I can honestly say that I've never even thought about the pantheon of gods in any edition of D&D. I always end up just making up my own anyway. Though we did use the Raven Queen a lot in 4E, since it seemed like there were a lot of crunchy bits that related directly to her in the characters my players were using.
This is a completely serious question and not remotely snark:
Does it actually matter what iteration of the pantheon they push? Anyone who knows enough about an older version to prefer it can just put the band back together in whatever configuration they want, can't they?
Yeah. "What pantheon are they using" feels like an excessive level of nitpickery. Perhaps it matters for the "officially sanctioned" games?
“I used to draw, hard to admit that I used to draw...”
I mean, it is very DM dependent, but the biggest change in 5e, to me, are the 5 boxes labeled Personality traits, ideals, bonds, flaws, and inspiration. At my table inspiration is flying around the table, not because the DM is overly generous, but because all of the players are playing their characters according to what's in the prior 4 boxes. Hell, last night a guy made a half-orc paladin and one of his flaws was that he can't stand cowardice.
So when the halfling rogue dove under the cart (because he had like 3 hp left from being in the wrong place at the beginning of combat, and honoring his personality trait of being in it for himself at the beginning), the paladin spends his turn walking over to the halfling, grappling his foot--contested roll and all-- and pulled him back out. The rogue still had his bow on him so on his turn instead of contesting the grapple, he shoots with disadvantage at the enemy and manages to hit and kill it. This was all organic between relative strangers (I play weekly at the game store in an open game) simply based on the traits.
So, you ask. I'm just saying that even with just the basic set there's alot of fluff available. You can do DnD tactics or you can do TOtME, but I kind of disagree with anyone who says that the game is all crunch.
They've had things like personality traits in every edition I've ever touched. Usually with charts. 4E has freaking pages and pages and pages devoted to them.
Personally I've always found them a bit too narrow in design, but then my current character fights with disco magic and summons glomping angels.
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oxybeEntei is appaled and disappointed in youRegistered Userregular
Yeah. I tend to just go "here is a character" and slowly flesh out the personality about 3-4 sessions in once I'm more comfortable with the PC and how it handles.
Sometimes it ends up with Fightmann. Just a guy with a big axe, a good head on his shoulders and guided by a personal motto of "don't be a dick". He's a common enough character to play. There's usually variations to the Fightmann, though. One might be a woodsman/tracker, one might be more of military man, one might... nothing too complex.
Sometimes we end up with drunken fox-men ninjas who use their illusion magic to whip up table dancers at the bar and prestidigitate fireworks. Or half-orcs dressed like banditos, strait out of a spaghetti western. Or a megaman boss... name one, lord I've played so many megaman boss inspired warforged.
Very rarely do I start a new character fully fleshed.
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I mean, it is very DM dependent, but the biggest change in 5e, to me, are the 5 boxes labeled Personality traits, ideals, bonds, flaws, and inspiration. At my table inspiration is flying around the table, not because the DM is overly generous, but because all of the players are playing their characters according to what's in the prior 4 boxes. Hell, last night a guy made a half-orc paladin and one of his flaws was that he can't stand cowardice.
So when the halfling rogue dove under the cart (because he had like 3 hp left from being in the wrong place at the beginning of combat, and honoring his personality trait of being in it for himself at the beginning), the paladin spends his turn walking over to the halfling, grappling his foot--contested roll and all-- and pulled him back out. The rogue still had his bow on him so on his turn instead of contesting the grapple, he shoots with disadvantage at the enemy and manages to hit and kill it. This was all organic between relative strangers (I play weekly at the game store in an open game) simply based on the traits.
So, you ask. I'm just saying that even with just the basic set there's alot of fluff available. You can do DnD tactics or you can do TOtME, but I kind of disagree with anyone who says that the game is all crunch.
Ah yeah, inspiration is a thing about 5E that I actually like. It reminds me of the "Style points" thing that I partially used, but overengineered. Really have to take a YAGNI approach no matter what system I end up using, heh.
“I used to draw, hard to admit that I used to draw...”
Since I have no wizard network store near me to even look over the rules, and I am going to keep playing in @Denada's pbp, would anyone be able to give me a general rundown of the first couple levels of Arcane Trickster? (ie what schools of magic can they use, how many spells do they get, etc)
Yeah. I tend to just go "here is a character" and slowly flesh out the personality about 3-4 sessions in once I'm more comfortable with the PC and how it handles.
Sometimes it ends up with Fightmann. Just a guy with a big axe, a good head on his shoulders and guided by a personal motto of "don't be a dick". He's a common enough character to play. There's usually variations to the Fightmann, though. One might be a woodsman/tracker, one might be more of military man, one might... nothing too complex.
Sometimes we end up with drunken fox-men ninjas who use their illusion magic to whip up table dancers at the bar and prestidigitate fireworks. Or half-orcs dressed like banditos, strait out of a spaghetti western. Or a megaman boss... name one, lord I've played so many megaman boss inspired warforged.
Very rarely do I start a new character fully fleshed.
This is pretty much the opposite of me. I always come up with the concept (in terms of look, background, basic personality) first, and then try to figure out how to make it work mechanically after that.
