Is D&D (WotC) flaming out?

[ProfessorCirno]

Locate Object can be used to find items you haven't personally seen. It just finds one generalized to scale. Something rare is stolen? There you go.

Detect Thoughts does indeed work on surface thoughts. You use it while you or someone else interviews people and you pick up on their surface thoughts about the crime. Certainly someone well trained could block it out, but we're just narrowing the mystery more and more.

As for Zone of Truth, it's true you don't know if it failed, but just how high are their will saves? The DC is 16-17. Assuming a character with high wisdom and good will saves and high level, it's still a 50/50 chance to fail. And you know what happens if none of the employees says anything? You cast it again.

As for your line on cheating, guess what? That proves me right. If you have to bend and ignore the rules and cheat, the rules aren't working.

Lastly, do you really need to capitalize and bold every other word?

 

[Derren]

As always the problem is not that spells make many cliché plots hard to do or impossible. The problem is that you want to run cliché plots copied straight out of a non D&D books or movies in a world with magic in it.

 

[Beginning of the End]

(FWIW, I'm one of those guys in the "never seen the 15 minute day" club; who doesn't have problems with wizards or CoDzilla doing everything all the time, etc.)

I've seen them. It's just that they happen about half as often as the days when the spellcasters have exhausted all their spells but the party has to keep going (time limit, consequences real or imagined, still stuck in the dungeon, whatever). And then there are the other days where everybody wishes the spellcasters hadn't prepped the wrong spells.

Given that reality, I find it difficult to consider them horrific. It balances out.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

You do realize that non-casters have an expendable resource too, right?

It's called "hit points."

Wizards can repleanish their own spells. Fighters? Not so much.

Incidentally, once again, this isn't about combat.

As far as running D&D style plots, ever notice something in D&D books? How the wizards very pointedly don't cast a whole lot of magic? Yeah, even in D&D novels, D&D wizards don't work.

 

[Beginning of the End]

Locate Object can be used to find items you haven't personally seen. It just finds one generalized to scale. Something rare is stolen? There you go.

So let me see if I can sum this up:

(1) Wizards prevent you from designing a "mystery" in which a super-rare object is stolen and then hidden within 500 feet (so that it can be trivially located with a locate object spell cast by a low level wizard).

(2) Therefore, "ALL the mystery" is gone.

I'll admit that I'm just plucking out one of your examples, but they all come back to the same central problem: Yes. The typical D&D party has access to a lot of powerful forensic abilities.

So what?

It's like you're playing CSI: The RPG and your sessions go like this--

Cirno: You see a corpse with a bloody knife lying next to it.
Player: I dust it for prints. And then I check to see if the prints are listed in the FBI database.
Cirno: NOOOOO!!!! You're using your narrative powers to destroy ALL the mystery!

Speaking of which...

Again, this is narrative power.

I think the fact that you're really, really, really upset by the thought of players being allowed to have narrative power is kind of revealing about the real source of your discontent. As a GM you want to wield ultimate control over how your My Precious Encounters(TM) and poorly conceived/railroaded mystery scenarios are going to play out. You've pre-visualized your campaign and the wizards keep throwing spanners into the works.

I, on the other hand, embrace simple encounter design and permissive scenario design. So I don't care if my players have narrative power. I want them to have narrative power.

You do realize that non-casters have an expendable resource too, right?

It's called "hit points."

Wizards can repleanish their own spells. Fighters? Not so much.

And here, yet again, you're invoking some sort of bizarre reality in which PCs never cooperate with each other. I'm not saying that every party of PCs needs to benefit from perfect harmony; but I also find it difficult to consider D&D deeply flawed because it doesn't work particularly well under the completely dysfunctional style of play you suggest.

 

[Beginning of the End]

Real world example of wizards "ruining everything":

The PCs need a wish spell in order to get past a magically sealed door. They ask their patrons in the Imperial Church to procure one for them. After much wrangling, they get a message from their contact that he's secured a ring of two wishes.

Two of the PCs go to pick it up.

But their contact in the Imperial Church is actually a traitor working for a rival group that also wants to get through the doors. So the GM has concocted a plan by which the traitor will mark the ring so that it can be magically retrieved. As soon as the PCs leave his office with the ring he telepathically contacts a spellcaster who casts scry on the ring and then teleports a strike force of trolls, ogres, and goblins to "steal" the ring".

The plan is simple: There'll be a minor melee in which the goblins will grapple the ring-carrier and then they'll all teleport away. They don't actually have to pickpocket the ring, because in reality the traitor will have magically retrieved it during the chaos.

PC wizard screwjob #1: Seeing the ambush arrive, he immediately grabs his partner and casts dimension door to escape the ambush. The result is a race of short-range teleports across the length of the city as the two groups try to engage each other. The PCs eventually succeed in getting back to the inn where the other PCs were waiting.

The result is a battle royale / siege: The inn was a gathering point for other wandering adventurers, and they recruited several on-the-fly to help them defend the inn. They end up killing several bad guys, but the bad guys still succeed in stealing the ring (since it was pretty much a foolproof spell they were using to do it).

PCs are furious. They race for the magically sealed door. When they arrive, they find it hasn't been opened yet.

PC Wizard screwjob #2: A scrying spell. The ring itself has been placed in a shielded location, so they instead scry one of the goblins that was part of the ambush. They luck out: The goblin isn't under the aegis of the scry-shield.

