D&D 5E D&DN going down the wrong path for everyone.

[Obryn]

The majority of the powers could have been any leader class' powers.

I strongly disagree, here, having seen most leader classes in play over the past few years.

The Bard's powers are distinctly controller-ish, as befits their Arcane power source. Tricks like domination and the like are rare among leaders. Additionally, their focus on Psychic attacks and a broad selection of non-damaging powers make them more unmistakable.

Personally, I always found 4e's alternate attack stats broke my verisimilitude. "Hey, I'm a bard. Strength and Dexterity are my dump stats so I can barely lift my rapier and am as clumsy as a legless dwarf, but I can stab you in the face using my charm." Yeah, a bard should have a high Charisma and might want to be in melee, but there had to be a better way to get the math to work than just saying "okay, you stab people with your personality."

The Charisma-based weapon stuff is kinda weird, yeah. But you're not just smashing stuff with brute strength; you're making magically enhanced attacks

But 4e was never the edition for people who wanted any semblance of verisimilitude in their game.

Huh, interesting. Tell me more.

-O

 

[Jester David]

Unless you're a skald, or a Prescient bard (Wisdom secondary), or you are building to concept, or to qualify for specific feats/paths/etc.

I am unfamiliar with the skald. I didn't particularly like the Prescient bard because builds where your kicker stat uses the same defence as your attack are trick to build without really sacrificing a defence.

No, they're really not. Your ignorance of 4e is showing. That's fine in and of itself, since I know you bailed early on, but it's not as cut and dry as you seem to think.

Checking the character op boards, they do tend to back-up my impulse to declare Str/Dex/Wis as dump-worthy. They do cite Str as a potentially non-dump for chain proficiency but also Dex to avoid a low initiative.

I guess we have a different idea of what games make for a better cinematic feel then. We're pretty much not going to agree on this one, ever.

I don't particularly want a cinematic feel. I actually prefer a narrative or literary feel. "Cinematic" tends to quickly devolve into "over-the-top".
I just use the cinematic example because it's easy. Everyone has seen a movie where they've done a double-take at the sheer implausibility of something and been reminded that they're sitting in a cinema. Where you stop actually enjoying the movie experience and start rolling your eyes.
I remember during Total Recall (the new one) I actually stopped watching the movie halfway through to do mental math over how fast the vehicle would have to go to actually travel through the earth in the fifteen minutes the movie claimed the journey would take. Not what the director likely had in mind. Similarly, I don't want the implausibility of the game system I'm using to detract from the story I'm telling.

 

[Jester David]

Huh, interesting. Tell me more.

Getting too much into it leads to edition wars (and madness) but the usual assortment of complaints: tripping oozes, burning fire elementals, frightening zombies, charming skeletons, etc.
Being able to move faster NE to SW than from N to S. Bard's "song" powers (and warlord heals) working on deafened allies. Fighters marking with javelins. Rogues with slow loading crossbows making burst attacks. The famous Come and Get It and its ability to get a wizard without a melee attack to walk through damaging terrain.
The general logic of exception based design, which means that if a power says something happens, it happens.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

I am unfamiliar with the skald. I didn't particularly like the Prescient bard because builds where your kicker stat uses the same defence as your attack are trick to build without really sacrificing a defence.

This is true, but classes built that way exist nonetheless. The skald is from Heroes of the Feywild, and is Cha-primary, but can be built as Dex- or Str-primary as well with a minimum of fuss, or any other stat whose basic attacks can be buffed or enhanced. Really quite versatile, which is appropriate, since that is what bards have always been about.

Checking the character op boards, they do tend to back-up my impulse to declare Str/Dex/Wis as dump-worthy. They do cite Str as a potentially non-dump for chain proficiency but also Dex to avoid a low initiative.

CharOp is not the be-all, end-all of D&D though, and while I said in my response that you CAN dump them, there is nothing obliging you to do so. I would hardly call CharOp's declarations "typical" choices for most gamers to make either. Only a small subset of the gamer population even cares to optimize, much less follow the builds on CharOp blindly. I am familiar with them, but mostly to mine ideas; bits and pieces.

