D&D 5E New playtest packet available.

[Kobold Avenger]

Just because someone can use detect magic at-will doesn't mean they do it all the time. Detect Magic in Pathfinder, is roughly the same a searching for loot, in my experience it's only done as often as rolling perception checks to search.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

Also I do see the advantage of having Detect Magic as part of a skill rather than a spell, even if it is at-will. It frees the player of having to use up 1 of their precious cantrip slots.

 

[Gorgoroth]

Fair enough, I concede the points you've all made and apologize for the snark in my tone (don't know what came over me). I am not a hypocrite, however, if Pathfinder allows a huge amount of tricorder-esque scanning (I mean by that, that you don't need to roll to succeed to detect whether something is magical at all, and I still maintain that that's a huge gift towards the PC side of the table), then I disagree with Pathfinder's approach too.

However, I've never seen that particular spell or cantrip used nearly so often as arcana, which is basically a swiss army knife for all things magical (traps, detections, dispelling, lore, spellcraft type checks, etc). It's just too many really good uses all rolled up into one, and probably the reason why other editions' frequency never bothered me (including pathfinder), was because the spellcasters had other cool things to do such as cast their spells, i.e. weren't limited to 1 or 2 utility spells per day and weren't spamming the red button (arcana) all the time like I saw in 4e over the years. It gets old after a while. If the first edition ten-foot-pole + listen for noise/detect traps routine was annoying, then 4e had Arcana checks ad nauseum. Again, there was just more variety of stuff to do, both in and out of combat, I found. I'm not saying let's make casters uber powerful, let's just make them have to pick and chose when to know for sure whether there is a magical effect. After playing AD&D for 20 years, it now seems like just another thing they had right before that they mucked up. Probably why there will still be more AD&D players 20 years from now than 4e ones. I just find grittiness and deadliness and difficulty is more central to the experience...and I don't want D&D to mimick the EZ life we have IRL where if you take one feat, suddenly it's like owning an iphone with google maps on it and wikipedia too. Maybe a high level wizard can do that, but you should have to earn those things...a crystal ball or crystal-ball type effect should not be easy to come by, nor common IMO.

 

[Garthanos]

Contrived...

 

[El Mahdi]

deleted

 

[Stalker0]

This is one of those things that I don't think really comes up in most games.

Sure there was the once in a while scenario back in the day when we didn't get a chance to know if something was magical because we ran out of juice. But most of the time it was commonplace to get the loot, find out if its magic. For me, streamlining those aspects of the game is a ok.

Honestly, I think the bigger debate is in magic item identification. That is a scenario where I have seen a lack of resources contribute to some interesting roleplaying and other fun times. That is one where I would like a baked in dial. Include the identify spell, but also include an option for auto identify.

 

[Garthanos]

Honestly, I think the bigger debate is in magic item identification. That is a scenario where I have seen a lack of resources contribute to some interesting roleplaying and other fun times. That is one where I would like a baked in dial. Include the identify spell, but also include an option for auto identify.

4e had a dial it was a DM perogative ... and even mentioned in the players handbook. Up to and including having to complete quests and using custom rituals.

 

[Gorgoroth]

Okay, it's obvious that AD&D is your favorite edition, and that's cool. In fact it's very cool that you are so passionate about and truly enjoy your preferred flavor of D&D. But I don't believe that passion also grants a license for someone to present opinions as fact*, disparage other people's preferred flavor of D&D, or blatantly post edition warring statements.

That was completely unnecessary...


*(Not only is there no evidence (only opinion) that AD&D will have more regular players than 4E in the future, there's absolutely no evidence that this is even the case now.)

I'm only extrapolating based on my gaming circle in my home town, who have tried both 3.0/3.5 and then 4, and PF, and have settled on either 3.5/PF or back to AD&D rather than stick to 4e, which is...let us all face the music, pretty much going bye bye.. I couldn't find a single group still playing it at my local gaming center last summer. I like 4e's combat because it plays like a videogame, since I'm a gamer at heart. I don't think it plays like D&D though, and I don't think it's a very "out there" statement to say that many others agree with this sentiment. There's nothing wrong with the technocratic / computer / mobile era being more focused on byte-sized templatable rules systems...and I don't even think that's wrong. I think 4e could have been fixed by the player base, they Wotc not held such a stranglehold and monopoly on errata and official power / class / PP / feat / magic item lists. Had the playerbase had meaningful ways to contribute to the official canon though the official tools (they could EASILY have done this...heck, I could have in a a few hours, added a way to post new feats to their system. I just wrote a shader to correct chromatic aberattion in anamorphic lenses in a 1/2 hour). What I'm saying is that it's not so much the framework of the 4e rules that sinked it, it was the Empire-esque squeezing of the fist control they wanted over a game that really belongs to us, the players. I detested the draconian way they could update their frikken builder and nuke 2 PCs builds (not even OP builds) at our table on a whim. Talk about killing off their own player base, literally. they killed more PCs with their idiotic errata that made no sense than their monster manual I monsters did. We played for three years and had one PC death due to suicide from boredom. I'd rather slice my eyeballs open with razorblades than look at another 4e tome. I will burn them in a funeral pyre this weekend and vow never to waste another tree in imaginary game rules...it's PDFs for me from now on, and if the rules suck, I'll just stick to videogames or play PF or something...it's pointless to even argue with whether 4e will be more popular in 20 years or not. who cares? I think it will, based on how quickly it took for them to come out with a new edish. otherwise why are you all reading this thread? 4e came out in 2008 and I spent thousands of dollars and man-hours on that game...ugh, what a bunch of frustration I got out of it. even now. Why should I apologize for saying so? I detest having wasted my time so....venting feels good. If that gets me banned from here, I'm sorry but only because I'm not sorry.

4vengers troll the DDNext threads and I don't bother their threads....DDN is about moving on. let's all do that.

 

[Garthanos]

So lets see come on rant about a mechanic which actually takes on a worse form (based on your own reasoning) and is smack dab in your favorite game ... and lambaste edition war crap left and right then blame others for not being all happy joy joy about your reasoning.

Not sure what you call that, but I don't call it pretty.

And I sure as blazes don't call it moving on.

 

[aike]

Whoa, barbarian is OP in low lvs.
Lot better than fighter