D&D 5e: For real this time?

[Agrippa]

Even though they're trying to appeal to more old school gamers by making skills and feats optional WotC still isn't winning their support for D&D Next. They claim that some of the classes are too complicated (i.e. have too many features) for them and many also dislike the idea of level based ability score improvement. Many old schoolers*, largely on Dragonsfoot forums, think that ability increases from just levels aren't really earned and that they make PCs too "godlike". These are the same guys who see no problem with high level NPCs having higher than average ability scores, even ones occasionally above 18. Nor do they see any problem with stat improving items because the DM can make them as rare and difficult to obtain as he or she wants and can take them away if they think it's needed. So in trying to make both camps happy WotC just managed to piss off everyone.

*P.S. By "old schoolers" I'm talking about a specific subset of them that prefer pre-Dragonlance 1st Ed. D&D or other older games like original Traveler.

[zioth]

A lot of assumptions are being made, which aren't necessarily true.
 
It's clear that the D&D designers have always considered a +1 stat boost to be really powerful. Just look at the 3E Epic Level Handbook. You can either get a +1 to strength, or turn all your attacks into vorpal attacks. You can have +1 to intelligence, or the ability to alter reality at a whim with epic spellcasting. In 5E, the power of attribute boosts is slightly more real, because they're so hard to come by, and because the maximums are so low compared to 3E. But either way, I doubt the attitude is going to be, "take a +1 stat boost, or a wimpy little feat." In fact, I know that's not true, because a long list of feats has already been printed. +5 reach, +1d6 on unarmed strikes, dispel magic several times a day, much higher average rolls for a skill, etc. These are significant, and most are better than +1 to an ability score, especially in the low-magic, low-power game that is 5E.
 
And that leads me to another assumption, which is that a game with less magic and lower power must be a bad game. People seem to be comparing 5E characters to 3E characters, and that comparison just isn't valid. Now maybe you don't want a low-power game, and that's fair, but for what it is, I think 5E looks fairly balanced and fun so far.
 
I think the Basic version is a good idea, if they can make it work. Beginning players can easily go from level 1-20 with basic characters and have fun. That will take a couple years of real-time, after which they can play an advanced character. Advanced players will only play advanced characters. A character isn't cookie-cutter to you unless you've played a lot of D&D in the past and know what to expect.
 
Will they be able to address the monster issue? They already have. Monsters don't have feats -- they have special abilities.
 
And obviously, WotC isn't going to abandon their business model and stop producing splat books. The options will expand dramatically over the years, sating everyone's need for non cookie-cutter characters. Since they're dropping the notion of prestige classes, these might take the form of additional base classes, feats, spells, backgrounds and even alternate rules.

[Eldritch_Lord]

Lowest Denominator design is the only efficient way to end up with a balanced product. One of the reasons CR was broken because of how different books valued creature abilities differently. In a universal system, CR10 is CR10, not "CR10 vs a party who has module X, CR14 vs everyone else"

I agree that the system is making concessions on all sides. That's what lowest denominator design does, it cuts things left and right until it finds the parts that are universal, then builds it up again with that universal balance in mind.

Designing to the LCD is indeed the best and really only way to handle designing a modular game, but modular design only works to a certain point.  We're not talking about a small module like "Group A is using normal hit points, Group B is using the Vitality/Wounds variant" or some other UA add-on, where assuming the lowest common denominator only requires minor tweaks and the "universal balance" point is close to the baseline system.  We're effectively talking about trying to find the lowest common denominator between OD&D and D&D 3e, which is an absolutely terrible approach given the fundamental differences in playstyle, assumptions, PC capabilities, and everything else between the two versions.

I agree completely with Bauglir when he says:

Essentially, Basic is not a good game (it's too simplistic, but it's not built to the standard of elegance that a good, simple game requires, because that isn't how D&D works), and its design philosophy constrains what Advanced is able to do.

