D&D 5e: For real this time?

[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 ... 

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

Gulp ... roll 2d6 stomach acid damage,
handle 2 d3 claw attacks per round, and
disease (mange) check +2 save from iron gut.
Contingency Raise Avatar.

Let's see 5e simulate that !!

[PlzBreakMyCampaign]

That grand-unified D&D is very doable. A lot of work? Yes. Impossible? No.

We have people here who've gone through every 3.5 spell in existance. Whoa.

When this thread hits 50 pages, I'll spell out how its doable if no one else has.

[JohnnyMayHymn]

Bump for 50 pages!

[wotmaniac]

Bump for 50 pages!

[Unbeliever]

The design idea for 5E being "low powered and low magic" has come up several times in this thread.  Is that an explicit choice by the designers? 

Here's what I'm thinking.  Part of the goal of 5E is to bring D&D players back to D&D -- D&D fans are quite fragmented (and fractious?) now.  I'm a huge fan of Hyboria and Lankhmar and Sanctuary, so I have absolutely no objection to a fantasy game with few spells and relatively mortal heroes.  Even Conan is relatively mortal when stacked up against the likes of Drizzt and Elminster. 

But, it seems to me that they're abandoning the core of D&D.  D&D, unlike the other fantasy games I've played, is the one with an orgy of splatbooks, spells, and magic items.  It's one of the few common threads between all the editions I've played.  I don't really know how D&D-esque an edition would feel without some significant degree of magic item/gear/paper doll type of interaction. 

That, and what sounds like a radical shift away from the familiar level structure -- really, if you can't differentiate characters in 20 or 30 levels, then they aren't really levels -- makes me wonder to what extent this game really would have anything, besides superficial terminology, that would be recognizably D&D. 

[zioth]

It's not exactly low magic. The two changes are first, that spellcasters get a lot fewer spell slots per day, and second, that magic items are rare and special, not things you can just walk into your local magic shop and buy. The first seems like a new thing. The second is similar to the style of 2E.
 

[littha]

You see, I actually like the plethora and abundance of magic items in 3e for example. If I am fantasy roleplaying I want the fantasy aspect to be emphasised heavily and to me that means magic or magic items. 'Low Fantasy' could only interest me less if it was historical roleplay.

They are never going to please everyone with 5e.

[FlaminCows]

For me, the killer of the current "iteration" of the playtest is the skill system, which I am hating with all of my hate. All the RPGs I like to play are highly skills-focused: Dungeons & Dragons 3.5, Mongoose Runequest (2/6/Legend), Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader, Eclipse Phase, and WFRP 2e. One thing in common among all those RPGs is that they have a detailed and granular skills system where each skill has listed skill uses with a set target number and game effect, and a character is defined largely by their skill set.

Many people dislike such skill systems, citing that they don't need rules for roleplaying and that the skill rules get in the way of their game and to this group Next caters, but for me such a skill system is a vital component. Skill uses act like "powers", giving the player a game piece to manipulate in order to overcome a challenge. You don't need rules for roleplay, but you do need rules for a game. In Next, as it currently is, skills are just a die roll to beat a number that the DM must decide arbitrarily and the effect of the skill's success/failure is also in the hands of the DM. Without some predictable uses of a skill there is no tactics involved in deciding to use it, or deciding to train in it. For me, if only combat has rules for it then most of the game is still missing.

Another issue I have with Next is that there are less things each character can do. I prefer rules-heavy systems because they give more pieces to move, so to speak. In short:

They are never going to please everyone with 5e.

The real question will be: can they please enough people to turn up a profit?

[oslecamo]

For me, the killer of the current "iteration" of the playtest is the skill system, which I am hating with all of my hate. All the RPGs I like to play are highly skills-focused: Dungeons & Dragons 3.5, Mongoose Runequest (2/6/Legend), Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader, Eclipse Phase, and WFRP 2e. One thing in common among all those RPGs is that they have a detailed and granular skills system where each skill has listed skill uses with a set target number and game effect, and a character is defined largely by their skill set.

Whot?

Can't really speak about those other RPGs, but skills in 3.5 are at best secondary stuff, at worst a broken mess.

Some are indeed against fixed DCs. But others are opposed checks against things that may or may not properly scale, and others can indeed be against arbitary DCs (gather information and spellcraft for the harder stuff for example).

Some are basically useless as Profession.
Others could be good, but are then greatly overshadowed by magic or other class abilities (hide/move silently, open lock, craft, tumble, etc).

Meanwhile Diplomacy auto-wins everything as written, precisely because the DCs are fixed but the skill itself is relatively easy to boost. Intimidate comes a close second. And nobody is very sure what Gather Information is suposed to do when you already have Diplomacy/Intimidate and Knowledge skills.

