D&D 5E Can an elf rogue be a decent archer in (Basic) D&D 5th edition?

[Mistwell]

I don't agree - the DM was encouraged to use Page 42, to put in interesting terrain, etc. - all this was active design encouragement away from AEDU-only focus. I don't buy that unless the players are directly encouraged, it somehow "doesn't count".

By the way, has any edition explicitly, actively encouraged the PCs to ignore their sheets?

Further, the post I responded to is still a Straw Man.

I wasn't trying to say other editions did it better in a more active way, just that my experiences with Page 42 is that it didn't come up very often (though it worked when it did come up) and it was not active in it's encouragement TO PLAYERS.

I liked Page 42 a great deal and I hope 5e uses that concept and expands on it as well. I just hope it's presented to the players in the PHB.

Otherwise, I think merely having fewer rules passively encourages players to do different things, better than 3e/4e passively encouraged it. If your character sheet presents a lot fewer options to look at, it's more likely the player will think to turn to things outside that character sheet text to try and resolve a problem in an encounter. I think it's a good goal to try and get players to stop looking at their character sheets so often, to stop looking at figures on a table grid so often, and to think about the situation more in terms of "how would my character deal with this" rather than "what abilities expressed by the rules for this character are intended to deal with this".

 

[Kobold Stew]

Why the Straw Man? No-one has remotely suggested that. I brought up Page 42, among other things as an example of how 4E was actively trying to get people not locked into AEDU tunnel-vision, not it fixed everything everyone disliked.

Ruin Explorer, I do not believe this is a Straw Man. While the poster you cite did *not* mention your posts, you are responding as if you saw yourself as the target, and so I looked back. And it is not hard to find this as a fair summary of the position you are espousing. Not exactly, of course, but near enough that anyone who has read the thread can identify the position. Certainly *you* identified with the position being described, which is enough to counter the straw man argument.

It was a general position, derived from the thread, with which you yourself identified.

So let's take a random post of yours, which reads in part:

See, I have long experience with 2E, 3E and 4E. My 2E, 3E experience is exactly as you describe. 2E was full of tricks/swashbuckling, 3E gradually beat that out of my players, because every single fancy trick you could try was covered by the rules and required about 14 checks, each of which had a chance to fail. Or you got a -4 or -8 penalty unless you had a specific Feat which was otherwise worthless and competing against amazing Feats. 100% agree with "rules often constrain", too.

Okay, we can accept your use of hyperbole ("about 14 checks") because it is an informal discussion: you are laying out your experience in order to justify your position. You have a view of how 4e play works, and you want to share it:

But then I started running 4E, and we had Page 42 (do you know what that is?) and the general "Feel free to make it up!" attitude (rather than 3E's "We've got a rule for THAT!" attitude), and before the end of the first adventure I had players trying "Fastball Specials" and the like! Ever since we've had tons and tons 2E-style antics, only all the PCs are involved in it in 4E, whereas only the non-casters were in 2E!

I have no doubt this reflects your group's experience. Many people have said it does not reflect theirs. By implication, you are saying they are wrong and you are right, by your appeal to authority. Your summary of both 3e and 4e are (again) obviously reductive. Your quotes are not actual quotes, but your simplistic black-and-white summary of how you see things, which (I presume) you offer for those who you believe are unclear of what you believe.

But you also use sarcasm ("do you know what that is?" -- I'll assume it's sarcasm, because otherwise in the context of a discussion specifically about p. 42 it's simple rudeness) with your reductive summaries, and, yes, I can see why The Hitcher thought that at least some people in the thread thought could draw the inference that you with your appeal to authority, hyperbole, sarcasm, and reductive summary, might think you were suggesting they were "playing it wrong".

Was The Hitcher referring to you? I have no idea. But your posts suggest to me that at least one person on the thread was indeed remotely suggesting this, and your response here (and following) confirms it.

So no one is denying your experience, and we all accept that your experience is different. In fact you tell us so:

So my experience is starkly contradictory, like, opposite-land, to yours, when it comes to 4E. And I've played it regularly since release, which I'm guessing you've not (am I wrong?).