You can build a game such that you have a Basic version and an Advanced version and the two are branches of a common ruleset that easily interact and don't constrain or otherwise impede each other, but 5e is not such a game thus far.

And that leads me to another assumption, which is that a game with less magic and lower power must be a bad game. People seem to be comparing 5E characters to 3E characters, and that comparison just isn't valid. Now maybe you don't want a low-power game, and that's fair, but for what it is, I think 5E looks fairly balanced and fun so far.

Again, there's a theory vs. practice divide here.  In theory, you can have a fun low-magic low-power game, and in fact several of those exist; Riddle of Steel, low point-buy GURPS, and other games with little supernatural stuff and more realistic/down-to-earth characters work out just fine.  But in practice, you can't start with a high-magic mid-/high-power game, remove several fundamental subsystems that provide a lot of character options, and expect the resulting low-magic low-power game to work as-is.

I like several low-magic games, but all of those games are games in which there are fun options that don't involve magic or lots of character power.  RoS has very detailed, granular combat and a well-done Arthurian setting; GURPS has a ton of options to build your character to differentiate it from others; FATE is rules-light, but the free-form aspect(s) mean you're not just limited to rolling a few checks to do stuff.  I may prefer games and settings where the players can shape the setting and do things on a grand scale, but I can still have fun in the shallow end of the options pool.  But 5e doesn't fill the void of its missing subsystems with anything new, interesting, or fun--the entire system for "everything you could possibly want to do out of combat and sometimes in combat" is spells and rolling one of six ability checks.  Characters are same-y and noncasters get very few out-of-combat options that spellcasters don't also have, and as noted above 5e doesn't have the right structure to work as a rules-light system when all the "fun stuff" is taken out.

[Bauglir]

Yeah, I'm not complaining about power level. You can construct your gameworld however arbitrarily you need to in order to create a fun campaign for characters of any comprehensible power level, so I don't really give a shit about how the system handles it when I talk about the system's design. Options are what I'm talking about. It's possible that the current feat list won't be entirely revised, and they're representative of where we're going here. If that's the case, then Wizards fundamentally misunderstands how their own game is going to work, but whatever. Nothing new there. At least they're not guilty of the particular problem I'm accusing them of - feats can still be a useful way of customizing your character outside of Basic.

But the thing is, it's easy to get trapped in your Simplifying Philosophy. You start writing rules under certain assumptions, and you go on to build a game system that works. But when it's time to add on the complications, you find you have to overhaul a lot of the system you spent so much time building, if you even consider it at all. It becomes very easy for, "Feats are optional, so we can work on them after we get the class system up and running" to become, "Feats are optional, so they're not as important as the class system" to become, "Feats aren't important, we're going to focus on the core of the system" by the time you get to release.

So what I'm worried about here is that this is going to become an ingrained part of the design paradigm, and it's going to poison future development for the rest of the edition. You'll get people saying that if you don't like the balance of feats, you shouldn't allow them in your game, as if playing Basic for the rest of ever is actually the default assumption. Stuff like that, that completely ignores the current intent.

[Nytemare3701]

We're effectively talking about trying to find the lowest common denominator between OD&D and D&D 3e, which is an absolutely terrible approach given the fundamental differences in playstyle, assumptions, PC capabilities, and everything else between the two versions.

They are trying to discover the "unified theory of D&D", and it's a HUGE order. You are saying it's a terrible approach, when it's the core philosophy of the entire product. EVERY version of D&D caters to some particular group, even retroactively. They are trying to find a way to cater to all groups in an acceptable manner. What is most likely is that they will make a product (good or bad) that attracts hate from all sides for not being enough like their favorite edition. They really can't please everyone, but D&D is inherently about getting a bunch of people at a table to play a story. If this edition is an acceptable compromise for all sides, then they succeeded, no matter how many complaints they get from diehard fans of other editions.

