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Lord Frisk posted:Anything you add to whiskey outside of ice cubes is a travesty. Lord Frisk posted:IIRC, you could save on expertise die for a parry (roll = bonus to AC) and save the rest for damage, rather than using it for all or nothing Both of this is I believe fairly old info. Expertise dice is last I checked no longer a fighter only thing. Instead they just get more things they can do with expertise die, which, as was already mentioned, won't matter if "do damage" is still better the those things. Parry is the "fighter only" mechanic, as their expertise dice regenerates every turn, not round, if I recall.
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Mar 1, 2013 07:22
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Actually the most recent Next news was Mearls on twitter mentioning healers an using all 3e healers, and stating that warlord would not heal and likely would be a fighter "theme."
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Mar 1, 2013 10:50
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Kai Tave posted:How do you guys cook hamburgers on a stove? Do you prep the meat in any special way? Temperature settings, cook times, I'm all ears. Hit me with your best stovetop hamburger techniques please. Speaking personally, I've found step one to be "have low standards"
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Mar 1, 2013 18:35
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Kai Tave posted:Mearls has something of a point in that if you want a game that's all about cleaving to archetypes then you don't want/need a huge list of all sorts of jargon-y options all over the place because you're trying to stick to those archetypes. Fine, okay, except this sort of overlooks that A). a bunch of people play D&D to mash together a half dozen classes and prestige classes and templates into some horrible transporter accident of a character and B). that a lot of things that have gone on to "resonate" with players are things that weren't "traditional D&D archetypal" from the get-go. Yes, like Warlords. Or 3E Sorcerers for that matter, that's a thing that wasn't "archetypal" by D&D standards and now it's so drat popular that it's been in two successive editions of D&D and Pathfinder has all sorts of crazy-rear end options for Sorcerers. This is all well and good, except he's already stated that 5e is going to use the 3e style of class that aren't really classes, which makes absolutely everything he just said pointless. 3e is by far the weakest rendition of the class system, and more then anything else contributed to the view of classes being "bags of mechanics" without fluff. Having that yet still talking about wanting to maintain the "core identity" of classes is laughable at best. Going on about "nobody plays because they want to take Rapid Shot" doesn't work if your system is built for building the guy who takes Rapid Shot.
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Mar 2, 2013 02:02
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MadRhetoric posted:Even as someone who got into playing D&D from 3.X, this really isn't the case. People like customization, yeah, but mashing together eleventy billion classes and PrCs and poo poo got you the stink-eye from DMs, either made you suck or stupid good as a player, and was a goddamned headache all around. The defenders of, say, 3.X fighter-types multiclassing all the live long day were the CharOp boards and guys like Frank Trollman; people hate those fuckers. From a player and a designer standpoint, discrete and modular ability chunks are good enough. Class, race, theme, background, maybe a subclass, and some feat-type things; that offers a large potential amount of creatable characters without creating something impossible to properly playtest. 3e multiclassing, as far as it's viewed in D&D fandom, is so loving bizarre. I've found it's biggest defenders aren't the CharOps people, they're the people that abhor it actually being used the most. I think it's maybe the archtype for D&D mechanics that reads one way then works in maybe the polar opposite way. A lot of people love it conceptually and then go on to ban it in their games or declare actually using it as being cheesy. And will then proceed to continue defending it! One of the defenses I see is that it can be "organic." Like "Hey my character has been getting extra pious so I take a level in cleric!" Except that's what the system punishes the most. And I've never once heard of that actually happening, even by those same defenders. They just fell in love with the idea of someone doing that. ProfessorCirno fucked around with this message at 02:25 on Mar 2, 2013 |
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Mar 2, 2013 02:21
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Vorpal Cat posted:Its funny because if you look at something like DotA/LoL which has classes an levels but is played online vs other people it has "Aggro" mechanics. Your not just the "tank" because your the hardest to kill but because if someone gos for your squishy damage dealers you have ways to stop it via stuns/slows/knockbacks/etc... It's something D&D has wrestled with for all the dumbest of reasons. See, traditionally, fighters don't have cool powers. I'm don't think it was initially because of a JOCKS VS NERDS thing or anything like that, mind you; it's just how the game was developed. They didn't think to give fighters powers, in part because fighters didn't need intelligence or wisdom like clerics or wizards, so they would assumably have better physical stats and would be better at improvising crazy poo poo. As the game progressed, "fighter has no abilities" simply became more or less the norm - they were