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

[Undrave]

The PHB, by itself. I wasn't even referring to the state of the game now, although that enhances my point. Just the PHB is a full roster of interesting options.

It's certainly a full roster, but I wouldn't qualify ALL of them as interesting >.> that's very generous.

 

[Parmandur]

That's a very good point actually.

Again, to go back to the evolution thing: the D&D player base changes with every new player and every time someone leaves.

D&D can't stay stagnant to keep its players satisfied because its players are never the same.

That's why they put stuff out there in UA, to test the waters. Some stuff floats, some stuff sinks. That's evolution.

 

[generic]

Someone selling their soul to extraplanar entities for fun & profit isn't going to sit right with many people.

Monk's are actually particularly problematic, though, because of the cultural appropriation odditiy going on there. I've heard some good analytics of this from Asian gamers, and it really puts the whole class in an uncomfortable light. The whole exotic Orientalist treatment of Ki is particularly egregious.

Allow me to address both points in order.

1.) This is a fantasy role-playing game, and, as far as I have seen, there is no direct parallel in the real world for someone selling their soul in exchange for magical powers. I cannot fathom how this is "culturally egregious", even if it does bother certain individuals.

2.) From my observations, ki/chi as a concept doesn't allow you to toss fireballs out of your palms in our dimension. Does the term "pact" offend you because it has been used in realistic contexts in certain religions? Should I toss my hat into the air and shout because "Paladin" is used incorrectly? What about Clerics? Is that term problematic because D&D's clerics don't represent the reality of clerical positions?

 

[generic]

The most popular versions of the game, other than the one we have now...?

They were editions of D&D, and just because something came later doesn't mean it is better. History doesn't progress or regress, it wobbles. WotC has correctly identified something that worked for early D&D, in terms of product development.

I neither stated what you seem to attribute to me nor agree with it.

 

[Parmandur]

It's certainly a full roster, but I wouldn't qualify ALL of them as interesting >.> that's very generous.

The PHB roster is all above the 70% threshold the Psionic die failed, which is what matters.

Also keep in mind that they have done after the fact approval tests in the past couple years: the PHB options, even unto the Beastmaster, are quite popular by the same metric these options failed.

 

[Parmandur]

This is a fantasy role-playing game, and, as far as I have seen, there is no direct parallel in the real world for someone selling their soul in exchange for magical powers. I cannot fathom how this is "culturally egregious", even if it does bother certain individuals.

Not to get too far into board rules, but that would be your opinion. Clearly in history, even recent history, people have claimed different things.

From my observations, ki/chi as a concept doesn't allow you to toss fireballs out of your palms in our dimension. Does the term "pact" offend you because it has been used in realistic contexts in certain religions? Should I toss my hat into the air and shout because "Paladin" is used incorrectly? What about Clerics? Is that term problematic because D&D's clerics don't represent the reality of clerical positions?

People do believe things about Ki, not just in other countries but next door to me here in California, which are very much misrepresented by the game concept. If I was King of D&D, I wouldn't touch that with a ten foot pole. But, hey, it seems to work for the most part, and passes the popularity threshold for now.

I neither stated what you seem to attribute to me nor agree with it.

Then I am unsure what you meant: the question was, name some other editions that had similar content release patterns after six years. I named three. They are not "proto-D&D," some low tech version of the game. They are, indeed, the example what the current edition has successfully emulated to thrive. The previous business model of 3E and 4E was the less fit exception in history, and 2E was a dumpster fire.

 

[generic]

People do believe things about Ki, not just in other countries butt next door to me here in California, which are very much misrepresented by the game concept. If I was King of D&D, I wouldn't touch that with a ten foot pole. But, hey, it seems to work for the most part, and passes the popularity threshold for now.

People believe in the faith and power of a Cleric as well. Ki is as much a term as Cleric is, and D&D's Ki is not a parallel to that of the real world any more than Clerics in D&D parallel real-world clerics.

 

[Parmandur]

People believe in the faith and power of a Cleric as well. Ki is as much a term as Cleric is, and D&D's Ki is not a parallel to that of the real world any more than Clerics in D&D parallel real-world clerics.

That's perilously close to the point: the depiction of Clerics has been quite good, from the TSR era when Gygax was leading Bible studies at his Church or in the WotC period when ordained ministers such as James Wyatt have written on the topic. Less faimiiar concepts such as Ki, being more exotic to the designers, have not fares as well. Hence, Ki fireballs, when Ki would be better used to describe, say, the Superiority dice of the Battlemaster or the Sneak Attack of the Rogue.

 

[generic]

That's perilously close to the point: the depiction of Clerics has been quite good, from the TSR era when Gygax was leading Bible studies at his Church or in the WotC period when ordained ministers such as James Wyatt have written on the topic. Less faimiiar concepts such as Ki, being more exotic to the designers, have not fares as well. Hence, Ki fireballs, when Ki would be better used to describe, say, the Superiority dice of the Battlemaster or the Sneak Attack of the Rogue.