As a comparison...do you have an example of a game that appeals to all editions of D&D players equally and lets them do everything they would do in their own edition?

EDIT: Make no mistake, I expect them to crash and burn. My argument is that since this is the intended product, it is the only sound design decision, no matter how improbable their success is.

[Eldritch_Lord]

They are trying to discover the "unified theory of D&D", and it's a HUGE order. You are saying it's a terrible approach, when it's the core philosophy of the entire product.

Those two things aren't mutually exclusive, you know.

EDIT: Make no mistake, I expect them to crash and burn. My argument is that since this is the intended product, it is the only sound design decision, no matter how improbable their success is.

There are other ways to unify multiple editions' approaches without just starting with 3e/4e and removing things until it's boring as hell.  For instance, they could use all the same resources in Basic 5e that are used in Advanced 5e but pre-choose them for beginners, so the Advanced Fighter class has a bunch of feats and maneuvers and selectable weapon styles and all that jazz and an Advanced Wizard has the usual spellbook and plethora of spells, but the Basic Fighter class is pre-built as a sword-and-board fighter with the simplest maneuvers and most unobtrusive feats and the Basic Wizard has his spells pre-chosen to create the "classic" blaster-with-some-utility; going between the two systems in either direction is easy (A->B means things get simpler, B->A still leaves you with some familiar options) and you don't sacrifice all the options just because you're playing Basic.

Or they could make Basic "Advanced, but less so" to just take the existing mechanics and simplify them.  If Advanced has lots of fiddly bonuses for creature size or whatever, condense or remove them; if Advanced gives everyone several AoOs that trigger on various conditions, reduce that to "once per round, martial classes can smack someone who tries to run away from them"; if Advanced lets you improve skills or learn new ones at certain levels, have Basic just scale them automatically, the same way many players just max out their X+Int class skills in 3e instead of considering individual points; and so forth.

There are plenty of ways to simplify the game to cater to the crowd that wants a simpler game that doesn't amount to "You want a simple game, so we're just ripping out chunks of the mechanics for you."

[Nytemare3701]

Or they could make Basic "Advanced, but less so" to just take the existing mechanics and simplify them.  If Advanced has lots of fiddly bonuses for creature size or whatever, condense or remove them; if Advanced gives everyone several AoOs that trigger on various conditions, reduce that to "once per round, martial classes can smack someone who tries to run away from them"; if Advanced lets you improve skills or learn new ones at certain levels, have Basic just scale them automatically, the same way many players just max out their X+Int class skills in 3e instead of considering individual points; and so forth.

There are plenty of ways to simplify the game to cater to the crowd that wants a simpler game that doesn't amount to "You want a simple game, so we're just ripping out chunks of the mechanics for you."

That way lies madness my friend. You can't easily take a complex system and simplify it on a case by case basis, then expect each of those cases to be balanced against each other. It's not impossible, but it is VERY difficult, and it is also extremely hard to playtest in the public manner they are currently, as every design decision is effectively a houserule, piling up until they either collapse under their own weight or condense into a new version of the core rules.

As I said though, I'm pretty sure they are doing it wrong...but I'm not sure what you are suggesting is better. At least this way it's easier to notice and correct the mistakes as soon as they happen, instead of just hoping that the houserules they are cooking up fit together correctly.

[Eldritch_Lord]

That way lies madness my friend. You can't easily take a complex system and simplify it on a case by case basis, then expect each of those cases to be balanced against each other.

Well, you can't really expect to throw a "2e module" and a "2e with Player Options module" and a "3e module" and a "4e module" and an "Essential module" and so forth at the rules to drastically change the balance and playstyle and have all (or any) of them work out fine, can you?  And yet that's what their plan is, to make the game so modular that you can play your favorite edition with it.  Basic 5e should be nothing more than the "OD&D module" thrown at the 5e rules, but instead they're making that the foundation for everything else, so instead of having a basic game that can be improved with a set of modules to make it resemble your game of choice they've made a basic game that needs modules and modifications to not suck.

