D&D General The Crab Bucket Fallacy

[Minigiant]

Things that might look like "oh, hey, that's for the powergamers," like SS/CBE, are like, yeah, but you're optimizing the low end towards the middle.

But no, I can't quite defend it logically, but my feeling is definitely that 5e didn't intentionally build in rewards for system mastery like Ivory Tower Roleplaying implied 3e did...

5e built itself around a simple core.

The issue was the core wasn't very balanced.
And they made all the complex rules except for spells variant rules. Then proceeded to not balance them.

The variant rules they should have known people would use weren't balanced at all. Feats. Multiclassing. Magic Items. Epic Boons. etc.

 

[tetrasodium]

Wotc "recommending" that GM's run 6-8 encounters per adventuring day with 5e's rest mechanics is like an automaker recommending RP1* as the intended way of avoiding a blistering semi-truck like 20+ second 0-60 acceleration on a car that is just too focused on hypermiling to avoid being a road hazard. That's not a solution, it's the admission of a serious flaw.


* Literal rocket fuel... Apparently like $16-$400 per gallon

 

[Clint_L]

Not solely of course, but 5e did arrive in a good period to go more mainstream.

Stranger Things, Community, Game of Thrones, super hero movies and comics considered cooler and more mainstream, some celebrities saying they play and the word getting out through social media, streaming, etc.

I'm not going to try to estimate how much that effected success or not but think it had some effect.

I think the biggest factor, as with so many things, was simple demographics: all us Gen Xers got to an age where:

1. We had enough time, money and nostalgia to revisit our youthful passions
2. We had kids that we were more than happy to support getting into D&D.

And then WotC cleverly made 5e very recognizable and comfortable for us grognards, to make both of the above easy decisions for a lot of folks. Many of the pop culture references you cite happened because those creators were into D&D back in the day and now old enough to do something about it. And then the new streaming phenomenon built on an already primed audience.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I mean, the dice modifiers are tightly restricted by BA, that's the only tight bit. Hit points/damage kinda bloat.
Mage Hand to Wish is still quite a lot of power scaling.

You misunderstand, but that's my bad for using a word often used differently. The power scale is not a function of level 1 to level 20. The power scale is the scale of power contained in the game between different plausible characters. So, the difference in power between the monk and the wizard, if we just take the charop party line as gospel.

So, no, that didn't help.

Again, I want to say it's just less material than other editions, and, while that does make it less appealing to optimizers, that doesn't quite cover it either.

It's just a matter of the number of choice points at levelup, and tactical impact of those choices in a scene or encounter. 4e had more CharOp chatter when only the first PHB was out than 5e did before...Xanathar's? Because every character made several impactful choices at CharGen, and at least one at every single level.

CharOp is more fun with more dials and levers and such.

 

[Tony Vargas]

.The power scale is the scale of power contained in the game between different plausible characters. So, the difference in power between the monk and the wizard, if we just take the charop party line as gospel.

So like Tier 1 vs Tier in 3.5, the gulf among classes.
Yeah, very much a thing, again, in 5e. Euphemistically, the Martial/Caster Gap.

It's just a matter of the number of choice points at levelup, ....CharOp is more fun with more dials and levers amd such.

Yeah "just less" covers a lot of it.
After further reflection, snother thing I think saves 5e from any suspicion of designed-in rewards for system mastery is its embrace of natural language and DM Empowerment.
CharOp echoes with "ETV" and Tech and "grill your DM with this checklist before you play a druid."

 

[Zardnaar]

The decision to try to make PF2 a somewhat balanced, consistent, playable/'tactical' game, when the established fanbase of PF1 was seemingly there precisely because they rejected those qualities in 4e, has always baffled me. Yet PF2 is successful (by the standards of not-D&D). I guess Paizo really won a lot of loyalty? Either that or their fanbase cycled dramatically?

Keep saying it's the 4E playstyle that was rejected not the mechanics.

You could rip out the classes and use 4E to clone any other edition of D&D tweaking bits. Star Wars Saga did this and it was great at the time.

I used 4E engine for my homebrew D&D. Then ripped it out with 5E. Needed to dust it off again.

Whenever we say this we usually get some whataboutism saying we're wrong.

 

[Zardnaar]

Folks are also completely capable of living in and out of their tunnels. For example, things bug me about PF2, it would never be my preferred game, but I can also look at it objectively and understand its designed well. Give a try some time.

This is my thoughts. Was flipping through a PF2 book on Sunday wasn't for me but it looked neat.

 

[Zardnaar]

You misunderstand, but that's my bad for using a word often used differently. The power scale is not a function of level 1 to level 20. The power scale is the scale of power contained in the game between different plausible characters. So, the difference in power between the monk and the wizard, if we just take the charop party line as gospel.



It's just a matter of the number of choice points at levelup, and tactical impact of those choices in a scene or encounter. 4e had more CharOp chatter when only the first PHB was out than 5e did before...Xanathar's? Because every character made several impactful choices at CharGen, and at least one at every single level.

CharOp is more fun with more dials and levers and such.

4E had a broken build several days before the phb came out. Ramger killing Orcus one. They nerfed it in errata.

Kinda ironic at the time people were singing its praises. It was an unbalanced mess just hid it better than 3E.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

So like Tier 1 vs Tier in 3.5, the gulf among classes.
Yeah, very much a thing, again, in 5e. Euphemistically, the Martial/Caster Gap.

Meh. Not gonna go round on a decade old argument.

If you won’t recognize the difference between what I said and what you are replying as if I had said, that’s very much something I’m going to just walk past rather than engaging with.

Yeah "just less" covers a lot of it.

I had to use context clues to parse this. You have a thing I didn’t say in quotes while replying to me. I think you’re using “just less” as snarky shorthand for “5e has fewer dials and levers to optimize with”.

If so, yes, the thing I actually said covers most of it.

After further reflection, snother thing I think saves 5e from any suspicion of designed-in rewards for system mastery is its embrace of natural language and DM Empowerment.
CharOp echoes with "ETV" and Tech and "grill your DM with this checklist before you play a druid."

This things make CharOp less satisfying, sure.

 

[Vaalingrade]

One build that got a lot of attacks.

Yup, that proves the entire thing is a broken mess. That's totally how data works.