D&D General Compelling and Differentiated Gameplay For Spellcasters and Martial Classes

Garthanos · Oct 9, 2019

Son of the Serpent said:
This jab is very literally quaint...kek...

true indeed!

Tony Vargas · Oct 10, 2019

Oofta said:
The rules are what they are. They aren't going to change because a subset of people dislike it.

The rules have been changed because a subset of people disliked them. That's why we have 5e.
It's a carefully-crafted compromise trying to get around as many such dislikes as possible.

Tony Vargas · Oct 10, 2019

Eric V said:
Yeah, enough that the fighters taking down a dragon several sizes bigger than a Mammoth is very much creeping into superpower territory.
Another poster earlier did a far better job than me pointing out all the things a high-level fighter routinely does/survives to make the case.

Nod. But it's all in a very tightly-limited domain of tanky DPR. And, what hps (and thus tankiness & DPR both) represent is highly abstracted. So you can interpret in ways that make high-level fighters (any high level 5e PCs, really, because there's just a lotta HD accumulat'n) into Highlanders (in the Quickening sense) or Asgardians (in the Marvel sense) or martial artists (in the Wuxia or Anime sense) or superheroes or just arbitrarily lucky.

Oofta · Oct 10, 2019

Tony Vargas said:
The rules have been changed because a subset of people disliked them. That's why we have 5e.
It's a carefully-crafted compromise trying to get around as many such dislikes as possible.

Losing top spot to a different RPG and seeing sales drop year after year was not the result of a small subset of people not liking 4E. It was more like the majority of people that had played previous editions of the game. Along with never appealing to newbies.

I'll agree there was opportunity to give feedback for 5E during the playtest. There still is for UA material. But the core of the game is pretty set in stone for now.

Cap'n Kobold · Oct 10, 2019

Oofta said:
At a certain point, what do you expect? You have a few basic options if 5E doesn't suit your needs. Implement house rules, possibly grabbing some from from Dmsguild. Play a different game or edition. Wait for a UA article and participate in the survey and give feedback. Accept that no game can be for everyone.

The rules are what they are. They aren't going to change because a subset of people dislike it. They definitely aren't going to change just because you post to a message board.

We're not here to change the edition, we're here in this thread to suggest rulings, house rules and game structure to remove or reduce the issues that the OP is having. As in the first of your suggested options. I'm fairly sure that no one has suggested this thread is about any of the others.

The purpose of this thread is to come up with ideas of constructive changes that would help the OP. And so I would hope that is what everyone involved in it is here to do.

Tony Vargas · Oct 10, 2019

Oofta said:
Losing top spot to a different RPG and seeing sales drop year after year was not the result of a small subset of people not liking 4E.

True, they weren't - there's a lot of forces at work in a market (though, with a cult/nerd property like D&D, a little nerdrage goes a long way) - changing the rules was a response to the dislike of a sub-set of people.

Those rules, were, themselves, based on a relatively small, self-selecting sub-set of people making criticisms of 3.x - "static combat" for instance. And, not entirely irrelevant to this topic, the proliferation of Fighter SUX threads back on Gleemax just might've had something to do with the huge expansion of choice/power that martial classes got in 4e. And, the contrary nerdrage of the edition war, to taking all that away again and powering casters back up. None of those were vast majorities of anything getting a consensus, they were relatively small, very vocal, elements.

So you're whistling past the graveyard, a bit. You know the game has changed in response to relatively small, very vocal, sub-sets of the fanbase, before. The last time, it changed in a way you liked.

The next time, who knows?

(Personally, I suspect D&D has finally settled into a 'sustaining' mode as far as rules go. Future editions will have different themes and different art and the like, but the rules aren't going to see substantive changes again. Like ever. That ship has sailed, hit a mine, burned to the waterline, sunk to the bottom of a deep-sea trench, been buried in a avalanche, and is currently riding a subduction zone very slowly into the upper mantle of the planet.)

(Then again, I've been wrong every time I've made a prediction about the future of D&D.)

Oofta · Oct 10, 2019

Cap'n Kobold said:
We're not here to change the edition, we're here in this thread to suggest rulings, house rules and game structure to remove or reduce the issues that the OP is having. As in the first of your suggested options. I'm fairly sure that no one has suggested this thread is about any of the others.

The purpose of this thread is to come up with ideas of constructive changes that would help the OP. And so I would hope that is what everyone involved in it is here to do.

When someone comes up with some concrete rules rather than general complaints, I'll be happy to provide feedback.

I gave some suggestions a long time back, but there's no consensus on what the issue even is.

FrogReaver · Oct 10, 2019

Cap'n Kobold said:
We're not here to change the edition, we're here in this thread to suggest rulings, house rules and game structure to remove or reduce the issues that the OP is having. As in the first of your suggested options. I'm fairly sure that no one has suggested this thread is about any of the others.

The purpose of this thread is to come up with ideas of constructive changes that would help the OP. And so I would hope that is what everyone involved in it is here to do.

Sadly I gave feedback, analyzed said feedback and determined it wouldn't work for D&D. That caused these people to lose their minds and spend the next several pages attacking me for daring to say their idea wasn't compatible with D&D - which it isn't - but it's strange this is started in the D&D section and the OP mentions his problems with D&D several times - it seems reasonable to assume this thread was about fixing D&D for him - which I don't think can be done.

**Given it wasn't the OP doing that - just a few rather vocal people that thought he was talking about something he wasn't - but they did derail and ruin the thread for most of us that might continue to offer feedback