D&D 5E (2014) 15 Petty Reasons I Won't Buy 5e

[Emerikol]

I see this argument a lot Pemerton that you make about sim. It's why I'm not sure the point is sim. Bawylie who hangs around here some and over on wotc boards a lot had a theory about narrative mechanical unity vs narrative mechanical harmony.

I don't really think I am trying to perfectly simulate anything. I do want my mechanics to flow naturally and smoothly with the fluff. So I put myself in the NMU camp and not the NMH camp. I've found that most people that really loved 4e tend towards NMH. They are much more willing to look at the overall affect on the entire game vs the affect and feel of the individual action.

Things like damage on a miss drive NMU people crazy. The reason martial healing is so hated for NMU reasons is that the entire game is worded entirely from the meat perspective. Cure Wounds. Heal. and so forth. By now though I'm sure most of your NMU people are well settled into the "meat" definition and by meat I mean the proportional partial meat position and not the slab approach. At least the game was worded that way entirely prior to 4e. 4e introduced a bunch of new words and kept a bunch of old words and that created a lot of disunity in the mechanics for the NMU people.

Here are a few NMU things that we like...
1. We want the order of events to flow in chronological order. We don't want to backtrack and reverse some earlier result. So once I roll to hit I've made contact. Once I roll damage I've applied some force. A Player can't come along and use a special ability and undo what's already happened. If it's part of the damage roll like a DR calculation that is not player chosen then it's fine.

2. Damage on a miss. The word miss means miss.

3. Any dissociative mechanic would fit the bill. NMU is bigger than dissociative though so lack of NMU is actually a better descriptor than dissociative.

Anyway. If you really wanted to understand why different people approach the game differently perhaps this will explain it somewhat.

 

[Hussar]

Actually, to be honest I can do without most of 4e's interrupt powers. Drags play down too much.

 

[Li Shenron]

[*]I read a WotC article months ago saying that "Magic items will be about the story, not the math." Please, magic items are about the story and the math. Denying the importance of one just makes me think you can't design games.

Of course 5e magic items have "math". They just have a bit more story than the last 2 editions, which tended to treat magic items as technology. For me this is a neat improvement.

[*]Speaking of magic items, 5e still has +X items. *yawn*

Agree. I still believe that too many people can't think outside the box about this. You don't need every magic weapon to be at least +1, and that bonus becomes actually a game limitation most of the times, since it improves attack and damage even when either story-wise or mechanically you don't need/want the PC to have that.

[*]And speaking of +X items, are they assumed or not? Because there's no happy middle ground; they're either assumed and expected, or an extra power boost that must be accounted for.

In theory magic items are not assumed by the math, but expected in play. Which means that those +1s are small enough not to break the game but at the same time we could definitely live without them.

[*]The release schedule is staggered. Quality control? Please! If that were the issue, all three core books would be released in December to ensure that much more quality control.

Don't care. I buy stuff when I want, I don't rush out on the first day or preorder anything.

[*]Mages are still the game's 'supreme magic-users,' and still can't heal. Are they even using balance as an excuse this time, or is it just one of those things that 'doesn't feel like D&D'?

Mages can learn to heal with spells by taking appropriate feats. If you don't want to use feats in your game but still want mages to heal, you can allow only those feats (granting Clerical spells) and only to Wizards in your game.

So 5e allows you to have healing mages, but it kind of requires the DM to make a conscious decision by "enabling" feats in the game, rather than entitling players to create healing mages by default. Good thing, IMHO.

[*]Speaking of healing spells, they're now in the evocation school...bwuh? First it was necromancy, which made perfect sense, then it was conjuration, and now it's in the blow-stuff-up school. Jeez, D&D, make up your mind!

Agreed. I liked them as "reversed necromancies", but they would make sense also as transmutations or even as their own schools. Evocation and conjuration are quite a stretch.

[*]No more monster roles or castes? (minion, solo, ect.) What, are they just too helpful? Take up too much page space?

