|
Brother Entropy posted:I don't think anyone was waiting on Wizard's stamp of approval to be allowed to play a queer character, so that little sidebar feels ultimately pointless even if it had obviously worthwhile intentions behind it. If you've got a bigoted player/DM who'd be an rear end about that kind of thing I doubt being able to point to the Official Rules would change their minds. It wouldn't change their minds, but it would at least deprive them of one excuse.
|
#
¿
Jul 4, 2014 02:15
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 30, 2024 06:31 |
|
|
"Rulings, not rules" does not refer to the designer's job, Mike.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 21, 2014 17:44
|
|
|
Damning with faint praise, 5th edition is an improvement over 3.5 in many ways.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 25, 2014 17:54
|
|
|
Orc paladins are cool.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 30, 2014 00:08
|
|
|
I'm a fan of rules for collaboratively defining the setting, which basically amount to a systematic approach for dividing the responsibility of coming up with facts that apply to everybody. I also like bidding systems for conflict resolution, like FATE points or the scoring system in The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen. I think that rules are important so that all participants are guided, at least at the beginning, towards successfully participate in the kind of collaborative story that they decided they wanted to. Based on this, I think I can try to come up with something. Maybe. But that's nothing to do with D&D.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 3, 2014 08:07
|
|
|
ProfessorCirno posted:D&D has absolutely no cultural gravitas at all. The only people outside of the hobby who know of it, know it as a stupid nerd joke. Stupid nerd jokes are incredibly profitable this decade.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 5, 2014 02:38
|
|
|
Lightning Lord posted:In the spirit of this thread, why would I play 5e when BECMI does this so much better? Because it's got the word "Basic" in the title and is therefore for babies.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 7, 2014 22:53
|
|
|
If you have both Advantage and Disadvantage from at least 1 source each, roll 3d20 and take the middle number!
|
|
#
¿
Aug 8, 2014 00:05
|
|
|
If you're fighting that many monsters, they shouldn't all be the same, I think.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 9, 2014 08:42
|
|
|
treeboy posted:I'm not trying to "foil" their tactics, if they decide to summon 200 skeletons then fine, if they determinedly cheese their way through it by digging up every cemetery on the Sword Coast and arguing every single rule, then they feel clever for the moment until they realize its cheese and therefore dumb, then that's their loss. Maybe a conversation needs to take place and make sure the game they're playing, or the one I'm running, is actually what they want to play. My whole entire point has been, despite the disparity in scope of casters and martials, the gap is hardly unbridgeable, nor is it completely broken. Consider this: You're talking about what "they" are trying to do, but it's actually what one player is trying to do. Edit: or, more precisely, what one player is allowed to try to do and the others are not. Bongo Bill fucked around with this message at 04:23 on Aug 12, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Aug 12, 2014 04:19
|
|
|
goldjas posted:The fact that we have to have this drat skeleton conversation in the first place, ignoring everything else about it, the mechanics, whatever, but just the fact that it's being had, is a huge problem. I do hope everyone realizes this. Talking about skeletons is never a problem.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 12, 2014 07:30
|
|
|
It'd be easy to balance evocation magic and martial class features (they haven't really done it, but it would be easy). But when you get outside of combat, or even into unconventional applications of "fantasy physics" powers into combat situations, it becomes harder to come up with ways to translate feats of strength into narrative power. This is not insurmountable, but it is limiting.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 12, 2014 08:53
|
|
|
The barbarian can carry people across the river no matter how deep, fast, or cold it is. The fighter can take out his sword and cut an alternate route for it as quick as you please. The ranger conveniently knows a spot very close by where it can be forded as safely and easily as if it were dry land.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 12, 2014 09:18
|
|
|
SirFozzie posted:and Fighters not only hit things more often and for more damage with a sword, but they too have greater rewards: What pages are the rules for these things on?
