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Oh hey 5E thread in TradGames! Didn't know you were here. I want to talk about how this book is organized. It's not awful-level (that would be Fantasy Flight Warhammer) but not good, either. -Races are out of alphabetical order for no reason I can fathom. -Insofar as I can tell, the book never actually says what having a skill gives you (one must assume proficiency), nor what a skill really does (beyond one-line generalities). -There's a reference to passive Investigation and no slot for it on the official sheet. -The spell section is organized worse than 3E. The general list doesn't mention what school each spell is or feature a short description. The actual full descriptions don't mention which classes qualify for which spells. This is no-brainer level of bad and leads to you keeping open one portion of the manual while you explore another. -The game simply does not do a good job of explaining basic mechanics, and you're occasionally thumbing through 2-3 different sections to find corresponding rules. Even the index re-directs you too much. Good Stuff -Everything in the book is predicated on generalities wherever the designers deemed possible. The book has almost nothing to say about alignment (to the point where alignment seems even more blatantly pointless than usual), doesn't list what several items in the equipment section do, and doesn't really get into specifics with many spells. To a certain extent this is refreshing. You can just sit down and play the game and you are seemingly expected to eyeball stuff in a rules-lite manner. That's OK if it's the objective. At other times, the distinctions it does make between rules become meaningless and clash with this style. The game does not describe skills almost at all, and yet there's eighteen of them. -There's an honest attempt to instill flavor back into the game. Suggested reading, introductory fluff, lots of full-color art on almost every page (more so of the latter, in my estimation, than 4E), emphasis on backgrounds being an RP tool more than a sexy build option, and so on. -The systems for proficiency, advantage, and upward limit on ability scores are pretty elegant overall. There's much less "+1 this, +1 that" or round-to-round bonuses than in 4E. Name Change fucked around with this message at 05:01 on Aug 20, 2014 |
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Aug 20, 2014 04:58
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Rosalind posted:Dwarf, Elf, Halfling, and Elf are the "core" races while the others are unusual races. I think it's explained more somewhere else in the book--or maybe in the adventurer's league document. This is still unfathomable.
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Aug 20, 2014 05:12
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Falcon2001 posted:Honestly the more I read about it, the better I feel about 5e. I mean they fixed some problems with 3.5 (not the glaring huge ones, but I guess we're just accepting those) and in general it seems like there are some good ideas there if you're super into 3.5/pathfinder. I might try playing a game sometime to check it out. Yeah it provides a couple of quality-of-life improvements without really addressing (and occasionally worsening) some systemic problems.
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Aug 20, 2014 22:04
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Falcon2001 posted:Yeah. It also sounds like combat tends to go quicker than 3.5, and I'll definitely admit that 4E combat tended to slog a bit, so that might be a good thing. Someday I'll get some folks together and play it out and see. You could go to a FLGS and play Encounters.
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Aug 20, 2014 22:08
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Falcon2001 posted:That involves leaving my house, maaaaaaaan. And hoping the FLGS isn't full of lovely people. But I twice hammered a really good gaming group out of FLGS people.
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Aug 20, 2014 22:11
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dwarf74 posted:Except on the 3e end, you need to have a pretty high degree of system mastery or beg your friends to make your character. Wizards already have broken and silly options (on both ends of the spectrum) and are primed by the setup of the system to gain in the same ways that 3E wizards did. There are only so many feats and class feature packages. The wizard learns dozens of spells.
