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

[Yaarel]

A tweaking of Attunement might work something like as follows.

Every magic item is assigned a rarity tier. Only upto three magic items can be attuned at any one time. It is impossible to attune magic items whose rarity tier is higher than the current level tier of the character. However, magic items whose rarity is two tiers lower than the character level tier no longer count toward attunement. So, a level 9 character can attune an unlimited number Common magic items.

Levels 1-4: Common
Levels 5-8: Uncommon
Levels 9-12: Rare
Levels 13-16: Very Rare
Levels 17-20: Unique


Additionally, every magic item continues the intention of its creator. So some magic items can "refuse" to be attuned for whatever intentional reason. Oppositely, the DM can introduce special "artifacts", that are powerful magic items that actively attune its user thus ignore attunement limitations.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Thats who the Treadmill typically was for. Weapon users using weapons..

Only 4E put it on spellcasters, as well.

Which, ironically, meant that 4e was the only edition of the game it was easy to remove the treadmill from.

But most of them never learn how many Magic items the game was designed around. Because the game always dances around giving answers.

4e gave answers, oD&D/1e gave tables which were kinda an answer. 3.X gave Wealth by Level. It's only 5e (and to a lesser extent 2e) that really ducks the question.

 

[Remathilis]

hmmm, i might say i don't think ability scores ought to matter less, but perhaps matter more equally, so that's you don't get that rush for 20 because it might be more valuable for your broadsword battlemaster fighter to instead invest in INT so they can learn an extra fighting style and bumps their number of uses of maneuvres,

edit, i do however also think there ought to be a few more ASI sprinkled into progression than there currently is.

When it comes to ability scores, BECMI had it right. Every score gives you a boost, but none directly affects your class except to boost your xp gain by 5%/10%. AD&D messed that up by making scores affect core competency in your class (Int affected wizard spells known and chance to learn, wisdom affected priest spell slots, Dex affected thief skills) and coupled with fighter exceptional strength, basically informed players that anything less than 18 was ineffective. Unfortunately, that mentality carried over into 3e and 4e's scaling math and in 5e's "x uses per day". I'd rather that scores have less influence on things like how many times you can use a class feature (for example, bardic inspiration). Spells prepped going to a fixed # from stat mod + level was good, but they backslid on so many others.

My perfect D&D would not care if your wizard has a 13 intelligence or a 20 intelligence when it came to your spell casting ability. Then you open the door to allow characters to not rocket to 20.

 

[Minigiant]

4e gave answers, oD&D/1e gave tables which were kinda an answer. 3.X gave Wealth by Level. It's only 5e (and to a lesser extent 2e) that really ducks the question

4e gave answers.

1e and 3e gave the answer but hid it in another answer. So if you ignored the Magic Item Tables or Wealth by Level table, you accidentally broke the system if you didnt include a replacement.

5e 2014 ducks the question and forces to to figure it out on your own.

 

[Zardnaar]

Fair enough, though I think you're in the minority on that.

Yes, it is a jaundiced view; because IME (both in-game and IRL) "teamwork" all too often consists of one person doing the thinking/planning and everyone else basically following orders. And I neither accept nor follow orders well in the least, but at the same time don't always want to be the one doing the thinking/planning for anyone other than myself.

If everyone thinking and acting for themselves is "total dysfunction" then so be it. In a typical D&D game I'd far rather have that than have a navy-seal team where everyone does exactly what they're told when they're told; and usually the reality ends up at a variable point along the spectrum between those, depending on a bunch of factors rarely if ever the same twice.

That said, what you refer to as total dysfunction in fact has one very important function: it's almost always the most entertaining and amusing type of play there is.

I've heard "defender" and "striker" often enough as football (soccer) terms but never "leader"; that's a new one on me, and I've followed football on at least a casual basis for many a year.

In terms of player-base, there wasn't much 2e left to crap on when 3e came out; and perhaps more notably 2e didn't crap on 1e or B/X/BECMI. That's what made the 4e marketing strategy so jarring: it was a first, at least IME.

I'd give this more credence had PF1 not proven the opposite a year later. Those books were massive, and still sold pretty well ( I was at GenCon 2009 when PF1 was released, and you couldn't swing a cat without hitting someone holding a copy of that book!).