strong, sure, at least if you used Unearthed Arcana or were playing 2e, but they had no bells or whistles. In 3e there was a sense of "We need to do something to allow the fighter to stop baddies from just running past him," and, as 3e had an increased emphasis on miniature usage, they made the super duper clumsy "Attack of Opportunity." Because the idea of fighters having unique fighter powers was in the year our lord 2000 still seen as weird and vaguely unthinkable. Later down the line you saw the Knight class who had a literal MMORPG taunt mechanic...because it was still not even considered to give fighter types other means to get enemies to fight them. I don't think it's all just "gently caress FIGHTERS," I think part was just simple absence of creativity. Tabletop games and video game designed in the west, largely taking inspiration from D&D, broadly followed this. What changed was two things. First, video game development in Japan didn't have that root connection to D&D, and they by and large saw boring fighters as just that - boring. So while the first jRPGs largely mimicked their western inspirations, they very quickly started giving all characters things to do in a fight. As western and eastern games started to mingle, "fighters have to be boring" started to die in video game design in the west. The second big leap was indeed World of Warcraft - or perhaps it would be better to say, World of Warcraft and Warcraft 3 together. Note that this isn't where "4e is WoW!" comes from, as this is a bit too meta analytical for the people who say that. WoW was pretty much the first major MMORPG to make an interesting fighter. The makers of WoW an WC3 weren't hardcore D&D nerds. They were dudes who played or developed Everquest and DAoC, and they hated boring useless fighters. So they added some snap and some sizzle to it. WC3 heroes all had unique abilities, regardless of their "class." And WoW fighters were explicitly modeled after fighting game mechanics, loosely translated to an RPG. The end result of both of these is that "boring fighters" is almost an essential non-starter for anyone but hardcore D&D nerds in video games. In 4e you saw a wide variety of defender mechanics and abilities that somewhat mimic what you said - there was no mind control aggro, there were trade offs and choices and restrictions and such. The problem is that D&D Next is meant to cater to those aforementioned hardcore D&D nerds. So fighters cannot have cool abilities. They cannot have big AoE attacks or stuns or slows or etc, etc. So you get "reactions." EDIT: 4e isn't MMOlike in any way other then "CHARACTERS HAVE ABILITIES." 4e is only "video game esque" in the sense of "video games have far outstripped the tabletop gaming industry for creativity in mechanics and open mindedness in new experiences."
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Mar 2, 2013 04:21
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goldjas posted:So I'm not sure what I think about Jack Daniel's, I think I'm kind of sick of it but I love whisky and anything that's better is all expensive and stuff, any thoughts? Because it would require using 4e anything. 5e is in a curious spot. When it was first announced I remember seeing people claim that WotC would set up 4e-esque mechanics and sprinkle some AD&D dust on it to make it look better and untainted to the anti-4e crowd. In reality, they've done the opposite - make starkly non-4e mechanics, but attempt to paint it in a positive towards 4e light. The grand irony is that, by and large, 4e fans aren't buying it. But the crowd that hates 4e is. They've managed to piss up the group they were trying to set up as their supporters while failing to win over the group they were vaguely trying to trick in. The alternative, of course, is that the group of develops, pretty much all of whom worked on 4e, have no idea at all how 4e actually works, and this is all one incredible comedy of errors. I'm not sure which is funnier.
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Mar 2, 2013 13:04
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Splicer posted:By "Buying it" do you mean "purchasing" or do you mean "believing the "it's like 4E!" bullshit"? The latter, as moths and Kai have said. Kai Tave posted:And if WotC has determined that the way to fabulous D&D riches is to move away from 4E and back towards other things that's their prerogative and I wish them the best of luck, but I also wish I got a more...enthusiastic feeling off of all the Next stuff? Like, say what you will about 3E and 4E but both editions felt like things that the people making them were really loving excited about, you guys are gonna love this poo poo oh man it will be so amazing. Even if Next turns out to be a game I dislike I'd rather it be something people are super loving enthusiastic about, I dunno. This is why I stopped updating the old OP and why the old thread died. I don't hate 5e. I'm bored of it. Nothing about 5e interests me. Nothing about it makes my eyebrows raise or makes me want to look into it deeper. I mean, I was actually pretty drat anti-4e when it came out, but it still made a scene. It made me pay attention. 3e and 4e both (sorry, too young for when 2e first came out!) were statements. 5e so far is a whimper. This is also what I see happening on other forums. People are losing interest rapidly. 5e has declared it won't do anything new. It's the ultra conservative edition where nothing changes. And as a result, it has a few people idly commenting on it when news comes out, but there's no excitement. Even on the forums that 5e appears to be tailor made for, people are rarely commenting on 5e, and far more often just being drawn into the same edition war bullshit that just uses 5e as an excuse to get going.
