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

[Staffan]

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."

It's not really any more or less gamist, it's just a worse mechanic – particularly for things like Inspire Competence, which is basically unusable in Pathfinder.

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...

To me, a "cooldown" indicates something you can do once, and then it needs to recharge for a bit, but that time should be short enough that you can use it multiple times in a day. Most of the examples you give have multiple uses, and many only recharge on a long rest. That's more of a "resource management" thing, much like spells.

Of course, it doesn't help that 5e has hour-long short rests so you don't get short-rest abilities back until you can take a proper lunch break. That, and Hit Dice being the complete opposite of healing surges, are probably my biggest irrational pet peeves about 5e.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

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.)

Yeah, character creation in 5e is still very complex. I've been playing Ironsworn with Hussar and his gaming group (which I guess is also "my" gaming group now? It's been a year already, sheesh!), and creating characters there should never take more than about five minutes even for an absolute beginner. Pick three assets that don't have prerequisites (so, 3 things from a pool of like 40ish?), assign your score array (+3, +2, +2, +1, 0), come up with your character's core quest or quests (formally, "Vows"), done. The world-building questions bake in starting Vow possibilities.

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).

Yeah, if you're going to try to tap into that, absolutely do not ever make stuff that is "for kids." Avatar: the Last Airbender is a good example of what you can do to market to younger audiences. Build things that are deeply authentic, that take the time and show the work. Don't shy away from Adult Themes, by which I emphatically do not mean gore nor sexytimes, but rather adult-scale tragedies and the darkness that can really exist in our world. Build up a setting that has an interesting premise, and a great deal of potential for something engaging: discovery, or change, or meaningful conflict, or personal expression. Preferably, as many of those things as you can squeeze into it. To continue the example, the world of Avatar feels like it's full of so many things to discover, particularly because of the hybrid animals and the deep world-building but the story's need to move quickly through that world-building. It's a world definitely in need of change for a variety of reasons (even if I don't like the specific changes that Korra made to it), and it absolutely has numerous meaningful conflicts going on, not all of which get solved over the course of Aang's story. And "personal expression", my goodness yes! Bending as martial arts that create (constrained) magical effects is brilliant, since there are far, far more martial art traditions than just those shown in AtLA.

That's the kind of thing you need to do, and I think it's why Eberron didn't quite make the mark. It was close, it had quite a bit of potential, but didn't quite land.

I will say, I don't think a setting as aggressively nihilistic and dystopian as Dark Sun is likely to be a candidate for this. You could work with dystopian or nihilistic concepts, but there would need to be counterbalancing things, like maybe the setting is kinda zeerust-y, full of sincere humor and heart to counterbalance the dark elements; or maybe it's a much darker take on 4e's "Points of Light" concept, where society isn't just teetering on the brink, it's functionally collapsed outside of a tiny handful of bastions barely keeping out the night from their own walls.

But perhaps that's just my own biases talking. I've grown incredibly weary of the over-the-top grimdark stuff, whether it be "grimderp" where the setting is constructed to be SO overwhelmingly bleak and horrible that it crosses the line twice and becomes distractingly goofy, or "shitdark" where the setting is merely overwhelmingly bleak without crossing the line twice and thus just feels...awful for seemingly no reason other than to revel in awful people being awful to one another for as long as there are other people to be awful to. That's why I prefer what I call "chiaroscuro" fantasy; the dark is there, and real, and dangerous....but the light is also real and knows how to be dangerous in its own way.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

It's not really any more or less gamist, it's just a worse mechanic – particularly for things like Inspire Competence, which is basically unusable in Pathfinder.

Well, the point of the original complaint (made by another, not by you, of course) was pretty clearly the gamism of "Encounter" powers, being likened to "cooldowns" as unpleasantly gamist things.

To me, a "cooldown" indicates something you can do once, and then it needs to recharge for a bit, but that time should be short enough that you can use it multiple times in a day. Most of the examples you give have multiple uses, and many only recharge on a long rest. That's more of a "resource management" thing, much like spells.

Actually, most of them recharge on short rest. Rage (though 5.5e changed that) is one of the few that doesn't, and Arcane Recovery is technically once a day, but it's tied to taking a short rest...so it functionally makes some of your spell slots pseudo-short-rest recovery. Fighters' Second Wind and Action Surge are short rest; Bardic Inspiration becomes short rest after a few levels; Wild Shape refreshes with a short rest; Warlock spell slots are short rest; etc. I specifically picked out these things because they were short-rest based.