Not much experience with using roles, but my feeling is that they are either redundant (if the effect on design is minimal) or counterproductive otherwise. I might want to use an Ogre as a solo vs 1st level PCs and 10 Ogres as minions vs 10th level PCs. I prefer they design an Ogre as an Ogre i.e. starting from concept/story and use mechanics to represent that, rather than pre-planning how a DM is supposed/forced to use that Ogre.

[*]+2 or +1/+1 or a feat: Yup, that's gonna get broke quick!

Don't see how this is broken.

[*]Hard Stat Caps: A well-designed game doesn't need awkward hard caps.

Not sure, but certainly uncapped scores skyrocketing in 3e didn't feel nice.

I would have preferred different caps for different races tho, so that a non-human race with a starting +2 would have a max 20 in that score only, and humans would have 18 max in all scores.

[*]Bounded Accuracy: Even if I liked the idea of BA, I guarantee it'll become Unbounded Accuracy quick enough.

Depends on how many bonuses are available in the standard game, and how many additionals sources will be in splatbooks. We have to see...

[*]A La Carte Multiclassing: You know, I think that 3e style multiclassing is a great idea, and I believe there're ways to make it work! Unfortunately, treating 1st level characters as (semi?)competent adventurers is not one of those ways.

At least, 5e 1st level PCs are slightly less front-loaded than before. I do agree that they could have been even less.

Generally speaking 3e style multiclassing is good IMO and in 5e the implementation seems much better than in 3e.

[*]Rolling abilities (and HP?) is default: Nope, not interested.

I love randomness. For those who don't, there is always point-buy. I don't think point-buy is "less default" than rolling, but even if it is, why do you care? It's there in Basic and the PHB, and a lot of gaming group will use it.

[*]Spell charts and class ability advancements are irregular: Yes, it bothers me that there's no pattern.

I would have preferred at least that all subclasses would start at 3rd level.

It might have been even a further improvement if all classes got subclass features and feats at the same levels, but this is of marginal importance IMO. The benefit could have been perhaps a possibility to create subclasses (or reuse some existing ones) even for multiple classes.

[*]No standard AEDU structure: I'd rather have fun combats than a fun rulebook to read.

Hell no. AEDU is one of my most hated features of 4e. Siloing abilities is horrible for my tastes. This would have been easily a dealbreaker for me.

[*]And last, but certainly not least...NO MORE LEVEL BONUS TO AC?! What, it makes too much sense? Is it too elegant? No, I guess it just 'doesn't feel like D&D.'

I think level bonus to AC might or might not work. It's not something you can tell in a vacuum that it is a good or bad thing, you have to evaluate it against the whole system, e.g. how do attacks scale by level, what other things affect attacks and AC, how monsters are designed, how armors are differentiated, and how proficiencies work.

Well, guess what, 5e? You just got too much D&D in my D&D, and I won't have that!

For me, if it isn't "D&D enough", I won't even consider it. It already happened once.

 

[pemerton]

The one in the 3e DMG. It wasn't useful because it was based on the party "having a certain amount of resources" which the game I ran wasn't founded on

It sounds like this is another thing that 4e did better than 3E, then. 4e is not based on the party "having a certain amount of resources". It is based on the PCs having certain to hit and defence bonuses, but these can be achieved via magic items (resources) or inherent bonuses (adds to level bonus) depending upon taste.

Not much experience with using roles, but my feeling is that they are either redundant (if the effect on design is minimal) or counterproductive otherwise. I might want to use an Ogre as a solo vs 1st level PCs and 10 Ogres as minions vs 10th level PCs. I prefer they design an Ogre as an Ogre i.e. starting from concept/story and use mechanics to represent that, rather than pre-planning how a DM is supposed/forced to use that Ogre.

I don't get this - how is anyone forced to do anything? In 4e, if you want to use an ogre against 1st level PCs you build it as a 1st or 2nd level solo. If you want to use 10 ogres against high level PCs you use the 11th or 16th level ogre minions (the MM has both). If you want to use a couple of ogres against mid-heroic PCs you use the standard 8th level ogres.

