D&D 5E 2024 D&D is 2014 D&D with 4E sprinkled on top

[Aldarc]

And it became the most popular version in D&D history. So looks like the grognards were right!

This is fallacious reasoning. You would need to show that this design decision meaningfully contributed to the success of 5e rather than simply being a design decision that was a free rider with 5e's success.

 

[Aldarc]

I'm happy to use the term "supernatural" rather than magic if you prefer, but if you're doing something that isn't possibly by real life physics, at all, it it by definition not mundane. I'm perfectly happy to accept multiple varieties of supernatural power, including the narrow definition of magic you are describing.

I suspect that a lot of the things that you take for granted as being "mundane" as part of your game preferences would actually be "magic" by your own standards.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I suspect that a lot of the things that you take for granted as being "mundane" as part of your game preferences would actually be "magic" by your own standards.

Please provide an example of my supposed hypocrisy. Otherwise you're just insulting me here.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

And it became the most popular version in D&D history. So looks like the grognards were right!

And here again we have the "because it sold well, every single thing 5e did must be absolutely perfect" argument.

It never dies. But I will not let it rest. This is a crap argument and it doesn't prove anything. Unless you can show that this choice was responsible for 5e's success, you are conflating correlation with causation.

 

[Aldarc]

Please provide an example of my supposed hypocrisy. Otherwise you're just insulting me here.

Sure thing but this isn't strictly true. Whether or not I am insulting you doesn't depend on me providing an example or not. There is no need for "otherwise." And if you reasonably feel that I am insulting you, then I recommend that you report my post for review by the mods. That is what the "Report" function is for.

That said, this is from another thread about the Sorcerer.

What I consider mundane is based on my perspective as a real life human: things real life humans can't do.

Fair enough. 5e has changed the game in yet another way I don't care for, destroying the concept of a mundane PC and ruining the ability to reasonably play any number of inspirations from fantasy.

The first post provides your metric, which is good. However, I think that the fundamental issue is that "the concept of a mundane PC" was one that existed in name only in D&D. What you think of as a "mundane PC" is not one that is actually mundane because they are capable of things outside of what real life humans can do. And I think that the more that we look at each of the games where PCs are supposedly "mundane," the quicker that this claim would unravel. Even for 1e D&D, Gary Gygax said that D&D was not a physics engine. Human beings in nearly all of our games defy physics and what is actually normal.

Why wouldn't they? Mundane actions are subject to the laws of reality and internal setting logic. Magic actions are subject to the laws of magic (whatever those are in the setting), which ought to be consistently applied. You may want different laws of magic than WotC D&D 5.5 provides (me too), but there are still laws for both.

Now if you expand your sense of mundane as you do here to include "internal setting logic," then I think that you are moving the goal posts for what constitutes mundane. I would even say that there is an implicit admission here that the mundane is not entirely mundane if it also requires "internal setting logic," which may contradict the otherwise "laws of reality."

I know that you like ACKS; however, I have no desire to dig through that for evidence as I would have to give money to a horrible person of a creator.

 

[Zardnaar]

And here again we have the "because it sold well, every single thing 5e did must be absolutely perfect" argument.

It never dies. But I will not let it rest. This is a crap argument and it doesn't prove anything. Unless you can show that this choice was responsible for 5e's success, you are conflating correlation with causation.

It did something right. I suspect less complex was a big part of that. And more pre 3E playstyle.

 

[Lord Twig]

If something is impossible, like Saitama jumping to the moon, its impossible, and you can call it anything you want but its not mundane, and its 'magic' by some other means.

I guess some people just can't imagine that something not explicitaly called magic could be magic. I don't have that problem. It's pretty easy actually.

Ahh, I love the sweet smell of flogging the deceased equine in the morning. It is all just so nostalgic.

You folks do realize that no one is going to budge one iota on this issue. It's STILL the reason that WotC can't be direct about stuff. They have to pretend that 4e doesn't exist, rewrite material so that it doesn't look like it came from 4e, in order to avoid all those 4e cooties.

I was starting to look at the good of 4e, but now I am starting to not like it all over again. I try to explain what I don't like and why, and I am insulted as being unimaginative.

The fact that all sorts of other systems have things like damage on a miss - or partial successes for attacks if you prefer to word it that way - doesn't matter. It's D&D. The HP system must remain sacrosanct or all believability is lost. And, we'll keep tossing up ludicrous examples to "prove" how these new ideas are just destroying the game.

Partial success! That is a great way to frame it. I actually like the idea of partial success. Along with success, critical success, and failure. Now failure sucks, but do you know what is worse? Never failing. It's (imho) boring.

Note that virtually everyone who is arguing against things like Graze, are people who don't play 2024 D&D.

Well, you did say "virtually everyone." I don't know how you get to that determination. I would say "some" or maybe even "many." But seems like you are trying to minimize the people who disagree with you.

 

[Lord Twig]

And here again we have the "because it sold well, every single thing 5e did must be absolutely perfect" argument.

It never dies. But I will not let it rest. This is a crap argument and it doesn't prove anything. Unless you can show that this choice was responsible for 5e's success, you are conflating correlation with causation.

That is not what I said. You are changing what I said and then attacking it. That is the very definition of a Straw Man argument.