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Aug 20, 2014 23:11
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OK so at my store we ran two tables, one a 4E table and one a 5E table. The 4E table was 5 PCs. The 5E table was 10 PCs (because we always get a huge spike at the beginning of a season). The 5E table went as fast as the 4E table, because there's so little to do on a 5E turn. Was playing a rock gnome wizard/sage. Made good use of Grease + Produce Flame from the druid sitting next to me to create a grease fire, an old school combo. Definitely 3E style where you need to have the PHB open to play a caster. Even people who are mostly positive about the game don't like that every spell arbitrarily uses one of several attack resolution systems. Found it remarkable that taking a five-foot step is now basically a standard action. There's not really a lot to the system, especially at 1st level, so there's not a lot to say. Being back to a fairly manageable character sheet is nice. Not needing a builder to make a character in efficient time is nice. New players being able to just instantly know wtf is nice (most of the table was people who had never played, or were doing their first 5E game. One person was that mythical creature who actually started with D&D for Dummies). Resolving a huge combat in about an hour was nice--leaves room for any real RPing, if that's what your group cares about. The 4E thing where you just feel like you are moving from setpiece to setpiece, with two minutes of boring poo poo in between, is done. Background serves as a springboard into your character, rather than being that thing you need to complete your powerbuild. Advantage is still elegant. Overall it's still a confused system, because they tried to make it more rules-lite than 3E but they didn't commit. Dungeon World still rules that side of things. Tactically of course it's a total mess, there are trap options aplenty. Witch Bolt is strictly far worse than any given attack cantrip, to name one of a hundred.
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Aug 21, 2014 18:34
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The Bee posted:If I can ask, what exactly about 4E gives the setpiece feel? I've heard it a lot but from comparing my 3.5 and 4E books I don't really see much difference. Is it just a side effect of the combat taking too long? It's entirely combat taking too long. 90-95% of the game is combat, and it's slow combat where success is measured in how quickly and completely you shut down your enemies with marking and penalties. A 3-4 hour game is probably two encounters. If we had the same amount of 5E players we would have been going 2-3 times as fast.
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Aug 21, 2014 18:48
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3E and 5E have their own problems, where the combat is fast because the casters are resolving it really quickly. Being faster =/= Better. There are many other systems that are fast and also better.
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Aug 21, 2014 18:50
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The Bee posted:Figured as much. I can't help but wonder how much it would be sped up if statistics and abilities were autotracked. It would make tons of hard to track modifiers way easier to observe and reduce the amount of sheet and book checking each time a power gets used. 4E would make a very, very good Final Fantasy Tactics-style video game. Sadly because of Atari we're not going to get that.
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Aug 21, 2014 18:56
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AFAIK the book states you can't add your proficiency bonus more than once to any single roll.
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Aug 22, 2014 01:23
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neonchameleon posted:... I've just made a first level Druid competitive in DPR with a fighter going flat out - while not surrendering casting ability in the slightest. By the time the fighter is again outpacing you, you've got hella magic. "Caster outpaces fighter at the only thing fighter does, while the caster retains all other features" is rather expected, though.
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Aug 22, 2014 02:49
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Daetrin posted:I don't suppose anyone could link/give me a full explanation on this? All I've been able to find is "Druid is bear, companion is bear, exponential bears." This is probably a reference to 4E where you can be a bear with the bear theme who summons bears and rides a bear, IIRC.
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Aug 22, 2014 03:18
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dwarf74 posted:Yes, that's exactly what everyone is saying. Go you. At least I'm having a quiet chuckle--there, but not audible--every time he posts.
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Aug 22, 2014 19:27
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Jackard posted:Is every 5E DM expected to be a game dev math wizard with there being so many optional rules? 5E is relatively tame so far, the only thing that you can really do is take a few fairly obvious trap options. As the game expands, everything that holds down casters will be stripped away, since the game is already set up that way. Fighter has a choice of class options and some feats--wizard has all that and two spells per level that can do literally anything and need not have any coherent theme with each other.
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Aug 26, 2014 08:27
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It's back to the 3E model where you earn your fun. At level 1 a wizard is dull. By 8-12 you are clearly better than everyone else. At 13+ you just rule the game.
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Aug 29, 2014 21:32
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Sarx posted:Is there a totally different thread for people who like the game and want to talk about it in a less critical way? This is pretty much that thread, the other one in the games version of LF is non-stop scorn.
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Aug 31, 2014 07:22
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Stat rolling is horrible and a joke unless disposable characters is the point of the game. "But it's fun to RP a character with fetal alcohol syndrome!" Then you get into "well if you don't like your rolls, roll again!" So why am I rolling, shithead?
