Given what I've read in this thread, I'm glad NONE of us are. I've seen lots it good ideas, but I've seen just as many that make me cringe. It's a good thing that D&D's design process is a group effort.
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D&D 5E What needs to be fixed in 5E?
- Thread starter KarinsDad
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Given what I've read in this thread, I'm glad NONE of us are. I've seen lots it good ideas, but I've seen just as many that make me cringe. It's a good thing that D&D's design process is a group effort.
Nemesis Destiny
Adventurer
I'm not trying to start a flamewar, but I really don't think you do, since that sentence contradicts itself.
So if a player disagrees with your flavour choices, they're somehow spoiled and entitled?
Because that's the part I disagree with in what you're saying. Why shouldn't there be arcane healing? Why shouldn't you be able to use unconventional stats to attack? Why do preferences that differ from yours make a player entitled? A lot of your complaints were purely flavour choices or stated preferences.
The game should be designed such that either a) that doesn't matter at all, or b) you can run it that way if you want, but a different way if you don't want to (as a DM).
I see nothing wrong with a game whose framework can accommodate many styles of play, from gritty Sword & Sorcery to gonzo WoW-style stuff. Options, man, options.
Fanaelialae
Legend
There are some things I agree with in your post, and some things I don't.
I did wish to address this, however.
I don't think that combat balance and narrative are necessarily as opposed as you seem to believe. I think it's merely a matter of how you approach the issue.
Now, 4e was designed to be a high fantasy game, so I can't blame the designers for not creating an Everyman class (your classic Innkeeper/Village Lad who sets out for a life of adventure). That said, I think there's design space for it.
First, let's examine the literary tropes of the everyman hero. Some of these are bumbling yet effective in their early adventures. One example might be the barmaid from the Dragonlance Chronicles. Useless with a sword, yet oddly effective with a frying pan. Others run for cover when danger rears its head like Steven Darige (Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone), a sage who's effectively useless in battle. He does contribute to the story, but much of the time it's in a more NPC-style research capacity.
The first example has a place in virtually any game. The character's powers are simply flavored as bumbling yet lucky (almost a faux drunken master). At later levels you can offer this everyman a choice between bumbling powers (a perpetual everyman) and regular powers (he's finally growing into his own as an adventurer). You can alternately give this type (accidental) leadership powers. Like an immediate interrupt that, when bloodied, allows the everyman to pull an ally adjacent to defend him and gives that ally a free attack. The everyman can be made quite incompetent while still allowing the player to meaningfully affect the game both in and out of combat.
The second example is one that I don't believe is well suited to a game like D&D. Even in early editions, there were some combats (like dragon encounters) that could be quite long in real time. Aside from perhaps the 3.x NPC classes (which weren't intended for player use) there has never been a combat-useless class in D&D (at least to my knowledge). A 1e rogue might have been better served hanging back and firing a bow, but he was still contributing! Just to a lesser degree than the fighter.
I agree that creating space to play everyman characters is a worthy goal. However, I do think that some limits need to be set. I don't believe creating a class that is better off hiding until combat is over is a good idea. Not for D&D, anyway.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
Yeah, I'm not especially buying it. Teleport being 'more magical and thus must be higher level' than fly is simply a conceit. There's IMHO very little difference in how 'non-physical' a flying humanoid is than a teleporting one. Both situations substantially violate the known laws of physics, and there aren't physical laws that are 'more important' than other ones. You take the whole thing kit-n-kaboodle or none of it.
Game mechanically the type of tactical short-range teleportation allowed at low levels IS tactically less disruptive than full-on flight. Teleportation doesn't let you hover over the battlefield choosing who and when to engage, and how, flight does. In point of fact you CAN get forms of flight or other effectively similar things at low levels. They have roughly the same mechanical tactical import as low end teleportation does. You can access terrain that is hard to get to, quickly escape from a bad situation, or bypass some enemy to get to another one, etc.
The same thing goes for warlords having healing powers. The gods are the BEST way to access healing mechanics. The cleric has healing potential warlords only dream of (or MC into another leader class to get, usually cleric). There are just alternatives for them that work pretty well and fit with their concept fluff-wise. The only issue here is one person's conceptions of how the game should be, not any consideration based on game design.
