D&D 5E Weighing in on 5e

[JoeGKushner]

But... 4e defaults to point buy and it was a fairly popular method in 3e too.

It seems you rally against unbalanced factors on one hand but encourage random, which can lead to unbalanced factors, on another.

 

[CroBob]

But... 4e defaults to point buy and it was a fairly popular method in 3e too.

It seems you rally against unbalanced factors on one hand but encourage random, which can lead to unbalanced factors, on another.

I don't encourage it. Personally, I find it unbalanced. However, I know people who really like to roll their stats.

 

[Saracenus]

When 5e rolls out many years from now this is how I envision folks talking about it on the internet...

It will be one minute later that someone picks up a bone and starts clubbing the others.

Cheers,

 

[Gort]

That's definitely how older editions worked, I simply thought it was a bad part of the game, not an "essential" part of it. If you remove the bad things, but leave the good things, then it qualifies as a new edition, so long as nothing has been pointlessly changed. The stats, however, do not need to be changed. Sure, mechanically, the stats are already simply whatever the modifiers are, effectively, yet you still get increases by one once in a while, and a conversion would make it a half instead of a whole number. Pointless? Perhaps, but it's also not at all harmful or bad to the game, and it's an essential description for stats, and it allows stat generation through the traditional method of rolling d6s.

The current way of describing stats IS harmful to the game. I DM for a bunch of new players, and while, "Your modifier is your stat minus ten halved rounded down" might seem harmless nostalgia to you, it makes no sense to them at all.

This sacred cow needs to die. I'm not saying it's a huge deal, it's just that getting rid of needless complexity is very worthwhile if you want to attract new players to the game.

Also, your point about "but you would end up with half modifiers" is a bit of a moot point, as we're talking a new edition here. How about you get +1 modifier to two stats every EIGHT levels instead of +1 to the stat every four? Problem solved, and I'm not even a game designer, who would doubtless spend more time on the problem and come up with a more elegant solution.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The current way of describing stats IS harmful to the game. I DM for a bunch of new players, and while, "Your modifier is your stat minus ten halved rounded down" might seem harmless nostalgia to you, it makes no sense to them at all.

This sacred cow needs to die. I'm not saying it's a huge deal, it's just that getting rid of needless complexity is very worthwhile if you want to attract new players to the game.

Also, your point about "but you would end up with half modifiers" is a bit of a moot point, as we're talking a new edition here. How about you get +1 modifier to two stats every EIGHT levels instead of +1 to the stat every four? Problem solved, and I'm not even a game designer, who would doubtless spend more time on the problem and come up with a more elegant solution.

Eh, maybe. It is a balancing act between slight added complexity and sticking with a tradition that a large number of existing players will appreciate.

 

[Kzach]

Eh, maybe. It is a balancing act between slight added complexity and sticking with a tradition that a large number of existing players will appreciate.

I hate the whole concept of being a traditionalist. Summed up, their arguments are essentially, "Let's keep things they way they've always been... because... well, just because!"

If something is to be improved, it needs to progress. If people don't like that, then they have four previous editions to cling to and sing lullabies at night.

I've put together literally somewhere around a hundred or so groups in the last twenty-three years of playing D&D and I started with AD&D 1e and 2e as a mish-mash, without even caring that they were two different systems. And one of the things I found, before 3e was even announced, was that EVERY group I played with or DM'd for had pages upon pages of house rules. What's more, those house rules were often very similar because everyone essentially had the same basic understanding of the inherent problems in the system that needed to be addressed and through either some form of collective unconscious, or just the rational application of logical conclusions, came up with roughly the same answers.

And yet despite this, the very same people who constantly tinkered with 1e/2e to fill in all the holes and problems that 3e tried to fix, denigrated 3e for trying to fix them and claimed 1e/2e was and always will be superior because... well... just because!

 

[KarinsDad]

If something is to be improved, it needs to progress. If people don't like that, then they have four previous editions to cling to and sing lullabies at night.

This assumes that a change is an improvement.

With regard to the 3-18 ability scores, there are groups where the players enjoy rolling 4D6, taking the best 3, and gaining their ability scores.

This "improvement" of removing this sacred cow wouldn't be progress to those groups.

I opine that most of the people who want to change game elements wouldn't necessarily agree on the changes that other people want. The best solution is for WotC to talk with the D&D gaming community, come up with the best 5E that they can (hopefully 5+ years down the road), and for people to still add house rules as necessary.

But the ideas for improvement posted here won't be for everyone and are kind of short sighted in that they don't take into account the desires of large segments of other D&D gamers. Hopefully, WotC will do a worthwhile analysis and come up with better ideas than just a handful of people here can come up with.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I hate the whole concept of being a traditionalist. Summed up, their arguments are essentially, "Let's keep things they way they've always been... because... well, just because!"

If something is to be improved, it needs to progress. If people don't like that, then they have four previous editions to cling to and sing lullabies at night.

I've put together literally somewhere around a hundred or so groups in the last twenty-three years of playing D&D and I started with AD&D 1e and 2e as a mish-mash, without even caring that they were two different systems. And one of the things I found, before 3e was even announced, was that EVERY group I played with or DM'd for had pages upon pages of house rules. What's more, those house rules were often very similar because everyone essentially had the same basic understanding of the inherent problems in the system that needed to be addressed and through either some form of collective unconscious, or just the rational application of logical conclusions, came up with roughly the same answers.

