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A Catastrophe posted:I guess if you're playing a more social, casual game without much story or character where you just roll the dice when your turn comes up and whatevs, it isn't such a big deal. this sounds like D&D to me 
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Aug 28, 2014 02:06
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Serdain posted:I think that narrative power going to the wizard is only a big problem if you are paying with big babies who all want to hold the shiny toys at the same time. 5e's return to caster supremacy is solely a response to the big babies who threw tantrums about 4e not letting them hold all the shiny toys.
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Aug 28, 2014 02:10
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So, just off the top of my head, I feel like this might be a neat set of house rules for running a game like 5e. Bring back Vancian Spellcasting. But seriously make it Vancian. First, you can only choose classes/builds with no spellcasting progression. You can still maybe get spell-like stuff from say being a spell-monk, but nothing like the ranger or paladin getting a gimped spell list. Everybody starts mundane but some folks get special stuff and you can explain it by saying they internalized a bunch of magic. Or maybe only mundanes but that only leaves like three classes or so. Hmm. Not sure yet. Next, everyone can cast spells. Everyone gets a spell progression chart. But pretty limited. Maybe nine total level's worth of spells at around level 16 or so. Then you can break that down with one big one, nine little ones, whatever. Next make all spell preparation times in days. So, a seventh level spell takes seven days to cram into your stupid mortal brain. And once it's gone, that's it. Better get back to your sanctum and start chanting again. Also, all material components cost like levelx100 gp. Incidentally, concentration spells can be held indefinitely forever. Spells are treasure. You aren't guaranteed to get them and you can't share them. Once you find a scroll and copy it to your spellbook, no one else can access it. Unless they murder you and rip your book apart learning your spells. Also, learning a spell takes a skill check that you can fail that erases the spell. So, if you go up against an enemy wizard and you are clever enough to gut him before he can polymorph his way out of the conflict, you get to split up his accumulated life's worth of knowledge like spellcasting vultures. So, it's a generally low magic world until wizards (aka PCs) get involved. And then they break reality over their knee but they better have a backup plan in case there's some dick around that can counterspell.
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Aug 28, 2014 02:10
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Necromancer fathers have all the fun. On the subject of necromancers, do they exist in 5th edition? I really missed them as well as tons of spells and summoned minions in 4th. Is this edition closer to 4th edition or Pathfinder? edit: vvvv Awesome, gonna have to check it out then. Thanks! vvvv Cainer fucked around with this message at 02:23 on Aug 28, 2014 |
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Aug 28, 2014 02:11
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Cainer posted:Is this edition closer to 4th edition or Pathfinder? If Pathfinder is 3.75, 5E is 3.9. You can raise all the skeletons you want.
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Aug 28, 2014 02:21
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Ferrinus posted:To be fair, 4e did favor magical characters over nonmagical characters outside of combat because A) everyone had skills but only magic-users (including, here, fighters who bought the "ritual caster" feat) had rituals, and B) rituals had way more page space devoted to their concrete effects and idiosyncracies than skills did. See, and this plays right into my thinking that all rituals (or comparable magic) do, is step on the toes of the skill system, but because spells tend to just work and skills require rolls, it's even worse than that.
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Aug 28, 2014 02:27
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Yeah, but the skill system is bad. I'd rather see it replaced with a bunch of concrete powers you can learn more and more of as you level up than see adventure magic melted down into "roll Arcana". I wasn't kidding when I mentioned Exalted before.
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Aug 28, 2014 02:30
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Ferrinus posted:I wasn't kidding when I mentioned Exalted before. Life is a kid! I suggest you kid it while you can....
