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  1. Lanefan

    D&D 5E (2024) NPCs, and the poverty of the core books

    To me, the bolded is a big concern. Those extra 38 points should count for something, even if only that it takes 37 points of curing to get that Fighter from 1 to 2 hit points (after which cures work as normal) after the first cure gets him from 0 to 1.
  2. Lanefan

    D&D General Ditching Archetypes 6E?

    Who's forcing anything? The class is what it is and does what it does, and if you don't want to play it then don't. If no-one wants to play it (which can be true of any class or role, depending on the specific group) then either you go without or recruit an NPC.
  3. Lanefan

    D&D General Ditching Archetypes 6E?

    Never had Barbarian. Bard is a generic catch-all name for Skald, Minstrel, and various other direct equivalents. Paladin - you have a good point.
  4. Lanefan

    Worlds of Design: Life in the Big City

    Vancouver, San Francisco, and Los Angeles seem to be doing OK and their situation is similar. That, however, is a much bigger issue. Australia's cities follow a similar pattern - nearly all of them are around the coastal rim - so again there's a vague real-world equivalent.
  5. Lanefan

    D&D General Ditching Archetypes 6E?

    If you don't want to play a healer, choose a non-Cleric class. Or, from my list above, a War Cleric; who would heal like crap (but still be able to do it) but have better combat-oriented and combat-affecting spells. Clerics are what I see as being mostly a support class, a concept that has its...
  6. Lanefan

    D&D General Ditching Archetypes 6E?

    Druids are replaced by Nature Clerics in the list I proposed upthread. "Druid" is a terrible name, in that both it and its root concept are tightly tied to a specific culture that only existed in a small part of our world. Monk-as-concept has the same problem.
  7. Lanefan

    D&D General Ditching Archetypes 6E?

    This is one case where I really do think less is more. I've never been fond of multi-classing even in our own games, which go back to the 1e days. If there's a archetpye that the game really doesn't support that has room to build a halfway-balanced class around that isn't a jack of all...
  8. Lanefan

    D&D General Ditching Archetypes 6E?

    Well, multiclassing as the WotC editions do it has to go as well.
  9. Lanefan

    D&D General Ditching Archetypes 6E?

    From what I could gather, there seemed to be enough ways around niche protection in 4e that in the end there really wasn't very much. For example, look at all the classes that could heal in some form or other, which is supposed to be the Cleric's niche.
  10. Lanefan

    D&D General Ditching Archetypes 6E?

    Every version of a swordmage I've ever seen has been someone's attempt to be able to have the features of both a Fighter and a Wizard, in one character. In other words, "I can do it all". Healing is the Cleric's hard-line niche. If it doesn't say "Cleric" somewhere in the class name then you...
  11. Lanefan

    D&D General Ditching Archetypes 6E?

    Which rather defeats the whole point of distinct classes and niche protection, right? It also blows up the idea of recognizable archetypes; and while that's the premise of this thread, it's a premise I oppose
  12. Lanefan

    D&D General Ditching Archetypes 6E?

    Rough math tells me that's between 52 and 78 possible class-subclass combinations, each one needing its own rules and write-up and each one then needing to be vaguely balanced against each other both before and after the corollary variable of PC species is introduced. Have fun with that. :)...
  13. Lanefan

    D&D General Ditching Archetypes 6E?

    Which is fine: it should be more challenging to play a less-well-rounded party. And if nobody wants to play a Cleric but the party still needs one, go and recruit an NPC.
  14. Lanefan

    D&D General Ditching Archetypes 6E?

    Way more than that. The arcane-divine divide becomes sacrosanct; even spells that are superficially similar e.g. Detect Magic are cast differently and give different results. Clerics get Flamestrike at 5th but never get Fireball or anything close, Mages get Fireball at 3rd but never get...
  15. Lanefan

    D&D 5E (2024) NPCs, and the poverty of the core books

    1 - you don't need every last detail of background etc. unless the PCs are likely to get to know the NPC beyond combat. 2 - if "multi-page statistics" are required, that tells me character generation has become vastly too complex. 3 - all that matters in the end is that the NPC fall within...
  16. Lanefan

    D&D 5E (2024) NPCs, and the poverty of the core books

    Which tells me loud and clear that the PCs need some serious toning down across the board in order to fit in better with their settings. And that, sadly, won't happen: 5e is designed to let the players wade through the vast majority of their opposition, more like a scaled-back supers game than...
  17. Lanefan

    D&D 5E (2024) NPCs, and the poverty of the core books

    There's a couple of TSR-era modules that set up this situation, where some or all of the party end up fighting their clones. In terms of round count, the longest combat I've ever run was one of these: a defense-first Fighter fighting her own clone where each needed something like a natural 19...
  18. Lanefan

    D&D General I'm a Fighter, not a Lover: Why the 1e Fighter was so Awesome

    Then he really missed the boat on the psionic-magic items she had in there: various psionic-run scrying devices, Wards Major and Minor, and so forth. I had a party find a set of Wards Major not long ago, took 'em forever to figure out what they did (I've taken psionics out other than for a few...
  19. Lanefan

    AD&D 1E What was so bad about unearthed arcana 1e?

    I vaguely remember some handwaving at mistletoe replacing other Druid/Nature Cleric components way back when, but that's it. Haven't seen that rule used since and, to be honest, had forgotten all about it. And we've had loads of Nature Clerics.
  20. Lanefan

    AD&D 1E What was so bad about unearthed arcana 1e?

    We agree, then, other than I misremembered 14th as 16th.
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