D&D 5E D&D Next Design Goals (Article)

[howandwhy99]

However, our standard goal is to remove minimum group sizes, allow for a complete adventure in one hour of play, and satisfying campaigns in 50 hours of play.

I'm guessing 3 persons minimum or we're going to see 1-on-1 games again.

What's really interesting to me is what their working definitions for Adventure and Campaign are.

& will we ever learn their determination of what the key elements of D&D are?

 

[pemerton]

descending AC going to -10 never made sense. That was part of my very first post in this thread. The very non-intuitiveness of that system took it off the table in our many and varied houseruling discussions.

A lot of system balance properties in 1e were non-intuitive and undocumented

Sure. But that's a property of lookup matrices

I played AD&D with the lookup matrices, and I never assumed that -10 was as low as you could go. The table was, after all, pretty easy to extrapolate!

Can you give me an example?

Besides some of those given, one has come up on another thread in this forum: falling damage. It seems many players want falling (and perhaps also two dozen archers at point blank rnage) to be scary and dangerous, even to high level PCs, but the maths - in this case, the mechanics governing the measure of damage - don't produce that outcome.

 

[am181d]

But THAC0 really is unneccesary convoluted. Making it simple addition is much easier.

THAC0 is only convoluted in retrospect. THAC0 was a huge improvement over the mess that was 1st edition. (Though I expect there are folks who will say "1st edition was a huge improvement over Basic." That's just the way those things go.)

 

[howandwhy99]

I'm not seeing a lot of 4e hate (though I'm not checking all of the boards out there), but I think I am seeing a lot more outright wooing of pre-4e fans. And I think that makes sense. That's the segment of D&D players they have to target most heavily with positive marketing efforts if they want it back.

Yeah, I think they might be best served by a multi-attack action against this hydra. We want Jeff Dee, Easley, Lockwood, and Wayne Reynolds in the books, and that's only to satisfy past generations.

No group is going to be happily left out of any piece of a D&D geared towards reunification, even the advertising blitz.

 

[Steely_Dan]

We want Jeff Dee

His art, especially in the 1st Ed Deities & Demigods (that Melnibonean chapter blew me away), really sucked me in.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

The comment made by one of the D&DN designers that seemed closest to me to 4E bashing was "skill challeges need to die in a fire."

Are you sure this has come from one of the D&DN designers? I cannot find the source of this quote and would be saddened if indeed it came directly from one of the designers.

Personally, I have not seen any 4e bashing from the designers and I read pretty much everything they are putting out. However, they have not exactly been gushing with 4e praise and some of their preliminary design decisions would seem to be reversing some of the "advancements" 4e made. This really should not be equated as 4e hate though.

I've seen a lot of angst from a section of RPG.Net posters and occasionally it spills over here too. Most of this centres around Monte and his supposed lack of understanding of 4e. To such posters I would suggest waiting until the Alpha rules are out. One thing I DO know about Monte is his love and knowledge of Dungeons & Dragons, his knowledge of the design processes that go into making a new edition as well as his amazing capacity as a DM. I figure as long as he and his team get the core right, the optional add-ons should cater to those players who really wish to focus on a particular style of play from their favourite edition. I certainly don't see any point in death-riding the designers and every perceived mistake or error that they appear to be making.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[Mika]

The "die in a fire" quote was from Robert Schwalb. The full quote, from a seminar at DDXP, is as follows:

"Rob: (jokingly) I really want skill challenges to die in a fire. The plan was great for those, but I always felt it subtracted too much from the narrative. I think we can do complex skill checks within the narative and provide a robust amount of information to help the DM just weave them into the story."

Make of that quote what you will.

 

[Andor]

I can't imagine how you could have some characters with healing surges and others without healing surges at the same table. This is a daily resource used to throttle how much a character can do in a day. If one person has this limitation and others don't have it . . . not likely to work. But I'll be glad to be surprised if it does work.

People think of two different things when they use the term "Healing surges."

One is the self-metered healing aspect like 2nd wind and short rests where the character can draw on a deep pool of reserve hit points. (A mechanic offered in 3e in Unearthed arcana, if memory serves.)

