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Secret Satans! Post | D&D Wishlist | General Wishlist
How many Hit Points should a level 1 Fighter with Con 14 have in your mind?
What's your favorite class that has appeared in the initial offering of an edition?
Secret Satans! Post | D&D Wishlist | General Wishlist
WiiU: JamWarrior
Given that the discussion was on low level play, specifically combat vs sneaky, the options should be written to focus on that. My suggestions would be "Enough to survive all the things" "Enough to survive a decent fight" "Enough to survive, if you have to fight" "Enough to make your first combat a slow death" "Enough to be considered alive, but no more."
No, really?
Dragon Slayers
I think the best argument that can be summoned for it is: since fighting, vancian spellcasting, and divine spellcasting are all different things, then you're best served by running them through different subsystems. Vincent Baker has a smart explanation of this I think :
http://lumpley.com/comment.php?entry=475
I like mechanical reinforcement of flavor and I don't think it has to be broken or badly designed.
That would be D&D 4th Edition, which has separate subsystems for tactical combat (including combat-related powers), rituals, and skill challenges.
-I'm going to do something
-I roll a d20 and add a number to it
-This result either meets or does not meet a target number
Treating different classes like completely different systems is simply adding complexity without gaining anything apart from less abuse from neckbeards who require absolute systematic verisimilitude in the mechanics for each class.
[El]: 2 [En]: 2 [G]: 80 [M]: 31 [N]: 80 [R]: 2 [T]: 2 [W]: 34
Minecraft: Ginjinngear | Steam
Mechanical enforcement of flavor is silly because it ties people to very specific and narrow character archetypes that restrict the breadth of the game and increase the concentration of cliches in a an already cliche-heavy genre. It also leads to byzantine and contradictory rules because rules written to enforce Flavor A eventually end up clashing with ones that enforce Flavor B because there's no coherent design philosophy behind flavor enforcement.
And again, while subsystem-heavy games may not have to be broken or badly designed, they often are because they are much more difficult to design in a balanced way - which is probably why you went with 'this theoretical idea COULD be done in a balanced, well-designed way' instead of '3.5/pathfinder/whatever is well-designed and balanced.'
I don't feel like I need to argue the absolutist 'A game built around separate subsystems cannot ever be balanced' when I have the much more easily-made argument 'That type of game is much more difficult to balance and WotC does not have the design team to pull it off' available to me.
Also the balance issue doesn't really touch on the complexity issue - players should not have to learn an entirely new set of rules when they decide to roll a new class. Requiring them to do so shuts down options at the table, makes play flow less well, worsens the work-to-fun ratio of the game, and makes it harder to get new players involved. There are huge benefits to a coherent system that simply cannot be reasonably outweighed by the desire to have someone else write your flavor for you.
I think there are two very different systems though - one in which different subsystems exist for different, complementary components, and one in which different subsystems exist in parallel with one another. There's "chunked into three different minigames" and there's "each player is playing a different minigame".
Shadowrun 4th is probably closest. Magic and Technomancing function pretty differently from everything else in the game.
I'm not really sure if I'd consider the DDXP demo a playtest, but that's just quibbling. If they even pretend to care about the NDA by the time the "open" playtest rolls around, I think a lot of people will lose their shit just for the sheer ridiculousness of it.
Dear lord, this makes me feel old.
Secret Satans! Post | D&D Wishlist | General Wishlist
At least this one isn't so terrible.
In wfrp you can cast as often as you like but miscasts can result in severe negatives, from insanity to summoned hostile demons etc. Lesser miscast results are loud noises (could wake up the bad guys) to glowing casters (ah crap here comes the witch hunters).
first encounter the dice got uppity
otto got shot twice in the chest
game over
otto figured he'd pick the corpse and just move on
then otto rolled some shitty dice
then the witch hunter rolled some really good dice
and shot otto with each pistol
right in the center of mass
it was an amazing feat of probability that forever made me love wfrp
dnd is hobbled by the fact that it is a frankensteinly hodgepodge doomed to be crushed under the weight of five thousand grognards all with differing opinions of what modern games should look like, none of whom actually know what constitutes an elegant game
Player of Li Mei Feng, Monkey Princess, The Dresden Files Low Profile
GM of Monsterhearts: Blackwood
Steam PSN: DerWaffleMous Origin: DerWaffleMous Bnet: WaffleMous#1483
that's really the part I dug about 3.5 and felt was lacking in 4.
It's like this. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance is a great game. It's super fun and well built but it has a template that all characters must fit. It is forth edition. Alliance is fun but I would love a game that was as well built as that but built each Avenger separately Cap as a first or third PS with a unique shield mechanic sorta like Dark Spectre. Ironman focused on his jetpack-like fight and various gadgets without the need to target. Maybe like Star Wars Bounty Hunter. Thor a third-person beat-em-up with massive area effect powers. Hulk just like Ultimate Destruction. And so on.
If they made that game that was just as we built and functional as Ultimate Alliance I would love the shit out of that game.