|
|
#
¿
Aug 12, 2014 12:23
|
|
|
SirFozzie posted:It's called imagination. Look into it. Unlike your examples, the rules do allow the wizard to do things that basically turn the game into The Wizard & Friends Show Starring Wizard, unless the DM takes steps to prevent them. Other classes do not have rules granting them that kind of narrative influence. The differing levels of support is the problem. This problem is a problem with the rules. We are criticizing the rules, not the experience of play. The fact that bad rules can be ignored is not the same as those rules being good. Bongo Bill fucked around with this message at 12:38 on Aug 12, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Aug 12, 2014 12:33
|
|
|
Well, it's not as if we didn't know this board is where all the 4e grogs hang out.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 13, 2014 15:54
|
|
|
Does it say you have to inscribe them in a book? Can you, for instance, write the spell on a piece of paper and put it in an envelope addressed to your intended target, then send it in the mail? Roll it up and tie it to an arrow, which one of your skeletons shoots into their bedroom window? Fold it into a paper airplane?
|
|
#
¿
Aug 18, 2014 16:50
|
|
|
slydingdoor posted:a trickster cleric can use their clone What's this build?
|
|
#
¿
Aug 18, 2014 23:34
|
|
|
There's an important difference between a character who's cool and a character whose stuff is cool, though of course they can overlap and there's room enough for both in any given elfgame.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 22, 2014 19:16
|
|
|
Ederick posted:Why is this not a problem in 4E? Replace the word "spell" with "power" and you have the same thing. No, you don't have the same thing, for several reasons. The differences between powers and spells go far beyond what you call them. No class has exclusive access to powers; every character, regardless of class, gets pretty much the same number, and they all use them the same way, so there is no way to make a character that is "the guy that uses powers" the way casters in prior editions were defined as "the guy that uses spells." (Characters are differentiated by the effects of the powers they get, not by their access to powers.) Additionally, the keyword "spell" has narrative implications in addition to the strictly mechanical meaning that the keyword "power" does not. This becomes pretty clear when you play 4th edition. Bongo Bill fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Aug 27, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Aug 27, 2014 23:06
|
|
|
Ferrinus posted:Actually, I'm saying the scope and versatility of the wizard has nothing to do with the issue, and that reducing the wizard's scope and versatility will solve nothing and make the game worse. There is no problem with wizards; there is a problem with fighters. If both fighters and wizards got powers, rather than only wizards getting powers, it wouldn't matter if either class's power list was really broad at PHB1's release because a framework would exist for giving both character types equivalent power over the game. Giving fighters powers is necessary, but it's wrong to say that wizards don't have a problem. Wizards don't have powers either. Powers don't exist in 5e. What exists in 5e are spells, and spells, with their arbitrary mechanical scope and pernicious narrative role, aren't really a "framework" for anything.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 28, 2014 00:18
|
|
|
The social environment at the table can prevent any game's problems from causing anything unfun. However, that's not a defense of the game. You can even enjoy playing Monopoly, but that doesn't make it good.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 28, 2014 00:49
|
|
|
The only wizard I want to play in D&D is Stardust the Super Wizard.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 28, 2014 17:08
|
|
|
TKIY posted:1. Why flip out about balance in a co-operative game? With my group, if the Wizard manages to save the day with a well timed spell, everyone is happy, even the Fighter. Are your groups that adversarial that DPS actually matters to anyone? Everybody should get to feel useful, and specifically, feel useful in a way that's consistent with what they want their character to be about. More to the point, that usefulness should come from the rules of the game, not from the game master deciding to play a certain way; because that way it feels like part of the character, not a contrivance of the story.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 1, 2014 19:24
|
|
|
TKIY posted:Mechanically? At the lower levels they are more survivable unless the Cleric is blowing heals on himself. The Fighter has no heals at all, so the party doesn't lose anything if the Fighter is replaced with a Cleric who only heals himself.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 1, 2014 19:28
|
|
|
This is some Caster Supremacy 101 poo poo.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 1, 2014 20:03
|
|
|
Things like Concentration and flatter math mean that, with respect to caster supremacy, 5e is quantitatively better than 3/3.5. However, qualitatively, it still has the same problem, which is that the mechanics that represent narrative power (spells) are not equitably distributed.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 1, 2014 23:57