And each of those cases can in fact be relatively balanced if implemented correctly in the base.  Each of the changes I proposed was less invasive than a UA variant subsystem, and should ideally be special cases of the "advanced" rules rather than rules on their own, the same way that "you have level+3 ranks in X+Int class skills" is a special case of "you have X+Int skill ranks per level, times 4 at 1st, that can be spent on class and cross-class skills to gain various amounts of ranks."

It's not impossible, but it is VERY difficult, and it is also extremely hard to playtest in the public manner they are currently, as every design decision is effectively a houserule, piling up until they either collapse under their own weight or condense into a new version of the core rules.

As I said though, I'm pretty sure they are doing it wrong...but I'm not sure what you are suggesting is better. At least this way it's easier to notice and correct the mistakes as soon as they happen, instead of just hoping that the houserules they are cooking up fit together correctly.

I'd prefer to see a three-car pileup of houserules than the current version, where every playtest packet changes things at random, ignores a bunch of feedback, and makes several things worse (usually with the poor fighter or rogue) compared to the previous incarnation(s).  Actually, I'd say the current public playtest is the best way to playtest modules--instead of providing one rule that one of AD&D, 3e, and 4e fans will like and the others will hate, they can provide several different options and let them be tested in parallel.  Using two modules per packet results in splitting the fanbase only four ways, which should give plenty of coverage for each possibility, and if one option is covered much more or much less than the others, well, that's useful information in and of itself.

[Nytemare3701]

That way lies madness my friend. You can't easily take a complex system and simplify it on a case by case basis, then expect each of those cases to be balanced against each other.

Well, you can't really expect to throw a "2e module" and a "2e with Player Options module" and a "3e module" and a "4e module" and an "Essential module" and so forth at the rules to drastically change the balance and playstyle and have all (or any) of them work out fine, can you?

Actually, yes. In that case, each of them is being built off the same core, being modified in a consistent manner, and being balanced against all other modules. You just can't do that when you start with the modules, then try to work back.


Neither of us really have much ground to stand on besides our personal preferences and experience, so let's just call this.

[Eldritch_Lord]

Actually, yes. In that case, each of them is being built off the same core, being modified in a consistent manner, and being balanced against all other modules. You just can't do that when you start with the modules, then try to work back.

Except that if you were to make a Venn diagram of all the editions' signature characteristics (power growth rate, saves/defenses, casting methods, multiclassing, etc.) to try to figure out what consistent, balanced core you could use to generate all the editions from, I'm guessing the only thing in the intersection of all the editions would be "uses a d20". Not a very solid core to build on.  I mean, heck, not even the class names stay the same between editions!

And that's all I'm saying, really; making a modular system for 2e and 3e fans wouldn't be too hard, just throw in a few equations to convert from THAC0 to BAB, a few mappings from the five 2e saves to the three 3e saves, and so on, since 2e+Players' Options and 3e are fairly close; you could probably make 50-60% of the system the "core" and the rest all the tweaks.  Same for 3e and 4e--you'd have to change a ton of stuff, but they're still fairly similar d20 systems under the hood, you might be able to get 60-70% "core" there as well.  But one that can handle 0e, 1e, 2e, 3e, and 4e, including all the little sub-editions and 0e variations?  The "core" would be small enough that you might as well make at least 2-3 different games, and the design of each edition would suffer as you tried to blur the differences between them to make combining them easier.

Neither of us really have much ground to stand on besides our personal preferences and experience, so let's just call this.

I still think it's an interesting discussion to have, since we haven't seen WotC's attempt at modularity and the latest packet is the same old same old, but if you want to drop it I can.

[awaken_D_M_golem]

I have a hard time understanding "why" a
Grand Unified Theory Of D&D Editions ^(tm)
isn't do-able with a concerted effort and decent group.