But he's also in a completely nondescript room. So they poke him with a whispering wind spell to freak him out and send him running for his boss. This works: He runs to his boss... who is talking to another character in front of an altar decked in Imperial Church symbology. The other character is a spellcaster who detects and dispels the scrying, but the PCs have their lead.

They spend the next session tracking down the specific Imperial Church (there were 12 options within the city), laying a siege, and (eventually) retrieving the ring.

Holy crap! They completely wrecked the game!

Not really. Why? Because while the GM may have put together a clever scheme for his NPCs to attempt, he didn't invest himself into any particular outcome from that scheme. It's impossible to ruin the GM's intentions if the GM was never wedded to them in the first place.

But what about all the other PCs? Weren't they terribly bored to just be sitting around watching the spellcasters having all the fun?

Are you crazy? The rogue had a great time; she was tossed over the wizard's shoulder and carried through dimension doors while firing arrows behind them at the flying ogre that was pursuing them. All of them had a blast at the siege/battle royale. The urban druid and religious knight were the ones who investigated all the different Imperial Churches in town. And so forth.

The magic didn't "ruin" anything or "steal" other people's fun. It empowered the group and created the fun.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

I'm ignoring your example as it's one massive strawman.

So let me see if I can sum this up:

(1) Wizards prevent you from designing a "mystery" in which a super-rare object is stolen and then hidden within 500 feet (so that it can be trivially located with a locate object spell cast by a low level wizard).

(2) Therefore, "ALL the mystery" is gone.

Nope. The problem is that wizards have a huge number of tools nobody else has that allows them to tear down potential plot points.

I'll admit that I'm just plucking out one of your examples, but they all come back to the same central problem: Yes. The typical D&D party has access to a lot of powerful forensic abilities.

So what?

It's like you're playing CSI: The RPG and your sessions go like this--

Cirno: You see a corpse with a bloody knife lying next to it.
Player: I dust it for prints. And then I check to see if the prints are listed in the FBI database.
Cirno: NOOOOO!!!! You're using your narrative powers to destroy ALL the mystery!

Cute strawman bro. Of course, we're talking about D&D not BotE's Storytelling Hour, so try again.

I think the fact that you're really, really, really upset by the thought of players being allowed to have narrative power is kind of revealing about the real source of your discontent. As a GM you want to wield ultimate control over how your My Precious Encounters(TM) and poorly conceived/railroaded mystery scenarios are going to play out. You've pre-visualized your campaign and the wizards keep throwing spanners into the works.

I, on the other hand, embrace simple encounter design and permissive scenario design. So I don't care if my players have narrative power. I want them to have narrative power.

Yes, I, who adore the FATE system which open faced gives players full narrative control, hate it when players take control!

Shut the hell up about "precious encounters," as that's not the case.

Maybe my problem is that the system gives narrative control to some and not others? Or maybe you could stop reading into what you want other people to say and you could try reading the actual posts?

And here, yet again, you're invoking some sort of bizarre reality in which PCs never cooperate with each other. I'm not saying that every party of PCs needs to benefit from perfect harmony; but I also find it difficult to consider D&D deeply flawed because it doesn't work particularly well under the completely dysfunctional style of play you suggest.

What does this in any way have to do with my post? Like, at all?

In short, all your arguments are a mix of strawmen examples, you creating words to shove into my mouth, inventing identities for me wholecloth, or just making up gibberish.

 

[Beginning of the End]

I'm ignoring your example

You ignoring what other people write is pretty par for the course.

Maybe my problem is that the system gives narrative control to some and not others? Or maybe you could stop reading into what you want other people to say and you could try reading the actual posts?

The fact that you believe magic is the only form of narrative control wielded in D&D is indicative of nothing but your personal failures and biases.

End of (Sub-)Thread.

 

[Keefe the Thief]

"Personal failures"? It seems it's not Wotc which is flaming out.

 

[Aberzanzorax]

The Original Post

I was surfing Amazon today looking for a way to burn up a new gift card. I haven't bought any new D&D books in a year or so, and figured there would be some great and intriguing new products out there. Much to my disappointment, it seems like the majority of recent WotC publications -- Dark Sun aside -- are essentially repackagings of existing material. Looking ahead, the only item in the next year's worth of projected publications that caught my eye as interesting/original is the Neverwinter Campaign Setting.

That may just be my perception, of course, but it did lead to this question: is WotC (and by extension, D&D itself) flaming out? We're three years into the current edition, and if we're already reaching the point where much of the official publication is repackaging/reimagining rather than truly original exciting material, I don't think it bodes well. Particularly as it seems the cycle has accelerated compared to the flame out/reboot times of the prior couple of edition cycles. (Note: this is not intended to be and edition war comment as I'm not comparing the edition content but rather the publishing cycles).

Or have I just become an old(er) grognard?

This is the first post of the thread. ^


Not sure how it got hijacked to become "The Angel Summoner and the BMX Bandit."



To get back on topic, I (sorta) like 4e, and may eventually play it a bit more, but I've been out of the loop, and I feel as though, if and when I get back into it, I'm going to have to do some real research regarding Essentials, Regular 4e, The Red Box, and the constantly vaccilating quality of D&DI (including what products, like VTT are even part of it as well as quantity and quality of the articles for the present and the likely future).

I see, if not "flaming out", WotC as "diversifying" the game of 4e...into dubiously compatible subgames. I wonder if this further fractures the base/audience who play 4e?

I've read threads in the 4e forums like "I managed to avoid essentials, until now" where someone doesn't want essentials in his pure 4e game.

So I wonder, for existing players as well as new ones, "What goes with what? Where does one start? What game does the D&DI support?"