D&D 5E Justin Alexander's review of Shattered Obelisk is pretty scathing

[MerricB]

Dunno why people have such a hate on for Dragonheist. I've run it twice to great effect. It's a really fun module. I dunno. I really liked it.

I've run it three times, but it is a deeply flawed adventure.

It has one of the best openings to an adventure I've seen in Wizards' catalogue. (Seriously, Chapter 1 is exactly what I want to introduce characters to a city-based adventure).

And then everything falls apart after that. But it doesn't fall apart in a completely unplayable way - just in that Chapter 2 feels like a lot of half-baked ideas, and the "chase" sequence in Chapter 4 is one big half-baked idea - something that sounds good in theory, but it an utter pain to use at the table (and has real railroading advice in case the party might do the unthinkable and get the McGuffin before every encounter has played out).

But it has a lot of good underlying ideas, which DMs can focus on.

Cheers,
Merric

 

[Hussar]

I've run it three times, but it is a deeply flawed adventure.

It has one of the best openings to an adventure I've seen in Wizards' catalogue. (Seriously, Chapter 1 is exactly what I want to introduce characters to a city-based adventure).

And then everything falls apart after that. But it doesn't fall apart in a completely unplayable way - just in that Chapter 2 feels like a lot of half-baked ideas, and the "chase" sequence in Chapter 4 is one big half-baked idea - something that sounds good in theory, but it an utter pain to use at the table (and has real railroading advice in case the party might do the unthinkable and get the McGuffin before every encounter has played out).

But it has a lot of good underlying ideas, which DMs can focus on.

Cheers,
Merric

I can see that. That's fair.

I guess I never really consider running an adventure as written. I always take them apart and build on them. So, Chapter 2, for me, is great - start off with a really fun adventure clearing out the Manor - something I borrowed off reddit where the spirit of a hag has been eating children and now the three orphans (names I forget) are trapped in the house when the party arrives to take possession. Then the side adventures for getting the house repaired and whatnot was just a golden opportunity to really bring Waterdeep to life.

Granted, I'll be perfectly honest, my first group wasn't overly interested but my second group loved it. I can totally see why it would have problems.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It's still more choice than just "go forward, go back, or stay put", which is all a linear dungeon gives you.

Actually, it's not. "left or right" might just as well be "roll on the random encounter table".

If you have a long main corridor with rooms off, the party have an actual tactical choice: check out the rooms, with the possibility of additional loot, but also depilating resources, or press on to the end focusing on the primary objective.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

As I said above, no, because the Wizards website has been completely deleted and replaced at least twice since then. It has, after all, been more than a decade.

I gave the transcription above. Mearls explicitly referred to Warlords as making hands "grow back" by "shouting" at people--and his immediate "now I'm being ridiculous" comment did not actually fix the problem. He was, openly, using edition-war screeds as reasons why 4e options should be excluded from 5e. Was he being the worst he possibly could? No. He was clearly trying to joke around. It's just a crappy thing to joke about given how gleeful so many people are about crapping on 4e, putting it down, dismissing anything good it ever did, or (worst of all, because it is entirely innocent) erasing it because they think awesome stuff 4e did was brand-new to 5e.

Sadly, I don't remember who on the dev team wrote the post about dragonborn, I can only tell you that it was really tone-deaf, cracking some rather weak jokes that basically boiled down to a stand-up comedian saying, "Dragonborn fans, am I right? What weirdos!" From context, it was clear he was trying to sound tongue-in-cheek, as in, making intentionally hyperbolic statements when he actually doesn't personally care that much, but I've endured more than enough of people telling me I don't deserve to have my preferences represented in D&D. Joking about it isn't funny--it's a very real experience I've had.

Wizards has deleted many things from the playtest period. More than a few of them were rather inconvenient things, like the poll that showed Warlord quite a bit more popular than Druid (which was in last place, and by a significant margin.)

You heard the expression "two wrongs don't make a right?"

Game design has too many prima donnas. You aint going to make it better by trying to out-prima-donna them.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

You heard the expression "two wrongs don't make a right?"

Game design has too many prima donnas. You aint going to make it better by trying to out-prima-donna them.

Who said I was trying to?

I was pointing out that the claim that 5e was the most inclusive edition, from a gameplay-preferences standpoint, was simply incorrect. That's literally it. 5e is not the "big tent" the developers talked about. It's open to some kinds of things and intentionally excluding others.

Anything beyond that, beyond the mere point of "it really ain't as inclusive as you think," is irrelevant to me at this juncture. For a different conversation, sure, but not this one.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Who said I was trying to?

I didn't mean you you. I had a different Prima Donna in mind.

 

[Hussar]

Who said I was trying to?

I was pointing out that the claim that 5e was the most inclusive edition, from a gameplay-preferences standpoint, was simply incorrect. That's literally it. 5e is not the "big tent" the developers talked about. It's open to some kinds of things and intentionally excluding others.

