D&D 5E Discussion

[Havoc]

That's... sad.

 

[Andhaira]

4e was never designed to be played just on the virtual tabletop, for crying out loud people don't spread disinformation. The VTT was a supplementary tool because HASBRO wanted to cash in on the sub based MMO money. 4e contained streamlined rules on the DM side, reducing as much load on the DM as possible in that system; many 3e DMs actually found 4e easier to run. The problem with 4e was the mass of similar powers that drained the fun out of the game, and the fact that a grid map was pretty much required for combat due to the way the powers worked.

 

[Keldryn]

4e was never designed to be played just on the virtual tabletop, for crying out loud people don't spread disinformation. The VTT was a supplementary tool because HASBRO wanted to cash in on the sub based MMO money. 4e contained streamlined rules on the DM side, reducing as much load on the DM as possible in that system; many 3e DMs actually found 4e easier to run. The problem with 4e was the mass of similar powers that drained the fun out of the game, and the fact that a grid map was pretty much required for combat due to the way the powers worked.

This.

I never really got a good feel for DMing 3e. I could (and still can) run sessions of AD&D or B/X D&D without cracking open the books and even improvising a lot of the content if necessary, but this never happened with 3e. Just looking at the 3e DM's screen gives me a headache and makes my eyes glaze over. 4e was pretty great from a DM's perspective, although I did often forget about some of the off-turn "reaction" abilities of my monsters. I only ran 4e about 6 or 8 times though, so I'll chalk that up to inexperience.

What really killed 4e for me more than anything else was that it requires more from the players than any other edition of D&D. Most of my groups have consisted of roughly equal numbers of dedicated players and more casual players. In any other edition of D&D, the less-invested players can play a fighter or thief and the rest of us can briefly explain the rules they need to know as the relevant situations come up in play. They don't need to own any books -- or even read them, for that matter -- in order to have fun playing the game and make a meaningful contribution to the campaign. 4e was different; a more casual player can't just get away with knowing how far his character can move, what dice to roll for attack and damage, and that when his hit points reach zero he's either dead or unconscious. He has to understand forced movement, healing surges, temporary hit points, action points, reactions, and deal with the resource management of encounter and daily powers. He also needs to understand when to use the attack power that does 2[W] + Str damage and the one that only does 1[W] + Str damage but also slows an enemy until the end of its next turn.

In addition to having battle maps for each encounter, players also need to have either a reference sheet or cards to keep track of what their powers do and when they have been used. Guess who ends up preparing these references for the players who aren't likely to spend time outside of the game doing their own preparation? Unless all of the players are invested enough in the game to read the books and learn the intricacies of the system on their own time, you end up with combats that drag on for an hour or more because players take too long to decide what to do. Or because they don't really understand how to use their stronger powers and just stick with their At-Will powers.

4e might actually be a pretty fun game if you have a group where all of the players are die-hard players who know the rules inside and out. It would still have lengthy combats (compared to AD&D) and there are issues with bland powers, but I can see how it could be a lot of fun with the right group of players.

It's clear that 4e took some design cues from MMOs, and I'm sure that there was a deliberate intent to made the game more familiar to those who grew up on WoW and video games (who have never even heard of tabletop wargaming, much less participated in it). But it was never designed to be played exclusively on the computer, nor was it designed for making computer/video games out of it. It is cumbersome to play without the use of digital tools to prepare for the game, but it is a tabletop game at its heart.

 

[Caim]

Hasbro realized that you can get more sales and make more money if you don't dilute them across a million books. This happened with third and fourth edition. A massive amount of content = nobody is going to buy it. There were some upbursts like Book of Vile Darkness and shit, but 3e books overall didn't sell too well because most people that play tabletop RPGs are just gonna buy the ruleset and maybe a few splatbooks. Not everyone needs or wants every single DnD book. They tried again with 4e to just fucking grunt out books for no reason and again after the initial burst and a few upticks here and there(campaign settings mostly) people just stopped buying. Who needs to buy a specific book based around killing zombies or using undead in the game? Shit like that is bad for DnD. So the new paradigm is to heavily playest the shit out of material and release 5 or less books a year.

I mean, so far we're getting 3 this year. A splat book with content and two Forgotten Realms adventures. Last year we got 5, the core set of 3 and the two adventure books that part 1'd and 2'd. It's actually a year old, they're just not interested in stuffing store shelves with the shit.

