D&D 5E L&L 3/11/2013 This Week in D&D

[Raith5]

And yet... much of what is in D&DN is directly because of things enjoyed in 4E.

Fighters have Maneuvers. Combat abilities they can use during fights that are more than just attack/damage. Directly a result of 4E exploits.

Hit dice? Directly a result of 4E healing surges.

At-will spells? Directly a result of 4E casting.

But of course... we also have a lot of 4Eisms that we need to remember just haven't been created YET... not that they aren't going to be in AT ALL. Like all the tactical miniatures gridded play? Not yet implemented (but pretty easy to see how it can and will be).

The reason why 4E players have not seen "their game" yet is quite simple-- "their game" ISN'T. Isn't simple. At all. It's the most tactically complex combat system (with miniatures and grids and movement etc. etc.) that D&D had ever seen. So why the heck would any of you think any of that stuff would appear in the beginning / first half of the playtest? You've all been waiting for advanced modules to show up before the basic and standard modules have even been completed. That's just silly.

Why not take the reasonable approach and think to yourself that perhaps it might be... oh, I don't know... after all the races and classes get finished before you might start seeing some of the advanced modules start to show up for testing? Call me crazy... but wanting a playable replica of 4E before we've even got the stupid RANGER to playtest is kinda putting the cart before the horse, don'tcha think?

Dont disagree with what you said. But I think WOTC and Mearls need to explicitly say what you are saying! They need to say: "dont worry guys a module with encounter powers, utility powers, static defences with attacks against Reflex and Fortitude, etc is coming", or advanced DDN will replicate most of 4th ed. But they have not.

Instead we are getting watered down healing surges and 4e exploits, with the lingering sense that is it. We a get a sense that 4th ed insights are an aside or afterthought to the playstyle which DDN will support.

That is why there is considerable frustration of the WOTC boards and I dont think this frustration is totally unreasonable. It is not unreasonable because frustration expressed in 18 months is going to be too late.

 

[Sunseeker]

I'm not sure what "4e fans" are getting upset about here. It sounds more like the article is about class flexibility than anything else. Which is something 4e lacked(at least early on), and something that 3X had too much of(IMO).

But I think Mearls is missing a point which has been addressed a lot in video games. When faced with increasing levels, you have one of two options: add more stuff(increase complexity) or spread stuff out(which actually lessens complexity). Over a span of say, 20 levels, it's not difficult to alternate between class features, feats, and spells/maneuvers without seriously ramping up the complexity. IE:
1: racial feature, basic class features.
2: feat
3: maneuver
4: class feature
5: feat
6: maneuver
etc... ad infiniutm....
There's no real reason for "dead levels" to exist at all. They serve no purpose. If XP and leveling is supposed to represent an increase in skill and knowledge, why would you have increases where no skills or knowledge are gained? It makes no sense. SOMETHING can be gained at every level beyond skill points and HP.

 

[dd.stevenson]

I was talking about the comments on the article on the D&D site. The first several comments were [and these are exact quotes]: "Dear Mearls, just quit already," "Where's my kewl powers?" "Yet again another article to gives me reason not to buy or even play D&DN," "Well I guess 5E is doing a great job if the design goal is making jilted 4E haters feel vindicated," etc.

Each with a lot of likes/thumbs up.

I only count five people making posts like that. Several of them making multiple posts in the space of the first hour. And the top liked among these posts has only ten likes. Not exactly a huge amount by L&L standards.

And since the rest of the comments after the first few are generally very constructive, I'm inclined to assume that a few people with nonconstructive things to say were upset enough that they wanted to post quickly, right as soon as the article was posted.

 

[pemerton]

I've read through every iteration at length, read through every single column, listened to every single podcast and read most of the designer's "off-the-grid", "grey literature" on their thoughts and design angles. I've playtested 3 of the iterations with one shot games. This is a cleaned up 2e (with its assumptions and expectations of DM force and metagame aversion) married to the simple, contained elegance of Moldvay Basic and updated to a d20 chassis. The mechanics promote open, serial, world exploration (rather than closed scenes) and the pacing is centered around that. Task resolution is pretty standard, inverted NWP tests (d20 ability checks). The only real difference is the math is totally borked in PC's favor right now and SoD is pretty close to non-existent.