And yet despite this, the very same people who constantly tinkered with 1e/2e to fill in all the holes and problems that 3e tried to fix, denigrated 3e for trying to fix them and claimed 1e/2e was and always will be superior because... well... just because!

Well, I played OD&D, 1e, and 2e very extensively, and some other versions less so. To be totally honest we never used house rules at all in AD&D. I'm sure we ignored a few things and certainly used the system in a way that suited us, and now and then used unofficial stuff. My issues with 3.x were purely based on analysis of the system. It had nothing to do with grognardism. In fact I was rather sorely disappointed that 2e didn't go much further and really clean up the game. 3e DID try to fix things that were issues in AD&D, and sometimes succeeded. It just broke a lot more than it fixed IMHO. Given that I have no problem with 4e in terms of "it changed stuff" I figure I'm relatively free of fond nostalgia based biases.

As for 3-18 ability scores I'll just say this. From day one back in 1975 when I first rolled up a PC and played the game your capabilities were largely defined by math attached to those ability scores. Yes, it is tradition, but it is also simply a way of thinking about characters and understanding the game at a low level. You can hate me for sticking to what works for me, but believe me, it works for me. I SUSPECT, though I certainly can't prove it, that this is also the case with a lot of us older players. Chalk it up to loss of mental flexibility if you wish. Whatever the reason I'd feel less comfortable with a different system for scaling ability scores. It may not be entirely logical, but there it is.

Finally I'll say that the oddest things will touch people off about a game design. As trivial as switching to bonuses might be in a mechanical sense I suspect, but again can't prove, that this change would set off a fairly significant negative reaction in a lot of players. Again, it is not logical, but again there it is. Again you can hate them for that, but WotC could really care less. If leaving ability scores as-is makes the game easier for the target market to digest, then that's likely what they'll do. You can always leave those spaces blank on your character sheet, it will make basically no difference in play.

 

[CroBob]

The current way of describing stats IS harmful to the game. I DM for a bunch of new players, and while, "Your modifier is your stat minus ten halved rounded down" might seem harmless nostalgia to you, it makes no sense to them at all.

The only reason it makes no sense is because your actual stat isn't used anywhere, only the modifier. In older editions, your actual stat was used in some situations. I understand how it may throw off new players, but you have to consider how many people consider it a staple of the game and may stop playing, even if their removal is a purely superficial modification. You saw what happened with 4th edition, where people refused to move to it because it was simply too different from older editions.

This sacred cow needs to die. I'm not saying it's a huge deal, it's just that getting rid of needless complexity is very worthwhile if you want to attract new players to the game.

It only needs to die if you care only for stream-lining the system, ignoring the biases of current customers who are not wholly rational people. If you care about keeping current customers, keep aspects of the game that they care about, that they consider staples of the game, like the stat system. This is no big deal, simply find a way to use the actual stat in game (like rolling your stat or lower for a stat check (to break down a door), for example). If you don't care about keeping current customers, and would rather streamline everything, then by all means, don't do that thing I just said.

Also, your point about "but you would end up with half modifiers" is a bit of a moot point, as we're talking a new edition here. How about you get +1 modifier to two stats every EIGHT levels instead of +1 to the stat every four? Problem solved, and I'm not even a game designer, who would doubtless spend more time on the problem and come up with a more elegant solution.

You could also just set up the system to account for higher bonuses with levels, or actually use half-points, and your stat bonus (stat) would be the prerequisite for feats instead of your stat as it currently is. I'm not saying it's mechanically sound to keep it, I'm saying that it's a D&D staple, and that a newer e3dition of the game should use the defining features of the game and work with them, not cut them out, unless you don't care about your unreasonable customers who you'd lose for the move.

 

[Nichwee]

Personally I think stats shoudl continue to be as they are.
The main reason I think this is twofold.
1) While defining all stats from an arbitrary average is fine, it still feels wrong to say the average human has zero constitution (str, dex, int, wis or cha). An average person still has some level of strength or some such and to say it is zero feel silly.
2) You lose the idea of Zero as a lower cap to a stat. This is relevent to spells that may reduce stats (which have existed in a lot of editions of D&D so far) and it gives you an understanding on what is too low to be viable. This idea of Int 0 (mod -5) = no mind at all for example halps place an idiot on the scale from "No Mind" through "Average" to "Genius". Now you can go with the idea that a -5 mod is the absolute lower limit (as that is currently the mod at Stat 0) but it feels arbitrary and disjointed, while saying well "You can't have a negative strength can you?" makes sense.

Having a stat value and a mod lets you put these simple facts into their real world version while being able to easily define relative compotence:
1) Zero is the obvious and practical lower limit to a stat, and you can give a logical reason why this will be.
2) A zero in a stat mod simply defines the average person's ability at some thing, so the maths gives a modification of probability from the norm. i.e. An average man can perform this "feat of strength" 50% of the time, and your stat mod gives a direct indication of the change in probability for you to do the same feat.
3) Having an obvious lower limit makes it easier to trigger effects or conditions based on this limit without it being a jarring effect when observed by players. "My Int has been reduced to zero! Coma time." vs "So my Int is -5 now, what's the big deal? It was always shoddy and it didn't stop me kicking butt before."