As for the general commentary on 4e design... I think what you have to understand is game design isn't some simple process. It is particularly tricky when dealing with a game like D&D that has over the years built up a large weight of previous precedent and has had almost every imaginable sort of material added to it at one point or another.
When you design a game it is VERY difficult (far more than you imagine) to bring all the various possible elements together perfectly so that they both work in a game sense perfectly and provide people with all the options they want, and at the same time thematically fit together in a reasonable way. It is especially difficult to do that in such a way that the result plays with a certain feel and provides the type of game people want. You really don't know how all that is going to fall out until you release a game. You could playtest for 100 years and once you reach a certain point there's just not that much more value in it.
I think if you look at 4e you will find they DID provide a pretty systematic concept of which things should and shouldn't be doable at different levels, within specific roles and power sources, etc. I think those guidelines were developed pretty early on in the design process. OTOH when it comes to adding material it is very hard to balance all the different competing considerations and hit it perfectly every time.
Clearly there are certain things like Twin Strike that would probably be done differently with 20/20 hindsight. That doesn't mean they were clearly and obviously flawed from day one. Internal playtesting is also a funny thing. All the people in a given community of gamers may well play in similar ways and do similar things. They establish a culture. Even when you go out to some people outside to playtest that A) usually only happens after most things are fairly set, and B) often the people you recruit end up sharing your approach. Then when your game hits the street you suddenly find out that there's some, in retrospect, fairly obvious loophole or flaw that people out in the field home right in on.
Other subtle things can happen too. 99% of the design of a game has to be complete by the time you get to a lot of the detailed elements, like say feats, powers, monsters, and items in 4e. Each individual item etc is fine in isolation, and the few that were used as test cases during development probably provide an overall feel to the game, and power level, balance, etc that seems right to the developers. Then you farm out all the 1000's of follow-on variations of those things you need, and the people writing them up can stick right to your guidelines, but yet the way they all tend to work and the way the editors tend to edit things, etc can lead to a collectively different result than what you intended. So for instance the bulk of MM1 monsters can feel like underpowered punching bags, yet in development the specific monsters that were used as test cases worked perfectly well. It is just that the people coming in to do the grunt work on that stuff tended to see it differently, maybe because your guidelines didn't quite capture what you wanted, or misrepresented it slightly in some subtle way. Perhaps the monster authoring guidelines for example slightly overemphasized insuring that monsters weren't 'swingy' and able to down characters with a single lucky shot in round 1. So the people authoring the monsters tended to undershoot, not being completely familiar with exactly what would make a perfect monster. No one monster falls drastically outside the damage guidelines but collectively they're just generally not offensively powerful enough.
You have to remember too that there's a really long pipeline of content. Stuff usually takes a year or so to go from project approval to delivery. MM2 is probably a perfect example. Once MM1 was out there and people were playing with it, it rapidly becomes clear that monsters should on average do more damage. By that time MM2 is practically finished. Maybe some superficial corrections get made, like MM2 tweaks solos and elites a bit, but mostly the issue is already built-in, and making a radical change requires another 6 months of R&D to get right, so it isn't until MM3 that we really see monsters that are dead on, and it isn't until MME that we see items being dead on, etc.
Game mechanically the type of tactical short-range teleportation allowed at low levels IS tactically less disruptive than full-on flight. Teleportation doesn't let you hover over the battlefield choosing who and when to engage, and how, flight does. In point of fact you CAN get forms of flight or other effectively similar things at low levels. They have roughly the same mechanical tactical import as low end teleportation does. You can access terrain that is hard to get to, quickly escape from a bad situation, or bypass some enemy to get to another one, etc.
The same thing goes for warlords having healing powers. The gods are the BEST way to access healing mechanics. The cleric has healing potential warlords only dream of (or MC into another leader class to get, usually cleric). There are just alternatives for them that work pretty well and fit with their concept fluff-wise. The only issue here is one person's conceptions of how the game should be, not any consideration based on game design.
As for the general commentary on 4e design... I think what you have to understand is game design isn't some simple process. It is particularly tricky when dealing with a game like D&D that has over the years built up a large weight of previous precedent and has had almost every imaginable sort of material added to it at one point or another.
