D&D General The Monsters Know What They're Doing ... Are Unsure on 5e24

[tetrasodium]

Maybe they should just make settings where higher powered PCs make more sense then

They could, but I can't imagine there is a lot of demand for an overt Mary Sue/Gary Stu author self insert type setting. Having that setting be anything else would require gm tools to support the setting. Im not hostile to the idea, and even linked to those a couple pages back, but I expect somewhere around around zero chance of ever seeing those kind of things in d&d as long as posts like 311 are the primary concern wotc focuses on when designing such a setting book

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@Minigiant I wouldn't say that a design choice that started with 5e and continued in the 5.024 revision makes for a "tradition"

 

[MichaelSomething]

Shouldn't Ammann treat this as a business opportunity? If 5e24 is becoming easier and higher fantasy, then he can more easily corner the market on harder and lower fantasy products?

 

[Distracted DM]

Punish also meant punish. As in, cripple PCs abilities and limit their options. Ravenloft weakened turn undead and most spells to make sure you can't get an advantage against the main antagonists. Planescape would restrict cleric spellcasting based on how many planes you were removed from your deity. Dragonlance forced every caster into the Jedi Order Order of High Sorcery and crippled you if you failed the robe test. Spelljamming cost arcane spell slots, guaranteeing your mage has to rest for hours very time you took off. And don't get me started on Dark Sun. Even good old Faerun required you to worship a god or you could never be resurrected. All rules designed to force players to play the correct way or suffer the consequences.

I found it absolutely liberating to play some of those settings without these punitive restrictions and I have found almost nothing is lost by removing them.

Personally, when it comes to designing a setting, removing access to certain classes, ancestries, altering equipment, changing how magic works... None of that is done with "punishing players" as the motive- it's done in service of evoking certain themes and creating a world, using the tools at hand. Does it mean that some assumptions have to change and it requires some adaptation to the new world and its rules? Yeah. But I'm NEVER making a campaign setting just to "stick it to the players."

 

[Minigiant]

Hot Take.

A level 1 PC should have 3 HD. A Level 1 PC should be someone capable of going in a Dungeon as an intelligent choice. This solves the 1st level squishiness issue without inflation and power creep.

There is history of first level PCs having multiple HD.

An optional rules should allow creation of 0th to -2th level PCs with 0-2 HD.

This way settings could have different baselines.Some 1st level. Some 3rd. Some -1st.

But Sword and Sorcery lost to Heroic Fantasy and Epic Fantasy the second GF and EF were available. So it won't be the baseline anymore.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Shouldn't Ammann treat this as a business opportunity? If 5e24 is becoming easier and higher fantasy, then he can more easily corner the market on harder and lower fantasy products?

In other words, instead of doing what he's been doing -- writing about how to play monsters better, and related topics -- he should think about doing something different?

I mean, yes, that's what his blog post is pondering.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Maybe they should just make settings where higher powered PCs make more sense then

Like Dark Sun, Forgotten Realms, and Greyhawk? Who have many famous powerful people.

 

[Minigiant]

@Minigiant I wouldn't say that a design choice that started with 5e and continued in the 5.024 revision makes for a "tradition"

5e14 and 5e,24 don't use the same design paradigm. The only use the same design benchmarks and under a different names.

That's probably the biggest change between the two versions of the edition

 

[mamba]

Shouldn't Ammann treat this as a business opportunity? If 5e24 is becoming easier and higher fantasy, then he can more easily corner the market on harder and lower fantasy products?

he has been creating supplements for what WotC is creating, not a competing product, so this is a complete change of the business model, not an opportunity. You also could change your business model at any time of you wanted to, it does not need to be forced onto you.

 

[MichaelSomething]

he has been creating supplements for what WotC is creating, not a competing product, so this is a complete change of the business model, not an opportunity. You also could change your business model at any time of you wanted to, it does not need to be forced onto you.

I mean he could create supplemental products that make D&D more lower fantasy or whatever. Since so many proclaim D&D is a toolbox, then making some tools to change D&D into whatever style you desire should be doable; and even profitable.

 

[GobHag]

They could, but I can't imagine there is a lot of demand for an overt Mary Sue/Gary Stu author self insert type setting. Having that setting be anything else would require gm tools to support the setting. Im not hostile to the idea, and even linked to those a couple pages back, but I expect somewhere around around zero chance of ever seeing those kind of things in d&d as long as posts like 311 are the primary concern wotc focuses on when designing such a setting book

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@Minigiant I wouldn't say that a design choice that started with 5e and continued in the 5.024 revision makes for a "tradition"

I'm not saying to make a gary/mary-stu, just one that's less grounded. In fact, why is just straight up canonizing that the PCs are special in some form of lore way is bad? Other settings have the implicit view of 'This is how things are going until you, the players who have some meta but not setting importance, are going to screw it up' why not just make that explicit?

I think being almost a decade old counts as tradition at this point