D&D 5e: For real this time?

[Wilb]

The developers are trying to rescue the fluff from older editions, while leaving some barely noticeable 4E like mechanics to try to please everyone (which is sure to happen, sure... ). This is presented almost explicitly on their new article about demons and devils (undoing the 4E changes for change`s sake). You can almost notice a palpable "We`re sorry" with every article posted.

The posters there mostly complain about the non prevalence of 4E mechanics and express inhuman hate towards the default fluff, always complaining that "you`re having badwrongfun!!!". Some of them, even being shown that alignments as a whole were optional, still complained about the EXISTENCE of an OPTIONAL rule that could LIMIT in any way the choice of players. When some tame posters identified themselves as DMs that used such rule (even if his players were cool with it), they were accused of being tyrants who limit the fun of others (nice to accuse someone of doing what they do it seems...) and then they sank to pure ad hominem level.

Those guys hate everything that tries to look like default fluff that is not 4E-again, and also complain that it is hard for new DMs to start playing without guidance. Just to make sure I make you guys get the point: Its not that different groups are complaining this, the very same group of people advocate such contradictory viewpoints, and when an innocent, naive little guy points it out, a shitstorm occurs, where the wotc forum zombies clean the mess and say something that ammounts to "no no, stop making ... angry! I`ll ban him for a day, are you satisfied you bully?" and go cry in the corner.

[awaken_D_M_golem]

So Fluff is freed from mandatory-ness 1st, to placate 4e fans 2nd.
That could work, even if people don't want it to.

... Vancian casters need to die or something, according to wizards forum members.

Low level Illusion spells causing psychic damage really don`t feel ok to me...

The word "Wizard" needs to be divorced from Vancian casting.
There still can be a Vance class, even called exactly that, doing
what everyone knows a "vance" has been doing forever.
After that the "Wizard" will suffer the exact same problem again. 
It won't be wizard-y enough for the next stereotype down the list.
  (but happy)

hmm ... 3e, 3.5e and Dr#349 had various takes on Illusion = Psi.
Similarly with psi/magic transparency, also with Complete Psionic.
If it's a minor streamlining, I don't see it being a big problem.

[Wilb]

The only problem I see Awaken, is that they are divorcing from their initial idea that every wizard tradition would be close to the same in terms or raw power, considering that they shafted the vancian one, while making all others become the AEDU standard, with at-will, encounter (signature), and daily.

They haven`t tried different ways to twist the casting, such as separating prepared spells from slots (as in preparing spells equal to the wizards int modifier for every spell level without forgetting them when a slot was used), not a pure cooldown caster (with each spell being able to be used, albeit each of them having unique cooldowns), nor a threshold caster (as in being able to cast X spell levels in sequence, with 1 level returning for every round spent not casting, with a 1-x hour(s) penalty in case of overcasting) while claiming to be stressing the classes to the limit (which is mentioned by them on the D&D hangout video).

I just don`t believe they`re trying to do this massive variety thing with casters, just catering to AEDU fans and offering a dirty bone for Vancian fans ( I for one would like to see Vancian being the main option for the Wizard, with at least 2 completely different ways presented on the PHB). What remains is the reason, they may be holding up their horses to have some stuff already prepared for future publications, or they may be disregarding the casters in favor of the melee guys (which I don`t think its working well, seing the reaction of the players to this iteration of the rogue, whose power decreased considerably, while being not even close to compensate with its ridiculously minimal utility).

Edit: 2nd level freeform illusions causing damage for up to 10 mins is my concern Awaken. Illusional structures such as selective walls or bridges would be more welcome to the school than raw damage, in my flawed opinion. 3E had the shadow evocation/conjuration line that limited a bit of the damage caused by them but look at the level they started, this one feels just a tad too early.

[awaken_D_M_golem]

Heh ... I like getting all the old fluff back in.
+1 to that !!

3e has Eberron way over "there" and Forgotten Realms
way over "that-a-way", so it'd be easy enough to have
a 4e Alternate Multiverse 'port with a few more barriers
to get through "over here".

[Amechra]

I like that Threshold caster idea...

[Wilb]

If they made the 4E basic fluff (Nentir vale is the name, i think) a separate campaign setting, It`d feel great, a new completely different setting with crazy cosmology and elemental demons. Having that stuff shoved down your throat  and being told that what was before shall never be again , coupled with forcing that stuff throughout all settings is what left me wanting to tear their heads barehanded. Lucky me they didn`t touch Greyhawk.

Amechra, can I take it that you will join me in the Homebrewing boards when the obviously lacking Next is finally done? Because Altering these simple things in innovative ways is just what I think it needs, after all, some guys were complaining that Vancian made them feel "not casters" for the majority of the day. This previous sentence translates to "I wanna nova like 5MWD all day long! Make me able to nova as much as I want so I can be the top dawg, but not so much that Fighter Mcfighter feels bad for not being as awesome as me." when you consider who says that. 5MWD just ticks them off because the can`t feel awesome all the time, not because it`s unbalanced.

