D&D General 6E But A + Thread

[Remathilis]

And that raises the key question. Which is more important - the story of your individual character or the story of the party as a whole?

Both.

What is more important, the story of the X-Men or the story of Cyclops? Both are important. The X-Men can tell stories without him, and you can tell stories about Cyclops without the X-Men. It's not fair to say that only stories about the X-Men as a team are important and it doesn't matter if it's Cyclops, Storm and Wolverine or Eye-boy, Gloop and Goldballs (seriously, those are real X-Men) anymore to say all X-Men stories should be about Wolverine (cough Fox movies).

 

[Remathilis]

Sure, as long as the character is in as much peril as usual.

The thing is, lots of players don't want their character getting killed while they are not at the game, so their character is handwaved to be "watching the horses" or whatever. And last I check, watching the horses was not a challenge.

We had a long running joke called "Blue Thumb Syndrome" where one of the character's thumbs turned blue. While their thumb is blue they are immune to all damage but they can only follow the part and quizzically stare at their thumb and wonder why it turned blue. Many players would find somewhere safe to stash the afflicted until they recover but sometimes all we could do was have them follow behind their friends and comment on they azure digit.

 

[payn]

Totally agree with divorcing initiative from Dex (and from everything else); but otherwise each stat should come with something it helps everyone do:

Strength - hit things, hurt things, carry things
Intelligence - remember things, learn things, know things
Wisdom - perceive things, analyze things
Dexterity - dodge things, balance on things
Constitution - stay upright longer
Charisma - get along with people

I agree with some of this, not all of it. I think offensive accuracy and defense ought to be baked into class and removed from the stats. Let the stats largely be saves, skills, and class functionality.

Then, choosing where to put your good stats as opposed to your bad ones becomes a real trade-off.

Oh, so you must roll for stats but can put them in any order? Seems to mitigate the randomness to begin with.

In my proposed ideas you would still have tradeoffs, but they wont be in the case of every fighter picks str, dumps cha and instead every fighter can choose if they want to focus on cha or str or any other stat.

I'd also like to see saves return to the 0e-1e idea where you're saving against the effect itself and stat bonuses don't always apply.

What's a "safe" dump stat would vary by class. Rogues don't need Wisdom: dump stat. Fighters don't need Charisma: dump stat. Clerics don't need Dexterity: dump stat. And so on.

Not what I meant. I meant in 5E if every stat can be targeted as a save, then some of them shouldn't be lightly targeted by lack of spells and spell potency. The threat should be evenly spread so there is little benefit from stat pump and dumping.

More or less agree here; though I don't mind there being some difference between 13 and 18 in one's primary stat, it should be possible to play a character with nothing but middling stats and still be able to keep up. What I'd really like to see is a return to there being minimal if any difference between about 7 and 14 (or at worst, between 9 and 12) in any stat.

Im a big Traveller fan and I think Bounded Accuracy is the bees knees. I could easily be convinced of this, but there must be changes to 5E as is for it to work this way.

That said, I'd also like to include a way for every stat number including the odd ones to be relevant. Roll-under-stat for some skills does this nicely, but people keep squawking about never wanting to have to roll low for anything.

I think the idea behind proficiency is that it works across all aspects of the game. Skills, offense, defense, etc.. The pro, of course, its easy to design new elements and once you know how the universal system works its easy to learn new tricks. The con is it all feels the same and there isnt much variety across the game.

I dont know if a roll under system is that attractive, but anything to change up 5E's skill system would be an improvement.

 

[Faolyn]

Even self teaching, requires investment however. Materials, space, upkeep of equipment, rehab (physio!) whatever you want to abstract it as, its still a cost.

Oh, sure. You just won't be stalled looking for someone else to teach you.

 

[Minigiant]

Human
--- Foreigner
--- --- Hot Blooded?

Funny thing

I have a stock enemy NPC villain in my games that is a human mage.

And all of the Foreign Mage's spells are Foreigner songs.

Hot Blooded is fireball
Cold as Ice is ice storm
Double Vision is blur
Urgent is misty step
Long Way From Home is banishment

I could never get a spell for Waiting for a Girl like you or Dirty White Boy outside of Summon Fey and Summon Celestial respectively.

 

[Faolyn]

Yeah it can be that way, but if those give XP, then it only makes sense that killing stuff would also give XP.

My point was, D&D doesn't currently have good rules for non-combat XP. Which means that, if I wanted to use XP but not give it out for combat, I'm kinda stuck. There's no given way to judge how difficult a noncombat challenge is. Someone who wants to give XP for both combat and non-combat is also stuck for the exact same reason. There's simply not enough of a guideline. And what it also means is that the game will continue to prioritize combat and de-prioritize noncombat methods of XP.

To bring up Draw Steel again, it has what looks like amazing rules for negotiations, which is defined as pretty much any time you have to really convince an NPC of something (which are also an independent sub-system that, I think, could be easily lifted into any other system--it's sort of like a 4e skill challenge, since you have to get the NPC's Interest to 5 before their Patience drops to 0, but with some interesting twists). Because of that, it's easy to tell if a social situation has succeeded or not, and therefore, if the players get their Victory Point. Likewise, Level Up's exploration challenges include a CR, examples of how to succeed against it, and you get the same XP for solving it as you would if it was a monster you killed.

My ideal for 6e would be rules that fully flesh out non-combat means of getting XP like those above in addition to combat means.

 

[Faolyn]

I have no issue with people preferring milestone leveling. I just don't agree with the reasoning that you do it because you don't want xp for killing things, because that issue can be IMO pretty easily bypassed.

It's... not. As I've said, D&D does not have good rules for assigning XP to non-combat events. And if I have to guess on XP, then I might as well get rid of it altogether.

 

[Faolyn]

I think it's fine if there is a "pew pew" caster, but the Wizard is way too greedy. If I could, I would probably make the Sorcerer into an Elementalist. If you want a "pew pew" caster, then you pick the Elementalist/Sorcerer. If you want be the clever mage with clever use of utility spells, counterspells, etc. then you pick a Wizard. But a lot of the Wizard would be stripped out, including fireball. "I get most of the spells" is not an archetype.

Well, the wizard could still get force damage, or the ability to levitate and throw objects. But I have no problem with elementalist sorcerers.

 

[Faolyn]

You dont just roll up and play a game sometimes without planning it all out first?

Thats all it really is, you just have to put the game aspect before the 'i need to be this kind of character' aspect.

Butting in. Me? Never. At the very least, I have a concept (like a race or class) I want to play, even if I don't have a background in mind. But getting some random character? No. That wouldn't be fun for me. And yes, I've played that way.

 

[Lanefan]

Both.

What is more important, the story of the X-Men or the story of Cyclops?

Depends. Is this a Cyclops movie (analagous to one-on-one play with the DM) or it is an X-Men ensemble movie (analagous to typical party play)?

Most typical party play maps to the ensemble movies - Avengers or X-Men rather than Iron Man* or Wolverine - and in those cases the characters' individual stories play second fiddle to the story of the party or company as a whole.

The other thing about both those franchises is that while they add in lots of characters over time they rarely if ever lose any and it's a big deal when they do. My favoured analogy instead is to see the party as a sports franchise where players come and go over time but the team keeps going.

* - Captain America: Civil War notwithstanding; it really should have been Avengers: Civil War as it's not exactly a solo Cap film.