D&D 5E Anyone else finding character advancement pretty dull?

[Winterthorn]

My problem is that too many people don't distinguish between "flabby crunch" and "sharp crunch".

More subclasses is (relatively) easy to produce. They increase choice - but not complexity. (Except in the narrow sense that you CAN multiclass into the new subclass)

What I want the most is crunch that increases build complexity for all characters, including existing ones for which more subclasses do nothing at all.

Why? Because we've got next to nothing of that kind.

I am not opposed to more subclasses.

I am opposed to getting ONLY subclasses - getting only breadth-crunch and no deep-crunch.

I agree. The game seems IMO... like we are in the shallow end of the pool.

I would like to see some kind of advanced player's guide that offers more options *within* subclasses. Perhaps replacing the nice but boring ASIs with choices between distinct features that are effective and interesting, even if sometimes they are slightly weaker** than ASIs

** I suggest slightly weaker in order to mitigate power creep, hopefully.

 

[Mercule]

But that's the easiest thing to change. It is hardly even a house rule.

And if you ditch xp and simply level up your heroes when the DM tells you to, you don't even need that.

Oh, absolutely. My group has used milestone advancement for 2-3 years, now. I never said I couldn't overcome the problem. I was really just answering in regards to RAW, which seems eminently reasonable. And, contrary to popular belief, one can express an opinion about something on the internet in a mild and conversational fashion.

Now, my comment about levels being too large grain is a bit more troublesome to solve. I really don't think there's a way to do it without killing some sacred cow or other You could get rid of levels, entirely, which is a bridge too far, for me. You could also take the existing levels and stretch them out over, say, 40 levels, with each advancement being, essentially, a half advancement. That's a lot more to my liking, since I've never really considered anything above 10th or 12th level to be worth playing, anyway. I'm not sure that'd be palatable to the majority of players, though. It's just something to be accepted as part of the trade off for playing D&D -- if there wasn't enough positive to outweigh that negative (and the class/level system is easily the biggest mechanical negative of D&D, IMO), I would be playing Fate, Hero, Savage Worlds, or Genesys.

 

[Parmandur]

Quite a bit comes from the Unearthed Arcana as well. I count giving us something to pay for that they already gave us as duplicating material in print. It's also not a whole heck of a lot, as evidenced by how small Xanthar's actually is. It's a very thin book.

And I get that the market demanded less than 4e and 3e, but I've seen a ton of people in the same boat that I'm in. They went too far the other direction, which isn't a first from WotC. They did the same with bounded accuracy and bounded it too tightly. They did the same with the switch from 3e to 4e, going too far away from the issues of 3e and creating even more problems for themselves. WotC needs to learn moderation and stop with the overreaction.

We've had 3 books of crunch in 4 years, and a lot of that is re-printed material. Not good.

None of the Unearthed Arcana material counts as a "reprint," as it hadn't been released in a finished state until after playtesting, obviously. If that's the standard, then there may be close to nothing but reprints ever again.

Now, you say over reaction. I say happy medium. Only WotC is in any position to know based on hard numbers, and while they aren't telling they have not changed course either.

 

[Hussar]

So, after 5 years of people declaring that D&D is dying because of the release schedule and how the release schedule is the worst thing in the world, we still have record growth and sales.

Hrm, one of these things doesn't add up to the other.

You'd think that with a couple of thousand titles on DM's Guild, people wanting crunch would be satisfied.

 

[Maxperson]

None of the Unearthed Arcana material counts as a "reprint," as it hadn't been released in a finished state until after playtesting, obviously. If that's the standard, then there may be close to nothing but reprints ever again.

Not really. A lot of UA stuff made it in, and a lot didn't. The monsters are new and weren't in the UA. No matter how you slice it, though, they only put out 3 books with crunch over a 4 year period, and monsters don't really count as what people like me want, so it amounts to 1 single book of stuff in 4 years. That's a far cry from 2 books a year like you claimed earlier.

Now, you say over reaction. I say happy medium. Only WotC is in any position to know based on hard numbers, and while they aren't telling they have not changed course either.

We're going to have to agree to disagree on this one. WotC has a proven track record of overreactions based on their "hard numbers."