Another issue I have with Next is that there are less things each character can do. I prefer rules-heavy systems because they give more pieces to move, so to speak. In short:

They are never going to please everyone with 5e.

The real question will be: can they please enough people to turn up a profit?

Oh, that's a given. The D&D name is still strong, so they'll most certainly sell enough to make a profit as long as they put "Dungeons and Dragons X" on the book cover. The question is how much of a profit they make.

[zioth]

Yeah. Dispite its shortcomings, the skill system is one of my favorite parts of D&D 3.5. 5E's seems inferior.
 
I'm not sure about the "less things a character can do" thing. There do seem to be fewer class abilities so far, but combat is a lot more flexible. By having guidelines instead of rules, players are encouraged to be creative. Jumping off a balcony, swinging from a chandelier and landing on the enemy is no longer a stupid thing to do. In 3.5, any creative act in combat results in penalties, and the loss of a full attack.

[FlaminCows]

Whot?

Can't really speak about those other RPGs, but skills in 3.5 are at best secondary stuff, at worst a broken mess.

Some are indeed against fixed DCs. But others are opposed checks against things that may or may not properly scale, and others can indeed be against arbitary DCs (gather information and spellcraft for the harder stuff for example).

Some are basically useless as Profession.
Others could be good, but are then greatly overshadowed by magic or other class abilities (hide/move silently, open lock, craft, tumble, etc).

Meanwhile Diplomacy auto-wins everything as written, precisely because the DCs are fixed but the skill itself is relatively easy to boost. Intimidate comes a close second. And nobody is very sure what Gather Information is suposed to do when you already have Diplomacy/Intimidate and Knowledge skills.

D&D 3.5 has the benefit of many years of extensive support. There are enough additional skill uses in the sourcebooks, magazines, and feats that the game can be run pretty much as I described. Gather Information, for example, is used for Urban Tracking, which in my game group is included with being trained in Gather Information rather than being a feat; something we do with all feats that grant skill uses. Diplomacy has fixes made by the community. Some of the skills are folded into other skills for more utility: Open Lock, for example, is just an aspect of Disable Device as suggested by the Rules Compendium. Some of the more bothersome 3.5 spells are just removed, considered to not exist by the game group.

That is, of course, a considerable number of changes from "default" D&D 3.5, but that's not the point. Next isn't competing with basic 3.5, it is competing with 3.5 in its current state, which is 3.5 with all the good parts of all those years of people tinkering with it. The Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 that I play is a highly skills-focused game where a character is largely defined by their skill set. If Next is to be worth buying, it would have to be better than the Dungeons and Dragons that I play, and the same would apply to each other individual who is considering it. They're saying that they are creating a modular, customizable D&D, when people have been modifying and customizing D&D for decades.

[oslecamo]

A similar thing happens in video games. Popular ones get extensive homebrew modding over the years, that make them much more enjoyable than the "base" games.

However, people will still buy said video game sequels, even if at start they're more dull and limited than the previous modded games.

This is because at the end of the day, even if your group managed to come up with your perfect "homebrew/modding combo patch", composed of a hundreds if not thousands of small chances, well... That's still just the game you play. But what if you want to bring new people in your group? People who haven't being modding/homebrewing D&D for decades?

That's why Pathfinder suceeded, even surpassing 4e. They made a bunch of changes to a popular base game, and then they made them widely available to the public. If a DM wants to start a pathfinder game, they can point interested players to the paizo srd that has everything neatly organized.

So I would wager that the chances of 5e suceeding will not be based on the comparison with personal group rules, but on how widely available they make the base rules to the general public, even if said rules aren't that hot compared to your personal version. IMO their biggest mistake in 4e was not having an open srd equivalent.

[Unbeliever]

It's not exactly low magic. The two changes are first, that spellcasters get a lot fewer spell slots per day, and second, that magic items are rare and special, not things you can just walk into your local magic shop and buy. The first seems like a new thing. The second is similar to the style of 2E.

Based on my experience in 2E I kind of want to distinguish something.  There's the "magic shoppe" approach to D&D, which has existed since time immemorial (stipulated for these purposes as being 20+ years) and is particularly common on charopp forums and which has some reasonable justifications for it. 

The rarity of magic items doesn't depend on magic shoppes, though.  AD&D, the version I mostly cut my teeth on, had 4 volumes of encyclopedias devoted to magic items.  Every single D&D character was presumed to have a large quantity of them, especially in the older iterations of the game as gear was one of the few things you had to customize your character.  It was hardly the case that magic items were rare or special.  They were expected and essential parts of the game.