Of course, it doesn't help that 5e has hour-long short rests so you don't get short-rest abilities back until you can take a proper lunch break. That, and Hit Dice being the complete opposite of healing surges, are probably my biggest irrational pet peeves about 5e.

Oh, personally I don't think either of those pet peeves are irrational. Short rests are not the length they are because they make for better gameplay this way, nor is there anything especially simulationist about saying that (frex) ki points or Warlock spells require one hour to restore rather than five minutes.

Personally, I would have preferred that they went with a 15-minute short rest. That's long enough that it can be meaningfully interrupted in a lot more contexts than the 4e one could, which reinforces useful design space. But it's also short enough that you can meaningfully do it after most combats, unless you're on a real and very serious time crunch, which again sets aside useful design space. An hour-long "short" rest means taking more than two a day is practically equivalent to taking half of a full-on LONG rest! That's just ridiculous.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I will say, I don't think a setting as aggressively nihilistic and dystopian as Dark Sun is likely to be a candidate for this. You could work with dystopian or nihilistic concepts, but there would need to be counterbalancing things, like maybe the setting is kinda zeerust-y, full of sincere humor and heart to counterbalance the dark elements; or maybe it's a much darker take on 4e's "Points of Light" concept, where society isn't just teetering on the brink, it's functionally collapsed outside of a tiny handful of bastions barely keeping out the night from their own walls.

I strongly disagree that kids need or want "counterbalancing". If that was true, 40K would have fallen out of favour with teenagers long ago, rather than going from strength to strength.

Kids who are beyond the weepy/clingy (so like, what 8? 9?) age are way more armoured against apocalyptic scenarios like that than adults are, are way more accepting of them in "Oh well" kind of way, and so on.

The actual people who you're talking about aren't "kids" at all, it's 20-somethings, particularly mid-late 20s, that's who need "sincere heart and humour" or they can't take stuff. It's no accident that the utter cults that form around "sincere heart and humour" shows are mostly actually filled by 20-somethings (as demonstrated extremely well by countless fandoms in the '10s, particularly on Tumblr). In fact, a lot of them are in their 30s and 40s, or even older.

I will say it's important to kids that the dark can be fought, but not that there's some cheery comfy cozy cup of tea MFers doing so.

But perhaps that's just my own biases talking.

With respect, it 100% is your own biases.

So is the difference between what you call chiarascuro fantasy and grimdark. One man's grimdark is another man's chiarascuro, if people just look at it differently. Grimderp is real but that's usually just bad writing by not very bright and/or thoughtful writers, same with goofy dark.

I used to like the "sincere heart and humour" stuff myself but it's become so trope-y and repetitive in its execution, or most of it has, that's almost become almost like gothic literature, absolutely predictable and feeling very "put on" rather than genuinely sincere - even when it is! Simply because it's hitting notes we've seen hit a hundred times before (and often not as well as the previous attempts). Ironically I'd draw a similarity to the "crosses the line twice" sentiment you express - it's very easy for "sincere heart and humour" stuff to do exactly that, and end up just looking fake as hell, even if the author totally, totally means it.

I attempt to avoid bias here by looking at what I liked when I was a kid and seeing if kids still like that, and hell yeah they do.

I feel like it's a big risk to try and inject "sincere heart and humour" into a setting you're writing/designing, because really that stuff flows from the characters, and when you try and jam it into a setting, or make a dark setting full of weirdly cheery characters, I think that can go very wrong.

I feel like I'm not expressing this as clearly as I could be, but if see a wanker in a tweed suit with round glasses and a kindly expression and neat goatee and greying big hair if masc-presenting or greying big hair tied back haphazardly if femme-presenting, perhaps with random steampunk prosthetic limb, I know we're in for a very stereotypical and tired time.

Kids don't need comfy. Kids don't cozy. That's stuff for older people or small children, not kids (as in like, people the age we were when most of us started playing). To be clear I know you're not saying they do, but a lot of stuff that tries to have "sincere heart and humour" immediately veers very hard into cozy/comfy stuff.

I will say I think it's a little safer to inject a bit heart into a setting that to try and go for the full "sincere heart and humour" deal. Like sincerity, humour, those are relevant to a TV show, less so a setting. The PCs will provide humour. There's no question. There's no need for designers to add in any of their own and indeed it can be counterproductive to insist on doing so. Likewise sincerity - that's going to be on the group and the DM, not the setting.

Sorry I'm really blathering on and still haven't fully gathered my thoughts on this, but I think it's very much less-is-more here re: "heart and humour", especially with settings rather than TV shows or books.

