D&D 5E Discussion

[TigerKnee]

What makes you think the players want to get one-shotted at full health?

Did you suddenly forgot what forum you were on or something? I reckon 90% of the players of this sub-forum would play campaigns starting out as a 0-level peasants because it makes them feel hardcore when they get pass the "everyone might get one-shot on unlucky rolls" phase of D&D.

 

[Spectacle]

5 years of 4E d&d, 0 character deaths
1 session of 5E d&d, 1 fighter killed from full health by a critical hit from a wolf, followed by rolling 1 on the death save.

Liking the new edition so far

What makes you think the players want to get one-shotted at full health? And why the fuck would anyone play 4E for 5 years?

The players in this case are all old-school gamers, and we're all enjoying the nostalgia of having 1st level characters die like flies.
And why play 4E? Because it has by far the best combat system of any D&D version, and combat has always been the main focus of our D&D games. If we want to focus on roleplaying we with other systems.

 

[Telengard]

What makes you think the players want to get one-shotted at full health?

Generally speaking, for three reasons

• Thrill - same reason people put real money down when gambling, the greater the stake, the greater the tension that results, and thus the greater the thrill
• Strategy - strict management of resources in a hostile environment, as it's only when things are hostile that strict management becomes necessary, rather than desire-based (I want to do this to survive rather than I want to do this to be more powerful and see a bigger number)
• Camaraderie - it's only when things get bad that people start really pull together (ideally anyway)

Of course, you may as well ask why people play rogue-likes, when the odds are always stacked against you.

 

[nikolokolus]

What makes you think the players want to get one-shotted at full health?

Did you suddenly forgot what forum you were on or something? I reckon 90% of the players of this sub-forum would play campaigns starting out as a 0-level peasants because it makes them feel hardcore when they get pass the "everyone might get one-shot on unlucky rolls" phase of D&D.

DCC RPG is bloody brilliant at this and making it simultaneously fun.

 

[Night Goat]

What makes you think the players want to get one-shotted at full health?

Generally speaking, for three reasons

• Thrill - same reason people put real money down when gambling, the greater the stake, the greater the tension that results, and thus the greater the thrill
• Strategy - strict management of resources in a hostile environment, as it's only when things are hostile that strict management becomes necessary, rather than desire-based (I want to do this to survive rather than I want to do this to be more powerful and see a bigger number)
• Camaraderie - it's only when things get bad that people start really pull together (ideally anyway)

Of course, you may as well ask why people play rogue-likes, when the odds are always stacked against you.

I understand that people want challenging games for those reasons. But when your fighter can get one-shotted at full health by normal wildlife, it goes beyond challenging and into "this is bullshit" territory.

 

[nikolokolus]

What makes you think the players want to get one-shotted at full health?

Generally speaking, for three reasons

• Thrill - same reason people put real money down when gambling, the greater the stake, the greater the tension that results, and thus the greater the thrill
• Strategy - strict management of resources in a hostile environment, as it's only when things are hostile that strict management becomes necessary, rather than desire-based (I want to do this to survive rather than I want to do this to be more powerful and see a bigger number)
• Camaraderie - it's only when things get bad that people start really pull together (ideally anyway)

Of course, you may as well ask why people play rogue-likes, when the odds are always stacked against you.

I understand that people want challenging games for those reasons. But when your fighter can get one-shotted at full health by normal wildlife, it goes beyond challenging and into "this is bullshit" territory.

For you.

 

[Night Goat]

Hay guise look how hardcore I am, I love gaems where I get killed without even having a chance to do anything. Am I cool yet?

 

[Alchemist]

What makes you think the players want to get one-shotted at full health?

Did you suddenly forgot what forum you were on or something? I reckon 90% of the players of this sub-forum would play campaigns starting out as a 0-level peasants because it makes them feel hardcore when they get pass the "everyone might get one-shot on unlucky rolls" phase of D&D.

DCC RPG is bloody brilliant at this and making it simultaneously fun.

This. DCC is incredibly lethal especially at early levels. And yet the DCC campaign I played in was the most fun campaign I ever played in my ~30 years of PnP gaming.

 

[Echo Mirage]

Fucking Hickman, Weiss, and Salvatore. Die in a fire.

I was about to ask how the fluff was this time around after the 4th edition dropped a nuke on the setting and almost put R.A Salvatore out of a job. Then I saw this comment. What's he done this time ?

 

[nikolokolus]

Hay guise look how hardcore I am, I love gaems where I get killed without even having a chance to do anything. Am I cool yet?

