D&D General Chris Perkins and Stan! - previous D&D edition thoughts

[Aldarc]

I thought influence from MMOs was sufficient to indicate that. Never claimed 4E was an MMO in paper form.

Never played MMOs thought the concept was crap. Wife did so learnt terminology from her.

There is a LOT and I repeat 'A LOT' of equivocation of arguments that goes on when detractors of 4E talk about the influence of MMOs or computer games on 4E., and part of the problem here is that people are reading far too much into what Perkins is saying about 4e than what he actually says.

 

[Zardnaar]

There is a LOT and I repeat 'A LOT' of equivocation of arguments that goes on when detractors of 4E talk about the influence of MMOs or computer games on 4E., and part of the problem here is that people are reading far too much into what Perkins is saying about 4e than what he actually says.

For me it's a little bit around terminology on roles and encounter powers in effect being cooldowns.

Cool downs aren't unique to MMOs either. Idk what game used them first.

 

[Aldarc]

For me it's a little bit around terminology on roles and encounter powers in effect being cooldowns.

Cool downs aren't unique to MMOs either. Idk what game used them first.

Dungeons and Dragons, and that was in the era before video games.

 

[Staffan]

Dungeons and Dragons, and that was in the era before video games.

D&D has had X/day abilities since forever. I am curious however about games with shorter-term "cooldowns", like 1/hour or 1/5 minutes or so.

I think the first iteration of encounter-level cooldowns I've seen in D&D was the Binder from the 3.5e Tome of Magic, where many of the vestiges offered abilities that recharged in 5 rounds.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

For me it's a little bit around terminology on roles and encounter powers in effect being cooldowns.

Okay, but the thing to remember is, that terminology didn't actually come from MMOs.

It came from soccer. There is no MMO that calls damage-dealing classes "strikers." That's a soccer term: people who strike forward into the enemy part of the field in order to score a goal. No MMO calls support/healing characters "leaders." That's a soccer term: people who go ahead of the strikers in order to set up a good shot for them.

I'm not sure if "Controller" is directly from soccer. That's the only one of the four roles that is, in fact, semi-commonly used to speak of stuff in MMOs...but it's almost never an actual role, because a class purely centered around crowd control effects would not be very enjoyable. (Guild Wars 1 suffered this problem with its Mesmer class. It was an almost pure support/control class, having very little to contribute to survivability, healing, or defense, and only a very small amount of offense. This made it a great pick for your secondary profession, but they made a very difficult pick for your primary one. GW2 notably reworked Mesmer to have much more damage potential.)

I don't really see how encounter powers are "in effect" cooldowns. Like the only relationship is that you can't use them whenever you like. Such things have been in D&D for ages. I don't understand why "this trick can't be repeated over and over whenever you like" becomes a "cooldown"--especially because most video game cooldowns are not once per fight, and much closer to once every 10-60 seconds, thus being "many times per fight, but not in rapid succession."

Consider, for example, the "rounds" of Rage or Bardic Music from 3.x. Those are far more actually like MMO mechanics! Specifically, they'd be charged stances that rebuild charges when not active.

Cool downs aren't unique to MMOs either. Idk what game used them first.

Sure. But I'm not even sure they're unique to video games. For example, variable-recharge (e.g. roll a d6, recharges on a 6) might even date back to 0e, and that's functionally a cooldown with a slightly randomized duration (roughly, once every six rounds of combat, but you can assume it's always available at the start.)

 

[Zardnaar]

Okay, but the thing to remember is, that terminology didn't actually come from MMOs.

It came from soccer. There is no MMO that calls damage-dealing classes "strikers." That's a soccer term: people who strike forward into the enemy part of the field in order to score a goal. No MMO calls support/healing characters "leaders." That's a soccer term: people who go ahead of the strikers in order to set up a good shot for them.

I'm not sure if "Controller" is directly from soccer. That's the only one of the four roles that is, in fact, semi-commonly used to speak of stuff in MMOs...but it's almost never an actual role, because a class purely centered around crowd control effects would not be very enjoyable. (Guild Wars 1 suffered this problem with its Mesmer class. It was an almost pure support/control class, having very little to contribute to survivability, healing, or defense, and only a very small amount of offense. This made it a great pick for your secondary profession, but they made a very difficult pick for your primary one. GW2 notably reworked Mesmer to have much more damage potential.)

