D&D General Which Sacred Cow Will Be The Last To Slaughter?

[Snarf Zagyg]

...or do they?

I model my DMing after that!

Brad: Olaf the Stout goes in for the attack! I rolled a 19. Do I hit?

Snarf: {unblinking stare} I'm sorry, Brad. I'm afraid I can't do that.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Eventually they will stop even pretending to care what angry, gate-keeping traditionalists (“root guards”) think but I’m not sure that is a sacred cow. More of a “keeper of the sacred cows.” Or a meta-sacred cow.

Sacred dairy farmer?

 

[Tonguez]

Imho DnD is a Class based fantasy game and if Classes ever disappear then it wont be DnD anymore - of course those classes are just Fighter, Mage, Skill monkey, but those are the pillars.

XP is meaningless, ability scores can be reduced to a single Proficiency bonus and Race has already become a stack of feats. But if Classes ever become a mere feat tree then we may as well play Gurps

 

[CleverNickName]

5E D&D still only has 4 classes...it's just that some of them are listed over and over again.

Fighter
Outdoor Fighter
Angry Fighter
Unarmed Fighter
Fighter that Went to Church That One Time
Cleric
Outdoor Cleric
Thief
Musical Thief
Wizard
Wizard with Legal Problems
Wizard with Family Problems

 

[MNblockhead]

Vancian magic is like a phantom limb to me. I may have been mostly cut out, but I still feel it.

I've actually been planning to run an all wizard, or wizard-focused campaign for some time that does away with cantrips, requires tracking material components (much of the questions would be obtaining said components, no sorcerers, no warlocks, no magic item academy. There are clerics but they are part of a Theocratic hegemony and are the antagonists in the campaign.

 

[ART!]

I went with Vancian Magic, although Ability Scores was a close second. I was going to say Classes, but I can imagine background and cultural aspects of races slowly eroding classes before I can imagine them dumping Vancian Magic.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Imagine there's no levels
It's easy if you try
No capstone to strive for
Above us, only sky
Imagine all the players
Livin' for today
Ah

Imagine there's no hit points
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no alignment, too
Imagine all the ancestries
Livin' life in peace
You.....

You may say Snarf's a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join me
And the DM will be no one

Imagine no ability scores
I wonder if you can
No need for strength or wisdom
No prime requisite for the fighting man
Imagine all the players
Sharing all Greyhawk
You.....

You may say Snarf's a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join me
And the DM will be no one

 

[CleverNickName]

 

[overgeeked]

Your claim that started this tangent was:

D&D still has PCs at fairly weak starting power level compared to a lot of other RPGs.

And in support of that claim you pointed to two games and followed it up with:

It was just two examples from the fantasy genre. There are many more.

If we're being honest then those other games would need to be roughly equivalent, say in the fantasy genre and also be roughly similar in other respects, tone, lethality, gameplay, etc otherwise there's no comparison to make. Apples to oranges as it were. If you point at say a superhero game and say that D&D characters are fairly weak compared to that...well, that's just not intellectually honest. Likewise if I pointed to Mouse Guard and said that D&D characters are actually quite powerful compared to them. That wouldn't be honest, either.

 

[Mezuka]

Classes will be last.