I don't particularly want a cinematic feel. I actually prefer a narrative or literary feel. "Cinematic" tends to quickly devolve into "over-the-top".
I just use the cinematic example because it's easy. Everyone has seen a movie where they've done a double-take at the sheer implausibility of something and been reminded that they're sitting in a cinema. Where you stop actually enjoying the movie experience and start rolling your eyes.
I remember during Total Recall (the new one) I actually stopped watching the movie halfway through to do mental math over how fast the vehicle would have to go to actually travel through the earth in the fifteen minutes the movie claimed the journey would take. Not what the director likely had in mind. Similarly, I don't want the implausibility of the game system I'm using to detract from the story I'm telling.

That threshold is different for everyone though, and some people still find the things that you complain about to be entertaining. I don't think it would be fair to design D&D Next based on Jester Canuck's idea of a good game exclusively, nor to assume that your playstyle and preferences are the default.

Ideally the game will support a multitude of preferences from gritty to over-the-top and everything in between. If it does not, then it may fail to capture a significant portion of the community. I think we can agree that that would be a shame.

 

[Balesir]

Getting too much into it leads to edition wars (and madness) but the usual assortment of complaints: tripping oozes, burning fire elementals, frightening zombies, charming skeletons, etc.
Being able to move faster NE to SW than from N to S. Bard's "song" powers (and warlord heals) working on deafened allies. Fighters marking with javelins. Rogues with slow loading crossbows making burst attacks. The famous Come and Get It and its ability to get a wizard without a melee attack to walk through damaging terrain.
The general logic of exception based design, which means that if a power says something happens, it happens.

Man, you seem to have an incredibly narrow view of what can be plausible in a fantasy world...

CharOp is not the be-all, end-all of D&D though, and while I said in my response that you CAN dump them, there is nothing obliging you to do so. I would hardly call CharOp's declarations "typical" choices for most gamers to make either. Only a small subset of the gamer population even cares to optimize, much less follow the builds on CharOp blindly. I am familiar with them, but mostly to mine ideas; bits and pieces.

Yep - especially since the power differential between CharOp and non-CharOp isn't generally as large in 4e as it was in some earlier editions.

 

[pemerton]

I'm pretty happy with the degree of verisimilitude in my 4e game, and would happily stack it up against anyone else's mainstream fantasy RPGing.

 

[Mournblade94]

Misquote

 

[Mournblade94]

Man, you seem to have an incredibly narrow view of what can be plausible in a fantasy world...

It is not a narrow view of what is plausible. Anything is plausible in a fantasy world. Many people though would rather play a game that is not over the top, and shares physics with this world, even with the presence of magic.

For example, most anime is unwatchable for me because I find the physics ridiculous. I would rather have Tom and Jerry physics in Tom and Jerry or Scooby Doo not D&D.

 

[Mournblade94]

Getting too much into it leads to edition wars (and madness) but the usual assortment of complaints: tripping oozes, burning fire elementals, frightening zombies, charming skeletons, etc.
Being able to move faster NE to SW than from N to S. Bard's "song" powers (and warlord heals) working on deafened allies. Fighters marking with javelins. Rogues with slow loading crossbows making burst attacks. The famous Come and Get It and its ability to get a wizard without a melee attack to walk through damaging terrain.
The general logic of exception based design, which means that if a power says something happens, it happens.

+1 to all of this.

I have to agree, for my purposes 4e was a detrimental system for the stories I wanted to tell. I simply could not make the system work for it.

I don't want to play Anime characters, I am playing more literary characters.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I don't want to play Anime characters, I am playing more literary characters.

Ugh. Trotting out this old cliche again...

Listen people...you need to go out and play some Big Eyes, Small Mouths so you can finally understand what ACTUALLY playing an Anime character is like. Once you do that... maybe this lame-ass comparison with 4E will finally be put to rest.