It's just really hard to accept that not only is the bar set so low, but it's seemingly arbitrary and unpredictable as to exactly what magic label is going to turn those blank boxes into the best thing to hit RPGs since the 70s. 4E had an entire page on the character sheets for personality traits, relationships, and so forth, and I honestly never heard anyone speak a word about it (nor have I ever seen anyone put anything into those boxes). It looks like they should have used words like "ideals" and "flaws" instead, and everything would have just worked out completely differently.
I have a sinking feeling I'm being pretty petulant in this post. But this just really rubs me in the wrong place.
I treated pages 23 and 24 of the 4e PHB as a quiz for all my players as they were creating their characters; it was something they had to do to play the game, in my mind. It really did help them get a better handle on the characters, and we even used the Character Builder to type in all the stuff into those fields. So in the end, each of them has a large portion of their character sheet filled with some basic terms defining their character beyond their alignment, as well as mannerisms and appearances. It made a difference, if for no other reason than to cement who they were starting out.
I will say I'm sorely surprised that more DMs didn't essentially insist that that area was not optional on the sheet . . .
But then I forget, so many people just used DDI, and were under the false impression that 4E had no means to fluff a character.
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
It's just really hard to accept that not only is the bar set so low, but it's seemingly arbitrary and unpredictable as to exactly what magic label is going to turn those blank boxes into the best thing to hit RPGs since the 70s. 4E had an entire page on the character sheets for personality traits, relationships, and so forth, and I honestly never heard anyone speak a word about it (nor have I ever seen anyone put anything into those boxes). It looks like they should have used words like "ideals" and "flaws" instead, and everything would have just worked out completely differently.
It's not the blank boxes that make this a cool feature, it's the inspiration points they let you earn. I don't think DnD has ever offered mechanical advantages for role playing actions, especially not in the form of points you can save up and spend on completely unrelated actions. This is an example of DnD adopting mechanics of other, more modern games like Fate and MHRP, and I think that's something to get excited about.
It's just really hard to accept that not only is the bar set so low, but it's seemingly arbitrary and unpredictable as to exactly what magic label is going to turn those blank boxes into the best thing to hit RPGs since the 70s. 4E had an entire page on the character sheets for personality traits, relationships, and so forth, and I honestly never heard anyone speak a word about it (nor have I ever seen anyone put anything into those boxes). It looks like they should have used words like "ideals" and "flaws" instead, and everything would have just worked out completely differently.
It's not the blank boxes that make this a cool feature, it's the inspiration points they let you earn. I don't think DnD has ever offered mechanical advantages for role playing actions, especially not in the form of points you can save up and spend on completely unrelated actions. This is an example of DnD adopting mechanics of other, more modern games like Fate and MHRP, and I think that's something to get excited about.
This got my attention, so I went digging around for more info. I found this.
So I guess it's better than I thought, but still not as good as I'd like.
I should probably comment less until I've read through the rules.
Triptycho: A card-and-dice tabletop indie RPG currently in development and playtesting
I should probably comment less until I've read through the rules.
Me too, although in this case I can blame my DM. I was operating under the assumption you could save up multiple inspiration points, when the rules in fact say otherwise. I suspect that's something that's going to get house-ruled.
This is a completely serious question and not remotely snark:
Does it actually matter what iteration of the pantheon they push? Anyone who knows enough about an older version to prefer it can just put the band back together in whatever configuration they want, can't they?
I keep up with some of the novels and also I'm just flat out curious so in that regard, yes it matters to me.
Inspiration is something I kind of like. I'm probably going to add something similar to my 4E game, but with more nuance than just Advantage.
Heck I might even just use 4E's Fortune Cards, but hand them out for good roleplaying instead of as a weird, half-supported, pay-to-win system like they were originally. I actually liked playing with Fortune Cards; they were fun and relatively unobtrusive. I just didn't like the booster-pack aspect of them.
Also, when I talk about the system, I mean it from having played about 5 sessions of it and am level 4. I'm having a ridiculous amount of fun with the system and I didn't even get the PHB until today. Shit, the DM made a homebrew world but used the pre-generated character's traits to weave in the story. Like the warrior who wants to earn his name back and the rogue's mom are actual NPCs. we're all randoms that play in a WPN store but not expeditions.
And look, I'm not saying that you couldn't write up your character fluff if you wanted to in other editions, it's that there are mechanical incentives to creating more than just the numbers of your characters. I mean, look at backgrounds: you've always been able to select a subset of skills, but I love how 5E interlinks the RP stuff with the skill choices. And then also offers you pregenerated hooks if you're not supercreative, like I'm not. I'm not saying 5E is better than previous systems...
so recently my older boy started playing some 4e at the FLGS on nights when I play board games. The group is going through Madness at Gardmore Abbey so he started at 6th level.
We used only paper (not even character sheets) and pencil and books to do everything and it totally confirmed what I've been thinking for years now: using a character builder is absolutely terrible for new players.
I think relying on the CB resulted in a lot of the persistent falsehoods that got repeated about 4th ed.
1) the CB did not have any of the flavor text or theme just the raw numbers (in a weird attempt to make people buy the books). Building a character with the CB, especially for new players, totally reinforces the falsehood that 4E is more about combat than previous editions of D&D (it's not).
2) the CB had all the races / classes / powers / feats etc... and that got to be quite a huge amount after a while. This gives the idea that 4th ed is way more complicated than it is and that creating characters is harder than it is. If you actually sit down with the (really, really good quality) Essentials books making a character by hand is explained very clearly in a step-by-step fashion and the amount of options is not overwhelming.