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Sep 1, 2014 00:23
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The only time two 6's happens is when you are trying to engineer three 18's or the like.
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Sep 1, 2014 00:46
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The point buy system that D&D has promoted has also historically been terrible, where it costs exponentially more points to get to 18, etc. It's easier to do something like: -You get an 18, 16, 14, 12, 10, and 8 -You get a set number of points that you spend 1-for-1 Much less headache, much better characters for what D&D editions expect you to actually have to qualify for things.
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Sep 1, 2014 00:49
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This thing where you derive enjoyment from playing a statistical moron or an invalid isn't actually taken away from you in point buy. No roleplaying avenue is cut off. Point buy just ensures that your character has baseline competence at his class--the thing you claim to be able to do and that your character identifies as--and can contribute equally to everything going on with the other characters. That's all it does. If you can articulate why doing it randomly is better in any way without simply appealing to tradition, that would be impressive at this point. When people say "Fun isn't a measuring stick," they don't mean you are having badwrongfun. They mean that you can have fun playing almost any game if you try hard enough (or as in the case of many versions of D&D, ignore enough bad rules), so your "fun" is really not indicative of how good the game is comparatively.
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Sep 1, 2014 01:14
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Kortel posted:We... do rolls for fun? We also do arrays and pregenerated characters. Play several other systems, all have pros and cons. Systems and settings determine what we feel like playing. Every system we play has things we like about that that help reinforce the narrative aspect. We also take the bads of each system, house rule where needed. "We anecdotally find this fun, the end" when it's already been spelled out why that's effectively meaningless.
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Sep 1, 2014 02:03
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dichloroisocyanuric posted:You talk to him outside of the game or find a new DM or suffer through it if the pros outweigh the cons. This kind of question sorta trails the line for life advice rather than Dungeons and Dragons discussion. Why can't I just have a game good enough that someone's limited understanding of the rules doesn't actively damage my experience? Why is this considered pie-in-the-sky?
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Sep 1, 2014 02:13
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Kortel posted:I was just told that a game is not fun because numbers. No, you weren't. You were told that mechanically, 5E is a bad game, compared across editions of D&D.
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Sep 1, 2014 03:04
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quote:I was absolutely in love with 3rd edition when it came out, and I've probably played more hours of 3E-derived D&D than anything else ever. But! There were things about it which, although I like them as rules from a "does this rule make sense and seem balanced" perspective, ended up being more effort to deal with than I liked. I really liked stacking rules as a replacement for 1e's horrific mess of incompatible modifiers. (Of ring of protection and cloak of protection, one worked only with nonmagic armor, and the other worked with only leather armor but magic armor was okay. That was insane.) I started a 3E game using WoW d20 the other night, and even after giving people a week to absorb what we would be doing and providing insights on how to do it (many had never dealt with 3E before), we still had to have a character creation night. No actual play, just building characters. Between people passing around books, etc. it took four hours to make seven or so level 5 characters. Everyone at the table was familiar with 4E, and they were flabbergasted at how over-complicated and badly organized 3E is. I had to remind them that we all voted on what we were going to play out of a series of choices, and this is what they picked. Now they would know as I knew. "If you want a prestige class, you should make sure you are getting all the prerequisites." "Where do I find the prerequisites for prestige classes?" "It differs completely from class to class, and there are countless classes."  "This chart represents your spell slots. Don't forget to add in your domain slot, which in the case of WoW is not even listed on the chart. Then cross-reference this chart with the bonus spells by ability score chart at the beginning of the book." "[Here is how skill points, the worst system in the game, work]" "You have 9,000 gold pieces to choose items." "What should I pick? The PHB just has chalk, rope, and iron rations." "All magical items are in the DMG. Even at level 5 you have hundreds of possible choices." "What about feats?" "Let me just tell you what feats you should take as this class. There are too many trap options for you to just do it by yourself." quote:5e is not a game about careful mechanical balance between party members, and I think that's not necessarily bad. Ever played Ars Magica? Talk about caster loving supremacy. But it can be a fun game anyway, and I don't think AM would be as much fun without the caster supremacy. Here's the problem: This isn't actually what 5E is meant to be. It's conceptually torn between rules-lite and tactical mechanics, such that people go searching for how to use certain rules that are in the book, can't find the corresponding mechanics, and have to ask Mike Mearls what to do on Twitter, to their sorrow, because he has no answers and has now even begun contradicting the book online. 