And this can be balanced against a character without the reserve pool in a few ways. The reserveless character can have some DR, or a larger HP total (although less than the total + reserves of the sugeing character.) Since 5e seems to be metered by damage output against level for monsters setting a dr by level to balance those two shouldn't be too difficult. Or if a fighter has 70 hp plus a 50 point reserve pool that's roughly equivilent to a barbarian with 100 hp. (He has more long term potential, but a greater risk of dropping in any given fight.)

The other aspect of healing surges that most non-4e people miss is that they also act as a limit to possible heals in one day. In that case a character with a hard limit and one without would not be balanced at the same table, although I suspect magical healing will be a bit more old school than in 4e, and if so, and it bypasses the cap, then there is no problem.

 

[DMKastmaria]

THAC0 is only convoluted in retrospect. THAC0 was a huge improvement over the mess that was 1st edition. (Though I expect there are folks who will say "1st edition was a huge improvement over Basic." That's just the way those things go.)

The 1st edition attack matrices are as complicated as a calendar. No muss. No fuss.

 

[Tovec]

Please note: I realized the other pages only after I hit the reply button, so I'll do the first page first then move on

Also, Mike Mearls - only 2 hours a week? I expect it to take FOREVER to get to lvl 10. Too bad I couldn't vote.

I really liked that article, thanks for posting it, Thaumaturge.

There does seem to be a contradiction in it though - "More importantly, we must look beyond the mechanics of the game to focus on the archetypes, literary tropes, and cultural elements that built D&D. We must build a fighter that resonates as a warrior, not one simply cobbled together with mechanics pilfered from D&D's past."

I'm not sure how Mike can square this aim, which seems to be going in an entirely new direction, with the desire for reunification.

That quote to me strikes more along the lines of, we don't want the fighter to be sound with math, we want him to be sound mathwise AND be a fighter.
That is just the first thing that strikes me.

After watching the video*, I feel I have a finer understanding of what the WotC design team is trying to achieve. They aren't looking to make an edition that functions like all others, they are trying to make an edition that looks and feels like them.

They want to make an edition that players of any edition can go "yep that's DnD" and pick up and play. Honestly I have been very hesitant about 5e since first hearing about it but that video was so frank and honest about the design process that it has renewed my vigor for the new edition, even if they want to call it an "iteration" or "D&DN".

* I'll try and find the link to the video and post it here in case you haven't seen it.

Umm, 'grats on proving my point. The point I was making is that "Feels like D&D" is 100% subjective.

Feels like DnD is subjective, yes. But as long as the system allows you to play YOUR KIND of DnD and allows me to play MY KIND, then who cares.

If the math doesn't work and the game isn't balanced, then 5E has failed at being 4E and fails at reunification.

So, is balanced math the only thing you care about from DnD or 5e?

Let me put it another way, why do you believe that 5e fails if it isn't 4e? I'm positive it won't be 3e, 2e or 1e but (to you) it fails if it isn't 4e?

Put another way, why does the new system HAVE TO BE like the old one, none of the previous ones were. All "e's" have been a departure from their parent and all to one extent or another have been a success.

They are trying to unify not the mechanics or "balance" of the system but the FEEL of play and options in play of that system.

Balanced math to me has almost 0 relevance to how good the GAME is. If it is a system where "the math is balanced" and has nothing else going for it then pretty soon I'll realize it isn't the game for me and I'll play something else. If it is a game where the math is balanced AND can do epic games, low magic games, skullduggery games, dungeon-crawls, mystery games, high fantasy, high technology or whatever then it will be a success. If it can do all those things and the math isn't balanced it will still be a success (at least to me).

Balanced math (by itself) =/= make a good game, neither does its absence.

Besides, chances are the math as well as a number of mechanics, phrases and techniques WILL resemble 4e more closely than other editions. It is a matter of what has the clearest coding or phrasing in mechanics. If there is advantage then it will be closer to 4e advantage than 3e's advantage. They are only 10% done the game but I am almost positive this is true.