7 Years of D&D Stories? And a "Big Reveal" Coming?

When asked what he was working on, WotC's Chris Perkins revealed a couple of juicy tidbits. They're not much, but they're certainly tantalizing. Initially, he said that "Our marketing team has a big reveal in the works", and followed that up separately with "Right now I'm working on the next seven years of D&D stories". What all that might mean is anybody's guess, but it sounds like there are plans for D&D stretching into the foreseeable future! Thanks to Barantor for the scoop!

 

[Shasarak]

Just a point about "irrational hatred of 4e"

The truly ironic thing is, so much of 4e appears in 5e without the slightest quibble, despite causing huge outcry in 4e.

Here's 5 examples:


4. Bounded Accuracy. The whole point of Bounded Accuracy is that the numbers don't really scale very much. A typical challenge for a character yields about a 60% success rate. So, the AC's for typical opponents fall around that range, save DC's too and difficulty levels for skills. It's 4e written backwards. Instead of everything scaling equally so that you always had around a 60% success rate for typical actions, they've simple done away with the number inflation and flat out given you a 60% success rate. It's not tied to the game and it's certainly not tied to the game world. 4e gets vilified constantly for this, while, again, 5e gets a pat on the back.


So, yeah, when Mercurous talks about the irrational hatred of 4e, I think he has a pretty strong point. The fact that 5e is getting pats on the back for stuff that got 4e vilified shows just how irrational a lot of the criticisms really were. People didn't hate the mechanics of 4e. They just hated 4e and used the mechanics as a scapegoat.

Wait a second, there is no way that 5es Bounded Accuracy comes from 4e.

I could understand the argument that it comes as a result of the lash back against the outrageously large accumulating numbers from 3e and 4e though.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Wait a second, there is no way that 5es Bounded Accuracy comes from 4e.

It's essentially the 4e 'treadmill' effect with smaller numbers.

 

[pemerton]

He said that people who were unhappy with 4E should also be unhappy with 5E.
If this is true, then people who are happy with 4E should be every bit as happy with 5E.

<snip>

I ask you, as a fan of 4E, do you equally love 5E because of his list?
If the changes are so minor that you must feel the same way towards them, that must apply to you as well.
Do you love 5E as much as 4E? Or do you disagree with Hussar? Or are you simply being hypocritical?

You second sentence is a non-sequitur.

Suppose it's true that A and B have X in common. Suppose also that some people have cited X as a reason for dislike of A. [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] is asserting that those people also have a reason to dislike B.

It doesn't follow that those who like A should like B. Perhaps, for them, X is a necessary but not sufficient condition of liking something.

Now when you take the situation out of my simplistic example and into the real world, [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s claim has to be more nuanced. For instance, it is open to someone who disliked A because of X to explain that the X-iness of B doesn't make them dislike B because B has some other feature that negates or transforms or obscures its X-iness. I'd be very interested, personally, to hear posts along these lines (probably not in this thread) from players who disliked 4e martial encounter powers but like the 5e superiority dice - I can conjecture what some of the differences might be, and would expect to see some of those conjectures confirmed, but it would be interesting to hear about it from those actually having the experience.

But the possibility of nuance doesn't change the fact that your claim is a non-sequitur. From the fact that 5e contains many mechanical features very similar to those that were widely complained of in 4e, it doesn't follow that any given 4e fan should like 5e. It might have other stuff that 4e dropped (eg "real world" spell durations that can tend to encourage illusionistic GMing) or not have stuff that 4e included (eg "subjective" DCs).

I mean, 3E also has a lot of stuff in common with 4e: a somewhat comparable action economy, d20 rolls to hit, combat victory by hit point ablation (at least at low-ish levels), same stat system, comparable default magic item load-out, etc. So if someone didn't like these features of 3E (eg they were a die-hard Runequest player) you might expect them not to like 4e either. It wouldn't follow that 3E fans would like 4e, nor vice versa.

 

[Shasarak]

Sorry but a capped +6 proficiency does not compare to a +15 from 4e or a +20 from 3e.

In fact Bounded Accuracy is actually getting off the treadmill.

 

[BryonD]

Wait a second, there is no way that 5es Bounded Accuracy comes from 4e.

I could understand the argument that it comes as a result of the lash back against the outrageously large accumulating numbers from 3e and 4e though.

You are correct. The implementation is wildly different.

I was in debates (including people in this thread) in which a key point of contention was the idea of characters not being good at things.
A simple example was that a rogue might be much better at climbing a wall, but everyone should have a decent chance to climb the wall.
Thus everyone gained }+1/2 level to everything.

In 5E, you can be a 20th level character and still have a +0 in a variety of skills (and even saves)

The implementation and feel is entirely different.

 

[BryonD]

You second sentence is a non-sequitur.

EXACTLY!!!!!!

The problem is So is the FIRST one.

Suppose it's true that A and B have X in common. Suppose also that some people have cited X as a reason for dislike of A. [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] is asserting that those people also have a reason to dislike B.

