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

[guachi]

+ascending AC. i don't know how you all dealt with thac0 before.

Then:
die roll >= THAC0 - AC

Now:
die roll >= AC - attack modifier

There's no difference.

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

I liked: Adventure paths.

I don't like: Adventure Paths.

When I was running long-term campaigns in the past I didn't know what I was doing. The story arc would just kind of wind and wend randomly (organically?) intrigue to intrigue. Towards an ultimate goa to be surel, but we kept getting distracted with side quests, strange happenings, and other unrelated adventures.

When I was introduced to adventure paths I thought they were the answer. Everything was planned out. You knew all of the details. The cumbersome details. The backgrounds that tied in with the campaign. The special monsters that set the tone. The characters, the many characters, from the plot makers to the tavern keepers. And, a plot arc that drives the and ties everything together

But now I crave that organic experience again. I don't want to feel like I have to play the same character throughout the adventure or it won't make sense.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Negative: people view the existence of things that they don't like as oppression by WOTC that forces them to play in a mandated style. While you and I, being Enworlders, are empowered enough to make the game our own despite any WOTC, weaker players arn't strong enough to withstand any "official" D&D material.

Unfortunately @Reynard this is entirely correct. I have seen it over and over again. The fact that dragonborn were included in the PHB was absolutely declared to be oppression of people who don't like and don't want to play dragonborn. That was a huge deal. There really was an article about it where an actual designer of D&D 5e talked about how they had to appease both people who like dragonborn, and people who are offended by the very presence of dragonborn. This is not a joke. This is not an exaggeration. They literally did say that they had to give equal consideration to "I would like to play dragonborn" and to "Dragonborn should never be part of D&D."

You can read the thing yourself here.

But the highlight is this (bold added for emphasis; "D&D;" is present in the original text):

We’ve tentatively agreed that D&D; is big enough to accommodate the various Player’s Handbook classes and races, and we want to make sure these options are available when the next version comes out. Although this move will certainly appeal to the audience who think dragonborn and tieflings kick ass, I wonder if their inclusion will offend people with opinions that matched mine a few years ago. I’d love to say that we’re all reasonable people and finding a tiefling in the next version of the game doesn’t mean they have to appear in every world or campaign, but, being an unreasonable person myself, I can understand how such a thing might be upsetting to people who have a clear vision of what D&D; ought to be. Likewise, I think people who dig the Nentir Vale and the 4E cosmology would be livid if we ripped out the dragonborn and tieflings, whose fallen empires are so important to shaping the land. Is this a no-win situation?​

So....yeah. The official position of WotC is, or at least was, that they have to appease the people who hate the very presence of things, or else they're being exclusionary. They have to avoid offending people who think that Dragonborn being in the PHB at all is offensive.

For reference, the above was written by Rob Schwalb. I am not trying to cast aspersions on the man himself, he sounds quite reasonable (despite his claims otherwise). But the position he is presenting here...is exactly what I summarized above. WotC has to placate jerks who demand that other people never be allowed to enter the so-called "Big Tent" edition.

Which is a big part, incidentally, of why I do not see 5e as a "big tent", and never have. It was never a big tent. It was simply a capitulation to the victorious edition warriors.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

But now I crave that organic experience again. I don't want to feel like I have to play the same character throughout the adventure or it won't make sense.

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.

Then:
die roll >= THAC0 - AC

Now:
die roll >= AC - attack modifier

There's no difference.

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).

 

[GrimCo]

Likes:
Unified xp progression across all classes
Milestone leveling
Skills in 3.x
Manouvers/stances in ToB, those were best martials i have seen across all editions
Point buy as one of default char gen options
AEDU system in 4e - best thing from 4e, one system where every class runs on same resource.
Minions in 4e - great for fast combat with tons of combatants
Advantage/disadvantage - great simple mechanic for resolving situational bonus/malus
Removing roleplay limitations as balance for mechanical advantages
Turning alignment into pure role play tool, rather than having mechanical tie ins
Sub classes - while still not perfect, they give some mechanical differences between characters of same class

Dislikes:
No simple casters
No way to gain more skills in 5e
Skill system in 5e in general
No mechanical support for social and very small support for exploration pillar
Giving everybody spell casting
Slapping spells instead of creating interesting abilities
Everybody has same attack bonus
Unified spellcasting for multiclass characters
Very few monsters with Save or die, or permanent drain abilities

 

[Lanefan]

When I was running long-term campaigns in the past I didn't know what I was doing. The story arc would just kind of wind and wend randomly (organically?) intrigue to intrigue. Towards an ultimate goa to be surel, but we kept getting distracted with side quests, strange happenings, and other unrelated adventures.

That sounds just fine from here. I think you knew exactly what you were doing, though maybe you just didn't realize it yet.

 

[Cergorach]

Do you mind if I ask: How much World of Warcraft (or indeed any MMO) have you played? And, how much 4e did you play?

I ask because I hear this comparison a lot, but it is often quite a superficial comparison--which I find is very counterproductive for discussion. But there are some people who really do mean it in a thoroughgoing way, so it's important to ask, rather than assume.

