D&D (2024) Do you plan to adopt D&D5.5One2024Redux?

[Hussar]

Sure, but you can see how "this power just works" without any lines of interaction or engagement can have issues. And it's not like we're done with such abilities- a Wolf Totem Barbarian in 5e grants advantage to his allies when they attack something adjacent to him. How? Why? Weird Angry Totem Magic, I guess.

If Come and Get It or Rain of Steel were written as spells in another edition, a lot of people would go "huh, cool" and accept that they work. Magic doesn't always need to offer saves, checks, or attack rolls to do it's thing. But historically, non-magic does, and the issue with the Martial Power Source is that people assumed it was "non-magic, just badassery manifest". So these powers are jarring if the Martial Power source is magic, and if it is, then that means the Fighter is now a magician, which, pick any thread, lol, you'll find a lot of people who don't want a "magic Fighter".

I'm not saying they should have designed these powers differently. A big problem for 4e was that many people expected it to be the same old D&D and were confused by the fact it was now more like Earthdawn or Exalted.

The truly funny thing about this was that out of the several HUNDRED martial powers in the 4e phb, there were four powers like Come and Get It which gave martial some sort of compelled action.

Four.

Totally optional powers.

That no one actually had to take.

That was the entire issue.

But here we are years later and people are still trotting out the same edition war crap from 2008. And then there’s a the claim that WotC wasn’t forced by the fandom to do anything.

 

[Lanefan]

So for it to be very little extra work for the DM, I need to accept the premise that the DM might come up with any number of a myriad of reasons on the spot to shut down my feature without even telegraphing beforehand the adversity of the situation for my character. No thank you.

When you take any given feature - or even choose any given class, for that matter - you're also taking on a varying degree of risk that what you choose might not turn out to always be the most useful and may sometimes be of no use whatsoever.

That's part of why I prefer that things like backgrounds (or secondary skills, in 1e) be randomly rolled. If nothing else, any background can be used to inform and-or assist your in-character roleplaying, which IMO is most if not all of the point of them anyway.

For example, my group just picked up two characters who recently escaped from slavery in a foreign empire; giving their players all kinds of opportunity to RP their dislike of said empire even though the current adventure has nothing to do with such.

And sometimes a background or secondary skill can be of practical use in the field e.g. a jeweller might* be better at appraising gems found in the field, or a leatherworker might be able to do some rough-and-ready patchwork to someone's ruined leather armour, or a sailor might be able to reduce the cost of a party's sea voyage by working as part of the ship's crew. That things like this can happen now and then is fine. That they must be mandated to happen, or that "might" must become "will", is not fine.

* - I say "might" because the dice will always have their say...

 

[mamba]

But here we are years later and people are still trotting out the same edition war crap from 2008. And then there’s a the claim that WotC wasn’t forced by the fandom to do anything.

poor WotC, being forced to react to market trends… they are no more forced to do this than any other company. They want to sell as many copies as possible, so they need to figure out what people want, it is that simple.

4e tanked, so they created a new edition to garner some interest again, just like they did before that with pretty much any prior edition change

I am not sure why you paint WotC as the victim here, are they more of a victim than Paizo or Ford?

 

[Scott Christian]

So for it to be very little extra work for the DM, I need to accept the premise that the DM might come up with any number of a myriad of reasons on the spot to shut down my feature without even telegraphing beforehand the adversity of the situation for my character. No thank you.

Not come up with. Please stop insinuating that all DMs do is make stuff up on the spot. The last port my players were in I had: the ships that came in and out, their destinations and where they came from, the captains, a ship log for the important ship, the dockmaster's name (and personality and motives), several NPCs that worked on the docks, the guard captain that oversaw the area, the tavern "by the docks," the owner of said tavern along with its three waitstaff, and the two competing nobles who always try to outperform each other.

It always sounds like you DM or have DMs that do no work. That it's just a game of improv. If that's true, then you are 1000% correct - the DM should never say no. But for those people that put work into the world, please show a little respect.

 

[Hussar]

poor WotC, being forced to react to market trends… they are no more forced to do this than any other company. They want to sell as many copies as possible, so they need to figure out what people want, it is that simple.

