Bring Back Verisimilitude, add in More Excitement!

[mkill]

Arbitrary Limited number of uses per day.

Ok, I agree on that one. If I had to write a barbarian, I'd give them two "emotional states", Rage and Calm. Depending on what state they are in, they'd have different bonuses / abilities.

I'm just as likely to use a Satyr, or a Minotaur, or a Succubus, for a non-combat encounter (which has a decent chance of turning into combat.)

I don't need a full character sheet, but the succubus needs to have well, "Charm" and such.

I see what you mean. Intelligent creatures (I'd add dragons to your list) are often viable NPCs, not just combat adversaries. 4th edition had the attitude of "give them combat stats, the rest will sort itself out", which created the problem that some monsters have powers relevant to social encounters (charms, shapechange, teleport...), which don't show up in their stats. It also created the impression that many of these creatures were only good for killing, not for storytelling (and the bland and boring modules were no help).

On of my major gripes with D&D (any edition) is the prevalence of stupid monsters that don't serve better plot purposes as "it showed up and now you need to kill it". The Terrasque is the epitome of this. Give us more intelligent monsters with their own culture and motivation! And for low levels, more stats of "normal" enemies like town guards.

It's hard to do a capture mission when you can't keep someone unconscious for more than 6 seconds.

In 4th edition, you can knock someone unconscious instead of killing them when you bring them below 0 hp, just by declaring it. It's right there in the book, but few people are aware of that rule.

I get so bored when everything is just slowly whittling away hitpoints. I need more than that.

Sorry, but if 4th edition combat felt like "boring whittling away hit points", you or your group didn't play it as intended.

Other than D&D and WoW, most fantasy I've read, a mob is a serious threat even to trained experts.

We're not talking about "trained experts", we're talking about 20th-level characters. Like Sauron in the first minutes of the first LOTR movie. One swing of the sword, send half an army flying.

I suppose the difference is that I don't feel like my game needs to go all the way up to kicking down the gates of hell to kill the devil. That seems more high powered than I need. I'm good with sticking to killing giants and slaying the occasional dragon; but I want a full-fledged game that covers the genre I want to play.

I'd be cool with, you know: 20 levels of fantasy (book 1), 20 levels of superheroes(book 2), 20 levels of godslayers (book 3). You can chain them together, or run them as separate games.

... or call them Heroic, Paragon and Epic tier and give them 10 levels each.

 

[Sylrae]

Call them Heroic, Paragon and Epic tier and give them 10 levels each.

Ah, the idea is I want to be able to play a full game without ever switching tiers(read: genres), and the 10 levels isn't enough to do that very convincingly. I want the ability to play 1-10 as a full campaign without the characters having to progress at a glacial pace.

But other than that I generally agree with you.

My complaint about whittling away hp is that you cant win 4e combat without hit point damage. There are no other parts of an opponent to attack. you cant attack his saves, you can't attack his attributes... etc.

It's like: Magic the Gathering: There is
Damage from creatures.
Direct Damage.
Decking the other Player.
Manaburn.
Taking their cards away to stop them from devending themselves.
Poison Counters.

etc. There are multiple ways to defeat an opponent. in 4e it seems to always come down to hp, and everything has way too much hp (excluding minions, of course), and damage seems too low, so it takes a looong time.

 

[FireLance]

Here's where the rubber meets the road:

Let's say 5e allows you to play a characters with no arbitrary limits on how often they can use their abilities (e.g. for some barbarians, rage is a state which they can turn on or off).

Let's say that 5e also allows you to play a character with arbitrary limits on how often they can use their abilities (e.g. some other barbarians can enter a rage only a limited number of times per day).

Both are presented as equal options, i.e. neither is the "default" approach.

Does the presence of the latter annoy you so much that you wouldn't play 5e even though it allows you to do the former?

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I love metagame resource management in games like action points, healing surges, daily powers and all. I don't like to sacrifice these for "verisimilitude" at all. If they can create a set of classes or builds that doesn't have any of that and one that does, maybe it could work for me. As long as "my" set of classes with metagame resources is finely balanced, á la 4E.

 

[Sylrae]

Both are presented as equal options, i.e. neither is the "default" approach.

Does the presence of the latter annoy you so much that you wouldn't play 5e even though it allows you to do the former?

