D&D 5E Are you happy with the Battlemaster and Fighter Maneuvers? Other discussions as well.

[The Crimson Binome]

AD&D paladins have nothing unique: every class makes saves, several other classes can cast healing spells and protection from evil 10' radius, and clerics can turn undead. They're nevertheless a reasonably flavoursome class.

Interesting. I could have sworn they had something unique, aside from just the Better Horse. I'll look it up when I get home.

Edit Update: Detect Evil, Immunity to Disease, Constant-Effect Protection from Evil. The paladin had unlimited-use magic at its gimmick, even if it was only in the form of such minor self-buffs.

 

[Gadget]

I've always had a problem with the 'just better at doing stuff anybody can do' sentiment. If you are going to add a specific combat maneuver system into a game of abstract combat and hit point ablation, you have to be careful to make sure that these maneuvers do not just simply provide a common end-around of the hit point system that can be 'gamed' into a mini 'I Win' button by optimizers (see various 3e trip-monkey-spiked-chain builds). There seem to be two ways to do this in D&D: by increasing the complexity of the system to take into account many of the various reasons why 'disarm' and 'throw sand in the eyes' will not be always reliable, go to actions for the properly optimized build; or you can introduce a more meta-game restriction on such maneuvers by way of superiority dice, action points, 4e's AEDU structure, etc.

The first option goes too far down the process-sim path for my taste, not to mention it being very tricky to get the balance right. You could easily end up with a maneuver system that is worthless to all but optimized 'builds', with a fine line between useless and over powered. I don't think I've ever seen it done well. I prefer some variation of the second approach, though depending on the implementation it seems to run afoul of many players sense of verisimilitude.

 

[Obryn]

That's fair enough. I would expect a game with D&D on the label to deliver that. However, I think it's become a great deal more than that, to the point where it is functioning as the generic fantasy rpg, even if it wasn't originally intended to do that.
...
That's all fine and good, but as you note, it's not even one edition. 2e and 3e both broadened the focus of the game. Did this move it away from its dungeoncrawling roots? Absolutely. Is it less "D&D" because of that? I suppose that depends on one's perspective.

When 2e started to drift, it really lost itself, IMO. The game engine was an imperfect fit at best for the sorts of 90's things that were being hung off it.

To me, that's not a good thing. I'm not playing D&D for a generic fantasy game; I'm playing D&D to do all the stuff D&D should be best at - the dragons and the dungeons.

Couldn't you say the same of anything though? Classic D&D doesn't have a maneuver system. Tons of other rpgs do. If you want a maneuver system, just play Iron Heroes (where Mearls should have stayed), or some other game that does. Dissolving a simple d20-based approach in favor of a more complex scheme serves what exactly?

I don't see how saying "I attack the goblin", rolling a d20, and not saying or doing anything else is not D&D enough. That's what all those old-school fighters were doing over and over again. Sounds pretty D&D-ish to me.

Classic D&D doesn't have a maneuver system, but a maneuver system fits very well with what I see as the ideal goals for D&D - that is, being the best at Fighting Dragons and Exploring Dungeons. It's an appropriate and welcome addition to the baseline system.

 

[Ahnehnois]

When 2e started to drift, it really lost itself, IMO. The game engine was an imperfect fit at best for the sorts of 90's things that were being hung off it.

To me, that's not a good thing. I'm not playing D&D for a generic fantasy game; I'm playing D&D to do all the stuff D&D should be best at - the dragons and the dungeons.

Again, that's fair. However, I think (not know, think) that the player base as a whole moved past that stuff sometime in the '90's. At least, to me, the whole dungeoncrawling, kill things and take their stuff mentality was what I started with but it completely disappeared from the local gaming community once 3e came out.

"Playing D&D" is a term that I (and many other people) use generically to describe playing an rpg, frequently one completely unrecognizable from the idea of mercenary "heroes" meeting in a tavern and raiding arbitrarily large underground tunnel networks for treasure.

Classic D&D doesn't have a maneuver system, but a maneuver system fits very well with what I see as the ideal goals for D&D - that is, being the best at Fighting Dragons and Exploring Dungeons. It's an appropriate and welcome addition to the baseline system.

I think that the maneuver thing and its ilk are really orthogonal to that end. An old schooler would say rulings not rules, and would eschew that sort of thing, particularly as incorporated into a character build. You can certainly do plenty of great dungeoncrawling without a fighter's character sheet ever having much more than a THAC0, and AC, and a hit point total, simply by leaving the rest to your imagination.

Maneuvers vs "I attack" is simply a question of detail and granularity. Do you want to just roll and attack and damage and move on, or do you want to know what your character was doing during those six seconds? Given how detail-heavy even the base D&D combat is, maneuvers can be a tough sell. But if you want to play a style that emphasizes those little moments and the tactics therein, you want them. It's really a campaign-level thing, not a character-level thing.

 

[Hussar]

Again, that's fair. However, I think (not know, think) that the player base as a whole moved past that stuff sometime in the '90's. At least, to me, the whole dungeoncrawling, kill things and take their stuff mentality was what I started with but it completely disappeared from the local gaming community once 3e came out.
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I would refer you to 3e's "Back to the Dungeon" tag line as well as Dungeon Magazine and the plethora of very well received mega dungeon modules for 3e if you think things disappeared once 3e came out.

