Ahnehnois
First Post
This is something I never understand. Tactical combat can always be treated as a separate minigame or as a vehicle for storytelling (or both). I don't see what the rules have to do with it. Whenever I see these comments to the effect of "I play the game better when playing edition X" it always feels to me like a sort of D&D placebo; i.e. it's not the rules that change things, it's the people playing them.Between this, and the new Legends and Lore, it seems to be getting clearer that there won't be much support for 4e-style play.
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Tactical combat resolution seems to be being treated as an end in itself, rather than (as in 4e) a vehicle for communicating and generating deeper thematic and story elements.
I would hope that story and background would be created before mechanics, and then mechanics would be created that fit them.This implies two things: (i) that "story and background" are based on a pre-4e standard, and (ii) that "story and background" are being treated as something indpenent of, and prior to mechanics, rather than something that it is the job of the mechanics to produce.
So instead of hobgoblins who form phalanxes because they get an AC bonus (as in 4e), there will be flavour text telling us that hobgoblins form phalanxes, and that goblins are sneaky, even though mechanically there will be little reason for the hobgoblins not to sneak or for the goblins not to form phalanxes.
I would think that all goblins would have high dex and a Hide bonus for being small, and perhaps more, which is why their behavior is oriented towards sneakiness. I wouldn't expect all hobgoblins to have a bonus for a specific fighting style. If you're running a historic game, would you expect all Greeks to get an AC bonus for phalanx fighting? Sounds like a feat to me, perhaps one that could be suggested for warrior types.
I take it this is posited as a bad thing?Particularly in light of what Mearls says about monster design, I don't have any hope that we'll see monsters like the Deathlock Wight (uses forced movement + psychic damage to model PCs fleeing from fear at its Horrific Visage) or PC powers like Come and Get It or even Thunderwave.
This is just nonsense. If you have ten advantages and one disadvantage they just cancel each other out? That aspect of it is going to need to be looked at. There needs to be some mechanism for stacking advantages.When you have disadvantage or advantage, you have it, no matter how many sources you're getting it from. They are binary conditions, and once you have that condition in a certain situation, you simply have it. However, if you have both, then their effects cancel each other out—you roll no additional dice; again, no matter how many sources grant advantage or disadvantage, having both means that you, effectively, gain the die-rolling effects of neither advantage nor disadvantage at that time. Technically, you still have both advantage and disadvantage (for the purpose of things that key on those situations), their basic effects simply negate one another.
The domains thing is good. Much more depth than in 3e, it would seem.
Tactical combat sounds like a positive, and with a better approach than previous editions.