3) the CB hides the game mechanics from the player. You have +10 to hit with this power. Why? What would make that +10 improve or get worse? Using the CB means new players don't know where the numbers on their sheet come from and never learn that info. Even if someone has been playing for years if they have relied on the CB all along they probably still think the game is way more complicated than it is. The math side of 4e is not at all hard unless you start dragging in all kinds of optional stuff from lots of different sourcebooks (in which case you deserve what you get ). Just rolling a character from the PHB or Essentials books requires no complicated stat management at all.
And in some ways long time D&D players are even worse off when using the CB. Because when helping my son I noticed that the only times I got confused and had to stop and look stuff up was when I started confusing 4E with rules from 3rd or 2nd or 1st ed. Long time D&D players especially should make some characters totally by hand to learn the differences (eg: you don't get your CON bonus to hp when leveling up)
4) all of the above leads to combat in 4E taking longer than it should. People who don't really understand how their powers work take a long time on their turns and have to stop and look up what "dazed" means 3 times a night and so on. Even at moderately high levels combat in 4e goes quickly if people actually know their damn powers.
Next time you are in a 4e game that seems to be going slowly pay attention to how much of the time is people actually doing stuff (rolling dice, moving minis etc...) and how much is staring at their char sheet deciding on what to do or looking shit up.
I mean, it is very DM dependent, but the biggest change in 5e, to me, are the 5 boxes labeled Personality traits, ideals, bonds, flaws, and inspiration. At my table inspiration is flying around the table, not because the DM is overly generous, but because all of the players are playing their characters according to what's in the prior 4 boxes. Hell, last night a guy made a half-orc paladin and one of his flaws was that he can't stand cowardice.
So when the halfling rogue dove under the cart (because he had like 3 hp left from being in the wrong place at the beginning of combat, and honoring his personality trait of being in it for himself at the beginning), the paladin spends his turn walking over to the halfling, grappling his foot--contested roll and all-- and pulled him back out. The rogue still had his bow on him so on his turn instead of contesting the grapple, he shoots with disadvantage at the enemy and manages to hit and kill it. This was all organic between relative strangers (I play weekly at the game store in an open game) simply based on the traits.
So, you ask. I'm just saying that even with just the basic set there's alot of fluff available. You can do DnD tactics or you can do TOtME, but I kind of disagree with anyone who says that the game is all crunch.
see this is so weird to me and maybe is another problem caused by the character builder
cause if people actually sit down and read the 4e books (especially the essentials books) all that stuff is in there. It's not a "change". And if you crack open the DMG2 you'll find tons of info about making games more story driven that people usually assume only exists in games like FATE and 13th Age.
It's just really hard to accept that not only is the bar set so low, but it's seemingly arbitrary and unpredictable as to exactly what magic label is going to turn those blank boxes into the best thing to hit RPGs since the 70s. 4E had an entire page on the character sheets for personality traits, relationships, and so forth, and I honestly never heard anyone speak a word about it (nor have I ever seen anyone put anything into those boxes). It looks like they should have used words like "ideals" and "flaws" instead, and everything would have just worked out completely differently.
It's not the blank boxes that make this a cool feature, it's the inspiration points they let you earn. I don't think DnD has ever offered mechanical advantages for role playing actions, especially not in the form of points you can save up and spend on completely unrelated actions. This is an example of DnD adopting mechanics of other, more modern games like Fate and MHRP, and I think that's something to get excited about.
So we rerolled last night and played more or less the same adventure, just these PCs showed up a month later, so things had progressed some. Still level 3.
This time I played a paladin. It was okay.
I took Oath of Devotion and because we don't have a PHB and my girlfriend needed the time to hunt for spells for her sorc, I decided my Paladin didn't believe in magic, and chose to use my spell slots explicitly for smites.
I used one spell slot to smite, and it was against a rat swarm, so it did negligible damage, so I chose to wait until I had a chance to fight the two were rats...and then they escaped. So basically I didn't do squat.
Although I did get to use Lay on Hands and Divine Health to prevent this party from succumbing to any filth fever or lycanthropy. So that was nice, and fitting.
But, while I'm okay with 5th edition on paper, in play I'm really just sort of okay with it in play.
Or maybe people soured on 4e for a variety of reasons and are looking to recapture some of the magic of DnD and see in 5e what they like about dnd to begin with?
It is amazing seeing people praise 5e for things 4th did from inception or added over time as if they are bold new advancements.
Wizards marketing worked I guess?
I still get this impression that a heck of a lot of people who played 4th never read the books. Either just used the CB or were long time D&D players who just skimmed the books looking for the crunch (as they were taught by 3rd ed).
All of the writing in the books not directly describing the numerical bonuses for classes / races / powers / feats seems to get ignored.
Attacked by tweeeeeeees!
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KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
so recently my older boy started playing some 4e at the FLGS on nights when I play board games. The group is going through Madness at Gardmore Abbey so he started at 6th level.
We used only paper (not even character sheets) and pencil and books to do everything and it totally confirmed what I've been thinking for years now: using a character builder is absolutely terrible for new players.
I think relying on the CB resulted in a lot of the persistent falsehoods that got repeated about 4th ed.
1) the CB did not have any of the flavor text or theme just the raw numbers (in a weird attempt to make people buy the books). Building a character with the CB, especially for new players, totally reinforces the falsehood that 4E is more about combat than previous editions of D&D (it's not).