Unfortunately, the attention span I was willing to give it was more along the line of nine days*, after which I turned away...and in some disappointment, I might add: the build-up and pre-release booklets had my hopes up somewhat that 4e - unlike 3e - could and would be a system I'd either be willing to adopt wholesale or could find acceptable with minimal kitbashing. But, no such luck.

* - or however long it took me to read through the three books and realize what I was - and wasn't - seeing.

I don't remember what tech I had at the time but odds are very high it would have been too old/slow to run DDI, either then or soon after. Further, I seem to recall all reports on their big digital initiative - was it Gleemax? - pointing to no end of bugs and glitches and problems, which didn't exactly make me eager to leap into anything digital WotC were doing.

As for what else was missing other than some classes, my main recollections are of missing iconic monsters.

And sure, I most likely could have run a short campaign with it. But a short campaign was exactly what I didn't want at the time, as about 4-ish months before 4e came out I'd just started my latest long-running campaign (which is still going).

Teamwork mostly happenstance or a veteran players co ordinating things. People play a d do what they want.

You woukd require a full party of Zards or ECMO3 to co ordinate a party.

Its also really hard to get someone to play support/leader.

Another big failure of 4E. What sounds good in theory falls apart in reality. Squad based tactics to that extent not popular and complexity as well. If youre lucky you have 1 "leader" who knows what theyre doing. Player issue not edition. Strikers and artillery are most popular options imho.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Teamwork mostly happenstance or a veteran players co ordinating things. People play a d do what they want.

You woukd require a full party of Zards or ECMO3 to co ordinate a party.

Its also really hard to get someone to play support/leader.

Another big failure of 4E. What sounds good in theory falls apart in reality. Squad based tactics to that extent not popular and complexity as well. If youre lucky you have 1 "leader" who knows what theyre doing. Player issue not edition. Strikers and artillery are most popular options imho.

Except it didn't fall apart in reality in 4e IME but does in 5e. That's because 4e gave ways of working together that 5e doesn't have - and people want to do cool stuff.

Provoke tactics (where e.g. a slippery rogue offers an opportunity attack to set up a fighter mark punishment) are cool stuff. So is pushing someone right underneath the wizard's incoming blast.

In my experience people loved to work together in 4e once they worked out how it works, and love to in Daggerheart because in both games if you did there was feedback that the whole was greater than the sum of the parts. And one of 5e's many mediocrities is that it doesn't enable this.

 

[Maxperson]

Thats who the Treadmill typically was for. Weapon users using weapons..

And armor. 1e/2e didn't do it for armor the way 3e and 4e did.

But most of them never learn how many Magic items the game was designed around. Because the game always dances around giving answers.

If the game is designed around player characters having three major Magic items are per player character then, say that..

Or do attunement slots.

0. 5e was designed around 0. We know this. Anything above 0 is table preference and has an impact on balance.

 

[Maxperson]

When it comes to ability scores, BECMI had it right. Every score gives you a boost, but none directly affects your class except to boost your xp gain by 5%/10%. AD&D messed that up by making scores affect core competency in your class (Int affected wizard spells known and chance to learn, wisdom affected priest spell slots, Dex affected thief skills) and coupled with fighter exceptional strength, basically informed players that anything less than 18 was ineffective. Unfortunately, that mentality carried over into 3e and 4e's scaling math and in 5e's "x uses per day". I'd rather that scores have less influence on things like how many times you can use a class feature (for example, bardic inspiration). Spells prepped going to a fixed # from stat mod + level was good, but they backslid on so many others.

My perfect D&D would not care if your wizard has a 13 intelligence or a 20 intelligence when it came to your spell casting ability. Then you open the door to allow characters to not rocket to 20.

That would be horrible in my opinion. Why should a wizard with a 3 int be as good at spellcasting as one with a 20? Why should a fighter with a 3 strength be as good in combat as one with a 20?

 

[Reynard]

My perfect D&D would not care if your wizard has a 13 intelligence or a 20 intelligence when it came to your spell casting ability. Then you open the door to allow characters to not rocket to 20.

If Int doesn't matter, why have it at all?

 

[Minigiant]

0. 5e was designed around 0. We know this. Anything above 0 is table preference and has an impact on balance.

5e was designed around 0 +X magic items.

But 5e was designed around getting non +X magic items in a slow increasing escalation. But that was subtle and not explained.