The point of roles is to handle the mechanics better. Against high level PCs, rather than an ogre which has lots of hp but negligible defence bonuses relative to the PC's attack numbers, you up the defences but give it minion hp (ie 1 hp but immune to damage on a miss). And rather than giving it a low to hit bonus with big damage you improve its to hit bonus but reduce the damage. The fiction is no different, but the mechanical resolution has been smoothed out. Given that to hit rolls, damage rolls, AC, hp etc and indeed the entire action economy are all abstract (no one thinks that each to hit roll actually corresponds to a single action in the fiction, do they?), it does no harm to the fiction to mathematically reframe the abstraction so as to preserve a more or less constant toughness for the ogre but make the mechanics of play smoother.

I'm not sure the point is sim.

<snip>

We want the order of events to flow in chronological order. We don't want to backtrack and reverse some earlier result.

What you describe here is pretty much the textbook definition of sim, isn't it?

The causal sequence of task resolution in Simulationist play must be linear in time. He swings: on target or not? The other guy dodges or parries: well or badly? The weapon contacts the unit of armor + body: how hard? The armor stops some of it: how much? The remaining impact hits tissue: how deeply? With what psychological (stunning, pain) effects? With what continuing effects? All of this is settled in order, on this guy's "go" . . .​

I just don't think that D&D has ever delivered this. Runequest, Rolemaster and Classic Traveller all try to. Gygax expressly denies this sort of linearity in his DMG, especially when discussing saving throws - a magic-user's successful saving throw can be an indicator, for instance, of a successful manipulation of the magic of the spell which (necessarily) took place before the spell was fully cast; a successful poison saving throw can be an indicator, for instance, that the attack failed to actually inject any poison (which, again, is clearly something that was true in the fiction before the point at which the saving throw is rolled).

3E departed from this model of saving throws, making them all about the character's response to the attack - dodging, enduring or resisting - but this was a major change in methodology. I think it was very popular, but to me this shows that many players were wanting to rewrite D&D in a more sim fashion. It doesn't show that AD&D itself was a game that conformed to your linearity requirement.

One of the single biggest puzzles for linearity is initiative. Edwards discusses this, following on immediately from my quote above:

All of this is settled in order, on this guy's "go," and the next guy's "go" is simply waiting its turn, in time. . .

nitiative . . . has generated hours of painful argument about what in the world it represents in-game, at the moment of the roll relative to in-game time. ​

Games like RQ and RM attempt to ameliorate at least some of this via continuous initiative - although there is still the puzzle about what the end of a round, and the rolling of initiative for the next round, actually represents in the fiction. (And I've had many debates playing Rolemaster about the absurdity of the fact that the resolution of an action seems to depend upon how it interacts with the transition from the end of one round to the action declaration phase of the next round, when in the fiction things should just be happing in a smooth, continuous way.)

Although 3E goes more sim on saving throws, it actually goes even more abstract on initiative and action economy. Turn-by-turn initiative is as non-linear as you can get, which can be seen in anything from "peasant rail guns" (exploiting the fact that actions taking place simultaneously in the fiction are resolved sequentially in the 3E turn system) to the fact that a character, whose movement rate is 30' per 6 seconds, can move a full 30' before anyone else can act (and hence eg dodge behind cover 30' away) even though there are other characters who are still to act in the round (and hence whose actions will occur, in the fiction, sometime during that 6 second period), whose attempts to attack that PC can be thwarted by the fact the PC gets the benefit of the full movement on his/her turn. 3E combat doesn't at all obey your linearity requirement. (Unless you think the world of 3E really is a stop motion one. But I don't think I've ever seen a 3E/PF player argue for that particular rules interpretation.)