2) the CB had all the races / classes / powers / feats etc... and that got to be quite a huge amount after a while. This gives the idea that 4th ed is way more complicated than it is and that creating characters is harder than it is. If you actually sit down with the (really, really good quality) Essentials books making a character by hand is explained very clearly in a step-by-step fashion and the amount of options is not overwhelming.
3) the CB hides the game mechanics from the player. You have +10 to hit with this power. Why? What would make that +10 improve or get worse? Using the CB means new players don't know where the numbers on their sheet come from and never learn that info. Even if someone has been playing for years if they have relied on the CB all along they probably still think the game is way more complicated than it is. The math side of 4e is not at all hard unless you start dragging in all kinds of optional stuff from lots of different sourcebooks (in which case you deserve what you get ). Just rolling a character from the PHB or Essentials books requires no complicated stat management at all.
And in some ways long time D&D players are even worse off when using the CB. Because when helping my son I noticed that the only times I got confused and had to stop and look stuff up was when I started confusing 4E with rules from 3rd or 2nd or 1st ed. Long time D&D players especially should make some characters totally by hand to learn the differences (eg: you don't get your CON bonus to hp when leveling up)
4) all of the above leads to combat in 4E taking longer than it should. People who don't really understand how their powers work take a long time on their turns and have to stop and look up what "dazed" means 3 times a night and so on. Even at moderately high levels combat in 4e goes quickly if people actually know their damn powers.
Next time you are in a 4e game that seems to be going slowly pay attention to how much of the time is people actually doing stuff (rolling dice, moving minis etc...) and how much is staring at their char sheet deciding on what to do or looking shit up.
Yes, as good as the CB was, there were a cavalcade of tool tips, flavor text and other miscellaneous things that, generally speaking, are present within many video game character generators that help to get across more of the effects, abilities, and more. And I got the DM screen specifically for the shorthand of what the different status stuff/bonuses/cover/etc did, though it got outdated quickly; they sold a "replacement" one with the values of relatively newer books but I believe those to were eventually reevaluated.
Basically, things I would expect within a user interface were woefully represented, even in the (arguably better) offline CB, which is why I tried my damnedest to have the books on hand when working with their material.
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
It's just really hard to accept that not only is the bar set so low, but it's seemingly arbitrary and unpredictable as to exactly what magic label is going to turn those blank boxes into the best thing to hit RPGs since the 70s. 4E had an entire page on the character sheets for personality traits, relationships, and so forth, and I honestly never heard anyone speak a word about it (nor have I ever seen anyone put anything into those boxes). It looks like they should have used words like "ideals" and "flaws" instead, and everything would have just worked out completely differently.
It's not the blank boxes that make this a cool feature, it's the inspiration points they let you earn. I don't think DnD has ever offered mechanical advantages for role playing actions, especially not in the form of points you can save up and spend on completely unrelated actions. This is an example of DnD adopting mechanics of other, more modern games like Fate and MHRP, and I think that's something to get excited about.
check out DMG2 from 4th ed
I just did and didn't see anything like that. Could I get a page number?
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KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
It's just really hard to accept that not only is the bar set so low, but it's seemingly arbitrary and unpredictable as to exactly what magic label is going to turn those blank boxes into the best thing to hit RPGs since the 70s. 4E had an entire page on the character sheets for personality traits, relationships, and so forth, and I honestly never heard anyone speak a word about it (nor have I ever seen anyone put anything into those boxes). It looks like they should have used words like "ideals" and "flaws" instead, and everything would have just worked out completely differently.
It's not the blank boxes that make this a cool feature, it's the inspiration points they let you earn. I don't think DnD has ever offered mechanical advantages for role playing actions, especially not in the form of points you can save up and spend on completely unrelated actions. This is an example of DnD adopting mechanics of other, more modern games like Fate and MHRP, and I think that's something to get excited about.
check out DMG2 from 4th ed
I just did and didn't see anything like that. Could I get a page number?
The only thing I found out of the ordinary was the Drama Rewards section on page 25, a very small section on how to reward XP for RP. Which isn't like what has been described, sadly.
I remember starting and moderating the flow of the "Things You May Have Missed" thread over on the Wizards Forum for the specific purpose of calling out material in the books that got little to no play in the game because they were in an odd book (more detailed treasure rules in the first Draconomicon, for example) and I don't ever remember seeing anything quite like the inspiration points, though they do have much in common with Action Points and the previously mentioned Drama Rewards section.
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
Or maybe people soured on 4e for a variety of reasons and are looking to recapture some of the magic of DnD and see in 5e what they like about dnd to begin with?
But no, can't be that.
So the past few pages people were discussing about Drow handicap... and now we're talking about the "inspiration" mechanic, which while it was a thing that existed in various forms a la house, wasn't a thing that I was aware existed in the 4E books.
I mean, even without a formal system how many DMs haven't gone "hey what you're describing your character as doing is pretty cool here's a bonus to help you do it!" Or, by virtue of your character's background, yes, they would easily know this thing even if their passive (with background trait bonuses) would fail it, etc...
So, IDK.
“I used to draw, hard to admit that I used to draw...”
While not exactly what 5E offers, from 4E DMG, Page 42:
Use the “DM’s Best Friend”:This simple guideline helps you adjudicate any unusual situation: An especially favorable circumstance gives a +2 bonus to a check or an attack roll (or it gives combat advantage). A particularly unfavorable circumstance gives a –2 penalty.