4e tanked, so they created a new edition to garner some interest again, just like they did before that with pretty much any prior edition change

I am not sure why you paint WotC as the victim here, are they more of a victim than Paizo or Ford?

4e tanked is fine. Every edition of D&D tanked eventually. Fair enough. But, the fact that you cannot even have a conversation about any of the ideas of 4e without the edition warring knives coming out is why WotC won't ever stray from the mainstream. You're saying that it's all about "selling the product". Okay as far as it goes. But, the reason they chose this path is because the fandom has been absolutely crystal clear that this is the ONLY path they can take.

Complaining about it, or painting it as a cash grab or corporate greed ignores the fact that WotC has no choice here. You want WotC to be creative? You want WotC to take risks or maybe publish books that don't get that magic number approval? Then shut down the edition warring rhetoric. Make it clear that just because someone doesn't like something that WotC published over a decade ago, it's not cool to KEEP BANGING THE DRUM. That just because something might have 4e cooties, doesn't make it a bad thing.

Until that happens. Until the fandom rolls back the edition war rhetoric and let's it go, WotC will obey the loudest voices of the fandom.

Fandom won. Congratulations. This is your prize for winning the edition wars.

 

[mamba]

Complaining about it, or painting it as a cash grab or corporate greed ignores the fact that WotC has no choice here. You want WotC to be creative? You want WotC to take risks or maybe publish books that don't get that magic number approval? Then shut down the edition warring rhetoric. Make it clear that just because someone doesn't like something that WotC published over a decade ago, it's not cool to KEEP BANGING THE DRUM. That just because something might have 4e cooties, doesn't make it a bad thing.

In doubt a few posts every once in a while on a forum register at all. If the OGL barely registered, then this is literally nothing. They want to sell as much as possible, and because of that they look closely at what is popular in the playtests. This time it was compatibility above everything else, not sure that will still be the case in 8 or 10 years when they do this again.

In either case, it was their choice to do this, they could be more experimental at the risk of losing some players. They decided not to and I cannot blame them for it, it seems to be working

 

[James Gasik]

Yes because there are other times they are simply using a good attack or effectively brought a gun to a snowball fight. We disagree and it says a lot you have been relying so much on a white room that overrepresents the commonality of these encounters in play or hides key details about the campaign.

This isn't the thread for this debate, so I'll drop it, but I'm going to say I don't really care for your tone. You've used comments like "tortured logic" and "white room" as if to say that I'm just making this up or injecting hyperbole. And that's fine, you can believe that if you want.

I started playing 3e the instant came out. I played 3.5 extensively for many years, long after the system was no longer supported. Playing a Rogue in those games was a miserable experience because of how many hoops you had to jump through just to use your primary ability in combat. You want to argue about how often those instances occurred, well no one has the data.

My point, and one that I will stick to, is I'm glad that Rogues have an ability now with less hoops to jump through. I've had this same discussion about Backstab in AD&D, where people say that Thieves used it all the time, and when I bring up all the reasons why that ability almost never worked, I get this same pushback.

Some people want to play in a game where everything is negotiable and players don't have abilities that they can rely on. That's fair, and if that's fun for them, more power to them. I've seen the downside of that, and I don't care for it. Is it fine for a player to be hamstrung sometimes? Absolutely. But when it's something that I've seen come up consistently as a problem for a long time, I'm not going to ignore it.

Ok, I think I've said all I need to.

 

[mach1.9pants]

It may have been answered already in this mega threads, but does anyone know what happens to DnD beyond, will my core books update, or is it a new purchase?

 

[Azzy]

It may have been answered already in this mega threads, but does anyone know what happens to DnD beyond, will my core books update, or is it a new purchase?

While I have no special knowledge concerning this (I'm definitely not in the know), I would assume that it will be a new purchase.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I started playing 3e the instant came out. I played 3.5 extensively for many years, long after the system was no longer supported. Playing a Rogue in those games was a miserable experience because of how many hoops you had to jump through just to use your primary ability in combat. You want to argue about how often those instances occurred, well no one has the data.

Most miserable thing: in 3.e backstab did not work in shadowy conditions. Exact the situations where you expect it to be best...
I guess many people just ignored this rule.