D&D General D&D Evolutions You Like and Dislike [+]

[Lanefan]

the irony of being half sized but having twice the diet...

Hobbits are just little self-propelled eating machines, aren't they?

 

[SkidAce]

That is the general intent of 5E. Now, that was also the general intent of 1E AD&D. Most everybody was 0-level. Only leader types typically had any class levels and using just 2 or 4. Of course, walk into a village in an adventure and it seems like most NPCs you'll meet will have class levels. Then there were NPC classes that could do things PCs couldn't, sometimes much much better than (but those were mostly in Dragon magazine).

However, racial abilities ere not tied to level, so it could be assumed that all dwarves had the same inherent characteristics.

But agreed, they would not have much of the level based stuff.

 

[CreamCloud0]

I've been thinking how you can make species traits more prominent and I'm increasingly at a loss except to give them moar powah! I mean, species already can fly, teleport, breathe fire, resist energy, heal with a touch, cast up to 2nd level spells, see in darkness, and grow large. What can you even do to make a dwarf fighter feel different from a human or elf fighter?

okay, consider, a '24 dwarf has
-darkvision
-poison resistance
-bonus HP per level
-limited use tremmorsense
how many of those things really actually influence your turn-to-turn experience playing your dwarf in a way that will feel significantly different from if you were a human?

i think species need a wide array of abilities so that something about being their species will be frequently coming up or offers them options (mostly) unique to them, i don't think abilities that can only be used a handful of times before needing to recharge on a long rest are good either(though some are a necessity), why can my dwarf only detect vibrations about a half-dozen times per day?

Spoiler: My Dwarf

Dwarf
Speed:30ft HP:15+2d4 Size:Medium
Enhanced Senses: you have 120ft darkvision, you also have 10ft tremorsense while standing on solid surfaces such as earth, stone or wood, you can increase the range to 60ft by concentrating, the range is halved when standing on semi-stable substances such as sand, mud or deep snow.
Dwarven Resistance: you have resistance against poison damage, additionally you have advantage on all CON saving throws.
Dwarven Endurance: you gain an extra +1HP at every level and when you take the defend action you can expend a hit die and recover HP equal to the amount rolled+CON.
Geokinesis: you know the Mold Earth cantrip, you can cast it as a bonus action, additionally when you take the attack action you may substitute one attack to cast Earth Tremor, when you use this ability if you have spellslots you may expend one of 2nd level or higher to upcast it, this ability recharges on a max d4 roll at the end of your turn, pick your casting stat for this spell from INT, WIS or CHA when you create your character, you may cast Earth Tremor as an action with your own spell slots if you have any.
Stable: you have advantage against being knocked prone and are not affected by difficult terrain resulting from earth or stone, this includes magical difficult terrain of those kinds.
Powerful Wielder: if you are proficient with any of the following weapons: Handaxe, Light Hammer, Battleaxe, Warhammer or War Pick you may treat it as if it has the finesse property, the thrown range of Handaxe and Light Hammer are increased to 40/90 for you, additionally you count as one size larger when determining your carrying capacity and the weight you can push, drag, or lift.
Defensive Master: while wearing armour or a shield that you are proficient in you gain an additional +1 AC for each.

Spoiler: My Elf

Elf
Speed:35ft HP:12+1d6 Size:Medium
Enhanced Senses: you have darkvision for 60ft and advantage on perception checks, you may add a d6 to any check you make to notice the presence of magic.
Trance: instead of sleeping you meditate for 4 hours in a semi-concious state.
Fey Ancestry: you have advantage on saving throws against being charmed and magic cannot put you to sleep.
Elven Magic: you learn any three cantrips of which's effects do not deal damage(Shillelagh and Magic Stone are not considered to deal damage), you may also cast detect magic as a ritual, pick your casting modifier of INT, WIS or CHA when you create this character.
Arcane Blademastery: if you are proficient with any of the following weapons: dagger, sickle, spear, shortsword, scimitar, rapier, longsword or greatsword, you may use it as an arcane focus, additionally you may also substitute your INT in place of the usual attack modifier required when attacking with it.
Long Learned Life: when making a skill check for arcana, history, nature, religion and one other skill you choose that you are proficient in, you may treat any roll of 9 or below as a 10 instead.
Shifting Step: once per move action up to 15ft of your movement can instead be teleportation to a location you can see, however you must walk at least 5ft before you can teleport.