Anything beyond that, beyond the mere point of "it really ain't as inclusive as you think," is irrelevant to me at this juncture. For a different conversation, sure, but not this one.

I dunno. It's a FAR larger tent than a lot of other games looks sidelong at Pathfinder

Considering that a very large swath of 4e mechanics has managed to make its way into 5e, I'm not really sure that I'd claim that 4e players were being excluded. And getting hung up on a couple of sentences by people who aren't really even at WotC anymore or, have very little to do with D&D anyway, isn't really helping. Mearls made that "shouting hands back on comment what, nearly ten years ago? It might just be time to let things go...

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I dunno. It's a FAR larger tent than a lot of other games looks sidelong at Pathfinder

I have given my reasons why I don't really think it's anywhere the size many folks think.

Considering that a very large swath of 4e mechanics has managed to make its way into 5e, I'm not really sure that I'd claim that 4e players were being excluded. And getting hung up on a couple of sentences by people who aren't really even at WotC anymore or, have very little to do with D&D anyway, isn't really helping. Mearls made that "shouting hands back on comment what, nearly ten years ago? It might just be time to let things go...

And I have given my reasons why I think this view is mistaken. It's one of my most popular posts on this forum, actually. The TL;DR: There are lots of things in 5e which look like 4e mechanics. They are not actually translations of 4e mechanics into a new game. They are rather almost totally different mechanics that just superficially resemble 4e ones. Proficiency vs half-level bonus and HD vs Healing Surges are probably the two biggest culprits on that front, but cantrips also fit the bill quite nicely. They are not at-wills, despite superficially resembling at-wills.

 

[Remathilis]

The TL;DR: There are lots of things in 5e which look like 4e mechanics. They are not actually translations of 4e mechanics into a new game. They are rather almost totally different mechanics that just superficially resemble 4e ones. Proficiency vs half-level bonus and HD vs Healing Surges are probably the two biggest culprits on that front, but cantrips also fit the bill quite nicely. They are not at-wills, despite superficially resembling at-wills.

That's true though of its other mechanics and older editions though. Spell prep looks like Vancian, but it's nothing like AD&D or 3e. Multi-classing isn't like 3e despite similar design. Feats and ASI don't work like 3e or 4e. 5e never promised faithful translation of specific mechanics, only that it would take inspiration from the past in design.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

That's true though of its other mechanics and older editions though. Spell prep looks like Vancian, but it's nothing like AD&D or 3e. Multi-classing isn't like 3e despite similar design. Feats and ASI don't work like 3e or 4e. 5e never promised faithful translation of specific mechanics, only that it would take inspiration from the past in design.

Actually, in that post, I argued that feats are one of the few things that really are pretty much identical, up to the level of change necessarily induced by being a different game. 5e feats are more similar to 4e feats than to 3e ones, let alone previous games, and it's one of 5e's great strengths that it preserved that aspect of the game, with feats that are actually interesting and flavorful. ASIs, on the other hand, I will absolutely grant you--they work nothing like 4e, and it's a shame they don't, because 5e has a lot of really cool feats most characters will never see because they aren't anywhere near as powerful as +2 to your main stat....and most of the ones that are that powerful are incredibly boring math bonuses with no flavor or character to them.

There is a great deal of difference between "take inspiration from" (which, to me, means preserving the spirit of the rules) and merely wearing the skin of older mechanics while literally being diametrically opposite in actual function. Hit Dice are diametrically opposite Healing Surges. They are a nice cushion of bonus healing on top of the critical necessity for magical spellcasting-based healing (or potions, which are magical anyway.) Cantrips are not at-wills, they are not even trying to capture what at-wills did; they are purely a power-up for spellcasters so they feel less punished for not casting proper spells every single round. Proficiency is probably the worst culprit, because its disguise is very, very good, but it negates the spirit of the rule it is allegedly inspired by almost as badly as HD do: Proficiency effectively punishes anything you aren't good at, because that punishment get worse over time, very literally the negation of the spirit of 4e's half-level bonus.

Taking inspiration from something requires that you actually respect what purpose that thing was for. 5e mechanics do not do that with 4e. In almost all cases--feats being a rare exception--if a 5e mechanic resembles a 4e one, it actively negates whatever purpose 4e put it toward. Often, IMO, to the game's detriment; consider how many think-pieces we've had about how difficult it is to actually threaten PCs, how easy it is to get healing, the nigh-endless threads for the first several years about fixing saving throws because people weren't getting enough proficiencies, etc., etc.

Meanwhile, if something is borrowed from 3e, its spirit is preserved to the hilt--and often its mechanical implementation as well, often to 5e's detriment. The CR system is straight from 3e, and is equally garbage. Multiclassing is essentially identical, apart from ability score prerequisites--you claim it is in some way different but it barely differs at all. In a laundry list of ways, 5e is effectively a tweaked clone of 3e, not a radically different game. Hell, Extra Attack is already in spirit a strong resemblance to 3e's iterative attacks, despite being dramatically simplified.