That their form is so good, how it he managed to cut through your guard with such grace that even as he backed off you were still worried about him lunging back in with his rapier?
Yes, I'm an ooze, I'm very worried. Also, I'm more worried about a basic attack that almost did nothing, and actually the guy who did that just ran away from me, than about the wizard about to burn me to a crisp. This just does not make any sense.
Like, are we just talking about creating fancy justifications in-world for it? I could do that all day.
Yes, and that's exactly the same problem as with everything else, you need to justify yourself. That's not what I'm talking about, I'm talking about powers that make sense narratively and that are THEN described in game term. You are doing the exact opposite (and consistently failing), starting from purely mechanistic effects and then failing to justify how they make sense in the narrative and in the game world.
Two very different designs, and two very different games in the end.
You ask why not the rest, but why is only the Bear Barbarian the one who causes people to be at disadvantage if they aren't attacking him (unless they are immune to fear)? Why do certain martials get to attack more than others? We carve out exceptions because exceptions are how we create classes. I mean, why do Barbarians in 5E not get Fighting Styles, but Rangers/Paladins/Fighters do?
Because they don't get formal training ? Because nothing in the barbarin say that they have a martial power source ? Because actually it's primal and clearly magical in some cases ?
Both, but 4E is honest about the decades-worth of problems with adversarial GMing? Like, the first is just meaningless boilerplate. The second is actually useful in explaining what a GM does and what they are meant to do by explicitly outlining it.
I get it, everything in 4e is great, everything in 5e is crap. But at least, you recognise the difference in design, instead of continuing to claim things which are so obvious that you have to resort to the great/crap rather than admitting that you were wrong.
Again, the 5E is meaningless boilerplate while the 4E is actually useful in that it is forcefully and immediately trying to confront the misconception of the adversarial GM. You talk about how 5E is a cooperative game, but you posted two big paragraphs where 4E is hammering home the idea of how D&D is meant to be cooperative even if the GM is sometimes meant to be put against the player. 5E doesn't mention anything like that at the start. It just assumes you know what you are doing... which feels like a lot of the problems of 5E, honestly.
Why don't you actually read the rules of 5e, because, right up in the PH introduction, it states: "Playing D&D is an exercise in collaborative creation. You and your friends create epic stories filled with tension and memorable drama."
The main difference is that 5e has actually recognised that the trauma of adversarial DMing is in the past, it's collaborative for everyone, whereas 4e was mostly collaborative for the players.
I mean, it's less crunchy in certain ways and way more crunchy in others. Look at spells, multiclassing, etc. There's a whole bunch of (likely unintended) crunch in how you dive into other classes and which order to do it in.
From the crunchy perspective, there is zero difference between list of spells and lists of powers. And also, read the rules, multiclass is just an option.
That's great if you have players that do that. I've found, especially with players coming from older editions, that they are more hesitant to do such things because they are used to a more adversarial GM. You know, the misconception that 4E first addresses when talking about how to GM it. I've found giving them structure to play in is actually really helpful because having structure can help focus their ideas and imaginations in certain ways. Being able to do that stuff on their own rather than just having to ask me helps them not only feel empowered, but also allows them to prepare most of this stuff beforehand without me.
Good for you if it is what your players need. At least you admit that some players (even we are probably way older than you and come from either older editions) have no fear of an adversarial GM.
The only bad faith part here is you, because CR is absolutely a thing and I have to believe you are being deliberately obtuse to deny it. Bounded accuracy doesn't mean that you can't have enemies who aren't suitable for your party, though this is more a problem with being above their level rather than lower; just because you have bounded accuracy doesn't suddenly mean your party can take on an Adult Dragon at 5th level.
And once more, you are confusing bounded accuracy which means that DCs do not increase with level (once more, DMG pg 238) and that monsters stay relevant at whatever level and whatever their DCs with monster CR and their appropriateness not to wipe a party.
And the one in 5e is not really the same: there are 3 levels for DCs
No, sorry, that's in the very imprecise 4e, 5e is way more precise with 6 levels.
, which are only given by vague ideas. The damage is given by level, but it's also across many more levels: 4d10 is a very different kind of deadly to 1st than it is to 4th, just as 10d10 is very different for a 10th level character compared to a 5th level character, but they are in the same band. That's... not good design, in my opinion.
Yeah, right, unfortunately, that "badly designed game" has been what, 10 times more successful than the "very well designed one", people must be idiots.
That's not how that works, and I can't really assume you are arguing in good faith if you are making these sorts of comments. Having a DC19 is something easy for someone at 30th level, but doesn't mean every easy task is that. You'd have to be a moron to assume that. Instead, they are telling you that scaling a castle wall is an easy task at that level, while at 7th-9th level that's a hard task.
I'm just saying that if you have, in the same group, a lvl 1 and a lvl 30, and you put a ladder to climb, you will be unable to set up a DC that makes sense.
The "level DC" is meant to give an idea of how challenging something is for the players, rather than be applied to everything they do. The DC of tasks in the world remains the consistent to what they are, but now the GM has a good way of measuring their difficulty relative to where the players are. I've literally had this argument a dozen times on the PF2 forums: I am totally a believer in things having their DC set by the world. The nice thing about those tables is that I can easily cross-reference them to know exactly how difficult it will be for my players if they come across them.
Yes, so when a ladder is appropriate for your lvl 30 players, it's impossible to climb for a simple lvl 1 sailor. But it's still just a ladder.
I've seen that. That's not good as guidance, because it's generalized and vague. Like, telling me something is "Hard" versus "Very Hard" just leaves me to eyeball it in terms of who and what can do something.