If fifth were that game to Fourth editions Ultimate Alliance I would love fifth.
But it won't be that game.
My Band "The Wicked Girls" http://soundcloud.com/the-wicked-girls/sets
I think at least some of the people that felt 4e limited creativity aren't interested in being able to create mechanical combos and exploit loopholes like parts of 3e allowed. You may have encountered more people that just wanted to break the mechanics of the game but I've heard more discussion along the lines of the following:
(Before I start this I feel the need for a disclaimer. This is not how all groups will be affected. It's more subtle than that, but it's something I feel does affect most players, especially those that are new to the hobby.)
When you're faced with a problem (let's say the party are on the second floor of a building that's burning down) the mechanics of the game you're playing can affect how you go about addressing it.
In 4e your character sheet in front of you has a list of Powers you can use and a list of Skills that you have varying levels of competence in. This can lure players into looking to their character sheet for the solution to the problem. As an extreme example you have players saying things like "I'll roll Acrobatics to try and climb down the outside of the building" and then roll a die.
In older versions of D&D (let's say use OD&D or Basic for this example) your character sheet was the six ability scores (which barely affected any rolls, or didn't at all in some versions), class, level and equipment. You probably had some class features too but nothing on par with the selection of powers, feats and skills in 4e. Here the player is less likely to look at their sheet for the solution to the problem. At best they'd look down and think "how can I use rope to get out of this situation?". Generally you end up with more player collaboration and imaginative suggestions. At least, this is my own experience.
There's nothing wrong with what happened in the 4e example. It's still being creative. But when you have that list of Skills in front of you there's always the temptation to try and get the biggest number on your side. "How can I use my Acrobatics Skill in this situation" is creative, yes, but it's just that bit more limited and has the danger of removing some variety from the game. 4e opened D&D up to a load of cool new stuff but I do think the oldies have a point when they suggest that part of the original core of D&D was lost in the change. Here's hoping 5e can bring that back without sacrificing the good stuff from 4e.
SoogaGames Blog
Secret Satans! Post | D&D Wishlist | General Wishlist
See, and my answer to that is that if you want to do something, you tell the DM what you want, and he figures out an appropriate roll for it. In no game I've either played or DM'd have I had players say "I make an Acrobatics check to climb down the building." It's always "I climb down the building," followed by the DM saying "Okay, make an Acrobatics check."
In short, this is one of the Three Classic Complaints of 4E, namely, "My DM isn't experienced/is bad/is kind of a jerk."
Also, as a DM, always, always, always give a flat +2 on top of all other bonuses for well described actions. At the very least do this outside of combat (we actually had a random game at a game shop where we made no attack rolls, and whether you hit or missed was determined by how impressed the DM was with your description of the attack. That was fun).
Secret Satans! Post | D&D Wishlist | General Wishlist
TL;DR, I have found that being "restricted" by my skill scores leads to me trying to find creative solutions to problems using what my PC is good at, simultaneously grounding my character in his or her own reality and leading to creative solutions to the problem.
The two issues you mention here are absolutely the cause behind every habitually "uncreative" situation I've witnessed at the table. Either "oh shit, I can do that!?" because the player just came up for air from trying to wrap their head around the rules and their sheet, or "uh, yeah, I roll a d20" because they have their nose in their phone. The first is unfortunate, the second is bullshit, but neither are the pooh-poohing about 4e being restrictive. Every edition is wholly restrictive if you only go by what's on your sheet.
It's even worse with skills, in my opinion, because people get stuck in partitions where they think all actions must fit the definition of the skill's text, rather than doing whatever the hell they come up with and us bending it into a skill. I like some skills because they capture important things to specialize in, but for the sake of everyone at the table I wouldn't mind 5e's skill-less system. All that said, though, I think that attentive players with a couple games under their belt and a good DM quickly learn that they should think first and fit it to the rules second. If they really don't like the rule outcome, they are free to come up with something else (there is no final choice until you roll).
It's frustrating talking about these problems of game design because so many people, e.g. here, just blame the players or the DM. That's too simplistic. Game systems create trends in play that are complex and hard to predict.
Skills are probably part of the culprit. I think with a skill system you either need a very wide system that covers everything a player can do, or no skills at all. You want to be able to go 'I hold my sword behind my back, hiss like a snake to distract him, and leap to attack, striking with my sword from a weird angle' or whatever, and then be hunting on the sheet to find how to represent that. If you start at the sheet, because you have enough skills to create options, but not too many to parse, then you get 'I use Acrobatics to get Combat Advantage' thing.
Every game that I like the skill system of, has lots and lot of skills, basically enough to let you roll something for anything you can think of, or at least find a skill that's vaguely applicable.
This has been me thinking aloud, but I think that is part of the problem. So another edition should have either no skills or a lot lot more.
And if you're hunting through my post to work out how to prove that it's the player's fault or the DM's fault alone, then you're as much a part of the problem with 5e as Monte Cook is.