Ah, but again, you start making assumptions about your interlocutors, and it gets ad hominem.

This framing of the argument suggests that anyone who hasn't played 4e "regularly since release" has less experience than you, and therefore less authority to speak about it. I don't buy that. I, as a reader of the thread, am interested in a variety of voices, and your attempt to silence and/or browbeat those who disagree with you seems unhelpfully hostile.

You say:

So when you say this has "changed", with 5E, that seems really weird.

As someone who has played AD&D, 3.5, 4.0, and the play test for Next, as well as dozens of other RPGs, I can say that it does not seem really weird. In fact, it matches my experience. And I know, since I have read the thread, that it doesn't match yours.

You say:

5E seems to similar to 4E, except for the fact that it doesn't actively encourage making rules up (as per the playtest anyway, DMG may well!). How do you account for this, given you're talking about how important actual experience is?

I don't know from this one post what you mean by "seems" (you may clarify it elsewhere), but one might reasonably infer (since you play 4e "regularly") that you are not also regularly using the play test materials.

Again, my experience, with a range of groups, has been that Next does deliver the freedom that you say is lacking. Your actual play experience may disagree, and if it does -- you know what? That's fine.

I understand what you have seen, and though it surprises me, I am aware that there are more things under the sun.

 

[pemerton]

I bought 4E when it came out, and I think it's a beautiful thing - it's this tightly constructed clockwork of rules that work to construct these exquisitely balanced tactical combat situations.

<snip>

But then I played the game, and I realised the monumental problem that the 4E rules create: because the entire system is organised around balancing classes and powers and combats, everything else becomes secondary. If you fully engage with the core of the system, then it is (as others have said) counter-productive to do weird improvisational stuff.

This is an interesting biographical fact about you, but I don't see how you can confidently generalise it. For instance, 3E/PF seems to be the most popular RPG around, but I don't recall ever seeing it argued that that popularity is linked to any great capacity for supporting improvisation.

Anyway, my group has not had any problem with improvisation from the very start of our 4e play, and most of the players have only ever played trad RPGs (D&D, Top Secret, Traveller, Rolemaster, etc). There are a couple of examples in my most recent session report, and there is no conflict between these improvisations and fully engaging with the core of the system.

I love a really good tactical combat game (you guys should definitely check out Card Hunter - it's similar in many ways to the combat of 4E, and is bloody excellent), but to me an RPG is an entirely different animal.

This looks like just another iteration of the more than 5 year old claim that 4e is a tactical skirmish game with the episodes of combat linked by a bit of improvised roleplay. Is there something else here that I've missed?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Ruin Explorer, I do not believe this is a Straw Man. While the poster you cite did *not* mention your posts, you are responding as if you saw yourself as the target, and so I looked back. And it is not hard to find this as a fair summary of the position you are espousing. Not exactly, of course, but near enough that anyone who has read the thread can identify the position. Certainly *you* identified with the position being described, which is enough to counter the straw man argument.

Your whole post seems to boil down to "Well you didn't actually say it, but you sort of sound like the kind of person who would maybe say a thing like that, so it's totally okay to claim you did say it!" (which is what you, particularly, actually, are doing).

Frankly, that's beyond the pale.

I didn't say it, neither did anyone else, and this bizarre and lengthy attempt to magically generate it from my posts is really seriously bad form, I'd say. The Straw Man is still a Straw Man, and no amount of "You didn't say it but I feel like you would!" will make it not one.

Let me be explicit - it is not a "fair summary" of my position, and I am in literally an infinitely better position to judge that than you. My entire beef here is that it's a cheap, unfair, bad-faith Straw Man of my position - a very facile one, I will grant you, but an unfair one nonetheless. That several people, including you, apparently WANT it to be my position doesn't make it my position, nor does it make your summaries "fair".

EDIT - I'm not going to argue this further, note. I didn't say that or intend that or subliminally project it on to your computer screen. It is not right to attribute it to me, or to this thread. Given that I think I may be the only one who has said much nice about 4E, improvisation-wise, I don't think you can really run the "Maybe he didn't mean you?!" line, either...

