D&D 5E Too many cooks (a DnDN retrospective)

[Hautamaki]

What I want from a character creation system more than anything is flexibility to fit the player's vision. My objection to 4e happened right at the outset when we tried to convert our 3e campaign to 4e and none of our characters worked anymore.

1 character was a fighter-rogue that used 2-weapon fighting, light armour, and sneak attacks. He ended up having to be re-spec'd as a ranger and wound up being completely different from the player's initial vision for the character.

Another character was a fighter-sorcerer who focused on buffing himself. He had to be re-spec'd as a warlock, again, completely different.

A third character was a druid with a wolfhound animal companion. Initially 4e did not support this class at all so the character was completely ruined and the player ended up leaving the group.

The only character that worked was the totally dnd generic halfling thief.

Is it unfair to dislike a system because back on day 1 it couldn't support character concepts that were designed for the then 8 years old 3e system? Perhaps, but as paying customers it is absolutely our right to make 'unfair' purchasing decisions. Ultimately, my money is only going to support a system that allows me to play the game I'm already playing even better than before. 4e had a lot of great stuff going for it but when we found out that it was a square hole for our round peg of a game we were instantly turned off.

For DnD Next to get my money, and I assume this goes for most everyone, it has to be able to make the game we are already playing right now even better. And that means that it has to allow us to convert our existing character concepts into the new mechanics in a way that makes our existing characters even cooler and yet better balanced than they were before.

That's a ridiculously tall order, considering that you've got 40 years of hundreds of books of published material that you need to not only incorporate but improve upon to make every potential customer happy to shell out for a new system. But then again, I'm not the one who told them they ought to make a new edition. That's the goal they set for themselves when they decided to invest all this R&D time and money into making a new system, whether they are fully cognizant of that or not. Personally, I'm happy with what's available right now, as I'm sure all of you are too (otherwise you wouldn't be here!) so they've got to find a way to make me even happier. I can only wish them the best of luck.

 

[Gorgoroth]

..

Why is a dual-short sword wielding ranger with presumably a high dex and ok strength, witha bunch of minor action attacks so difficult to reflavour as a functional rogue? take the MC rogue feat at level 1, call "Ranger" : " Rogue", done!

Reflavoring is the one truly genius thing about 4e that I hope is at least somewhat possible, if not explicitly via some particular selection of backgrounds and specialities. Had I realized at Day 1 what I knew two years later, that my ideal 4e character was a Dragonborn ranger with 18/16 str/dex in light armor, refluffed as being just tough AC-wise because it was actually his dragonscales that were like wearing scale armor, that I could enjoy dual-wielding waraxes and even pretend to be a paladin via taking an mc-Avenger feat with the religion skill...

but the downside to that was making the rigid mechanics fit my character concept. The amount of time I wasted on that game...thinking about my characters...was far more than I actually played them, and I ended up in like 3-4 campaigns at the same time, mixed and matched in 4e and Pathfinder, until I realized that whatever I wanted to play in 4e, I could do better mechanically and more fun too, in PF. That's when I stopped 4e entirely. I played a synthesist who was basically a dragonborn with wings, who turned out to be too god-like and broken / OP, but it was literally the best combat I've ever seen. I soloed a titan at level 10, and took on his flying mooks at the same time. It was ridonculous.

Better still than reflavoring is eliminating the need to. Be a thief with the right weapon and maneuvers, and you're your own kind of bounty hunter. Another bounty hunter might even be a monk, who specialized in grappling you to arrest you with his maneuvers. I see no reason to believe Ki powers you.

The Refluff Cat is out of the bag, from now on.

 

[timASW]

Thankfully, the amount of people who find what WotC has done over the last decade as actual "incompetence" (rather than just having made choices for a new game that were not liked) is extremely low.

Oh yes, so low that WoTC lost their place as the #1 in the market to a complete upstart with a 10 year old, rehashed product.

Or is this where the "its only superficial and if everyone just quit sucking as gamers and realized how awesome and revolutionary it really was....." line comes in that really, really, pisses off everyone who didnt like it?

Competence is measured in success or failure at what your attempting. Since they were presumably attempting to make a product that made them lots of money and stayed at the top of the market then yes, losing that place in the market and lots of money to an old, flawed product is INCOMPETENCE at your profession.

Unless you think the captain of the Titanic was competent too.......

 

[DEFCON 1]

Oh yes, so low that WoTC lost their place as the #1 in the market to a complete upstart with a 10 year old, rehashed product.

