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Nihilarian posted:Who is Zak S? An rear end in a top hat and a derail. Also, Death Ward is, the first time you would go to 0 HP, or the first time a spell would kill you outright, instead you are at 1 HP or the spell is negated. Anyone notice fireball got a bump to 8d6 damage? I can't figure out why... I've been consistently playing D&D Next because I am a dumb babby idiot, but honestly the Basic set is giving me a way stronger 3.5 vibe than the October playtest did. In many ways, I prefer the 2E "DM Fiat" of the playtest to the 3.5 "DC 10 + 1/2 X" feel of a lot of mechanics in basic rules. Plus sides: Great layout and formatting, the use of fantasy quotes is good. Down sides: I don't like the way they word some mechanics, its the "conversational" style which just feels unnecessarily wordy; it doesn't say something interesting, it just uses a lot of words to describe a rule mechanic. Laphroaig fucked around with this message at 21:51 on Jul 3, 2014 |
# ¿ Jul 3, 2014 21:49 |
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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 06:29 |
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Yeah thats what I said. "the first time you would go to 0 HP, or the first time a spell would kill you outright, instead you are at 1 HP or the spell is negated." It doesn't really last 8 hours, it lasts 8 hours or until expended. So its either a 4th level out of turn heal that recovers someone who would otherwise lose a turn (depending on initiative order), or a 4th level don't die when you fail a save-or-die. Honestly, I'd rather prepare Revivify, considering there is still nothing else to spend gold pieces on.
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# ¿ Jul 3, 2014 23:03 |
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ritorix posted:Also there's some encounter design math up: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20140707 So designing encounters on the fly looks to be really loving hard compared to 4E... does the CR system automatically do this math for me or something? I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that I won't have to pull out a spreadsheet to do my encounter design like the bad old days of 3.5. Still doesn't match up to the ease of balancing 4E encounters though. Shame.
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# ¿ Jul 7, 2014 15:03 |
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LFK posted:One thing I think I screwed up: this is my "should" chart, not my "is" chart. The only difference is that this is what CR 1 DPR should be, not what it is. In reality CR 1 DPR is 10. Though if you lump all CR ≤1 creatures together the average is pretty close to 7. Interesting, I'd be interested in the comparison chart. AKA, expected DPR of a 4 man iconic party (Rogue, Fighter, Wizard, Cleric) assuming normal use of daily resources etc, and see if this math even matches up. Basically, PCs can take so many hits, monsters can take so many hits. Does this math actually match up to provide a useful metric? Are all fights supposed to last 2-3 rounds? Exactly HOW terrible is it to take an action to NOT deal damage in combat, especially at higher level? At what point does inflated monster HP make save-or-die spells the optimum thing to cast?
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# ¿ Jul 7, 2014 19:48 |
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Gort posted:I guess the most basic would be getting a +1 sword at level 2, +2 at 6th, +3 at 10th, +4 at 14th and +5 at 18th. Let's say d6 elemental damage at level 6, increasing to 2d6 at 14th? So has anyone noticed that magic weapons scaling with to-hit defeats the entire purpose of bounded accuracy...?
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# ¿ Jul 14, 2014 17:45 |
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As I can't make a judgement on the edition until the modules come out, I will hold off on buying 5E until the module that makes it a good game I give a gently caress about arrives, fixing all of the problems and dramatically reversing some of the core design choices and decisions made. I suggest everyone else do the same.
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# ¿ Jul 22, 2014 18:59 |
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Winson_Paine posted:IT IS A BABY GAME FOR BABIES, RECESS LASTS AN HOUR the box clearly says 12+, NOT FOR BABIES https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rph3cZn-7z4 Mormon Star Wars posted:If you have to hide in the janitor's closet of the castle you are invading for a full hour in order to use your encounter power, it's not an encounter power, it's a daily. No one out adventuring is going to take an hour between every combat. Actually you should just start a stopwatch while asking the DM questions about the interiors of the room, the plot, roleplaying with your other party members, and then go "ANNNNND TIME!" once the 1 hour rolls around and you reset your abilities, as you look at the dm w/ a grin. Laphroaig fucked around with this message at 18:17 on Jul 23, 2014 |
# ¿ Jul 23, 2014 18:14 |
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moths posted:Wait, are 5e sympathetic websites getting exclusive previews? yeah but why should this be a surprise?