Yeah, for players who don't buy a lot of stuff it's more managable to release only a few books and be done with it that way.

But for other players, myself included, who like to buy acquire all the books in order to have a lot of fun with them and build all sorts of crazy shit and create awesome adventures, this is a rather lacking method.

Or they could just release a massive Planescape book with places, monsters, plot points and so on and I'm content with it. I just fucking love Planescape.

 

[Alchemist]

I'm kinda glad WotC is taking it slow with 5E releases. In my case I'm unlikely to buy much "splatbook" type of stuff anyway - I'm fine with having just the core three books and creating my own new material or adapting stuff from older editions, if I ever run 5E. Some updated setting books (anything but Forgotten Realms please!) would be nice though. By the way, some 3rd party publishers have been creating stuff for 5E, despite not having an OGL.

Also the sad fact is, PnP D&D will always be just a side-project in Hasbro / WotC's eyes, compared to the video game licensed projects and Magic.

 

[Caim]

Unfortunately you're a minority.

I know, I just want to explore the Planes and see their wonders in 5e. To bad they don't care about the Planes anymore.

 

[Lhynn]

we need 5e ravenloft!

 

[Caim]

IF you like planescape, you should play Numenera. It's basically Planescape.

Yeah, I read about that. But it seems to lack a few things. Quality, for one.

we need 5e ravenloft!

Oh yes. I wanna see what happened to the place after it was given the Anus of Vecna.

 

[Keldryn]

I'm kinda glad WotC is taking it slow with 5E releases. In my case I'm unlikely to buy much "splatbook" type of stuff anyway - I'm fine with having just the core three books and creating my own new material or adapting stuff from older editions, if I ever run 5E. Some updated setting books (anything but Forgotten Realms please!) would be nice though. By the way, some 3rd party publishers have been creating stuff for 5E, despite not having an OGL.

I've never found splatbooks to improve the game in the long run -- at least the generic ones. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Setting-specific character options are (or can be) great and can really make a setting feel distinct (defiling in Dark Sun, Dragonmarks in Eberron, etc). The same goes for books focused on a particular campaign theme but not tied to a specific setting (e.g. pirates & seafaring adventures, horror, war, "oriental" adventures, swashbuckling, etc).

It's the kitchen-sink splatbooks that I hate, for the most part. PHBR1 The Complete Fighter's Handbook was pretty cool back in the day, as it included a lot of stuff that made combat more interesting. There was some good info on running a fighter-oriented campaign. The "character kits" section wasn't really the focus of the book, but this was where the decline started. None of the kits in this book were overpowered, but this was where the thematically incoherent mess of kitchen-sink D&D really took hold. The classes in the 1e and 2e Player's Handbooks were designed to work together and fit the pseudo-medieval-European milieu reasonably well (if you didn't think about it too much). Then the The Complete Fighter's Handbook shows up, followed quickly by the books for Thieves, Priests, and Wizards, and of course players want to try out everything in the books. So now the campaign starts out like the set up for a bad joke: So, a Samurai, an Amazon, a Pirate, a Pacifist Priest, a Witch, and an Acrobat walk into a bar...

Never mind that it was an elven Samurai, a halfling Amazon, a dwarf Pirate...

Some of the kits in those first four books were clearly better than others, and virtually everything in The Complete Priest's Handbook was severely underpowered compared to the basic cleric, but I remember them as being mostly added flavor and nothing grossly overpowered or game-breaking. Then came PHBR5 Elves Are Better Than Everyone Else and Don't Need to Sleep, Eat, Fart, or Even Take a Shit and set splatbooks upon their future path.

3e fared no better. Prestige classes sounded like a cool idea at first, representing more advanced career paths or setting-specific organizations, but the first splatbook (Sword and Fist) alone shit all over that concept. Sure, the Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization feats represent a fighter who has dedicated his life to mastering a particular weapon, but here are some 10-level classes for warriors who want to totally master a particular weapon. And a special class for warriors who master spiked chains, just because. Oh, and there's a couple of weird monk classes because this book says it's for fighters and monks and we haven't written anything for them yet.

Organizing additional character options in books centered around game mechanics like classes or races is just a bad way to do it. You'll either end up with a thematically incoherent campaign or a stack of books where you only use 4 pages from each one. Also, by the time every class book has come out, power creep has likely made the options in the earlier books less appealing. This happened in 2e, 3e, 3.5, and 4e, and I am certain that it would happen in 5e as well.