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Aug 28, 2014 03:00
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Ferrinus posted:I'd call that a sorcerer. A fighter would probably need, say, a sword cooled in the blood of a creature from the target plane that they then swing in a precise pattern through the air at an already-unstable location. Or, maybe they go to a crossroads at midnight, draw their weapon, and issue a formal challenge to duel to some guard or monster from wherever they want to go. 1) there's literally nothing stopping you from creating such a sword and giving it to your fighter 2) or crossroads demon-guard challenging either Nothing you've mentioned, by and large, could be done by any martial character in 4e who couldn't also cast spells/rituals, despite their inherent 'powers' Making Fighters "wizards-in-armor-with-swords" is not what 4e did, and every time you insist its the secret to 'fixing' caster supremacy you demonstrate you don't know what you're talking about. I'm fine with introducing more variety to the Fighter and martial classes and have said so. But the sheer variety of abilities that *every wizard and caster* has access to is what blows away the martial guys as far as narrative ability. There are few spells I would remove from the game outright (wish is the easy example since even casting it largely depends on DM fiat), the rest (especially high level spells) should be restricted to the chosen school specialization. Everything you describe would be homogenizing the system, not balancing it. You would simply reskin the wizard as Fighter Dude who uses a sword instead of a staff, and sounds like a really boring game where everyone can do anything. Ferrinus posted:Yeah, but the skill system is bad. I'd rather see it replaced with a bunch of concrete powers you can learn more and more of as you level up than see adventure magic melted down into "roll Arcana". I wasn't kidding when I mentioned Exalted before. This is your answer, if you want a game where anime super heroes are blowing up moons then play exalted. This has never been D&D and likely never will be, even 4e.
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Aug 28, 2014 03:12
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P.d0t posted:See, and this plays right into my thinking that all rituals (or comparable magic) do, is step on the toes of the skill system, but because spells tend to just work and skills require rolls, it's even worse than that. Well in 4E it was perfectly possible, if you really wanted to, to jack your rating in a skill so high that even rolling a 1 you couldn't actually fail the sorts of skill DCs you were likely to face unless the GM decided to just throw some bullshit at you. I'm not saying this is somehow an amazing feature that redeems 4E's skill system or anything but it's definitely a thing you can do.
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Aug 28, 2014 03:15
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Kai Tave posted:Well in 4E it was perfectly possible, if you really wanted to, to jack your rating in a skill so high that even rolling a 1 you couldn't actually fail the sorts of skill DCs you were likely to face unless the GM decided to just throw some bullshit at you. I'm not saying this is somehow an amazing feature that redeems 4E's skill system or anything but it's definitely a thing you can do. To say nothing of the actual resolution mechanics for D&D skill systems, I think the point still stands that Magic doing skills "but better," fucks up any intentions of niche protection for "Guy Who Has Skills." Like "I sneak around undetected because I'm an expert thief" vs. "I cast invisibility" or "I use my charisma to sway the king" vs. "I cast Charm Person" running off different systems is going to cause jankiness. If you built the system around "skills being the things that do Narrative Impact" and got spells out of that realm, it'd be a different equation than what we have now. 
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Aug 28, 2014 03:27
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In 4e it felt like skills were for more in-the-moment events, where you didn't have time to cast a ritual (Acrobatics to balance, Stealth to sneak through the castle/prison, Athletics/Strength to jump or break poo poo, etc.). I never really got the impression that rituals nullified the skill system, just that one system was for when you had time/resources to do something more elaborate and the other was for doing things on the fly/impulsively.
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Aug 28, 2014 03:33
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A Catastrophe posted:Actually the narrative power going to the wizard is only not a big problem if you are playing with staggering boring, passive, and dull quasi-players who are happy to let somebody else have all the spotlight time because they're too boring and creatively broken to make use of it anyway. If your table are roleplayers, they certainly won't be happy with 5e style wizards- they'll rightly see them as rendering their character meaningless, and making it difficult to engage with the world due to the shifting sands of fiat and spellcaster ex machina. So you believe that in a traditional fantasy setting of Sword Guy and Mage - any reasonable person should want to be the guy in the dress even if they love the concept of Sword Guy thematically? Is the game not meant to be, at some level, about playing a Role? Not everybody wants Sword Guy to be able to rend a hole in space-time with his thews because in most fantasy sword guy CAN'T do that and being able to dilutes the role. Fortunately a player has plenty of options for the role they want to play in 5e. Sword-Lock, Fist-Wizard, Magic-Sneak... the roles that have less narrative power are just that.. Roles. All that having been said - I think the major focus should be on comparative DPR. Having read through the PHB a few times, the spells dont seem like they have as disparate DPR as 5E/PF, which is good. Kortel posted:Should be an interesting game then. No healers. Guess I could hire a cleric. Three casters, one fighter and a monk at level 1. I am sure Belt of Healing will be a magic item (even if houseruled). Belt of Healing 3 Charges As a standard action, expend 1 charge to spend 2 hitdice and gain 2dX + Con health, or, expend multiple charges, spending 1 hit dice per charge to gain 1dX + Con Health per charge expended. Restored by long rest. Serdain fucked around with this message at 03:41 on Aug 28, 2014 |
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Aug 28, 2014 03:34
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I found another cumbersome example of caster supremacy, which is even more bizarre, to me, than "invisibility" vs "roll sneaking". Check out this really cool Ranger class feature:PHB, p. 92 posted:Land's Stride When I first read this, I thought it was neat and flavorful, though at 8th level it may not be incredibly great. Then I got to thinking, and looked up some spells. Let's look at a Level 4 spell that Bards, Clerics, and Druids get at level 7: PHB, p. 244 posted:Freedom of Movement This isn't even a situation of "well casters get a ton of flexibility and martial classes don't". This is a situation where a martial class got a significantly lesser version of a spell, a level later than casters get it. Would it really have been so game-breaking to just give rangers daily casts of Freedom of Movement? (It's worth mentioning that Rangers also get this spell six levels later at level 13!)