5E's idea of rules-lite is "don't bother writing the rule," while the design takes pains to structure the manuals out like the 3E PHB, which is not a rules-lite system. As such, one of the big problems with 5E is that it's not really good at anything, let alone what it's trying to do. An actual rules-lite system does not even look like the PHB. The green book here is the entire Dungeon World manual, how to play and how to GM:   Ars Magica is completely a game about dominant casters and the things they do, it's pretty much on the box. You alternate between being a spellcaster or one of his henchmen. You won't be surprised to find that when you roll a man-at-arms that you're actually the least important or, in the case of D&D, mechanically interesting person at the table. If you want a game where characters are supposed to be randomly generated from the ground up and expendable, D&D doesn't actually intend that, and it's not good at it. If you want a game that places the narrative around certain characters intentionally via their class and feeds the other players interesting ways and formats to contribute, D&D doesn't actually intend that, and it's not good at it. If you want a game that's grimdark and full of gruesome death and maiming around every corner, no matter what you rolled, D&D doesn't actually intend that, and it's not good at it. If you want a game with a simple central resolution mechanic that everyone can learn in twenty minutes so they can set mechanics aside and have a narrative-based game, D&D doesn't actually intend that, and it's not good at it. 5E, like all D&Ds before it, is a high fantasy adventure game with involved tactical combat and heavy character-building mechanics. That's what the game is about. If 5E is bad at its job, it's really kind of a waste to try to stick some other tag on it to compensate. Just play the game that does it better. 5E is a third-rate system at this point. People who want sound tactics have 4E. People who want a mix of tactics and wild choices have 3E. People who want a game about wizards from the ground-up have many choices. People who want easy mechanics and lots of narrative have the most choices of all. Name Change fucked around with this message at 07:31 on Sep 1, 2014 |
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Sep 1, 2014 07:24
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PeterWeller posted:To be fair, that was 4E's way of presenting truly magical healing like the Cleric's cure spells. This isn't accurate. Surgeless healing was either a valuable class feature (Artificer) or something you typically got at high level or with several asterisks attached.
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Sep 8, 2014 18:11
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Arivia posted:Yeah I just got a copy of the 4e Eberron Campaign Guide and I'm pretty excited to read about how it plays in 4e. It should be a good fit. One of the things I noticed immediately with 3E Eberron was that most of the feats are really loving cool, something noticeably absent from typical 3E design, where each feat felt like "Let's make the idea of this intriguing, but the actual effect pretty worthless, even though feats are more difficult to get than spells."
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Sep 10, 2014 05:01
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You could literally add "all bonuses give you advantage, all penalties give you disadvantage" to 4E and you'd be both A) Significantly improving 4E's combat timesink B) Extracting the sum total of innovation out of 5E, capped stats and more static bonuses by level not withstanding. The only asterisks I can think of would generally be: -If your 4E power lets you roll multiple times already to resolve one attack, you only get one extra roll total -To determine if you have advantage or disadvantage when you have both bonuses and penalties, calculate the sum modifier imposed by the effects and resolve accordingly.
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Sep 10, 2014 23:51
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Kai Tave posted:It also makes the Avenger's shtick less impressive to be honest since anybody else would be able to duplicate it with minimal effort and much more flexibility. I don't think the avenger would mind rolling three times, though. Although disadvantage would gently caress the Avenger up unless you just flat-out ruled they couldn't get disadvantage or something similar.
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Sep 11, 2014 00:00
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Add a sanity/perils of the warp mechanic for casters, which introduces random apeshit splatterdeath charts, which improve any game ever.
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Sep 11, 2014 08:16
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Jack the Lad posted:
I will take the ring to mumble.
