D&D 5E What are the Roles now?

[LostSoul]

A loss of hit points which need to be restored through healing; either magical or the D&D version of "naturally".

Ah, yep, you're right. I wasn't thinking about it that way.

I switched inspiration-based HP recovery to temporary HP in my hack but I'm not really sure why... I think it's because I didn't want characters to be inspired from 0 or negative HP back into the positives. There are probably other ways to deal with it though.

 

[BryonD]

I switched inspiration-based HP recovery to temporary HP in my hack but I'm not really sure why... I think it's because I didn't want characters to be inspired from 0 or negative HP back into the positives. There are probably other ways to deal with it though.

drifting off topic....

In my 5E house rules Second Wind was replaced with "Heroic Resolve". At the end of each short or long rest a fighter gains 1d10+level temp HP.

 

[SirAntoine]

drifting off topic....

In my 5E house rules Second Wind was replaced with "Heroic Resolve". At the end of each short or long rest a fighter gains 1d10+level temp HP.

I don't like second wind for PC's. For monsters, it makes good sense sometimes, because they can't have clerics, but I don't like the idea of PC's being in control of their own hit points. I don't think inspiration by itself, or morale, should give more hit points. The old "aid" spell can, because it's magic. I like playing with clerics in higher demand.

 

[SirAntoine]

The character classes are pretty good in 5th Edition. I don't think you need another layer of roles, not even for combat. The thing is, it will cramp your creativity and strategic thinking as well as rub some the wrong way by telling them what to do. There is just so much more potential to use the D&D classes.

The characters basically can build combat skills in the areas of melee and missile offense and defense, assistive spell-casting and inspiration by the bard, and more explicitly offensive and defensive magic that can be practically unstoppable. Magic rules in D&D, but it can only go so far and characters who don't focus on it can be equally heroic and important to the party's effectiveness over the long term. The less magic can be used, the more the other characters will determine the outcome. So if you want more of an equal relationship between magic and might characters, you should not give spells back just with a long rest.

 

[Bluenose]

Levels reward player achievement, and the higher your level the more powerful your character is. That goes for all classes without exception, though all characters of the same level do not have the same power. Low level magic, in many cases in combat, exploration, and social interaction, will be more powerful than high level might, and I could give an example of each, but there are also plenty of cases where high level might is much more powerful than low level magic. Strictly speaking, within combat, might is a shade or two weaker than magic of the same character level. I'd say a four level gap exists. So a 5th level fighter was about as powerful as a 1st level wizard.

These observations come from AD&D, not 5th Edition, though. In the new game, the gap is narrower, down to one or two levels I'd say. Magic still remains much more powerful for exploration and social interaction, of course.

I only want these comparative advantages for magic-focused characters because I believe magic is much more powerful than might. To play otherwise would lower the verisimilitude of the game.

Can you prove that when magic is doing something more effectively than might it's not because the magic is being done by someone higher level than the someone doing the might? If not, then you're using the word verisimilitude to support your belief that's based on what you'd like to be rather than anything that counts as verisimilitude for anyone but you.

Which in turn means that being hit for 95 points of damage has no effect.
If you are ok with this, then great.
A lot of people are not.

If you've got 96 hit points to start with then the loss of 95 of them handicaps your ability to run marathons, fight, play the banjo and argue philosophy not at all. Sort of suggests that the physical injury involved isn't particularly significant.


The fundamental argument here at least is that some people have bought into the idea that magic is fundamentally better than mundane, and that therefore anything which is done with magic can't be permitted to be done as effectively by other means. It's not a question of whether verisimilitude demands that magic do something; it's also that mundane must not do it at all, or mundane must do it less effectively at the same level. The necromancer may (perhaps must) be able to raise an army of undead; if that army of undead is matched against the army that the fighter may be allowed to raise, it's got to be better if the levels are the same, because verisimilitude can only be maintained if the privileged position of magic in their minds is acknowledged and supported by the rules. Since this position cannot be proved or disproved by anything outside the rules (because levels aren't a concept in the fiction that inspires the games) then any rules which don't support this have to be condemned as lacking verisimilitude and rules which support it have to be held up as agreeing with it. Since D&D has been published without design goals, an argument about how it's supposed to be run isn't going to change anyone's mind, no matter how many hundred page threads discuss it.

