D&D 5E People didn't like the Psionic Talent Die

[Minigiant]

Which in turn meant less versatility in builds... nice job there...

That was their goal. It was their way to prevent CoBzilla.
Sacred Flame spammer or Mace swinger. Mockery Spammer or Rapier Poker.

That's why I hope the psychic warrior/knight and soulknife never get combined into 1 class nor made into subclass of the same class. If the psion becomes a class, it want them only as mindblasty mind-controllers.

 

[Fenris-77]

You read all that into me literally just telling you that not wanting to use 3pp is a perfectly valid stance, because, amongst other reasons, most of it isn’t consistent with official material, isn’t well balanced, doesn’t do what it says on the tin, or some combination thereof.

There is a wealth of material that is at least as well balanced as WotCs stuff. How balanced depends on what you're looking at. First off, there is definitely a bunch of stuff that's way out of whack. But there's a some great stuff too. Class stuff can be dicey, but subclass and class balance in 5E is already dodgy, so keeping up there on the quality side isn't hard. People also play D&D at a bunch of power levels, so the extent to which a given item is balanced isn't simply determined by some kind of comparison to an average class in the 5E rules. Spells are also up and down, but, again, the spells in the 5E core are not even remotely 'balanced' by level, so it's a weak comparison. That's the player facing side. On the DM facing side there is a treasure trove of great work. Stuff that expands on areas the core books just touch on, like Shadowfell and the Feywild, as well as great stuff to play with the tone of the game - Dark Fantasy, Urban play, straight horror, all sorts of things. Never mind the host of DM aids specifically designed to help campaign construction.

The fact that there is a general consensus in the wider community about 3PP stuff is pretty meaningless. It means nothing about specific products, and nothing about the usefulness of that product to specific GMs. It's much like movie reviews, take it with a big grain of salt. What I find sad is that this general consensus could serve to keep newer GMs from sampling some of the great stuff that's out there because the received wisdom is that it's all unbalanced. The quality ranges too much for that kind of sweeping dismissal to useful or appropriate IMO.

The fact you somehow squeezed a personal insult toward you into that is entirely on you. I neither said nor implied any such thing.

Well, your post did include a very specific and pointed personal insult, so reading the rest of your post in light of that isn't particularly odd...

As for your part in the exchange, please don’t outright lie. You didn’t just state that there is a wealth of good material, you dismissed the preferences of anyone who doesn’t want to use those materials, as if the reasons weren’t well documented across the greater online TTRPG community.

And now I'm lying. Lovely. What I dismissed was the idea that you can paint all the 3PP product with a single brush (which is exactly what you did). If you want to talk about a position that indexes elitism look no further that that statement right there. There's some junk out there, and also some great material. Dismissing the whole batch with a wave of the hand strikes me as ill considered at the very least. The 3PP publishing world isn't a monolithic thing that's all the same, and to suggest otherwise seems kind of ignorant.

 

[Maxperson]

One of the best parts of 5E is the lack of oxygen for 3E-sttle "builds" being a thing.

Which in turn means that you cannot create many PC concepts in 5e that you could in 3e. Not without those concepts being grossly imperfect anyway, which ruins them for me. Don't get me wrong. I really like 5e. To me this was just a major strength of 3e and is a major flaw of 5e.

 

[Undrave]

One of the best parts of 5E is the lack of oxygen for 3E-sttle "builds" being a thing.

5e totally has 'builds', not as extensive or crazy, but you can build characters differently. It's not about synergies or power gaming, it's about themes and differentiation!

That was their goal. It was their way to prevent CoBzilla.
Sacred Flame spammer or Mace swinger. Mockery Spammer or Rapier Poker.

Are you really argueing that having Toll the Dead in the PHB would have, somehow, made Bards and Cleric overpowered? That being able to target two different defenses with your attack Cantrip is somehow WAY too strong on the Cleric and Bard in the PHB?!

Again, it's not about synergies and power level. It's about being able to have two different ( Caster)Cleric or two different Bard that don't spam the same move over and over again! Why is my Trickery Cleric slinging gouts of radiant holy flames around? Why is the Storm Cleric automatically a melee guy that doesn't even get any Lightning or Thunder cantrip? Would Shocking Grasp on a Tempest Cleric be broken? What if I like the Bard and want to play another one, but don't want to spam Vicious Mockery again?

There is a wealth of material that is at least as well balanced as WotCs stuff. How balanced depends on what you're looking at. First off, there is definitely a bunch of stuff that's way out of whack. But there's a some great stuff too. Class stuff can be dicey, but subclass and class balance in 5E is already dodgy, so keeping up there on the quality side isn't hard.

Finding the good stuff takes a while though. It's like trying to find a good fanfiction: they're out there, they exist, but you have to wade through a LOt of High School AU before you hit the good stuff.

 

[Fenris-77]

Finding the good stuff takes a while though. It's like trying to find a good fanfiction: they're out there, they exist, but you have to wade through a LOt of High School AU before you hit the good stuff.

That is very true, especially for player facing options. I tend to read a lot of reviews before I make purchases. Once you find a publisher that does stuff that's up your alley it's a little easier, or at least I find it so, but that's not helpful for the indie imprints and DMGuild stuff. I do have some stinkers on my shelf. Not too many thankfully, but a handful.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Well, your post did include a very specific and pointed personal insult, so reading the rest of your post in light of that isn't particularly odd...

