D&D 5E (2014) 5th Edition and The Rules

[Joe Liker]

Is this an edition war? I thought those were forbidden.

 

[MJS]

I like what I see of 5E, other than the book covers, I like its modularity.
The #1 most important thing about 5E is you can run it without minis. Minis are a dealbreaker for RPGs in my book.

 

[jasin]

I like what I see of 5E, other than the book covers, I like its modularity.

What do you mean? Isn't the modularity supposed to be in the DMG? I've browsed the PHB and I'm not sure there's anything there I'd call modularity, except, perhaps, the fact that you can ignore feats or just take stat increases instead. Is there something I'm missing?

The #1 most important thing about 5E is you can run it without minis. Minis are a dealbreaker for RPGs in my book.

It certainly appears to be easier to play without minis than 4E, but would you say it's easier than 3E? It seems to me that distance and relative positioning are still a factor, and all almost distances in the rules are still given in 5 ft. increments, so it seems to assume much the same style of play as 3E in that regard.

 

[jasin]

Is this an edition war?

If you think so, you haven't seen an edition war.

 

[Tony Vargas]

What do you mean? Isn't the modularity supposed to be in the DMG? I've browsed the PHB and I'm not sure there's anything there I'd call modularity, except, perhaps, the fact that you can ignore feats or just take stat increases instead. Is there something I'm missing?

No, you're not missing anything. 'Modularity' seems to have degraded in meaning to "game doesn't somehow force you to use all it's rules without modification or addition."

It certainly appears to be easier to play without minis than 4E, but would you say it's easier than 3E? It seems to me that distance and relative positioning are still a factor, and all almost distances in the rules are still given in 5 ft. increments, so it seems to assume much the same style of play as 3E in that regard.

5e tells you it's meant to be run 'TotM,' and that's about it. It succeeds at being worse for minis & a grid than 3e, 4e, or 2e C&T - though it'd be easy enough to add rules to improve it in that regard (and I'm sure we can count on the DMG for some, even if they might make good threats to layer on gratuitous mechanics like facing) - but it doesn't do anything to make it better at TotM. It's like taking the tires off a car and calling it a hovercraft. I suppose we can hope that the DMG will /also/ include some TotM-facilitating rules like those of 13A. The main sticking point would be all those spells with range/areas already hard-coded to feet and geomatric shapes. It's nothing much to provide alternate, simpler, positioning rules, revise movement by race and re-print a ranged weapons table with new TotM-friendly terminology.

 

[sunshadow21]

I think the biggest problem that 3E hed with rules taking center stage was the rise of organized play. The core books themselves didn't do anything more to encourage rules over story telling, but by successfully introducing a new environment to play D&D in, via organized play, WotC opened up a can of worms that has yet to be fully dealt with. The difficulty with organized play is that the rules are the only thing a player has to rely on; playing with a different DM and group each and every time you sit down with that character tends to make reliance on DM judgment and storytelling problematic. On the character development side, it also meant that your character had to be reasonably good at most things because you never knew what your party members would be able to do. Paizo has limited this to a great extent, but not entirely eliminated it, by making it clear that PFS is just one way of many of how the game can be approached and played. WotC never really did that with either Living Greyhawk or LFR (never tried Encounters, so I have no idea how well they separated it from the total 4E experience).

The one thing I have seen with 5E at least so far is that the rules are presented more clearly and consistently. That alone will help cut down on the focus on rules. PF could do the same easily if all Paizo did was republish the core book and changed none of the actual material but simply reformatted everything to be easier to read and access. In the end, though, the main lesson for 3rd edition still holds true, and that is how people approach the game has as much impact on how it is played as how many rules do or don't get formally written down or how those rules are formatted do.

 

[jasin]

Paizo has limited this to a great extent, but not entirely eliminated it, by making it clear that PFS is just one way of many of how the game can be approached and played. WotC never really did that with either Living Greyhawk or LFR (never tried Encounters, so I have no idea how well they separated it from the total 4E experience).

I'm not sure what you mean here? There are Pathfinder home games, obviously, and they probably outnumber the Pathfinder Society games, but there were 3E home games and they probably outnumbered the Living Greyhawk games, no? What is the difference between Paizo's and WotC's approach you're thinking of?

 

[sunshadow21]

I'm not sure what you mean here? There are Pathfinder home games, obviously, and they probably outnumber the Pathfinder Society games, but there were 3E home games and they probably outnumbered the Living Greyhawk games, no? What is the difference between Paizo's and WotC's approach you're thinking of?

