D&D 5E How Can D&D Next Win You Over?

[Herschel]

"fighters can try anything, they just have a better chance of success than anyone else when it comes to fighting", but whatever. It is oodles of fun, though. It's been working for decades.

And shoveling manure with a pitchfork has worked for centuries but I'm buying an end loader.

Puppet shows were fine for centuries but I 've got a 60" LCD with BluRay and Surround Sound.

The goal of producing a new game should be to improve it, not just sit with the status quo. Thee's a reason the 4E Fighter was so popular: because it could do more than just swing and play "DM-may-I".

 

[Scylla]

The goal of producing a new game should be to improve it, not just sit with the status quo. Thee's a reason the 4E Fighter was so popular: because it could do more than just swing and play "DM-may-I".

I agree with this (well except for the DM-may-I), and there's nothing wrong with making something better. It's a laudable goal. But then again, if it ain't broke...

One must be careful in our attempts to improve things, lest we ruin them. It's like the golden rule of medicine: Don't make an ailing patient worse. Assuming of course, that the patient was ailing to begin with.
You can take a car and add wings and dual engines and additional seats for 80 more people, but if you're not careful you'll suddenly have a jet and that '79 Mustang you enjoyed driving so much will be nowhere to be found.

 

[JeffB]

Nobody enjoys anything about a 79 mustang

 

[Scylla]

Hey! My first* real car—seriously—was a '79 Mustang, and I enjoyed it just fine.

*I had one car 2 months before it, but totaled it in a crash with a police car. Ah, misspent youth.

 

[Ahnehnois]

And shoveling manure with a pitchfork has worked for centuries but I'm buying an end loader.

Puppet shows were fine for centuries but I 've got a 60" LCD with BluRay and Surround Sound.

The goal of producing a new game should be to improve it, not just sit with the status quo. Thee's a reason the 4E Fighter was so popular: because it could do more than just swing and play "DM-may-I".

Watching the sun set has been good for centuries and we're still doing that, because it's just good.

I'm all for improving the fighter. I just rewrote the 3e fighter in fact, with no dead levels and all kinds of fancy bonuses. But not powers. It's much better than it was. Improvement is good.

There's also a reason the 5e fighter doesn't have powers (and thus is an improvement over the "old" 4e fighter, which I guess in now analagous to a cassette player or a typewriter by your logic): because the 4e fighter was popular with some people, but anathema to more.

 

[Steely_Dan]

As a guitarist who plays electrically, solid state amps are great (consistency of tone, easy maintenance - no replacing of tubes etc), but nothing sounds like a Fender Twin Reverb.


These analogies of "manure" (which is appropriate) wrangling with a game like D&D crack me up.

 

[Tony Vargas]

There's also a reason the 5e fighter doesn't have powers (and thus is an improvement over the "old" 4e fighter, which I guess in now analagous to a cassette player or a typewriter by your logic): because the 4e fighter was popular with some people, but anathema to more.

I can understand not liking something. I can understand not choosing the thing you con't like. I'm not so sure I get the need to actively suppress something you don't like. The 4e fighter wasn't broken. It didn't imbalance the game, grind it to a halt, or render it un-playable. Quite the contrary, it was part of a better-balanced, more smoothly running iteration of D&D than had previously been accomplished. Why then, is your preference so much more important than that of others? Surely, you can't believe your own appeal to popularity: Pathfinder only caught up with 4e (in what un-dependable numbers we have) /after/ a power-less fighter had been re-introduced for Essentials. Clearly fans of 4e, while not numerous enough deliver the kind of revenue numbers Hasbro wanted from WotC, are not some tiny minority - like fans of gnomes (whom WotC famously got stung for ignoringl).



Since I first read through the 1e PH, there is nothing about D&D I've found more jarring, more nonsensical, or less appropriate for inclusion in D&D than Psionics. My feeling about that are about as extreme as I'm going to be able to generate on the topic of a game - as close as I could come to honestly saying something is 'anathema' to D&D for me.