With those expectations, it plays quite well. If that was what I was looking for, I would be quite pleased with this product.

On another ENworld thread Manbearcat posted the above (and I hope he doesn't mind the cross-thread quoting!).

From my point of view that seems a pretty good description of D&Dnext. The particularly important thing for me, given where my own tastes in RPGing are at, is "The mechanics promote open, serial, world exploration (rather than closed scenes) and the pacing is centered around that." For me, the assymetric design of the class-derived resouorces is a huge part of that. And given that, I don't see how I would run my style of game using this system. My preferred game involved limited and very structured and directed applications of GM force (mostly in scene-framing). This game seems to rely upon GM force at every point to support pacing, to shape the plot etc.

If someone thinks that Manbearcat, or I, have missed something in reaching these views, by all means explain what it is!

 

[Manbearcat]

On another ENworld thread Manbearcat posted the above (and I hope he doesn't mind the cross-thread quoting!).

No problem. Just like the warlord that I contrived as a litmus test in the "podcast thread", the post you quoted could probably go into 3 - 4 concurrent threads. One is as good as the next. If it helps clarify the issue then the more the merrier!

 

[DEFCON 1]

Dont disagree with what you said. But I think WOTC and Mearls need to explicitly say what you are saying! They need to say: "dont worry guys a module with encounter powers, utility powers, static defences with attacks against Reflex and Fortitude, etc is coming", or advanced DDN will replicate most of 4th ed. But they have not.

They won't and can't say that. Because they don't know that it will in fact ultimately be true. And we all know one of the "big sins" of any producer of entertainment is to "promise" something, not deliver, then spend the next eight years listening to parts of the fanbase whine about it, how they got "lied!!!" to. Why do you think companies like Blizzard stopped revealing release dates for their patches of World of Warcraft? Because too many times after they said "We're expecting to release the patch in three months" and then discovered some issue that set that date back... the fans went apoplectic. The whole "GHOSTCRAWLER PROMISED US A PONY!" syndrome.

Mike and company have said from the beginning that their intention is to put pieces in place that would allow players to emulate any previous editions they enjoyed. You either believe them, or you don't. But if you are working yourself up into a lather because every single time a column or article or webcast or interview gets released by someone from WotC that doesn't go into specifics about what is going on... you probably shouldn't follow along. Because we only hear probably a tenth of what is actually going on, and everyone is making assumptions on that based on extremely faulty information.

If you really need more concrete information from WotC to keep from freaking out... you really should do yourself a favor and just stop following along. Because you're never going to be happy for these next eighteen months.

 

[Pour]

...(after all, we're probably still grinding our way through Heroic tier, pfft *eyeroll*)

This made me laugh.

 

[Pour]

There's no real reason for "dead levels" to exist at all. They serve no purpose. If XP and leveling is supposed to represent an increase in skill and knowledge, why would you have increases where no skills or knowledge are gained? It makes no sense. SOMETHING can be gained at every level beyond skill points and HP.

I agree, and I think as a player I should be able to choose what in a safe, math-balanced environment. Maybe even multiple whats.

It'd be kind of cool to tailor your character each level along some feature guidelines, not necessarily have to follow any prescribed class model, so like each level was an opportunity to choose one or two things to improve or expand from a long list of what makes a character a character (as you said, race, feat, class, spell, maneuver, etc) or maybe a little broader choose something social, combat, and exploration oriented. Of course, then by level 20 you're sheet has 60 options on it, and if you limit the customization to say only 1 feature per level, you may be feeding into lopsidedness, one-trick ponies, and system mastery. Maybe you could work up some rule, a stool rule, kind of like you can take any pillar feature, but none of them can be more than two levels apart, so like a stool, if you build up only one or two legs, the whole thing tips after a time. First level you get one of each, though, a nice, solid base. Sorry, rambling...