Honestly, I said it somewhat tongue in cheek. Yes, I know we can't prove any particular part of the 5e rules are solely responsible for the success of 5e, or even that it is a significant reason, but the fact remains that it was successful. And the way they handled magic items is part of 5e. Are you honestly trying to say that magic items in 5e are bad or unpopular? Because that has not been my experience at all.

 

[Aldarc]

That is not what I said. You are changing what I said and then attacking it. That is the very definition of a Straw Man argument.

Honestly, I said it somewhat tongue in cheek. Yes, I know we can't prove any particular part of the 5e rules are solely responsible for the success of 5e, or even that it is a significant reason, but the fact remains that it was successful. And the way they handled magic items is part of 5e. Are you honestly trying to say that magic items in 5e are bad or unpopular? Because that has not been my experience at all.

I honestly can’t say that I have heard magic items breaking into any lists for Top 5 or Top 10 reasons that 5e D&D is the best edition ever.

This is not to say that magic items in 5e are bad or unpopular. I’m just not sure how much of a causal or contributing factor it is to the overall success of 5e even if we look strictly at 5e in terms of its game design.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I guess some people just can't imagine that something not explicitaly called magic could be magic. I don't have that problem. It's pretty easy actually.

No. My problem is that "magic" comes with HUGE baggage like:

"Oh so Fighters shoot lightning bolts out of their hindquarters now?"
"Ah, good to hear that my Fighter will be shut down by a counterspell when doing her stuff. Just wonderful."
"But Fighters can't be magic, then there are no nonmagic classes left!"
"I wonder what hand-jive and weird Dog Latin phrases Fighters learned in order to jump really far, so strange that that is required..."
Etc., etc., etc.

It isn't that I don't think magic contains a lot. It does! Of course, D&D 5e is kinda at fault here for continuously shifting more of the game's contents...even things that aren't supernatural at all like "shoot multiple targets"...into being specifically spells, which is just once branch of magic, but that's a digression for another topic.

It's that magic excludes many of the amazing, heroic, astounding things martials should be able to do, if our inspirations are European myth, literature, and folklore. There is no place in "magic" for "he's just such a good blacksmith, the swords he creates have souls of their own." Nor for "she can just hold her breath for three hours, no big deal." These things are impossible in real life. We are not talking about real life. This is a world where species are created by gods directly, where interbreeding between many many many different species is fully possible without any complications. Where bus-sized lizards can fly on wings that couldn't keep a hangglider aloft. Where women and men can be roasted by a fire that would instantly incinerate a warhorse, but which these heroic individuals shrug off as a Tuesday afternoon.

That is why "magic", as broad as it may be, is still too narrow.

I was starting to look at the good of 4e, but now I am starting to not like it all over again. I try to explain what I don't like and why, and I am insulted as being unimaginative.

I mean... it's literally a demonstrable thing WotC actually did, repeatedly pretending that 4e never existed and then "inventing" 4e's way of doing it ("What about what I like to call 'passive perception?" asked Monte Cook, literally just regurgitating 4e, even in its actual terminology, but pretending it was brand-new). And then the several more things where they took only the most trivially superficial impression of 4e mechanics, and then actively worked against anything even remotely like what the 4e mechanic was for (Hit Dice, cantrips, subclasses, "monster builder" stuff, etc.)

Partial success! That is a great way to frame it. I actually like the idea of partial success. Along with success, critical success, and failure. Now failure sucks, but do you know what is worse? Never failing. It's (imho) boring.

Why does "partial success damage" (if that is your preferred term for the exact same mechanics...) mean "you literally never fail ever no matter what"?

What this oh-so-offensively-named mechanic does IS NOT "you just cannot fail." Instead, it pushes a tension situation (like combat) toward resolution, one way or another. I have no problem with either PCs or NPCs having such mechanics. I think it is extremely good and healthy for a game's design to avoid encouraging "and nothing happens" results. Those bleed tension dry and turn what should be exciting and memorable moments into drudgery and bookkeeping.

A similar design concept that I think D&D needs to pick up, sooner rather than later, is "fail forward." Note that, just as the above, failure is still bad. It's still not what you want to have happen. (Edit "Fail Forward" simply means that failure does not grind the game to a halt. E.g. if the party just flat-out must get through a particular locked gate...they will! But whether they do so fast enough to achieve their ends, or without sacrificing something important, or without suffering a terrible setback? That's where the failure comes in for fail forward. Sure, you pick the lock--but you get through after being positively identified by numerous bystanders, meaning your cover is blown and you'll have to lay low or skip town. Sure, you find the secret entrance--after hours of trial-and-error frustration, at which point the cult has already killed their sacrificial captive and left the scene, so now you must figure out where they'll go next. Sure, you rescue the hostage who is the only person who knows the secret you need to learn--but they're comatose from the poison, so you still don't know what you need to know and have to solve this new problem. Etc.

And, unrelated to the above: Does this mean you have ruled at your table that every spell which says it has reduced effects for a successful save actually has no effects at all? Because otherwise you are again saying magic is just better, magic can be an auto-win button and that's totally cool but martial things can't do that because...reasons? Assuming you did fairly take away this thing from magic that you're so vehemently opposed to, have you thus compensated Rogues and Monks for making what was a special class feature for them a generic thing?