|
|
|
Video games are good, so being more like a video game can make tabletop games better.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 24, 2014 03:06
|
|
|
Oligopsony posted:I'm lazy and incompetent, what's a good one-stop summary of what's wrong with 5e? Everything 4e fixed is broken again, but not as broken as it was before.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 12, 2014 07:57
|
|
|
If the DM is good, the game will be good. And with D&D, if you don't have a DM, you don't have a game. The number of DMs is the bottleneck limiting how fast D&D can grow. Being a good DM is hard, understandably; in addition to creativity and the ability to be a good host, you need solid, broad knowledge of the game. Which D&D products were designed to teach the game? (The video games. Video games are the greatest teaching tool ever invented, completely on accident. Video games grew the market for D&D, but then they stopped making them.) It's hard to design a product for newcomers because it's imagine what it's like to not know something once you've learned it well enough to make something like it. But it's also hard to design a product for experts, because experts are very particular and it takes an even greater expertise to synthesizes the common elements of their wishes. In both cases, the designer must make something that the target audience doesn't know they want; newcomers obviously don't know enough about it to even guess at their tastes, and experts can just make what they think they want for themselves. So here's the big question with the obvious answer: who is 5e for? The answer to the riddle is found in the other difference between products for newcomers and products for experts: competition. You attract newcomers and grow your market by competing with entirely different phyla of product, completely unrelated pastimes and hobbies, like for instance video games, gardening, and having a life. Experts, on the other hand, need to be won over from similar products offered by competitors within your field. D&D is already the biggest fish in the pond. Who's there to steal market share from? Hold that thought. But here's what I just can't figure out. The story goes that Wizards of the Coast noticed the a major trend: all these superhero movies and fantasy TV shows and monster novels are growing the market for nerdy and nerd-peripheral media, so the time is right for a venerable and iconic dork-brand to come out with a new edition, draw in these geek-curious new customers and show them why RPGs are good enough to be worth getting shoved in a locker, and ride this rising tide all the way to the bank. Faced with this mandate, what does that baboon Mearls do? He makes a game designed to steal customers from Pathfinder.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 19, 2014 07:39
|
|
|
That's the surprise!
|
|
#
¿
Dec 19, 2014 21:44
|
|
|
Sanzuo posted:less fun and more traditional. New thread title.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 13, 2015 05:02
|
|
|
A major design goal of 5e appears to have been to make the rules as ignorable as possible from a player (not DM) perspective. Is this a worthy goal, and to what extent did they succeed?
|
|
#
¿
Jan 19, 2015 00:40
|
|
|
The fact that it's limiting is probably exactly what Jack Vance had in mind.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 19, 2015 02:34
|
|
|
IT BEGINS posted:You're literally arguing that Wizards designed this game poorly on purpose so that DMs could clean up after them. Even if that does somehow make sense, why is that a good thing? Please tell me a single good thing about having to readjust a trap's damage from d8 to d6 just so it doesn't unfairly kill my rogue 1/8 of the time because the design team couldn't be arsed to consider the average rogue HP at level 1. Is this "DM Empowerment"?
|
|
#
¿
Feb 9, 2015 23:38
|
|
|
Provide a contrivance, but make it fun. You find a merfolk corpse floating face-down near the shore. He's wearing water wings (hence the floating) and if you examine his face, you'll find a snorkel tied to his mouth. It's magic and lets you breathe water as though it were air. Maybe there are more nearby? And why was he murdered?
|
|
#
¿
Feb 11, 2015 18:07
|
|
|
I find myself giving a poo poo about a formula.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 16, 2015 05:57
|
|
|
goatface posted:An Elf lies slumped over the pristine bar in a high end hotel, discovered by staff arriving next morning. The bartender who would have closed up is missing. Thank you.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 26, 2015 03:36
|
|
|
theironjef posted:It's simple man. 4e is good with a grid, and bad without a grid. 3.x is bad with a grid, and bad without a grid. So to an observer, 4e gets worse without a grid present, but 3.x does not. It's just all relative. I thought that this was obviously what's happening here. Going gridless can't break what's already broken.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 27, 2015 00:16
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 30, 2024 06:31 |
|
|
Splicer posted:So many things fall under the game elements umbrella that you'd think there'd be a specific term for the "powers and weapons and stuff" sub-category. Content.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 28, 2015 02:18
|
|