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

Shadeydm said:

CS dice can be applied every round and can be simplified to adding extra damage (not dissociative imho) and nothing more. Can we change 4E melee encounter powers to work every round? There lies two very big differences...if you can't see the diff I don't think there is much more I can do to help you understand.

Click to expand...

No. No we can't. Because that is a fundamentally boring battle in that the monsters always present exactly the same opportunities to the PCs and so the best course of action is normally spamtastic. Which breaks mysense of immersion. Not being able to do the same thing equally well every round and instead having limited opportunities per fight makes a fighter feel much more like a fighter than going in the same way every time no matter what the situation on the ground is.

Now we can have different means for limiting the fighter's best options (13th Age uses one). But a spamtastic fighter is to me far more diassociated from the way a fighter thinks, moves, and behaves in skirmish combat than an AEDU fighter is.

Neonchameleon said:

No. No we can't. Because that is a fundamentally boring battle in that the monsters always present exactly the same opportunities to the PCs and so the best course of action is normally spamtastic. Which breaks mysense of immersion. Not being able to do the same thing equally well every round and instead having limited opportunities per fight makes a fighter feel much more like a fighter than going in the same way every time no matter what the situation on the ground is.

Now we can have different means for limiting the fighter's best options (13th Age uses one). But a spamtastic fighter is to me far more diassociated from the way a fighter thinks, moves, and behaves in skirmish combat than an AEDU fighter is.

Click to expand...

I think this is the part where I'm supposed to talk about moving goalposts etc. Pass...

Neonchameleon said:

How about comparing AEDU to the classic source for controversy then? Vancian casting. Especially All Magic Being Vancian. The issue there is that it breaks immersion, feels non-magical, and breaks balance.

Click to expand...

If you're looking for me to defend Vancian, I won't really do that because I don't like it.

However, the problematic element of Vancian is being able to do something reliably up to X times a day, and then not being able to do it at all afterwards. In that sense, a 4e rogue is somewhat Vancian.

The good thing is that all magic isn't Vancian. 3e presents sorcerers that don't memorize right off the bat. The vast majority of magic classes released in supplements were spontaneous or used even less Vancian alternate casting systems, most notably the warlock. Several alternate casting systems are out there, including OGL systems published by WotC in UA. So it's not hard to play a non-Vancian caster. More importantly, fighters and rogues don't have daily limitations, and those two classes themselves constitute a large proportion of all D&D characters. So while I'm not defending Vancian as being anything other than laborious, confusing, stylistically limiting, and unbalanced, it has a strong history and at least it's optional.

AEDU isn't.

But a spamtastic fighter is to me far more diassociated from the way a fighter thinks, moves, and behaves in skirmish combat than an AEDU fighter is.

Click to expand...

I find this opinion rather bizarre. When you say "spamtastic", I assume you mean that some fighters repeatedly take the same action (attack, trip, etc.). But it doesn't mean the character is doing the same thing each time. A successful attack roll could represent any number of martial techniques. Combining all those techniques into one attack roll is very abstract, but it's very D&D. If you wanted to model martial techniques, I assume you'd use facing rules and a stunt system. I also assume you'd want an injury system, because hit points are equally abstract and it's hard to model the way a fighter behaves without describing physical status in more detail.

These things have very little to do with simply packaging existing effects in the AEDU system.

Shadeydm said:

Because I have faith that CS dice (or action dice for that matter) will be an optiona module not a default assumption. Therefore i will simply not use that option if I find it unpleasant.

Click to expand...

Objection, your honor. Move to strike as non-responsive.

Neonchameleon said:

Now we can have different means for limiting the fighter's best options (13th Age uses one). But a spamtastic fighter is to me far more diassociated from the way a fighter thinks, moves, and behaves in skirmish combat than an AEDU fighter is.

Click to expand...

