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

[soviet]

Harder, certainly. But Pendragon did it back in the mid 80s, so certainly not impossible.

Greg Stafford is like the 'Simpsons Already Did It' of RPGs

 

[Distracted DM]

Evolutions I don't like:

• I never cared for "damage on a miss." Probably never will.
• I wish they hadn't moved away from monster templates. I liked the versatility and customization they brought to the game.
• I never liked multiclassing in any edition. Someone saying "my adventurer is a fighter/sorcerer/wizard" makes about as much sense to me as someone saying "my doctor is a doctor/doctor/doctor."

Evolutions I do like? Pretty much all of it, but especially:

• I say this as someone who is a fan of math, loves math puzzles, and does statistics for fun: the d20 system was a huge improvement over THAC0, and I can never go back.
• I'm a big fan of the Advantage/Disadvantage mechanic. I think it is far superior to the endless stack of bonuses and penalties of older editions, especially 3rd Edition/3.5 Edition.
• Magic item attunement slots. That was a brilliant way to solve the "Christmas Tree" issue I was having in earlier editions.

I also like Advantage/Disadvantage, it's great... but I also think it gets leaned on too heavily, and then you have advantage coming from so many sources it's invalidating a lot of them cuz you can only have "advantage." So bonuses and penalties do have their place, but yeah I'd never want to go back to 3e's tons of little modifiers.

Regarding attunement, again, yeah it's a great idea and it's well-implemented.. for the most part. I think things like wands suffer, though, because they're attunement- there are often better uses of attunement, which means wands end up going unused. I think going back to earlier editions' non-attunement consumables works best for wands (which is what I ended up doing in my games).

 

[Remathilis]

Otherwise, the DM making restrictions comes off as the bad guy, every damn time.!

I think the fact that DMs feel like the bad guy when they limit options says exactly what it should about limiting options...

 

[Necropolitan]

I think the fact that DMs feel like the bad guy when they limit options says exactly what it should about limiting options...

No, it's a completely irrational feeling.

If a player insists on going against the theme of a campaign by demanding to play something that doesn't fit then they're the bad guy.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I wholly understand the reasoning behind homogenizing the PC ancestries and humanoid monsters between settings, but I consider it regrettable. Every old setting does, and every new setting  should, have its own unique character and the population is a big part of that.

My only caveat here is that not having a bunch of restrictions can, itself, be "its own unique character" if it is leveraged correctly.

That's precisely what Eberron does. Despite both it and Forgotten Realms being "kitchen sink" settings, I don't think anyone would accuse Eberron of being easily mistaken for FR. In this case, not because they don't have something in common (allowing most stuff), but because Eberron goes quite hard on making anything it explicitly includes truly woven into the setting. Even when dragonborn were added with 4e, there was a very natural place for them--really, it filled a hole that was kinda weirdly empty, we just didn't notice before!

 

[EzekielRaiden]

No, it's a completely irrational feeling.

If a player insists on going against the theme of a campaign by demanding to play something that doesn't fit then they're the bad guy.

Is it irrational to want to play the game that the book tells you is playable? That is what sounds irrational to me.

 

[Necropolitan]

Is it irrational to want to play the game that the book tells you is playable? That is what sounds irrational to me.

Yes, it's completely irrational to demand that DMs be forced to do whatever players want as long as they rules lawyer hard enough.

DMs have been banning broken or otherwise overpowered options since 3.5 at least and every official campaign setting has specific lore.

Are you seriously claiming it's unreasonable for DMs to ban Silvery Barbs just because it's in a book?

 

[Necropolitan]

My only caveat here is that not having a bunch of restrictions can, itself, be "its own unique character" if it is leveraged correctly.

That's precisely what Eberron does. Despite both it and Forgotten Realms being "kitchen sink" settings, I don't think anyone would accuse Eberron of being easily mistaken for FR. In this case, not because they don't have something in common (allowing most stuff), but because Eberron goes quite hard on making anything it explicitly includes truly woven into the setting. Even when dragonborn were added with 4e, there was a very natural place for them--really, it filled a hole that was kinda weirdly empty, we just didn't notice before!

Eberron and the Forgotten Realms have restrictions.

It's ambiguous if Eberron's gods exist or what they are if they do exist and in the Forgotten Realms divine power only comes from the gods.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

It's ambiguous if Eberron's gods exist or what they are if they do exist

that's like...the exact opposite of a restriction lmao. that lets dms do whatever they want with it.
an actual eberron restriction is that it's cut off from the rest of the dnd multiverse by the nature of how it's constructed so you can't do like spelljammer or planescape from it without changing that entirely

 

[Necropolitan]

that's like...the exact opposite of a restriction lmao. that lets dms do whatever they want with it.
an actual eberron restriction is that it's cut off from the rest of the dnd multiverse by the nature of how it's constructed so you can't do like spelljammer or planescape from it without changing that entirely

"It's ambiguous" vs "They're obviously real and active" is a restriction.