This is why I don't really take seriously accusations that 4e in some special way disconnects action resolution from the ingame fiction. On turn-taking and action economy it is actually more verisimilitudinous and less of a stop-motion world because of the range of off-turn actions (though it doesn't have the full-fledged continuous initiative of a system like RQ or RM). On hitting and damaging it is no more abstract than AD&D on saving throws.

I don't dispute that it is different. And of course I don't dispute that some people don't like those differences - it's obvious that they don't. All I dispute is that 4e is in some way distinctive among D&D editions in having mechanics that violate temporal linearity.

 

[Emerikol]

What you describe here is pretty much the textbook definition of sim, isn't it?

The causal sequence of task resolution in Simulationist play must be linear in time. He swings: on target or not? The other guy dodges or parries: well or badly? The weapon contacts the unit of armor + body: how hard? The armor stops some of it: how much? The remaining impact hits tissue: how deeply? With what psychological (stunning, pain) effects? With what continuing effects? All of this is settled in order, on this guy's "go" . . .​

I just don't think that D&D has ever delivered this. Runequest, Rolemaster and Classic Traveller all try to. Gygax expressly denies this sort of linearity in his DMG, especially when discussing saving throws - a magic-user's successful saving throw can be an indicator, for instance, of a successful manipulation of the magic of the spell which (necessarily) took place before the spell was fully cast; a successful poison saving throw can be an indicator, for instance, that the attack failed to actually inject any poison (which, again, is clearly something that was true in the fiction before the point at which the saving throw is rolled).

Even if people ignored some of the fluff text it was very easy to achieve in every edition of D&D prior to 4e. I don't remember EVER thinking someone taking a poison save could have not been poisoned at all. You may have some text to support this but it was something glossed over by many. The manipulation of the spell is a non-entity. It's like damage resistance. The player does not announce he is trying to manipulate the spell. It's just subsumed in combat. The real issue is player decisions that essentially time travel back before the event that has already happened and change it.

A good example would be a reaction that said whenever you take more than 10 damage you can choose to use your parry power and reduce that damage by 1d6. The player is then acting on that 10 damage which to be known in my opinion has to have already occurred and then going back in time and parrying it.

Perhaps this is the heart of GNS simulation. I'm not really sure. The constant confusion I get from people over these terms has let me to use narrative mechanical unity.

3E departed from this model of saving throws, making them all about the character's response to the attack - dodging, enduring or resisting - but this was a major change in methodology. I think it was very popular, but to me this shows that many players were wanting to rewrite D&D in a more sim fashion. It doesn't show that AD&D itself was a game that conformed to your linearity requirement.

Most people I know played them the same exact way. This is probably a clue as to why many people in my camp see 3e as just another successor to pre-3e D&D. There is plenty to not like don't get me wrong but it's not a "sim" or NMU issue.

One of the single biggest puzzles for linearity is initiative. Edwards discusses this, following on immediately from my quote above:

All of this is settled in order, on this guy's "go," and the next guy's "go" is simply waiting its turn, in time. . .

nitiative . . . has generated hours of painful argument about what in the world it represents in-game, at the moment of the roll relative to in-game time. ​

Games like RQ and RM attempt to ameliorate at least some of this via continuous initiative - although there is still the puzzle about what the end of a round, and the rolling of initiative for the next round, actually represents in the fiction. (And I've had many debates playing Rolemaster about the absurdity of the fact that the resolution of an action seems to depend upon how it interacts with the transition from the end of one round to the action declaration phase of the next round, when in the fiction things should just be happing in a smooth, continuous way.)

Such arguments though are kind of disingenuous. I realize that in a perfect world everything would be real time perhaps. I do think though that while initiative is purely a player concept nothing happens in the world until you take actions. After the battle is over, a character might remember that he got in a sword thrust before the ogre but initiative is not part of his world. Whereas with me, AC, hit points, and such are very much part of his world even if named differently in his mind. (general defensive capability and general overall health).