 

[Pedantic]

The skill points are not alike, yes. But actually using the system? Far more like 3e than any other system--including 4e, the one that the rules actually did get more-or-less copied from. I have no idea why people choose to run 5e's system as if it were 3e. But they do, much to 5e's detriment. Its skill system, especially if they hadn't utterly jettisoned Skill Challenges, could've actually been good.

This is completely untrue. 5e's skill system looks nothing like 3e, setting aside the question of skill points entirely. 3e skill entries start with a complete description of what each skill allows, followed by a table of modifiers, followed by any modifying kinds of checks (climbing 1-handed, for example). 5e has nothing like:

With a successful Climb check, you can advance up, down, or across a slope, a wall, or some other steep incline (or even a ceiling with handholds) at one-quarter your normal speed. A slope is considered to be any incline at an angle measuring less than 60 degrees; a wall is any incline at an angle measuring 60 degrees or more.

Instead we get a fun note buried in the Move action, that specifies sometimes your DM might ask you to make an Athletics check as part of movement, or they might not.

After all that, 3e skills specify the time it takes for each attempt, whether or not you can take 10/20 (a thing you were frequently expected to do, because the results of getting specific number were spelled out above), and then guidance on whether you can try again. Hard to compare to 5e's comparatively quite abbreviated skill section, and absolutely opposite in orientation. Given a description of a situation, skills in 3e simply don't offer choices to the DM about adjudication; you don't set DCs in 3e, you derive them.

You're correct in identifying the 5e skill system is largely taken from 4e; all it's removed is the table 42 set of difficulties by level in favor of a single band of difficulties. In play, it's got far more to do with skill challenges than 3e's skills; you propose a course of action, the DM decides a difficulty with some guidance, you succeed or fail. The difference is entirely down to the number of checks involved before the result is determined.

The most uniquely 5e skill design choice is automatic pass/fail on natural 1/20s.

 

[tetrasodium]

This is completely untrue. 5e's skill system looks nothing like 3e, setting aside the question of skill points entirely. 3e skill entries start with a complete description of what each skill allows, followed by a table of modifiers, followed by any modifying kinds of checks (climbing 1-handed, for example). 5e has nothing like:

Instead we get a fun note buried in the Move action, that specifies sometimes your DM might ask you to make an Athletics check as part of movement, or they might not.

After all that, 3e skills specify the time it takes for each attempt, whether or not you can take 10/20 (a thing you were frequently expected to do, because the results of getting specific number were spelled out above), and then guidance on whether you can try again. Hard to compare to 5e's comparatively quite abbreviated skill section, and absolutely opposite in orientation. Given a description of a situation, skills in 3e simply don't offer choices to the DM about adjudication; you don't set DCs in 3e, you derive them.

You're correct in identifying the 5e skill system is largely taken from 4e; all it's removed is the table 42 set of difficulties by level in favor of a single band of difficulties. In play, it's got far more to do with skill challenges than 3e's skills; you propose a course of action, the DM decides a difficulty with some guidance, you succeed or fail. The difference is entirely down to the number of checks involved before the result is determined.

Good summary. It would dramatically improve 5e if the 5e skill subsystem system & how that subsystem was threaded through the core rules had more in common with 3.x then it does at present.

 

[Belen]

Well, the point of the original complaint (made by another, not by you, of course) was pretty clearly the gamism of "Encounter" powers, being likened to "cooldowns" as unpleasantly gamist things.


Actually, most of them recharge on short rest. Rage (though 5.5e changed that) is one of the few that doesn't, and Arcane Recovery is technically once a day, but it's tied to taking a short rest...so it functionally makes some of your spell slots pseudo-short-rest recovery. Fighters' Second Wind and Action Surge are short rest; Bardic Inspiration becomes short rest after a few levels; Wild Shape refreshes with a short rest; Warlock spell slots are short rest; etc. I specifically picked out these things because they were short-rest based.


Oh, personally I don't think either of those pet peeves are irrational. Short rests are not the length they are because they make for better gameplay this way, nor is there anything especially simulationist about saying that (frex) ki points or Warlock spells require one hour to restore rather than five minutes.

Personally, I would have preferred that they went with a 15-minute short rest. That's long enough that it can be meaningfully interrupted in a lot more contexts than the 4e one could, which reinforces useful design space. But it's also short enough that you can meaningfully do it after most combats, unless you're on a real and very serious time crunch, which again sets aside useful design space. An hour-long "short" rest means taking more than two a day is practically equivalent to taking half of a full-on LONG rest! That's just ridiculous.