Spoiler: My Dragonborn

Dragonborn
Speed:30ft HP:15+2d4 Size:Medium
Enhanced Senses: you have darkvision for 60ft and have advantage on any checks which require smell.
Draconic Ancestry: you are distantly related to a particular kind of dragon, this choice determines the element of certain other associated features pick one of [fire, cold, lightning, poison, acid].
Chromatic Weapons: you have natural weapons that deal the damage type of your ancestry
-Breath Weapon, when you take the attack action you may substitute one attack to make either a 15ft cone/30ft line breath attack, save for half, DC=8+CON+PB, it deals 2d6 damage, 3d6 at 6th, 4d6 at 11th and 5d6 at 16th, this attack recharges on a max d4 roll at the end of your turn.
-Claw Attacks, you make an attack with your claws, they are considered d6 finesse weapons that you are considered proficient in, you gain extra claw attacks with extra attack, you can use your bonus action to make an additional claw attack when you attack with them, if you attack a creature that has resistance or immunity to their element they instead deal d4 Slashing that is considered magical for the purposes of determing resistances.
Tail Sweep: when you make a melee attack you may use your bonus action to attempt to trip a creature adjacent to you, they must make a DEX saving throw or fall prone, if the target is large it has advantage on the saving throw, if it bigger than large the attempt fails.
Scaled Hide: your natural scales provide protection, you resist the damage of the type associated with your ancestry, additionally when not wearing armour you have an AC of 14+DEX(max 3).
Dragon Wings: you have a large pair of wings, as a reaction while in the air you can use them to slow your decent as well as glide a horizontal distance triple the height that you started at, at 5th level you gain a fly speed equal to your walkspeed, you must maintain concentration to remain airbourne between turns else you safely descend to the nearest available location to land, if your concentration is forcibly broken you fall to the ground, your flyspeed is halved if you are wearing heavy armour.
Frightful Roar: you let out a terrifying roar and all non-allied creatures in a 30ft radius who can hear you must make a WIS saving throw or become frightened of you for 1 minute, they can reattempt the save at the end of each of their subsequent turns, if you have proficiency in Intimidation the initial save is made with disadvantage, if you have expertise the check is automatically failed(if they resist fear it's made with disadvantage instead), this ability uses the same charge your breathweapon uses.

this is a dwarf, elf and dragonborn rewrite i've made before, can you see how playing each of these would stand out as their own experience and not feel like playing any of the others?

It might have been an overreaction to making Species abilities so tied to attributes. It made some class combos better or much worse. I think that could totally be offloaded from stats. Though, some of the things like proficiency was weird. Where every elf knows longbows kind of thing. How to do it uniquely without it being illogical has a been a trick that hasnt been figured out.

yeah i'm fine with dropping ASI modifiers or generic proficiencies as what define species from each other.

 

[billd91]

Is there anyone else who thinks Classic, 2e, and 4e are better than 1e, 3.5, and 5e?

With the exception of the ranger class which I would pull over from 1e, I'd play 2e in a heartbeat over 1e. No question.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Does that not also happen with the "organic" experience?

Like sincerely, if you've had a party of five characters consistently for (say) a year and a half of play, and then one of them dies, isn't that gong to lead to a lot of difficulties and dull, weak consequences because of dropped plot threads and "conclusions" that are anything but? Perhaps it is simply an attitude thing, but I find the "organic" method falls apart just as badly with character deaths. Especially TPKs. And to be clear, I run that method myself. I have used exactly one..."module", you might call it, and I heavily customized it for my own purposes--and it doesn't really have much of a "story" to it anyway. Otherwise, I do all bespoke work--and it is just as difficult to keep things sensible when you've had ten (or more?) different party members over the course of eight years. Maybe the change of just one character doesn't stress it that much, but it's still a stress, and the more you made it matter that it's these people in this place at this time, the more those deaths are going to strain things.


Subtracting a negative rather than adding a positive is not the same. The two may result in the same probability distribution, but that doesn't mean they are the same process to reason through.

