D&D (2024) So the Power Feats Got Nerfed!

[Azzy]

I wonder if -5/+10 will return as a general rule, tbh. Only weapon attacks or unarmed strikes.

Could end up as a fighter maneuver or class feature.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Could end up as a fighter maneuver or class feature.

Could do, but I'd rather not have it exclusive to fighters.

TBH this is why i wish the fighter had been built to have much bigger subclasses.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The 2014 game DMG has in it acceptable (perhaps 'good-enough') guidelines on what to do if you can't or don't want to run 6-8 (or 3-4 more difficult) encounters per physical (in-game) day.

I mean I've read those guidelines many times and I strongly disagree that they're "acceptable" or "good-enough". They're bad.

The 6-8 thing seems more like a reaction their own design than a genuinely motivated and considered change, especially as it was last minute, and it was 3-4 somewhat harder encounters until then. It's definitely true that 5E works most reliably when you use 6-8 encounters of the recommended difficulty. I think if they'd tweaked some numbers, like having spells heal for more but maybe cost HD from the target (healing a standing target is rarely tactically a good idea in 5E, below level 9-ish anyway - the HD cost is to ensure overall daily healing isn't increased much), lowering the HP values of monsters slightly (like, 15-20%), and so on, then we could have seen 3-4 work well.

(and I'm not exactly swayed by arguments that they should have set something else as the default, as why should we care?)

We should care because the maths fundamentally works best with 6-8 which is why they changed to it at the last minute, and their guidelines are not well-designed, so we're stuck with a system where 6-8 is what it works best for, and other numbers can be done but don't work great.

You mentioned White Wolf and that's a good note - the Revised version of White Wolf changed the rules to screw over anyone playing a more "heroic" version of both Vampire and Mage (I actually don't remember Werewolf Revised well enough to comment). A playstyle WW had, less than two years before Revised, been encouraging in some books (Tales of Dark Adventure for Mage 2E for example). Despite strong marketing, it didn't seem to do great for them. It doesn't matter if they gave guidelines for playing a more heroic style (I mean, they didn't, AFAIK, but w/e), because the system, especially in Mage Revised, was just fundamentally opposed to making that work.

Re: easy mode, that's a fundamental example of how the guidelines for encounters in general are not well-designed, but the system has an issue in that if you make it significantly harder, then it doesn't play as well. Let's be fair - 5E is far from the only game to have this problem! I've seen it appear in video games and board games too.

Also when you're making a game with a potentially very board audience, it's more important to consider what the audience is going to want than just what the designers think is cool, or what is the easiest to get working or whatever. 5E designed aiming for 5-10m people, 1D&D has to aim for 30m people (by WotC's own figures for people actually playing 5E). If you design in something that's at odds with say, 25m of the 30m, it is you who has screwed up, not them.

 

[Edwin Suijkerbuijk]

I wonder if -5/+10 will return as a general rule, tbh. Only weapon attacks or unarmed strikes.

I think that if something like this would return it would become -prof mod to hit +2x prof mod to damage.
As one of the problems was that there was no scaling in the -5 +10 making it very powerful on low levels if yo managed to hit.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I think that if something like this would return it would become -prof mod to hit +2x prof mod to damage.
As one of the problems was that there was no scaling in the -5 +10 making it very powerful on low levels if yo managed to hit.

Yeah, also fits thier increased focus on the proficiency bonus.

 

[Willie the Duck]

I mean I've read those guidelines many times and I strongly disagree that they're "acceptable" or "good-enough". They're bad.

The 6-8 thing seems more like a reaction their own design than a genuinely motivated and considered change, especially as it was last minute, and it was 3-4 somewhat harder encounters until then. It's definitely true that 5E works most reliably when you use 6-8 encounters of the recommended difficulty. I think if they'd tweaked some numbers, like having spells heal for more but maybe cost HD from the target (healing a standing target is rarely tactically a good idea in 5E, below level 9-ish anyway - the HD cost is to ensure overall daily healing isn't increased much), lowering the HP values of monsters slightly (like, 15-20%), and so on, then we could have seen 3-4 work well.