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I wasn't trying to say other editions did it better in a more active way, just that my experiences with Page 42 is that it didn't come up very often (though it worked when it did come up) and it was not active in it's encouragement TO PLAYERS.

Sure, but I wasn't talking about players exclusively or even primarily, so...

I liked Page 42 a great deal and I hope 5e uses that concept and expands on it as well. I just hope it's presented to the players in the PHB.

Indeed! I suspect we might see something vague in the DMG, and nothing in the PHB, sadly. I really hope they at least give some mechanics suggestions, rather than just saying "Oh, deal with it however!" as most editions have done.

Otherwise, I think merely having fewer rules passively encourages players to do different things, better than 3e/4e passively encouraged it.

EXACTLY!

4E has about 20-30% as many general-case rules as 3.XE/PF had (i.e. not specific spells/powers), maybe less. 5E looks to have about 60-80% as many general-case rules as 4E (very rough estimate in both cases).

My players picked up on this pretty quickly - I think in part because we'd be screwed over by trying complicated stunts involving looking up lots and lots of rules in 3.XE, and trying the same things in 4E involved so much less looking up - in large part because of Page 42 telling me "Just use meeeeeeeee!" (but also because the general-case rules are more simple).

EDIT - Maybe this is all because my players had a DIFFERENT problem in 3.XE to a lot of people?

In 3.XE, we tried stuff, the rules screwed us, because they could be applied to almost all situations and often demanded multiple d20 rolls (I was mostly a player in 3.XE, but did DM).

I think what you're saying though is that for your group, it wasn't that the rules screwed you, necessarily, it's that people were so obsessed with the rules and what was on their sheet that they didn't think outside that.

So going to 4E, my group, though "ground down", does try stuff again, and boom, it works, and suddenly we're rollin'!

Whereas most groups continue to stare at the character sheet, perhaps even more intently, is that it?

If your character sheet presents a lot fewer options to look at, it's more likely the player will think to turn to things outside that character sheet text to try and resolve a problem in an encounter.

Sure, but that's been true in every edition. We can logically expect casters to be less creative in 5E, if it's really a strong influence.

I think it's a good goal to try and get players to stop looking at their character sheets so often, to stop looking at figures on a table grid so often, and to think about the situation more in terms of "how would my character deal with this" rather than "what abilities expressed by the rules for this character are intended to deal with this".

I don't think "how would my character deal with this" is typically the source of improvisation and awesome stunts, myself - more "what would be awesome is if..." - but perhaps that's semantics. Obviously no single thing can cause this - theatre of the mind vs battlemat helps, but it's not without cost. Similarly, not giving PCs ANY defined abilities forces them to improvise, but at the cost of the DM basically deciding what happens - with no guidelines, in most editions. As a DM, I've found I prefer a middle ground - where the PCs have a decent amount of on-sheet power (all of them, not a select subset - particularly as the subset is selected by class choice - which is often an aesthetic choice, not player gameplay preferences in that regard - if it was player gameplay preference I'd have less of an issue with it), and where improvised stuff has some decent guidelines that I can work from, rather than asking me to just make it up entirely - I suspect you feel similarly, given your hope that 5E also has some guidelines.

 

[Kobold Stew]

Hi There.

I'm glad I caught that you edited your post before I responded. I'll deal with the original post and then the edit.

Your whole post seems to boil down to "Well you didn't actually say it, but you sort of sound like the kind of person who would maybe say a thing like that, so it's totally okay to claim you did say it!" (which is what you, particularly, actually, are doing).

Frankly, that's beyond the pale.

I didn't say it, neither did anyone else, and this bizarre and lengthy attempt to magically generate it from my posts is really seriously bad form, I'd say. The Straw Man is still a Straw Man, and no amount of "You didn't say it but I feel like you would!" will make it not one.

I'm sorry you feel that direct engagement with your actual words, rather than blithe summaries or fanciful imagined quotes, is bad form.