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Mar 3, 2013 01:00
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Jimbozig posted:Having limited experience with pre-4e editions, I have a question. Yes, broadly. In AD&D the "balance" was more or less that wizards weren't likely to actually make it to higher levels. In practice groups either found this not fun (and thus monsters didn't attack the wizard outright or wizards had different ways to ensure their life) or the group would rally around protecting the wizard, which had the side effect of making the game into the Wizard Show, but in a reverse way.
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Mar 4, 2013 03:32
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Branding is indeed a part of the general problem as I see it, but the general problem I see is one of WotC not wanting to accept their branding. As has been stated numerous times, D&D has never been the "best" game, no more then McDonalds is the "best" burger. It's the generic fantasy game, the intro and gateway game. It was that in the 70's, when Gygax added Tolkien stuff he hated because other people thought it was cool. The idea was simple - take stuff you think is cool and make a game out of it. Since then, however, things have gotten more and more regimented. I think the core of this is that there's a part of the fanbase that adamantly does not want to be the generic gateway game. It's one of the reasons 4e "wasn't D&D," the same as in places like Dragonsfoot, 3e "isn't D&D." It's why 4e was a dumbed down WoW game for babies. It's why Next is talking big about making a "Basic" game then ignoring the actual Basic edition to continue fellating AD&D. It's why there's so much stupid talk over what the TRUE ESSENCE OF D&D IS. Because people don't want those horrible outsiders in their hobby, and that's a drat stupid thing to believe in when you're the McDonalds of tabletop gaming. It's also why you see things like "We can't include MODERN fiction or fantasy in D&D, we need to stay true to the roots!" despite the roots of the game being "Here's some dumb fantasy stuff our group thought was fun." And make no bones about it, D&D will never be the elite exclusive members only game that some of it's toxic fanbase - and, I'm starting to believe, one or two of it's developers - want it to be. It has and always will be the dumbed down game for newbies. The more it fights it, the more it suffers.
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Mar 5, 2013 00:46
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D&D's relationship with minis is odd. It was assumed you'd use a fairly rough method of keeping track of distances and such in OD&D, AD&D had the minis rules baked in hardcore to the point where things were measured in inches though some still didn't use them, AD&D 2e went polar opposite and assumed you didn't use minis at all, 3e assumed you used minis but a lot of people didn't which lead to rule wonkiness at times, 4e went back to AD&D levels of miniature assumptions but, rather then bake it into measurements of inches and such, baked it into the combat, and now 5e seems to be doing an unholy mash of 2e and 3e, though "an unholy mash of 2e and 3e" does describe the edition overall. Of course part of it is because 3e and 4e had much crunchier combat rules then AD&D and Basic did, and the mini usage went along with that. 5e has a strange number of combat crunch but is still trying to be cagey about the ~*~theater of the mind~*~.
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Mar 5, 2013 01:56
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jigokuman posted:This makes me wonder if there's a Harry Potter pen and paper RPG, or at least a game that emulates it, because if there isn't, that makes me think the hobby is very much pointed in the model railroad direction. From what I remember, there were one or two jabs at it but Harry Potter the IP is ludicrously valuable and it's owners kept a tight lid on it (outside of the inevitable sea of terrible video games that always somehow occurs). As for emulating it, the tabletop industry has been notoriously terrible about following actual pop culture stuff as it comes out, so...yeah. Which is funny because there is a fairly gigantic internet culture based around freeform roleplaying that, from what I've seen, absolutely could be tapped into by the industry. But it doesn't, because they roleplay as like 18th century nobility or wizards and vampires (but not the "cool" tabletop versions), and it's predominately female, so...welp. Kai Tave posted:I don't really watch Doctor Who but it's impossible to visit the nerdier parts of the internet and avoid learning anything about it, and a commonly held belief in Doctor Who fandom is apparently that whichever Doctor you get into the series with is generally the one that most fans will point to as their favorite. That makes a lot of sense, really...first impressions tend to be the strongest, so someone who gets into something and really enjoys it is going to associate a lot of happy memories with those initial forays. So at the risk of coming across as glib, I'd say in all sincerity that the soul of D&D for many people is probably "how D&D was when I first started playing it." People who got into D&D during 3E, and there were a lot of people who got into D&D when WotC rolled out 3E...not, like, Harry Potter numbers or anything, but sometimes it's easy to forget 13 years on just how successful 3E was...are likely going to feel that 3E represents the "true soul" of D&D despite numerous editions coming before it, while a dedicated 2E fan is likely to think that the soul of D&D is found in 2E despite several successful editions coming afterwards. It's not a universal truism of course, any more than it probably is in Doctor Who fandom, but I'd bet actual cash money that it holds true in a large number of cases. While this is true, it also speaks to why Next is going to fail - it's trying to be 13 again, but you can't. You cannot be a 13 year old again. You cannot play D&D for decades and then suddenly revert to not knowing everything you spend those decades learning. Because they don't want something new, they want the old thing to magically feel new again without actually changing. Back when g.txt was still around, there was the quote that "grognardism is the failure to grow up in a mature and/or graceful way," and I think that's what's haunting Next and it's devs. You can't be 13 again. And the more you try, the worse the end result looks. ProfessorCirno fucked around with this message at 05:41 on Mar 5, 2013 |