I played maybe a month of WoW specifically back in 2005, to move to EVE Online. And I've played a lot of other (fantasy) MMOs before and after. And the reason I didn't stick with WoW didn't really have to do with the game system, it had to do with many shards vs single shard and player influence within the MMO. I came back a couple of times to WoW, but it never stuck.

The reason I mention "The WoWyfication of 4E." is because people know what I mean and fill in the blanks themselves without me going into a two page details rant about what I liked and didn't like about 4e and why we didn't touch it at all.

I never played 4e, I was gearing up to DM for 4e after a hiatus from 3e, even bought 4e PHBs for all my players and I collected all the 4e books (and most of the cards and tiles). 4e was mechanically very strong, which I liked. Everything became 'magical', all kinds of new core species, in my eyes a complete lack of personality, major changes to established IPs (100 year jump for FR), This resulted in me the DM not having ANY inspiration to run a 4e campaign and no one else in the group stepping up til 5e came out.

This isn't about why my opinion is right or wrong, it's about the things we liked and disliked about D&D over the years and for some of us that's 35+ years of D&D (or longer).

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I played maybe a month of WoW specifically back in 2005, to move to EVE Online. And I've played a lot of other (fantasy) MMOs before and after. And the reason I didn't stick with WoW didn't really have to do with the game system, it had to do with many shards vs single shard and player influence within the MMO. I came back a couple of times to WoW, but it never stuck.

The reason I mention "The WoWyfication of 4E." is because people know what I mean and fill in the blacks themselves without me going into a two page details rant about what I liked and didn't like about 4e and why we didn't touch it at all.

I never played 4e, I was gearing up to DM for 4e after a hiatus from 3e, even bought 4e PHBs for all my players and I collected all the 4e books (and most of the cards and tiles). 4e was mechanically very strong, which I liked. Everything became 'magical', all kinds of new core species, in my eyes a complete lack of personality, major changes to established IPs (100 year jump for FR), This resulted in me the DM not having ANY inspiration to run a 4e campaign and no one else in the group stepping up til 5e came out.

This isn't about why my opinion is right or wrong, it's about the things we liked and disliked about D&D over the years and for some of us that's 35+ years of D&D (or longer).

Well, we were also told to discuss. If we cannot examine an opinion, then we cannot discuss.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

Only if you're concerned about the story arcs of the individual characters rather than that of the party or adventuring company as a whole.

If the (hypothetical) party accomplishes events A, B, C, D, and E and in so doing develops and plays out a great story, does it really matter that while the party started out with characters 1-2-3-4-5 by the time it got through E it consisted of characters 3-6-8-9-13?

How-why the turnover? Because characters 1-4-5-10-12 died along the way, character 2 retired (player left the game), and characters 7 and 11 left the party to go on different adventures in the same game/setting, picking up characters 14 and 15 en route (the two parties may or may not interact with each other in the future).

Not all that different from the Lord of the Rings party/parties, when you think about it........

Party starts out as characters 1-2-3-4, then picks up character 5 before long. A few adventures later they meet characters 6-7-8-9, that party runs for a few adventures then character 9 dies; shortly after that, character 8 dies and characters 3 and 4 get captured. The few that are left split up into two parties: characters 1 and 2 carry on with the original mission (picking up character 10 along the way) while characters 5-6-7 try to rescue the captives; meanwhile bumping into (and picking up, again) the revived version of character 9. And without anyone knowing it yet, captive characters 3 and 4 have freed themselves and started their own adventure, etc., etc.

And that worked out as a pretty good tale, I think.

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).

I've run 1e (or close) since forever and while I'm just fine with descending AC, I don't get THAC0 either. For me it just adds an extra unnecessary step to the arithmetic I'm already doing.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Only if you're concerned about the story arcs of the individual characters rather than that of the party or adventuring company as a whole.

I'm interested in both.

You don't have a team without members. And you don't have members without a team.

It's like saying one should be interested in the fabric, while not caring one iota about any of the threads. Without the threads, it's "fabric" in concept only. But a pile of disconnected threads is merely the material of fabric, not fabric itself. It is only the union of both--the individual pieces, and their collective structure--that makes fabric.

Likewise, story. Without the individual members, it's a "story" in concept only. With exclusively individual members, no wider network to fit them into, it's got the pieces of a story just randomly jumbled about.

Or if you prefer a food analogy: If you replace the cream with tomato puree, and the clams with sausage, and the potatoes with tortellini, and the Old Bay with salamoia bolognese, it's not clam chowder anymore, even if it has the right structure, because it has (effectively) none of the components. Likewise, a carafe of cream, a container of chicken broth, a pile of potatoes, a bowl of freshly shucked clams, and a container of Old Bay aren't clam chowder either. The former has lost all but the tiniest similarities to clam chowder, having only the most fundamental structure (soup). The latter has all the components, but components alone don't make clam chowder, the cooking does.

The whole thing--components, structure, and execution--is important. Telling folks to enjoy the components of a clam chowder isn't going to make them any more likely to listen to you, no matter how much you explain that nutritionally it's equivalent.