I'm not campaigning to have psionics pulled from 5e. I don't walk away from the table when someone plays an Ardent. What someone else is playing doesn't have to ruin my fun. As lame as the concept of a robot or ESPer in D&D may seem to me, they're just concepts. If the game still plays OK even with their inclusion, and can tune out or rationalize the stupidity of it. Ultimately, that sort of thing is subjective, and I can leave them to those who, inexplicably, enjoy them. OTOH, if psionics are whacked-crazy-broken, and a psionic in a game is going to be blowing through every encounter while the rest of us wonder why we show up, well then, they're not so easy to ignore or rationalize or even tolerate.

5e, more than any previous edition, is trying for a broad appeal, it's trying to be inclusive. To achieve that, it's going to have to 'include' a lot - including some things you don't like and some things I don't like. As long as those things can, as it were, peacefully co-exist (ie, as long as the game's balanced), that shouldn't be intolerable.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The 4e fighter wasn't broken. It didn't imbalance the game, grind it to a halt, or render it un-playable.

And yet it was quite unpalatable to a lot of players. The reasons are many; here are a few:

1) in prior editions, the Fighter was probably the most mechanically streamlined class in the game, making it a great class to run as a player's first PC, or for casual players. The 4Ed iteration is no less complicated than any other 4Ed class.

2) along with several other martial classes, the 4Ed Fighter has abilities that are unique to it that would be open to all martial-themed PCs in other versions of the game (or other RPGs). This many find counterintuitive and it seems done solely to make things fit the game's power architecture...a square peg in a round hole.

3) the loss of iterative attacks for a class whose representatives will probably be engaged with multiple foes a goodly part of the time is a big change. Yes, some of their powers can target multiple foes, but those are an ablative resource. They were either always available or available whenever triggered in prior editions (once the Ftr is of sufficient level, of course)- IOW, they had no structural limits to the number of times they could attack multiple targets. Arguably, this change DOES contribute to 4Ed's combat grind issues.

 

[Herschel]

And yet it was quite unpalatable to a lot of players. The reasons are many; here are a few:

1) in prior editions, the Fighter was probably the most mechanically streamlined class in the game, making it a great class to run as a player's first PC, or for casual players. The 4Ed iteration is no less complicated than any other 4Ed class.

The simple, streamlined class in 4E became the Ranger and the "best" intro character. Why should the Fighter always be the class with no, or fewest, options? I likke the archtype but grew to hate the class design.

2) along with several other martial classes, the 4Ed Fighter has abilities that are unique to it that would be open to all martial-themed PCs in other versions of the game (or other RPGs). This many find counterintuitive and it seems done solely to make things fit the game's power architecture...a square peg in a round hole.

So somehow Fighters having their own schtick is bad? One of the things I liked most is that classes have some unique tricks and gimmicks of their own and a Fighter plays differently from a Paladin, Swordmage and Warden.

3) the loss of iterative attacks for a class whose representatives will probably be engaged with multiple foes a goodly part of the time is a big change. Yes, some of their powers can target multiple foes, but those are an ablative resource. They were either always available or available whenever triggered in prior editions (once the Ftr is of sufficient level, of course)- IOW, they had no structural limits to the number of times they could attack multiple targets. Arguably, this change DOES contribute to 4Ed's combat grind issues.

Iterative attacks were lame as heck in providing class depth. While everyone else was getting cool stuff they said to the Fighter "Uh, here, just have some more attacks". Great, you gave me an edition where the last thing I want to do is play my preferred class. Trip and disarm were not interesting tactical additions either.

 

[Bluenose]

1) in prior editions, the Fighter was probably the most mechanically streamlined class in the game, making it a great class to run as a player's first PC, or for casual players.

Which is interesting when you also consider that it's also perfectly fine to expect these first-timers and casual players to come up with imaginative schemes to make up for their characters' lack of mechanical options.

And while we're about it, is it really that hard for people to cope with having, ooh, five or six actual mechanical options? Especially since 4e was "dumbed down for WoW" according to some, and yet is apparently too hard to master for some people who could manage perfectly well in previous editions.

Iterative attacks were lame as heck in providing class depth. While everyone else was getting cool stuff they said to the Fighter "Uh, here, just have some more attacks".

And then they gave them to everyone else too, unlike previous editions.