D&D 5E D&DN going down the wrong path for everyone.

[Jester David]

CharOp is not the be-all, end-all of D&D though, and while I said in my response that you CAN dump them, there is nothing obliging you to do so. I would hardly call CharOp's declarations "typical" choices for most gamers to make either. Only a small subset of the gamer population even cares to optimize, much less follow the builds on CharOp blindly. I am familiar with them, but mostly to mine ideas; bits and pieces.

Maybe. But I looked there in response to your comment that my ignorance regarding 4e was showing by suggesting Str/Dex/Wis were the likely dump stats of a bard.

 

[Obryn]

Ugh. Trotting out this old cliche again...

Listen people...you need to go out and play some Big Eyes, Small Mouths so you can finally understand what ACTUALLY playing an Anime character is like. Once you do that... maybe this lame-ass comparison with 4E will finally be put to rest.

Everything old is new again.

I mean there's some verisimilitude gauntlets being thrown down, too. It's like 2008 has come around again.

-O

 

[Jester David]

Man, you seem to have an incredibly narrow view of what can be plausible in a fantasy world...

Sometimes it depends on my game. If I'm playing something that emulates Xena, I'm okay with 4e. If I want something more akin to a Song of Ice and Fire then I want something that feels more real.
But for the most part, I want the magic to feel magical and the martial to feel mundane. If the martial feels magical then, in comparison, the magical is less magical. But also where the fantastic elements of the game are because of magic or fantasy and not because of rule oddities.

 

[Jester David]

Everything old is new again.

I mean there's some verisimilitude gauntlets being thrown down, too. It's like 2008 has come around again.

-O

Yeah... and since the edition they were complaining about didn't do so well and died a quick death, those comments should not be dismissed outright.
The problems and complaints didn't go away after 2008, the people just stop playing and left for other games.

Doing the same thing twice and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.

 

[Mournblade94]

Ugh. Trotting out this old cliche again...

Listen people...you need to go out and play some Big Eyes, Small Mouths so you can finally understand what ACTUALLY playing an Anime character is like. Once you do that... maybe this lame-ass comparison with 4E will finally be put to rest.

If I don't want to play anime character's why would I play a game that is designed to play Anime characters?

 

[Obryn]

Yeah... and since the edition they were complaining about didn't do so well and died a quick death, those comments should not be dismissed outright.
The problems and complaints didn't go away after 2008, the people just stop playing and left for other games.

Doing the same thing twice and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.

I think it's also funny when people say their own personal beef with 4e was directly the reason we're getting a new edition. (which is arriving right on schedule. and which the evidently successful 4e is bankrolling through DDI, keeping D&D profitable enough that WotC literally just needs to sit back and watch 500k/month roll in while releasing no new products, instead letting them focus on outreach projects like reprints and pdfs.)

... But I'm sorry, you are saying something about verisimilitude?

-O

 

[Gorgoroth]

Sometimes it depends on my game. If I'm playing something that emulates Xena, I'm okay with 4e. If I want something more akin to a Song of Ice and Fire then I want something that feels more real.
But for the most part, I want the magic to feel magical and the martial to feel mundane. If the martial feels magical then, in comparison, the magical is less magical. But also where the fantastic elements of the game are because of magic or fantasy and not because of rule oddities.

+1, my thoughts exactly.

D&D rules conform to common tropes, as we'd expect it to, magic is magical and doesn't obey the usual laws of nature and physics, but the rest should, as best as it can given the limits of simulation in the theater of the mind. It's much easier to handwave complex physics effects narratively than to get people to swallow the idea that you push the table back AND the ogre behind it who weighs a ton.

Another example : you cannot jump more than six feet vertically, no matter how strong you are (unless you're playing a monkey PC race, maybe). You cannot punch out a dragon. These are things that the DM should just say "no". Just, no. There is still plenty of things you can do. Try dropping that portcullis on the dragon's head, or pushing a boulder off a cliff attached by a chain to the ogre's leg. Those are things that D&D is about, not "I have a power that tells me I can slip n slide any enemy, no matter how large, around the battle grid at-will". No, no, no, and no.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Meh. To each their own.
I just found the bard running around hitting people with a sword (using charisma no less) to be weird, as was the bard waggling their wand. Nothing particularly wand-ish about the bard class. The multiclassing was a fun nod to their 1e roots but in practice it just led the bard to feel less like a bard and more like other classes. Very few powers had a musical or song hook, other than some loose flavour text. And instruments were just implements, pretty much wands with "wands" crossed out and "instrument" written in its place. The majority of the powers could have been any leader class' powers. Words of Friendship was ridonkulous; skills were never the best system in the game for hard math but giving a class with high Charisma who was likely trained in Diplomacy a +5 bonus pretty much whenever made their Diplo bonus unbeatable.

