D&D General D&D's feel - forums vs. Reddit

[DEFCON 1]

I'm not sure were are coming from the same perspective. Why would classes have the exact same mechanics?

I meant that with four classes (for example), you are seeing multiples of the same class in most parties. And thus except for the few individual subclass mechanics for any of those classes, the rest of the class feature mechanics will be the same. Having two Fighters means more mechanical duplication than having a Fighter and a Paladin (for example). Thus there is less distinction from my perspective.

 

[dave2008]

I meant that with four classes (for example), you are seeing multiples of the same class in most parties. And thus except for the few individual subclass mechanics for any of those classes, the rest of the class feature mechanics will be the same. Having two Fighters means more mechanical duplication than having a Fighter and a Paladin (for example). Thus there is less distinction from my perspective.

OK, I get it.

Well, that really depends on how you make the classes and, as you noted, the fluff provided and brought by the Players. Backgrounds can also play an important distinction too. Personally I would like the paladin to be a type of cleric, same with the druid. So those "classes" would be options within the framework of the cleric, or what I now like to call the Invoker class.

In my hypothetical class system you could easily see a dozen different fighters feeling different even if they are all the same class.

 

[Bluenose]

Thank you for doing all these polls and sharing the data. I do have one thought;

You list items in the 40-60% range as "debatable importance." I would say that there is no company in their right mind that would remove something that 40-60% of its fan base thought was important. Basically, what I am suggesting @JEB is that your organizational titles are a bit misleading.

For several items in that category - and some in other categories too - they've changed several times over the history of D&D. D&D may need an initiative system and/or alignment but which way it's done is entirely debatable and that debate could easily include removing them in favour of something "better". I mean, if the 6E designers came out saying they were considering getting rid of alignment entirely and replacing it with a mixture of boons and flaws to reflect the personality of characters and monsters, would that be so terrible as to make the game !Not-D&D? A cleric of the goddess of passion who is expected to protect lovers, glory in battle, avenge personal slights and never marry doesn't really need an alignment, whereas a listing of expected conduct could be part of the Boon system quite easily.

 

[TheSword]

I find it fascinating that despite the claims that Alignment is dead, and a pointless relic, nearly half of all respondents consider it important to the feel of D&D.

I feel less alone, now I know it’s not just me and @Oofta that feel that way.

I’m not surprised the great wheel doesn’t rank highly in importance, as awesome as it is. You can have a perfectly healthy d&d campaign without visiting the outer planes. It also hasn’t really had much support since the Planescape setting ended... that was 25 years ago. Though it’s time will come again.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I find it fascinating that despite the claims that Alignment is dead, and a pointless relic, nearly half of all respondents consider it important to the feel of D&D.

It is dead in the sense that it essentially has to be a non-mechanical optional feature at this point, rather than something that's built into the mechanics, which is a big change from earlier editions of D&D.

It's also more divisive, opinion-wise, than a lot of elements, in that people who are against it or for it tend to be more strongly so. Further, I don't have figures, but I strongly suspect that it's drastically dropped in popularity over the last 30 years. Like, had you polled a D&D forum in, say, 1995 (if one existed - I was all about Shadowland.org, the WoD forums and RPG.net and stuff back then), I suspect we'd have seen alignment at like 80%+ support. Then in say 2005 it'd be down to like 65-70% support, then by 2010 maybe 50-55%, and now here we are with 46%. I don't think that trend is likely to reverse.

Sorry, I read this and it seems kind of mean. That isn't intended - you're totally entitled to love the hell out of it! What I'm trying to say is that it's a feature that it is necessary to exclude from being mechanical, and that is only likely to continue to be pushed to the periphery of D&D as time goes on.

On the topic generally I find it pretty interesting that reddit through ability scores were the key defining trait of D&D moreso than, say, classes, or levels, which seems pretty wild to me. I can play a game that feels exactly like D&D to me with different ability scores or none, but I can't do that without classes (I can do it without really proper levels, as Dungeon World shows). YMMV.

 

[TheSword]

It is dead in the sense that it essentially has to be a non-mechanical optional feature at this point, rather than something that's built into the mechanics, which is a big change from earlier editions of D&D.