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# ¿ Jul 30, 2014 18:06 |
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"How to fanbase reacted to D&D 4E" you mean by buying a ton of it, playing it a lot, and making the online offerings into a big revenue stream? 4E was a financial success. 5E might also be a financial success. But I am not interested in playing a different version of 3E.
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# ¿ Jul 31, 2014 16:22 |
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thespaceinvader posted:Basically, The Raid, or the recent Dredd movie, but with a likeable 4-person team cast, and with orcs. the twist is instead of going UP into the building they go DOWN into a dungeon!!!!
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# ¿ Aug 4, 2014 19:59 |
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Recycle Bin posted:"You just teleported everyone in to the back of the necromancer's elaborate throne room and slit his throat? poo poo! Well, I didn't have time to come up with anything else for the night sooooo...random encounters?" This is a pretty terrible criticism. "Oh, you draw your sword and attack? poo poo! Well, I didn't have time to come up anything other than this elaborate negotiation scene with the Genie diplomats, sooooo... go grab a pizza while I stat up this combat?" The players bypassed the planned session. It doesn't matter what edition of D&D you are playing, that screws up prep. To criticize D&D 4E, the edition where it is absolutely easiest to open the MM and select # of Monsters equal to # of players with level equal to the players, blam, encounter... as the one that is harder to prep for...? Of course I forgot that D&D 4E removes the ability to roleplay and the incredibly stimulating "The wizard cast two spells that ended the session via scry and die, now we sit around and talk." "You killed the necromancer, which was the entire purpose of the session, luckily I am just SO GOOD at world building which I do all the time, I can just come up with something on the fly!" 4E gets rid of the ability to be good at world building, you see, because you are making encounters really quickly instead writing lists of Wizard names. Wait that makes no loving sense and neither does your criticism. EVERY edition of D&D has this exact problem, D&D Next/5E included. If the players bypass the planned session, you have to run on the fly. D&D Next doesn't give me any tools to make this easier. I've done it in 3.X (with difficulty) and with 4E (easily, because combat is simple and roleplaying mechanics, with skill challenges, were dirt simple to throw together). Laphroaig fucked around with this message at 20:51 on Aug 6, 2014 |
# ¿ Aug 6, 2014 20:41 |
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I am withholding judgement of D&D NEXT entirely until I see the organized play materials. If the organized play materials are not amazing I will completely ignore NEXT, and frankly so far its not been great. The transition adventures were OK, but they didn't knock my socks off. And Dead in Thay's Doomvault, which I played through as a PC, was a terrible joke of a module that sucked as written.
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# ¿ Aug 6, 2014 20:53 |
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Jack the Lad posted:Also, Enchanter wizards are pretty crazy: I love this because it means a Wizard's effective chance to be hit is mathematically equal to [[CHANCE OF ATTACKER FAILING WISDOM SAVE] * [CHANCE OF ATTACKER HITTING WIZARD]]. So it automatically scales with Wizard proficiency! You could have a monster with a 20% chance to pass the save and an 80% chance to hit the Wizard's AC end up with only a 16% chance of the attack actually going through. Its such a devastatingly powerful ability, but it slips through because WIZARDS. I just want to point out that because Proficiency scales from +2 to +6, or a +4 improvement, this ability is mathematically superior to +6 magical full plate with a shield in terms of its defensive ability. Assuming +6 armor even exists in the new edition? If armor doesn't scale up to +6 than lol Wizard Supremacy yet again. Also, since we have Natural Language and no longer have "charm effects" etc, nothing in the game is currently immune to the power! Laphroaig fucked around with this message at 16:33 on Aug 7, 2014 |
# ¿ Aug 7, 2014 16:26 |
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LuiCypher posted:It's like someone was sitting around trying to figure out how they could make fighters practically useless while still giving the wizard an effective counter against a DM who was just throwing monsters at the wizard. It's not enough to take away the fighter's choice whether or not to be meatshield - that choice is now a wizard class feature! Its also just straight up better than "imposes disadvantage" on the attack roll because, of course, 80%*80% is still 64%, whereas no monster is getting an 80% chance to pass a Wisdom saving throw (unless it has Advantage on all saves or something).
