D&D General D&D Evolutions You Like and Dislike [+]

[EzekielRaiden]

I dont like the tactical team aspect of D&D, or I should say I dont like it to be required. If the game works with a herd of cats, but is optimal with a team of surgeons, it seems to have hit the sweet spot.

I find the enormous problem is that "works with a herd of cats" means teamwork is functionally irrelevant--every group can succeed without it, so why bother going to all that work when it makes no functional difference? Which is precisely my problem. D&D is and has always been a team game. I believe it should be designed as such.

Now, that doesn't mean D&D should be designed so that flawless interlocking machine-like teamwork is required 24/7. That's foolish and unproductive. But I genuinely do believe that if the group is behaving, as you say, like "a herd of cats", then they should pay a price for that. It should be hard to succeed under such conditions. Not impossible, but you're leaving your success mostly up to luck and brute force when you're that dysfunctional. Conversely, a well-oiled machine of teamwork might be able to punch above their weight or otherwise achieve unusual success, but is susceptible to having holes poked in it, allowing for a more dynamic back-and-forth.

Like, if "herd of cats" is 10% teamwork and "well-oiled machine" is 100% teamwork, I would expect the game to be balanced for a point roughly around 40%-50% teamwork. Call it "fire-forged friends" type teamwork; just because they're friends doesn't mean they always get along or have rigid discipline. Dropping down all the way to 10% teamwork is a major risk, but it's also a lot more casual. Perhaps the DMG can have advice for how to account for varying degrees of teamwork in the group. Seems like that would be right at home with the "player personalities" stuff that was present in the 4e DMG.

Part of the 4e design philosophy appears to be to create rules that no longer require a DM to adjudicate ambiguity or narrative context considerations. It is rules that ensure gaming balance rather than DM fiat.

I would argue that that is not quite true, with an illustrative example: Marking. Marking cannot be adjudicated by a computer nor a flowchart. It is not autonomous. It requires a values-judgment. It is genuinely indispensable to have a human mind deciding what is worth doing, and what is worth avoiding.

This is where I find many analyses of 4e fall flat. They mistake the smoothing of one problem for the total elimination of something, when that isn't true. Specifically, 4e worked very hard (as I know you know) to remove balance concerns. It did not eliminate them...but they got farther than I'd ever have expected. By eliminating the need for the GM to worry much about balance, their goal was for the GM to pick up all of that cognitive load and shunt it right back into all of the other--and let's face it, much more fun--parts of being a GM. Throw together a wild and raucous fight, is it still +/- 4 levels of the characters? Then it'll most likely be a fun and engaging time. And all the time you would've spent worrying about balance, you can instead spend on the zillion other things that a GM needs to be paying attention to.

Of course, that's not how folks saw it...but perception and reality are not as closely allied as any of us would like, I suspect.

The two flaws of 4e were. The fatal flaw was 4e killing the OGL. It alternative licensing made it unappealing for indy content to develop niches.

On this you will never hear argument from me. Attempting to kill the OGL was the single stupidest thing 4e's creators ever did. Had they not done so--had they instead collaborated and tried to reinforce the OGL--a great many things would have gone differently.

Second flaw was, its universal mechanical advancement schedule guaranteed gaming balance while the reflavorability made almost any character concept possible. But the schedule was too intricate and inflexible (such as, all classes needing to gain their utility powers at only certain levels). Thus it was difficult to modify mechanics while maintaining balance. Most DMs became dependent on the official products. Relatedly, the indies were unable to fill the gaps. The lack of DM mechanical tweaking made the game less of a living culture.

I'm....not really sure what "dependent on the official products" means in this context. That makes it hard to respond to your thought here, but I feel like if we can get to that, this is a fruitful discussion to have.

If 4e allowed OGL to remain alive, we would all be playing 4e 2024 now. The products from indies would have proven which mechanics worked well, and WotC would have adopted trends.

Given it's been nearly 20 years since 4e came out, I'm pretty sure we'd be playing 5e by now. But it would've been a 5e launched much more recently. But I do agree that keeping the OGL and letting 4e cook for like one extra year? Massive, massive differences.

