D&D 5E (2014) Justin Alexander's review of Shattered Obelisk is pretty scathing

[Micah Sweet]

And this is why I say what I'm talking about is never going to happen.

Not with WotC, no. But we all know this, even if some don't want to admit it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Give me an example of what you mean. Does it have to be Blades in the Dark to matter?

There aren't many examples. That's my point. Most games don't give anything but combat this sort of attention, even ones that probably should. About the closest I can think of that does this with another area are Gumshoe games with investigation, Ars Magica with magic, or a couple cyberpunk games with hacking (though often those are just reskinned combat, too).

 

[Thomas Shey]

Not with WotC, no. But we all know this, even if some don't want to admit it.

It doesn't happen virtually anywhere.

 

[Iosue]

Measuring the difficulty, sure, as in A is tougher than B. And CR works for that. But none of this "you must have X encounters with Y difficulty per day" nonsense.

5e doesn’t have that. It has “If you have X encounters at Y difficulty, your PCs will need a long rest.”

Some people have then assumed you have to do that, but that’s not what the game says.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It doesn't happen virtually anywhere.

If you want the same degree of attention as combat, maybe not. But every little bit helps.

 

[Thomas Shey]

If you want the same degree of attention as combat, maybe not. But every little bit helps.

I'd at least like for it to be close on areas that are supposed to be important and involve multiple characters.

 

[Lanefan]

Not at all. It starts and stops at "I want to write 'Priest' at the top of my character sheet and be a holy warrior that breaks face." These are, of course, not classes that exist in 5e or any WotC edition of D&D. ("Templar" was a subclass of Cleric in 4e, but that's not really relevant here.)

A holy warrior that breaks face - isn't that just the long-form way of saying "Paladin"?

In any case, this still sounds like a player who wants to have and eat cake at the same time; because writing "Priest" at the top of the sheet implies the character has all the 'Priest' abilities going for it, meanwhile the player wants to add in a bunch of warrior-y stuff as well.

Okay. Can you ignore your personal table rules and consider it system-agnostically? Because that was kind of the point, and why I led with an example that never occurred in any actual D&D edition...

And yet it did occur. In 1e a Fighter who specialized in bow and who went Dex-first rather than Str-first (and who, when forced into melee combat, went more swashbuckler-y than tank-y) exactly mirrors what your hypothetical player is trying to roll up.

Now sure, other editions might not support that same concept very well; but to me that's a flaw in those editions - just like it's a flaw in 1e that it doesn't well support some common builds of later editions.

No, you misunderstand. Not "I mostly use just regular magic items." They want to cast spells normally. They just want all of those spells to be items, with mechanical support for them being actual items, and acting a little different compared to normal spells, but still also spells with all the rules of spells. And they want to be called a Wizard the whole time.

Yes, then, I do misunderstand. In play, how would this look? The character is carrying around a bunch of items with, in effect, spells loaded into them? Or when the character studies its spells in the morning, a number of these items are created that get used up during the day as spells are cast? Or ... ?

I ask because this seems a cool idea on the surface; I'm just wondering how it would work in practice.

Sure. But in official 5e, it doesn't exist.

Also rangers can wear all the heavy armor and take all the combat feats. And they get fighting styles. So...not really seeing how you're offering much that the Ranger doesn't already get.

I thought heavy armour was pretty much banned to Rangers these days. I say this because one of my favourite character types is the "heavy Ranger", and after trying (and largely failing, though I gave it a good shot) to build one in 3e I paid attention to what 4e and 5e allowed and saw the path to making a heavy Ranger was even more blocked. They've gone all-in on the high-dex low-armour archetype, and given them more casting.

Just because they're basics does not mean we must water them down until they are everything to everyone. They can still be clearly designed for purposes. You'd just want ones that are in high demand.

Agreed.

And guess what! Fighter has always been cast primarily as a defensive wall between the dangerous world and their fragile teammates, going all the way back to OD&D.

The difference, however, is that in 0-1-2e the Fighter was also the main damage dealer - that defensive wall had sharp teeth! - where 4-5e seemed to back hard away from that while playing up the defense piece. And yeah, there's a fairly limited design space around an archetype whose main purpose is to stand there and take abuse.

And while I agree that subclasses are a very useful tool for flexing things in new directions, they're much more limited than you seem to think (which is, frex, why the "Warlord Fighter" has always been DOA, folks just keep burying their heads in the sand about it). You can sometimes make some pretty significant divergence (e.g. the 5e Warlock's Pacts), but the vast majority of cases are grace notes on the base structure, not meaningfully altering the class.

The chassis kinda has to be visible; but even so there's a big difference between, say, a swashbuckler and a heavy-metal knight - big enough that there's lots of room to make those be different classes even though both sit on the Fighter chassis.

Believe me, I wish that weren't true. I have tried proposing such flexibility. For example, the Zealot Barbarian would be a shockingly close fit for an actual 5e Avenger (the class from 4e), except that it would need to work with Dexterity rather than Strength for damage. Everyone I've ever proposed this to, even as a feat, has instantly and vehemently rejected it as totally unacceptable, broken garbage that only a powergamer could want. Just that tiny tweak of "let me use Dex for attacks and still get Rage stuff" is absolutely verboten.