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# ¿ Aug 7, 2014 16:37 |
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Jack the Lad posted:I still haven't seen the final version, but in the playtest it was: Ok, so it hopefully got changed or removed in the final version. Ideally they changed it to imposes disadvantage, things immune to charm are immune.
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# ¿ Aug 7, 2014 16:49 |
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treeboy posted:What? The only stats a Wizard has any interest in is Con and Dex? How about Int, the Wizard's primary stat that determines all of its to-hit and DC bonuses? He obviously means the only stat a Wizard cares about, after Int, is Con followed by Dex. The standard array lets you put a 15 in int and a 14 in con. You should do that if you play a Wizard. quote:Also excuse me, True Polymorph is a lvl 9 spell, Polymorph is a lvl 4 crowd control spell. Concentration doesn't matter for those spells listed because they are loving amazing and don't require concentration. They are huge amounts of Wizard power, and concentration does nothing to nerf them because it doesn't apply. quote:You're still completely ignoring the fact that a Wizard can't simply be hit infinite number of times and not lose a spell. Eventually (1-3 DC10 hits) they're likely to die and lose the spell anyway. Uhhhh EVERYONE can be hit and die from damage. But healing also exists. The Wizard can have his long-duration concentration spells and as long as he is not getting murdered in a fight, which those long duration concentration spells help prevent by the by (like Stoneskin), they are not going away due to this mechanic. AKA concentration is not an effective limit to the power of certain buffs aside from the only 1 spell you can concentrate on at a time. As soon as that limit is broken (and of course it will be, this edition is gently caress all if not gung ho for more broken spells, I bet there is going to be a spell that concentrates on a spell for you, because the Wizard's of the Coast D&D team motto: "Because gently caress you thats why." It will be balanced because it uses up a spell slot, you see! quote:Almost like they've got some kind of process for determining monster statistics to keep them within a certain range... Yeah wouldn't it be great if they told us what that was instead of backsolving for tummyfeels. Laphroaig fucked around with this message at 19:37 on Aug 8, 2014 |
# ¿ Aug 8, 2014 19:34 |
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Kai Tave posted:Pushing things to ridiculous extremes with cheese is a part of the D&D experience though. I mean, white room arguments are extremely tedious, granted, but the fact is "I summon my horde of skeletons to zerg rush the boss" isn't really some radical outside-case scenario and doing poo poo that then forces the gameplay to suddenly be all about you whether it's by skeleton-ganking the dragon or by engaging in a drawn-out argument with the GM over how many skeletons can fit in the dragon's cave or the fact that skeletons should totally be immune to fear because it's dumb otherwise or the GM having to tailor every encounter to take 44 skeleton minions into account is exactly the sort of thing that people should be prepared for if they want the "classic D&D feel" because that's it right there. Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the New Edition is at hand. The New Edition! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of ENWorld Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with dragon body and the head of a wizard, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards the publishers to be born? Laphroaig fucked around with this message at 21:54 on Aug 11, 2014 |
# ¿ Aug 11, 2014 21:46 |
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Mendrian posted:Any other navel-gazing thoughts? I'm really tempted to do some rewrites. There is a thread for this, but suffice to say, the first question you want to answer is one of theme. Who is this game for? What type of games will be played using this system? I'd take a handful of good ideas from D&D Next, and from other D&Ds, and from other games, but I wouldn't use D&D Next with a binder of houserules. What would be the point? Granted, you are right: this edition seems to have been designed from the ground up to be "The D&D you play with a binder full of house rules; so its YOUR D&D."