It's also more divisive, opinion-wise, than a lot of elements, in that people who are against it or for it tend to be more strongly so. Further, I don't have figures, but I strongly suspect that it's drastically dropped in popularity over the last 30 years. Like, had you polled a D&D forum in, say, 1995 (if one existed - I was all about Shadowland.org, the WoD forums and RPG.net and stuff back then), I suspect we'd have seen alignment at like 80%+ support. Then in say 2005 it'd be down to like 65-70% support, then by 2010 maybe 50-55%, and now here we are with 46%. I don't think that trend is likely to reverse.

Sorry, I read this and it seems kind of mean. That isn't intended - you're totally entitled to love the hell out of it! What I'm trying to say is that it's a feature that it is necessary to exclude from being mechanical, and that is only likely to continue to be pushed to the periphery of D&D as time goes on.

On the topic generally I find it pretty interesting that reddit through ability scores were the key defining trait of D&D moreso than, say, classes, or levels, which seems pretty wild to me. I can play a game that feels exactly like D&D to me with different ability scores or none, but I can't do that without classes (I can do it without really proper levels, as Dungeon World shows). YMMV.

Perhaps. Though without any evidence to back you claim up I’m not so sure. Alignment was far far far more divisive in 3e.

Don’t worry, I don’t take it as mean, I just recognize you as one of the 54%.

I take heart, that I think WOC is unlikely to remove something from the game that almost half of responding think is important to the feel of the game. There would be other less controversial things to take out.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Alignment was far far far more divisive in 3e.

This is what I mean though re: mechanics. Alignment isn't controversial when it doesn't get forced on anyone because of the mechanics they want to use - i.e. their class or race (thought tbf D&D has generally realized the latter was "not on" since 2E, it's just that's been inconsistent, sometimes even within the same book). 3E tried to make alignment mechanical and mandatory at a point in history when it was kind of "too late" to really do that without creating an issue, because, I would suggest of the weird attempts in early 3E to go "back to the basics!", i.e. pushing GH as a setting, looking at 1E more than 2E for a lot of inspirations (including bringing back Monks and Barbarians), and so on. Attempts which were soon given up on to be fair.

I have little doubt 6E will have something called alignment in it, fully-explained, and fully-optional. I'd strongly suspect NPCs and monsters in official books won't have an alignment applied to them, though - or if they do, it may well be in an appendix at the back of the book or something.

 

[prabe]

This is what I mean though re: mechanics. Alignment isn't controversial when it doesn't get forced on anyone because of the mechanics they want to use - i.e. their class or race (thought tbf D&D has generally realized the latter was "not on" since 2E, it's just that's been inconsistent, sometimes even within the same book). 3E tried to make alignment mechanical and mandatory at a point in history when it was kind of "too late" to really do that without creating an issue, because, I would suggest of the weird attempts in early 3E to go "back to the basics!", i.e. pushing GH as a setting, looking at 1E more than 2E for a lot of inspirations (including bringing back Monks and Barbarians), and so on. Attempts which were soon given up on to be fair.

I have little doubt 6E will have something called alignment in it, fully-explained, and fully-optional. I'd strongly suspect NPCs and monsters in official books won't have an alignment applied to them, though - or if they do, it may well be in an appendix at the back of the book or something.

If they persist in putting encounter tables in the DMG instead of the Monster Manual, they might put alignments there, too. Seems to me that might mean they'd end up putting alignments for creatures in other monster books in the appendices with the encounter listings. Which isn't really disagreeing with you, just seeing another way alignment could be not in the main stat block.

 

[Minigiant]

It confirms for me the idea that mushing D&D back down to just four classes, or three classes, or even two classes (weapon-user / spell-user) is something that some people might say, but almost nobody actually wants.

I think that is a bit of leap from the data as there was nothing about number of classes. I could argue that you get more "distinct" character classes with only 4 classes instead of 20 classes that start to walk all over each other's toes.

To be clear, you could be correct, but I don't think this data does anything to support your claim.

I think it's more about packages and archetypes that anything.

For example, you could get away with sticking the druid and paladin in the cleric. However,especially from what I've seen oft he reddit DnD community, you BETTA add in all the iconic class features as an option.

You can't just give the cleric a sword and lance and call it a paladin. You need the smites, auras, immunities, and Charisma importance r/dnd, r/dndmemes, and most of the forums and greater community expect. And that is often more that the "back down to 4" crowd is willing to do and is just re-recreating classes again.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

I think D&D could work well with 4 classes IF they let the archetypes have more impact on the base class. Like having 10 features over 20 levels instead of 5-6, the ability to change how primary features of the class work (changing the spellcasting stat, frex).