Or is this where the "its only superficial and if everyone just quit sucking as gamers and realized how awesome and revolutionary it really was....." line comes in that really, really, pisses off everyone who didnt like it?

Competence is measured in success or failure at what your attempting. Since they were presumably attempting to make a product that made them lots of money and stayed at the top of the market then yes, losing that place in the market and lots of money to an old, flawed product is INCOMPETENCE at your profession.

Unless you think the captain of the Titanic was competent too.......

Like I said... it's obvious you have not idea what the definition of "incompetence" actually is.

 

[Hussar]

Consult page XX, though I think they use the rouge's attack table.

Well played sir, well played. Cannot posrep that.

 

[CroBob]

Unless you think the captain of the Titanic was competent too.......

Who said the captain of the Titanic was incompetent? A vessel the size of the Titanic is super difficult to turn, and he was super experienced with ships half that size. Any other ship (except the Britannic or Olympic) would have avoided the iceberg. He was one of the most experienced sea captains of his time, having commanded sea vessels for over 20 years beforehand, and he was unaware of what was happening on the bridge due to being in his quarters, the ship under command of the Chief Officer, during the impact with the iceberg. Captain Smith went down clutching the wheel.

Lieutenant Murdoch was in command when the iceberg was sited, and he gave the command to turn starboard upon notice of the iceberg. The night was too dark and the ship too big. It was not the command's fault the ship sank.

Or are you talking about Futurama?

 

[Rechan]

@CroBob , I've emphasized what I think the problem is:

So why do such superficial things matter so much to otherwise rational adults?

Humans Are Not Rational. Due to our brains wiring, to our emotions, to the limits of our perceptions, we are very very flawed. Most of our decisions are ruled by irrational and subconscious forces. We only think we're making our own rational choices, because well, they're our choices and we're rational, so they must be rational choices...

There's a study that I think will help here. Two groups of people were given a scenario: "You are going to a play you want to see. Tickets for the play are $20." One group were told "You have purchased a ticket in advance. When you arrive at the theatre, you find the ticket is missing, but you have $40 in your pocket." The other group were told, "You brought cash to buy a ticket. When you get to the theatre, you find that one of your $20 bills are missing, but you have $40 in your pocket." Both groups were asked "Do you buy a new ticket to see the play?"

Most of the group who lost the $20 bill said yes. Most of the group who lost the ticket said no. The ticket group said "I don't want to buy something twice". But the $20 group lost the amount of the ticket, too! Both slips of paper intended for the play are worth the same amount; both groups lost $20.

The point here is that despite the superficial nature of it, purchasing the ticket meant something different than a slip of paper worth $20 they intended to use for the play.

In this situation, one group is putting more importance on the meaning of the word Fighter, and what that Means to them, built up over playing fighters or seeing them at their table for years. In their mind, "The Fighter is the master of weapons and is about killing enemies with weapons". So when 4e says "The fighter is a Defender, and good with melee weapons, it violates the impression they have built. And once an impression is made, our brains are very stubborn about giving them up. So here you have a Meaning that's important, and a Meaning resistant to change.

There are other factors here, of course - experience, taste, etc. But a lot of it is purely a psychological hiccup. Bare in mind I am not calling people who dislike the 4e Fighter for reasons listed above as irrational, necessarily. Merely that I'm explaining why something that is seemingly superficial actually matters to some people.

Every-day irrational behavior is one of my new favorite subjects in Psychology. I wish I'd done my Masters thesis on it. If you want to know more on this topic, I posted a bunch of links to other books and videos.

 

[Gothikaiju]

What I want from a character creation system more than anything is flexibility to fit the player's vision. My objection to 4e happened right at the outset when we tried to convert our 3e campaign to 4e and none of our characters worked anymore.

1 character was a fighter-rogue that used 2-weapon fighting, light armour, and sneak attacks. He ended up having to be re-spec'd as a ranger and wound up being completely different from the player's initial vision for the character.

Another character was a fighter-sorcerer who focused on buffing himself. He had to be re-spec'd as a warlock, again, completely different.

A third character was a druid with a wolfhound animal companion. Initially 4e did not support this class at all so the character was completely ruined and the player ended up leaving the group.

The only character that worked was the totally dnd generic halfling thief.

