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

[Derren]

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.

4Es balance works in combat situations, but as soon as you expanded into non combat 4E struggles. Thats because 4Es tries to balance with tight restrictions (weapon limitations for nearly all classes, etc.) which works in closely controlled environments but as soon as you are faced with a large, uncontrolled environment, which mosts non-combat situations are, ensuring balance through this fails as the restrictions either start to look more and more arbitrary or they fail to achieve balance (what is out of combat balance anyway?) as this situation was not expected by the designers.

 

[I'm A Banana]

If "regular play" is synonymous to "combat" then yes. But as soon as you expanded the game 4E broke down very hard. Thats because 4Es extremely restrictive design "works" (debatable) in closely controlled environments like combat, as soon as you are faced with a large, uncontrolled environment, which mosts non-combat situations are, ensuring balance (what is out of combat balance anyway?) through tight restrictions fail as the restrictions either violate verisimilitude hard or fail to do they job.

Please read the post RIGHT before yours. If that's unclear, feel free to PM me.

 

[Chaltab]

4Es balance works in combat situations, but as soon as you expanded into non combat 4E struggles. Thats because 4Es tries to balance with tight restrictions (weapon limitations for nearly all classes, etc.) which works in closely controlled environments but as soon as you are faced with a large, uncontrolled environment, which mosts non-combat situations are, ensuring balance through this fails as the restrictions either start to look more and more arbitrary or they fail to achieve balance (what is out of combat balance anyway?) as this situation was not expected by the designers.

Non-combat is free form and doesn't have to be balanced so tightly. I've run entire sessions with 4E where no combat took place. Investigating murders, gathering information, simply interacting with NPCs to get a better handle on the best way to proceed. To say 'this situation was not expected by the designers' is kind of silly when there are plenty of rules for things outside of combat in the DMGs.

 

[EnglishLanguage]

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.

My bad, fixed.

 

[Obryn]

4Es balance works in combat situations, but as soon as you expanded into non combat 4E struggles. Thats because 4Es tries to balance with tight restrictions (weapon limitations for nearly all classes, etc.) which works in closely controlled environments but as soon as you are faced with a large, uncontrolled environment, which mosts non-combat situations are, ensuring balance through this fails as the restrictions either start to look more and more arbitrary or they fail to achieve balance (what is out of combat balance anyway?) as this situation was not expected by the designers.

That's really weird considering just last night I ran the first part of Zeitgeist Episode 2, and the closest thing to a "fight" was our fighter tossing an annoying scholar out a bar window.

Everyone participated just fine, which is a big part of "balance". While it'd be good if every class had 4 trained skills at a minimum, part of 4e's balance is a sort of bounded accuracy when it comes to skill checks and DCs. Even the uncharismatic PCs could work the crowd, for example.

 

[pemerton]

4Es balance works in combat situations, but as soon as you expanded into non combat 4E struggles.

That's really weird considering just last night I ran the first part of Zeitgeist Episode 2, and the closest thing to a "fight" was our fighter tossing an annoying scholar out a bar window.

Everyone participated just fine, which is a big part of "balance". While it'd be good if every class had 4 trained skills at a minimum, part of 4e's balance is a sort of bounded accuracy when it comes to skill checks and DCs. Even the uncharismatic PCs could work the crowd, for example.

The dwarf fighter-cleric in my 4e game often makes Diplomacy checks despite no training and a CHA of 12. This is because I frame the character into situations where the player would rather have his PC speak up than remain silent. The "bounded accuracy" aspect helps here - these checks are hard but not hopeless - as do other features of my approach, like the player knowing that his PC is not going to be hosed in the fiction because of a failed check.

Which fits into the notion of balance = "everyone can participate fine", which I find 4e mostly achieves via a combination of "frame situations that engage all the players via their PCs" (sometimes derisively described as "everyone participates" as if that were a bad thing!) and "no one's numbers are so hopeless that participation is futile".

 

[Storminator]

The dwarf fighter-cleric in my 4e game often makes Diplomacy checks despite no training and a CHA of 12. This is because I frame the character into situations where the player would rather have his PC speak up than remain silent. The "bounded accuracy" aspect helps here - these checks are hard but not hopeless - as do other features of my approach, like the player knowing that his PC is not going to be hosed in the fiction because of a failed check.

Which fits into the notion of balance = "everyone can participate fine", which I find 4e mostly achieves via a combination of "frame situations that engage all the players via their PCs" (sometimes derisively described as "everyone participates" as if that were a bad thing!) and "no one's numbers are so hopeless that participation is futile".

I had a limited set of players yesterday, so a lot of skills were used untrained. Went fine. Almost the entire session was a "skill challenge" (I run them extensively modified), and I told the players the easy/moderate/hard DC and let them choose which to roll against, with the knowledge that hitting a harder DC gives greater rewards. All the PCs attempted untrained skills because it matched what they were trying to accomplish. In my games I refer to this as "normal".

PS

 

[Chaltab]

I had a limited set of players yesterday, so a lot of skills were used untrained. Went fine. Almost the entire session was a "skill challenge" (I run them extensively modified), and I told the players the easy/moderate/hard DC and let them choose which to roll against, with the knowledge that hitting a harder DC gives greater rewards. All the PCs attempted untrained skills because it matched what they were trying to accomplish. In my games I refer to this as "normal".

PS

The elimination of individual skill points is hands down the best thing 4E does to the non-combat game.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

Exactly. What more do you need?

And the answer from the various designers of the last few editions seems to be "quite a lot", which is one of the reasons I'm not a fan.

Fighters in 1e are the best class - the mechanics are extremely minimal and thus stay nicely out of the way; in non-combat situations I can always find something to do (whether it's useful or not is another question); in social situations I can always say my piece (again to dubious effect, but who cares?), and in combat I kick ass. It just doesn't get better than that!

Lan-"I really was hoping for pure simplicity out of the 5e box...sigh"-efan

 

[Ahnehnois]

Exactly. What more do you need?
...
Fighters in 1e are the best class - the mechanics are extremely minimal and thus stay nicely out of the way; in non-combat situations I can always find something to do (whether it's useful or not is another question); in social situations I can always say my piece (again to dubious effect, but who cares?), and in combat I kick ass. It just doesn't get better than that!

To me, where they failed is in not making the rest of the classes as minimal. The D&D I'm waiting for has the player of a wizard tell the DM he's making an illusion, roll an illusion check, wait for the outcome from the DM, and move on. Endless lists of discrete, specific, and detailed spells are not what I'm playing D&D for. Nor powers. Nor maneuvers.