D&D 5E The Door, Player Expectations, and why 5e can't unify the fanbase.

[fenriswolf456]

This isn't true in my case. I didn't use to play 3E (I did use to play AD&D, back when it was still the current edition). Some members of my group played 3E games. One member had never played D&D (I introduced him to fantasy RPGing with Rolemaster) until our 4e game started.

For me, 4e was the system that led me back to GMing D&D after nearly 20 years of running something else.

Perhaps I'm an outlier, though.

Doubtful ... I too never played 3E, though I DMed the heck out of AD&D. Partly it was the breakup of my group, partly not taken in by 3E's shinyness. It just never grabbed me, despite a couple of attempts to play and get into it.

With my current 4E groups, I think only 2 or 3 come from playing 3E, the other 5 or so are either newcomers or 'old school' players. One of my players runs Encounters, and half the players there are teens or even preteens.

It's too early to tell now, but I'm pretty certain we'll at least give 5E a try when it is finally released, unless future playtests really turn some of us off the idea. But I don't believe there's going to be any auto-buy in by 4thers just because some came from a previous edition. The game has to prove interesting and fun enough for people to make the switch, especially if it's going to go the route of having to be a large investment.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

On the wizard memory thing, I've also had a small instance of memory loss, though not as dramatic as pemerton's. Mine was a car wreck that initially knocked out about 30 hours of memory, but gradually shrunk down to about 6 hours that never came back. It's just a hole where everyone around me said that I was conscious for most of it, talking and cracking jokes, but it is all gone.

This didn't really change my view of wizard memorization in D&D, though other things have. I initially and for a long time time took it, having read and enjoyed Vance, as very much the imposing of an alien presence in the mind, as pemerton mentioned. But research since about study habits have discovered more about how memory works.

One of the reason "cramming" can work for a test but not retain knowledge is that you need repetition over time, and in different environments to readily retain and recall things. For example, they have discovered that some people recall things by (subconsciously) associating the memory with colors--such that a book you read in a well-lighted room with green walls is going to be more readily referenced in your head in similar conditions. If you deliberately study something in different environments, the effect seems to get magnified--and then you finally reach a point where you've "got it" no matter what.

So I kind of viewed spells as something so difficult to handle that you are pretty much stuck "cramming" to get it to work in any kind of reasonable timeframe. In this conception, theoretically a wizard could study fireball for a decade or so, in all kinds of environments and dangers, and finally cast it on demand--but who has that kind of time? (If you say "elves," I'm gonna smack you! )

I've moved more towards a mix of that "cramming" option with the former, as I think the "cramming of alien knowledge" into your brain manages to explain the various spell levels and Vancian "forget" adequately enough, while also allowing some room for minor at-will effects and other such exceptions.

 

[Remathilis]

We've been here several pages back. I forget who it was (it may even have been me) who proposed that fighters got to pick from at least half a dozen different forms of empowerment from the ambient magic that means giants don't collapse under their own weight to being born a demigod to spells cast on them.

But from what I can tell you are the only person left arguing for what you are - many options have been given in this thread. Instead Remathilis is arguing explicitely for a cap on the power of the fighter below.

Then I have a question for you. What is the fighter meant to do when the Tarrasque comes calling? Or Ogremoch? Take the day off? Get swallowed with a single gulp?

And this is the problem. There will always be a bigger monster. People don't seem to want to cap spells - and bigger, scarier monsters are cool. But you seem to think that the epic fighter should be impossible?

Do what they did when our group fought it in 2nd edition. Find high ground, use magic items, and deal stupid amounts of damage while the wizard preps the wish spell and the cleric kept the HP engine going. (It was the thieves who stayed home).

Why do you need to have to leap around like a jackrabbit at a moon-landing to fight the Tarrasque? Its a terestiral creature, it stands on the ground too.

I haven't asked this question because I didn't feel it relevant, but are these fighters supposed to jump oceans and cleave mountains naked? Because for all my years of D&D I've never seen a very high level fighter that didn't have a dozen magical items to give him flight, super strength, insane AC, etc. Yeah, fighters need their toys. Because they're not wizards, they need items to use magic. I DON'T WANT FIGHTERS DOING MAGICAL THINGS WITHOUT MAGIC!

 

[TwoSix]

I DON'T WANT FIGHTERS DOING MAGICAL THINGS WITHOUT MAGIC!

I do. Now what? Fix it, WotC.

 

[billd91]

I do. Now what? Fix it, WotC.

They already are trying to do so by making the game modular (funny, back in the 3e days, that was called using the game as a toolkit). Of course, whether or not this is actually possible, we don't know yet. It's not very helpful that people are saying the project is doomed from the start, particularly since we're the ones who will, collectively, make that determination with our purchasing dollars and playing time.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Do what they did when our group fought it in 2nd edition. Find high ground, use magic items, and deal stupid amounts of damage while the wizard preps the wish spell and the cleric kept the HP engine going. (It was the thieves who stayed home).

Why do you need to have to leap around like a jackrabbit at a moon-landing to fight the Tarrasque? Its a terestiral creature, it stands on the ground too.

I haven't asked this question because I didn't feel it relevant, but are these fighters supposed to jump oceans and cleave mountains naked? Because for all my years of D&D I've never seen a very high level fighter that didn't have a dozen magical items to give him flight, super strength, insane AC, etc. Yeah, fighters need their toys. Because they're not wizards, they need items to use magic. I DON'T WANT FIGHTERS DOING MAGICAL THINGS WITHOUT MAGIC!

