D&D General 5e System Redesign through New Classes and Setting. A Thought Experiment.

[Zardnaar]

There's no way to know which of you is right, so his speculation is just as valid as yours.

Overall argument is that modern players are doing XYZ. That's how they play.

Mearls may be exaggerating but I dont think its by much.

Even here most are saying 6-8 is BS. It wasn't a design flaw thats what we told them to do. Combine that with huge influx of new players no one could really foresee.

Broadly speaking i think we all agree we are not doing 6-8 by default.

Long ago i said tge healer feat was broken. That was in the context of 6-8 encounters I tested. People weren't running it that way 2015.

All of the 5 power feats I identified in 2015 got nerfed/bumped /changed. Just saying.

 

[mamba]

Plenty of GM books got by just fine without an encounter balance system.

and humans got by without penicillin, doesn’t mean they should abandon it once it was discovered

If the lesson needs tweaking, then tweak it, don’t abandon teaching

 

[Zardnaar]

and humans got by without penicillin, doesn’t mean they should abandon it once it was discovered

If the lesson needs tweaking, then tweak it, don’t abandon teaching

They've already abandoned half if it. Doesn't work.

CRs always been a joke.

 

[Remathilis]

and humans got by without penicillin, doesn’t mean they should abandon it once it was discovered

If the lesson needs tweaking, then tweak it, don’t abandon teaching

Nonsense. The bathwater must be disposed of, infant and all.

 

[Zardnaar]

Nonsense. The bathwater must be disposed of, infant and all.

That's how we got 4E lol. Worked out well.

 

[Corinnguard]

That's how we got 4E lol. Worked out well.

It's also how we got Pathfinder 1e at roughly the same time.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

You're conflating role-playing complexity with mechanical complexity. They are not the same.

No, I’m not. I’m speaking purely about mechanics.

Adding more bookkeeping mechanics - i.e. making the players' job at the table more complex - is not great; there's many more important things for them to track than an unnecessary second healing-related number.

HS don’t do this. The same amount of stuff is being tracked, and it is less complex for everyone to track their own stuff rather than having some classes require tracking stuff for everyone and weighing the use of resources for the whole group.

It is simpler to mark that you used 1 HS than it is to have a strategic chat with the party cleric about how badly you do or don’t need them to use a healing spell on you. It is simpler to have all healing work the same way for everyone.

 

[Zardnaar]

It's also how we got Pathfinder 1e at roughly the same time.

Yup. My theory is most of the fanvase is actually casual. This meas 4E was fixing problems they had no issues with and were likely unaware of.

Forum members tend to think theyre correct.

Rereading 3.5 the numbers suck and the worst effects are nuts. 90% of it isn't nutty crap though. Its to fiddy these days for my personal tastes.

 

[Corinnguard]

This meas 4E was fixing problems they had no issues with and were likely unaware of.

Whereas Pathfinder 1e kept what worked in 3.5 and fixed what didn't work. 4e revamped everything, even the parts the player didn't have any problems with.

 

[Campbell]

All I will say is that any game that does not provide me with a different starting point when it comes to encounter design gets thrown in the bin of never going to run. I like to run and play multiple games. If I have to spend a year or two developing intuitions about what appropriate encounters look like, then it will never see the table because my games do not last that long.