Wizards of the Coast Re-Registers Dark Sun With USPTO

Alot of players do not really hang out in these type of forums like we do. They do not optimize and I encourage my players to play a character not a build.

Paul Farquhar said:

I mean, this is largely a taste thing, isn’t it?

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it is, and neither @Superchunk77 nor my taste matter for this, but the aggregate of players. VRG did fine, hence DS would do fine as well, the opinions of some grognards notwithstanding

What is vrg?

Valetudo said:

What is vrg?

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Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft.

They had a 3rd party do the 3rd ed ravenloft. Its the one to look for.

Valetudo said:

They had a 3rd party do the 3rd ed ravenloft. Its the one to look for.

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There was some good work from the White Wolf era. My knock on that system was a lot of those options also had some jankiness with 3e rules at the time, and a big dip in the artwork, but when you’re following up Stephen Fabian, that’s a tough act to follow.

Valetudo said:

Alot of players do not really hang out in these type of forums like we do. They do not optimize and I encourage my players to play a character not a build.

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"Optimization" in 5e is not like the old days of past editions where it took some actual thought & planning. The bar is set so low by the base 5e rules that taking steps to "Optimize" pretty much amounts to things like "I'm going to make strength my high stat & take the biggest damage weapon plus GWM on my fighter". Not optimizing to a degree that impacts play almost takes dedicated effort, even puffin's abserd is a capable build.

tetrasodium said:

"Optimization" in 5e is not like the old days of past editions where it took some actual thought & planning. The bar is set so low by the base 5e rules that taking steps to "Optimize" pretty much amounts to things like "I'm going to make strength my high stat & take the biggest damage weapon plus GWM on my fighter".

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It also includes about four to six multiclasses as well, a la the glory days of the 3E prestige class smorgasbord. If you haven't multiclassed your PC into a completely incomprehensible narrative you haven't truly optimized.

Paul Farquhar said:

Really, no. This is a prime example of someone putting their own interpretation on something with no supporting evidence in the text and claiming it is the one true interpretation.

It was just an attempt to put John Carter back into D&D after it had been stripped out for intellectual property reasons. Maybe a bit anti-Tolkiesque generic fantasy I guess, but still very much D&D as it was originally envisioned.

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Nah my dude, part of the pitch for DS is that it took all the D&D tropes and flipped them 180 degrees. Every race is different, every class heavily modified, the default psionics system, arcane magic dangerous, divine magic changed or non-existent. Almost all the classic D&D monsters don't have a place, and equipment is radically different. Almost no part of the 2e PHB exists in DS unaltered by design. They wanted to change everything and make it as different as they could while still keeping the basic system resolution intact. It's as close to the 2e Core Rules as d20 Star Wars was to Core 3e.

New Dark Sun will have to hew closer to the expectations of the Core Rules. 4e already provided that template. Gone were the alternative ability score generation, the radically different designs for races and classes. Most of the wild rules changes are now just skins over the PHB equivalent. Dark Sun may still be D&D's wild child, but it's learned to wear shoes and eat with a fork. The setting is beholden to the rules, not vice versa.

DEFCON 1 said:

It also includes about four to six multiclasses as well, a la the glory days of the 3E prestige class smorgasbord. If you haven't multiclassed your PC into a completely incomprehensible narrative you haven't truly optimized.

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I don't mind that kind of CharOp & never did, even in the 3.x days when the GM was still equipped with tools to balance the scales as needed it was ok for me. The thing that annoys me most about 5e carrying that PrC smorgasbord is the fact that 5e did it while lowering the barrier to zero by stripping the concept of prerequisites at functionally meaningful levels☆ needed to qualify for them. I'm just so burned out on Being expected to pretend that naked CharOp spreadsheet level builds are "ROLEplaying" just because the edition dropped the mechanical spreadsheet aspect of the fence to avoid a sidebar like the "But I really want Alertness" sidebar draw steel has that leaves the choice to lower that barrier with the GM.

☆ 13 in a primary stat may as well be zero.