The beauty of this statement lies in the fact that most 4E fights end up with the defender having no choice but to spam an at will round after round partially because they drag on so long and partially because so many encounter powers are very situational. So in the end the 4E Fighter ends up in a "spamtastic" battle as you say regardless. 4E must be so very disassociating for you

Shadeydm said:

The beauty of this statement lies in the fact that most 4E fights end up with the defender having no choice but to spam an at will round after round partially because they drag on so long and partially because so many encounter powers are very situational. So in the end the 4E Fighter ends up in a "spamtastic" battle as you say regardless. 4E must be so very disassociating for you

Click to expand...

I hear a lot about this "combat grind" aspect of 4e, but I don't actually see it in play. Maybe my players are tactical geniuses, or something, but I see At-Wills used scattered among Encounter and Daily powers used to best advantage (often set up specifically with At-Wills beforehand) finishing most combats in, typically, 4-8 combat rounds.

Ahnehnois said:

In a sense, there is no valid comparison between the AEDU system and any other mechanic in D&D, as there is no other version of the game that has a common advancement structure for all classes. .. I think comparing a new advancement mechanic just for fighters is a useful comparison.

Click to expand...

Ah, so just for the fighter. That at least makes sense.

I do like CS for the same reason I liked the 3e bonus-feat fighter: it's customizeable, and it gives you some round-by-round flexibility. The former is great for a build-to concept. The latter can be engaging - if the game has tactical depth enough, combats last long enough, and those round-by-round decisions make difference enough, to matter. That really didn't come through for the bonus-feat fighter too well, there was a narrow range of levels where it worked: you had enough feats to realize a concept and have some meaningful options, but your contribution hadn't yet been obviated by the party's casters. Maybe 4-6th, approximately... If the CS fighter holds up for all 5 of the levels presented in the current playtest packet, that's be something.

That'd still be no where near what AEDU did for the fighter, but it's a start.

Balesir said:

I hear a lot about this "combat grind" aspect of 4e, but I don't actually see it in play. Maybe my players are tactical geniuses, or something, but I see At-Wills used scattered among Encounter and Daily powers used to best advantage (often set up specifically with At-Wills beforehand) finishing most combats in, typically, 4-8 combat rounds.

Click to expand...

Yes I must be making this stuff up it's not as if I play 4E every week, oh hey wait a minute...

Balesir said:

I hear a lot about this "combat grind" aspect of 4e, but I don't actually see it in play. Maybe my players are tactical geniuses, or something, but I see At-Wills used scattered among Encounter and Daily powers used to best advantage (often set up specifically with At-Wills beforehand) finishing most combats in, typically, 4-8 combat rounds.

Click to expand...

My Gramma used to say "it's a long time if you're sit'n on a hot stove!" I think part of the 'grind' complaint is a little circular, in that it comes from not enjoying combat in the first place. An 8-round combat seems like a hellish grind if combat is just something you want to get over with so you can get on with the 'real point' of ROLE-not-ROLL playing, or 'Exploration,' or Monty Python references, or whatever it is you show up to D&D games for instead of combat. OTOH, if you like combat, and want a good combat to be center-piece of a session, an 8-round combat can be awesome, and a 1-2 round combat is a real let-down.

Shadeydm said:

CS dice can be applied every round and can be simplified to adding extra damage (not dissociative imho) and nothing more. Can we change 4E melee encounter powers to work every round? There lies two very big differences...if you can't see the diff I don't think there is much more I can do to help you understand.

Click to expand...

Yup, you get rid of encounter powers and use Essentials characters.

Done.

That's about the same degree of change for both. You've stripped away most of the mechanics of a Next Fighter and an Essentials Fighter has done the same.

Easy peasy.

Ahnenosis said:

So while I'm not defending Vancian as being anything other than laborious, confusing, stylistically limiting, and unbalanced, it has a strong history and at least it's optional.

AEDU isn't.

Click to expand...

Ummm, no? Why do people keep ignoring Essentials? Are the books like painted in stealth paint or something? You, Ahn, brought up supplements in 3e, so, it's not like we're sticking to core here. Why does 3e get the pass but, when talking about 4e, we must only ever talk about the first three books? Good grief. We're not allowed to bring up older editions, we're not allowed to talk about any D&D books published after 2008. It does make it rather hard to have a conversation about what D&D means when we're only allowed to look at a pretty narrow set.