In terms of this L&L, are any 4thers really surprised? Was this really the article that broke the camels back? The only time I really felt like posting on the subject was during the Warlord uproar of last week. This is just smoke, or fog hehe. I forget who mentioned that analogy, but that was quite clever upthread hehe.

 

[Visanideth]

Honestly, I think the core issue 4E fans are having with Next (aside from the occasional vitriol thrown at them in podcasts, as in the recent "Warlords shouted lost limbs back" nonsense) is that integrating 4E with classic design IS problematic.

The core problem here is that 4E's merits can hardly continue working when faced with compromise. If 4E's virtue is having integrated and balanced options available to all classes at all levels, that is not gonna work as well when one of your design goals is simplicity and quasi-AD&D styled leveling. If 4E's virtue is divorcing reality-altering magic from classes (and combat), that's hardly gonna work if one of your design goals is bring back the 3E arcane spellcaster.

And so on and so forth. 4E is about balance, options, exception based monster design, compatible subsystems, narrative solutions integrated into mechanics; it's about having an extremely class-based design for player characters, and so on. Another problem is that unlike previous editions, 4E fans aren't nearly as dissatisfied with the system as WotC is used to see late in the life of an edition.
If you dislike 4E, you generally do from the get go. You disagree with the premises, you dislike its philosophies and its approaches. But if you do like 4E... it doesn't present many issues. It doesn't fall apart at high levels. It doesn't feature linear "fighter/quadratic wizard" kind of issues. It's balanced, it's functional, it's strongly supported, it has a gigantic amount of material to draw from - it just works. That doesn't mean it can't be improved, but it doesn't really need to.

When 3.5 hit, I remember my gaming group being willing to accept the frankly ridicolous idea of buying every single book again because while we had a lot of fun with 3.0 initially, we were having huge issues with it. We hoped 3.5 would allow us to play past level 10, that it would fix the imbalance of casters and so on. We felt like we needed 3.5. 3.0 had issues, but maybe it was salvageable, so 3.5 was fundamentally welcome.

As a 4E fan, I really don't feel like I need 4.5. I wouldn't want 4.5. 4E, for what it's meant to do, works fine. And that's also why I don't feel I need Next to satisfy my need of a game like 4E: because 4E isn't an RPG-lite, it's a system that thrives on complexity, options and modularity. Could you make Next more like 4E? Maybe, but why would I want a watered down version of 4E, if being watered down/fast/accessible isn't 4E's forte? Honestly, I'm fine with Next being nothing like 4E because I don't think you can really compromise 4E and retain its strength. I like 4E classes having 20 pages worth of abilities. I wouldn't want a "new" 4E with "simple" classes (like Heroes Against Darkness, for example). Why would I want less of something I like?

Instead, I could be really interested in Next if it's a "fixed" 3.X, or even better (much, much better) if it's a modernized AD&D. Because I like those systems too, and they have bigger issues than 4E, and a much bigger need of "fixing" or simply to be put up to date. I'm completely happy with the idea of going back to the D&D/AD&D formula where Next is my lighter, faster and improvisation-friendly system and 4E is the more complex, more "crunch" oriented one.

As a 4E fan, I feel like it's understandable that other fans feel like Next isn't going their way, but I also feel it's something inevitable. 4E is an edition that thrives on being "more" - to be part of a "a bit for everyone" edition, it would need to be stripped down of some of its parts, and that edition would be a worse 4E than the one we have already is.

 

[GX.Sigma]

...spread stuff out(which actually lessens complexity). Over a span of say, 20 levels, it's not difficult to alternate between class features, feats, and spells/maneuvers without seriously ramping up the complexity. IE:
1: racial feature, basic class features.
2: feat
3: maneuver
4: class feature
5: feat
6: maneuver
etc... ad infiniutm....
There's no real reason for "dead levels" to exist at all.

I'm not buying it. It doesn't matter if it's a feat, a maneuver, or a class feature; it's still another little thing you have to remember during play.