Bring Back Verisimilitude, add in More Excitement!

[Siberys]

I really don't think we'd need rules for 'fire attacks catch stuff on fire'. I mean, it's certainly not realistic. I could easily get burned by fire but not catch at all.

If an attack says it catches something on fire (explicitly, or implicitly with something like ongoing fire damage), then it can catch per the rules. If it doesn't say it does raw, but I as DM think it should, then it does. Simple. And this can apply to the other stuff - combat being spelled out doesn't mean there's no room for DM interperetation, and that has a long and storied history as a key compenent of D&D.

As for the rest of your points... I'll be honest, most of that is what turned me off against 3e late in its run (win buttons, option paralysis) or really depends on the system to see if it's viable (your multiclassing preferences, frex). I don't want out-of-combat defined for monsters except maybe to a minimal level, because I feel safe winging that. PCs? Sure, I can see abilities like that, but they should not be at the expense of combat abilities - I'm still a big proponent of siloing.

As an aside, I always tended to plan out my character's mechanical path roughly, based on what I wanted him to be storywise. Level by level MCing looks like it will help with that at the start, because of the greater degree of control it affords in the CC process, but in the end it was always unsatisfying. I want to start with that character concept, not build toward it. Frex, I was playing a nobleman swashbuckler in a PF campaign, and I tried hacking together a multiclass rogue/cavalier, because I wanted light combat and the ability to direct my allies. It might have worked - if I was a high enough level to get the salient features at the same time. The chaffe that didn't fit with the character always got in the way, though. If I had built that character in 4e, I could have started as a hybrid warlord/rogue or even a rogue with the warlord multiclass feat, and had what I wanted from the getgo. In short, I want to see from the next edition this sort of 'start multiclassed' option that's easy in 4e.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Trailblazer doesn't give me precisely the game I want, but as a "problem fixer" I'd say it did quite admirably when compared to 4e *or* pathfinder. Especially considering it's a small publisher one-off book.

I agree that TB is far from perfect, but that the mentality behind it and the process of creating it were better than most of what we've seen. Hopefully WotC can learn from them as well.

Please explain. What is wrong with Barbarian Rage?

I wake up in the morning when the party member on watch cries out that we are under attack by ogres. Furious, I jump to my feet, grab my axe, and hack them to pieces. When I'm done, I'm tired and I go back to sleep.

Now, no matter how mad I get, I cannot fly into a rage again until I get another full night's sleep after that. It doesn't matter if my family is kidnapped by ghasts and I have to save them, there's no way I could possibly generate that berserk rage again...until I get a full night's sleep.

Unless of course, I'm fourth level. In which case I could do it twice in a day! The number of times I can do this has no relation to my toughness and endurance, how fatigued I am in general, or what my emotional state is as a character. It does relate to a metagame variable that my character doesn't understand. How does my character even know how many rages he has in a day?

It's the sort of thing that doesn't come into play all that often (barbarian was never the most popular class, fighting multiple battles in a day is somewhat unusual, and you don't use rage for the easy ones anyway), but if you think about it, it's really nonsensical. It's a lousy balance mechanism because you don't know how many battles a particular DM will have in a day, how many will be difficult, what decisions the player will make regarding rage use, and it doesn't model combat fatigue very well either. Basically, it's lazy design.

A well-designed rage would limit its use by some fatigue mechanic, if you wanted to limit it.

 

[Herschel]

Here are the things I would want to see in the next Edition of D&D. *wad-o-stuff*

Here's the thing: Everything you named would be good, fine and dandy as part of a module, but absolute, pure and utter CRAP as far as the base game goes.

Everything you name points to making everyone play the game the way YOU think it should be played and alienating thousands of others. You literally named things thousands of people enjoy. That's not going to fly.

And that's aside from the fact you say you want more "realism" in a game with waizards and dragons and characters using moves from "The Matrix".

 

[Herschel]

I wake up in the morning when the party member on watch cries out that we are under attack by ogres. Furious, I jump to my feet, grab my axe, and hack them to pieces. When I'm done, I'm tired and I go back to sleep.

Now, no matter how mad I get, I cannot fly into a rage again until I get another full night's sleep after that. It doesn't matter if my family is kidnapped by ghasts and I have to save them, there's no way I could possibly generate that berserk rage again...until I get a full night's sleep.

