D&D General 6E But A + Thread

[dave2008]

...

Did you read the very thing you just quoted?

Because you're literally talking about what I'm referencing here.

It literally says, "six to eight medium or hard encounters in a day."

Yes, and you said : "...explicitly tells people to use bare minimum 5 encounters a day,..." it doesn't do that so I asked your were it does.

Also note it says: "...most adventuring parties can handle about six to eight medium or hard encounters in a day." Implying you could have fewer deadly encounters per day (the math works out to about 3). So again I don't know where you are getting 5 from.

 

[Reynard]

Also, here's my ideal Humanoid Book, which would be separate from the rest of the monsters. (Separate in this case can mean "it's own chapter in the PHB or MM")

Step 1: Create a whole ton of NPC statblocks for every tier. Make them both as generic and as flavorful as possible. Yes, it's a weird combo.

Step 2: Write up the humanoids. For each one, do the physical description, a bit of lore, and three different example mini-cultures (no more than few sentences for each--these are examples designed to get the GMs and players to think). The cultures could be anything from "The Nation of Gnomingrad" to "the Brass Orc Mercenary Company." One culture should be evil, one neutral, and one good.

(See, my biggest problem with alignment is that no matter how much the game says "usually" or insists that any particular race doesn't have to be the listed alignment, they almost never actually take that into consideration in their actual books. This way, even if the description says "this species is mostly one alignment, there's an "official example" of a way to include variants.)

Step 3: For each of these humanoids, include both the PC stats and an NPC template. The NPC templates can include stat modifications, even though the PC stats wouldn't. This should hopefully satisfy both the people who think that one particularly strong PC halfling means that all halflings will also be strong (nope, their NPC template says they get a -4 to Strength; the PC halfling is just unique), and those people who need or want guidelines for where to assign their stats.

Each humanoid would take up a page, maybe two if there's a lot of art involved.

Then, to make an orc knight or elf raider or grung druid, you put the appropriate NPC template on the statblock.

Does it mean that you can play one right out of the book? No, there's math involved. However, so much of this is done online these days via DDB or a VTT that one of those will do the math for a large number of players, and hey, it's still easier and faster than what was involved in 3e.

Why can't you do this in.thr current edition.

 

[Faolyn]

Maybe someone has addressed this already, but next time you use the term sacred cow consider an alternative, like dead dude on lumber, and consider if someone might find it offensive. If you do, that's fine, feel free to offend everyone's religion, but don't act like the one you're familiar with is better than the one you aren't.

...what's dead dude on lumber from, and/or why would you not want to remove one?

 

[Reynard]

...what's dead dude on lumber from, and/or why would you not want to remove one?

They are talking about Jesus.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Yes, and you said : "...explicitly tells people to use bare minimum 5 encounters a day,..." it doesn't do that so I asked your were it does.

Also note it says: "...most adventuring parties can handle about six to eight medium or hard encounters in a day." Implying you could have fewer deadly encounters per day (the math works out to about 3). So again I don't know where you are getting 5 from.

From actually checking the math.

Three "deadly+" encounters simply cannot produce enough bonus damage output for a Champion to ever, even remotely, keep up with a Paladin--to say nothing of the Wizard, who will be eating well with all the enemies that must be present, or the singular enemies that will almost surely have at least one weak saving throw they can target, as opposed to their AC, which will be extremely difficult for said Champions to actually hit. (Remember, even if the Champion's crit range is increased, ONLY a natural 20 is a guaranteed hit. You can "crit but miss" on a 19 as a Champion.)

 

[Faolyn]

this thread has exploded so I haven’t kept up but my wishes:

- No proficiency system. In 3.5, I liked that fighters were better at melee than rogues. Proficiency just made every class exactly the same. Everyone is equally good at everything as long as you max your stat.

Or at the very least, give martials a bonus to fighting that non-fighters don't have.

- Separate spells for every class. I think it’s okay if wizards are the only class with detect magic. And maybe only sorcerers have fireball. Whatever the different lists look like, it doesn’t matter to me except that they are unique

Very much agreed. I'm actually going through all the Level Up spells (both official and 3pp) + the spells that didn't make it over from 5e and trying to remove as much crossover as possible. There's still spells where it makes sense that more than one class knows them, because LU has has more classes (including 3pp classes) than 5e does so there's classes that have similar flavors, but I'm really trying to reduce the number of classes that can know any particular spell.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I am curious what you think that intention should be. I was under the impression that the lack of intentional design in 5e was something you prized, and the presence of intentional design in 4e was something you greatly disliked about it. Is that not the case?

Edit: Meant to respond to this as well, but forgot.

Every single time I've ever interacted with a self-avowed "OSR"/"old school" fan, they have made it clear their intense and consistent antipathy to the idea of giving out even the weakest of magic weapons, magic armor, or whatever else until the party is an extremely high level. Like, we're talking never giving out even a +1 weapon before level 10 in 1e or 2e, and even getting one at level 10 would be considered insanely generous.

Have you not seen this yourself? The people who constantly advocated for "making magic items magical again", which 100% always meant "making magic items something nobody ever actually receives". The people who constantly railed against "christmas trees" and "magic item marts" as being the second-worst thing to ever happen to D&D. On and on it went. The genuine hatred for the very idea that players could want, and try to gain, particular magic items because they liked said items or thought said items would make for a powerful combination of effects.

I'm an OSR fan, and I like magic items. So do others (like @Lanefan whom I believe you've interacted with before). I just want them to be cool.

Like many conversations I've had with you, I feel you are histrionically overstating your case.

And for the record, I think the design of 6e should be intentional, but I don't expect it to be an intention that works for me. All I want from the megacorp is full access to D&D's IP via the DMsGuild. I already have the games I want, and I hope they make a bespoke non-compatible 6e so it is easier to ignore. I've said as much a couple times upthread.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Inspiration is metacurrency.

Not much of an inspiration fan either.

 

[Micah Sweet]

If I may ask:

What game is left, if we cut out the focus on combat? Because, especially if we remove most of the unique/utility spells, there's...not much left in D&D other than combat.

Lots of exploration and social mechanics in Level Up. But I agree, combat is at least as important.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

You point them to the rule book that demonstrates that magic items are an expected component of the game design?

Where does it say that?

Because alllllll throughout D&D Next, that was explicitly the opposite of true. That magic items were explicitly NOT an expected part of the design, and were specifically always supposed to be 110% optional.

The incessant celebrations of the magic item haters were one of the most tedious things about the first like two or three years of 5e's life for that very reason.