 

[Parmandur]

Not really. A lot of UA stuff made it in, and a lot didn't. The monsters are new and weren't in the UA. No matter how you slice it, though, they only put out 3 books with crunch over a 4 year period, and monsters don't really count as what people like me want, so it amounts to 1 single book of stuff in 4 years. That's a far cry from 2 books a year like you claimed earlier.



We're going to have to agree to disagree on this one. WotC has a proven track record of overreactions based on their "research."

They have consistently released at least three books a year, however, which have sold well. That not all books appeal to every demographic is to be expected, but they have released product.

We have no way to know for certain if they have been engaged in overreaction: however, they have not changed direction in approaching five years, and nobody has been fired. So they are, at least, apparently making their numbers quarter to quarter and year to year.

In contrast, at this point in relative time, 4E went through Essentials and then out of print already, and both 3.0 and 3.5 had burned out and seen mass layoffs.

 

[Maxperson]

They have consistently released at least three books a year, however, which have sold well. That not all books appeal to every demographic is to be expected, but they have released product.

The amount of non-monster crunch in those three books could fill one book and not be as big as the PHB or DMG. Splitting up the meager amount of crunch released doesn't make it three books of stuff.

We have no way to know for certain if they have been engaged in overreaction: however, they have not changed direction in approaching five years, and bobdy has been fired. So they are, at least, apparently making their numbers quarter to quarter and year to year.

It took them years to bring out essentials and they didn't change their sell a bazillion books a year model for 14 years. They had hard numbers that entire time. Having hard numbers isn't enough. You also have to be able to correctly interpret those numbers, and WotC has a poor track record with that.

 

[Parmandur]

The amount of non-monster crunch in those three books could fill one book and not be as big as the PHB or DMG. Splitting up the meager amount of crunch released doesn't make it three books of stuff.



It took them years to bring out essentials and they didn't change their sell a bazillion books a year model for 14 years. They had hard numbers that entire time. Having hard numbers isn't enough. You also have to be able to correctly interpret those numbers, and WotC has a poor track record with that.

Essentials came out in the second half of 2010, less than three years into 4E, after their initial publishing strategy crashed and burned. About the same time frame as Volo's Guide came out for 5E.

WotC announced that a new edition was being worked on in January 2012, less than four years after 4E was released. At the same point in 5E's lifecycle, they began marketing MToF. That's two Titanic shifts in product direction in less time than 5E has been out with the same staff: forget about the 4E heads rolling in layoffs.

3.0 and 3.5 fair only slightly better, and both saw plenty of changes of direction. 5E doesn't seem to have any major changes of direction, in staff or strategy, in sight.

 

[Maxperson]

Essentials came out in the second half of 2010, less than three years into 4E, after their initial publishing strategy crashed and burned. About the same time frame as Volo's Guide came out for 5E.

WotC announced that a new edition was being worked on in January 2012, less than four years after 4E was released. At the same point in 5E's lifecycle, they began marketing MToF. That's two Titanic shifts in product direction in less time than 5E has been out with the same staff: forget about the 4E heads rolling in layoffs.

3.0 and 3.5 fair only slightly better, and both saw plenty of changes of direction. 5E doesn't seem to have any major changes of direction, in staff or strategy, in sight.

I counter with a solid 14 years of putting out more books than my local library can hold.

One book worth of material in 4 years just isn't reasonable in my opinion. And it's nowhere near the middle of the road from what was probably around 5-8 books of crunch a year. It's far closer to 0 than it is to the middle.

 

[Parmandur]

I counter with a solid 14 years of putting out more books than my local library can hold.

One book worth of material in 4 years just isn't reasonable in my opinion. And it's nowhere near the middle of the road from what was probably around 5-8 books of crunch a year. It's far closer to 0 than it is to the middle.

They had data before, but they didn't go Big Data until the Next interim.

The Golden Mean is always closer to one extreme than the opposite, and honestly being closer to none is probably much more the reasonable middle ground.

We are getting two crunch focused products this year (races, Subclasses and a boatload of monsters in Ravnica, apparently), so they are ramping up. Slowly, rationally. Nothing hasty.