On this I can agree, but do the concept sin D&D need to parallel those in our world directly? As I understand it, Ki is better represented in the more martial, and less mystical Monk subclasses, but that does not an issue make.

 

[PsyzhranV2]

People believe in the faith and power of a Cleric as well. Ki is as much a term as Cleric is, and D&D's Ki is not a parallel to that of the real world any more than Clerics in D&D parallel real-world clerics.

There's a qualitative and moral difference between bastardizing the myths and legends of your own people or a group of people close to your own ancestry, and doing the same to those of a culture far removed from your own. When doing the latter, it is best to tread a lot lighter. Doubly so if you're a White creator taking inspiration from the myths and legends of BIPOC cultures. And sometimes, you have to ask yourself if what you're writing is really your story to tell.

Have a gander at this article: Asian Representation and the Martial Arts. Section specifically on 5e quoted below:

The Monk in Dungeons & Dragons, 5th Edition

We first see an illustration of a human or elven woman with European features holding out her hands, which glow with some kind of magical energy. In the background stands a tall building with Chinese-style concave sloped tile roofs. Her outfit doesn’t look Asian, but its saffron-and-red colors evoke vestments from the Shàolín Monastery, where all this Asian fighting monk business started. However, as I mentioned in Best Practices for Religious Representation, the cultural influences in this class come from all over the place.

• The hook paragraphs describe a half-elf using acrobatics and deflecting arrows with her fists as she beats up hobgoblins; a tattooed human breathing fire at some orcs; and a halfling ninja about to stab a bad guy. I get the first one, that works as a Chinese Shàolín monk thing. I get the second one, maybe he’s the Avatar. But why is there a ninja? Shouldn’t a ninja be a ranger or rogue? Sure, ninja know martial arts, but so do fighters, paladins, rogues, and rangers. Is it just an ethnic thing? Monks know martial arts, and when Asians are fighting it’s automatically martial arts? Influences:
• Next we hear about ki, the monk’s power source. Were we actually to follow Chinese or Japanese understandings of breath energistics, it would be as relevant to clerics, fighters, and rogues as it is to monks. Instead this game has redefined a basic idea of Asian medicine as a magic points pool. You can check the heading “Prāṇa, Qì, and Ki” in the religion article for more details, but for now, suffice to say it’s a little weird that this Chinese monk concept accompanies some Japanese vocabulary which isn’t even in common English circulation. Just as the monk sticks out as the lone regionally typed class, the game term “ki” sticks out as an incongruous foreign term in a book otherwise written in English. I guess it sounds more exotic than if they just called it spirit points or something. Influences: I guess
• The monk’s most important ability scores are Dexterity and Wisdom. I would have expected Strength rather than Dexterity for a Shàolín monk, but I’m not finna overthink it because I find the way D&D maps real-world activities to the six ability scores inconsistent at best and mystifying most of the time. We’ll come back to Dexterity and Wisdom when we talk about Western conceptions of Eastern combat and its related stereotypes, though.
• The monk primarily fights either unarmed or using a list of “monk weapons, which are shortswords and any simple melee weapons that don’t have the two-handed or heavy property.” I don’t understand where aversion to heavy weapons came from even as a stereotype. The Shàolín monk’s signature hand-to-hand weapon was the monk’s spade, a heavy staff with a modified spade on one end and a T-shaped blade on the other. The Japanese sōhei’s signature hand-to-hand weapon was the superheavy glaive called a bisentō. Maybe it has something to do with the monk’s Dexterity emphasis?
• The monk fights without armor. That’s from wǔxiá cinema, I guess?
• The monk has various abilities listed as “martial arts” which involve, uh, attacking, defending, moving quickly, and jumping around. Like, okay, but other classes do these things too.
• High-level monks can sustain themselves on ki alone, turn invisible, and astrally project. I think these abilities draw on Chinese sources, but … they’re actually from Daoist sources like the Lièzǐ, not Buddhist ones like Shàolín. Yes, some Shàolín monks studied Daoism. Yes, Daoism had its own monastic traditions. But conflating Daoism and Buddhism is not to be undertaken lightly. Still, the David Carradine television series Kung Fu notoriously featured Buddhist monks spouting Daoist aphorisms. Seriously, y’all, that was one scene in The 36th Chamber of Shàolín, not justification for confusing two different religions on a regular basis.

So the monk mostly draws on Chinese sources, except culturally conflated with ki and ninja stuff from Japan. No other character class has any cultural signifiers like it, not even the barbarian or druid. The barbarian isn’t actually from a foreign land, they’re just angry. The druid is a wilderness magician who resembles a Celtic religious leader only in name and sickle proficiency. There’s one racialized class, and its race is “Asian martial artist.” Which Asian martial artist? All of them.

This ain’t it, daimyō.