The thought that immediately leaps to mind as to why your DMs have been rejecting this is that it takes Dex - which as a stat already has far too much going for it in 5e - and gives it even more to do.

Now if your proposal suggested using any other stat (Wisdom? Charisma?) for damage my guess is it would get a better reception.

Not at all. If we are talking about creating a new game, not the design of existing games, which I have not been doing this far. It is an argument for a Goldilocks zone. And four is definitely too small.

Yes, four is too few. There's been discussions before (we may have even been in them!) as to what the ideal number of classes (including subs) is, and I seem to recall the rough average of what people thought would work best was in the 12-20 range.

"bloated" (a word I have come to despise because all it means is "I don't like this," it has no actual critical content)

I can recognize something has become bloated while still liking it. Prime example: the MCU.

Saying something has become bloated is more a warning to those just getting in that there's an awful lot of material to wade through in order to catch up.

Ultra-genericized classes weaken both the thematic expressiveness of those classes and their mechanical ability to actually deliver those themes in enjoyable acts of gameplay. But having too many classes makes everything a blur, for both players and designers. There's a happy medium somewhere in the middle, where there are enough classes that they cover pretty much all the archetypes and flexing can get you essentially all the remainder, but few enough classes that each can be clean and distinct and pursue it's thematic identity with distinct and effective mechanics.

And each have its own specific niche - the thing it does well that everyone celse can at best do nowhere near as well. I think we agree on this bit.

I think 4e had perhaps a small amount too many, and 5e has a noticeable amount too few. IIRC, 4e has something like 25 classes, and some really didn't need to exist (e.g. Seeker, Runepriest, and Assassin could—should—have just been variations of Ranger, Cleric, and Rogue respectively.) Meanwhile, 5e is missing at least the Warlord (as much as I know you hate it, it is one of the most commonly requested additions), Swordmage, Psion, and (debatably) Priest aka what 4e called "Invoker," the "clothie" miracle-worker type rather than the "armored cudgel-swinger" that every Cleric necessarily is.

There's more than enough available design space for Assassin to be its own class.

Swordmage is fraught with risk of exploit: every time I've heard ideas for such a class (or its "gish" brother) my first thought is always "Here's someone who wants to play a multiclass Fighter-Mage but without all the drawbacks of being a multiclass."

The design issue with Psion is that either a) they'd have to design a whole new magic system built around psionics and powers of the mind, which is a lot of work; or b) the class would become just another caster largely indistinguishable from the rest (as has happened with Bard, which IMO should also have its own bespoke magic system built around sonic transmission), and that space is already kinda crammed full.

If they actually supported the option of replacing basic class features (not merely adding new options, actually losing a feature you have and getting something else in its place), subclasses would be far more effective as tools for representing archetypes. But because WotC is at least as allergic to the concept of ACFs as they are to the concept of PrCs, I doubt we'll ever see it, and 5e subclasses will remain almost exclusively grace notes.

Allowing players to mix and match class features to that extent would be either a designer's nightmare or a powergamer's dream.

 

[pemerton]

Measuring the difficulty, sure, as in A is tougher than B. And CR works for that. But none of this "you must have X encounters with Y difficulty per day" nonsense.

But the community hadn't drunk the Kool-Aid on that being a necessity back then.

5e doesn’t have that. It has “If you have X encounters at Y difficulty, your PCs will need a long rest.”

Just to add to @Iosue's reply: my understanding is that the imperative is hypothetical, not categorical: something like if you want to maintain intra-party cross-class combat balance, then you should have around about X encounters with Y difficulties between long rests, with Z short rests interspersed between them.

 

[pemerton]

Not nearly as far as I'm talking about. Come back when your intrusion game in D&D has as many meaningful decisions that are not just GM arbitration as combat does.

I'm not exactly sure what constraints a RPG has to satisfy to respond to your point. I'm pretty confident that skill challenge vs combat in 4e D&D wouldn't be counted by you as an answer.
But what about Torchbearer? The resolution framework for all conflicts is the same, whether combat or social or magical or fleeing or whatever. In our game the highest skill at start was the Dwarven Outcast's Fighter 4. Well into level 4 he is still Fighter 4. On the other hand, the Elven Dreamwalker started with Lore Master 3 but is now Lore Master 5 - the highest skill in the party. This has been driven significantly by the fact that Lore Master is a key skill in Trick and Riddle conflicts, and the PCs in our game have done a lot of tricking and riddling.

Indeed. How about asking players to use their brains to solve a problem? E.g. they need to figure out what an actually NPC wants, by asking the right questions.

Social interaction as puzzle-solving isn't very verisimilitudinous, in my experience.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Just to add to @Iosue's reply: my understanding is that the imperative is hypothetical, not categorical: something like if you want to maintain intra-party cross-class combat balance, then you should have around about X encounters with Y difficulties between long rests, with Z short rests interspersed between them.

Sadly, that might as well have been a burning bush to most folks.