Personally, I always found 4e's alternate attack stats broke my verisimilitude. "Hey, I'm a bard. Strength and Dexterity are my dump stats so I can barely lift my rapier and am as clumsy as a legless dwarf, but I can stab you in the face using my charm." Yeah, a bard should have a high Charisma and might want to be in melee, but there had to be a better way to get the math to work than just saying "okay, you stab people with your personality."
But 4e was never the edition for people who wanted any semblance of verisimilitude in their game.

Well, FIRST of all I'd point out that the bard is an ARCANE class, and this is very much in keeping with the source material (Celtic and Norse Bards/Skalds). Beyond that there's nothing wrong with a character's primary method of beating the enemy being awing them, cowing them, and just overwhelming them with your personality, showmanship, etc. This is very much in keeping with the whole theme. Again, you have such a rigid idea of how game mechanics and narrative must interact that you're missing entire aspects of the game. My bard doesn't use speed or strength wielding his rapier as his primary means of defeating someone. However, think about this, his STR and DEX are not going to be exactly horrible. Even if one of them is an 8 that's only slightly below average (which we assume in the 3-18 range D&D imagines is about 10-11, indeed exactly where you have a +0 modifier). Most bard characters over most of their careers will be at least average in every stat. That's not the picture of weak clod. Even if you ARE weak and slow that won't force you to be a bad swordsman, it just means you would need practice and different tactics, like what the bard actually DOES use...

Also, I see nothing wrong with bardic instruments. Sure, they could have made instrument a generalized type of implement, but most bards will find playing an instrument advantageous (just maybe not always in combat), and many will no doubt have magical instruments that can be used as implements. Others have singing swords and bows (maybe other weapons too), which seem cool and thematic to me. I think instead of dissing something for what it is how about what's missing? Is there something you needed from this class that wasn't there? I don't see you mentioning anything.

As for being able to use wands, meh whatever. You can also refluff things easily if you want, so big deal. Bards are magical practitioners, so there's no real reason why they shouldn't be able to use the tools of the trade. I could see the various bard functions/styles being broken out in a different way, but the 4e way was certainly fine. Again, the issue relating to DDN is more that you refuse to do anything but wholesale rejection. Every aspect of everything 4e is bad, wrong, stupid, etc. You guys will never get any cred, and DDN won't get any cred at all, until that attitude dries up and blows away. Give it up!

 

[am181d]

Doing the same thing twice and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.

Just a pet peeve of mine, but *no* that's not the definition of insanity:

in·san·i·ty (inˈsanitē)
Noun
1. The state of being seriously mentally ill; madness.
2. Extreme foolishness or irrationality.

 

[Jester David]

That threshold is different for everyone though, and some people still find the things that you complain about to be entertaining. I don't think it would be fair to design D&D Next based on Jester Canuck's idea of a good game exclusively, nor to assume that your playstyle and preferences are the default.

And I honestly hope they don't. I'm happy being slightly fringe and having to kitbash my game out of modules and house rules. (That's what I'm doing right now anyway.)

But I believe it's easier to say "yes" than "no", and that it's easier to grant permission than take away.
So it's easier to have a game start with a semblance of verisimilitude and nods to physical limits and plausibility, but allowing DMs to say "forget the rules, you can do that." But to the limit of simplicity; the rules should stack on options needlessly just because it's easier to take them away.

Ideally the game will support a multitude of preferences from gritty to over-the-top and everything in between. If it does not, then it may fail to capture a significant portion of the community. I think we can agree that that would be a shame.

Absolutely. I agree with everything in that statement.
But with my philosophy described above, I think it's easier to start low (gritty-esque) and add until you get over-the-top. But it's also easier to add option to make the game even grittier by adding options like lasting wounds or greater limits limits (such as corruption from spells or spellcasting fatigue).