D&D 5E Are you going to miss AEDU? (And did you feel a lack in the playtest because of it?)

[keterys]

essentials and Bo9S both managed to have interesting options with out AEUD

Technically, both Essentials and Bo9S both are AEDU.

What they don't have is every class using the exact same approach to AEDU. And that's the part that's good, where the base PH failed.

 

[Dungeoneer]

essentials and Bo9S both managed to have interesting options with out AEUD

Don't forget psionics from the PHB3. I thought the point system and the augments were clever.

At the end of the day what you want is for every class to a) have a selection of interesting options and b) not have a bunch of wildly divergent subsystems. The latter is hard for a DM to deal with and tends to lead to balance issues. Fundamentally, you want to have small attacks that can be used all the time and big attacks that require some resource management from the players. As long as they all put out roughly the same amount of damage and are used with roughly the same frequency, how you get there doesn't matter.

AEDU is sort of the direct approach to this. But there are other ways, as Essentials, Psionics and 13th Age illustrate.

I don't think the AEDU model is inherently broken. A fighter with a set number of At-Wills, Encounters and Dailies that simply leveled up in power rather than adding new ones all the time would work well and be pretty easy to manage. The problem is that WotC wanted everyone to add powers all the time so that they could sell splat books full of new powers. Which lead to bloat and some balance issues (although not huge ones). AEDU wasn't the problem, the problem was the zillions of powers they were shoveling into the system.

 

[Dungeoneer]

What's AEDU?

At-Wills, Encounters, Dailies and Utilities. The four types of powers in 4e.

 

[Yora]

In that case: No thanks.

Only A makes any sense and possibly a few cases of E.
D and U make no sense, not even for spellcasters. They are impossible to rationalize for anyone else.

 

[The Human Target]

In that case: No thanks.

Only A makes any sense and possibly a few cases of E.
D and U make no sense, not even for spellcasters. They are impossible to rationalize for anyone else.

I mean, I can rationalize it.

I must be a genius!

 

[Marshall]

[No message]

 

[Dungeoneer]

In that case: No thanks.

Only A makes any sense and possibly a few cases of E.
D and U make no sense, not even for spellcasters. They are impossible to rationalize for anyone else.

Erm, dailies have been around as long as wizards have had spells, so apparently SOMEONE can rationalize it.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Technically, both Essentials and Bo9S both are AEDU.

What they don't have is every class using the exact same approach to AEDU. And that's the part that's good, where the base PH failed.

um fighters in essentials don't have daily, and Bo9S has no at will, daily or Utlity???

 

[n00bdragon]

I won't miss them. I never thought that AEDU was the best mechanic. It was just necessary to maintain balance. I was willing to accept a little bit of wonkiness in exchange for balance in my game that I felt was lacking in 2e and 3e.

Once some splat books came out, I noticed that 4e was starting to buckle under the weight of its options and the balance that I'd hope would be maintained due to the AEDU system didn't hold up. We had characters who were essentially unhittable by any monster. We had characters who could kill monsters of their level in one round of attacks by themselves. These were the exact same things that the AEDU system was supposed to prevent due to limiting the stacking of modifiers and the balance of math.

So far D&D Next is maintaining the balance better than 4e did without using the AEDU system to maintain it. We'll once again see what the future holds.

AEDU does not create balance. It does not foster balance. It doesn't have anything to do with balance between classes. AEDU is simply the idea that everyone has non-generic mechanical things otherwise known as "cool things" they can do all the time, everyone has slightly cooler things they can do slightly less often, and everyone has really cool things they can do every once in a while.

One thing that really repulses me is this idea (featured in 5e and in a few other games) that simply adding AEDU makes the game "balanced" in the same way that adding sugar makes food sweeter. AEDU is not an ingredient of "balanced" games. It's not the cause of "balance" in games. It's a symptom of a design philosophy that regardless of what character building options you choose you should have access to the same amount and variety of abilities as anyone else. Symmetry is important to game balanced game design. The aim for symmetry simply begat AEDU. It could beget many other things as well but in the case of 4e that's what they went with. You can speak on the demerits of AEDU all you like (it has many) but it's pretty hard to seriously argue that symmetrical design is bad.

 

[keterys]

um fighters in essentials don't have daily, and Bo9S has no at will, daily or Utlity???

Having the 4e specific labels isn't required:

For example:
a Bloodclaw Master can use encounter maneuvers, use Shifting daily, Claws of the Beast at-will.
a White Raven folower with Clarion Commander can Follow Up, Perpetual Flank, and Pile On as at-wills.
Sudden Recovery gives a daily maneuver
Crusaders get daily smites.
Etc.