Unless of course, I'm fourth level. In which case I could do it twice in a day! ....

I can get up, study my spell book and cast Fireball once and then it disappears from my mind until I get up and read it again tomorrow......

I can cure your minor wounds only as many times as I have prayed for using my first-level slots and then I have to wait until tomorrow......

Those "artifical limits" have always been in the game.

 

[keterys]

I'd definitely be up for #11! #13 sounds reasonable.

The first part of #3 sounds fine and second half of #4 sounds great, though I've got some strong ideas about implementation of both.

I'm a little dubious of a fair shade of the other points. Like, most suggestions I've seen to improve verisimilitude have sounded like a lot of extra work to track that detracts from the excitement and makes me think about numbers and physics _instead of imagining what's happening in the game_.

#1 doesn't sound very realistic at all, even for movie realism.

Basically, bunch of interesting points, but the title and post are at odds for me

 

[Sylrae]

Everything you name points to making everyone play the game the way YOU think it should be played and alienating thousands of others. You literally named things thousands of people enjoy. That's not going to fly.

Well, you can apply that argument to what anyone lists as things they want to see in the game.

If 5e is a modular as they say it will be, you should be able to please all the groups.

And that's aside from the fact you say you want more "realism" in a game with waizards and dragons and characters using moves from "The Matrix".

In this case more realism is a euphemism. I dont expect the game to model reality. but I dont want the game to stand up when I want to accomplish something and get in the way with "It doesnt matter if it doesnt make sense because those are the rules because it's a game". The "Gameyness" shouldn't pop out at me in an RPG.

"More Realism" and "More Verisimilitude" are being used as euphemisms for "Less Boardgameyness" because those terms offend 4e players.

3e had it in some places, 4e has it everywhere, and I want less of it than there was in 3e.

I'd love to see it go as far as no spells/day or powerpoints even, and sidestep to making casting rolls, and perhaps a fatigue mechanic. But when its getting in my way like that its somehow less offensive when I can't say "But you can do that in real life just fine!"

Sometimes I see a combat feat, and I think: "But anyone can attempt to do this, even without special training. Why do I need a feat to even try it?"

Ideally, the game would let me try it, and I as an untrained person, would just be less likely to succeed.

 

[Herschel]

Well, you can apply that argument to what anyone lists as things they want to see in the game.

If 5e is a modular as they say it will be, you should be able to please all the groups.

And there's the rub: in order to please the most players, the base system is going to have to be as bare bones as possible. We're talking old Red Box-type basic. All the other stuff would be in modules.

But, how fast/when will the different modules be released? How many people will write off the game if the modules they want aren't released immediately? How can they humanly prepare all the modules needed for the initial release date unless those modules are just re-hashed 1E, 2E, 3E and 4E rules with a new coat of paint?

 

[Wormwood]

Those "artifical limits" have always been in the game.

And honestly, we need to either face the fact that the game requires metagame restrictions on character power, or come up with an alternative that makes real-world sense without turning it into a game of awesome Wizards and pathetic Muggles.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I can get up, study my spell book and cast Fireball once and then it disappears from my mind until I get up and read it again tomorrow......

I can cure your minor wounds only as many times as I have prayed for using my first-level slots and then I have to wait until tomorrow......

Those "artifical limits" have always been in the game.

And those limits have "always" been different for magic than for nonmagic. As they should be, that's what makes it magic.

Besides the realism issue (for rage), there's the balance issue. Rage isn't balanced. Spells per day was never an effective balance mechanism either (cue Vancian thread); it just simulated a style of fiction written by Vance. Rages per day, on the other hand, are an absolutely horrible representation of how passion and anger work in fiction or in reality, for the reasons I explained in my prior post. The mechanic is ineffective from a gamist, simulationist, and narrativist perspective. Frankly that's hard to do.

3.X barbarian rage is such an inept piece of design it makes me kind of...angry. Unfortunately, I can't act on that anger. I have to go to bed.

 

[Herschel]

And those limits have "always" been different for magic than for nonmagic. As they should be, that's what makes it magic.

Only magic huh?

How 'bout them hit points?