Page 74:
Sometimes, a player tells you, “I want to make a Diplomacy check to convince the duke that helping us is in his best interest.” That’s great—the player has told you what she’s doing and what skill she’s using to do it. Other times, a player will say, “I want to make a Diplomacy check.” In such a case, prompt the player to give more information about how the character is using that skill. Sometimes, characters do the opposite: “I want to scare the duke into helping us.” It’s up to you, then, to decide which skill the character is using and call for the appropriate check.
You can also make use of the “DM’s best friend” rule to reward particularly creative uses of skills (or penalize the opposite) by giving a character a +2 bonus or –2 penalty to the check.
Where I've seen this used is in similar as above; good roleplaying is rewarded with a +2. So the precedent is there in 4E. If you like what they've done in 5E, then they've improved upon what 4E offered, which is what an advancement in the system should do. But the idea of mechanically rewarding players for being creative isn't new.
While not exactly what 5E offers, from 4E DMG, Page 42:
Use the “DM’s Best Friend”:This simple guideline helps you adjudicate any unusual situation: An especially favorable circumstance gives a +2 bonus to a check or an attack roll (or it gives combat advantage). A particularly unfavorable circumstance gives a –2 penalty.
Page 74:
Sometimes, a player tells you, “I want to make a Diplomacy check to convince the duke that helping us is in his best interest.” That’s great—the player has told you what she’s doing and what skill she’s using to do it. Other times, a player will say, “I want to make a Diplomacy check.” In such a case, prompt the player to give more information about how the character is using that skill. Sometimes, characters do the opposite: “I want to scare the duke into helping us.” It’s up to you, then, to decide which skill the character is using and call for the appropriate check.
You can also make use of the “DM’s best friend” rule to reward particularly creative uses of skills (or penalize the opposite) by giving a character a +2 bonus or –2 penalty to the check.
Where I've seen this used is in similar as above; good roleplaying is rewarded with a +2. So the precedent is there in 4E. If you like what they've done in 5E, then they've improved upon what 4E offered, which is what an advancement in the system should do. But the idea of mechanically rewarding players for being creative isn't new.
Except that 5e's Inspiration mechanic isn't about rewarding creativity or stacking the deck in your favor with circumstance bonuses, it's about rewarding role play by offering bonuses unrelated to the action that earned them. It's pretty clearly an adaptation of bennie points like Fate Points and Plot Points out of other games, which has no analog in 4e.
Look, I'm no fan of 5e, and I think it's really irritating that many of the handful of things that are good about it are just watered down versions of 4e features (at-will spells, spell slots that are regained after a short rest, short rests themselves, spending hit dice) that 4e haters suddenly have no problem with, but this really isn't an outgrowth of a 4e idea. It's something that is both new (for DnD, not RPGs in general) and good, and we should celebrate that fact that even though they were trying to create some sort of 2e-3.X hybrid Mearls and co managed to hit on one new idea that really advanced the brand. If we're going to avoid being total grognard edition warriors we really need to acknowledge the good ideas when we find them.
It is amazing seeing people praise 5e for things 4th did from inception or added over time as if they are bold new advancements.
Wizards marketing worked I guess?
I still get this impression that a heck of a lot of people who played 4th never read the books. Either just used the CB or were long time D&D players who just skimmed the books looking for the crunch (as they were taught by 3rd ed).
All of the writing in the books not directly describing the numerical bonuses for classes / races / powers / feats seems to get ignored.
I read the 4th edition books cover to cover. Or, to be more accurate, I read the 4th edition books that existed when I played 4th edition from cover to cover. I played 4th a ton when it first came out, ended up burning out on it, and then stopped playing it. I stopped playing 4th long before they every tweaked all the borked math they had for monsters and encounters, for example. It's pretty silly to expect everyone in this conversation to have kept up with 4th edition and all the changes that occurred to it over the years.
It's not that the 4e online builder was bad taken on its own. It is functional in the right circumstances.
It's that it was an unmitigated massive step backwards from the thing they had already created and given us and then took away again whilst lying through their teeth about improvements and progress!
The original builder was so, so good. The future of RPGs incarnate. I was more than happy paying a monthly sub for that.
Seriously. The offline builder was great, then Dark Sun hit and they were like hey guys sorry about the delay the update is coming!
Weeks later: It's coming!
6ish weeks later: Hey guys let us tell you about this cool new online only character builder that uses outdated technology that lets you build Dark Sun characters! (Oh yeah also we're not updating the offline one anymore)
It is amazing seeing people praise 5e for things 4th did from inception or added over time as if they are bold new advancements.
Wizards marketing worked I guess?
I still get this impression that a heck of a lot of people who played 4th never read the books. Either just used the CB or were long time D&D players who just skimmed the books looking for the crunch (as they were taught by 3rd ed).
All of the writing in the books not directly describing the numerical bonuses for classes / races / powers / feats seems to get ignored.
I read the 4th edition books cover to cover. Or, to be more accurate, I read the 4th edition books that existed when I played 4th edition from cover to cover. I played 4th a ton when it first came out, ended up burning out on it, and then stopped playing it. I stopped playing 4th long before they every tweaked all the borked math they had for monsters and encounters, for example. It's pretty silly to expect everyone in this conversation to have kept up with 4th edition and all the changes that occurred to it over the years.