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# ¿ Aug 11, 2014 21:57 |
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Also this is just an example we've come up with now. Its not like goons have been scouring the sourcebooks, wringing their hands and going this'll show em!! Its also not willful rules misinterpretation. Cast spells that last 24 hours. Rest. Regain the slows, the effect is still up. This is some basic poo poo. Why does it exist? Because D&D Next is lazy. Its the expendables 3 of RPGs. It has 1 or 2 great things (Mel Gibson, Antonio Bandereas, Advantage/Disadvantage). It has the explosions/dragons you want. It'll be fun to go see/play with your friends. But its lazily made. Its not really good in a market with tons of other stuff to go play. The house rule for it is simple; you can't do it. You keep trying to make up ways "Oh well in the dungeon then, so and so will happen to compensate" - full stop, gently caress that stupid poo poo. Just say "You can only have X skeletons/summons/whatever." The game is not built to support minion factories and smart swarm/minion rules have been consistently removed from every iteration for the same reason damage on a miss was - irredeemably terrible people on the internet with terrible opinions. Guess what, you cater to those people, the game breaks. Ban skeletons at your table but don't keep giving me "WELL IN A REAL FANTASY WORLD, YOU SEE, HEH" because it makes you sound like a complete loving toff and it ignores the fact that nothing YOU, as the DM, are doing is wrong, you are being actively hosed by a game system that says "This is the class that gets to bend reality to their whims and its in a game with the class that gets to attack a couple of times" and calls them equal.
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# ¿ Aug 11, 2014 23:35 |
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:4E would make a very, very good Final Fantasy Tactics-style video game. Sadly because of Atari we're not going to get that. the greatest problem 4E really had was, the one edition that would have easily made an awesome FFT style video game didn't get it.
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# ¿ Aug 21, 2014 19:04 |
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gradenko_2000 posted:So I found a/the formula for computing DPR - my next question would be if monster HP is/should be based on an expected fight length or if it should be more towards just escalating hit dice as the level increases. What, exactly, are you trying to do, and why are you trying to do it? Is the goal to create a monster in 5E?
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# ¿ Oct 30, 2014 16:53 |
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Esser-Z posted:Your own allies have never counted as cover for enemies as long as I've been playing D&D. I'm not sure if that's still true in Next, though. DM's choice.
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# ¿ Nov 10, 2014 20:56 |
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Darwinism posted:If it's contained steam? Yeah, since steam expands. I'm not even an engineer! yeah but the decanter of endless water could create an endless gyser: “Geyser” produces a 20-foot-long, 1-foot-wide stream at 30 gallons per round. - the force of which is getting you substantial efficiency as straight hydro-electric. You'd then take the infinite water and also generate infinite steam to turn another turbine. or just use infinite heat to make a thermocouples to generate infinite electricity and then you can have an endless nerd argument about metagaming and player knowledge vs PC knowledge and then i have an INT score of 24 with enhancements, that means by IQ is 240 which means i figure it out, also i solve fermi's last theorm and make a laser gun god I hated the Reality Physics Simulator Edition that was 3.X
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# ¿ Nov 13, 2014 23:09 |
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Lets look at D&D insane history of revenue generation:
Might as well go down the rabbit hole and monetize D&D by making the D&D App. I ponder if Trapdoor Technologies was hired to do this. Ultimately I don't think the development money was ever in existence to make a high quality D&D app, but if it did exist, this is how I think it would work. The app contains the basic rules for free. It contains a character sheet with basic building functionality and built in die-roller. You need to do a thing? You touch a thing. Die rolls, gives you a result. The app contains in-app upgrade purchases. You can buy the $30 complete unlocks (whole PHB, whole DMG, whole MM) or just pay for the rules modules that you use. Modules are priced at the $8 mark or so. Its cheaper to buy the whole package than to buy all the unlocks. You can even do stuff like price individual monsters and spells at X cents each. Go hog wild. Use the now massive utilization data on which classes people are playing, spells they are casting, monsters they are fighting etc to make intelligent choices about your market.