Although 3E goes more sim on saving throws, it actually goes even more abstract on initiative and action economy. Turn-by-turn initiative is as non-linear as you can get, which can be seen in anything from "peasant rail guns" (exploiting the fact that actions taking place simultaneously in the fiction are resolved sequentially in the 3E turn system) to the fact that a character, whose movement rate is 30' per 6 seconds, can move a full 30' before anyone else can act (and hence eg dodge behind cover 30' away) even though there are other characters who are still to act in the round (and hence whose actions will occur, in the fiction, sometime during that 6 second period), whose attempts to attack that PC can be thwarted by the fact the PC gets the benefit of the full movement on his/her turn. 3E combat doesn't at all obey your linearity requirement. (Unless you think the world of 3E really is a stop motion one. But I don't think I've ever seen a 3E/PF player argue for that particular rules interpretation.)

Your argument is basically that any concession to game play is a total concession and why not throw out any concerns on the matter. While I know logically as a player, when I am in the mind of my character I am imagining things happening in that order. It doesn't affront my sensibilities. Whereas, the second I use a time traveling power, I've lost any immersion I had.

This is why I don't really take seriously accusations that 4e in some special way disconnects action resolution from the ingame fiction. On turn-taking and action economy it is actually more verisimilitudinous and less of a stop-motion world because of the range of off-turn actions (though it doesn't have the full-fledged continuous initiative of a system like RQ or RM). On hitting and damaging it is no more abstract than AD&D on saving throws.

You can have off turn actions. That in and of itself is not the issue. The issue would be off turn actions that specifically travel up the timeline of events. 4e likely had some of those (and other games too of course) and that is the issue. I don't take issue with opportunity attacks which are reactions. If a person begins to move through my threatened area, I can react to it before the total movement is completed. My only requirement is that the choice to use a reaction occur before the outcome is known. So if I have a shield spell that stops incoming arrows, I want the DM to announce that so and so enemy is firing an arrow, and then I must choose to use the shield. I do not want to be hit by the arrow and then choose to use the shield. Of course in the first case requiring a perception roll could be in order if the room is busy enough.

I don't dispute that it is different. And of course I don't dispute that some people don't like those differences - it's obvious that they don't. All I dispute is that 4e is in some way distinctive among D&D editions in having mechanics that violate temporal linearity.

There are several things that you should consider about pre-4e people. First. Nothing but the core books is really the official rules. If there is a feat in a splatbook somewhere even put out by wotc, that gives a second wind, we would not say that that edition supports martial healing. Even though such a feat would exist. Second, we don't consider all reactions as a violation of temporal linearity. Just those that actually undo a result.

I must admit I've forgotten all about 4e for the most part. Still I would imagine that there are examples of both in the game.

I think one big disconnect for some people is what is known to the PCs in game. For people like me a LOT more is known than you probably assume. It gets us in trouble on the dissociative arguments because what a PC knows is important to that concept.

Sidenote: I've enjoyed some of our discussions. It's nice to have one without acrimony. If that means both sides are coming to better understand the other then that is a good thing we can thank the various forums for if nothing else.

 

[pemerton]

Such arguments though are kind of disingenuous.

Not for me. The issue of being "round purged" ie suffering in an attempt to achieve an action not because of any ingame phenomenon, but because of how it interacts with the initiative rules, is a real thing that has caused real issues at my Rolemaster table. It arises because movement and action are roughly continuous in resolution, but the split of the melee combat pool has to be declared at the start of each round, and remains constant over the round until redeclared. This means that when opponents are closing, whether or not someone is able to defend him-/herself sometimes depends on how the movement occurs relative to a declaration of attack/parry split, even though in the gameworld everything is unfolding continuously.

I realize that in a perfect world everything would be real time perhaps. I do think though that while initiative is purely a player concept nothing happens in the world until you take actions.

<snip>

Your argument is basically that any concession to game play is a total concession and why not throw out any concerns on the matter.