That's a totally legit perspective. When people are trying to make statements about something, though, it's problematic if they don't actually have current information.
Like if someone complained that 4E sucked because it had no rules for psionics.
While not exactly what 5E offers, from 4E DMG, Page 42:
Use the “DM’s Best Friend”:This simple guideline helps you adjudicate any unusual situation: An especially favorable circumstance gives a +2 bonus to a check or an attack roll (or it gives combat advantage). A particularly unfavorable circumstance gives a –2 penalty.
Page 74:
Sometimes, a player tells you, “I want to make a Diplomacy check to convince the duke that helping us is in his best interest.” That’s great—the player has told you what she’s doing and what skill she’s using to do it. Other times, a player will say, “I want to make a Diplomacy check.” In such a case, prompt the player to give more information about how the character is using that skill. Sometimes, characters do the opposite: “I want to scare the duke into helping us.” It’s up to you, then, to decide which skill the character is using and call for the appropriate check.
You can also make use of the “DM’s best friend” rule to reward particularly creative uses of skills (or penalize the opposite) by giving a character a +2 bonus or –2 penalty to the check.
Where I've seen this used is in similar as above; good roleplaying is rewarded with a +2. So the precedent is there in 4E. If you like what they've done in 5E, then they've improved upon what 4E offered, which is what an advancement in the system should do. But the idea of mechanically rewarding players for being creative isn't new.
Except that 5e's Inspiration mechanic isn't about rewarding creativity or stacking the deck in your favor with circumstance bonuses, it's about rewarding role play by offering bonuses unrelated to the action that earned them. It's pretty clearly an adaptation of bennie points like Fate Points and Plot Points out of other games, which has no analog in 4e.
Really what has been described strikes me as a direct lifting of oWoD's demeanor mechanic which was around in the 90's.
While I think it is a positive that something like this is in the game the implementation doesn't strike me as particularly clever or anything. The nice thing about Fate is these points are explicitly currency and you get them by acting in aspect when doing so is probably not "best" for "winning" but is good for the story. Contrast to 5th where these points are stored from when acting in accordance with your nature can have low or no cost and be used whenever.
Ha, I just went and looked up these rules, are they are more detailed somewhere than the basic rules online? What is there is very very slim and entirely "Mother may I" styled.
4E didn't have anything that operated like Inspiration as I'm hearing it described. This is an honest-to-goodness new idea(TM) and should be recognized as such.
It's kind of a kludgy implementation of something that the pen and paper RPG community has seen several dozen versions of, some of them quite excellent like Fate Points and Plot Points, but it's new to D&D.
I find it very frustrating when 5E and it's creators or fans pretend that stuff from 4th is brand new and innovative, but this isn't a case of that. At all.
Inspiration is also a brilliant thing to include with respect to some of the stuff they wanted out of 5th.
Like, here's a new rule that simultaneously encourages players to roleplay more and gives new fiat power to the DM.
That's pretty win-win.
Also regarding 4e online stuff, they did eventually come right out and say, "Yeah so we hired this guy and he was gonna be our web-tools guru and basically was going do all our software design and well turns out life started rolling crits on him, so he's out of the picture and flatly we can't afford to replace him so you're stuck with what you've got." Which, while it does reveal amazingly short-sighted business planning from WotC, it also shows genuine honesty, which I can at least work with. Of course I say that as someone who never subscribed to Insider.
@RiemannLives when you choose a power in the Online Builder, then highlight it, to the right side of the window it will give you the breakdown of the attack and damage plussea
At least this time they're hiring a company to do their digital stuff for them. That's exactly what we've been saying they should do since DDI started.
Posts
Yeah. "What pantheon are they using" feels like an excessive level of nitpickery. Perhaps it matters for the "officially sanctioned" games?
So when the halfling rogue dove under the cart (because he had like 3 hp left from being in the wrong place at the beginning of combat, and honoring his personality trait of being in it for himself at the beginning), the paladin spends his turn walking over to the halfling, grappling his foot--contested roll and all-- and pulled him back out. The rogue still had his bow on him so on his turn instead of contesting the grapple, he shoots with disadvantage at the enemy and manages to hit and kill it. This was all organic between relative strangers (I play weekly at the game store in an open game) simply based on the traits.
So, you ask. I'm just saying that even with just the basic set there's alot of fluff available. You can do DnD tactics or you can do TOtME, but I kind of disagree with anyone who says that the game is all crunch.
Personally I've always found them a bit too narrow in design, but then my current character fights with disco magic and summons glomping angels.
Sometimes it ends up with Fightmann. Just a guy with a big axe, a good head on his shoulders and guided by a personal motto of "don't be a dick". He's a common enough character to play. There's usually variations to the Fightmann, though. One might be a woodsman/tracker, one might be more of military man, one might... nothing too complex.
Sometimes we end up with drunken fox-men ninjas who use their illusion magic to whip up table dancers at the bar and prestidigitate fireworks. Or half-orcs dressed like banditos, strait out of a spaghetti western. Or a megaman boss... name one, lord I've played so many megaman boss inspired warforged.
Very rarely do I start a new character fully fleshed.
Ah yeah, inspiration is a thing about 5E that I actually like. It reminds me of the "Style points" thing that I partially used, but overengineered. Really have to take a YAGNI approach no matter what system I end up using, heh.