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# ¿ Dec 2, 2014 16:48 |
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Human (Variant), Level 1 Cleric (Life), Next levels in Wizard Gain: heavy armor + shield (AC 20 with plate and shield) Gain: Swap INT save proficiency for WIS save proficiency Gain: 2 HP Gain: A pile of cantrips and two Cleric domain spells, as well as level 1 cleric spells known Feat Taken: Resilient (Con) Stats, after racial adjustments: 16 INT 16 CON 14 WIS 10 DEX 8 STR 8 CHA Lose: Delay class features for Wizard 1 level Lose: 2 first level wizard spells, delay your gaining new Wizard spells by 1 level (so instead of 2nd level spells at 3rd level, you will gain them at 4th). Neutral: At certain levels it will be exactly as if you were a Wizard of that level. Lose: A stupid level 20 capstone Also you should go Necromancer! Nothing says Necromancer like black-spike fullplate and your skeleton horde.
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# ¿ Dec 3, 2014 21:38 |
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$425k, and thats not flexible funding, its all or nothing. If I was WoTC and they showed me that product with a half a million dollar price tag, I would have cut my losses as well.
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# ¿ Dec 6, 2014 19:26 |
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Jimbozig posted:Yeah, that's not the only time Mearls talked about that on the podcast. Apparently in Mearls' game the players are literally fighting without penalty with their guts hanging out until the cleric prays them back into their bellies, or until a good night's sleep fixes it right up. Mearls once lifted some heavy boxes for a friend and then his arms felt like dead weights and super sore to the point he couldn't move them (0 HP), but then he had a good night's sleep and was able to use them again and felt OK, if slightly sore. But if William Wallace had shouted at him to keep lifting he couldn't have done it. See, tummyfeels as design.
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# ¿ Dec 8, 2014 17:34 |
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Healing surges were an elegant mechanic that worked well until level ~16 or so in 4E, its a shame that whoever wrote the section in the DMG presented them as "You just heal! Free healing!" instead of as a pacing and resource mechanic.
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# ¿ Dec 9, 2014 23:29 |
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mango sentinel posted:Well I know that's an issue. I meant more the belief that Healing Surges are a bad mechanic. Anything that smooths out encounter balance makes players feel less limited without breaking the game seems like a slam dunk good thing. Anyone who thinks Healing Surges are a bad mechanic are broken people. Pre-healing surges (and now in Next) HP is unlimited; you have as many potions or wands of cure light wounds as you can carry. Any restriction on this healing has to be from the DM or the world. In a fight, however, you can't heal well; the only thing wortwhile is the Heal spell at higher level. Pacing and scaling on healing spells didn't really match up to the HP damage being dealt by monsters. This poor design of previous D&D is now back in Next. With healing surges, two things happened: one, the total amount of HP you could tap into in a given day was limited. Secondly, healing in combat suddenly became a realistic proposition - you were able to use this healing resource in combat as it scaled with your HP (each surge is base 1/4th of your total HP, some races/feats etc modified this), and generally the math on monster to-hit and damage was very tight in 4E. This was a complimentary, elegant system. Some people hated it because healing comes from Magic Only and thats how they always did it. Some people hated it because it necessarily made the game less lethal; Mearls house-ruled Healing Surges out of existence in his 4E games because he wanted players to have their basic HP and-that-was-it; he didn't like the Adventuring Day being tied to Healing Surges left, he wanted it to be tied to spells remaining and just in general be higher lethality. In 4E, there are no monsters that can just kill you outright; it wasn't a design concept. Anything that could do enough damage to kill you outright would also be unhittable and miss you only on a natural 1 due to the level scaling. If you wanted higher lethality, and that gameplay feel/style, removing or reducing healing surges was a step in that direction. I think that is a pretty fair look at why people didn't like healing surges without name-calling. Basically they wanted to play a game with, for lack of a better term, less empowered (not necessarily powerful, but capable of