Search results

My intent is that preset ones would ultimately be be no more powerful than optimized custom ones. It's just that the custom ones would benefit from mechanical synergies (found by a skilled player), while the preset ones would have some special features not available otherwise. Or perhaps just...

Sure, 4E's encounter powers aren't a perfect portrayal of how fatigue works, but the bigger question is why would you expect a perfect portrayal in a game like DnD? This is a game where life and death hinges on a completely abstract system with almost no resemblance whatsoever to reality (HP)...

I could see giving the pre-made Backgrounds and Themes a little something extra that can't be gotten using the "custom build" rules, to make up for the power of being able to build towards synergies with custom builds. For example, the Essentials fighter is a lot less customizable than the...

So, essentially, Backgrounds would be pre-generated Skill progressions, while Themes would be pre-generated Feat progressions? Sounds reasonable, although hopefully they won't fall into the "lousy but flavorful" trap that pregens tend to fall into. This could also be used to effectively...

I don't think it would be wise to use this sort of math-heavy notation. I don't mind it personally, and like the clarity, but for a game aiming at broad appeal, it could be a turn off for a lot of people.

I would think that spells like Fireball wouldn't have a bunch of different versions. It would just be 5d6 base, and then say "As higher level spell: add 2d6 for each level past 3rd". Specific different versions would only be needed for spells with non-quantitative effects.

To me, spells, feats, class features, powers, whatever, are all essentially the same. They're build resources that can be spent on various things. And they all can end up having issues with "flavorful" vs. "useful". Under your scheme, a caster needs to choose to give up preparing a flavorful...

If 5E has no options for Encounter spells/powers, or something similar, it's a lost cause to me. So this proposal doesn't do much for me. It's really only a little different from the "feats for at-wills" approach they've talked about. Vancian + at-wills addresses some of the silliness of...

Lolth featuring prominently in DnD Next isn't surprising, since it's confirmed to be a part of the game from the start, possibly the default setting. That doesn't mean cross-setting stuff will be standard, though. DDO is crossing settings out of necessity. It started in Eberron, and playing...

How about, as part of the rules on Zones (i.e, persistent area effects): Then, Light and Darkness could simply be slotted into any slot higher than their minimum spell level, and the interactions between various versions are produced naturally via a single rule that generalizes to other...

Hopefully, we'll get a coherent and well-defined set of rules that makes spell/effect interactions obvious and intuitive, eliminating ad-hoc spell text descriptions for that purpose. I don't think it would be too unwieldy to have lines at the end of spell descriptions like:

I'd be very disappointed if they don't assume errata will be needed. That either means that they're deluded into thinking they won't make mistakes, or that the game is too fundamentally imbalanced for mistakes to matter. Now, I don't think the OP's proposal is practical. Best I could see is...

And also, my guess is we'll be going back to "Spell Levels", so it would only be 9 effects, at most. But I agree that there's no need for a different possible effect at every level; three different levels for most utility spells would be enough.

It would still cost a prepared spell. Or if it's at-will, it would still cost a feat (or several) to make it at-will.

Sounds like they won't scale automatically with level, but could be prepared in higher level slots to have greater effect. So a Fireball in a level 3 slot might always be 5d6, but could possibly be prepared in level 9 slot for 17d6 damage. For utility spells, scaling would have to be more...

I think "Heavy Roleplaying" works for this.

Well, I can't argue over it working for you, but I still don't see how "2 hp" could logically mean, in any edition of DnD, what it means to you. Given how HP works, interpreting any value other than zero as "mortally wounded" seems strange to me. It also strikes me as strange to ascribe a...

I fully understand what a death spiral is. And have played systems with very strong death spirals. But you seem to think that a -1 penalty Wound system in DnD would transform DnD from a no-death-spiral system into a death spiral system. A Wound system isn't the only possible source of death...

Then why do you choose to interpret the rules in a way that isn't fun for you? "Almost dead" or "mortally wounded" at 2 HP is not in the rules. You are vulnerable to being killed by subsequent damage, but have not yet taken a mortal wound, or any significantly debilitating injury. That's very...

Really, a -1 possibly up to -3 is a "death spiral"? Far more serious status effects get tossed left and right in 3.X and 4E. I figured it was a little to flavor the Wound as being something physical, and be worth removing, but not enough to be a serious impediment.