And if you disagree, all I can tell you on this is, I've got diff-eq and vector calculus under my belt. In short, I'm no slouch at math (had to be good at it for my physics courses!), and yet I found THAC0 absolutely impenetrable for the longest time. The one and only reason I ever became even vaguely fluent with it is because I had to if I wanted to play Planescape: Torment and Baldur's Gate I/II/ToB. And even then, it was infuriating because the text is wildly inconsistent in terminology. Sometimes -1 is a penalty; sometimes it's a bonus. And the same goes for +1 (albeit rarely as a penalty).

Found a paper on mental subtraction vs addition: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0732312301000608

It's just harder for people to do "10-8" than "8+2" in their heads.

 

[Yaarel]

Part of the 4e design philosophy appears to be to create rules that no longer require a DM to adjudicate ambiguity or narrative context considerations. It is rules that ensure gaming balance rather than DM fiat.

In a way, this was a continuation of 3e "simulationism", creating rules to autonomously quantify all aspects of the game world. But 4e prioritized the mechanics, and made versatile reflavoring a default norm. Giving players the control over flavor, made 4e the most flavorful, and diversely flavorful of all D&D editions.

The two flaws of 4e were. The fatal flaw was 4e killing the OGL. It alternative licensing made it unappealing for indy content to develop niches.

Second flaw was, its universal mechanical advancement schedule guaranteed gaming balance while the reflavorability made almost any character concept possible. But the schedule was too intricate and inflexible (such as, all classes needing to gain their utility powers at only certain levels). Thus it was difficult to modify mechanics while maintaining balance. Most DMs became dependent on the official products. Relatedly, the indies were unable to fill the gaps. The lack of DM mechanical tweaking made the game less of a living culture.

If 4e allowed OGL to remain alive, we would all be playing 4e 2024 now. The products from indies would have proven which mechanics worked well, and WotC would have adopted trends.

As it is now. 5e kept the 4e ideals of balancing player options, but made the game engine mechanics flexible and tough and easy to tweak. Rulings-not-rules is also part of the pushback against 4e mechanical inflexibility.

But most importantly, the OGL now CC is alive and well, so indies can help meet gamer needs and keep 5e alive.

 

[jmartkdr2]

I am trying to figure this out…

Without a predetermined plot, a story is emergent…after play. This is especially true if you consider D&D to be a wargame with additions.

That said, in our current campaign we have had cut points before a new series of challenges emerge. These might be chapters if not stories.

But either way, I am in the camp of us playing a game and then ascribing a plot after the fact unless the dm already predetermines the outcomes.

We can’t write about beating the bad guy if it never happens. Or I don’t know the details until they take place.

I used to hang out with a guy who was working on his PhD on English.

He made a distinction between "stories" and "narratives." A narrative is a set of events happening to people and/or characters presented in a medium. Me telling an anecdote, a novel, a history text, a ttrpg session, a movie, all of these are narratives.

A story has an arc - a beginning, a middle, and an end. There's a coherence to it. Most narratives one encounters will be stories (or at least attempted stories) but some really aren't - they're just accounts. A ttrpg session, or even a campaign, generally does not quite meet this definition of "story," though if the characters have motivations and try to pursue them, it's often really close.

Then there are storygames like most PbtA games that have procedures and rules designed to ensure an actual story happens.

 

[Reynard]

The fatal flaw was 4e killing the OGL. It alternative licensing made it unappealing for indy content to develop niches.

I don't think this can be overstated. If 4E had gotten just Paizo on board, the entire history of D&D over the last nearly 20 years would look different.

 

[jasper]

Likes advantage, bounded accuracy, and less publishing schedule
Dislikes too many races with no real role play differences, Passive perception, darkvision common.

 

[Minigiant]

+ Growth of Customabilty. PCs would be weirder and less traditional or more focused on theme than the common NPCs.

- Advantage and Disadvantage. Little bonuses addition was always a headache to me.

- Less focus on race/species. Yes races hare not as class tilted but their features are bland and don't grow.

- Traditionalism in mid to high level fantasy interpretations. A 5' 5" human facing off with a dragon and living would have unbelievable feats of fantastic acts. D&D still won't address how it looks past level 5.