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Mar 5, 2013 05:39
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That's the best and worst thing - fantasy for the most part is still fairly similar to how it used to be. All you'd really need to do is emphasize a few different styles or plot hooks. Get some different types of wizards and magic mechanics, don't be afraid to mix in some "eastern" touches, get settings or adventures with a de-emphasis on murderhoboing and a bigger push towards grand kingdom politics and drama. In fact a general note of "Make sure your settings have drama built in" would be a smart move overall. And Harry Potter could absolutely work with Avatar. Part of the problem is that some people want this clear and perfect style for D&D. They get really mad about "anime" or draculas or people playing orcs, and some claim that D&D went downhill by adding in the monk. But D&D was never pure. It's always been a dirty mess of medieval knights smiting brain sucking aliens from the future in the name of greek gods. The monk class came from some dude going "Man I like this terrible TV show called Kung Fu because it's the 70's and we aren't going to evolve taste for awhile." One of the original gods of Greyhawk is a cowboy, literally a cowboy, with two straaaaange iron wands that can fire six mystical projectiles before they need to be "recharged." The earliest games involved Dungeon McDonalds and the Balrog Times. It just. It bewilders me that people can take Gygax, a dude who said "I hope they remember me as a guy who liked games," and try to deify him. Only they don't, they're deifying their image of him, which is often pathetically far from the truth. That people can claim they speak with the righteous authority of all of D&D, and then turn around and hate on half of it. You can't love old school D&D but hate the monk and the Barrier Peaks. That's all a part of the sheer bizarre wackiness of the game. This loving fanbase is built around flocking to a hobby based entirely around imagination and desperately trying to choke anything new or imaginative out of it.
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Mar 5, 2013 06:50
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Rexides posted:But DnD aside, I agree how the fact that TTRPG companies aren't more aggressively trying to tap into currently popular IPs is just bizarre. It's like these people hate money. Or maybe there are a lof of things I don't know about those deals that would make more sense out of this. Maybe the fact that TTRPGs are not that popular compared to other media makes acquiring such a licence prohibitive, but that turns it into a Catch-22 argument in the end. You have to enjoy the popular thing to make a game out of it, and most people in the industry pride themselves in not enjoying modern pop culture. I legit saw people give 4e poo poo because "wizards have to use wands like their harry potter or something dumb like that."
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Mar 5, 2013 11:46
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dwarf74 posted:It's refreshing to see this "shouty battle heal-screaming" sort of edition warring coming from within the Next development team instead of just random dudes on ENWorld. Given that many D&D Next articles could have been copied and pasted directly from ENWorld AND it's the only website where mearls posts, I'm not sure why this is a surprise. D&D Next has always been ENWorld Edition.
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Mar 7, 2013 00:48
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Kai Tave posted:I'm honestly not sure how much commentary they are listening to. All the polls and such on the WotC website basically come across as puff pieces instead of any serious attempt at gathering data, and several times now they've put out a "playtest packet" while simultaneously saying that the most recent packet doesn't reflect the rules that they're currently messing with internally, which would mean that "playtesters" aren't even playtesting the most current iteration of the system. Again, at least one moderator on ENWorld has playfully commented that a few articles from WotC could have come straight from ENWorld, and Mearls posts on one and only one set of forums, and those are ENWorld. ENWorld also got some exclusive backstage info on 5e before it came out. They are listening to commentary. But it's not RPG.net, or SomethingAwful, or Penny Arcade, or Dragonsfoot, or Paizo's website. D&D Next has simply always been ENWorld edition. And so very, very much about it and it's weird 3e-AD&D hybridness makes sense when you take that into account.
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Mar 7, 2013 01:38
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Kai Tave posted:That doesn't mean that they're listening to ENWorld's commentary, eager for their words of wisdom, though, it could simply just mean that Mearls' tastes in pretend-elf happens to line up with the greater ENWorld forumgoers' tastes. I guess what I'm saying is that it seems more likely to me that Mearls and the Next dev team are simply making the game that they want to make because they think it's cool and their vision happens to mesh with ENWorld's, not that ENWorld has the ear of Mike Mearls and is steering his hand. I think it's a bit of both. 5e certainly has a lot of stuff that comes down to "Mearls wanted this to be in the game, so it is." At the same time, I think in both general design philosophies and specific examples, they're taking inspirations from ENWorld. They're not flat out reading the forums at the edge of their seat to copy it up, no, but I think there's a lot of go between there.