Can you promise me that a fighter will get this magical items that give him these abilities?

And can't the Wizard get the same items, so the Wizard still has the advantage?

 

[billd91]

Can you promise me that a fighter will get this magical items that give him these abilities?

And can't the Wizard get the same items, so the Wizard still has the advantage?

At one point, the game was designed to make this a likely occurrence. The 1e and 2e DMG magic item randomized tables were skewed away from permanent wizard-friendly magic items. Potions, scrolls, weapons, and armor were favored to appear. Potions could help anybody and thus weren't really worth a lot of control. Scrolls were one-shots or used to improve spell books, so they didn't have a constant or consistent impact either. But weapons and armor being much more common that bracers of armor, staves, and wands would and did. It helped that the 1e DMG makes this idea explicit - magic item placement should generally favor equipment-based classes. Magic item creation was also a real pain in the ass, discouraging it in general.

3e, in an effort to make magic item creation more of an aspect of the game and probably in response years of player feedback, made magic item creation easy for players to manage. But doing so, however, any distinction favoring the equipment-based classes was lost. The requirement that the item creator was a caster also made it easy for wizards to get what they wanted when they wanted it. Magic item creation, as I see it, may have been one of the biggest and most troublesome genies 3e let out of the bottle.

PF has leveled the playing field a little in the sense that non-casters can now craft magic items with the investment in an extra feat and a bunch of skill ranks. Now, that fighter/armorer can make his own stuff. But the ease of making items is still there in general.

If 5e really is moving back to the 1e model of magic items distribution being under the DM's authority, as long as the guidelines are clear and the implications of denying decent equipment to the fighters or giving too much gear to the wizards are laid out, I think we can be more confident in a better balance between equipment-based and less equipment-based classes.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

This reminds me of something -I seem to remember the devs tinkering with some kind of stamina system. I am not sure that it will make it in as core or if it's a module or just a random thought, though.*snip*

There is more where that came from, if anyone is interested:

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

At one point, the game was designed to make this a likely occurrence. The 1e and 2e DMG magic item randomized tables were skewed away from permanent wizard-friendly magic items. Potions, scrolls, weapons, and armor were favored to appear. Potions could help anybody and thus weren't really worth a lot of control. Scrolls were one-shots or used to improve spell books, so they didn't have a constant or consistent impact either. But weapons and armor being much more common that bracers of armor, staves, and wands would and did. It helped that the 1e DMG makes this idea explicit - magic item placement should generally favor equipment-based classes. Magic item creation was also a real pain in the ass, discouraging it in general.

3e, in an effort to make magic item creation more of an aspect of the game and probably in response years of player feedback, made magic item creation easy for players to manage. But doing so, however, any distinction favoring the equipment-based classes was lost. The requirement that the item creator was a caster also made it easy for wizards to get what they wanted when they wanted it. Magic item creation, as I see it, may have been one of the biggest and most troublesome genies 3e let out of the bottle.

PF has leveled the playing field a little in the sense that non-casters can now craft magic items with the investment in an extra feat and a bunch of skill ranks. Now, that fighter/armorer can make his own stuff. But the ease of making items is still there in general.

If 5e really is moving back to the 1e model of magic items distribution being under the DM's authority, as long as the guidelines are clear and the implications of denying decent equipment to the fighters or giving too much gear to the wizards are laid out, I think we can be more confident in a better balance between equipment-based and less equipment-based classes.

I wonder if all this happened by accident - that it worked out mostly in OD&D and AD&D and that it broke apart around 3E, or whether I give the OD&D/AD&D to little credit and they knew what they were doing and later designers didn't know that...

I still prefer the 4E edition approach to something that relies on mostly random item distribution. It just seems... more robust or more elegant, I don't know.

 

[Underman]

There is more where that came from, if anyone is interested:

Awesome, hope you get good feedback.

If 5e really is moving back to the 1e model of magic items distribution being under the DM's authority, as long as the guidelines are clear and the implications of denying decent equipment to the fighters or giving too much gear to the wizards are laid out, I think we can be more confident in a better balance between equipment-based and less equipment-based classes.

Why isn't there a fantasy trope that high level fighters learn to craft magic weapons and armor on their own?

Batman commissions his own gear, Spiderman invented his own webshooters, etc. -- I kinda roll my eyes at these one-man shows, but why not a fantasy warrior who is making a living out of adventuring, earns a ton of disposable income, and want to improve his chances of survival out there? It makes sense in a modern rational kind of way.

Failing that, the fighter can have a patron arcane weaponsmith -- like the way Bond has Q or Thor has the dwarves that made Mjölnir.

Failing that, the fighter is sorta like Indiana Jones or Lara Croft, specifically looking for treasure troves containing (or villians wielding) legendary weapons and armor, and these "side quests" are built into the adventure cooperatively with the DM.

Failing that, the fighter's destiny is to find magic weapons and armor which is all part of a bigger plan/fate towards some unknown destiny, and gets narrativist "points" towards including such items in the adventure.

Mythic fighters wouldn't need to rely on magic trinkets, but why don't mundane fighters reliant on magic items/armor take control of their own fate, instead of passively hoping for magic gear?

(This is assuming that the magic item economy supports this, but in my experience, D&D genre is flooded with magic items, even while the rules protest otherwise)