D&D 5E Behind the design of 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons: Well my impression as least.

[SilentWolf]

Explain how your contribution isn't measured in damage? If you're doing very little damage to the dragon your party is fighting, how are you contributing to a victory? Spending your action providing advantage to the fighter so he can do good damage?

The mistake, here, is thinking that the only contribution a character can give is only in combat. With D&D 5e we must abandon the idea that the game experience revolves mainly around Combat. In this edition there are 3 Pillars, not one.
The ways a PC can demonstrate contribution are 3, not one.

The character who reveals to be weak in combat against an enemy, will be the one who will save the harsh warrior when he will risk ending up to be executed by the nobles of a city for having insulted them.

The D&D 5e balance is based on 3 Pillars, not just one.

 

[Celtavian]

The -5/+10 feats are really good for some classes, mediocre for some classes, and outright bad for some classes. It's a great choice, for example, for a Fighter that has gobs of ASI to burn and lots of lower damage attacks, but bad for Rogue to take Sharpshooter as your sneak attack damage dwarfs the damage bonus from Sharpshooter.

They're good for Barbarians, Paladins, and Fighters with consistent access to a bless spell.

 

[Celtavian]

The mistake, here, is thinking that the only contribution a character can give is only in combat. With D&D 5e we must abandon the idea that the game experience revolves mainly around Combat. In this edition there are 3 Pillars, not one.
The ways a PC can demonstrate contribution are 3, not one.

The character who reveals to be weak in combat against an enemy, will be the one who will save the harsh warrior when he will risk ending up to be executed by the nobles of a city for having insulted them.

The D&D 5e balance is based on 3 Pillars, not just one.

The three pillars are not equal. This idea of three pillars always existed in every edition of D&D. And have never been equal. Marketing by the designers is emphasizing these ideas of three pillars as though it is something new. It isn't and never was.

Combat is always and has always been the largest pillar by a huge margin in any edition of D&D. A DM might adjust that if his group does not mind. My group likes combat. They don't like to spend very much time on out of combat material. I very much doubt a very sizeable majority does not play exactly the same way. That is why combat balance should always be one of the largest factors in RPG design that involves combat simulations decided by numbers. Combat is the equivalent of glory in an RPG. He who kills the most and fastest accumulates for himself the most glory.

 

[Rhenny]

I think a lot of people under estimate the importance of interaction and exploration compared with combat. Many players gain a ton of enjoyment from non-combat success, and some who play pcs that are quite good at combat but not good at the other pillars feel less fulfilled.

Working the three pillars is player type specific. But, since pcs are not defined as tightly by the role they they serve (leader, striker, defender, etc.), 5e allows players to approach the three pillars in their own way.

I'm going to assert, from my own playing and DMing experience that many of the most satisfied players feel at least competent in 2 out of the 3 pillars while some of the least satisfied players are the ones who run pcs that are only combat centric.

 

[Cadriel]

The three pillars are not equal. This idea of three pillars always existed in every edition of D&D. And have never been equal. Marketing by the designers is emphasizing these ideas of three pillars as though it is something new. It isn't and never was.

Combat is always and has always been the largest pillar by a huge margin in any edition of D&D. A DM might adjust that if his group does not mind. My group likes combat. They don't like to spend very much time on out of combat material. I very much doubt a very sizeable majority does not play exactly the same way. That is why combat balance should always be one of the largest factors in RPG design that involves combat simulations decided by numbers. Combat is the equivalent of glory in an RPG. He who kills the most and fastest accumulates for himself the most glory.

This is simply false, since you are talking about "always" and "every edition." The earliest editions were primarily exploration games. If you got in a fair fight in Gary Gygax's Greyhawk dungeon, that was a failure. The better players avoided fights unless absolutely necessary; ask Rob Kuntz or Mike Mornard if balanced combat was always at the center of D&D, and they will set you straight.

It's just not my experience that people want combat, combat, and more combat as the center of D&D. In over 20 years, I've found very few players motivated by glory in combat. If you've never played a perfectly good D&D game where no one even rolled for initiative, and I have done this, then you've missed out on whole swathes of what the game has to offer. I've found that players tend to be motivated more by advancing their characters, getting magic items, and completing objectives, than by glory in combat. And the very best combats I've run have been entirely plot motivated.