interacting with the game world on their own terms) PCs. 4E essentially empowered all characters to do this within the framework of the rules - you didn't have to use weird magical tricks and loopholes. Lots of players, however, got their kicks out of 3.X from doing exactly that, trying to gain a degree of power over the world via abuse of the game rules, because a vanilla 1-20 character had no agency unless they were a Cleric, Druid, or Wizard in 3.X. All of a sudden, everyone was equal under the game rules. That is a very different mental game - you no longer are trying or have to or even need to game the system. And, get this - really, truly gaming the system in 4E requires the participation of *other players at the table*. You couldn't craft the 1-20 build that did its stupid gimmick and didn't rely on anyone else and get that kick anymore. As a DM, I was delighted at this, but I know a few players who made the 3.X->4E transition and basically were sad that the degree of power gaming possible in 3.X in relation to the relative power of the default classes and other players was no longer there. You can still do nasty tricks and combos in 4E, but the absolute best ones rely upon abuse of the action economy, and those require other players to maximize. Laphroaig fucked around with this message at 00:46 on Dec 10, 2014 |
# ¿ Dec 10, 2014 00:40 |
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kingcom posted:Ftfy. Healing Surges made the game more predictable and less randomly lethal. A more predictable game and a less randomly lethal game puts more power into the hands of the players uniformly. DMs who wanted more lethality didn't like it, and players who got a kick out of maximizing their own PCs relative to the PCs of others didn't like it. quote:Mob attacks seems sensible at first blush until you realise that advantage is much more difficult to calculate for those rules than any form of static bonus would be. Just do Advantage is +5, Disadvantage is -5. I know thats only true for the middle of the chart, but its a useful rule of thumb and can be resolved quickly.
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# ¿ Dec 10, 2014 00:48 |
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who gives a gently caress about a formula
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# ¿ Dec 10, 2014 01:06 |
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for the polearm thing: If this was 4E it would work this way. Reach adds +5 feet reach when you attack with it, you don't exist in a constant state of +5 foot reach. Polearm Master makes them provoke when they enter your adjacent square then, and when they leave your adjacent square they also provoke. You can make attacks with a space between you and your foe though. Mage Slayer should probably say Reach not 5 feet though. Garl: He is saying if the polearm made your reach 10 feet instead of being +5 feet "when you attack". Frankly this whole edition has badly writing wording so hey guess what its RULINGS NOT RULES play the way YOU feel Polearm Master and Reach should work!!
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# ¿ Dec 11, 2014 22:24 |
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Lets ask Mike Mearls and he can post about how he spent his lunch break swinging a broom around the D&D offices and its time to make some changes to the rules...
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# ¿ Dec 11, 2014 22:27 |
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Like I said last page, this will be solved by Mike Mearls swinging a broom around the Wizard's offices and then coming up with how polearms should ACTUALLY behave you see, because at Agincourt, glaive guirsame, bohemian ear-spoon you see, the halberd can OBVIOUSLY be grasped by the short haft, but lucern hammer? I await the full Polearm Rules Module.
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# ¿ Dec 12, 2014 04:41 |
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Pharmaskittle posted:Ok, thanks for the answers on the reach problem. Between your responses, taking a closer reading of the rules, and skimming some other sites, I think I've got it figured out. The rules aren't any more or less balanced than how I'd do it, they're just needlessly complicated. Does this look like a good little chart to give to my DM and other players? I knew what you were talking about and I found the chart confusing. Skip the chart maybe? Demonstrate the three scenarios on the grid instead of trying to present them as one image? I don't care about flanking. This game's tactical depth is "Does the <Wizard> use a spell or use a cantrip?" Adding flanking, removing it, who cares. If you have it in, it should be Advantage because a bonus should be Advantage, not piddly modifiers.