As it is now. 5e kept the 4e ideals of balancing player options, but made the game engine mechanics flexible and tough and easy to tweak. Rulings-not-rules is also part of the pushback against 4e mechanical inflexibility.

But most importantly, the OGL now CC is alive and well, so indies can help meet gamer needs and keep 5e alive.

Personally, I don't think 5e kept any amount of "balancing player options" from 4e. Like I personally think it actively went out of its way to piss on balancing player options, and 5.5e came about in part because players were unhappy that they did that. (It came out for a lot of reasons, this was just one of them IMO.)

I suspect thry will just use current phb raves maybe add next most popular 1-2 (Gith, Dhamphir?).

Gith maybe, they're still pretty fringe. I mean, Planescape: Torment was phenomenally successful in its day, and it didn't suddenly lead to a huge influx of tiefling interest despite prominently featuring a tiefling and an outright baatezu (Fall-from-Grace). I could see Dhampir being implemented as feats in a PHB though; that's the kind of layer-on-top feature that folks love, and which would provide a clear differentiation point from 5e, which sharply limits the amount of customization any character gets, but especially a 1st-level character. (Again, an area where 5.5e has slightly shifted away, but you'll frankly need a new edition to actually change that.)

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Saying you found THAC0 impenetrable when it's a simple subtraction (or addition if AC was negative) contradicts being no slouch at math. ACs ranged from 10 to -10 for almost every creature and what you're telling us is subtracting or adding up to 10 was "absolutely impenetrable".

But if you really were no slouch at math you could just move the equation around so it's all addition.

die roll + AC >= THAC0

or

die roll + attack mod >= AC

There's still absolutely no difference whatsoever.

It's just that the addition is actually slower at the table than subtraction because if you know the AC of the creatures then you can have the subtraction done before you even roll. Then it's nearly instantaneous to find out if you've hit.

I have studied college-junior level math and gotten A or B grades. I have tutored math for people of all ages, professionally, for years. The most challenging tutees are always the adult learners building up their foundational math skills.

What more would you need for me to prove my credentials? Doing integrals in my head? I've done that. I'm too rusty to do it now, but I used to, e.g. back in my optics class. I can do some fiendishly difficult mathematics.

But keeping straight in my head that a +4 bonus to THAC0 from a magic weapon means my THAC0 goes from -3 to -7, and thus I can hit a target with AC of...what? Assuming I roll 10, with a THAC0 of -7, I can hit an AC of -7-10 = -17.

And every single time I have to do these mental gymnastics to get useful information out. Doubly so because, if I were actually playing at a real table, most GMs will NEVER tell you a monster's AC, so you're doing Die + [UNKNOWN] >= THAC0.

In every possible way except raw mathematical equivalence, ascending AC and positive hit bonuses are superior to descending AC and negative hit bonuses. Because people think additively better than they think subtractively, and people instinctively recognize "make number go up" as an improvement. The mere fact that AC was attempting to be descending because it was ordinal data from the beginning, and we never EVER should have been doing arithmetic with it!

Like literally. The reason AC is descending is--solely and exclusively--because it was meant to be understood as "AC1 = First-class armor, AC2 = Second-class armor", etc. As in, the best class there is, then the second-best, then the third-best, and so on. But shields immediately destroy that, because they improve your armor class by 1, which means shields are not ordinal data at all, they're cardinal data, numbers that fit on a number line with clean, fixed separations. (Another term for this is "ratio" data.) You have one point's worth of armor, not you have first-class armor. That, that thing right there, is precisely what made (and makes) THAC0, and more generally descending AC, such a bugaboo for so many people, myself included.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

4E skill challenges were meant to be the one system that ruled them all.

I would call that an exaggeration....but they really are much, much better than their detractors claimed them to be, and it is a crying shame that 5e treated them like stinky garbage rather than the diamond-in-the-rough that they were.

