D&D (2024) I have the DMG. AMA!

[Emerikol]

And yet I'm on the "the world can affect player mechanics" side. Emphatically so. Like I have said I am an advocate for changing subclasses - and if that isn't impacting player mechanics I don't know what is.

What I'm not an advocate for is crippling the player character. Change isn't the same as crippling. That which doesn't kill you makes you stranger.

And the problem with just about all these is that they are boring. The problem is that literally all the consequences you have named there fit into one of two categories:

• Taking away someone's toys and crippling them until they get them back (removal of spells, level drain, ability score drain)
• Changing around numbers (magical ageing, ability score drain)

It's not the fact that they have an impact that's the problem. It's that they are all crippling and strictly negative.

What I like are consequences. I recently gave someone a homebrew Hand of Vecna and the way it worked was through a corruption mechanic; whenever they used one of the major powers they marked off a Mark of Corruption. And each time they used a major power they had to fill in a circle - fill them all and they become an NPC. Just a Taste and Megalomania went fast. How fast he got corrupted was up to him.

Marks of Corruption​

O Just a taste: The first time you reduce a foe to 0hp after a long rest they return as a zombie under your control​

OOO A touch of death: At the first level you look as if you haven’t slept for a week. At the second you look gaunt and haggard, and at the third like a lich​

O Blight: Small plants die and larger ones wither in your presence​

O Megalomania: Gain a tendency to speechify. You have everything under control. So you think.​

Far far more interesting than "You just took level drain. You lose your best toys and take -1 to rolls". I'm on the "we want this removing things trash out of the way because it's clogging up where interesting things could be as well as making things less fun". And you know what this does? It makes the PCs far more likely to risk the consequences because they know they will be interesting. And their character will get stranger, not just crippled.

What is fun and engaging varies between people is all I can say. The fear the undead invoked in my PCs cannot be easily duplicated without those rules.

And while you may or may not be in this group so don't take it as I'm saying you are but there exists a group of what I would call entitled players who want inviolate protections from what they'd view as DM interference. Those people I save the trouble. I tell them they are eternally protected and send them out the door.

And I'm not saying your thing is bad. Everything doesn't have to be exactly what I listed. I think those things were good though.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I have theorized why they like or dislike things. I'm not sure there are a mass of players who will play almost anything put out by WOTC and called D&D. I estimate it is close to 65% of the playerbase. None are probably here or very few.

How do you square that with people who didn't play D&D for the thirty-preceding years or who stopped playing in various editions?

Or the simple fact that most of the playerbase has ONLY known 5e and now 5.5? As in there's really no data to support this hypothesis.

By putting second wind in the base fighter, they sent a very direct message to me. Get lost! I was all for a multitude of fighter choices and assuming the champion would be the one I'd pick and mandate for my games.

Really? Second Wind was the straw there? Why? It's a full 30% of the class before subclasses. What would there even be left of the fighter?

Well and that is what we are debating. If that mechanic can't work well in a game, someone in that group is not someone I want to play D&D with. Whether it is the DM or the player.

Again, if people don't want to deal with the mechanic at all, why devote page space to it?

 

[Micah Sweet]

But WotC is absolutely allowed to choose one as the default.

I'd rather they offered a variety, even if they feel the need to emphasize one of them.

 

[Xenolith234]

Unfortunately, it’s much harder to take things away than to give them. By defaulting to “DM can’t touch this”, any DM that does is fighting an uphill battle. A DM could more easily choose not to take away a cleric’s power and not cause any issues if they choose that it fits their setting.

 

[Emerikol]

In a video about the PHB, yes.

If I had not already decided to ignore this edition as I did 5e and wished I did 4e, that would put me over the top.

 

[Micah Sweet]

This makes no sense; to get to the upper levels of the church they should have been clerics. So you're telling me the most important people in the church were the most powerless?

You can - but you do not get to claim that the reason you want to be able to rip the powers away from a cleric and leave them crippled has anything to do with versimilitude or actually being part of a religion when many of the most popular ones work the other way. It is entirely an arbitrary decision you have made.

Yes, we disagree about this. But so far as I can tell no one has presented any way that it is good for the game. Just that it gives DMs an extra tool to shaft "bad" players. And DMs already have an overwhelming amount of power.

Meanwhile I've presented plenty of ways it has negative consequences to roleplaying, to worldbuilding, and to storytelling.

They were clerics with powers. At first.

And to me setting logic and class fantasy, and especially fiction first, mechanics second, is very good for the game.

 

[TwoSix]

In a video about the PHB, yes.

That's just bog-standard "playacting competition" that's super common between players and DMs. I constantly act "super frustrated" that the PCs managed to kill my clever boss fights; in reality, I couldn't care less, it's all just part of the show.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It's as big a change as chopping both arms off a fighter.

But I feel it's ok so long as the means to get new arms is readily available.

 

[Vaalingrade]

That's just bog-standard "playacting competition" that's super common between players and DMs. I constantly act "super frustrated" that the PCs managed to kill my clever boss fights; in reality, I couldn't care less, it's all just part of the show.

Yeah, I engage in this kind of kayfabe too.

 

[TwoSix]

I feel like exploring their character via roleplay isn't going rogue.

While working with the DM on planning character arcs is a good idea, it shouldn't be mandatory or punished.

Not mandatory, but as a DM I would expect at least a "I've got something planned, don't want to ruin the surprise, just roll with it when something weird happens."