D&D General Requesting permission to have something cool

[haakon1]

Is there a character class that gives a once every few days cure, turning skeletons only, and no armor or weapon prof?

Maybe Cloistered Cleric from Dragon in the 1980’s, but I don’t remember it’s details.

 

[Lanefan]

Is there a character class that gives a once every few days cure, turning skeletons only, and no armor or weapon prof?

There very quickly could be.

 

[Lanefan]

The design ethos began early into 2e. The last time PCs were nobody's at first level was Basic, when fighters had d8 HP, clerics didn't get a spell until 2nd level, thieves had a 15% chance of doing something useful, and magic users cast sleep and then became walking rations.

And, sadly, the mechanical gap between commoner and 1st-level character has been growing wider ever since, peaking with 4e.

 

[Autumnal]

Just looking in to note what others have: 3e’s Ex(traordinary) abilities make a really good middle ground between mundane and magical. They should get emphasized once again for cases like these.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

What I am saying is that the Champion Fighter is not an archetype that someone wants to play. It is a set of game mechanics that do some stuff (and not particularly well). Players need to play the thing that actually has the mechanics that support their preferred playstyle, class fantasy, whatever. If you want to play a swashbuckler who moves around the battlefield and stabs people in their squishy bits, you don't bemoan the lack of a swashbuckler subclass, you play a rogue. If you want to play a super powered mutant with a few intense abilities, you don't complain there is no mutant class,you play a warlock.

Or, you reach into the essentially bottomless well of creativity that is the 3PP community -- pro and fan -- and find just the right thing.

Then there should have been no problem with telling people, "Oh, you want to play a moderate to heavy armored martial character who is very good at killing their enemies dead? Play a Ranger. That is what you play to make that happen."

But instead, opposition to that--opposition to, as you have so blithely said, "RTFM"--landed us exactly where we are today. "Fighter" had to be at the top of the sheet no matter what someone actually wanted to play.

A fighter homebrew thing? Yeah, if you're looking for feedback to help hone your design, I can try to help. If you PM me, just give me a brief description of your design intent (along with the document or link) - so many folks forget to do this, and it's super important.

Of course, I'm not your GM, so even if I say "that's wonderful!" my voice doesn't really matter except for the ego boost.

No, caster prestige class. Silver Pyromancer. Largely intended for Sorcerer, but Wizard and Bard can also do it, and EK/AT can as well at very high levels.

This is an exercise in futility if you think anything written on this forum is going to impact the way WotC/Hasbro conducts their business.

The beloved 'oberani fallacy' isn't actually a fallacy - it's just a rejection of reality.

The technical term is an informal fallacy. It is not a fallacy due to the structure of the argument (e.g. the fallacy of the excluded middle is a formal fallacy because the form fails to connect the conclusion to the premises), but rather because the argument is unsound. For Oberoni, the fallacy is the claim that, because house-ruling/homebrewing/DM adjudication exists, any flaws in the rules aren't actually flaws, so the rules are always without fault. It is by and large a particular application of the fallacy of equivocation: flaws/faults/etc. are used in one sense as "errors or problems that have to be addressed," and in the other sense as "fatal problems that completely prevent play." When spelled out as such, rather than preserving the ambiguous terms, the failure to connect premises to conclusion becomes obvious:

1. A ruleset exists which contains elements that do not function as intended and thus cause problems.
2. The GM of any game can modify the ruleset to improve its function or address problems.
C. Therefore, no ruleset exists which contains elements that do not function as intended and thus cause problems.

The weaker argument, non-fallacious but also much less meaningful, is that "Rule Zero" etc. mean that no ruleset can have completely fatal flaws, because no flaw is so egregious that sufficient application of Rule Zero cannot fix it. But that claim is pretty risible--it's literally just saying, "If you work hard enough, no matter how badly made a game is, you can force it to be good. It just might take a bottom-up redesign!" Of course if you're willing to work for literally years, replacing every part and redesigning every element as needed, you can address literally all problems ever--but that's an admission that there are problems that do in fact need to be addressed, which was the point in question to begin with.