I disagree. An hour gives you time to clean or repair equipment, eat or drink, maybe remove armor and rest, care for animals. Pray or study.

15 minutes is not a rest after exploring and combat.

 

[occam]

5e is more similar to 3.5 than 2e, any day of the week. It's far more a successor to 3.5 (and 4e even, where do you think bounded accuracy comes from???) than anything from TSR.

Similarities in rules, ideas, and how things work (HP dice keep coming, multiclassing, Feats, etc) are all more akin to how 3e worked than TSR D&D. 1e, BECMI, BX, 2e are all more closely related and work better than anything with 5e. 5e is far more compatible with 3e than 3.X or 5e are with 2e.

It's not even close. C&C is far more of a successor to 2e than 5e. Heck, almost any OSR game is more related to 2e, regardless of what version of D&D it is based on...than 5e.

People have short memories.

It has nothing to do with short memories; I think you're missing the real argument, which others have made in this thread. Obviously 5e owes a lot of its design to lessons learned from 3e and 4e. And it is, overall, similar to 3e in a lot of ways, but it's like a 3e designed in an alternate timeline, without a bunch of the ultimately unnecessary stuff introduced in the actual 3e (like typed bonuses, and iterative attack and AoO rules that cemented character tokens to fixed 5-foot squares once combat started, and nitpicky skill points, and the godawful feat proliferation, and the LFQW dichotomy, etc.) that made it a PitA to use after a while.

As a result, if the last D&D you played was 2e (or 1e), then 5e makes for a smoother transition to a D&D with modern design principles than either 3e or 4e does; 5e feels more similar to the experience of playing earlier versions of D&D than 3e or 4e does.

 

[GreyLord]

It has nothing to do with short memories; I think you're missing the real argument, which others have made in this thread. Obviously 5e owes a lot of its design to lessons learned from 3e and 4e. And it is, overall, similar to 3e in a lot of ways, but it's like a 3e designed in an alternate timeline, without a bunch of the ultimately unnecessary stuff introduced in the actual 3e (like typed bonuses, and iterative attack and AoO rules that cemented character tokens to fixed 5-foot squares once combat started,

Iterative attacks are still in 5e. Like, they can even start at 2nd level for some classes, and are much more of a pain to remember (is it a bonus action or not? Can I use this bonus action for this or this?) than even 3e was!

Things that limit movement and square movement also...

Still exists to a more limited degree, but is still there along with a bunch of other items to lock someone down.

and nitpicky skill points,

Not as many skill points, but they sure operate differently than in 2e...more like...oh yeah...that's right...3e and 4e.

You even have DC's!!!! Wow...yep...DC and stuff is solidly 3e and beyond.

And it's not even OPTIONAL (which skills and NWP were optional in 2e)! You can't have a character that just may know something because they are that class and it fits naturally, or someone wants to try anything they can and it's the Dm's fiat (normally an ability score to roll under...none of this Skill/proficiency/other bonus junk that 3e came up with) to simply figure out what they need to roll or even do (say...they speak it out instead of rollling, no dumb diplomacy checks...no dumb intimidation checks...no dumb persuasion checks...etc).

and the godawful feat proliferation,

Still there, and now even mandatory in 5.5!

and the LFQW dichotomy, etc.) that made it a PitA to use after a while.

And once again, still exists in 5e.

As a result, if the last D&D you played was 2e (or 1e), then 5e makes for a smoother transition to a D&D with modern design principles than either 3e or 4e does;

Actually 3.0 was a smoother transition. 5e is actually hated by most of my old time players, and loved by the younger generation.

5e feels more similar to the experience of playing earlier versions of D&D than 3e or 4e does.

Did you even play 3e???

3.0 was designed to play like 2e. That people didn't and started munchkining the heck out of it meant that the way the game was viewed changed (and they promptly came out with a more defined 3.5), and they found out the way they designed 3.0 was probably deeply flawed, but 3.0 was actually far more of a transition (especially if you played with Skills and Powers previously) from 2e than 2e to 5e would ever be.

One of the KEY complaints I've heard (and I've had myself) is a bunch of cuss words in regards to how flawed Bounded Accuracy is and how much more limiting it is than 2e was (or from those who tried 3e, how much more limiting it is than even 3e was).

 

[Chaltab]

Good summary. It would dramatically improve 5e if the 5e skill subsystem system & how that subsystem was threaded through the core rules had more in common with 3.x then it does at present.

oh god no that would be awful.

The most uniquely 5e skill design choice is automatic pass/fail on natural 1/20s.

That isn't a thing in 5E either! Only attack rolls are automatic pass fail.