I'm talking broad strokes of the brush. They stated that it works best under XYZ conditions, and if you don't find your game matching those expectations, here is some advice and an some example alternate rest frequencies (such as Gritty Realism rest variant) that might better match your playstyle experience. My first paragraph was my main point -- unless they want to try a significantly different resource-recharge loop (4e, something like 13 Age does, or something new entirely), or go back to establishing parameters of playstyle (renormalizing the dungeon crawl, for instance, or doom clocks, etc.), it seems the only real way they've left themselves to mitigate the 5/15-minute workday pretty is to set a standard for how many fights one is expected to get through. If they've gotten the math subtly wrong for 6-8, or if it would have been better to say 3-4 of a harder CR, that's certainly possible, just outside the point I was trying to make.

We should care because the maths fundamentally works best with 6-8 which is why they changed to it at the last minute, and their guidelines are not well-designed, so we're stuck with a system where 6-8 is what it works best for, and other numbers can be done but don't work great.

My point is that I don't care where the 'default' is set. I stopped playing video/computer-games regularly back in the Atari/NES-era, so this might be a very out-of-date analogy. Anyways, I remember the title screen popping up with 'easy,' 'medium,' and 'hard.' There would be an arrow you could move around between the three options. I don't think that where that initial arrow shows up as default speaks all that much about the game as a whole (Qbert doesn't become easy because it has the arrow start on Easy, while Pac Man is hard because that's where it's arrow defaults), and D&D is the same.

You mentioned White Wolf and that's a good note - the Revised version of White Wolf changed the rules to screw over anyone playing a more "heroic" version of both Vampire and Mage (I actually don't remember Werewolf Revised well enough to comment). A playstyle WW had, less than two years before Revised, been encouraging in some books (Tales of Dark Adventure for Mage 2E for example). Despite strong marketing, it didn't seem to do great for them. It doesn't matter if they gave guidelines for playing a more heroic style (I mean, they didn't, AFAIK, but w/e), because the system, especially in Mage Revised, was just fundamentally opposed to making that work.

Well yes, that was an example of a game where they didn't work with players trying to dial in specific experiences. Traveller did better with specific options (military campaign, etc.), and GURPS/Hero made it a fundamental premise.

Re: easy mode, that's a fundamental example of how the guidelines for encounters in general are not well-designed, but the system has an issue in that if you make it significantly harder, then it doesn't play as well. Let's be fair - 5E is far from the only game to have this problem! I've seen it appear in video games and board games too.

Also when you're making a game with a potentially very board audience, it's more important to consider what the audience is going to want than just what the designers think is cool, or what is the easiest to get working or whatever. 5E designed aiming for 5-10m people, 1D&D has to aim for 30m people (by WotC's own figures for people actually playing 5E). If you design in something that's at odds with say, 25m of the 30m, it is you who has screwed up, not them.

I agree, however, again I don't think where the default arrow rests is super important, so long as you make clear (and I think the biggest thing WotC needs to do with 2024 D&D compared to 2014 D&D is clarification of goals, reasons, process; as well as guidance on how best to change the dials and settings to curate a specific gameplay experience) how you set things to get various outcomes.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

My point is that I don't care where the 'default' is set. I stopped playing video/computer-games regularly back in the Atari/NES-era, so this might be a very out-of-date analogy. Anyways, I remember the title screen popping up with 'easy,' 'medium,' and 'hard.' There would be an arrow you could move around between the three options. I don't think that where that initial arrow shows up as default speaks all that much about the game as a whole (Qbert doesn't become easy because it has the arrow start on Easy, while Pac Man is hard because that's where it's arrow defaults), and D&D is the same.

I get what you're saying but it's irrelevant to the issue, which isn't about what the book says, it's about what the math in the edition says.

I agree, however, again I don't think where the default arrow rests is super important, so long as you make clear (and I think the biggest thing WotC needs to do with 2024 D&D compared to 2014 D&D is clarification of goals, reasons, process; as well as guidance on how best to change the dials and settings to curate a specific gameplay experience) how you set things to get various outcomes.