1e Fighter is basically a 3e Warrior with slightly better
or different saves, and a weaker mini-Leadership effect.

Basically do a direct game maths translation first, and
then a small amount of soup-up (or soup-down) balance.
  ... but not so much it takes any real work.

[oslecamo]

Because there's several points where people just don't agree on what should be the "right" thing to do.

Some people want a balanced game with clear rules where even a begginner that just grabbed the books can shine.

Other want badly written rules that can be interpreted in a myriad of ways where the guy who spends more time twisting english from as many books as possible "wins". I'm not kidding. Some people have spent over a decade now doing this, while being cheered on by small crowds. They clearly enjoy it.

Some are fine with charge->full attack. Others will agonize if their character doesn't have more different special attack options than it has Hit points.

Then some people are not happy at all if their character can't do everything monsters can do, while being better, while others want monsters to have unique powers and be an actual challenge to overcome.

Magic items. Feats. Skills. What do you want them to do? Should they even be there?

And that's before starting to decide how the fluff should be (plenty of people raged over the simple possibility of 5e having an alignment system, despite, you know, it being there ever since the begginning).

[123456789blaaa]

Because there's several points where people just don't agree on what should be the "right" thing to do.

Some people want a balanced game with clear rules where even a begginner that just grabbed the books can shine.

Other want badly written rules that can be interpreted in a myriad of ways where the guy who spends more time twisting english from as many books as possible "wins". I'm not kidding. Some people have spent over a decade now doing this, while being cheered on by small crowds. They clearly enjoy it.

Some are fine with charge->full attack. Others will agonize if their character doesn't have more different special attack options than it has Hit points.

Then some people are not happy at all if their character can't do everything monsters can do, while being better, while others want monsters to have unique powers and be an actual challenge to overcome.

Magic items. Feats. Skills. What do you want them to do? Should they even be there?

And that's before starting to decide how the fluff should be (plenty of people raged over the simple possibility of 5e having an alignment system, despite, you know, it being there ever since the begginning).

I think you may be a bit biased.

[oslecamo]

Just check this forum's PbP recruitment section. Then check other forum's PbP recruitment section.

I dare you to find two diferent DMs that will use the same base houserules base for their campaigns.

There's countless fixes for everything and anything, but very few things that everybody will agree on.

[123456789blaaa]

Just check this forum's PbP recruitment section. Then check other forum's PbP recruitment section.

I dare you to find two diferent DMs that will use the same base houserules base for their campaigns.

There's countless fixes for everything and anything, but very few things that everybody will agree on.

Oh I agree with that. My statement was more for the 2nd to 5th lines of your previous post. They seem a little...exaggerated  .

[awaken_D_M_golem]

Other want badly written rules that can be interpreted in a myriad of ways where the guy who spends more time twisting english from as many books as possible "wins". I'm not kidding. Some people have spent over a decade now doing this, while being cheered on by small crowds. They clearly enjoy it.

My kitty avatar sees what you done there ... 

[Necrosnoop110]

Other want badly written rules that can be interpreted in a myriad of ways where the guy who spends more time twisting english from as many books as possible "wins". I'm not kidding. Some people have spent over a decade now doing this, while being cheered on by small crowds. They clearly enjoy it.

My kitty avatar sees what you done there ... 

Yeah but isn't he about to be eaten? Can you trust what he sees?

[linklord231]

Subclasses. 
Not sure if I like these or not.  It's nice that they're offering a bit more customization, but not if it locks you in to certain concepts.  What if the concept you were going for isn't supported by any existing subclass?  Can you multiclass between subclasses in the same class (for example, Knight/Gladiator)?  Are these more like ACFs and Substitution Levels in 3.5, or Kits in 2E? 

[bhu]

Looks like the new version of Kits/PrC's

[SorO_Lost]

Downloading, downloading, omg 5 minutes noooo!!!

*waits*

Ahh, still not out.