What is the essence of D&D

Monayuris said:

Maybe? It borrows many of the same elements of D&D. So why wouldn't they share the same essence.

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Because they are completely different games. Legend of the 5 Rings is not even close to being D&D. And the reason for that is because they present the same game elements in very different ways.

Monayuris said:

Yes. I'm super happy that 5e turned to encouraging more DM authority. It is a strength of the game.

To me, those extra tools and guidelines were helpful in the beginning but turned into straight jackets as I got more skilled in the game.

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Thing is we were discussing how at a big level the level of adventure and broad challenge resolution that didnt change.

To me it means I have to adjudicate many many more actions and honestly making sure an improvised thing doesn't step all over things defined elsewhere in the system and is reasonably balanced with them is not exactly easy AND that is something DMs have demonstrably failed at since forever.

I have seen it on here with DM posters declaring near impossible difficulty for things that were demonstrably inferior to a situational level 1 spell... and another declared a slight variation of it as easy. *because one allowed a reaction to effectively be earlier rather than later. (the level one spell affected the entire party where as an acrobatic technique breaking an allies fall - or interrupting it entirely in the faster reaction case was declared EPIC). The it costs a resource how valuable is that cost????? is very good at hiding value. Its not generally even super valuable to be able to break fall "constantly" but stopping a party wide plummet from wrecking everyones day when you need it?. 4e provided consistency of resources that made it easier across the board for system design and dms like myself to adjudicate in improvised ways

To me they took away tools and made the DM job harder and force me to concentrate on "bit fiddling" instead of bigger picture things...no how far can the character jump (beyond and overly mundane basic amount) should not require I be hunting through monk specialty rules and spells to decide but for it to be balanced with the capabilities of the caster crowd it needs to take them into consideration that is why system answers seem better to me.

And unlike 3e the rules were concisely modular and clearly expressed so that again it was not DM spending his time looking up overly complex rules or interpreting many many paragraphs of natural language.

Campbell said:

When people start making noise about Fifth Edition giving the DM their power back I'm all like "Back? Where'd it go?"

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3.x/PF & 4e/E were oft-perceived as 'player entitled,' what with 3.x RaW uber alles zeitgeist and 4e wishlists and whatnot.

Garthanos said:

Someone on here described how one could build a Monk via reflavoring another character class and I went ... wow a bit like Fantasy Hero got its Peanut Butter in the D&D chocolate. And I love Reeses -> that said the actual release monk is pretty damn interesting

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Monk is probably the best executed 4E class. The power system is a natural fit for those archetypical martial arts "call out your attack!" attacks, their movement actions are a unique twist that emphasizes how mobile you're supposed to be (in stark contrast to 3E's "always be full-attacking" design), and it just feels really satisfying to punch someone for free every turn with Flurry of Blows. I'd have gone with Strength and Dexterity as optional primaries and Wisdom as a mandatory secondary, but I understand that style of class design was out of favor by the PHB3.

TheCosmicKid said:

Monk is probably the best executed 4E class.

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Way too much competition for that for instance the damned if you do damned if you don't dynamic of the defender fighter was sweet. You should look up HEMA the martial artists of europe were not engaged in "I hit it with my sword" -though they were misrepresented as such by the later renaissance types books have been found and they had cool sometimes poetically named moves and were much more elaborate -- I somewhat recall reading one called boar racing downward or the like (I think that one was in German) there was a Guard called the Fools Guard and so on -- in addition to other animal names. The teachers of these Knightly Arts called themselves the "Masters of Defense" - 1200 to 1500 CE at minimum, that they were dissed on by later fencing masters is kind of weird (In other parts of the world claiming older heritages is revelled in)

Wow. I'm away for 2 days and....only 10 more posts?

Come on gang, there's life in that horse yet. Really. I saw it twitch.

Elfcrusher said:

Wow. I'm away for 2 days and....only 10 more posts?
Come on gang, there's life in that horse yet. Really. I saw it twitch.

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You know where the gasoline is, if that's what you really want...

Garthanos said:

Way too much competition for that

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Well, there's some serious conflating of presentation/organization with mechanics with fluff to un-pack from the assertion, but, putting that aside, and putting aside stuffing the archetypal unarmed martial artist into the psionic-striker box, the Monk was a pretty cool design, specifically the 'full discipline' mechanic gave it some fairly strong mobile-striker support.

I know, that's a /lot/ to put aside, though.

As off as the whole western-perception-of-eastern-martial-arts as unarmed may have been, the archetype could have yielded a martial class, and, considering going from arms-and-armor-using to unarmed would have conveniently reduced it's damage & AC potential, could've been a chassis mechanically suited to a controller. Not like that's never come up.

You should look up HEMA the martial artists of europe were not engaged in "I hit it with my sword" -though they were misrepresented as such by the later renaissance types books have been found and they had cool sometimes poetically named moves and were much more elaborate...that they were dissed on by later fencing masters is kind of weird (In other parts of the world claiming older heritages is revelled in)

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The Renaissance was really into antiquity, if some ancient Greek or Roman didn't endorse it...

Tony Vargas said:

and putting aside stuffing the archetypal unarmed martial artist into the psionic-striker box

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I ignored that idiocy and have undone it for all intents and purposes even adjusting the tools to help... making the Martial Artist class "martial" is an incredible no brainer. That said its mostly a flavor issue and/symbolic thing. Regardless the vividness of this martial artist is pretty damn cool and doesn't need to be asian in flavor either

Tony Vargas said:

As off as the whole western-perception-of-eastern-martial-arts as unarmed may have been, the archetype could have yielded a martial class, and, considering going from arms-and-armor-using to unarmed would have conveniently reduced it's damage & AC potential, could've been a chassis mechanically suited to a controller. Not like that's never come up.

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The multi-targeting is certainly in the monk... just need to allow those hits to do more disabling controller shots... The ranger had feats which increased control _(sacrificing damage) seems reasonable to do something similar with a monk.

Pressure Points feat (weakening)
"Carefully striking their limbs at pressure points creating sublime pain in addition to physical impairment which interferes with concentration used in casting you weaken their subsequent attacks " reduce the damage of your martial strike by one die each target and target enemy is weakened save ends *(terrible language I know)

Also too potent unless limited... perhaps once per encounter