This is pretty much the opposite of me. I always come up with the concept (in terms of look, background, basic personality) first, and then try to figure out how to make it work mechanically after that.
I treated pages 23 and 24 of the 4e PHB as a quiz for all my players as they were creating their characters; it was something they had to do to play the game, in my mind. It really did help them get a better handle on the characters, and we even used the Character Builder to type in all the stuff into those fields. So in the end, each of them has a large portion of their character sheet filled with some basic terms defining their character beyond their alignment, as well as mannerisms and appearances. It made a difference, if for no other reason than to cement who they were starting out.
I will say I'm sorely surprised that more DMs didn't essentially insist that that area was not optional on the sheet . . .
But then I forget, so many people just used DDI, and were under the false impression that 4E had no means to fluff a character.
It's not the blank boxes that make this a cool feature, it's the inspiration points they let you earn. I don't think DnD has ever offered mechanical advantages for role playing actions, especially not in the form of points you can save up and spend on completely unrelated actions. This is an example of DnD adopting mechanics of other, more modern games like Fate and MHRP, and I think that's something to get excited about.
So I guess it's better than I thought, but still not as good as I'd like.
I should probably comment less until I've read through the rules.
Me too, although in this case I can blame my DM. I was operating under the assumption you could save up multiple inspiration points, when the rules in fact say otherwise. I suspect that's something that's going to get house-ruled.
Oh, I'm sure none of us would have thought that!
I keep up with some of the novels and also I'm just flat out curious so in that regard, yes it matters to me.
Heck I might even just use 4E's Fortune Cards, but hand them out for good roleplaying instead of as a weird, half-supported, pay-to-win system like they were originally. I actually liked playing with Fortune Cards; they were fun and relatively unobtrusive. I just didn't like the booster-pack aspect of them.
And look, I'm not saying that you couldn't write up your character fluff if you wanted to in other editions, it's that there are mechanical incentives to creating more than just the numbers of your characters. I mean, look at backgrounds: you've always been able to select a subset of skills, but I love how 5E interlinks the RP stuff with the skill choices. And then also offers you pregenerated hooks if you're not supercreative, like I'm not. I'm not saying 5E is better than previous systems...
I'm just saying why I like it so much.
We used only paper (not even character sheets) and pencil and books to do everything and it totally confirmed what I've been thinking for years now: using a character builder is absolutely terrible for new players.
I think relying on the CB resulted in a lot of the persistent falsehoods that got repeated about 4th ed.
1) the CB did not have any of the flavor text or theme just the raw numbers (in a weird attempt to make people buy the books). Building a character with the CB, especially for new players, totally reinforces the falsehood that 4E is more about combat than previous editions of D&D (it's not).
2) the CB had all the races / classes / powers / feats etc... and that got to be quite a huge amount after a while. This gives the idea that 4th ed is way more complicated than it is and that creating characters is harder than it is. If you actually sit down with the (really, really good quality) Essentials books making a character by hand is explained very clearly in a step-by-step fashion and the amount of options is not overwhelming.
3) the CB hides the game mechanics from the player. You have +10 to hit with this power. Why? What would make that +10 improve or get worse? Using the CB means new players don't know where the numbers on their sheet come from and never learn that info. Even if someone has been playing for years if they have relied on the CB all along they probably still think the game is way more complicated than it is. The math side of 4e is not at all hard unless you start dragging in all kinds of optional stuff from lots of different sourcebooks (in which case you deserve what you get
And in some ways long time D&D players are even worse off when using the CB. Because when helping my son I noticed that the only times I got confused and had to stop and look stuff up was when I started confusing 4E with rules from 3rd or 2nd or 1st ed. Long time D&D players especially should make some characters totally by hand to learn the differences (eg: you don't get your CON bonus to hp when leveling up)
4) all of the above leads to combat in 4E taking longer than it should. People who don't really understand how their powers work take a long time on their turns and have to stop and look up what "dazed" means 3 times a night and so on. Even at moderately high levels combat in 4e goes quickly if people actually know their damn powers.
Next time you are in a 4e game that seems to be going slowly pay attention to how much of the time is people actually doing stuff (rolling dice, moving minis etc...) and how much is staring at their char sheet deciding on what to do or looking shit up.
see this is so weird to me and maybe is another problem caused by the character builder
cause if people actually sit down and read the 4e books (especially the essentials books) all that stuff is in there. It's not a "change". And if you crack open the DMG2 you'll find tons of info about making games more story driven that people usually assume only exists in games like FATE and 13th Age.
check out DMG2 from 4th ed
This time I played a paladin. It was okay.
I took Oath of Devotion and because we don't have a PHB and my girlfriend needed the time to hunt for spells for her sorc, I decided my Paladin didn't believe in magic, and chose to use my spell slots explicitly for smites.
I used one spell slot to smite, and it was against a rat swarm, so it did negligible damage, so I chose to wait until I had a chance to fight the two were rats...and then they escaped. So basically I didn't do squat.
Although I did get to use Lay on Hands and Divine Health to prevent this party from succumbing to any filth fever or lycanthropy. So that was nice, and fitting.
But, while I'm okay with 5th edition on paper, in play I'm really just sort of okay with it in play.
Wizards marketing worked I guess?
But no, can't be that.
I still get this impression that a heck of a lot of people who played 4th never read the books. Either just used the CB or were long time D&D players who just skimmed the books looking for the crunch (as they were taught by 3rd ed).
