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

[Parmandur]

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.

For me, character concepts are about literary and psychological tropes, not math. Just by introducing Backgrounds and the Ideals/Traits/Bonds/Flaws, 5E is infinitely more than 3E in terms of character concepts. Less mathematical cruft and traps are a big part of the bonus.

 

[Parmandur]

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!

Yes, but by bringing the build system under control, the game is vastly improved.

 

[Parmandur]

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.

I agree with all of this, though it pains me to admit about the Traveller character creation rules, since those are the best ever.

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

Do you all understand that the monk, the warlock, and maybe even the Battle Master fighter would probably never see print now that three subclasses and a feat using a different dice mechanic are too far away from the core to deserve consideration by the player base, right?

 

[Parmandur]

Do you all understand that the monk, the warlock, and maybe even the Battle Master fighter would probably never see print now that three subclasses and a feat using a different dice mechanic are too far away from the core to deserve consideration by the player base, right?

The PHB threshold for inclusion wasn't 70% approval, it was 90%. They lowered their threshold to get enough material for Xanathar's Guide. So, those mechanics would have done fine by the current standard.

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

The PHB threshold for inclusion wasn't 70% approval, it was 90%. They lowered their threshold to get enough material for Xanathar's Guide. So, those mechanics would have done fine by the current standard.

All evidence point for that to be just wishful thinking on your part.

 

[Lem23]

All evidence point for that to be just wishful thinking on your part.

Since they're in the PHB, evidence suggests that they er...would be in the PHB.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

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

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.

Dude, firstly you need to stop trying to invent extrapolations of what I'm actually saying. I'm saying what I've literally said, and that's it. I never said no one should bother with 3pp, I said it's perfectly valid to not want to.

As for the insult, I'm not going to keep going in circles about it. What I said was not an insult. Telling you that your words were elitist and represented terrible behavior is not an insult.

 

[Parmandur]

All evidence point for that to be just wishful thinking on your part.

Alright, let's grant that they wouldn't have made it in: so what? Maybe the game would be better without the culturally problematic aspects of the Monk or Warlock, honestly, and the Battlemaster is a bit overly fiddley.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Do you all understand that the monk, the warlock, and maybe even the Battle Master fighter would probably never see print now that three subclasses and a feat using a different dice mechanic are too far away from the core to deserve consideration by the player base, right?

It should occur to everyone, at some point, that a new mechanic that isn't needed will be more likely to get rejected the more distinct mechanics are in the game, so no, that isn't something we all need to understand, because it's based on a false premise.

The warlock excited the same people who voted against the psionic die.