 

[Minigiant]

Language

• Positive
  • Simplified List
  • Sign language
  • Common and Rare language
  • Assumed that most adventurers speak Common
  • Assumed all MAJOR monsters and evil forces speak a common language
  • Language not Assumed attached to race
• Neutral
  • No Shadowfell, Law, or Chaos Languages
  • No DSL
  • No Mixed, Creole, or Pidgin Languages
• Negative
  • Tongues too cheap
  • NPCs speak Common too often
  • Options to Illiteracy or partial proficiency removed
  • Learning language is too cheap

 

[Reynard]

I would call that an exaggeration....but they really are much, much better than their detractors claimed them to be, and it is a crying shame that 5e treated them like stinky garbage rather than the diamond-in-the-rough that they were.

I find it interesting that many of the post-5E games have embraced at least some of the 4Eisms that 5E abandoned. Both Daggerheart and Draw Steel embrace different parts of 4E, for example.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

A piece of woven fabric is in nearly every possible case more useful than a pile of disconnected threads.

And the idea that threads should be woven together is less useful than a pile of disconnected threads.

Threads you might still do something with. The nebulous concept of weaving is not something you can actually do something with.

Threads are potential. Fabric is potential realized, with the question then becoming to what use will that fabric be put.

No. Threads are material. It is weaving that is potential. Fabric is a finished product.

Weaving is a concept. Threads are a material. A loom is a device which, through effort, implements the concept of weaving onto the material of threads. Fabric is the finished good produced by this process. Fabric does not exist without all three parts: concept (weaving), material (threads), and labor.

You keep selling people on the idea that because weaving exists as a concept, we should not care whatsoever about the threads. I'm telling you that's bupkis, at least for most players.

I think, if I read this right, I'm saying the exact opposite: to enjoy the chowder as itself without worrying overmuch about what's in it.

And I'm telling you that if you tell me I'm getting a chowder, it damned well better have clams, potatoes, and a cream-based sauce. I don't care that Manhattan uses tomato--you tell me "clam chowder" and that's what I'm wanting.

The chowder is, like the cloth, three things: the concept (recipe), the material (ingredients), and the labor (cooking). Likewise, a D&D play experience is three things: the concept (group arc), the material (PC arcs), and the labor (actually playing). A group arc with no PC arcs is a chowder without ingredients. A group arc and character arcs without actually playing is a chowder recipe and chowder ingredients that nobody bothered to cook. Random ingredients and cooking without a recipe isn't a meal, it's a weird experiment that is unlikely to be repeated unless you got lucky.

If I'm just here to fill my belly and couldn't care less what the particular food is, that's a one-shot, not a campaign. When I go to a campaign, I expect more of it than "whatever the chef threw together".

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I find it interesting that many of the post-5E games have embraced at least some of the 4Eisms that 5E abandoned. Both Daggerheart and Draw Steel embrace different parts of 4E, for example.

And much the same can be said of various other games, like 13th Age and Pathfinder 2nd Edition.

4e's influence and reach will last much longer than the hate did.

 

[Reynard]

And much the same can be said of various other games, like 13th Age and Pathfinder 2nd Edition.

4e's influence and reach will last much longer than the hate did.

13th age us a bit different, being by a 4E lead. But I get your point.

I did not play 4E for long. We just did not have fun with it. One day I would like to do so, but it seems a lost edition since so much of it was digital only.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

13th age us a bit different, being by a 4E lead. But I get your point.

I did not play 4E for long. We just did not have fun with it. One day I would like to do so, but it seems a lost edition since so much of it was digital only.

Perhaps. I would argue it is...more complicated than that.

Certainly, the extremely easy-to-use tools went away...sort of. Yar-har-fiddle-dee-tee etc.

 

[billd91]

But if you really were no slouch at math you could just move the equation around so it's all addition.

die roll + AC >= THAC0

or

die roll + attack mod >= AC

There's still absolutely no difference whatsoever.

Technically correct, but also incredibly wrong at the same time. Pretty much a textbook example of "technically correct".

You can use algebra to give the players just addition and still use THAC0, but you can't really do that and keep it limited to the terms the player has readily in front of them. And what they have in front of them is the die roll and their THAC0 value, typically not the target's AC. So what is an operation strictly on the player side in 3e and later was a 2-person operation in AD&D. That's not "no difference whatsoever".