The threshold, as well as the others (and many new ones i keep thinking spontaneously) are just the ideas that play with the casting aspect, making it "more" or "less" Vancian, while allowing the permanence of the aspect I think makes the D&D Wizard (not so iconic for the Cleric, i think), the preparation, which is not present only in the pure cooldown I suggested. You can also notice that some of those variations can also be used with other casting systems without much problems (threshold applied to slots, MP or Warlock Favors is quite possible, am I right?), leaving the 5MWD an issue to be dealt with at player level. Both as player and DM I enjoyed the machinations necessary to prepare my spells every day (Wiz, Clr, Drd 3+3.5) and when something was not tailored to the spells prepared I felt intrigued and a sense that "not everything is made to suit my capabilities and desires but to create a world in itself", which screams fantasy to me.

Awaken I hope that they`re bringing all the cosmologies to their respective places, and maybe bringing some new ones (RICH BURLEW`S SETTING FOR GODS SAKE!!!) but with the Great Wheel being taken as the default, not forced to anyone as the crap move done to World Axis. I have homebrewed a setting which i used since 2003, but I treasure most of the official ones, that used to contain so much inspirational fluff. Greyhawk and Planescape are my favorite ones (Greyhawk wins by a little margin), with Spelljammer, Mystara, Dark Sun, Ravenloft and Birthright (in order) just behind, but I consider all settings up to the end of 3.5 to be amazing compared to what came after.

Check out the new articles and lets post about them! (In a legal, civilized way, not found there)

[awaken_D_M_golem]

I think the Homebrewing "cat" is out of the bag.
That's a very good thing.

[bhu]

I think the Homebrewing "cat" is out of the bag.
That's a very good thing.

Mows? 

[awaken_D_M_golem]

... although to be fair, it is not very likely
that a 5e Book of Vile Darkness would
include a Cactus with a Profane bonus.



Lots of recent play on the wotc 5e board about a
product announcement.  Someone put 5+2 together ...

[Rejakor]

4e was actually a great system, for one thing.  Separating out the people I would never want to play with.

With an acknowledgement for the small group of people who joined in 4th ed and yet are good at running games (mostly via just eyeballing and homebrewing everything up to and including the core ruleset), 4e 'fans', with their obsessive focus on low power games, endless dice-rolling, 'keeping up' with errata updates, thinking a default setting where races are evil and loot 'drops' from nowhere is amazing, and all the rest of the pointless rage-inducing minutiae and terrible design flaws hailed as manna from heaven for terrible reasons, are just everything I hate about the roleplaying community in specific and nerds in general.

So I like that, because I can hear '4e', listen briefly for the 'but I change everything', and then simply tune that person out of my personal reality forever.


That said, given the mismanagement of 3e, the enormous leap backwards of 4e, and the same faces in the same places, wotc has about a bazillion negative rep with me when it comes to selling new games.

[awaken_D_M_golem]

The 4e Loot problem has bugged me from the start.

Who made that +2 Sword with Property X ??
NPC Wizard or NPC Artificer or NPC Human with
the Mark of Making feat ... are the most likely answers,
but NPCs and Monsters get unlimited rituals anyway.

Why be a PC if you'be got rituals in your game ?!

[Wilb]

4e was actually a great system, for one thing.  Separating out the people I would never want to play with.

With an acknowledgement for the small group of people who joined in 4th ed and yet are good at running games (mostly via just eyeballing and homebrewing everything up to and including the core ruleset), 4e 'fans', with their obsessive focus on low power games, endless dice-rolling, 'keeping up' with errata updates, thinking a default setting where races are evil and loot 'drops' from nowhere is amazing, and all the rest of the pointless rage-inducing minutiae and terrible design flaws hailed as manna from heaven for terrible reasons, are just everything I hate about the roleplaying community in specific and nerds in general.

So I like that, because I can hear '4e', listen briefly for the 'but I change everything', and then simply tune that person out of my personal reality forever.


That said, given the mismanagement of 3e, the enormous leap backwards of 4e, and the same faces in the same places, wotc has about a bazillion negative rep with me when it comes to selling new games.

  Dude, just, dude...

I feel there are not enough people who could just state that nowadays.

In my country, whose RPG community is divided between otaku animuniacs and vampire wannabe goth virgin men, 4E was hailed as the salvation, given the low creativity of the DMs and the rejection of RPG settings as worlds. Everyone was just happy with their theme park adventures with Carlos the Adventurer Dwarf, while hailing the new books and errata as godly gifts (with that "ooh shiny" face) thinking that using them was equivalent to cheating, which is an almost national hobby (google "jeitinho brasileiro" to see what kind of crazy shenanigans brazillians are up to).

The 4e Loot problem has bugged me from the start.

Who made that +2 Sword with Property X ??
NPC Wizard or NPC Artificer or NPC Human with
the Mark of Making feat ... are the most likely answers,
but NPCs and Monsters get unlimited rituals anyway.

