D&D 5E First experience with 5th edition and Lost Mines of Phandelver (no spoilers)

[Oofta]

Some people like attention. Either give it to them, or don't. Or, more charitably, some people look for solutions, and others prefer to vent. If you are a solutions-oriented person, best to avoid those who are just venting.



But that's because you haven't been eating sashimi!

/ducks

All right. Now I need your address. Some slappin' is about the happen!

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Guest 6801328]

WotC is targetting "newbies" and "younglings" because they want to make money and maximize their audience. 5e follows this business model.

Funny, I'm an old grognard and 5e targets me perfectly. It brought me back to the game after D&D strayed too far into territory that I always assumed was meant to appeal to kids raised on video games.

But maybe we should both stop making assumptions.

And to be utterly pedantic (which I have as an at-will power because I'm an Old Grognard) "target audience" is not a synonym for "business model".

 

[Tony Vargas]

My definition of a fighter being a magic user is certainly different from yours.

Your 'definition' is wrong within the context of the game in question, which had it's own power Source definitions.
Within 5e's definition of magic, OTOH: The EK casts spells, spells are explicitly magic. EKs are explicitly a fighter sub-class. They're fighters who use magic.

Why? Well, they were limited to x number of times, just like a vancian spellcaster.

Not quite like a vancian spellcaster, no. Classic D&D 'Vancian' casters memorized spells and used verbal, somatic, and material components to evoke their effects, losing memory of the spell - but could memorize the same spell more than once if they wanted. No 4e (or 5e) classes actually did all that (even 3e classes stopped 'memorizing' and started 'preparing'). 5e casters use spontaneous slots, like non-Vancian 3.x Sorcerers. In 4e, only the Wizard memorized ('prepared') spells, but couldn't prep the same spell more than once.

So, it's really just x/day, and that's an entirely different issue. Magic in genre (even in the works of Jack Vance) doesn't work a limited x/day like they do in D&D. Most characters in genre, OTOH, don't display the exact same moves over and over - they have some 'signature' tricks and some others that get used less often, not necessarily with any explanation why. D&D has used x/day limits for non-magical abilities before and since, as well. 3e Barbarian rage, for instance, was x/day, but explicitly (EX)traordinary. The 5e fighter, BTW, also gets an x/day (as well as x/rest) ability...

So it's not that everyone was 'using magic,' nor even that everyone had limited-use abilities, rather the distinction was that non-magic-using characters had limited-use abilities that rivaled those of casters in both availability and power (though not in scope or versatility). Balance is what you objected to.

That's fine, not everyone has to like balance, and 5e has been doing quite well without much balance baked into it's system (DMs can always impose balance, afterall).

Nope. Every class can use magic.

True. You could simply never use magic, regardless of class. ;P

And, you can free up a few classes from that 'burden' of actually being magical by simply banning the sub-classes that do gain spell slots.

Well, that is, if you do not extend your definition of 'use magic' to 'has limited-use abilities,' even when those abilities are not explicitly magical the way spells, rituals and ki are in 5e. In that case you're still out of luck.

*If I hear one more person say "you just haven't had good sushi" I may have to slap them. I've tried sushi multiple times, sometimes paying an exorbitant amount of money for the privilege.

I quite like it, myself. You can dislike sushi all you want, but you probably shouldn't go around saying that it's all textured soy protein, because that's an outright lie, and disparaging to all the folks out there catching all that lovely fish and serving it at sushi bars.

By the same token, you - like thecasualoblivion - may not like this or that RPG, or even this or that edition of D&D (defunct or current), which is fine but, you should still refrain from making false claims to justify that dislike. Doing so isn't just offensive to people with different opinions, but makes you appear petty and dishonest, as well. Why would you want to do that to yourself, even from behind a message board avatar? Besides, it's not necessary to have, let alone 'prove' a reason for disliking something. Disliking it is enough.

Hell, they're talking about another "big mechanical expansion" soon because IMO they're already out of novel content for 5e.

Well, they're out of profitable content anyway, probably based on their surveys. So I agree i'ts time to judge 5e.

Games do have a life cycle. At any point in a games life cycle, you can deny criticisms (rather than actually answering them), by simply claiming that it's 'too early' in the life cycle to judge, or 'too late' in the life cycle to change. Often, different apologist will do each, simultaneously.

This may be a little existential, but you can certainly judge the game once it's out of print. And 5e's very much in print.

Unfortunately, I don't think you will be satisfied with 5e.

That'd be unfortunate, as 5e's goals including trying to re-unify the fan base.

WotC is targetting "newbies" and "younglings" because they want to make money and maximize their audience.