When you design a game it is VERY difficult (far more than you imagine) to bring all the various possible elements together perfectly so that they both work in a game sense perfectly and provide people with all the options they want, and at the same time thematically fit together in a reasonable way. It is especially difficult to do that in such a way that the result plays with a certain feel and provides the type of game people want. You really don't know how all that is going to fall out until you release a game. You could playtest for 100 years and once you reach a certain point there's just not that much more value in it.
I think if you look at 4e you will find they DID provide a pretty systematic concept of which things should and shouldn't be doable at different levels, within specific roles and power sources, etc. I think those guidelines were developed pretty early on in the design process. OTOH when it comes to adding material it is very hard to balance all the different competing considerations and hit it perfectly every time.
Clearly there are certain things like Twin Strike that would probably be done differently with 20/20 hindsight. That doesn't mean they were clearly and obviously flawed from day one. Internal playtesting is also a funny thing. All the people in a given community of gamers may well play in similar ways and do similar things. They establish a culture. Even when you go out to some people outside to playtest that A) usually only happens after most things are fairly set, and B) often the people you recruit end up sharing your approach. Then when your game hits the street you suddenly find out that there's some, in retrospect, fairly obvious loophole or flaw that people out in the field home right in on.
Other subtle things can happen too. 99% of the design of a game has to be complete by the time you get to a lot of the detailed elements, like say feats, powers, monsters, and items in 4e. Each individual item etc is fine in isolation, and the few that were used as test cases during development probably provide an overall feel to the game, and power level, balance, etc that seems right to the developers. Then you farm out all the 1000's of follow-on variations of those things you need, and the people writing them up can stick right to your guidelines, but yet the way they all tend to work and the way the editors tend to edit things, etc can lead to a collectively different result than what you intended. So for instance the bulk of MM1 monsters can feel like underpowered punching bags, yet in development the specific monsters that were used as test cases worked perfectly well. It is just that the people coming in to do the grunt work on that stuff tended to see it differently, maybe because your guidelines didn't quite capture what you wanted, or misrepresented it slightly in some subtle way. Perhaps the monster authoring guidelines for example slightly overemphasized insuring that monsters weren't 'swingy' and able to down characters with a single lucky shot in round 1. So the people authoring the monsters tended to undershoot, not being completely familiar with exactly what would make a perfect monster. No one monster falls drastically outside the damage guidelines but collectively they're just generally not offensively powerful enough.
You have to remember too that there's a really long pipeline of content. Stuff usually takes a year or so to go from project approval to delivery. MM2 is probably a perfect example. Once MM1 was out there and people were playing with it, it rapidly becomes clear that monsters should on average do more damage. By that time MM2 is practically finished. Maybe some superficial corrections get made, like MM2 tweaks solos and elites a bit, but mostly the issue is already built-in, and making a radical change requires another 6 months of R&D to get right, so it isn't until MM3 that we really see monsters that are dead on, and it isn't until MME that we see items being dead on, etc.
Nemesis Destiny
Adventurer
I'd XP the Mad Arab if I could, but alas...
There are limits. IMO. Obviously, YMMV.
For example, I don't want a Stealth skill that uses Cha. It's illogical.
Or, an Endurance skill that uses Int.
Or, an Athletics skill that uses Wis.
Or, a History skill that uses Con.
Just like I don't want a sword attack that uses Cha. It's illogical.
When the definition of Str is "strength measures your character’s physical power", I want powers and skills and abilities that are physical power in nature to be based on strength.
Ditto for the rest of the abilities scores.
Otherwise, we should get rid of the Martial Power source completely and have different types of Martial Magic Power sources.
These really aren't flavor choices.
And btw, the reason I think there shouldn't be Arcane healing is because of what Arcane magic has meant in D&D for nearly 4 decades. Except for a few minor side spells/powers and such, Arcane healing is pretty darn rare and corner case (until 4E and to a lot lesser extent, 3E Bards). I wouldn't really mind it if the designers made Arcane healing a Tier 3 or even a Tier 2 ability for a few select classes, but it should never be a Tier 1 ability. The class role of the class shouldn't dictate the strengths of the power source (since class role shouldn't exist).