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Aug 28, 2014 03:43
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Serdain posted:So you believe that in a traditional fantasy setting of Sword Guy and Mage - any reasonable person should want to be the guy in the dress even if they love the concept of Sword Guy thematically? Is the game not meant to be, at some level, about playing a Role? "Are you a ROLL-player or a ROLE-player?  "If all that matters is playing a role why are you spending a hundred plus dollars on a three book set of bullshit rules? quote:Not everybody wants Sword Guy to be able to rend a hole in space-time with his thews because in most fantasy sword guy CAN'T do that and being able to dilutes the role. Then they would be perfectly free to ignore those bits and focus on spamming attacks all the time just like the guy who wants to play a blaster wizard can stock up on fireballs and lightning bolts if that's all he wants to do.
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Aug 28, 2014 03:46
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QuantumNinja posted:I found another cumbersome example of caster supremacy, which is even more bizarre, to me, than "invisibility" vs "roll sneaking". Check out this really cool Ranger class feature: it is worth noting that the ranger ability appears to be passive and permanent from what you've quoted
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Aug 28, 2014 04:17
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Serdain posted:So you believe that in a traditional fantasy setting of Sword Guy and Mage - any reasonable person should want to be the guy in the dress even if they love the concept of Sword Guy thematically? Is the game not meant to be, at some level, about playing a Role? It is not even about a ~~traditional fantasy setting~~ where wizards fly around invisible while shooting death rays from their eyes and sword guys are dumb jocks who hit really hard with a sword. It is about the gameplay. If half the rulebook is about the cool poo poo casters can just declare to happen, then yes, every sane person who is interested in actually playing the game and not just hanging out with the king nerds while they play their game would want to play a caster. You can't balance the insane, semi-DM levels of narrative agency casters get with 'has good DPR' and crap like 'jumps 1d6 inches higher'. You either have to give everyone narrative agency and cool stuff to play with like 4e, DW, FATE and other non-lovely games do, or go full Weird Wizard Show and have everyone run a wizard and a bunch of medieval dirtfarmers so you can ~~roleplay~~ the wizard's minions, like Ars Magica does. 5e does neither.