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Mar 7, 2013 01:50
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Guilty Spork posted:What amuses me about all of this is that all throughout the time 4e was active Mearls was the figurehead that everyone who hated it would throw their vitriol at (even though Heinsoo was apparently much more important to the design). There are a lot of people to whom Next could be pretty much ideal who have claimed he's a complete and utter moron, based solely on him being involved in an elfgame they didn't care for. That's is the big problem 5e has to face and I'm not sure how'll they'll do it. Previous editions lost old players in an attempt to get new, unbiased players; 3e insulted 2e, 4e made jabs at 3e, 5e is going full out edition war on 4e (seriously, that podcast uses rhetoric you'd see from people banned from other websites). It was a way of saying "Hey new guy, come play THIS game, not that stinky old one!" It also serves as a rallying cry for people who played that previous edition but wanted certain tings fixed. But in 5e they're not going after new players, and they're not going after 4e players who want to see fixes to 4e. They're going all chips in on previous players of non-4e editions. Which is funny is a problem because most of them hate WotC. See the edition wars weren't just hating on 4e, it was hating on the entire company. That's where a lot of Paizo's success comes from. With 5e they not only have to try to sell a game to people who are already perfectly happy with the game they have, they have to sell the game to people who are marked for their dislike of new games, AND they have to sell it to people who are marked for their dislike of them, the company making it.
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Mar 7, 2013 02:16
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AlphaDog posted:Really, she's very much the person Next should be aimed at. A geeky (but not gamer-y) person who likes the idea of pretending to be a Get that WoW poo poo out of here, Next is only for elf wizards and dwarf fighters. ( No really, I have very heavy doubts we'll actually be seeing tieflings or warlocks or demonic characters or anything like that ) Also... Kai Tave posted:1). They tend to be stupidly dense. To most RPG fans, a 64-page game would be considered "lite" or "streamlined." To most other people, even board-gamers or WoW raid regulars or the like, 64 pages is ridiculous. Maxwell Lord posted:And technically they have a simple Core as a goal, but they want to sneak in a bunch of legacy stuff too and that's an obstacle. This made me laugh because of how hilariously true it is. If WotC wants to make a truly "basic" version of D&D they need to make a character sheet that holds literally all of your character. In easy to read and reference ways to boot. Maybe two sheets. The rules themselves need to fit in a small booklet. And we all know that will never happen. What's maddening is that every now and then they'll begin approaching a good idea, and then they scream and run away as fast as they can. Like hey, your attributes are your skills. That could totally work! It's how OD&D worked! Except no, we have to make this stupid complicated list of skills - most of which are lovely - and traits and all this other poo poo. Oh and we need to be 3e too so attributes ALSO effects your combat performance to an incredible degree at every step so you're stuck there, too. Did I mention all that's randomly rolled? Yep! WotC keeps talking about wanting an easy basic Core, but all that really seems to mean is "all the other options stripped out" while keeping all the goddamn rules that necessitate those options to begin with!
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Mar 7, 2013 07:23
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Actually the issue is that his post completely misses the actual problem, which is more or less the norm. Of course "the fighter takes a bit longer to rest" doesn't matter too much, unless you're playing in a very old school game where you roll for random encounters while the party sleeps, and even then only if they rest in the dungeon. Few people care about that. The ACTUAL problem is that the wizard needs one cleric spell to heal while the fighter needs four or five. That's the REAL thing 4e solved - your healing spells healed a percentage of health, not just a single lump sum, so the fighter didn't get less bang for his buck then other classes got, and clerics didn't have to be a constant IV drip. At this point I don't know if they're not talking about that intentionally to throw out a strawman, or if they legit don't realize what the problem is. And when can't tell your ignorance from your malevolence, that's a bad thing.
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Mar 8, 2013 00:28
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Speaking of strawmen! Mike Mearls: So for people pinging me with warlord questions: Did you play that class to be a leader, or to be a healer? Again, I dunno if he's intentionally being disingenuous or if he somehow doesn't realize that leaders heal or that a lot of warlords liked having BOTH, but frankly I'm leaning towards the former. This is just garbage rhetoric.