Plus, Arcane magic can do healing differently. It can hand out temporary hit points or damage resistance. The magic protects the PC before damage occurs instead of knitting bones afterwards.
I am ok with a tiny amount of Arcane healing, but what happens is that once one opens the door a tiny bit, it gets opened more and more until eventually, we get the Bard singing a silly song and wounds magically knit. The Bard does this, but it is impossible for the Wizard or the Warlock or the Sorcerer, even though they all use the same power source. The magic from the same power source doesn't work the same for all of the classes using that power source.
That's a bit backwards to me.
To me, any PC in the same power source should have the ability to use similar powers to varying degrees. If teleporting is part of the Arcane shtick, all arcane classes should eventually be able to do it.
If healing is part of the Primal shtick, all primal classes should eventually be able to do it.
If channeling the radiant power of a god is part of the Divine shtick, all divine classes should eventually be able to do it.
Power source based, not role based. Role is artificial and game mechanics driven. Power source is plausibly driven and not mechanically driven.
When role is used, people have to then come up with the most convoluted rationals to describe why such and such class can do such and such ability. When class/power source is used, it just makes sense for the most part to most people.
Segregating abilities by power source controls them as part of design. Segregating them by role forces a lot of weird and flaky things into the game. Class powers based on roles are bad. Class powers based on power sources are better because they make better narrative sense.
It makes sense that the Paladin can turn undead. It makes less sense that the Rogue can turn undead (not that 4E has crossed that line).
And when it comes down to it, all game elements should make narrative sense to a majority of players. When it doesn't, that's when people stop playing the game. A significant percentage of players that did not migrate to 4E did so because many game elements stopped making narrative sense.
Player 1: "What do you mean that the Bard can heal right out of the box at level one multiple times per encounter, but my Druid cannot heal until level 16 as a Daily? That's not D&D."
By changing the role of the Druid, the 4E designers took away a very significant class feature and they handed it to the Bard who had it in a more minor way. They significantly altered both of those classes. Bards went from being jacks of all trades (including a small amount of healing) in 3E to major healers in 4E.
That's not a flavor change.
Roles are lame at the class level, they are good at the power level. The gaming community has been convinced that roles are a good concept at the class level for three years now. People should take a step back from roles and see where they really belong.
If I as a player need to do a lot of damage to a foe, I pull out one of my striker powers. My striker power might not be as powerful as a Rogue striker power, but it's still a solid damaging single target power. The Rogue does it with a weapon. As a Psion, I do it with my mind. A Wizard does it with arcane force or elemental power.
That's where the freedom should be that you are talking about. Every class should be able to do a bit of a niche of every role, but they should do it based on which powers they pick. Not solely on which class they pick.
But that doesn't mean that every class should be able to do every game mystical capability like teleport, heal, fly, or go invisible.
And Leader does not mean healing. It means helping out other PCs. That's game mechanics driven in 4E.
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AbdulAlhazred
Legend
I agree, but I would go on to say that 4e provides more room for this type of character than either of you is giving it credit for. While it might be fairly difficult to make a striker that convincingly pulls off the bumbling 'drunken master' type of shtick for an extended period of levels you can certainly do a pretty credible job of it with a leader or controller. There are certainly several builds like the lazy warlord that suite this trope fairly well. You can build a bard that is reasonably combat-challenged too, yet still quite effective in combat and even more effective in other situations.
Fundamentally though I agree with the concept that every character being able to equally contribute in virtually any situation can be taken too far. IMHO it is perfectly OK if a given character does next to squat in a diplomatic negotiation scene and another doesn't do squat in an infiltration scene. Unless the DM is simply incapable of constructing the adventure in such a way as to provide plenty of variety and pacing that is suitable to not back benching a player for hours on end 4e seems to be at a pretty good spot there. It envisages the PCs dealing with a constantly changing set of circumstances where each player will get their moment on a regular basis, and if the game for whatever reason emphasizes one type of play over another there's no class that can't adapt and pick up a few resources that are likely to be useful in that style of play. That's what feats and skill powers that do things like allow attribute substitution or skill substitution are for. That's what MCing and skill training are for. Sure, you give up something and in many games those options don't need to be used, but they're there and work well when they are needed, or when a player has a character concept that doesn't QUITE fit exactly within a specific class.