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Aug 28, 2014 04:17
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treeboy posted:1) there's literally nothing stopping you from creating such a sword and giving it to your fighter Okay, but there is something stopping my fighter from using such a sword to open a planar gateway, even though in anyone else's hands it'd just be a +2 sword/+4 vs. devils or some poo poo. There is something stopping my fighter from being such a great warrior that an elemental archon would respond to my fighter's call for a fencing match, while it wouldn't respond to any common brigand and has magically girded itself against normal summoning magic. That thing is the fact that fighters don't get any loving powers. quote:Nothing you've mentioned, by and large, could be done by any martial character in 4e who couldn't also cast spells/rituals, despite their inherent 'powers' Making Fighters "wizards-in-armor-with-swords" is not what 4e did, and every time you insist its the secret to 'fixing' caster supremacy you demonstrate you don't know what you're talking about. Did you see the post in which I said that 4e's out-of-combat rules still heavily favored magic users? In 4e, martial characters are the equals of magical characters in combat, but not really in terms of travel, stronghold construction, trap removal, or other adventure action that isn't subordinated to the initiative counter. quote:I'm fine with introducing more variety to the Fighter and martial classes and have said so. But the sheer variety of abilities that *every wizard and caster* has access to is what blows away the martial guys as far as narrative ability. There are few spells I would remove from the game outright (wish is the easy example since even casting it largely depends on DM fiat), the rest (especially high level spells) should be restricted to the chosen school specialization. Again, this is lazy cargo cult bullshit. Oh, the "Wish" spell! That game ruiner! Oh no, not "Knock"! Perhaps you'd like to think that if you just cut the spell list down a bit and promised to only ever use magic that called for Wisdom saves, not Dexterity or Constitution saves, it'd somehow be okay for you to play your full spellcaster in the same game as a fighter or rogue. But it isn't. It's not any specific power your wizard has, and it's not the breadth of powers your wizard can in theory or even have at once - it's the fact that non-casters get no powers. quote:This is your answer, if you want a game where anime super heroes are blowing up moons then play exalted. This has never been D&D and likely never will be, even 4e. See, the problem here is that you don't know what you're talking about. In Exalted, you aren't actually an anime super hero who blows up moons unless you actually break out the (equivalent of) epic level rules that showed up in some supplement years down the line. However, what you are, straight out of the Exalted corebook, is someone whose abilities - whether they're swordfighting abilities, sweet-talking abilities, sneaking abilities, blacksmithing abilities, navigating abilities, whatever - all show up as discrete, mechanically-supported special powers. With Charm A, you can put on your armor in seconds and wear it all day without getting tired. With Charm B, you attack everyone within reach as a single action. With Charm C, you can deconstruct any mundane object in a matter of minutes so long as you've got some tools at hand. There is a list of magic spells - you could summon a demon, ride around on a tornado, turn your skin to living bronze, etc - but the list of magic spells is actually shorter than the list of amazing but human-condition-rooted exploits. Now, because of the game's setting, you eventually start unlocking powers that let you shoot energy blasts by swinging your sword, stick your arm out and fly around like Superman, etc. But that's Exalted. D&D doesn't need fighters who glow with holy light or phase directly through solid walls - it just needs fighters who have concrete, mechanically-supported special abilities. It's entirely possible, and has been done, to take a completely mundane character and represent their abilities as a bunch of discrete, deployable powers.
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Aug 28, 2014 04:18
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treeboy posted:it is worth noting that the ranger ability appears to be passive and permanent from what you've quoted It is both passive and permanent, which isn't so big an advantage since the spell is an hour long and is not channelled. The only real benefit the ranger gets over the spell occurs when he is traveling, on foot, by himself, for more than an hour (which seems unlikely given a party of players that can't move that speed with him), and at some immense costs in terms of magical vs nonmagical entanglement and the whole "can't be locked up" thing.
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Aug 28, 2014 04:24
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Littlefinger posted:It is not even about a ~~traditional fantasy setting~~ where wizards fly around invisible while shooting death rays from their eyes and sword guys are dumb jocks who hit really hard with a sword. If D&D were actually emulative of a lot of traditional fantasy stories wizards would generally be NPCs, either the sort who exist to dole out cryptic clues and occasionally bust out a few weird tricks to help the real heroes or the sort with an unhealthy fixation with snakes that the PCs gang up to go kill because gently caress that guy. D&D is bad at emulating just about anything but its own self. The real problem with Serdain's dumb argument is that it conflates "role" with "capability," as though "guy who can't do as much as his pal the Wizard" is a narrative role despite the fact that A). that's bullshit and B). D&D is terrible at doing things like emulating narrative roles anyway (see above). There's nothing inherent to the role of a spellcaster that forces D&D to present them the way it does, same goes for martial classes.
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Aug 28, 2014 04:28
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Kai Tave posted:...D&D is bad at emulating just about anything but its own self.
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Aug 28, 2014 04:48
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Grim posted:That's my point! D&D is really dumb, and it's great! Speaking of dumb.. is it still 50% more efficient to run diagonally in 5E like it was in 4E since the cost of movement is exactly the same?
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Aug 28, 2014 05:00
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Serdain posted:Speaking of dumb.. is it still 50% more efficient to run diagonally in 5E like it was in 4E since the cost of movement is exactly the same?
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Aug 28, 2014 05:06
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Serdain posted:Speaking of dumb.. is it still 50% more efficient to run diagonally in 5E like it was in 4E since the cost of movement is exactly the same? It doesn't seem dumb to me, honestly. I mean, that's the most efficient way to move in the real world, too.