Why be a PC if you'be got rituals in your game ?!

3+3.5E was really thorough when it came to crafting. So many systems and subsystems related to it (nipple ring reversed infinite torture spell clock ambrosia harvesting, dark craft XP, Artificer craft reserve, crafting XP redistribution amulets and so on)  and a stupid amount of things to craft (from basic magic trinkets to LIFE AND PLANES THEMSELVES!!!!) just made the world all the more believable when it came to the possibility of finding magic items anywhere.

OFF TOPIC: is there a way to create a topic that can be seen only by certain people? I still couldn`t ascertain the legality of Next homebrew, so, to avoid any future problems, I`d like to create a place to post at least the caster ideas mentioned by me in this topic, and discuss that with those interested. Sorry if I couldn`t post this here.

[InnaBinder]

OFF TOPIC: is there a way to create a topic that can be seen only by certain people? I still couldn`t ascertain the legality of Next homebrew, so, to avoid any future problems, I`d like to create a place to post at least the caster ideas mentioned by me in this topic, and discuss that with those interested. Sorry if I couldn`t post this here.

My 2cp, completely free of official status:

This sounds like a question best handled via PMing the moderator account, which AFAIK every mod has sigged.

[Prime32]

PMing you mean? Private boards are possible, but not private threads. I have no idea what the legal status of Next homebrew is, though I saw some posted on GitP...

To be on the safe side, you could try discussing it in a chat room?

[FlaminCows]

3+3.5E was really thorough when it came to crafting. So many systems and subsystems related to it (nipple ring reversed infinite torture spell clock ambrosia harvesting, dark craft XP, Artificer craft reserve, crafting XP redistribution amulets and so on) and a stupid amount of things to craft (from basic magic trinkets to LIFE AND PLANES THEMSELVES!!!!) just made the world all the more believable when it came to the possibility of finding magic items anywhere.

On top of that, Wizards forgot the #1 thing about crafting magic items in 3.5: it is FUN. So fun that it deserves the all caps. When they made 4e, they were like "Crafting magic items is overpowered, pitch it out the window." Which completely missed the point, really.

[Wilb]

PMing you mean? Private boards are possible, but not private threads. I have no idea what the legal status of Next homebrew is, though I saw some posted on GitP...

To be on the safe side, you could try discussing it in a chat room?

Surely. Anyone wanting to discuss Next brew just PM me and I`ll get in contact with some solution.

[Childe]

I just want to weigh in to say I don't understand why anyone would homebrew 5e right now, as there essentially isn't a system besides the d20 mechanic. What are you modifying? The loosely altered Standard / Move action economy (already present in 3.X and 4e)? The checks/saves/etc. systems, which are all different words used for the d20 mechanic? The class system that isn't really very different from 3.X? The feats and class features that are hopefully all agreed to be terrible? The items that are actually incredibly game-breaking in very silly ways?

You're working with scorched earth. You can do that without calling it homebrew. Just create your game.

That's my two cents.

[Wilb]

There`s no use in homebrewing for playing purposes right now.

What I intend to do is just demonstrate that they haven`t done what they claimed, which was testing all different possible mechanics within a class.

I want to do it by creating a different mechanic to use with feats, maneouvres and spells already present in the playtest, while mantaining what I, in my limited and useless opinion, think is acceptable flavour for each class, starting with Wizards and Traditions.

[Wilb]

Guys, see the new article on D&D Next rules! There`s a chance that Mike Mearls really is reading what the guys post in the surveys (or he reads this board). He explicitly states that Wizards`spell slots and prepared spells will be separate on the next packet, just as I had suggested in these boards and answered in the surveys (as well as 12 DM friends that discussed this online somewhere else).

There was no indication of such change in the previous packet, and he claims that this is just like the Deity choosing mechanic for the cleric, which worked like this for the Domain-like spells. That is not even close to the truth because the spell preparation was still there, with the option of giving up a prepared spell for one from the fixed list being added (just as the spontaneous domain option in the 3.5 CD or CC, I don`t really remember which). This time he is givinf the wizards a fixed amount of spells prepared per spell level, completely divorced from the slots (you prepare the spells but no spell is tied to a slot, and it seems to indicate that the number of slots, claimed to be increasing, will be greater than the number of prepared spells).

(I like the fact that new wizard styles are going to be tested, I will dislike if it becomes the only option)

[awaken_D_M_golem]

I doubt many or any of them read over here.
Old C.O. and the post C.O. crowd is pretty
much a corner case.  Everyone thinks highly
of themselves, but they're busy.


That Wiz stuff, sounds like an attempt to
a) ... keep the Vance historical Wizard
b) ... partially please the anti-Vances
c) ... better have a "wizard" option that has no
Vance at all lest the skies cloud and meteors
fall and the Mayan apocalypse, etc ...

Feels like a Wiz-y Sorc with half-way home sign posts.