It doesn't follow that those who like A should like B. Perhaps, for them, X is a necessary but not sufficient condition of liking something.

and.......

the presence of that thing may not be a sufficient condition of NOT liking something.

Why do people who like 4E get to take these things in context, but people who don't like it must accept them as stand alone ideas?
It is a double standard.

ZERO of those thing play out within 5E the way they play out in 4E.

It may be true that you can draw a connection.
But the reason for being annoyed by them is either gone or implicitly detachable.

 

[pemerton]

Sorry but a capped +6 proficiency does not compare to a +15 from 4e or a +20 from 3e.

In fact Bounded Accuracy is actually getting off the treadmill.

4e was designed to set default success chances to around 55%-65% provided that a GM followed its encounter-building advice (ie use the DC-by-level chart, used monsters and NPCs statted within -2 to +4 or so levels, and avoided higher-level soldiers).

5e's bounded accuracy is much the same thing, but with the level-relativity stripped out. My maths suggests that the success rate in 5e is slightly broader than 4e - a band of around 40% to 80%, depending on build and level.

I don't know the 3E maths well enough to comment, but this is very different from AD&D, where at 1st level success rates in combat are typically below 50% (eg 1st level fighter vs AC 7 needs a 13 to hit before mods, which are harder to get in AD&D than in 4e or 5e).

 

[Shasarak]

4e was designed to set default success chances to around 55%-65% provided that a GM followed its encounter-building advice (ie use the DC-by-level chart, used monsters and NPCs statted within -2 to +4 or so levels, and avoided higher-level soldiers).

Yes, this is the 4e treadmill. You always have the same 55 to 65% chance as long as you boost all the right abilities and constantly upgrade your items etc.

You do not have that in 5e.

I do not even know how someone can look at Bounded Accuracy and even claim it comes from 4e. It is, as they say, a Non sequitur.

 

[BryonD]

4e was designed to set default success chances to around 55%-65% provided that a GM followed its encounter-building advice (ie use the DC-by-level chart, used monsters and NPCs statted within -2 to +4 or so levels, and avoided higher-level soldiers).

5e's bounded accuracy is much the same thing, but with the level-relativity stripped out. My maths suggests that the success rate in 5e is slightly broader than 4e - a band of around 40% to 80%, depending on build and level.

I don't know the 3E maths well enough to comment, but this is very different from AD&D, where at 1st level success rates in combat are typically below 50% (eg 1st level fighter vs AC 7 needs a 13 to hit before mods, which are harder to get in AD&D than in 4e or 5e).

Again, you are taking things out of context.
If 5E a character can EASILY be way outside of the target range and the game is built to create these situations.
4E was praised for avoiding them.

It is night and day.


Again, doesn't this prove the point? We have 4E fans presuming that everyone else plays the game though the exact same filter as they do. So the aspect of a rule that they see as primary MUST BE the thing that everyone else sees. You presumption completely fails to speak to my game. And your conclusion follows.

 

[pemerton]

I was in debates (including people in this thread) in which a key point of contention was the idea of characters not being good at things.
A simple example was that a rogue might be much better at climbing a wall, but everyone should have a decent chance to climb the wall.
Thus everyone gained }+1/2 level to everything.

In 5E, you can be a 20th level character and still have a +0 in a variety of skills (and even saves)

But still have a decent chance of success (eg 30% against DC 15, which seems to be the median DC for the system).

The real difference, as I see it, is not the mathematics of bounded accuracy.

The difference is the implications for genre and story of the way it is implemented. 4e is designed tightly around the "tier" structure: combat abilities, paragon path and epic destiny descriptions, the Monster Manuals, the example traps all work to reinforce this. The result of all this is that - if you play to these defaults - the PCs will progress through the "world of D&D", from villages threatened by kobolds to combatting demon lords on the Abyss.

The fact that, when you look at the 4e mechanics, an epic wizard can also trivially scale a kobold barricade, or trivially intimidate a Greyhawk street thug into handing over his loots, is (within the scope of this design) a relativey minor side-effect. To the extent that it comes up in play, it is minor flavour. To the extent that you want to make this sort of thing a major focus, it would be the epic wizard wiping out a kobold stronghold single-handedly, or taking control of the Greyhawk thieve's guild, and it would be resolved as a skill challenge with level-appropriate DCs (and so the question of how easily that wizard can scale a single barricade or intimidate a single thug would not arise as part of the resolution).

5e does not have the same default story structure. There is a deliberate intention that the mechanical equivalent of 4e's pargon heroes might have to engage single differentiated kobold barricades, or single differentiated street thugs, in the course of meaningful action resolution. That's not a mechanical change - 4e also has single differentiated barricades and single differentiated thugs that are relevant to high level PCs (eg the barricades that Dispater erects to trap his foes, or the thugs that Orcus sends out to kill intruders in Thanatos). It's a story change - a change in the character of the fiction, and the way it is meant to be handled, and to change or not change, over the course of the game.