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Aug 28, 2014 05:08
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They should resurrect the hex-grid option from AD&D instead. It just appeals more to my sense of realism, since circles on a hex grid look way more circular and instead of moving in 8 directions 4 of which are 1.5 times faster, you can move in 6 directions at the same speed, just like the real world.
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Aug 28, 2014 05:29
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Think of 4e's squares as flattened hexagons.
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Aug 28, 2014 05:29
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Next doesn't even use a grid though so I have no idea what the gently caress you guys are talking about.
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Aug 28, 2014 05:41
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Kai Tave posted:Next doesn't even use a grid though so I have no idea what the gently caress you guys are talking about.
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Aug 28, 2014 05:42
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Serdain posted:Speaking of dumb.. is it still 50% more efficient to run diagonally in 5E like it was in 4E since the cost of movement is exactly the same? I wonder if it's 50% more efficient for a Queen to move diagonally in Chess.
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Aug 28, 2014 05:50
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The Bee posted:It doesn't seem dumb to me, honestly. I mean, that's the most efficient way to move in the real world, too. "okay you guys have to get to New Land City, its 100km North over even terrain." "Okay we run NE for 25 km, then NW for 50 km, then NE for 25 km and arrive at the front gate."
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Aug 28, 2014 06:26
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Serdain posted:"okay you guys have to get to New Land City, its 100km North over even terrain." Truly the sort of question heroes should be asking, how can I worry about having to move diagonals right up there with "How many arrows do I have".
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Aug 28, 2014 06:29
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Stormgale posted:Truly the sort of question heroes should be asking, how can I worry about having to move diagonals right up there with "How many arrows do I have". It's more "How many diagonals can I incorporate into any trip without any penalties". Not a real problem - but it does make things strange.
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Aug 28, 2014 06:40
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Serdain posted:It's more "How many diagonals can I incorporate into any trip without any penalties". Things that are also strange: walking at a consistent 6.82 miles per hour constantly for hours on end. Movement rules in combat are always really dumb when you assume that they're a model of how people actually move and not just a gameplay abstraction so you don't have to spend half the fight dicking around with a tape measure, is what I'm saying.
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Aug 28, 2014 08:01
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Really when you think about it the right way to make a grid is like this: It shows that a player character can easily move N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, or NW but has to Use a tape-measure, like Gary intended.
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Aug 28, 2014 08:15
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Just use hexes, jesus.
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Aug 28, 2014 08:22
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Flame112 posted:Just use hexes, jesus. But but but if you do that then buildings can't have straight walls 
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Aug 28, 2014 08:28
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Just use the theater of the mind. The only limit to how fast you can move diagonally is your imagination.
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Aug 28, 2014 08:28
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Kai Tave posted:Just use the theater of the mind. The only limit to how fast you can move diagonally is your imagination. Come with me, and you'll be in a world of PURE IMAGIATION! Seriously, I know a number of people in this thread have played. Have any of you played more than like two sessions in a row with theater of the mind without requiring a sideboard to figure out positioning during a combat somewhere?
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Aug 28, 2014 08:40
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Serdain posted:So you believe that in a traditional fantasy setting of Sword Guy and Mage - any reasonable person should want to be the guy in the dress even if they love the concept of Sword Guy thematically? Is the game not meant to be, at some level, about playing a Role? quote:Not everybody wants Sword Guy to be able to rend a hole in space-time with his thews because in most fantasy sword guy CAN'T do that and being able to dilutes the role. quote:Fortunately a player has plenty of options for the role they want to play in 5e. Sword-Lock, Fist-Wizard, Magic-Sneak... the roles that have less narrative power are just that.. Roles. You can't just say 'role' and act like it means something. quote:All that having been said - I think the major focus should be on comparative DPR. Having read through the PHB a few times, the spells dont seem like they have as disparate DPR as 5E/PF, which is good. Serdain posted:I am sure Belt of Healing will be a magic item (even if houseruled).
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Aug 28, 2014 08:43
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treeboy posted:it is worth noting that the ranger ability appears to be passive and permanent from what you've quoted Serdain posted:"okay you guys have to get to New Land City, its 100km North over even terrain." A Catastrophe fucked around with this message at 08:50 on Aug 28, 2014 |
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Aug 28, 2014 08:45
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