 

[Minigiant]

All character should play a role. But all roles are not combat roles.

• Combat
  • Damage Dealer
  • Tank
  • Controller
  • Healer
  • Buffer
• Exploration
  • Wilderness
  • Urban
  • Dungeon
  • Magical
  • Physical
  • Logistics
• Interaction
  • Face
  • Anti-face
  • General

Whatever roles your adventure focuses on, your PC has to pick one.

 

[seebs]

The three pillars are not equal. This idea of three pillars always existed in every edition of D&D. And have never been equal. Marketing by the designers is emphasizing these ideas of three pillars as though it is something new. It isn't and never was.

Combat is always and has always been the largest pillar by a huge margin in any edition of D&D. A DM might adjust that if his group does not mind. My group likes combat. They don't like to spend very much time on out of combat material. I very much doubt a very sizeable majority does not play exactly the same way. That is why combat balance should always be one of the largest factors in RPG design that involves combat simulations decided by numbers. Combat is the equivalent of glory in an RPG. He who kills the most and fastest accumulates for himself the most glory.

There's a lot of table variance here, and I've been in games where combat wasn't an every-session type of event. Mostly, though, I'd point out that battlefield control and enemy neutralization can be just as important as "damage".

My wizard in our Pathfinder campaign did maybe a fifth as much damage as the hardest-hitting front line fighter. Maybe. Less than that most rounds. Often she'd go an entire combat without doing a point of damage.

As a result of which our enemies tended to spend combat at -2 to -4 on most or all of their rolls, incapacitated, spending their turns doing nothing but provoking attacks of opportunity. Or staggered. With all their magic items disabled.

I did not feel any regrets about my lack of damage output, and neither did anyone else.

 

[Umbran]

Now it is my impression the game was not designed around mechanical teamwork and synergy as was 4th edition. I am under the impression that the classes were designed on an individual basis.

I think you're a bit off there. I think it was designed for synergies - it is just designed so that you don't have to have a *specific* class in the party to gain the synergy.

How much damage you do, or how much damage you do when compared to others is not something this edition was designed around.

This is where your posit fails, I think. The balance of classes is not so rigid as it was in 4e, but significant attention was paid to having things so everyone is effective.

You choose a class in this edition because it's what you want to play, not because you need to fill specific roles to make the party complete.

Okay, so this is not actually an argument that they didn't balance damage dealt and such. It isn't like you can only balance classes against each other if they are filling specific roles. Decouple the idea of "filling roles" and "character balance" in your mind. You will likely see a bunch of folks complaining that, compared to 1e and 2e, spellcasters have been nerfed. The number of high levels spells they can cast a day is limited, compared to earlier games - this is an example of balancing. Restricting the very potent spells means those spellcasters can't outshine other classes as easily.

What I like about this edition is it doesn't matter if you have three people wanting to play rogues for example.

But, it probably does matter. If you have three people playing rogues, they will tend to overlap abilities quite a lot. If the players are not careful to really differentiate their characters, it will be difficult for individuals to really shine, and there will be many things they collectively won't be able to handle. This game is such that they may be able to sufficiently differentiate themselves within the same class, but they will still probably have to put some thought to it.

 

[Sailor Moon]

But, it probably does matter. If you have three people playing rogues, they will tend to overlap abilities quite a lot. If the players are not careful to really differentiate their characters, it will be difficult for individuals to really shine, and there will be many things they collectively won't be able to handle. This game is such that they may be able to sufficiently differentiate themselves within the same class, but they will still probably have to put some thought to it.

Remind me again what is wrong with overlap?

If you have a party of rogues why aren't you all sneaking, backstabbing, taking turns disarming traps etc.... This isn't the edition about having your niche and you are the only one who can shine in it. From the sounds of it, you are still holding on to a 4th edition type of mentality.

 

[trentonjoe]

I am a big fan of overlap as well. It does make encounter design (COMBAT and NONCOMBAT) more difficult for the DM. I think it is actually easier to run agame of ALL melee fighters or ALL controller wizards or ALL sneaky rogues than running a game where you have 3 guys who more or less do the same thing and two guys who desperately try to fill the other roles.