All of the writing in the books not directly describing the numerical bonuses for classes / races / powers / feats seems to get ignored.
Yes, as good as the CB was, there were a cavalcade of tool tips, flavor text and other miscellaneous things that, generally speaking, are present within many video game character generators that help to get across more of the effects, abilities, and more. And I got the DM screen specifically for the shorthand of what the different status stuff/bonuses/cover/etc did, though it got outdated quickly; they sold a "replacement" one with the values of relatively newer books but I believe those to were eventually reevaluated.
Basically, things I would expect within a user interface were woefully represented, even in the (arguably better) offline CB, which is why I tried my damnedest to have the books on hand when working with their material.
I just did and didn't see anything like that. Could I get a page number?
The only thing I found out of the ordinary was the Drama Rewards section on page 25, a very small section on how to reward XP for RP. Which isn't like what has been described, sadly.
I remember starting and moderating the flow of the "Things You May Have Missed" thread over on the Wizards Forum for the specific purpose of calling out material in the books that got little to no play in the game because they were in an odd book (more detailed treasure rules in the first Draconomicon, for example) and I don't ever remember seeing anything quite like the inspiration points, though they do have much in common with Action Points and the previously mentioned Drama Rewards section.
So the past few pages people were discussing about Drow handicap... and now we're talking about the "inspiration" mechanic, which while it was a thing that existed in various forms a la house, wasn't a thing that I was aware existed in the 4E books.
I mean, even without a formal system how many DMs haven't gone "hey what you're describing your character as doing is pretty cool here's a bonus to help you do it!" Or, by virtue of your character's background, yes, they would easily know this thing even if their passive (with background trait bonuses) would fail it, etc...
So, IDK.
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Where I've seen this used is in similar as above; good roleplaying is rewarded with a +2. So the precedent is there in 4E. If you like what they've done in 5E, then they've improved upon what 4E offered, which is what an advancement in the system should do. But the idea of mechanically rewarding players for being creative isn't new.
Except that 5e's Inspiration mechanic isn't about rewarding creativity or stacking the deck in your favor with circumstance bonuses, it's about rewarding role play by offering bonuses unrelated to the action that earned them. It's pretty clearly an adaptation of bennie points like Fate Points and Plot Points out of other games, which has no analog in 4e.
Look, I'm no fan of 5e, and I think it's really irritating that many of the handful of things that are good about it are just watered down versions of 4e features (at-will spells, spell slots that are regained after a short rest, short rests themselves, spending hit dice) that 4e haters suddenly have no problem with, but this really isn't an outgrowth of a 4e idea. It's something that is both new (for DnD, not RPGs in general) and good, and we should celebrate that fact that even though they were trying to create some sort of 2e-3.X hybrid Mearls and co managed to hit on one new idea that really advanced the brand. If we're going to avoid being total grognard edition warriors we really need to acknowledge the good ideas when we find them.
I read the 4th edition books cover to cover. Or, to be more accurate, I read the 4th edition books that existed when I played 4th edition from cover to cover. I played 4th a ton when it first came out, ended up burning out on it, and then stopped playing it. I stopped playing 4th long before they every tweaked all the borked math they had for monsters and encounters, for example. It's pretty silly to expect everyone in this conversation to have kept up with 4th edition and all the changes that occurred to it over the years.
but you have to admit that the designers really came up with something new and exciting when they decided to add "Passive Perception" to the game.
Seriously. The offline builder was great, then Dark Sun hit and they were like hey guys sorry about the delay the update is coming!
Weeks later: It's coming!
6ish weeks later: Hey guys let us tell you about this cool new online only character builder that uses outdated technology that lets you build Dark Sun characters! (Oh yeah also we're not updating the offline one anymore)
That's a totally legit perspective. When people are trying to make statements about something, though, it's problematic if they don't actually have current information.
Like if someone complained that 4E sucked because it had no rules for psionics.
Really what has been described strikes me as a direct lifting of oWoD's demeanor mechanic which was around in the 90's.
While I think it is a positive that something like this is in the game the implementation doesn't strike me as particularly clever or anything. The nice thing about Fate is these points are explicitly currency and you get them by acting in aspect when doing so is probably not "best" for "winning" but is good for the story. Contrast to 5th where these points are stored from when acting in accordance with your nature can have low or no cost and be used whenever.
Ha, I just went and looked up these rules, are they are more detailed somewhere than the basic rules online? What is there is very very slim and entirely "Mother may I" styled.
It's kind of a kludgy implementation of something that the pen and paper RPG community has seen several dozen versions of, some of them quite excellent like Fate Points and Plot Points, but it's new to D&D.
I find it very frustrating when 5E and it's creators or fans pretend that stuff from 4th is brand new and innovative, but this isn't a case of that. At all.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Like, here's a new rule that simultaneously encourages players to roleplay more and gives new fiat power to the DM.
That's pretty win-win.
Also regarding 4e online stuff, they did eventually come right out and say, "Yeah so we hired this guy and he was gonna be our web-tools guru and basically was going do all our software design and well turns out life started rolling crits on him, so he's out of the picture and flatly we can't afford to replace him so you're stuck with what you've got." Which, while it does reveal amazingly short-sighted business planning from WotC, it also shows genuine honesty, which I can at least work with. Of course I say that as someone who never subscribed to Insider.