D&D 5E fighters and wizards both getting new toys?

[GMforPowergamers]

Auto parry.

I am trying to remember 15 years ago, but if I remember they had 3 choices and could change them at the beging of every round.

1) +3 attack and damage
2) +3 (well -3 because subtract to add) AC
3) Attack and parry the same round.

if I also remember parry was make an opposed attack roll...

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I went back and took a look at the Complete Fighter's Handbook, Complete Thief's Handbook, and Complete Book of Dwarves for perspective.

They do have more crunch than I remember. Also, like most TSR products, I wouldn't consider them up to today's quality standards. But I think there is something in the philosophy, and even the type of crunch that made it less dominant.

It seems that the philosophy was primarily about how to implement that class/race more fully and completely in your campaign. "Here's everything you need to know about dwarves to play a solid dwarven campaign."

[...]

Some of it's just nostalgia, granted. But I think what we should be considering is that when we talk about 2e splatbooks, what people remember is the fluff. When we talk about 3e splatbooks what people remember is prestige classes and feats. I think that says something.

I can't contrast 2e and 3e, but I can contrast 2e and 4e. Taking for instance the 2e Complete Fighter's Handbook, its a fairly nice book, with a good bit of fluff. Probably half the material is flavor text, but its a bit hard to say for sure because there are a bunch of things that aren't clearly one or the other. Because AD&D tended to have a lot of very fuzzy and story-based rules you can interpret a lot of stuff as kind of both or consider it suggestive but factored into the design of a kit. A lot of the crunch is also written in a very conversational style and mixed into the text.

Honestly I liked the 4e style better. If you look for instance at Martial Power, which is very analogous in 4e to CFH it has many similarities but is definitely stylistically quite different. It covers all the Martial power source, so its less focused on the fighter specifically (though about 1/3 of the stuff is for fighters). There is more flavor than people give it credit for, but the division between crunch/flavor is pretty hard. The result is its both easy to ignore the flavor and easy to focus only on the mechanical stuff. However, MP sets up the explanation for each new build pretty carefully. What it doesn't do is say "this battlerager is a viking!" He's drawn to LOOK like a viking and his description SOUNDS like a viking berserk, but its never stated outright. I think maybe this is part of 4e's issue. It lets you draw a picture and build a story around it instead of coloring it all in. For some people this is more fun, it pokes the imagination but doesn't lead you by the nose to one answer, but I guess for a lot of people it felt flat. PERSONALLY I liked a lot of the 2e writing, but I thought it was overly heavy-handed in a lot of places. 4e's touch is often lighter.

Again, it will be interesting to see what 5e does. When they started this process it was hard to imagine they could escape from what they unleashed with 4e, but Mike has shown great determination to remake AD&D, so my guess is the fluff will be much more in the leading you by the hand mode.

Yeah. Transmedia can be a great boon if it keeps crunch bloat of the tabletop game under control. I still shake my head when I look at the list of some of the layoffs that WotC did. I mean, Jeff Grubb? In the TSR era it seemed like his name was on the cover of half or more of the books that came out. What were they thinking?

Jeff Grubb is a great guy and an excellent writer and game designer. The funny thing IMHO is that Mike went and got Monte to help him with his AD&D nostalgia trip when he would have been far better off getting Jeff. Well, maybe that option was even less available, who knows?

 

[Sword of Spirit]

I can't contrast 2e and 3e, but I can contrast 2e and 4e. Taking for instance the 2e Complete Fighter's Handbook, its a fairly nice book, with a good bit of fluff. Probably half the material is flavor text, but its a bit hard to say for sure because there are a bunch of things that aren't clearly one or the other. Because AD&D tended to have a lot of very fuzzy and story-based rules you can interpret a lot of stuff as kind of both or consider it suggestive but factored into the design of a kit. A lot of the crunch is also written in a very conversational style and mixed into the text.

Honestly I liked the 4e style better. If you look for instance at Martial Power, which is very analogous in 4e to CFH it has many similarities but is definitely stylistically quite different. It covers all the Martial power source, so its less focused on the fighter specifically (though about 1/3 of the stuff is for fighters). There is more flavor than people give it credit for, but the division between crunch/flavor is pretty hard. The result is its both easy to ignore the flavor and easy to focus only on the mechanical stuff. However, MP sets up the explanation for each new build pretty carefully. What it doesn't do is say "this battlerager is a viking!" He's drawn to LOOK like a viking and his description SOUNDS like a viking berserk, but its never stated outright. I think maybe this is part of 4e's issue. It lets you draw a picture and build a story around it instead of coloring it all in. For some people this is more fun, it pokes the imagination but doesn't lead you by the nose to one answer, but I guess for a lot of people it felt flat. PERSONALLY I liked a lot of the 2e writing, but I thought it was overly heavy-handed in a lot of places. 4e's touch is often lighter.

Again, it will be interesting to see what 5e does. When they started this process it was hard to imagine they could escape from what they unleashed with 4e, but Mike has shown great determination to remake AD&D, so my guess is the fluff will be much more in the leading you by the hand mode.

I can't really comment on the 4e splats because the only access I had to that material was in the character builder.

I can say I do prefer integrated fluff and crunch in my D&D. The fluff is a major part of what I like about the brand; I see D&D as less of an RPG toolbox, and more of a specific world(s) with rules to help you role-play in that world(s).

So I think it's really just about wanting different things. It's also about how you want your players to see your campaign. In 3e and 4e the assumption was that you built a character, and there were limitless resources for that (even if they were done differently). I just don't get into that anymore. I've "built" my fair share of characters, but I'm at the point now where I don't want any crunch I don't feel is needed and more or less integrated with the world.

So I've found that my philosophy has returned closer to an early 2e mode, even if I wouldn't touch 2e mechanics with a 10' pole.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I can't really comment on the 4e splats because the only access I had to that material was in the character builder.

I can say I do prefer integrated fluff and crunch in my D&D. The fluff is a major part of what I like about the brand; I see D&D as less of an RPG toolbox, and more of a specific world(s) with rules to help you role-play in that world(s).

So I think it's really just about wanting different things. It's also about how you want your players to see your campaign. In 3e and 4e the assumption was that you built a character, and there were limitless resources for that (even if they were done differently). I just don't get into that anymore. I've "built" my fair share of characters, but I'm at the point now where I don't want any crunch I don't feel is needed and more or less integrated with the world.

So I've found that my philosophy has returned closer to an early 2e mode, even if I wouldn't touch 2e mechanics with a 10' pole.

I don't think 4e fluff fails to be INTEGRATED, it is just much less of a narrative prescription. Looking at my Complete Fighter's Handbook for instance I look at the Pirate/Outlaw kit. It has no mechanics at all really. Its a pretty decent sized entry, but it amounts to "pick piratey weapons and armor, and oh btw the law is probably not your friend" Beyond giving you a list of NWPs and WPs you MIGHT pick from (you can pick other ones if you want, though I think one or two become part of your class list that wouldn't normally). In essence it is just about the same weight as a 4e background. 4e has a theme that is similar to this kit, it has the usual theme crunch (not a ton, but some), but the flavor text is more generalized and player-oriented. The 2e Kit text is much more in the vein of a full formulation of exactly what a pirate is and how the DM should run it. In this case I think I LIKE the kit, but some of the kits are more heavy-handed. Its definitely a matter of preference. It is just that I think a lot of the "4e has no flavor" complaints miss the mark. 4e has plenty of flavor, its just a very different sort.

In any case, I'm not sure this is too relevant to the thread anymore.