I'm not hardcore, but I am old and this is just how we played it back in the day - for D&D style games at least.

Don't get me wrong, if I were playing Runequest or Elric!, then losing a character hurts a lot more because it takes forever to roll up a new guy.

 

[nikolokolus]

Fucking Hickman, Weiss, and Salvatore. Die in a fire.

I was about to ask how the fluff was this time around after the 4th edition dropped a nuke on the setting and almost put R.A Salvatore out of a job. Then I saw this comment. What's he done this time ?

He didn't do anything, he's Just a shit author. Mainly I pointed it out for the eye-rolling fact that he's been enshrined in this edition's version of "Appendix N" along with Hickman and Weiss. These hacks created some of the stupidest Mary Sue characters ever and were part of the shift to D&D games becoming so heavy on metaplot in the last twenty+ years.

 

[Echo Mirage]

Fucking Hickman, Weiss, and Salvatore. Die in a fire.

I was about to ask how the fluff was this time around after the 4th edition dropped a nuke on the setting and almost put R.A Salvatore out of a job. Then I saw this comment. What's he done this time ?

He didn't do anything, he's Just a shit author. Mainly I pointed it out for the eye-rolling fact that he's been enshrined in this edition's version of "Appendix N" along with Hickman and Weiss. These hacks created some of the stupidest Mary Sue characters ever and were part of the shift to D&D games becoming so heavy on metaplot in the last twenty+ years.

Ah. I see it now. I didn't notice his name because of that blur in the image. I'm not familiar with Hickman or Weiss's 'contributions' to D&D fluff. But I gave up on R.A Salvatore's prose the second I read the opening to The lone Drow. Great cover, Shit story.

What the hell is he even doing these days anyway? I know he wrote Transitions that pissed everyone off, and he didn't get paid for Kindoms of amalur. Is he still hacking out crap or did someone finally fire him ?

 

[Spectacle]

Hay guise look how hardcore I am, I love gaems where I get killed without even having a chance to do anything. Am I cool yet?

I dunno why you dislike 4E, since it's the only version of D&D that has 1st level characters that are reasonably robust.

 

[Night Goat]

I dislike 4e because literally everything about it is bad. That includes the combat, where you just blow all your encounter powers, then grind down the enemies with your at-wills while you wait for it all to be over.

3.5 is my edition, and while it is possible for first-level characters to be one-shotted there, it isn't something that happens often. 5e is going full steam ahead with its "fuck the players" mentality, and I think it's going to backfire for WotC when the players ask the DM to run 3.5 or Pathfinder instead.

 

[Don Peste]

Where can I find the equivalent to these rules in AD&D / Retroclones?
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/movementPositionAndDistance.htm
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/actionsInCombat.htm

 

[Drakron]

I dunno why you dislike 4E, since it's the only version of D&D that has 1st level characters that are reasonably robust.

And?
If a lv1 character dies you can easily make a new one, its at higher levels that the system becomes complicated enough were rolling a new character became more problematic but then again at higher levels death became not much a occupational hazard but Thursday.

Plus DMs are more willing to be forgiving to certain rolls, no sane DM would want a TPK because then season is over and all his work goes down the drain, reason why there is a DM and not just a rulebook is because someone needs to make calls, even when its fudging the dice on the players favor because the goal of a season is always for the party to be victorious, not to die 2 hours in on a random encounter due to a unlucky roll.

 

[Raghar]

I never fudged dices in combat.

 

[nikolokolus]

Where can I find the equivalent to these rules in AD&D / Retroclones?
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/movementPositionAndDistance.htm
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/actionsInCombat.htm

Hackmaster.

 

[TigerKnee]

I dunno why you dislike 4E, since it's the only version of D&D that has 1st level characters that are reasonably robust.

And?
If a lv1 character dies you can easily make a new one, its at higher levels that the system becomes complicated enough were rolling a new character became more problematic but then again at higher levels death became not much a occupational hazard but Thursday.

Getting constantly killed can lead to a sort of "Yeah whatever, not going to get attached to this guy until he reaches level X, my new character is Fighter John the 4th, he's John's twin brother who has exactly the same appearance and personality" mentality. Which might rankle some storyfag players.

Also rolling up a new character in pre-3E is fast because you basically just roll your stats and choose your class, and some retroclones don't even allow MUs to pick spells. But even a level 1 3.x based character will take some take to pick his feats, assign his skill points and shit.

 

[Drakron]

Getting constantly killed ...