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# ¿ Dec 16, 2014 22:58 |
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My vote on 5E is: there are better game systems to play that will let you experience the style of fantasy roleplaying you want. If you want it to BE dungeons and dragons with all of its tropes, items, etc - then use whatever your preferred brand of D&D is. Its currently supported. There are no digital tools or PDFs. I wouldn't spend $100 on the game buying books. At the end of the day its not horrible its just not any good. I'd rather play any of a variety of other games, or house ruled 4E, or BECMI, than play Next. But I'd rather play Next than 3.X or 2E.
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# ¿ Dec 17, 2014 19:15 |
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FMguru posted:Who, exactly, is the target audience for this $150 slab of mediocrity? Solid Jake posted:Mike Mearls. Echoing this sentiment. Every major choice in the core rules is a reflection of the things that Mike Mearls likes, with elements he didn't care about being sacrificed on the Altar of Grog. Speaking about Magic: In 4E, magic is omnipresent and everywhere, especially in itemization for the players. Wealth by level is a necessity for the tight math of the system, and while you don't have to be completely decked out in magic items past the Big Three (Armor, Neck, Weapon(s)), plenty of combos only work with specific itemization. A high level 4E character can expect to have a dozen different magic items. In NEXT, you can only have 3 attuned items. This makes magic "rarer" - for those who can't just cast spells. Magical effects are harder to come by unless you are a Wizard. Expectations of what kind of items you are going to get also differ. In 4E, the wishlist system and robust wealth-by-level system means players have a much stronger control over magic items than in previous editions. A lot of DMs complained about this sense of entitlement and worried that the wonder had gone out of magic items. Now we are returning to a forced-rarity situation -it doesn't make any of the items, though, inherently more wondrous or magical. Just rarer. So far, aside from the artifacts none are truly character defining or exceptionally interesting. And the Artifacts are all spell effects and stuff to convey how they are powerful; they let you act like a powerful spellcaster. There are personalities and detriments and drawbacks and boons, but they are flavorful rather than defining the power of the item. That is a pretty big sea-change. I don't think it accomplished what was desired, because everything is still "As per the blank name spell." As long as magic is limited by what spell effects can produce, honestly, it will never feel truly wondrous or cool to me.
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# ¿ Dec 19, 2014 17:35 |
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Adventurer's League will have rulings, not rules, so that your local Adventurer's League will be unique! It will be YOUR D&D, not the D&D some corporate guy at "Wi$$ard$ of the Coa$t" is trying to sell you. Also theatre of the mind
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# ¿ Dec 19, 2014 22:20 |
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Darwinism posted:But wizards are explicitly rare in Dark Sun and most people only ever see the quasi-divine Templar magic granted by the sorcerer kings? Like, Defilers and Preservers are things, but they're really not common in-setting. Man if only there were a class of PCs who would defend those people, maybe called Defenders with explicit mechanics that made the whole 'metagame knowledge' thing completely pointless... Seriously 4E PC roles was a great idea and 5E running away from that is a gigantic and terrible step backwards. We have all these same problems again because they are a core and fundamental problem of D&D 3.X.
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# ¿ Dec 30, 2014 22:04 |
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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 06:29 |
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Of course, this leaves out all of the plate wearing wizards and all of the wizards currently shapechanged into monsters with hundreds of hit points. Truly the Wizard is a mysterious and ever-changing beast. Wizard wizard wizard wizard, what is D&D if not a game of Wizards? A dragon is just a wizard-lizard and a dungeon is just a wizard-den.
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# ¿ Dec 30, 2014 22:48 |