Hmm.

Ideally it would be a "One, or the Other, but not Both" approach.

But I'm going to go with: "So long as you have a full collection of classes/races with your chosen method, it's great."

If I have to throw half the classes out the window, or half the races out the window to do it, then it's not really optional, we have a situation where you basically "have" to use both.

In this example if there is an X/Day Barbarian, there should be a non X/Day Barbarian Analog. If the choice is "disallow barbarians" then I won't be very happy with the options.

 

[Hassassin]

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

That not a reason to keep them!

If they can figure out a better way to accomplish the *reason* they are there, I'd be glad to see (most of) them go away.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

That not a reason to keep them!

If they can figure out a better way to accomplish the *reason* they are there, I'd be glad to see (most of) them go away.

If an "artifical limit" works and provides a positive gameplay experience, it should stay regardless of whether it provides verisimilitude or not.

What should be focused on in such a case is how to rephrase it and redesign it so it provides more verisimilitude.

But I play D&D also because I like playing the game. Not just the story-telling. The game itself, with all its unique, non-"realistic" aspects.

 

[Sylrae]

If an "artifical limit" works and provides a positive gameplay experience, it should stay regardless of whether it provides verisimilitude or not.

Clearly for some of us, that breaking of verisimilitude makes it into a rule that "works" while putting a negative impression on the gameplay experience every time it comes up. You force yourself to look past it and move on, but its always there. Bugging you with its... stupidness (its too late at night for me to think of a better word).

What should be focused on in such a case is how to rephrase it and redesign it so it provides more verisimilitude.

That isn't my first choice approach, but it could work (assuming the game designers wrote it that way, and it's not just "imagine its fluffed in some less immersion-breaking way if you don't like it") Okay, so we rework the barbarian into a melee-mage of some kind who buffs himself up and hulks out before entering combat. And we ditch the idea that it has anything to do with Barbarians. I could work with that.

Assuming we want to keep the fluff as is, and the mechanics don't fit, you need to come up with a non-arbitrarily limited rage, or drop it in favor of some other ability that fits the concept.

Essentially: "Only put in the arbitrary limits when there is absolutely no other possible way to accomplish the task".

But I play D&D also because I like playing the game. Not just the story-telling. The game itself, with all its unique, non-"realistic" aspects.

Ah. I like the settings. I like the storytelling. I like tactical combat in an RPG instead of Rules Lite. I like a well supported Bestiary.

But I don't like /all/ of the games idiosyncracies. Any time one feels boardgamey, it gets in the way of fun. If the GM uses a battlemat and minis, and uses the squares as more than a guide to measurement (IE: You have to end your turn fully within a square) or makes a Fireball a Firecube, that gets in the way of fun. I want to be immersed. The more it plays, or reminds me of a boardgame or wargame, the less immersed I am.

Wargames and Boardgames are all well and good, but they're not what I'm looking for when I play an RPG.

 

[Lwaxy]

Houserules differ from table to table, and I know a very large number of GMs who don't use houserules and dont allow actions not covered by any rules in the game.

And the amount of houserules required to achieve this list in the current edition of D&D is enough that the game wouldn't be recognizable when I finished.

I would probably not want to play with a rules anal GM.

I do not play 4e, but in 3x and now PF it is relatively easy to go around the rules when it makes sense. All you need is "if it is physically doable, doesn't break the magic and makes character sense, it is fine." This simple addition has saved me from several problems, including the issue with the barbarian rage. Yeah so the barbarian did rage twice a day when someone attacked her kids and later stole her talisman. Didn't break the game, just made her need a lot more rest later on.

 

[Sylrae]

I would probably not want to play with a rules anal GM.

I do not play 4e, but in 3x and now PF it is relatively easy to go around the rules when it makes sense. All you need is "if it is physically doable, doesn't break the magic and makes character sense, it is fine."This simple addition has saved me from several problems, including the issue with the barbarian rage. Yeah so the barbarian did rage twice a day when someone attacked her kids and later stole her talisman. Didn't break the game, just made her need a lot more rest later on.

This type of GMing seems to be fairly uncommon in pathfinder, and even less common in 4e.

Additionally, I've seen some players get pretty upset if you include any houserules, and even more upset if they think the houserules aren't very explicit.