 

[BryonD]

If you've got 96 hit points to start with then the loss of 95 of them handicaps your ability to run marathons, fight, play the banjo and argue philosophy not at all. Sort of suggests that the physical injury involved isn't particularly significant.

This conversation has been repeated many times before. 4E fans are absolutely free and welcome to embrace that gamist approach to it. As always, play what you like.

The mistake I see over and over is jumping from "this works good for me in my games" to "this is a truism for all games everywhere".

I'd say that a guy capable of absorbing/avoiding/rolling with several swings of a giant's club being so worn down that the next goblin to come along could take him out with one stab is "significant".
And I also don't see D&D as enjoyed at is best from a pure gamist perspective.
In movies, books, and TV shows the action heroes are always getting the crap beat out of them. To look at them as see them interact with their surroundings when NOT toe-to-toe with the bad guy, they are beat up and hurting. And they need to recover. But then they get in a fight and they perform at full effectiveness for just long enough. This is a classic trope.
For the mechanical part of D&D, that classic trope is important. Being able to put out just as much combat effectiveness as ever with 1 HP left has fit that duty since the first versions of the game.
And the idea that characters are still "beat down" as GWforPowerGamers put it, has always been obviously understood by everyone I ever played with.

So, again, if you don't like it that way then there is no reason to expect anything different. But when you start putting your preference out there as a truism, you are showing some serious blinders on your perspective.
And if you are leavign that part of the narrative out of the game, IMO you are missing out on a whole lot of the fun. But that is your call.

 

[Hussar]

Looking at genre fiction, I wonder which came first - novels where magic trumps non-magic, or D&D? If you look back at golden age genre fiction, magic is actually pretty darn weak. Wizards don't blast away with fireballs. They get tied down with lengthy rituals which, if successful over enough time, allow the wizard to do fantastic things, but, the idea of the "adventuring wizard" is a D&Dism IMO. You don't see Harry Potteresque wizards until the late 70's early 80's in genre fiction. Things like David Eddings' Belgariad series or Wizard of Earthsea. Even Vance's wizards were nowhere near as powerful as a D&D caster.

 

[BryonD]

Looking at genre fiction, I wonder which came first - novels where magic trumps non-magic, or D&D? If you look back at golden age genre fiction, magic is actually pretty darn weak. Wizards don't blast away with fireballs. They get tied down with lengthy rituals which, if successful over enough time, allow the wizard to do fantastic things, but, the idea of the "adventuring wizard" is a D&Dism IMO. You don't see Harry Potteresque wizards until the late 70's early 80's in genre fiction. Things like David Eddings' Belgariad series or Wizard of Earthsea. Even Vance's wizards were nowhere near as powerful as a D&D caster.

Yes, this is interesting.

There was a time when magic was assumed to be rare and anyone who used magic *a lot* (and sometimes anyone who used magic at all) was strange and distrusted (frequently foreign). And the implied theme was that home-grown toughness would win over "strange ways".

Then D&D came along and everyone wanted to "be" Gandalf. Expect everyone wanted to cast spells a lot more often.

 

[Ratskinner]

Looking at genre fiction, I wonder which came first - novels where magic trumps non-magic, or D&D? If you look back at golden age genre fiction, magic is actually pretty darn weak. Wizards don't blast away with fireballs.

I think that depends on where you draw the line for genre fiction. If, as some do, you include mythic fiction or fairy tales, then magic is an uber-powerful trump card (often with an Achilles Heel, drawback like true love or...well Achilles's Heel).

However, it is that way to drive the plot/hero forward, and is strictly the province of supernatural beings who usually operate under alien rules to serve the storyteller. Trying to put such magic in the hands of the hero adventuring wizard makes for very rough going.

 

[Ratskinner]

Aragorn's ability to turn the tide by rousing his allies' spirits isn't supernatural either - but in D&D how are you going to implement that if not in the form of hit point restoration and/or combat buffs (along the lines of the 4e warlord)?

I'm sorry I missed this before, and I know its big thing for you. Honestly, I think there are several ways that you could implement this in D&D without touching HP directly: morale rules from the old editions work for those inspiring speeches and I could see then expended, IIRC the Black Company book for D20 had two leaders prestige classes that let them lend different types of bonuses et al., worst comes to worst you can just have a spell-like compulsion thought I don't imagine that would be popular. Then again, you could just go ahead and make an encouraging speech to your stablemates, I've that work a good number of times. Just because something can happen doesn't imply that it must be mechanized.