D&D (2024) 6E When?

[Tony Vargas]

It's honestly so simple I'm wondering if you're being deliberately obtuse

...bit o' humor's all that was.

5e suffers from the same basic flaws as 4e and 3e in how it treats the core damage and healing mechanics and in how it treats advancement of hit points, attack bonus, hit points, etc.

So, 5e's slow, but even, "BA" proficiency advancement is the same problem as 4e's rapid but even 1/2 level advancement, and 3e's rapid, but uneven BAB & in-/cross- class skill ranks advancement?

Stop the arms races involving armor class, attack bonus and hit points and 5e can remain evergreen.

The attack/AC race in 5e is more of a stroll. You gain 4 whole points of attack bonus over 20 levels, monsters of about CR = level may have a similar gain in AC (though monster ACs can vary by more than 4 among monsters of the same CR, anyway). Save DC/bonus can be a bit tighter, both can go up by exactly Proficiency + primary stat mod, but , there are at least some saves on virtually every class & monster that don't advance, at all.

Yes, hit-points/damage scales dramatically in 5e. Something has to scale in a level-based game.

 

[R_J_K75]

I can't see what's not to like in 5e that's not not to like in 2e, too.
OK, yes, there are differences in the fiddly mechanical details, but overall, they're remarkably similar in function & feel.

2e has kits, 5e has backgrounds & sub-classes. Fighters in 2e do tons of DPR (if you use optional weapon specialization), fighter in 5e do tons of DPR (if you use optional feats). Monsters in 2e had their hps & damage upped significantly, Monsters in 5e had their hps & damage upped significantly. 2e had optional NWPs but you could probably just make an informal stat check to do whatever, 5e has skills that hardly matter, and you can probably just do whatever by describing it to the DM and maybe making a stat check.
…?

That does sound frustrating.

Maybe you've just been confused by a book title? j/k

5E and 2E are similar in some cases and its been so long since I played 2E that Im probably forgetting the bad things with. Switching back at this point might just be trading one set of problems for another. But I will say that when 3E came out the tone of the game changed. Our group is taking a break until January, I'll give it some thought on what I want to do.

 

[Tony Vargas]

5E and 2E are similar in some cases and its been so long since I played 2E that Im probably forgetting the bad things with. Switching back at this point might just be trading one set of problems for another. But I will say that when 3E came out the tone of the game changed. Our group is taking a break until January, I'll give it some thought on what I want to do.

Yeah, there was a definite return to the less self-conscious-story/angst, more kick-in-the-door, 'back to the dungeon' vibe with 3e.
5e doesn't come down hard on either side of that, though, AFAICT. It's up to the DM what he wants to do with his campaign.

 

[darjr]

Wait, just because no one has done the research into ph2 confusion for 3.5 doesn’t mean it wasn’t confusing. We think we know PH2 was confusing for 4e because WotC did some research into what was up and found this out.

it could very well BE that PH2 3.5 was just as confusing for people. I know I am now.

 

[Oofta]

Wait, just because no one as done the research into ph2 confusion for 3.5 doesn’t mean it wasn’t confusing. We think we know PH2 was confusing for 4e because WotC did some research into what was up and found this out.

it could very well BE that PH2 3.5 was just as confusing for people. I know I am now.

I'm just confused as to why this is even an issue. There's no reason to keep the old convention other than "because that's the way they used to do it".

 

[R_J_K75]

I'm just confused as to why this is even an issue

If I walked into a store looking to buy my first PHB and all I saw was a PHB2 or PHB3 my first thought would be wheres the PHB1?

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Parmandur]

It was the plan for 4e however:

"Sometime around 2006, the D&D team made a big presentation to the Hasbro senior management on how they could take D&D up to the $50 million level and potentially keep growing it. The core of that plan was a synergistic relationship between the tabletop game and what came to be known as DDI. At the time Hasbro didn't have the rights to do an MMO for D&D, so DDI was the next best thing. The Wizards team produced figures showing that there were millions of people playing D&D and that if they could move a moderate fraction of those people to DDI, they would achieve their revenue goals. Then DDI could be expanded over time and if/when Hasbro recovered the video gaming rights, it could be used as a platform to launch a true D&D MMO, which could take them over $100 million/year.

The DDI pitch was that the 4th Edition would be designed so that it would work best when played with DDI. DDI had a big VTT component of its design that would be the driver of this move to get folks to hybridize their tabletop game with digital tools. Unfortunately, a tragedy struck the DDI team and it never really recovered. The VTT wasn't ready when 4e launched, and the explicit link between 4e and DDI that had been proposed to Hasbro's execs never materialized. The team did a yoeman's effort to make 4e work anyway while the VTT evolved, but they simply couldn't hit the numbers they'd promised selling books alone. The marketplace backlash to 4e didn't help either. "

Insofar as that may have been an intention,frankly it failed.

 

[Parmandur]

I mean, that's not crazy or anything: if 3.5 was not bringing in many new players, and the PH2 just comfortably sold to established ones, while 4e was selling mainly to new players, then, yeah, maybe it was conceivably confusing...
….but then why try to 'solve' that with an even more confusing 10-product 'Essentials' line, led by a retro-"Red Box" aimed at old players? While leaving the offending numbered book in print?
And, why, if we are dealing with so many presumably-still-confusion-subject new players, today, go entirely the other way with one potential 'on ramp' and make it mechanically lead-into a defunct edition? Surely that's at least as confusing?

I mean, I know I'm confused.

I don't know why a conspiracy theory is necessary, it was a confusing and obtuse release scheme. Xanathar's title doesn't show what it does, but the blurb does.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Also, what does it mean to "keep an old convention?"

Good point. If 5e had bundled the player-side material in the various supplements we've seen so far and instead released it in a PH2 that would not have been continuing an old convention. Instead, it's returned to an old convention, in publishing not-too-focused supplements with unintuitive and/or setting-referent names.