D&D 5E D&D Next Blog: Beyond Class & Race

[Ratskinner]

Well, I'm actually very pleased by this article. Having finally had a chance to read this thread, I feel like some people read a different article than I did. Nature of the game, I guess.

I agree that there is a risk of imbalance favoring the "customizers" over the "pregens." However, I think there are ways to mitigate that risk. Primarily, make the pregen builds awesome with as much synergy as you can fit in them. I've never understood the idea of providing purposefully sub-optimal pregens or examples. That being said, its important to note that what may be imbalanced in one game, can swing just fine in another.

There is one concern I still have, which wasn't addressed directly, AFAICT. Simple vs. Complicated. Yes, I can get away with making only 4 "choices" for character gen, and then just follow the lists for each as I level up. However, that still sounds like my 10th level character is going to have a page full of little tweaks, feats, and abilities. To me, that's a complicated character, albeit one that I only made four choices to get. I hope that there are some basic (perhaps I should say, "Essential") themes which would be home to far fewer fiddly bits, but still keep up with the complicated characters. I think that would be far more important to some of the players around my table than picking a theme as a general concept.

 

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=6688937]Ratskinner[/MENTION]
Actually I raised that question and Trevor gave a great reply...back on page 5 of this thread. He commented that he might bring the complexity question up with the design team for a future blog post or something.

 

[Ratskinner]

@Ratskinner
Actually I raised that question and Trevor gave a great reply...back on page 5 of this thread. He commented that he might bring the complexity question up with the design team for a future blog post or something.

So you did. I thank and XP you for it. Somehow missed that the first time through.

 

[El Mahdi]

Look at any example D&D build ever printed, and honestly tell me it isn't inferior to customized builds. Heck, look at other games too. I'm honestly surprised this is even a contentious point. I thought the lousiness of example builds was widely known.

Now, if that's all these preset Backgrounds and Themes are supposed to be, example builds, that's fine; there's room in the manuals for example builds. But they shouldn't be treated as more than that. Don't flesh them out to 20, don't print a bunch of them, don't reserve valuable names for them. Just print a few, and be done with it.

I'm not denying that this has happened in other games and even other editions of D&D. Nor am I denying this is a possibility in D&D Next. I have faith this won't happen, but it's still a possibility. However...

...A Possibility is not a Virtual Guarantee.

This isn't a case of parsing words. You keep presenting this as a fait accompli...and you do not have the means to know that or say that, with any accuracy whatsoever.

 

[Argyle King]

Maybe I'm wrong, but the impression I got was that your background and theme determined some of your feats, but not all of them. There seems to be a discussion going on about builds versus customization. What I got from the article was that you'd choose race, class, theme, and background. Each class and race would have suggested themes and backgrounds with them so as to make things easy for people who only want to make the two traditional choices.

However, either way, I did not get from the article that theme and background packages make all of the choices for you; neither did I get the impression that you can just completely avoid theme/background and just cherry pick what you want. The impression I got was that after making your initial 4 choices (either way, you're making 4 choices; one of the ways just disguises it as 2 choices,) you would still be able to make choices later in your character's career. So, what am I saying?

I'm saying that I think theme and background give you an initial package of stuff, but that initial package does not preclude you from still gaining things and making choices as you level up.

 

[Hawke]

My group really dug 4E themes and never really got excited about picking some feats the way they did choosing a theme. Except maybe some racial feats like the dragonborn breath ones, the affect they had on their character wasn't as neat as what themes got you. The article might not communicate much surprising if all it is saying is that they will include suggested builds or packages or whatever. What it does communicate to me is that the 4E style Themes that my group dug are no more.

Bummer cause I could pretty much leave feats behind or at least make them limited to every 5 levels so the ones you do pick always have some kind of interesting punch. I'm still trying to wrap my head around what they want to do with feats, especially with mentions of feats potentially letting wizards gain at-wills.

 

[WheresMyD20]

I don't like this idea. Even if you have pre-gen builds, casual players still need to deal with a multitude of skills, feats, etc.

How about if the DM doesn't want to deal with the micro-management of all the different skills, feats, etc.? Can the DM still run a simple game?

I thought the point of 5e was to have a simple core and then layer on complexity. This article makes it seem like 5e has a complex core and then is trying to layer on simplicity. It's backwards and I doubt it will accomplish what they want it to.

 

[Sunseeker]

I don't like this idea. Even if you have pre-gen builds, casual players still need to deal with a multitude of skills, feats, etc.

How about if the DM doesn't want to deal with the micro-management of all the different skills, feats, etc.? Can the DM still run a simple game?

I thought the point of 5e was to have a simple core and then layer on complexity. This article makes it seem like 5e has a complex core and then is trying to layer on simplicity. It's backwards and I doubt it will accomplish what they want it to.

I'm not sure what kind of D&D you'd be playing if you didn't ever deal with skills. Feats I can take them or leave them provided there's some form of customization. But skills are well...the other two pillars of the game, I don't think it'd quite be D&D if you ran the whole thing off the 6 ability scores.

 

[WotC_Trevor]

I don't like this idea. Even if you have pre-gen builds, casual players still need to deal with a multitude of skills, feats, etc.

How about if the DM doesn't want to deal with the micro-management of all the different skills, feats, etc.? Can the DM still run a simple game?

I thought the point of 5e was to have a simple core and then layer on complexity. This article makes it seem like 5e has a complex core and then is trying to layer on simplicity. It's backwards and I doubt it will accomplish what they want it to.

With this idea, I don't see why backgrounds and themes couldn't be optional. If that's the case (Rob didn't say one way or the other, but it makes sense to me that it's optional) then you could easily run a game without themes and backgrounds which would leave out feats and skills.

 

[Mercule]

I'm of two minds on this one. On one hand, I have a couple players who would love to just pick class, race, and theme and carry on with life. There are some days, that's all I'd care to do. At the very least, it gives me a quick way of building NPCs. So, I'm fine with some of this.

On the other hand, when I was looking through my 3.5 PHB pondering "how would I build 5e", I realized that not only did 3e suffer from an outrageous level of feat bloat, but it was made worse by having things that should really be class abilities thrown into feats -- and the same feat list, even. Why is Weapon Specialization a feat and not on some selectable class ability list for Fighters? Better yet, why are Weapon Specialization and Improved Familiar on the same list of anything? They had no problem making Uncanny Dodge span multiple classes, so why not Improved Familiar? What logic is used to determine which bucket an ability goes in? I'm really, really concerned that both Themes and Backgrounds signal an approach to 5e that pushes feats even further into the catch-all for stuff the designers don't know what to do with.

I think it was Monte who said that feats were originally supposed to be a class ability just for Fighters. I'm really starting to think that's where they should have stayed. Some sort of perk mechanic would be nice in D&D, but the way feats were handled in both 3e and 4e wasn't the right way. They became just a listing of powers. The strength of D&D compared to, say, Hero System is that D&D is simple and straightforward. If you use a mechanic like feats to try to be all things to all people, you lose that benefit and just find yourself with a list of prebuilt "templates" that's longer and more boring to read than the actual list of Lego-style powers in Hero -- and considerably less easy to use.