I don't really see how encounter powers are "in effect" cooldowns. Like the only relationship is that you can't use them whenever you like. Such things have been in D&D for ages. I don't understand why "this trick can't be repeated over and over whenever you like" becomes a "cooldown"--especially because most video game cooldowns are not once per fight, and much closer to once every 10-60 seconds, thus being "many times per fight, but not in rapid succession."

Consider, for example, the "rounds" of Rage or Bardic Music from 3.x. Those are far more actually like MMO mechanics! Specifically, they'd be charged stances that rebuild charges when not active.


Sure. But I'm not even sure they're unique to video games. For example, variable-recharge (e.g. roll a d6, recharges on a 6) might even date back to 0e, and that's functionally a cooldown with a slightly randomized duration (roughly, once every six rounds of combat, but you can assume it's always available at the start.)

3.5 was opt in though. Pick those classes if you like what it's offering.

4E it was universal.

I'm a heavy consumer if 3.5. 50-60 books. Even I missed a lot of the late 3.5 stuff. Alot of 4Eisms were in those books.

If I missed it being a whale I'm guessing a lot of the greater user base missed it.

 

[Staffan]

Consider, for example, the "rounds" of Rage or Bardic Music from 3.x. Those are far more actually like MMO mechanics! Specifically, they'd be charged stances that rebuild charges when not active.

Point of order: 3.x didn't have rounds of Rage/Bardic Music. It had X uses per day, with each use lasting a certain number of rounds (with bardic music, varying depending on what use you put it to). Changing to rounds/day was a Pathfinder change, and at least for bards it was a huge nerf (somewhat ameliorated by some action economy improvements).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

In 5E tried to reduce time to make characters & monsters.

I'd say that relative to 4E it actually failed at the latter. 4E's DDI let you create monsters a lot faster than 5E does by any method, and 4E actually had rules for creating monsters, unlike 5E 2024 which now has none lol.

(It's also not much faster at creating characters than 3E/4E/PF - it is faster, but not vastly so - what's much faster is levelling them up though, far fewer choices and importantly - basically no required "planning" unless you're multiclassing.)

What's funny is I'm not sure that "younger audiences" really even want products directed specifically at them. As a young teen I remember nothing irritated me quite as much as well-meaning attempts to make something for my age group specifically, which always ended up feeling like it was for "kids". You also don't want products directed at grogs of course, to be fair.

I think capturing the zeitgeist is something pretty distinct from this, and that TSR actually did a better job of that than WotC has really ever achieved, when they managed to drop Dark Sun and Planescape within three-four years of each other, both of which spoke to "youths" of that era in a way that nothing WotC has ever made has (the closest being the general, vague "dungeonpunk" vibe of 3E, but they never capitalized on that by, say, making a dungeonpunk setting, because Eberron, despite being cool, sure ain't it).

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Point of order: 3.x didn't have rounds of Rage/Bardic Music. It had X uses per day, with each use lasting a certain number of rounds (with bardic music, varying depending on what use you put it to). Changing to rounds/day was a Pathfinder change, and at least for bards it was a huge nerf (somewhat ameliorated by some action economy improvements).

Okay, fair.

Point of chaos: I don't see how "You can only sing three times today" is any less openly gamist than "you can only sing six rounds today." If 4e brought to mind "cooldowns" with Encounter powers, I don't understand why Rages, Bardic Musics, Wild Shape uses, Smite Evils, and Turn/Rebuke Undead charges don't bring to mind cooldowns. Nor why 5e would not do so even more, because you have...

Barbarian: Rage
Bard: Bardic Inspiration
Cleric: Channel Divinity
Druid: Wild Shape
Fighter: Second Wind, Action Surge, and Indomitable
Monk: Ki points
Ranger: Favored Foe (with Tasha's)
Warlock: Pact spell slots
Wizard: Arcane Recovery

And that's ignoring both subclass features and any changes made in 5.5e. All but three baseline classes (Paladin, Rogue, Sorcerer) have some kind of per-rest feature, and even with those classes, two out of three (Rogue and Sorcerer) both typically get "cooldowns", short-rest abilities, from their subclasses.

So...if it's one's honest impression that X had "cooldowns" and Y did not, even though Y has almost as many things that function the same way as X did...I mean I can't really say that that impression is "wrong", but it certainly comes across as biased.

 

[mamba]

So...if it's one's honest impression that X had "cooldowns" and Y did not, even though Y has almost as many things that function the same way as X did...

I assume because one is AEDU, with per encounter abilities, and the other is x times per day, regardless of how many encounters there are, so it is more like spell slots