Some degree of power creep is inevitable when you start publishing new character options, but if they are only published as campaign-specific material for the entire set of classes, then it really doesn't matter so much if 5e Oriental Adventures options are less powerful than the 5e Fine, Here's Planescape, Now Stop Bugging Us options published 3 years later.

I would, however, be willing to accept an eventual book of new "general" character options akin to the 1e Unearthed Arcana book, provided that the material was actually balanced and thoroughly playtested. Oh, and that the book's binding wouldn't fall apart when you breathe on it. But I'm talking about one book expanding the non-campaign-specific options for all character classes. I absolutely do not want to see any class- or race- focused books. Those types of books start the inevitable countdown to the new edition that is required to clean up the mess.

Also the sad fact is, PnP D&D will always be just a side-project in Hasbro / WotC's eyes, compared to the video game licensed projects and Magic.

This is both good and bad. On the plus side, it means that they are less likely to meddle with it too much or impose stupid "business models" on it.

D&D is a pretty complete game with just the core rulebooks and doesn't really need any additional rules. The game has actually always done very well when there was a small set of core rules and some adventures to play. Aggressive release schedules have generally not been a positive indicator of the game's health. The early years (1974-1979) and what many would consider the "golden age" when D&D was at its peak as a cultural phenomenon (1980-1984) saw tremendous growth in the popularity of the game, but a fairly controlled increase in the number of products being produced each year. And the product line was heavily weighted towards adventure modules, rather than rules expansions and campaign settings.

From 1985-1988, TSR's focus shifted towards additional rulebooks and campaign settings/supplements, culminating in a reboot of everything in 1989 with AD&D 2nd Edition. Even before the Player's Handbook hit store shelves, The Complete Fighter's Handbook and The Complete Thief's Handbook were listed in that year's TSR Product Catalog. What followed over the next six years was an absolute glut of product. Fifteen books in that PHBR series. Ten campaign settings with their own product lines, two of which had at least one sub-line. Some of this stuff is destined to sit in a landfill next to E.T. cartridges. TSR was a train wreck waiting to happen throughout the 90s, until it finally did happen in 1996.

3e was a massive hit at first and seemed to bring in a lot of new blood, yet within 3 years the game was rebooted with a revised edition. The quality of WotC 3e supplements was rather poor, and there was an avalanche of 3rd party product that displayed an appalling lack of quality. Within four years, there had been enough hardcovers produced for 3.5 to fill up the back of a pickup truck, and 4e was announced. The hardcovers for 4e were released at an even faster rate than they were for 3.5, and it was only two years before the line was NOT REBOOTED, HONEST with D&D Essentials. Not even two years later, they were talking about the upcoming 5e playtest.

Now many things are different in the 2010s compared to the 1980s. What I've talked about above is just circumstantial evidence, and there were obviously many causal factors at play. There are certainly other reasons as to why each successive edition has a shorter lifespan than the last.

But maybe, just maybe, the "huge variety of options" doesn't actually increase the lifespan of the game by offering players enough variety that they don't get bored as quickly. Maybe all of these options just end up contributing to player burnout. Too many products to buy, too many books to cart around, and too many decisions to have to make when starting campaigns, creating characters, or even just going up a level. Players get tired of buying books with cool options only for the DM to say "no, that doesn't fit my campaign," DMs get tired of having to say "no" all of the time, DMs get tired of having to get familiar with the new material that players bring into the campaign... After a while, the appeal of switching to a different game that uses 1 or 2 books becomes pretty tempting.

I'm not saying this is the case with all, or even most, players. I'm just musing.

Given the history of the game, I think that this slow rollout is probably a good thing. They'll lose some players who want a robust product line and a suitcase full of books with character building options (they already have Pathfinder). But they could very well lose more players and kill the game's positive momentum by releasing too much too soon. We're just now at 8 months from the release of the last of the 3 core books. I would much rather have a lean first year after the core books so that they have a chance to gather feedback on the finished product than get 3 or 4 books that were largely developed before the core rules were finalized.

 

[Lhynn]

I dont see a problem with "thematically incoherent" content. its a system, not a setting.

But yeah, too much material can simply contribute to the death of a system.