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Mar 8, 2013 00:42
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A rather smart fellow o're on RPG.net pointed out that warlords and warlord healing even if you don't use it makes a statement about 4e and what kind of game 4e is about. And that the fact Mearls is eviscerating warlords says a lot about THAT. I feel that the fact that he directly quotes edition war rhetoric with his "you can't shout a hand back on!" in turn speaks volumes.
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Mar 8, 2013 05:32
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Kai Tave posted:That smart person is Old Kentucky Shark. ( I know Kai I said that to flatter him you ruined it  )Incidentally the argument against warlord heaing I've seen is to allow them to give Temp HP but...that's only more confusing! Ok so let's say we accept Mearls' HP as meat argument. What the hell is Temp HP then? Are you stapling extra stomachs onto yourself in case one gets stabbed? Is Temp HP just filling your body with even more blood then it can actually handle?
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Mar 8, 2013 06:19
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AlphaDog posted:Warlords are awesome. They're the angry sports coaches of D&D. Warlord healing makes total sense to anyone who's ever engaged in physical activity, something something fat nerds.
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Mar 8, 2013 08:20
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Ferrinus posted:That RPG.net post is spot-on. One of the cool and important things about the warlord was that it could entirely obviate the cleric. My first 4e group ever featured a wizard, a warlock, a fighter, a rogue, and two warlords. No one felt like playing a cleric, and we got along perfectly fine (and the two warlords, owing to different power selections, played really differently from each other). I am waiting with bated breath for one of the developers to actually outright say "It's tradition!" at some point. I feel like we're getting closer to it, as they slowly discard their attempts to keep 4e fans strung along. quote:Anyway, all this Warlord bitching is a bit silly until we see what they come up with for the fighter's 'Warlord-ish build.' If it includes granting THP and granting saving throws and extra attacks, I won't care THAT much that they ditched the healing. I agree that the argument why they can't heal you is stupid, but my favourite part about Warlords was always the attack-granting lazylord stuff. Here's the catch though: They've already said that the warlord will be split between bard and fighter, so already it's significantly weaker even right from the start. Actually, here's the second catch: every negative prediction regarding 4e materials has been true so far. Boring fighters, vancian casting, divine only healing, no warlords, hell they even removed the warlock class!. We did wait. Why are you still waiting?
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Mar 8, 2013 16:21
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Splicer posted:Have you played a healer in D&D4E? It's balls to the walls fun. I'm in three 4e PBPs. My characters are a warlord, a warlord|warlock, and a warlord|bard. Suffice to say, we needed a new OP that wasn't done by me.
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Mar 10, 2013 02:47
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Have Some Flowers! posted:Take a look at the list of optimized characters here - http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/28872281/DPR_King_Candidates_3.0. Or don't. 4e CHarOps, devoid of 3.x's very clearly broken mess, have done what they can to try to break 4e and recreate it in that image. This typically entails finding the spergiest or buggiest messes and then demanding that everyone else play with them or that this is the one TRUE way to play. The "DPR King" stuff is the worst, because most of those characters are simply unplayable and sacrifice absolutely everything just to get their numbers higher, often abandoning even the slightest pretense of being a character you would play. The problem with 3e was never "that jerk who made a super powerful character and one shot everything," and that's what 4e CharOps tends to represent. The problem was always "that guy who accidentally made the character that one shots everything" or "the new player who just wanted to be a cool fighter" or "the dude who updated his wizard to 3e and now all of a sudden he's better then the rogue at everything." dwarf74 posted:Hey, look: more warlord talk. So the response is pretty much as I expected. Roll out one of the few guys seen as still being "for the 4e players" and have him soothe - but not appease - the 4e side as much as possible. Actually, what's funny here is that, despite this article being little more then them trying to continue stringing 4e fans along, it's still written for people who hated 4e. Come on, referencing a comic book hero shouting someone back to life? They're still engaging in edition war rhetoric - while trying to convince you to play their game! Credit where it's due, this IS the most backhanded article I've seen in awhile.
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Mar 15, 2013 00:34
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here, from probably the most warlord-friendly guy on the team. Still clearly lukewarm.
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AlphaDog posted:From what I remember, the majority of fans immediately misunderstood the three pillar system to be along the lines of "Fighter: All combat pillar, nothing else. Rogue: Most of the exploration pillar, some of the combat pillar", rather than what WoTC was originally talking about. I don't think there was any misunderstanding there, because if I remember WotC outright used that as an example.
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Mar 15, 2013 04:04
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AlphaDog posted:Oh? No, yeah, over here we were saying "They should use the three pillars to make differences for classes" and then WotC choose to say "Now see a class like Fighter might be 5/0/0, while a rogue might be 3/2/2..." You got us switched.