What you seem to be ignoring, and I think I've been fairly clear about it, is that the guidelines and "dials" and so on are sufficient to change the experience in broad terms, but the experience is still marred because it was designed for a specific setting, and the dials and guidelines cannot negate that in this particular game. It's not true of all games.

This is like a videogame which was designed to play absolutely great on "many encounters, easy combat", but most people want to play it on "fewer encounters, harder combat", and whilst the game will let you set it that way, it just doesn't play as well when it's set that way.

If they've gotten the math subtly wrong for 6-8, or if it would have been better to say 3-4 of a harder CR, that's certainly possible, just outside the point I was trying to make.

They haven't got it wrong for 6-8. That's the thing. They've (seemingly accidentally) got it right for 6-8.

They've got it wrong for 3-4 of a harder CR, let alone lower numbers and harder still. The entire public playtest of 5E, the game worked on a 3-4/harder basis (at least as stated by WotC). At the last minute, they seemed to realize the math didn't quite work for this, and instead of changing the math, they changed the default recommendation. What they should have done is changed the math/abilities/etc.

With 1D&D, they still have a chance to at least partially fix that. Changing how healing spells work would be pretty good for it, for example. Making it so monsters in the 1D&D MM have fewer HP, and potentially errata'ing MMotM to drop the HP of those monsters too would also help. Preventing any classes from being reliant heavily on Short Rests would be very good - we haven't had a chance to see anything with that, because no Short Rest-reliant classes or subclasses have been shown (the main ones are Monk, Warlock and Fighter).

Even if they only do some of that it would be very helpful to correcting the math issue. Honestly even if they just made it so no-one relied on Short Rests and changed healing spells that'd probably be enough to make it hard to tell it wasn't intended (though the slightly-too-many-HP thing does kind of drain some of the interest from 5E).

 

[Willie the Duck]

I get what you're saying but it's irrelevant to the issue, which isn't about what the book says, it's about what the math in the edition says.

What you seem to be ignoring, and I think I've been fairly clear about it, is that

No. It is neither irrelevant, nor am I ignoring anything. I am simply going off in a direction you do not wish to discuss. The two are not the same thing. Participants in a thread do not get to curate what others bring up. Rest assured, no one has missed your point. It isn't that world-shaking, and fits well in line with your existing 'the devs don't know what they are doing' positions (which, in this case, we're actually approaching common ground).

Regardless, I think it is pertinent. Unless the game changes recharge mechanics, moves back to a form of social convention (doomclocks or 'most adventures happen in dungeons, leave to rest too frequently and the enemies will set better traps or leave with the loot' or similar) any rest frequency balanced against will be at most a polite suggestion. That's not wrong, but if it is to be the case, there ought be stronger DMG wording saying, in effect, 'yes, if you don't end up with these circumstances, you need to modify things, and here are some [preferably better designed with 8-10 years of experience of the existing structures] methods to do so.'

They haven't got it wrong for 6-8. That's the thing. They've (seemingly accidentally) got it right for 6-8.

You're correct. I miss-spoke. I don't know that it was accidental, but they definitely designed a system, found out where it worked best, and then put that as the default. I'm not convinced the numbers are too out of whack for 3-4 harder challenges, but honestly that's not the largest issue, AFAICT. From what I gather from others here, on the larger internet, and in F2F play, is that 6-8 is in the middle of the nadir of a bimodal distribution, with dungeon-crawlers oftentime exceeding that number and wilderness encounters, social encounters, and minidungeons (ex: the ruined temple with some guards out front and then the main battle inside) push the average for other activities closer to 1-2/day.

 

[Ancalagon]

And I never will because no one ever takes it.

No one you play with takes it

I've seen it in a game that lasted 2 years ish. One player said she would play a cleric if other players could "chip in" with some of the healing themselves. So one guy played a paladin, and the other a warlock with the healer feat. The warlock did more healing than the paladin, it was quite significant. I wouldn't say it broke the game, but it was a good feat.