D&D 4E Mike Mearls on how 4E could have looked

[Sadras]

I think the idea is that the dramatic arc/heroes journey can:

1) Begin at x trope below Conan

2) Evolve into Conan

3) Evolve further into Beowulf

Extrnded further, the premise is:

”Only a Beowulf-esque martial archetype can achieve relative parity with the godlike power and breadth of resources of a D&D Archmage (which is overwhelmingly more powerful than spellcasters in other genre fiction) due to reasons a, b, c (one of which is no action resolution for their suite of godly resources).

My take on it is that 5e deals with everything up to Conan but merely touches on Beowulf (epic boons, supernatural gifts).
The game does stop at level 20 whereas 4e pushed on and explored the Beowulf option. Granted in 4e this was done in relatively equal pace to the caster classes whereas 5e has reverted to arguably the more preferred/popular play style of mundanes.

What WotC could do, is to provide a modular mechanics expansion which may attempt to balance the mundanes with the casters. That is certainly an option and falls within the 5e paradigm.

 

[Manbearcat]

[MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION]

That is certainly an option.

I personally think a well-designed module would be interesting that:

A) Pushed Fail Forward for all action resolution.

B) Increased Martial Characters’ non-combatant fiat abilities (extrapolating from Background Traits and some other features).

C) Had all spells cast require action resolution (I covered how this could be done well upthread).

That would make for an interesting experiment.

 

[Garthanos]

Huh? There is a system for auto-success in the DMG pg. 239

OK the key word was RESOURCE here is what I mean lets say I am a DM who wants martial types to have out of combat parity with the mages...
I need to be able to give them an expendable resource of some sort as a limiter on them being able to do more extreme stunts
With no system for expending say HD in place with appropriate factors to allow similar frequency I will have an imbalance in the
opposite direction... is that clearer?

 

[Imaro]

OK the key word was RESOURCE here is what I mean lets say I am a DM who wants martial types to have out of combat parity with the mages...
I need to be able to give them an expendable resource of some sort as a limiter on them being able to do more extreme stunts
With no system for expending say HD in place with appropriate factors to allow similar frequency I will have an imbalance in the
opposite direction... is that clearer?

Like the Battlemasters dice...

 

[Stalker0]

Good point. I was going to say that. The whole point of bounded accuracy is to avoid having to have a DC by level table and DC creep in general. Now I don't think they actually managed to avoid DC creep in some parts of the game but they tried.

Yeah I think part of the issue is when you see level 6 characters "routinely" (not all the time but common enough) pull off DC 30 skill checks....I think it can cause the DM to want to inflate skill DCs. But at that the same time the key is....that character isn't really supposed to fail on those skill checks. Its just what they do.

 

[Garthanos]

Like the Battlemasters dice...

Right for non-combat arena activities.

 

[Imaro]

Right for non-combat arena activities.

Eh I would say use the same thing if that's what you need... spells use the same resources for combat and non-combat, no reason maneuvers have to be purely physical or combat centered.

 

[Garthanos]

Well see that's the thing... you don't get to play a Conan or Achilles under this paradigm.

Wait the immortal godling who had one vulnerable spot only and nearly immune to everything he reaches into the fire and holds it without making any checks what so ever.

 

[Parmandur]

OK the key word was RESOURCE here is what I mean lets say I am a DM who wants martial types to have out of combat parity with the mages...
I need to be able to give them an expendable resource of some sort as a limiter on them being able to do more extreme stunts
With no system for expending say HD in place with appropriate factors to allow similar frequency I will have an imbalance in the
opposite direction... is that clearer?

Part of the overall narrative balance though is that martials don't have resource limitations like magic users...?

 

[Imaro]

Wait the immortal godling who had one vulnerable spot only and nearly immune to everything he reaches into the fire and holds it without making any checks what so ever.

I guess it depends on which version of Achilles we are speaking to... that said even the invulnerable one's powers come from an enchantment on him as opposed to his own innate abilities.