"You can fix any machine by replacing all of its parts" says very little. "No machine is ever broken because you can always hire a repairman" is fallacious--doubly so because the only reason to hire a repairman is to repair something.

Are folks typically playing with strangers? I have only done that at cons or when new to an area. And the new to the area game eventually included folks I eventually went to bars and concerts with, invited to my wedding, met their families, went to parties at their house, etc. Folks I DM’d that I knew separately, I have seen become close friends too. One of former players even hired a former player.

D&D is the opposite of the book “Bowling Alone”, no?

The vast, overwhelming majority of my play, as a player, has been with people I did not know particularly well before playing, for a large variety of reasons. If you find a great group, then sure, friendships can flower from it. But my friend group isn't exactly enormous, and very few people in it are willing to run TTRPGs of any kind, let alone ones I am specifically interested in playing. It would be awesome if I knew literally anyone else willing to run something that wasn't 5e. I don't. Even people willing to run 5e, there's only two. Hens' teeth and such.

Haven't ever heard of the book, so I can't comment.

How many gigs of data have been spewed this way and that on this forum alone regarding class design? Feats? RPG design or just game design in general? How many videos exist on this? Blogs? Other forums?

I would say there is a 0% chance this could not be done, and done well, if someone actually cared to apply themselves to do it.

And yet.

So, as is literally always the case with these things, you are confusing the goal here.

I don't want to make a game that does the things I want a game to do.

I want to PLAY a game that does the things I want a game to do.

The former is totally orthogonal to the latter--and, more importantly, even if I did the former, it wouldn't help me find a group. Which is something I looked for. For over a year. Gradually broadening my criteria until they became "for God's sake, will anyone run anything that can be massaged into something vaguely like what I would enjoy?" And the answer was quite consistent: No.

I tried. I'm not going to spend six months of my life on a heartbreaker that won't ever be seen by 99.99999% of the gaming community because people are creatures of habit and, to paraphrase Jefferson, all experience has shown that people will retain the things to which they are accustomed rather than doing something different, even if it would be better, let alone might be. "Better the devil you know," as they say.

The only possible solution is for WotC to do it and even if they do, the idea of the disparity is so embedded that most of them will not even accept a WotC solution.

It really isn't "so embedded", and this "you literally cannot please the people who are upset, so never ever bother trying" argument is pretty awful merely on its face.

Haven't you heard? Everybody hates the fighter class! The fact that people play fighters more often than other classes is no indication whatsoever that when given options people choose to play a class they like. Any day now, people are going to realize they really don't like the class and stop playing fighters.

When 46% of its players are dissatisfied with the Fighter class, yes, I think it's pretty fair to say that people are dissatisfied with the Fighter class.

They keep playing it because they like the idea, the concept, the theme, the intent thereof. But the execution is lacking. People are in fact dissatisfied. They also keep playing! Why would that be? Could it, perhaps, be what I've been arguing for years, which you have always consistently dismissed, that the design actually matters, even though people will continue to play something they find unsatisfactory?

Then what are you worrying about? Seems like you've got a solution that works for you.

"What are you complaining about? Banging on the hood a couple times gets the car going. Obviously, it doesn't need any repair work."

A machine that requires percussive maintenance to function has a problem and needs repair. That it can be cajoled into working through percussive maintenance does not mean there isn't a problem.

And, sadly, the mechanical gap between commoner and 1st-level character has been growing wider ever since, peaking with 4e.

Is that, maybe possibly perhaps, because people aren't super interested in playing utterly unremarkable, do-nothing commoners? That when they hear the idea of fantasy adventure, they'd much rather be Aragorn than Nameless Rohan Citizen #37?