No. My argument is that freeze frame combat resolution violates temporal linearity, and it is 3E (not 4e) that made freeze frame a core part of D&D. (4e relaxes it by having more out-of-turn actions.)

For me, allowing "time travel" actions (interrupts and OAs) is a small price to pay for reducing stop-motion resolution. I don't find it any more jarring than resolving simultaneous initiative in classic D&D, where you resolve one side but don't apply the results until the other side has its go too.

 

[Hussar]

/snip

There are several things that you should consider about pre-4e people. First. Nothing but the core books is really the official rules. If there is a feat in a splatbook somewhere even put out by wotc, that gives a second wind, we would not say that that edition supports martial healing. Even though such a feat would exist. Second, we don't consider all reactions as a violation of temporal linearity. Just those that actually undo a result.
/snip

Note, just for clarity, this is actually untrue. 3e is unique in claiming "core" rules. Earlier D&D certainly did not claim this and the editions were addititive. If it was officially from TSR, then it was official rules, end of story. There was no "core". As such, Emerikol, it might be helpful to remember that us 4e people, at least on En World, probably played every edition, and probably played every edition for hundreds of hours. We tend to be an old lot.

So, trying to rewrite history isn't going to get you that far. You'd be much better off simply sticking to your own personal experiences.

Now, I did mention this in the other thread, but it bears repeating here. Every edition of D&D has supported martial healing. Monks could heal themselves in 1e, without any magic. In 2e, with the Healing Proficiency (which is in the 2e PHB), you can heal an ally for d4+1 HP, so long as you perform the check within a certain amount of time after combat. The text of the Heal check specifically mentions bandaging people up as returning HP immediately. 3e doubled your healing rate with a complete rest and a Heal check - 4 HP/Level/day. So, essentially, with a heal check, most characters could heal completely in one day. Again, absolutely no magic involved.

So, claims that earlier editions did not support non-magical healing are easily shown to be false.

 

[Emerikol]

Note, just for clarity, this is actually untrue. 3e is unique in claiming "core" rules. Earlier D&D certainly did not claim this and the editions were addititive. If it was officially from TSR, then it was official rules, end of story. There was no "core". As such, Emerikol, it might be helpful to remember that us 4e people, at least on En World, probably played every edition, and probably played every edition for hundreds of hours. We tend to be an old lot.

Well we just disagree on that point. The core 3 has always been core. It was an innovation in 3e only because of the OGL. Unearth Arcana was not official and no DM ever felt so. I lived through those times and I played and DM'd many campaigns. It was always core 3 is allowed and get permission for the rest of it.

So, trying to rewrite history isn't going to get you that far. You'd be much better off simply sticking to your own personal experiences.

It is you who is rewriting history.

Now, I did mention this in the other thread, but it bears repeating here. Every edition of D&D has supported martial healing. Monks could heal themselves in 1e, without any magic. In 2e, with the Healing Proficiency (which is in the 2e PHB), you can heal an ally for d4+1 HP, so long as you perform the check within a certain amount of time after combat. The text of the Heal check specifically mentions bandaging people up as returning HP immediately. 3e doubled your healing rate with a complete rest and a Heal check - 4 HP/Level/day. So, essentially, with a heal check, most characters could heal completely in one day. Again, absolutely no magic involved.

So, claims that earlier editions did not support non-magical healing are easily shown to be false.

None of these things require a non-magical healing interpretation. The intent is ameliorating damage through physical medical care. It's not inspiration for sure. I admit some of it might offend my rate of healing preferences but it's definitely not martial healing.

 

[Savage Wombat]

My first DM didn't allow Unearthed Arcana at his game, so I can support that comment. He was a true Killer DM, too. I wonder if UA would have helped.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

None of these things require a non-magical healing interpretation. The intent is ameliorating damage through physical medical care. It's not inspiration for sure. I admit some of it might offend my rate of healing preferences but it's definitely not martial healing.

I think your definition of "martial healing" might be different to that of most people who discuss the issue. Could you clearly define it?