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Mar 15, 2013 05:50
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dwarf74 posted:The Warden being a Paladin build is interesting, at least. I disagree with both of these: even most recent RPGs haven't learned their lesson regarding extra attacks (and the one thing worse, Initiative Passes), and there isn't a chance in hell that 5e wouldn't inevitably start walking back to that. The Warden makes no sense to me, because alignment is really loving dumb and I guarantee they'll be stuck to the really stupid version of neutral where you need to "balance" good and evil, randomly attacking both for no reason. So paladins are all super good guys, blackguards are all dumb Bioware "EVUL," and Wardens are schizophrenic.
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Mar 18, 2013 08:30
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2e had everyone do one attack per round except the warrior classes, who gained half an attack every I think 7 levels, read as 3/2 attacks, which more or less meant "round one attack once, round two attack twice," and then full on became two attacks per round. You could add to this with weapon mastery if you were a fighter, and ONLY a fighter. Fighters in AD&D 2e or AD&D UA were beasts of destruction. Certain ranged weapons automatically attacked more often (or less often for crossbows), like bows I think just plain started off with two attacks per round, and the ALMIGHTY DARTS were three per round, which bizarrely made them the weapon of choice for cheesy fighters and wizards - the former could pound a bunch of static damage increases to become a dart machine gun, the latter having two extra chances to roll the 20 it needed to hit. Mind you, these attacks were not in any way limited. It wasn't "you attack for -6 attack bonus," it wasn't "you have to make a full attack." It was just "Oh yeah and when you shank a guy, you do it twice." The only limitation was that you can only move half your movement rating and still melee attack, with ranged being more heavily penalized for moving. A human has a movement rating of 12. That means a human fighter can move - not charge, just normal movement - 60 feet and still unleash 2-3 attacks in one turn. Fighters in AD&D 2e and AD&D UA were beasts of destruction. Oh yeah, and as for escaping melee, you had two choices. Withdraw meant you could only move 1/3rd your movement, so good luck there, unless you have a buddy also fighting this dude who can harry him and keep him in place. Or you could flat out flee an retreat and use your whole movement. Which means your enemy gets a free attack on you. All his attacks on you. Not costing him anything. Really, this sorta eats at why D&D Next is having so many problems. It's not 4e. It's 3e. 3e is and always has been the really, really bizarre one. It's why martial die change every other test run - because the 3e crowd is used to really weak fighters who don't contribute much and have easily bypassed AC and no defenses against magic, whereas everyone else other then hardcore AD&D no supplements players are used to fighters being uncomplicated badasses who have incredible saving throws, super high HP values, armor that makes them all but invincible against melee attacks, and soul crushing attacks that massacre everything in their path and let none pass by them. In my experience in 2e at least, Fighters don't tend to worry about the cleric healing, because the cleric is healing the other poor saps who aren't wearing their incredible plate mail and shield, and who don't have a nice big buffer of HP between living and dying. When people say Fighters in AD&D weren't defenders, they are correct. Fighters didn't have one role in combat, because they did just about all of it. So in D&D Next you have a problem. The developers have stated they want AD&D/3e style fighters back. No powers, not ToB style maneuvers, just attack, defend, and occasionally something like trip. And if they truly brought in the 2e style monstrosity of a Fighter, that would more or less be ok. Boring, since the skill system hurts fighters for no reason other then "3e developers really loving hated fighters," but do-able. The problem is that the 3e fanbase does not want monster fighters, so they call fighters who take little damage and vomit forth death as overpowered. And that, too, would work, if they gave fighters something more then just "kill a thing." But they can't. So they're stuck with a fighter that must be about and only about "kill a thing," but cannot be very skilled at it for fear of overshadowing the rest of the party. Incidentally while looking some of this up, I encountered this in the 2e book. And I quote: quote:layer characters have a marvelous (and, to the DM, vastly amusing) tendency to fall off things, generally from great heights and almost always onto hard surfaces. While the falling is harmless, the abrupt stop at the end tends to cause damage. 3e is and always has been the bizarre aberration.
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Mar 18, 2013 14:57
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Really I think the easiest way to say why multiple attacks are a problem is two-fold. 1) Each extra attack increases all damage you deal by 100%. 2) Each extra attack increases all dice rolled by 100%. This means that multiple attacks very quickly becomes better then any other option, but also slows down the game more then almost any other option.
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Mar 19, 2013 16:35
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FRINGE posted:There must be a story as to why use rope was so bad? It never seemed like a big deal either way in 2e. It was probably the best example of "poo poo everyone should know." Use Rope before NWPs was rather simplistically a thing you knew because you were a goddamn adventurer. And even in NWPs, using rope was next to things like "know constellations" or "identify heraldric symbols." In 3.x, however, you had Use Rope next to Be Able To Use Any Magical Item or See Things or Lie. It is in other words super, super niche, in a skill system that was intended to be very broad.
