D&D General 6E But A + Thread

[Scribe]

But I question whether it reliably does, or whether people tell themselves that to cover cognitive dissonance of it not actually being very fun even though they "adjusted" - thinking of videogames particularly. Some people just don't enjoy certain roles, even if they're good at them, even if they "make the experience better". Like, I have a friend who is extremely good at playing WoW, just any role. Doesn't matter. She's good at all of them. But she doesn't enjoy them equally, and furthermore, they don't get treated equally - WoW people are 10x nastier to tanks and 5x nastier to healers than DPS. Nor are they necessarily equally important - I think a good case could be made in modern WoW that a mediocre healer is fine for about 99% of content, and for a lot of content (ironically including raiding!) a pretty mediocre tank is fine (not so much for M+), but for all content, you really want absolutely blazin' DPS who don't stand in fire. Even if your tank and healer are kind of bleh, if everything just melts, you're fine. But on the flipside, way fewer people want to play tank or healer (in part because they attract 80% of the criticism and 90% of the abuse you might get in WoW), so what do we value here, actually putting a party together and getting things done ("better experience") or standing around waiting for some sucker to be willing to take the bum roles? I this as someone who has tanked for decades, note. It wasn't always like this either.

Its a safe place here...

I get it, but I remember playing my sons account (oops!) to drag him out of the pit of Silver ranked players. Every team was a bunch of 'dps superstars' who sucked. If they had 2 players swap (Tank/Support) every one of them would have ranked up.

You cannot play many dungeons, without a tank in WoW, or at least in the old days you couldnt, unless you hilariously outgeared it, out leveled it, or exploited it.

This is what I mean when adjusting to the game. The game comes with various expectations, players are free to ignore them, but the better group experience, and I'll support Group > Individual any day, happens when people meet the designed experience on its terms, not when people are selfishly forcing a bad choice into the group comp.

 

[Reynard]

They do the latter in their private playtest network: the public tests are just a smell test. Prevents stuff like "Magic of Incarnum" from happening.

Why would you want to prevent that?

The public are not good designers or even good judges of design. WotC's design department should make the game they want, not the one the most fervent and opinionated members of their fanbase demand.

 

[Faolyn]

At a certain level, yes. Players should adjust to the game, or find a different one.

Adjusting to the game generally means adjusting to the game's genre and tone. It doesn't mean ignoring 3/4 of the spells because of reasons.

 

[ECMO3]

Or maybe they'd be gated to certain paths of spellcasting? Battlemage, etc. But if you're choosing to be a combat-focused spellcaster then you're choosing to not have the other kinds of spells and magic.

Personally I want spells to be less gated than they are now, not more gated. That way a PC can really drive what they want to do based on their story or character idea instead of having it dictated to them or having arbitrary obstacles to them getting a certain spell.

That way you can build a combat focused spell caster and not choose other kinds of magic or you can build one and then also choose those other kinds of magic, whatever works for you and your character idea.

This is really the main thing I want out of 6E. Spells like Armor of Agathys and Dissonant Whispers should not be gated behind specific classes.

If we assume a similar level-based spell system then what I would like in 6E is to put all the spells in one big pool by level - If your character gets to pick a 1st level spell then pick any 1st level spell you want. Not this list for Clerics and that one for Sorcerers and only Warlocks can get Hex.

 

[Parmandur]

Why would you want to prevent that?

The public are not good designers or even good judges of design. WotC's design department should make the game they want, not the one the most fervent and opinionated members of their fanbase demand.

Because nobody wanted it, so it didn't sell.

The current design philosophy, across industries, is focusing on user needs. UA is about figuring out what people actually want or don't want, so they can focus on making stuff people will actually use.

Math balance is a different issue entirely.

 

[Remathilis]

Replacing barbarian, ranger and druid with a wilderness-focused class that could go combat, exploration, or magic based

I can't see how this works. You might as well say "replace the fighter, rogue and sorcerer with a dungeon focused class that could go combat, exploration or magic based."

 

[mamba]

WotC's design department should make the game they want,

they did that with 4e, I don’t think they will try that again any time soon

not the one the most fervent and opinionated members of their fanbase demand.

they probably should not do that one either, so the question is how you determine this part of the fanbase. Is it simply anyone participating in the UAs?

In any case, your job as a designer does not begin and end with figuring out what your customers want, but that definitely should be a part of it / feed into the design

 

[Chaltab]

they did that with 4e, I don’t think they will try that again any time soon

How do you mean this? Was 4E not literally designed to address the common pain points of 3E? Imbalanced classes, too many skills, trap options, unreliable CR, etc?

 

[Scribe]

How do you mean this? Was 4E not literally designed to address the common pain points of 3E? Imbalanced classes, too many skills, trap options, unreliable CR, etc?

I dont think so. I think it was designed to maybe hit some of those, but to also remodel how the game was designed.

If it was 'just address the issues' we would have seen 3.75 (PF1) instead. 4e is its own branch of the tree completely.

 

[Chaltab]

I dont think so. I think it was designed to maybe hit some of those, but to also remodel how the game was designed.

If it was 'just address the issues' we would have seen 3.75 (PF1) instead. 4e is its own branch of the tree completely.

Except Patfhinder 1E also failed to address many of the balance issues. I would argue that they were so fundamental that a drastic redesign was necessary.

Granted, 4E threw out some babies with the bathwater, but it was extremely dirty bathwater that needed to be discarded.