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Sep 11, 2014 10:03
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Anyway, I'm thinking of running a roll20/mumble 5e game - either Hoard of the Dragon Queen or my own thing depending on when I can get a Monster Manual. Would any of you be interested in playing?
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Super Waffle posted:What exactly is an Intelligence Contest? ...So many one-liners that I'm not using right now.
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Sep 11, 2014 20:41
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Are we still treating MonsterEnvy like he isn't a gimmick poster while we patiently wait for this thread to become exactly like the Imp Zone thread?
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Sep 11, 2014 23:07
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Arivia posted:Oh my god they're putting the Elder Elemental Eye into the Realms. Kill me now. What, you're not excited that Literally Sauron is here to stay in the always really good and compelling D&D fluff?
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Sep 12, 2014 08:04
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Dairy Power posted:I can see why people didn't like 4e rules. Monsters and players having different scales of health/damage struck us as odd, and the guy who usually DM's in the group didn't find the 4e rules for creating NPCs enjoyable, which was a big enough issue to make it a non-starter for us by itself. Some of the encounter powers and at-will powers had abilities baked in that we couldn't decide if we'd allow outside of specific situations, a prime example being the avenger's at will that allowed teleportation with the attack. We also found battles to be extremely slow. Everything felt a little too sanitized, and we frequently felt limited to our available abilities, rather than empowered by them. While I generally agree with a lot of this, "we couldn't decide if we should let the class have its actual powers" is petty grognard poo poo. And for maybe the millionth time in this thread, anecdotes are nothing in the face of observable facts. Pretty much everything in 5E is poorly balanced and there have been multiple posters breaking this down painstakingly, only to be returned with "Well in my group we just smear poop on each others' faces instead of reading rules." That all being said, 4E is a miniatures battle game dressed up as an RPG, which ironically makes it closer to the original D&D than most anything published for it in the last 20 years. I can totally empathize with anyone who thinks it goes too slow, that it de-emphasizes and oversimplifies everything outside of combat, and that it makes you feel limited to what it says on your sheet in terms of your options--even though, if you'd been paying attention, you're more limited even yet in other editions, because D&D has always been bad at and not meant at all for narrative-based play. Don't confuse 5E's not actually writing rules for subsystems for a rules-lite system.
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Sep 19, 2014 21:43
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Babylon Astronaut posted:There isn't a scale in 5e, but you know all about the NEXT math. From your analysis, and playtesting 5e for so long, I can't find any rhyme or reason behind damage and hp wrt CR or whatever you could index them by. Back in the day we had hitdice with *'s. You added a * for each special ability and you could parse roughly how hard it was going to be and there was a formula for how much xp it was worth. I don't know if they actually even considered special abilities in their CR when rust monster is CR 1/2 and still rolls +3 to hit and a d8+1 of damage. Meanwhile, it has the hp of an average level 5 cleric. Without the ability to destroy equipment, it still is overpowered for 2 level 1 characters. Keep in mind higher-level parties will by the math encounter swarms of them.
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Sep 20, 2014 00:16
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Making new class content in 3.5e is as easy as making a 21-row chart and going to town, and because the game isn't really balanced to begin with you don't have to worry about breaking anything, per se.
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Sep 20, 2014 00:47
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AlphaDog posted:I can't check this right now, but according to that site, 2 orcs is a hard challenge for a party of 4 level 1 PCs. 3 Orcs would make the encounter "ludicrous". I think the math is hosed up, eight PCs are supposed to be unable to handle CR 4.
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Sep 23, 2014 08:48
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I'm a person who doesn't see a meaningful difference between MMO tanking and 4E tanking (at least as a fighter tends to do it in that system) and I am OK with that. The tank in 4E is the dramatic centerpiece of combat, which is something it fails to achieve in every other edition. By contrast, the wizard isn't even strictly necessary to the cohesion of the group, which is nearly revolutionary by D&D standards.
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Sep 23, 2014 21:11
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I think most normal people that didn't like 4E just quietly continued playing 3E. They probably didn't even post about it on the Internet.
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Sep 23, 2014 21:27
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