This is amusing, because 4e is not more precise than 5e, and actually less precise with only 3 levels.
Those are just vague terms which can mean different things to different people and if you're not good with calculating probabilities might cause you to over or underestimate how difficult a task is. I'm good with math so this isn't much of a problem for me as it is an annoyance, but it's all over the system itself.
That's because you are mostly thinking in terms of system. I don't, I just think about what it's like in the world, say, "it's easy" or "it's very hard", and then use the DC. Some day, you will understand that there are people who do not think about D&D only in terms of rules and probability.
I do, but shouting "Bounded Accuracy, Bounded Accuracy" like an incantation doesn't really address what I'm talking about. It's not a solution for everything and can honestly lead to problems if you think it will. It's as weak an argument as boldly asserting that I need to read the rules again when I've run the system since it came out. Just because I disagree with you doesn't mean I'm missing something, it means I'm disagreeing with you.
It just means that you don't understand the concept and what it means in terms of game design. It's a solution to many problems that have plagued D&D ever since it was created to cater for low-level adventurers and interplanar heroes. Including how to have a ladder with just a simple DC to climb, whether you are lvl 1 or lvl 30.
I mean, it still is a purely-complicated geeky thing. Again, spellcasting is way more complicated than 4E, as are learning different classes and their individualized systems, as well as competently multiclassing. Heck, character building to avoid trap options is way more of a concern and demands way more system knowledge.
The problem is that you are thinking as a game master thinking that you need to know everything. For a given player, who only needs to know a bit about his character, 5e is extremely simple, he only has a few things to remember and he can simply tell what he is doing. He does not need rules, which is not the case in 4e where you need to understand all the technical rules just to be able to go through a fight.
4E's problem was not that it was complicated, but that it was different. It's a different idea, and we're in a conservative hobby that doesn't like too much change, and 4E was a whole lot of it.
Not only. The best proof of that is that 4e had exactly the same chances to convince new people to play than 5e, but it did not happen, it's still too complex and too geeky, too technical.
With 5e, the number of players has been multiplied by 10 worldwide, so I'm talking about the 90% there who are obviously not concerned at all about conservativeness, since they never played before.
I mean, I know people around here have talked about running 4E with young kids, so trying to pull that card is meaningless. Just because you don't think it can be done doesn't mean it can be, nor does it suddenly eliminate the complexity inherent in 5E's design, particularly in its character building. You can push your grandson off to a simpler class, and if he picks a trap option you can GM around that, but they still exist.
I've run initiations with every single edition including BECMI, and 4e was by far the worse (with 3e) because of the sheer amount of things that you need to understand just to move your token around the grid and understand the options available to you. It's as simple as that.
This is the point: just because there are fewer rules doesn't make something simpler: rather, when you create a bunch of individualized and unique systems for everything from spells to classes, it creates a lot of unspoken complexity there. 4E has complexity, but it's also tied to a bunch of universal mechanics and systems, so everything is tied into the same language in a way that most of 5E just isn't.
Again, read the rules. Just because other options and spells exist does not mean that you need to understand these to play. Even the DM does not need them. The core of 5e is much smaller and simpler than 4e. After that, what you are saying is still plain wrong, by the way, because each class has its own version of the powers, so in the end, although they are somewhat unified, they are still different and still need a separate read.
Ah yes, my imagination is "stinted". Totally my problem, totally my fault. I simply cannot see the majesty of the game.
What you certainly can't see is the world that exists beyond the rules.
Yeah, no. I've played plenty of games with differing levels of complexity. My imagination is fine, but I find having guidelines to be nice because it sets expectations rather than having to negotiate them constantly. If you are someone who is naturally shy and conflict-averse, it's very nice to not have to hash out details about how things work, especially when you have argumentative players. And when you have creative players, it's nice to give them guidelines that they themselves can see rather than me having to give it to them, because then they can do that on their own rather than have me need to rule on each one.
And again, it's about players being argumentative and needing to negotiate. You do realise that there are lots of players out here that simply play the game with their DMs, and that adding tons of rules just to control a few people does not have to be part of the core game ?
That's great, but I don't really care because we are talking about 5E and 4E and not Amber. Like, you keep talking about other systems and I keep saying because I'm not talking about more freeform systems, I'm talking about a pair of fairly crunchy rules. One is crunchier than the other, but less so than you'll likely admit.
Again, very simple, the combat rules of 4e are three times more complex than those of 5e. That is really the core of it, and therefore an undisputable indicator of complexity.
After that, my reference to Amber was to show you that you do NOT need rules to play a fantasy game, a fact that you don't even want to discuss because you need your rules to control your argumentative players. Fine for you if it's what you need, but don't force rules for other players, don't even suggest that they might be good when these other players don't have the problems that you have.
Sure, I could go play Dungeonworld and I'd probably be pretty okay with that because it has a different level of crunch compared to 5E and they probably are better adapted to using that lack of crunch than 5E is. That's been my point: I don't think 5E is a good balance for that while I think 4E hits the level of crunch it wants to do in a way more satisfying way. To me, 5E is just a bunch of half-measures trying to please everyone, paying lip service to being freeform but in fact not really being that or executing on it in any sort of satisfying way. Rather, it just decides not to include things that would be useful, because it thought "less rules" simply meant not writing some of them down instead of actually designing a game that used fewer rules.
The problem is that 5e is proven to have fewer core rules, a simple fact. It's not perfect, but it's both simple enough for many people to pick up easily, and complex enough so that people with decades of experience can play it for further decades without being bored. Don't force crunchiness on people because you happen to like it, actually, accept the fact that millions of people have liked the fact that 5e was a much better balance for their taste.
