D&D 5E Maybe I'm just tired?

Summer-Knight925 · Nov 20, 2012

Paizo produced the Critical Hit deck and Critical Fumble deck.

Both are awesome.
My group uses both.
Keeps things interesting as well as giving extra types of damage.

For instance, sure, that critical hit to the face did double damage, but against the giant?
Eh.
The main thing is he now has to make a reflex save (against the confirmation result) or be blinded, because my sword just cut out his eyes.

This happened.
Twice in teh same battle (different cards, one where the blood got in his eyes) against giants, who then wound up hitting eachother.

Greatest battle ever. (not true, but the point remains.)

Lanefan · Nov 20, 2012

ferratus said:
Exploding crits are fun (if unbalancing), but criticals in 3e are just a minor bonus of double damage (which may also have less power than a regular hit).

If I was running 3e I'd immediately change this to something more interesting.

ferratus said:
Besides, wasn't ctitical confirms just brought in because they took away critical fumbles anyway, not for any real game balance issue?

Perhaps, but in any game I run there's fumbles too.

(and yes, you roll to confirm the fumble as well)

That said, every version of critical we've ever used had some sort of confirm to it - and that goes back long before 3e days.

Lanefan

Birdlegs · Nov 20, 2012

The biggest fear is the lack of good supporting materials. Hasbro needs to get its head out of its rear when it comes to producing good campaigns. Piazo is far ahead of the competition in building fan loyalty because they come out with good material. I hope DDN isn't "just another edition" with a little support. We dont want another underdark dungeon crawl (done that), or another mega dungeon (done that a lot), fighter handbook, etc..... Give us some good thought provoking well designed and thought out adventures to sink our teeth into.

Tony Vargas · Nov 20, 2012

Summer-Knight925 said:
I'm not sure, but I really don't see that much I like in NEXT.

What, if any, are your biggest fears with NEXT?

Fear implies uncertainty. I'm certain 5e is going to be one of those exemplars of Murphy's Law that gets absolutely everything "wrong." I expect it to be a lumbering frankenstein edition combining all the worst aspects of every edition of D&D.

So, hey, at least when it comes out there's a chance I might be pleasantly surprised rather than bitterly disappointing.

That hair split, I'm expect 5e to:

Be a power-gamer's wet dream, like 3.x was.
Introduce cool new stuff for the fighter - but give it to everyone else, too.
Have no vestige of class balance.
Have no vestige of encounter balance.
Attempt to blame the lack of class and encounter balance on the DM by giving him guidelines so narrow and inflexible he'd have to put his campaign on rails to stick with them.
Have no formal system or useful guidelines for handling anything but combat.
Be complex enough to daunt new players even just considering core, and a nightmare once you start adding modules.
Have rules that can be interpreted many radically different ways, making it problematic to migrate from one DM's table to the next because of different house rules, even just considering core, but getting exponentially worse as modules are considered.
Have a worse than useless skill system that requires constant DM intervention and ad hoc rulings to do anything.
Fall back on players as resolution systems, so if the guy who's good at puzzles is playing a brain-dead half-orc barbarian, he'll still be the one to solve the riddle of the sphinx.
Provide the DM with a long list of magic items, padded out with ill-conceived game-breakers, and intimate that it's his fault if magic items become a problem in his campaign.
Have encounter-design guidelines such that 'easy' encounters are sometimes TPKs and 'very hard' encounters are often cakewalks, with what spells the wizard has memorized generally determining which it'll be.
Have an obvious best weapon and an obvious best armor. But the difference of the few points of damage or AC that makes is meaningless when you consider how inferior a choice it is to depend on armor and weapons rather than magic and dex.

Aaron L · Nov 21, 2012

ferratus said:
Besides, wasn't ctitical confirms just brought in because they took away critical fumbles anyway, not for any real game balance issue?

No, crit confirms were put in place so that all the times you can only hit something with a natural 20 (which happens quit a bit) it won't always be a crit. As someone explained before. And so masses of kobolds firing arrows at you won't statistically crit every 20 shots.

pemerton · Nov 21, 2012

Aaron L said:
crit confirms were put in place so that all the times you can only hit something with a natural 20 (which happens quit a bit) it won't always be a crit.

4e has a simple solution to this: if you only hit on a natural 20, but not on a modified 20, than no hit can crit.

pemerton · Nov 21, 2012

Tony Vargas said:
* Have encounter-design guidelines such that 'easy' encounters are sometimes TPKs and 'very hard' encounters are often cakewalks, with what spells the wizard has memorized generally determining which it'll be.

* Have an obvious best weapon and an obvious best armor. But the difference of the few points of damage or AC that makes is meaningless when you consider how inferior a choice it is to depend on armor and weapons rather than magic and dex.
[/list]

Tony, that is a cynical and vicious list! The two that especially stood out for me, and at present really capture my concerns, are the two I've quoted.

I was struck by the response to the wizard spell nerf in the current packet, although calculation quickly showed that a wizard had about the same average damage output as a fighter. It's hard not to feel that Next wizards are going to be overpowered once again.

Tony Vargas · Nov 21, 2012

pemerton said:
Tony, that is a cynical and vicious list!

I didn't mean to be vicious...

But I'm glad my relentless cynicism came through. I suspect that fans who expect 5e to be the worst thing since the Black Plague will be the only ones not bitterly disappointed by it. It's just trying too hard, and people are expecting too much from it.