I am calling you out for bad argumentation, and for not engaging with your interlocutors in respectful conversation. You demonstrate that again here.

I'm sorry you find it bizarre and beyond the pale to address the substance of what you say. I understand fully that your experience differs from that of others, and from mine. That diversity should be celebrated, rather than attacked.


Now the edit:

Let me be explicit - it is not a "fair summary" of my position, and I am in literally an infinitely better position to judge that than you. My entire beef here is that it's a cheap, unfair, bad-faith Straw Man of my position. That several people, including you WANT it to be my position doesn't make it my position, nor does it make your summaries "fair".

It may not be; I only said it seems to be a fair summary to me. As I said, and as you know, I have know idea if what you originally called a straw man was a reference to you or not. But that's the way I, as someone who has played 4e, took it. I am telling you the association that I made.

I, as someone who has played 4e, do not see it as cheap, or unfair, or bad-faith. I recognize that any rule system can result in a diversity of play styles.

And one of those play styles, apparently experienced by many people in the thread, generated experiences close to mine.

Believe me, your position is not in doubt. You have been very clear, many times.

Happy gaming!

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I don't agree - the DM was encouraged to use Page 42, to put in interesting terrain, etc. - all this was active design encouragement away from AEDU-only focus. I don't buy that unless the players are directly encouraged, it somehow "doesn't count".

My experience as a player was that the "encouragement" was so weak as to prevent me from ever trying it. The DM could go through all of the effort of setting up interesting terrain, but if it's only ever going to deal level-appropriate damage (as page 42 suggests), then I might as well save myself the effort by just using my explicit powers.

It's kind of the opposite problem from 3.5, because that edition would let you do anything - with a ton of checks, to make it much more likely that you would fail. Is that preferable to 4E, where you can do anything relatively easily - to no real benefit beyond what you could do otherwise?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

[MENTION=23484]Kobold Stew[/MENTION]

I don't feel like anything you're saying here is honestly meant. You made assertions about my views that were untrue, that you knew at the time were untrue, and then said it was fine for people to act as if they were true. If you can't see why I think that is bizarre behaviour, I can't help you. It's pretty funny that you claim to be "calling me out for bad argumentation" when your entire argument appears dishonest in it's nature

 

[Ruin Explorer]

My experience as a player was that the "encouragement" was so weak as to prevent me from ever trying it. The DM could go through all of the effort of setting up interesting terrain, but if it's only ever going to deal level-appropriate damage (as page 42 suggests), then I might as well save myself the effort by just using my explicit powers.

Sure, if your DM religiously sticks to p. 42 and your explicit powers do more damage than limited expressions and achieve the same things. You don't get 2E Wizards going to great lengths to pour molten iron from a giant bucket on people when they could just cast fireball, either.

If your DM sticks with the spirit of p. 42, though, rather than the strict numbers, you should have a better experience.

Also, even looking at default stuff and stuff in DMG2, let alone homebrew, lots of terrain in 4E inflicts stuff you might not even have access to, so this seems a bit off.

It's kind of the opposite problem from 3.5, because that edition would let you do anything - with a ton of checks, to make it much more likely that you would fail. Is that preferable to 4E, where you can do anything relatively easily - to no real benefit beyond what you could do otherwise?

I agree that 3.5E has that problem, I've mentioned exactly that a number of times. It obviously isn't preferable, it's much worse.

 

[Blackwarder]

If your DM sticks with the spirit of p. 42, though, rather than the strict numbers, you should have a better experience.

I usualy try to avoid responding in threads such as this, Especialy since they can easily sink into personal attacks but I have to point out that you just moved the goal posts.

I honestly don't understand your POV, you said that you had X experience playing 4e, others have said that they had Y experience. Fine. What's the point in arguing about it? You'll have to excuse me for not reading all of your posts (by this point I just scan them briefly) but I don't think that anyone have said that your experience is invalid, the most people said (and iirc I was one of them) that their experience was different.

And how the hell does this several pages long argument pertain to the thread title?

Warder