We tell stories about people who are interesting to focus upon. Farmboys whose true fathers are evil wizards leading the armies of the Empire. Young women whose inheritance is guarding the barrier between life and death. Mages marked by the evil of the dark wizard who slew their parents. Heirs to forgotten crowns and constructs yearning for purpose built by mad geniuses. Comfortable landed gentry who feel the call to madcap adventure...or to carry a burden greater than any other.

D&D bills itself as high fantasy high adventure. Has since at least 2e, probably earlier. Not really sure what you expected people would think they'd be getting. Planescape was driven, in part, by making a setting that melded high and low together, with the grit and grime of Sigil and the weirdness and power of the planes all in one package.

 

[Minigiant]

And, sadly, the mechanical gap between commoner and 1st-level character has been growing wider ever since, peaking with 4e.

4e just skips the part of the game most people either skip or rush though. 4e's first level is 5e's 3rd level.

 

[Scribe]

I don't want to make a game that does the things I want a game to do.

I want to PLAY a game that does the things I want a game to do.

The former is totally orthogonal to the latter--and, more importantly, even if I did the former, it wouldn't help me find a group. Which is something I looked for. For over a year. Gradually broadening my criteria until they became "for God's sake, will anyone run anything that can be massaged into something vaguely like what I would enjoy?" And the answer was quite consistent: No.

I tried. I'm not going to spend six months of my life on a heartbreaker that won't ever be seen by 99.99999% of the gaming community because people are creatures of habit and, to paraphrase Jefferson, all experience has shown that people will retain the things to which they are accustomed rather than doing something different, even if it would be better, let alone might be. "Better the devil you know," as they say.

Then the 'issue' is simply not an issue for the majority (seemingly overwhelming based on your experience) and its not going to change unless you form your own group.

Which sucks, but I get it. There are games I would love to be playing, but for it to be at all a worthwhile experience, you need a community, and despite going out of my way in an hour in any direction, this game never picked up, and wont be.

You are 100% correct. People are creatures of habit, and once something works for them, they are not going to change unless forced.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Then the 'issue' is simply not an issue for the majority (seemingly overwhelming based on your experience) and its not going to change unless you form your own group.

Which sucks, but I get it. There are games I would love to be playing, but for it to be at all a worthwhile experience, you need a community, and despite going out of my way in an hour in any direction, this game never picked up, and wont be.

You are 100% correct. People are creatures of habit, and once something works for them, they are not going to change unless forced.

Though "works for them" and "makes them happy" can quite easily be worlds apart. Again: several 5e classes and subclasses have abysmal player satisfaction percentages, despite still being played frequently.

And WotC clearly cares about this. That's why we have an image from a presentation discussing the current playtest, showing this information. That's why they're doing a playtest at all, rather than just publishing a barely-changed update and calling it good. That's why they changed their design structure a few years back, to avoid short-rest abilities in most cases (not all, but the vast majority.)

 

[Scribe]

And WotC clearly cares about this. That's why we have an image from a presentation discussing the current playtest, showing this information. That's why they're doing a playtest at all, rather than just publishing a barely-changed update and calling it good. That's why they changed their design structure a few years back, to avoid short-rest abilities in most cases (not all, but the vast majority.)

Yes, corporations clearly care about easily measured metrics, that they can make go up.

Like us, they are into seeing 'bigger numbers.'

The sad thing is, it doesn't necessarily make for a better game. Just wait for the results of the survey regarding Wizards getting more power, and Cantrips being improved across the board all receive 'overwhelming support'.

 

[Minigiant]

The sad thing is, it doesn't necessarily make for a better game. Just wait for the results of the survey regarding Wizards getting more power, and Cantrips being improved across the board all receive 'overwhelming support'

I fully expect 5.2024e AKA 5.5e to be 3e II Electric Boogaloo.

Because magic stuff always gets high praise and heavy support officially and unofficially.

How many magic classes were in 3e and 4e. Tasha's subclasses were all overtly magical.
WOTC and many bid 3PPs have leaned hard into magic magic magic.

Because magic sells easily and corporations want sales.