 

[Obryn]

Again, that's fair. However, I think (not know, think) that the player base as a whole moved past that stuff sometime in the '90's. At least, to me, the whole dungeoncrawling, kill things and take their stuff mentality was what I started with but it completely disappeared from the local gaming community once 3e came out.

"Playing D&D" is a term that I (and many other people) use generically to describe playing an rpg, frequently one completely unrecognizable from the idea of mercenary "heroes" meeting in a tavern and raiding arbitrarily large underground tunnel networks for treasure.

Of course there's other stuff than adventuring (that is, exploring dangerous "dungeons" and fighting deadly "dragons"), but adventuring should be the focus of the rules. If the rules around adventuring take away from adventuring, I don't know why I'm playing D&D anymore instead of a game which does that other stuff much better.

I'm not in the market for "generic fantasy RPG." I'm in the market for D&D, which should deliver on the Dungeons and the Dragons.

I think that the maneuver thing and its ilk are really orthogonal to that end. An old schooler would say rulings not rules, and would eschew that sort of thing, particularly as incorporated into a character build. You can certainly do plenty of great dungeoncrawling without a fighter's character sheet ever having much more than a THAC0, and AC, and a hit point total, simply by leaving the rest to your imagination.

Maneuvers vs "I attack" is simply a question of detail and granularity. Do you want to just roll and attack and damage and move on, or do you want to know what your character was doing during those six seconds? Given how detail-heavy even the base D&D combat is, maneuvers can be a tough sell. But if you want to play a style that emphasizes those little moments and the tactics therein, you want them. It's really a campaign-level thing, not a character-level thing.

I think you are misconstruing where I'm coming from. I love RC D&D and AD&D 1e. I think they're excellent games, and great at the "Exploring Dungeons" parts of the game. They do what they do very well, and I enjoy playing them.

But I'm not coming at this merely out of tradition. Earlier editions are lacking when it comes to the "Fighting Dragons" parts of the game. 3.x is particularly bad here because it so easily degenerates into spell-rocket tag.

Detail and granularity are helpful for the cinematic combat that's essential for cinematic fights - the sorts of exciting conflicts that I always wanted out of D&D but which it never delivered. As I said upthread, I think 4e's approach finally fulfilled a lot of what D&D (and D&D-like media) had been promising for 40 years.

 

[Balesir]

I think (not know, think) that the player base as a whole moved past that stuff sometime in the '90's. At least, to me, the whole dungeoncrawling, kill things and take their stuff mentality was what I started with but it completely disappeared from the local gaming community once 3e came out.

I used to think in these terms, too, but I now think that I was mistaken to do so. "Evolution" does not move exclusively in one direction - it is about diversity and filling multiple niches. Diversity of species and individuals is, in fact, vital to a healthy ecosystem. I no longer believe that there is a single "best way" to write a roleplaying system. There may well be "local" best ways - creatures supremely well-adapted for specific niches are common in evolutionary terms - but an overall "best way" is merely a mirage. It is, at best, temporary.

I think that the maneuver thing and its ilk are really orthogonal to that end. An old schooler would say rulings not rules, and would eschew that sort of thing, particularly as incorporated into a character build.

And another thing I have learned is that "rulings, not rules" is fundamentally flawed for many circumstances (see multiple posts from many folks in other threads). A search for good ways to build systems for interesting ecological niches is thus a useful endeavour, and manoeuvres are a rules artifact that suit the "action adventuring" niche well. As do classes and hit points - which are (not coincidentally, IMO) classic features of D&D (as distinct from RPGs in general).

 

[Marshall]

I voted no for exactly the opposite reason as the op.
The Battlemaster is crap. Not because its to 4e, but because its a weak attempt to pander to 4e. At third level, a BM can give up his one attack to grant ad to an ally 1/round/shortrest or at best 33% of his actions. At 20th level, he can grant ad to an ally with one of 5 attacks/round, 3 times/shortrest or at best 20% of the time. Assuming all of 3 rounds of combat per short rest (hopefully a drastically low assumption).
The basic comparison here is that the BM is roughly equal to a Cleric who gets nothing but 1st level spells that never scale. A waste of ink and paper.

The concept might be salvageable if the BM ends up with double digit superiority dice per short rest, the ability to spend multiple per round AND enhanced effects by spending more die on a maneuver. Essentially, 4e psionics with a dice pool, but that would take competence, vision and forethought from the design team. Something they have shown exactly none of since before 4e E.

 

[EnglishLanguage]

Something they have shown exactly none of since during 3.x.

FTFY

3.x is probably the only edition of D&D I can safely say had completely subpar design with only 2-3 classes that were actually worth playing by design.

4e at least had good class balance and enough variety between the classes where you could play pretty much any party combination and still be able to play a regular game.

 

[I'm A Banana]

3.x is probably the only edition of D&D I can safely say had completely garbage design with only 2-3 classes that were actually worth playing by design.

This is a zone of peace, which means no Edition Warring. If you can't talk about the e's you think are less awesome without being rude and volatile about it, please just avoid talking about them.