Paizo's approach very clearly and very visibly doesn't rely on the rules as the centerpiece. While their products do support PFS and vice versa to a large degree, at least one major line, the APs, aren't used by PFS at all, and most of the supporting lines are timed to support the APs primarily (i.e. a companion book on a specific region that plays center stage in the current AP) with PFS working them and the later published hardback books into the PFS ruleset only as soon as the PFS coordinators are comfortable doing so. In the end, with all the products that Paizo has going at once, PFS ends up being just one way people can learn about and play the game, with the focus of the system actually being on supporting the world of Golarion, not PFS. Also, Paizo devs routinely either begin or end their forum posts with a disclaimer of some kind that DMs are free to do what they want, a message routinely pushed out by Paizo in all of their products as well. So far, at least to me, they have done a good job overall of managing the balance between DM fiat and player control of their own character. They also are very active in getting the word out in what their intentions were in their designs and interacting with the community about where both intent and execution could be improved.

With WotC's emphasis on rule splat books during both 3rd and 4th edition, few adventures, and world support beyond FR (and sometimes even FR) being sporadic, there ended up being less highly visible products to hook and retain new players beyond the rule books themselves. Add in the fact that Living Greyhawk (and later LFR and Encounters) had far more visibility than your average home game and new players tended to get a lot more reinforcement that the rules as written in the book were the only proper way to play. WotC also rarely in 3rd edition took the time to highlight the role of the DM being the final moderator anywhere in any of their products or dealings with the community, so even if they weren't actively discouraging DM rulings, they were also doing very little to discourage the growing sentiment of player entitlement during the time frame of the 3rd edition books. The rules, through a number of factors, were forced into a spotlight they were not designed to be in, and the system suffered as each splat book made that focus even more and more rigid. They tried to correct this with 4E, and ended up overcorrecting it and not correcting it at all at the same time. They pushed DM fiat as much as they could while publishing splat book after splat book that seemed to reinforce the player being the key controller. The net result was a lot of confusion on the part of the newer DMs and players, who for lack of a better option, usually ended up deferring to the written rules during 3E or simply not playing 4E because of the confusion.

They are doing better so far with 5E overall when it comes to that message, though, at least up to this point. They are pushing a reasonably clear system that both DMs and players can understand while making it clear that all rules are optional pending DM approval. Whether they can continue to support that will be the key determining factor of it's long term success. So far, it's doing a decent job, but not one likely to fully win back the majority of lapsed players. If it can continue on its present course, though, it will prove solid enough to sustain the brand and stop any more damage from happening.

 

[Hussar]

I think I kinda see your point Sunshadow21. I really do believe that 4e was in large part designed for organised play to take centre stage. Makes sense to me, if they were truly trying to bring in all these new players, particularly through Gleemax and the online offerings, you'd want rules that were pretty static from table to table. Add to that the fact that the RPGA was the primary play testing vehicle, and you get a system that is heavily leaning on organised play concepts.

Pathfinder seems to be going the way of the old Living campaigns where you have two distinct rules sets, one for home and one for organised play. You got the same thing for Vampire as well where you had the Minds Eye Theater rules and the RPG rules, each of which was pretty much completely different.

It will be interesting to see how the idea of modularity interacts with WOTC's approach of making each supplementary offering a big event. Which modules WOTC chooses to include in supplements will largely determine what people do at home. Same as you saw in 2e. Sure, NWP's were optional, but, if you used the class splats like Complete Fighter, it was assumed that you were using NWP. The 2e supplements pretty much assumed that all the "optional" options in 2e were in use. Which generally meant that they were.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I think I kinda see your point Sunshadow21. I really do believe that 4e was in large part designed for organised play to take centre stage. Makes sense to me, if they were truly trying to bring in all these new players,

Nod. Encounters did seem like a pretty good vehicle for new and casual players, to me (I've participated since the 2nd season, and seen a lot of new players try the game - and a surprising number kept playing Encounters and/or formed groups of their own).

It will be interesting to see how the idea of modularity interacts with WOTC's approach of making each supplementary offering a big event.

The Adventurers Guild document and the DM materials for the HotDQ season of Encounters make it clear that there are more specific guidelines for character creation and optional rules in force than are presented in the PH. Feats, for instance, are in, messing with starting hps or level or magic items placed is out. This is a bit of a change for Encounters which always encouraged DMs to allow character options specifically from the latest offerings, but didn't make pronouncements about rules in force, and left DMs a 'rule of cool' sort of escape clause to modify the adventure as they saw fit for the good of the play experience at the individual table. Where I ran, this included not only opening the table to more character options, but changing the level of the adventure, entirely.

I can see the need for the changes, of course. The characters from Encounters are meant to be usable in other organized play programs, so they have to toe /some/ line to assure that no one shows up downstream with too many items, or a variant race or 20 more hps than they should have, or whatever. But it is ironic that I have less flexibility running encounters under 5e than I did under 4e.