D&D 5E With Respect to the Door and Expectations....The REAL Reason 5e Can't Unite the Base

Neonchameleon · Aug 13, 2012

pemerton said:
This raises an interesting question - how do I build a PC who always gets lucky when s/he attempts crazy stunts? In D&D, I can only do this by boosting my DEX and my Acro-type skills as high as possible. I don't see that there is any rule which prevents me from interpreting this, in play, as luck rather than skill. (It would be different if there was some sort of training mechanic associated with stat and skill increases, which would then seem to mandate intepreting higher numbers as greater skill.)

Multiclass into Monk for the utility powers? And then narrate what you can do normally as wire-fu as luck? Or just be a Monk and narrate as if it were a Jackie Chan character?

vagabundo · Aug 13, 2012

Imaro said:
When did characters become the gold standard for a new edition? As I stated earlier there are a ton of games where characters from one edition can be played in another edition. Also, who decides what revisions are large enough to constitute a new edition? The designers apparently didn't think 3.5 waranted being a new edition yet posters like neonchameleon continue to spread mis-information and then in turn don't want the same standards applied to their edition of choice. Finally, there is conversion/adaptation involved between using the original corebooks and essentials (monster math/skill DC's/stealth rules/etc.)

I do. My group does. We parked the 3.0 stuff and moved to 3.5 wholesale. We didn't have the same problems with 4e/essentials, we mixed happily. YMMV. If you could run content mixed from 3.0/3/5 on the fly more power to ya,but I found it a hassle and just moved over. I didn't have this problem with 4e. I found much easier to mix pre-essentials and post essentials stuff.

NOTE the monster math updates was pre-essentials MM3.

ForeverSlayer said:
We never had a problem with using 3.0 and 3.5 material.

Give us an example of the difficulty that you had.

It's been a long time but , off the top of my head; skill name changes and merges, DR issues, skill points, class replacements and a million little spell changes. I'm sure some people just converted on the fly or just hand waved the changes, but, at the time, we were quite finicky about the rules and in the end it was easier to just moved to 3.5e and put all the 3.0 stuff away.

pemerton · Aug 13, 2012

Neonchameleon said:
Multiclass into Monk for the utility powers? And then narrate what you can do normally as wire-fu as luck? Or just be a Monk and narrate as if it were a Jackie Chan character?

Sure. But that's going to get objections from the "dissociated" crowd, I think. Especially i fyou want to ignore the "psionic" keyword on your powers and pretend they're martial!

For clarity: I'm not disagreeing at all - a Jackie Chan lucky monk could be a fun PC, especialy at Heroic. (I'm not sure it fits the tone of paragon and epic so well.)

I think the point of my comment was to try to indicate that this anti-"dissociation" thing is a very strict constraint on PC building and PC characterisation. It's much stricter than just confining people to actor stance: as [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] has often pointed out, you can achieve that just by not choosing CaGI at 7th level. A requirement that every mechanical operation and element correlate to some incharacter decision is hugely strong, and rules out hit points (other than as meat), initiative and turn-by-turn action sequences (unless you envisage the gameworld as a stop motion one). And also AD&D-style saving throws, which in some cases are more like "luck rolls" than evasion rolls.

Hussar said:
The downside, as NeonC points out, is that all of your options strip any choice from the player's hands.

<snip>

Is that the critical point in a nutshell - that the player gets to declare when he's attempting a critical hit?

As far as I can tell, yes, that is the issue. It's not about stance - because you don't need to leave actor stance to think "Now's the time I'd really like to strike a killer blow!". It's about metagame mechanics that (i) permit the player to determine outcomes within the gameworld without directly modelling the ingame causal process that produces that outcome, and (ii) that do not correspond to any decision taken by the PC. (Number (i) on its own is too strong, because it would rule out "crit on a natural 20", which doesn't really model any ingame causal process either. Number (ii) is, I think, where the threat to immersion is seen to lie.)

Underman · Aug 13, 2012

pemerton said:
I think the point of my comment was to try to indicate that this anti-"dissociation" thing is a very strict constraint on PC building and PC characterisation. It's much stricter than just confining people to actor stance: as @Hussar has often pointed out, you can achieve that just by not choosing CaGI at 7th level. A requirement that every mechanical operation and element correlate to some incharacter decision is hugely strong, and rules out hit points (other than as meat), initiative and turn-by-turn action sequences (unless you envisage the gameworld as a stop motion one). And also AD&D-style saving throws, which in some cases are more like "luck rolls" than evasion rolls.