 

[Neanderthal]

Thought the complete book of Vikings was pretty good, but overall i've got to agree with you Keldryn, in the end i'd rarely use much of anything besides the core books and my house rules. What really pissed me off at the time was 3e coming out just when i'd gotten all of the 2e content I wanted, seemed a right fucking cashgrab. Oh and glad i'm not the only one whose Unearthed Arcana fell apart, it was almost as bad as those files for the Monstrous Compendium ring binder.

Nowadays what products a company produces doesn't bother me, if I fancy a game in Planescape or Ravenloft I just adapt the old books.

 

[Lhynn]

Why a cashgrab? just keep playing 2nd edition, god knows you have enough books to run it forevah.

 

[Keldryn]

I think there are more Unearthed Arcana books out there with poor binding than there are with proper binding. I had more pages falling out of UA than I did from those ring binders.

That whole "Historical Reference" series was actually pretty good, not just Vikings. They were quite reminiscent of GURPS books. They are also a good example of books with a tightly focused theme for a specific campaign. The character options and specific rules designed to facilitate a certain type of campaign belong together, where they can actually be integrated with one another. You also get to make use of the whole $20 book you bought, rather than a couple of pages in each of four $20 books.

And as the DM, when you tell your players that you're allowing the Vikings book, it's clear what sort of game you're running. In my experience, most players care more about trying out cool new character options and aren't bothered in the least when a Samurai and a Swashbuckler go dungeon delving alongside a heavily armored Knight in what is essentially medieval England. It drives me nuts though.

 

[Neanderthal]

Why a cashgrab? just keep playing 2nd edition, god knows you have enough books to run it forevah.

I were a stupid little cunt at time, thought I had to keep up wi all newest shit, grown up since. Ironic thing were I ditched AD&D entirely a few months later and made my own homebrew system.

And as the DM, when you tell your players that you're allowing the Vikings book, it's clear what sort of game you're running. In my experience, most players care more about trying out cool new character options and aren't bothered in the least when a Samurai and a Swashbuckler go dungeon delving alongside a heavily armored Knight in what is essentially medieval England. It drives me nuts though.

Got to admit i've devoted far too much time to this, trying to shepard players into making suitable characters that fit the setting and have a place there, now I just e-mail my lads an faq for any new setting along with a ton of suggestions and archetypes. Film or book suggestion as well to capture the essence. They sometimes come back with some solid gold ideas.

 

[Lhynn]

In my experience, most players care more about trying out cool new character options and aren't bothered in the least when a Samurai and a Swashbuckler go dungeon delving alongside a heavily armored Knight in what is essentially medieval England.

Just think of it this way: "It can only happen at the table".
You shouldnt care that much about what characters they have or how it affects your setting, just build around that, it can make for very memorable campaigns. Whats the fucking point if they dont get to play whatever the fuck they want to play?

 

[Hoaxmetal]

Just think of it this way: "It can only happen at the table".
You shouldnt care that much about what characters they have or how it affects your setting, just build around that, it can make for very memorable campaigns. Whats the fucking point if they dont get to play whatever the fuck they want to play?

Obligatory

 

[Lhynn]

Would be doable if the bear didnt actually have animal intelligence.

 

[TigerKnee]

After years of "lolz 4E is the WOW edition mirite gaiz", it's strange to see pretty reasonable posts on it.

 

[Neanderthal]

Got to admit that i've run a few do and be anything campaigns, but the characters being exotic (just asked them to make whatever they wanted rules be damned) fit because the world itself was a broken and nebulous place. It was a kind of dream like broken series of islands of reality, set in a vast black sea of unreality, kind of a proto realm still being born and held together very loosely. Doorways to other realms were lightouses stood at the edge of the unreal sea, and they allowed quick travel along with quite a few other options. Inspired by Yes album covers, Moorcock novels and weird 70's films like Zardos.

Great fucking fun, first session I had the characters escaping a geometrically mad ruined city on an island, where the shadows of the inhabitants tore and shrieked at them. They found the docks abandoned, ships rotting and the sea gone replaced by a desert of sand that they ran into. Miles into the desert they came across a massive wall of water, the sea held back by an invisible force hundreds of miles wide, some kind of ancient curse cast upon the distant city. Finally found one of the lighthouses and clasping the gem casting light at its apex were shunted to another world, endless waving fields of wheat in an eternal summertime, with small hamlets dotting the meadows.

Pretty good campaign, allowed a lot of freedom and creativity from me and the players.