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Mar 21, 2013 05:28
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Kai Tave posted:Yeah, that's a valid point...it's the inverse of the "social skills are too good, you can just roll high and make the king give you all his gold" thing, the "well your speech was super awesome but you rolled a 1 so that's a failure and nothing happens." Just say at the end of his speech, the character let's loose a massive fart. ( in all seriousness, I prefer to make my speeches AFTER I roll for this reason )
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Mar 23, 2013 04:17
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The problem with "Apprentice Tier" and the reason people hope it's a joke is because level 1 in D&D Next was already supposed to be that level of "you're a nobody, time to try to make something of yourself." With people who wanted to start off experienced being told to start at level 3. Now I guess you go from inexperienced at level 1 to still inexperienced at level 3 to actually naming your character at level 6? Edit: I do like how apparently all characters lose their class abilities and only regain them at level 3, except wizards who not only keep their already existent spellcasting but just get more cantrips to add to it, though. ProfessorCirno fucked around with this message at 00:38 on Apr 2, 2013 |
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Apr 2, 2013 00:28
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FRINGE posted:Is this thing actually a big deal? Did they do something other than slap a name on the first few levels to add flavor to it for new players? He's saying they actually have changed the mechanics. "Level 1" as it stands in the current playtest is now "Level 3" with two new, weaker, less interesting levels to start at. isndl posted:Have they made any mention about making this Apprentice Tier stuff into a separate module, or are they on track for jamming more crap into core? Last I checked - which was awhile ago! - D&D Nex had not one single module. This and everything else is all not only Core, it's still a part of their "Basic" set.
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Apr 2, 2013 02:28
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goldjas posted:Are there people that actually really like to play at level 0 or whatever? Hell, after like my first game of 3rd or 4th most people didn't even like starting at level 1 anymore(especially 3.x because at level 1 you can be 1 shot by a dice roll gone wrong). Is there like a legitimate wanting for this kind of thing? I mean, if players want to die all over the place in even 4th edition that's pretty easy to facilitate as a DM, Hell I've done it before (and it's even an official thing with Lair Assault in a way), it's almost like these people(assuming they really exist) want to be challenged by having poo poo characters instead of being challenged in interesting tactical ways. I don't think anyone likes level 0, nor does anyone like starting at level 5, which is the problem. Some people want level 1 to be FFV and others want to be a cool hero from the start. Both want their play to be the default, and the others to have to start at "apprentice" or "master" EDIT: FRINGE posted:Thats what I mean. One way or another you can just continue on as you normally would. (Just calling it "lv3" now.) If they lose some of the super-powered end of the progression, thats the least important thing IMO. Making the first half as accessible as possible is more important. (If they manage it.) So while this may or may not suck, it sounds like their attention is in the right spot (maybe). I have nothing against basic and easy first levels. I do NOT think "at level one, everything kills you, move five feet at a time and check for traps and never fight" is a good introduction to the game, however.
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Apr 2, 2013 03:16
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Yeah, I guess to put it in other words: "Easy gameplay with few choices for beginners." "Gritty gameplay for experts with easy to die characters" Choose one. The first is tied to level inherently, because level 1 is where beginners step out on. The second need not be tied to level at all. That's where D&D Next's "module" thing could step in. Except this isn't "play D&D how you want," it's "play D&D how Mearls really wants to remember AD&D as," so we're not getting that. Elsewhere I'm seeing people praise this because it solves problems like multiclassing or wanting easy death gameplay, and yet all their problems seem to originate from: I'm an experienced player and I want gritty gameplay." The only reason this need be tied to level is because of laziness or the desire to force a gameplay aspect.
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Apr 2, 2013 03:54
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goldjas posted:There's nothing really stopping you from doing gritty gameplay at mid or high levels as well. I mean, the Tomb of Horrors was originally a pretty high level thing wasn't it (just for example). I guess in 3.x mid and high levels got all sorts of broken so you couldn't really do it as easily there but in any other edition of DnD nothing really was stopping you from "turning up the grit" at any level of play as it were. Right, that's broadly what I mean. It's actually not really HARD to make survivability something that can be tweaked or changed easily, but it means not tying it into level. Which isn't going to happen.
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Apr 2, 2013 04:06
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Don't forget, level 1 warrior in OD&D is titled "Veteran." This "apprentice" bullshit where level 1 characters are just fresh behind the ears losers was, from my recollection, born somewhere between 2e and 3e.
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Apr 2, 2013 14:17
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