I seem to recall being corrected as to what 2E was as opposed to AD&D, so I could just be misreading these things.  But, the idea of magic items not being a fairly huge part of the game -- no matter where you acquire them -- seems to be a sea change to me. 

[veekie]

Magic items sort of just wound up in their position from where they were just the incentives to do pretty much anything in the game. They didn't really get locked into their present significance until 3E, which was sort of fine before because there weren't particularly well defined standards on your character performance yet either.

You had X wealth at Y level because experience correlated to wealth gain, but due to being random loot, you wouldn't have something like a Big Six, but more a random mashup of cool toys you could apply to problem solving.

[zioth]

The rarity of magic items doesn't depend on magic shoppes, though.  AD&D, the version I mostly cut my teeth on, had 4 volumes of encyclopedias devoted to magic items.  Every single D&D character was presumed to have a large quantity of them, especially in the older iterations of the game as gear was one of the few things you had to customize your character.  It was hardly the case that magic items were rare or special.  They were expected and essential parts of the game.

Sure, that's the way you and many other people played AD&D, but the game described in the 2E DMG was very different. The DMG suggested that magic items be rare, requiring specific quests to acquire them. 5E also suggests that items be hard to acquire, and adds that they have no fixed gp value, which makes them harder to buy and sell. Naturally, some DMs will create campaigns where PCs are covered in magic items starting at level 2, but that's not standard for 5E or 2E. It's very much standard for 3E and 4E.
 
 

Next isn't competing with basic 3.5, it is competing with 3.5 in its current state, which is 3.5 with all the good parts of all those years of people tinkering with it.

I don't think that's as true as you think. D&D has a huge following, while these (and other) boards include what - a couple thousand players at most? We, with our focus on optimization or heavy modding are not the typical D&D players that Next is targetting. Next is going for:
 

• 4E players, most of whom have not done extensive house-ruling. This is going to be a difficult sell, since Next is so vastly different from 4E.
• Pathfinder players, most of whom have not done extensive house-ruling. This one will be tough because so many Pathfinder books are in the OCG, and thus distributed to every player. It will take D&D a couple years to catch up.
• 3E players. Being older and more experienced, these players have house-ruled a bit more, but not nearly as much as you think. I'm guessing a lot of them are open to a new system, but after seeing and hating 4E, will be skeptical.
• Players who remember 2E and earlier fondly, but are turned off by the WoW-feel of 4E. Really, WotC probably isn't thinking of these people much, because there are so few of them.
• People who have never played D&D, which, with a few exceptions, is really people who have never played any RPG. This group is made up mostly of younger players - high-school and elementary school D&D groups, kids whose parents play D&D, etc. For these people, WotC has to make the game exciting and fun, but also simple so new players aren't turned off. Ideally, you should be able to grab a handful of pre-gen character sheets, hand them to a group of 4th graders with a somewhat experienced DM, and have a game going within half an hour.

[wotmaniac]

Sure, that's the way you and many other people played AD&D, but the game described in the 2E DMG was very different. The DMG suggested that magic items be rare, requiring specific quests to acquire them.

Sure, the fluff tells you that magic items are/should be rare; but then that gets completely thrown out the minute you actually start rolling the treasure charts.  As I remember, my 2e groups had much more treasure than my 3e groups.

[veekie]

The 2E treasure was probably a lot more varied though. 3E loot is pretty functionally oriented. Earlier editions took more of a whimsical approach.

[bhu]

I did so like my Wand of WOnder....

[kitep]

I agree with Veekie.  With 2E, the magic items seemed more random - you got what the DM gave you.  In 3E, it seems more like shopping, you get what you pick out.  Great for min/maxing, but I sometimes I miss having strange items.

[ksbsnowowl]

I agree with Veekie.  With 2E, the magic items seemed more random - you got what the DM gave you.  In 3E, it seems more like shopping, you get what you pick out.  Great for min/maxing, but I sometimes I miss having strange items.

This can be controlled by the DM though.  In my viking gestalt game there are no magic item shops; there is basically no magic item trade to speak of.  The players pretty much got what I awarded to them.  I even doubled the requisite caster level for all item creation feats, as the setting is supposed to be "rare magic" (characters have appropriate wealth by level, but it might not be exactly the "best" items they would pick).

Even so, no one took an item creation feat until 12th level.  Now they are making many of their own Wondrous Items, but for the first 11 levels, they got what I gave them.  I did keep in mind things that would be helpful to them, and even got a short list of "desired items" that each player wanted, and would drop those in throughout the campaign.  It was always fun when the player realized the bad guy they were facing had the item he really wanted... then he had to earn it by having it used against him.  I still do the desired items list, and occasionally drop in those items at level-appropriate times.