 

[Caim]

There's a certain kind of aspie that loves 3.5/Pathfinder, and it's the min-maxing super grognard. I rarely see people discuss anything in pathfinder threads except how to make the most min-maxy builds. It's fucking annoying.

Yeah, it's kinda the draw of the game. It's one part RPG, one part optimization puzzle.

 

[Keldryn]

Just think of it this way: "It can only happen at the table".
You shouldnt care that much about what characters they have or how it affects your setting, just build around that, it can make for very memorable campaigns. Whats the fucking point if they dont get to play whatever the fuck they want to play?

Because if I'm running a Dark Sun campaign, it's much more difficult for everyone to buy in to the shared fantasy when one player insists on playing a winged elf ninja.

D&D itself has always taken something of a kitchen sink approach to fantasy, drawing inspiration from swords & sorcery fiction, Tolkein, pulp adventure serials, medieval European history, the Bible, and a number of real-world ancient mythologies (Greek, Celtic, Norse, Egyptian, etc). The swords & sorcery influences are probably the most dominant ones in early D&D and AD&D, and early Greyhawk materials definitely had a strong S&S vibe.

Some of the best D&D campaign settings are defined as much by what they remove from the game as they are defined by what they add to the game (Dark Sun, Ravenloft, Birthright). The first official setting produced by TSR after Greyhawk was Dragonlance, and one thing that really differentiated that setting from Greyhawk was how much of the "default" D&D material was excluded.

D&D also has some great campaign settings which facilitate an anything-goes style of play. Almost anything that you can dream up would be at home in Planescape, and it definitely leans more towards "weird" than "goofy." Spelljammer goes the other direction, leaning towards completely gonzo, over-the-top pulp adventures. Right from the start, the setting included giant space hamsters, running on huge wheels to power the spacefaring vessels of tinker gnomes.

But I don't want every game to feel like a Spelljammer game. If I want to run a D&D game set in Dark Sun or Ravenloft, or if I want to run a game of Deadlands, Earthdawn, or Star Wars, then there is a certain tone that I'm trying to achieve. And if I'm creating my own setting for D&D, I'm going to be focusing on certain themes and a specific tone as well. We already have D&D settings that were made to accommodate pretty much anything in the books (Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Eberron, Mystara). I'm not going to put the effort into crafting my own setting if it isn't going to be significantly different than those worlds.

And since the DM is the one doing exponentially more work for the game than all of the players combined, the players need to be accommodating as well. There is always a lot of talk about how DMs should be more accommodating when it comes to what players want -- and there is a lot of truth to that as well -- but there is a lot of room for a player to find something that he would be happy to play that still fits the tone and themes of the DM's campaign.

When I run a game, not only am I doing vastly more work than the players, I'm also hosting the game (which requires some time cleaning up the house to make it presentable), printing off character sheets and reference material, providing the miniatures and battle maps, providing books for the players who don't have them, and often giving players rides to and from a transit hub. If I say "a water-elemental-blooded elf ninja doesn't really fit this campaign, please pick something else" the very least that the player can do is not argue with me and just pick something else. It's not like there are a lack of options in the core rulebooks, and I'm always open to character concepts that are well-integrated with the game world.

 

[Lhynn]

Who even gives a shit if its lame, you are not writing a thesis, you are running a game.
Also ravenloft? that setting that borrows from every other setting in existence?
Sure, dread and horror are a p. clear theme, but from jap, to chinese, to egytpian horror exist and can be easily introduced into a ravenloft campaign, so even if your players are oddballs, you can still add themes of horror related to them.

Besides, you can always talk to your players about it to adapt the class to the setting, that ninja can easily be a darksun bard that likes to wear black clothing,

As for breaking the game? fucking please, get a wizard with as much intelligence as you can get away with and you already broke the game. Unless we are talking about 5e, then theres nothing truly broken and not that many options atm.

 

[LeStryfe79]

Fuck anyone who liked 4ed. You're an idiot and I will beat your ass.


(at 3d6)

 

[LeStryfe79]

Haha, you only have a 16.2% chance of beating that!!!!

 

[Shevek]

Who even gives a shit if its lame, you are not writing a thesis, you are running a game.
As for breaking the game? fucking please, get a wizard with as much intelligence as you can get away with and you already broke the game. Unless we are talking about 5e, then theres nothing truly broken and not that many options atm.

Man, with the way you "roll" for stats, I am sure you can break just about any game.