They really aren't, at least, not with the system. AL is certainly trawling for players, but at least as much returning ones as entirely new ones.

What does this mean?
(1) Overnight healing. Everybody heals overnight. Yay!

A little easier for bookkeeping.

(2) Simple character generation. Math is boring!

Class generation isn't all that simple - simpler than 3.x, more complicated than B/X or 1e. What it is, though, is fairly familiar to long-time players.

(3) More class balance.

/Less/ class balance than the last edition, to please fans of yet older editions.

(4) Removal of controversial mechanics.

Again, to please fans of older editions.

My DM can't yell at my alignment and make me cry!

Alignment has not been removed.

Conversely, people who are attached to decades old canon libraries will be disappointed.

Not so much. Classes and races have been restored to their earlier 'feel,' FR has been re-set to be closer to what it was before the Spellplague.

Almost missed this. I agree with you. WotC wanted to avoid the "4e mistake" where level-1-characters were balanced.

Lol.

No PCs died at level 1. OMG newbie videogame! The internet boards were alight with rage. I'm pretty sure this means WotC artificially inflated the lethality of early levels in 5e. Also this means that hardcore DMs are sadists

It is at odds with the idea that 5e is aimed at giving new players a fun/gentle first play experience, and consistent with the game being primarily targeted at long-time and returning players.

People expect new players to join a session, then die to a big trap or spell. That's D&D as they say. 5e carried that goal like most predecessors.

That is what some so-called 'grognards' and returning players might expect. Again, that points to the edition taking them into consideration, arguably, ahead of the potential for new players.

And, it /does/ make sense. Since the end of the initial fad in the 80s. D&D has acquired new players via existing players bringing them into games and teaching them. No matter how appealing new players might have found a less-traditional take on D&D, no matter how positive a first-play experience the designers could have contrived to provide via the mechanics, if existing players didn't whole-heartedly embrace the latest edition, they weren't going to be there to indoctrinate potential new players into it. 5e probably isn't as good at retaining new players as some more modernized version might have been, but it's better at getting old players to bring new players into the hobby.

5e is prettymuch for the long-time and returning 'old' player.

Case in point...

Funny, I'm an old grognard and 5e targets me perfectly. It brought me back to the game

Thanks.

after D&D strayed too far into territory that I always assumed was meant to appeal to kids raised on video games.

But maybe we should both stop making assumptions.

Yep.

And to be utterly pedantic (which I have as an at-will power because I'm an Old Grognard) "target audience" is not a synonym for "business model".

Right again, my friend.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Oofta]

Your 'definition' is wrong within the context of the game in question, which had it's own definitions of magic.

Wait ... so basically you're saying "your opinion is wrong, but my opinion is right"?

Slap whatever label you wish on 4E's "martial" powers, but they were supernatural IMHO. They follow the same pattern as spells, and violated all rules of what would be physically possible. Magical spells were just a different subset of supernatural abilities. The only difference between visions of avarice and come and get it were range, duration and one had a "martial" label attached and the other had the "magic" label.

While all fighter abilities are abstractions of reality, they still make sense if you apply action-movie reality. They bend what is possible, they don't take what would be possible while swinging a sword throw it out and replace it with something that is completely impossible in our reality and paper it over with vague "it works because it's cool" fluff. Powers from 4E only make sense if you apply cartoon or video game reality.

I'm not saying that's necessarily bad, and I don't mean it as an insult to 4E fans. A lot of people liked that style and several video games (Dragon Age pops to mind) follow a similar pattern.

 

[Tony Vargas]

5e's goals was to unify the fanbase. So, yes, to the extent that any fan of D&D doesn't like, that is unfortunate.

The thing that bothers me is not so much that it's inevitable that 5e can't succeed completely in that goal, it's the speed and zeal with which that 'failure' (incomplete success) is sometimes put forth in what seems to be intended as a 'defense' of 5e. 5e has a tremendous amount of flexibility - if the community remains open to the idea of adapting it to the full range of past and possible styles. If 5e discussions turn into us/them exercises in dismissing others' concerns, if some group of circled wagons starts to get proprietary about it - if, worse case, a 5e edition war gets started - then it's not just going to inevitably, ultimately not quite succeed completely with it's re-unification/inclusiveness goal, it's going to see that goal undermined.

'Unfortunate' really doesn't do it justice.

Wait ... so basically you're saying "your opinion is wrong, but my opinion is right"?

It's not a matter of opinion, but of fact.

D&D present options that use magic and options that don't. When you label an option that doesn't use magic - like a 3e Barbarian or a 4e martial class or 5e Champion - as using magic, you are simply wrong.