Is it unfair to dislike a system because back on day 1 it couldn't support character concepts that were designed for the then 8 years old 3e system? Perhaps, but as paying customers it is absolutely our right to make 'unfair' purchasing decisions. Ultimately, my money is only going to support a system that allows me to play the game I'm already playing even better than before. 4e had a lot of great stuff going for it but when we found out that it was a square hole for our round peg of a game we were instantly turned off.

For DnD Next to get my money, and I assume this goes for most everyone, it has to be able to make the game we are already playing right now even better. And that means that it has to allow us to convert our existing character concepts into the new mechanics in a way that makes our existing characters even cooler and yet better balanced than they were before.

That's a ridiculously tall order, considering that you've got 40 years of hundreds of books of published material that you need to not only incorporate but improve upon to make every potential customer happy to shell out for a new system. But then again, I'm not the one who told them they ought to make a new edition. That's the goal they set for themselves when they decided to invest all this R&D time and money into making a new system, whether they are fully cognizant of that or not. Personally, I'm happy with what's available right now, as I'm sure all of you are too (otherwise you wouldn't be here!) so they've got to find a way to make me even happier. I can only wish them the best of luck.

$E is what brought me back to D&D after years of WoD, HERO, or nothing... but at first, I, too, found the characters uninspiring (no supernatural melee close combat options that weren't being a heavily armored, really religious character class? races were very human seeming... unless they were Charisma based?), so at first I turned down request by friends to give it a try.

Then in it's second year, 4E added Barbarians, Druids, Sorcerers, Wardens... and Shifters and Warforged. Things suddenly became interesting enough for me to learn the rules, and spend some money.

But, just like 4E, f Next doesn't have enough options to make the characters I've come to prefer at launch, I will not be playing or buying Next at launch.

 

[innerdude]

Or is this where the "its only superficial and if everyone just quit sucking as gamers and realized how awesome and revolutionary it really was....." line comes in that really, really, pisses off everyone who didnt like it?

Most of the 4e fans on this board have never taken that attitude. They've been pretty open about the fact that they like 4e on its own merits, because it works for them as their game of choice, and don't begrudge anyone else choosing a different system.

(Folks on the WotC message boards are a different sort entirely. I think I've visited that site one time since late 2008, maybe a year ago, just to see if the 4e love fest echo chamber was still in effect. Needless to say, it was. The entire mindset seemed to be that only idiots and hopeless grognards didn't "get" how awesome 4e was.)

But this does beg the question--if 4e was really as strong of a game as its proponents espouse, why is it being dropped? To be honest, I'd have gained a tremendous amount of respect for WotC if they'd come out and said, "We truly believe that 4e is the best iteration of the D&D rule set, and are committed to supporting it long-term. We want to provide our fans the best RPG experience we have to offer, and are committed to providing the best tools, support material, print and digital content in the industry. " And then gone out and hired the people and committed the resources to doing it. Instead it's been basically one PR faux-pas after another (the digital tools never finished, the PDF fiasco, mishandling DDI, the lackluster at best handling of Dragon and Dungeon magazines).

I just never got the impression that was their intention. Decisions made about the product were purely business-driven. Now that's not to say that Paizo doesn't try to be smart about their product, I've just always gotten the sense that making the best possible product was more important than maximizing every possible ounce of ROI.

 

[Remathilis]

Whereas I most certainly want the opposite. I want the players to create the characters that they want to play. I have zero interest in either WOTC or myself handing down their options from on high. If I want to create particular kinds of "packages" for my world, fine and dandy. But, I don't want WOTC's fingerprints all over my campaign thanks.

Would you be fine if PCs made up their own deities to worship as clerics as well?

What if i told you both approaches are valid?
Your DM thinks that for internal consistency all druids will be spontaneous casters? All good.
Your DM wants to make different sects of wizards unique in their approach to magic? He can do that too.
Still can't see the problem.

I'm not advocating that a DM shouldn't be able to choose (and mix and match) casting types, but I do believe.

1.) WotC should give us a default "baseline" assumption, or what the game uses if the DM doesn't want to change it. They can include rules for switching and using other systems in the DMG, where such stuff belongs.
2.) Changing magic systems assumed in a class should be the pervue of the DM in connection to how he runs his world; not a character choice on par with picking his background or specialty.

This is where my fear for next is being realized; too many conflicting views on what D&D should cater to. I want a solid system that I can tweak and twist using house rules as needed, not a do-it-yourself toolbox on which I can build any flavor of game I choose. I want D&D to be D&D, not GURPS d20.