I don't think it's that stringent. Even you pointed out before that things that passively happen to the PC or affect things primarily at the metagame level don't necessarily include a feeling of dissociation. Or did you already backpedal on that epiphany? I'm a bit bummed because I thought we had a tentative meet-halfway thing going there

pemerton · Aug 13, 2012

Underman said:
Even you pointed out before that things that passively happen to the PC or don't force the PC to behave in a certain way or affect things primarily at the metagame level don't necessarily include a feeling of dissociation.

That covers action points, and also some saving throws. I don't think it covers hit points very well - because every D&D player I ever met made decisions in play based in part on remaining hit point totals, and I don't see how that is about passive effects, not behaving in a certain way, or primarily metagame. But aybe that's really author stance - decisions about what would be desirable or not from the point of view of my PC risking death, then retconned into my PC's desires - in which case I'm wrong to say it's not a stance issue.

But when it comes to initiative and turn-by-turn actions, I don't see how these are a stance thing, nor do I see how they are to do with passive effects, not behaving in certain ways, or primarily metagame. I can't see any principled reason (as opposed to familiarity, say, or habit) for accepting rolling initiative, and rationing actions via a turn-based action economy, but rejecting rationing luck via dailies and encounter powers. They're both purely metagame-motivated resource-allocation mechanics.

pemerton · Aug 13, 2012

Tony Vargas said:
A build might have a sort of script, certain powers (especially minor action attacks) in a certain order. It's not really for use in every fight in a real campaign, it's just for calculating DPR or some other metric being optimized to.

In theory, though, if you did choose to play such a build, you'd use the script as often as you could and had a good target for it, since it is your 'optimal' thing.

I can see this working well for certain sorts of anti-solo builds (optimised archer rangers?). Harder to apply to mobile multi-target attackers, I would think.

Anyway, if people are playing 4e games where the situations that the GM presents themselves with are best tackled via the same script 98% of the time, no wonder they didn't like the game! Their GMs suck!

Tony Vargas · Aug 13, 2012

pemerton said:
Anyway, if people are playing 4e games where the situations that the GM presents themselves with are best tackled via the same script 98% of the time, no wonder they didn't like the game! Their GMs suck!

I can't agree. DMs make a huge difference, of course, but systems make a difference also. 4e really makes running pretty easy, including giving the DM some fairly straightforward formulae to follow for a standard encounter. I wouldn't blame a DM for sticking to that formula pretty tightly for a while. There'll still be some variation, naturally enough, but falling into a 'rut' is something a given PC could do. Nothing like the original claim, but it could happen here or there, in 4e, as in any system - regardless of how 'good' the DM is.

pemerton · Aug 13, 2012

Tony Vargas said:
I can't agree. DMs make a huge difference, of course, but systems make a difference also. 4e really makes running pretty easy, including giving the DM some fairly straightforward formulae to follow for a standard encounter. I wouldn't blame a DM for sticking to that formula pretty tightly for a while. There'll still be some variation, naturally enough, but falling into a 'rut' is something a given PC could do. Nothing like the original claim, but it could happen here or there, in 4e, as in any system - regardless of how 'good' the DM is.

I guess so. I was more thinking of encounter after encounter against the solo with 4 minion flunkies (or whatever it is) that triggers the script - whereas, as soon as you stick a bit of terrain in there (pillars, pits, whatever) the players will have to leave the script and come up with something new, at least for a round or two.

Neonchameleon · Aug 13, 2012

Tony Vargas said:
I can't agree. DMs make a huge difference, of course, but systems make a difference also. 4e really makes running pretty easy, including giving the DM some fairly straightforward formulae to follow for a standard encounter. I wouldn't blame a DM for sticking to that formula pretty tightly for a while. There'll still be some variation, naturally enough, but falling into a 'rut' is something a given PC could do. Nothing like the original claim, but it could happen here or there, in 4e, as in any system - regardless of how 'good' the DM is.

It's something they could especially do with certain PC builds. If you're playing a Slayer always in the same stance (Poised Assault or Battle Guardian) or a charge spammer then yes you can and it works. If you're playing a twin-strike ranger, it's not optimal but you don't need to be. But yes you can if that's what you want to do.

Also far too many DMs don't use interactive terrain.

Which reminds me, I must get on with my OGL 4e compatable project.

Imaro · Aug 13, 2012

Lokiare said:
Wow...

Ok, that right there tells me you have never compared the two side by side.

Unless you can actually point out the 'substantially different' math. We can assume you don't really know what you are talking about.

P.S. I'm trying to be polite, but comments like this make it difficult...

Uhm, what I'm saying is pretty common knowledge...Compare the skill DC's per level in the first three corebooks (PHB, MM, DMG) with those found in essentials...