You may not like that a short-rest-recharge mechanic is used to refresh the 4e martial character's encounter powers, a 4e arcane caster's encounter spells, a 5e Champion's Second Wind, and 5e Warlock's spells, but it doesn't make 'em all magical.

 

[Oofta]

It's not a matter of opinion, but of fact.

You do know we're talking about a game of imaginary, made up abilities, right? That "fact" doesn't really apply here?

In my opinion, most of 4E's powers for all classes were what we would consider supernatural.

From dictionary.com's definition of supernatural: "of, relating to, or being above or beyond what is natural; unexplainable by natural law or phenomena; abnormal."

Most of 4E's powers fall into the supernatural category.

With 5E you have the option of playing a class that does not require justification of "it's supernatural". As in, could possibly be a replication of something that could happen in real life (or in an action-movie setting anyway).

Anyway, this is going nowhere. Good gaming.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The only difference between visions of avarice and come and get it were range, duration and one had a "martial" label attached and the other had the "magic" label.

'Arcane,' technically, not 'magic' - though the Arcane source was defined as being magical.

But, you are, again, demonstrably wrong. There are other differences, here's a big one:

Visions of Avarice was subject to Dispel Magic. Come & Get It, Rain of Steel - and, indeed, all the fighter's other attack powers - were not.

While all fighter abilities are abstractions of reality, they still make sense if you apply action-movie reality.

As did Come & Get It in 4e and even Stunning Fist (which was a Fighter Bonus Feat and was another example of a non-magical daily) in 3.x/PF.

they don't take what would be possible while swinging a sword throw it out and replace it with something that is completely impossible in our reality and paper it over with vague "it works because it's cool" fluff.

On the contrary, Action movies totally go that far.

You do know we're talking about a game of imaginary, made up abilities, right? That "fact" doesn't really apply here?

There are facts about the content of the game, yes, it's there in black & white. You can open the book and check what it says.

I'm not talking about the 'facts' of what's going on in the imagined fiction - there aren't any, just imagination. In 4e, in the case of powers, that's even a design 'feature' (or bug, I suppose, if you don't like it), in that the fluff text of a power is subject to change by the player to fit his character concept, changing that imagined un-reality.

In my opinion, most of 4E's powers for all classes were what we would consider supernatural.

Technically, most of the class powers in the game were supernatural, because Martial Powers, the only ones that weren't supernatural, constituted a minority (~2/9ths, if it matters) of those powers.

From dictionary.com's definition

Might be helpful in discussion 5e or maybe 3e, but 4e went so far down the jargon rabbit-hole that there's no point.

With 5E you have the option of playing a class that does not require justification of "it's supernatural".

Sub class, all 5e classes have at least one sub-class with supernatural elements, a few have one or two without them. If you don't hold to your earlier definition of any limited-use power being magical, that is.

In 3e, you could play several such classes - the Fighter, Rogue, and Barbarian (all EX powers, just double-checked) - and you could fold in up to three levels of Ranger with them to make MC builds with no supernatural powers. In 4e you could play 4 classes with no supernatural powers - the Fighter, Ranger, Rogue and Warlord - each with 2 builds just in the PH. In 5e, you can play Barbarian, Fighter or Rogue, but not all their sub-classes, if you want to avoid explicitly-magical powers. Unless you have issues with things like Rage or Indomitable being x/day, that is.

You could also go beyond what the rules strictly said, of course. In 4e, you could re-skin classes & their powers, too, if you really wanted (FREX: in a 4e steampunk campaign, a mad scientist with a flamethrower was a re-skinned Sorcerer) but the keywords stayed (if the mad scientist used the wrong power to set an area on fire, it might be dispelled - if anyone had a Dispel Magic handy - though the one Wizard in the campiagn re-skinned as a hypnotist didn't). Re-skinning isn't a player thing so much, but in 5e the DM could up and declare, for instance, that he was using the Mystic, and that the class's psionic powers were not magical, and they wouldn't be, no pesky keywords or jargon.

 

[ZzarkLinux]

All this discussion makes me wonder about how WotC is targetting NewAgeGamers vs. PastCollectors. Seems interesting, but I lack Tony's energy to explain. XP all around for sharing your thoughts.

In my opinion, most of 4E's powers for all classes were what we would consider supernatural.
(...)
With 5E you have the option of playing a class that does not require justification of "it's supernatural". As in, could possibly be a replication of something that could happen in real life (or in an action-movie setting anyway).

A lot of people agree, though some people like me tend to ask more questions. A lot of all this stuff was touched in the other thread about what-we-miss from older editions.

Have you shared your thoughts over there yet?