You dont get constant killed unless you either screwed up thats unlikely at lv1 or the DM screwed up with the encounter that is more likely, you can also have some bad rolls.

The problem is often not the player but someone that screwed the pooch on the encounter design, a lot of CRPGs even try to avoid it not by cleaver design but by allowing players to level up much faster so there not a issue until later levels, problem is D&D by default doesnt allow to simply "level up" when you gain the required XP but at the end of the adventure and so starting at lv1 incurs substantial danger because it only ends at the end of the adventure, not when a NPC gives you 1000 xp for gathering 10 herbs.

That brings the question, why would you play with the default settings? a lot of faults come from DMs that simply want to auto-pilot it and from players that hold the rules as sacred and unchangeable because if you dont like certain rules ... ditch then, take alignment, you can rip the whole thing off and not change the core of the rules substantially, only some spells yet that also involves work and know what you have done, yet people rather bitch about instead because its easier.

 

[Night Goat]

When I DM'd, I started the campaign at level 6. That was higher than it needed to be, but I definitely wouldn't start a campaign at level 1. I like Dark Sun's policy of making level 3 the default starting level, since if the characters have survived to adulthood they'll have some experience already.

 

[Melan]

What makes you think the players want to get one-shotted at full health? And why the fuck would anyone play 4E for 5 years?

The same reason people enjoy UFO: Enemy Unknown's casualty rate. Under the right conditions, that kind of risk is enjoyable, and it's also cool when you can work around your vulnerabilities and do something very impressive with the little you have. Some games take it to a level that's absurd for most people (the DCC funnel and The Tomb of Horrors come to my mind), but the general idea that you lose a few characters at the start is pretty okay as long as nobody takes it personally. And cruel, occasionally random death makes for cool war stories. The characters I have lost are probably more memorable than some I have won with - like my very first, unnamed Fighter who got killed in a mine by orcs on his first adventure, the 2e thief who got greedy and wandered into a side-crypt inhabited by wights, or the 3.0 combat monster who was critically hit for 36 points of damage by a greataxe-wielding orc.

When I GM, I mostly start my games at 3rd level where characters are a bit more resilient, but 1st level deathfests also have their charm. You need a specific mindset (the polar opposite of the build mentality) and easy character generation, but it can be quite enjoyable.

 

[tuluse]

The same reason people enjoy UFO: Enemy Unknown's casualty rate. Under the right conditions, that kind of risk is enjoyable, and it's also cool when you can work around your vulnerabilities and do something very impressive with the little you have. Some games take it to a level that's absurd for most people (the DCC funnel and The Tomb of Horrors come to my mind), but the general idea that you lose a few characters at the start is pretty okay as long as nobody takes it personally. And cruel, occasionally random death makes for cool war stories. The characters I have lost are probably more memorable than some I have won with - like my very first, unnamed Fighter who got killed in a mine by orcs on his first adventure, the 2e thief who got greedy and wandered into a side-crypt inhabited by wights, or the 3.0 combat monster who was critically hit for 36 points of damage by a greataxe-wielding orc.

When I GM, I mostly start my games at 3rd level where characters are a bit more resilient, but 1st level deathfests also have their charm. You need a specific mindset (the polar opposite of the build mentality) and easy character generation, but it can be quite enjoyable.

In X-Com, you don't really make characters, it's a different style of game.

I suppose if you can make a new character in about 10 minutes and the players get to control more than 1, a super deadly campaign could be fun. D&D isn't that though.

 

[Melan]

Most D&D variants that aren't 3e or 4e have pretty fast chargen - maybe not 10 minutes, but well under 20 for lower levels. Can't comment on 5e yet.

Multiple characters are beside the point, although it is an approach that works fine for dungeon adventures. However, to say that D&D doesn't accommodate high-lethality campaigns ignores most of the game's history. Intro adventures have featured some deadly stuff - In Search of the Unknown, Keep on the Borderlands, The Sunless Citadel (and I am told particularly The Forge of Fury); even the randomly stocked generic dungeon in the back of the 3.0 PHB has potential to develop into a TPK (wich we have experienced first hand). Low level characters are disposable. You can work around it in various ways, but that's just how it is by default. Then some of them survive, gain enough experience for 2nd and 3rd level, and from then on, they are mostly safe from random, senseless death.

 

[Alchemist]

The 5E basic rules were updated and now also include a separate PDF for DMs, with Monster info, among other stuff: http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/basicrules

I'm not sure what was changed in the Player PDF yet.