Do you not see a major game versatility difference between being able to teleport out of a grab and not being able to fly out of a grab, or teleporting anywhere, but taking Opportunity Attacks with a fly?
Fly requires moving into every square in between. Fly does not negate hazards and is unable to get past certain types of barriers. Teleport does negate these. The game mechanics advantage of one is much greater than the other, even with the line of sight limitation of Teleport.
The mobility options with Teleport are huge compared to any other movement ability in the game system except possibly Burrow.
And actually, flying violates the laws of physics a lot less then teleporting. All kinds of creatures fly. None known to science teleport. Flying is giving the abilities that creatures already possess to PCs, just like Water Breathing would.
There's a very valid reason that Gygax made Dimension Door and Teleport higher level spells.
There are some very valid reasons why certain game effects are considered both from a mechanical and a flavor reason to be more powerful. Saying that neither effect can be done via the laws of physics and hence, both are equally as versatile and powerful is not quite kosher.
Nemesis Destiny
Adventurer
Again, on some of your points I agree, i.e. skills. Others, i.e. attacks, not so much. Attacks, like damage, in this game are abstract, and always have been. In saying that these things have to make logical sense all the time is an attempt to de-abstract them, and in my opinion, purely for flavour reasons.
People can rationalize attacking physically with *some* non-physical stats in a way that I find very believable. Sometimes, the game mechanics even does it for me, i.e. by power source. Likewise, I find some of the other stat choices to strain MY sense of disbelief, (Clerics use Wis for powers darrived from faith in their god, but to me Wis =/= faith; more like Cha) but I get that it has more to do with my interpretation of things than any kind of bogus simulation of imagined "reality." Not everyone will agree, and fine, but I see no reason to disallow other interpretations from the game.
Anyway, I just wanted to point out that any theoretical 5e, if it doesn't want to further split the market, needs to be inclusive of many different playstyles. The things you were suggesting (demanding? speaking of entitlement) ran contrary to that goal. Not to put too fine a point on it, but your tone is very dismissive of any sort of disagreement with the style and flavour choices you make (and I still maintain that that is all they are for the most part). That is one of the major mistakes made in the introduction of 4e and I don't think we need to see such things repeated.
Suffice to say that as usual, we do not agree, nor are we likely to ever see eye-to-eye on this, so I'll leave it at that. Happy gaming.
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KidSnide
Adventurer
I think there were a number of good ideas in your post, but I think this is taking things in the wrong direction. I think 5e should have room for an "adventuring with non-adventurers" / "classes without roles" supplement that provides some sort of basis for having blacksmiths and academics as PCs. (Level 0 characters would also fit in there.)
However, from a core rules perspective, I think 4e made a tremendous advance by ensuring that each PC could meaningfully participate in combat. I'd like to see 5e make a similar advance in certain types of the most common non-combat encounters (namely: chases, infiltrations, negotiations, exploration and journeys).
That all having been said, I agree that 5e needs to tie the mechanics closer to the narrative world. However, I tend to think that creating more narratively-directed mechanics is in the details of class and power design than it is in the sort of broad-based design structures you suggest.
To take a couple examples, I really like the idea that there can be martial (or arcane) sources of healing. I don't want to see that go away, but I agree that the current healing surge mechanic has a weird narrative brake-down when Inspiring Word is used to revive someone who is unconscious and at risk of bleeding out. Likewise, the pre-errata Come and Get It may have gone a little too far, but I wouldn't wipe out the idea of Martial Will attacks. Positioning Strike always seemed narratively reasonable to me.
Likewise, I think 5e would be improved with a little more thought given to the variation in narrative techniques. For example, I think the DMG needs some discussion of how to narrate combat and how variations in that technique generate different a different tone in the campaign. For example, if every "hit" is a solid hit instead of an experienced dodge that turns an otherwise lethal strike into a bruising glance, then high level characters will end up absorbing heroically (or comically) large amounts of unrealistic physical injury. In the same vein (as it were), I think 5e should have some optional lasting injury rules for more realistic campaigns.
-KS