No, it didn’t. Telling you that your behavior is bad isn’t an insult. The idea that it is is absolutely mind boggling, and detrimental to any community.

Dismissing the whole batch with a wave of the hand strikes me as ill considered at the very least. The 3PP publishing world isn't a monolithic thing that's all the same, and to suggest otherwise seems kind of ignorant.

No one is doing that, though. I said it’s reasonable (valid) to not want to mess with 3pp because much of it is bad, and even the most well known 3pp provider is inconsistent with how much their products feel like 5e products and read in the same linguistic style as the official products.

it’s ironic that you’re calling me ignorant in the same post where you falsely claim I insulted you, though.

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

5e totally has 'builds', not as extensive or crazy, but you can build characters differently. It's not about synergies or power gaming, it's about themes and differentiation!

Side note: I DMed 3e and Pathfinder after it. Had some "broken" builds appearing at our tables, but no Hulking Hurler. Most characters that I'd rate as unfair were spellcasters created with nothing but the PHB. That said, I've yet to see something destroy our fun as much as a 4th-level variant human Battle Master running on crossbow expert and sharpshooter.

 

[Mistwell]

If the industry had always operated this way, we'd never have had any innovative or mechanically daring products.

You mean innovative and mechanically daring products which almost nobody likes or buys. Innovative doesn't mean better, it just means a new method of doing something. Mechanically daring also doesn't mean better, it's just another way of saying the same thing - a new method of doing something. All you're really saying is we'd have avoided the new ways of doing things in ways people didn't like.

Which is how we got games like Lejendary Adventures (or the character creation methods of Traveller), a game with plenty of "innovative" and "mechanically daring" methods of doing things which almost nobody liked and which only got off the ground to begin with because Gary Gygax was behind it.

You can publicly test a new way of doing things ("innovative" and "mechanically daring") first and see if people like that new method. If they don't, you discard it as Lejendary Adventures mechanics. If they do, you embrace it like Advantage/Disadvantage. The playtesting it to see if people like it doesn't make it not innovative or not mechanically daring - it tests to see if it's the kind of those things people actually enjoy in their games.

Right now the feedback seems to be "new method of doing something is fine, as long as it's easy to understand and easy enough to use that I can just sit down and start using that content right away." That's certainly a design challenge to find something which is both new and easy to understand and use quickly, but it's not an impossible standard to meet.

And it's probably the right standard to fit the theme of this edition of D&D. It keeps the designers on focus - don't get distracted by shiny new toys which speak to your depth of experience in wonky and complex mechanics, stay focused on the theme of this game being people can just sit down and start playing the game without a lot of advanced study first. Keep your efforts on those kinds of innovations, and not the wonky ones.

 

[Fenris-77]

No, it didn’t. Telling you that your behavior is bad isn’t an insult. The idea that it is is absolutely mind boggling, and detrimental to any community.

I think there is ample evidence in this thread to the contrary.

No one is doing that, though. I said it’s reasonable (valid) to not want to mess with 3pp because much of it is bad, and even the most well known 3pp provider is inconsistent with how much their products feel like 5e products and read in the same linguistic style as the official products.

it’s ironic that you’re calling me ignorant in the same post where you falsely claim I insulted you, though.

Dude, when you've done something in public, and been called out for it in public, and the evidence is, again, public, it doesn't really move the dial to just say you never did it. I'm not fashed about it mind you, but I do find myself bemused by your strident denials of the blatantly obvious.

I didn't call you ignorant either, I said the position your statement would seem to support is ignorant. And it does, seem ignorant that is. You're still painting with that big ol' brush of yours - again above, you say the best 3PP is not great, implying it's all down hill form there, which would seem to include all the products published the by company that hosts the very website you're posting on. Ouch. Finding quality 3PP isn't that hard.

Essentially you're saying that people shouldn't bother with any 3PP stuff whatsoever because it they might have to actually look in to what they're buying before they make a purchase. I don't see how that's any different than buying anything else - if it's expensive enough that you are worried that it won't be worth the money, you do some research. To pick a comparable example, I wouldn't buy a video game sight unseen without looking into it, or maybe unless it was from a studio I was a big fan of. 3PP stuff is exactly the same.

 

[Parmandur]

Nice goalpost move.

Putting out "untested" products is not the same thing as "waiting for 70% approval from a specific group of nerds, and never doing anything they don't like, unless it's out of sheer incompetence". The idea that doing anything else is "silly" is ludicrous. If the industry had always operated this way, we'd never have had any innovative or mechanically daring products. There's an unimaginably vast space between this kind of extreme risk-avoidance, and the total "just sell whatever, make more stuff!" approach of say TSR.

The real issue here is that I'm right, and it makes you uncomfortable for some reason. Why not just admit that this particular process is completely risk-averse?

Again, there is risk, and there is dumb. Putting out a product people don't want is dumb. Putting out new mechanics for free to see if people want them first is smart. There is no difference in terms of "risk" involved.

The way the industry operated before the Next playtest was objectively inferior, and produced a measurably inferior commercial result. They took a gargantuan risk by starting down the big data path, way bigger than any splat book put out with no vetting ever did. It paid off, and they have every reason to continue.