D&D (2024) Do you plan to adopt D&D5.5One2024Redux?

[Lanefan]

Here's the thing though, every game and every player's experience is different. I've faced lots of swarms (they suck in 3e) and my DM's often feel that the best solution to not having to explain a dungeon ecology is to fill it with constructs and undead. Adventures will use whatever critters make sense, and classic pre-written adventures tend to have a mix of monsters. So while you think swarms, constructs, and elementals are rare, they could be commonly used in a game.

IME swarms are very rare (can't recall the last time I met one as a player, and have DMed maybe one in the last two years), constructs are fairly common, and undead are a near-constant.

That said, while I wouldn't allow backstrikes or sneak attacks against such things I would and always will allow criticals against them; the in-fiction rationale being that you happened to hit a key bit that holds the construct or physical undead together, or the heart of what animates an incorporeal undead, or the most concentrated part of the swarm.

Having those monsters exist as a flat-out bane to one class and not others is bad design,

I disagree. It's neutral design, and sometimes players just have to suck it up and accept that they might not have brought the right character for the job this time. 1e Illusionists vs undead - who are by and large immune to illusions - is the classic example; or a Druid in a dungeon crawl. This is the risk factor in the equation when it comes to playing a specialist character like this.

The flip side is that there will be times when those same classes can tell the rest of the party to sit back and enjoy the fun as they wipe the floor with the dumb-as-rocks Ogres (Illusionist) or the woodland menaces (Druid). This is the reward factor.

So maybe in your experience there was value in the limitations on Sneak Attack, but I just didn't see it. It didn't help that Rogue also had no niche protection in 3.5, so you could easily replace one with a class that brought other kinds of utility to play, from Factotums to Skulks to Beguilers.

Backstrike in 1e was too limited by RAW. Sneak attack in 3e-4e-5e is IMO far too generous; and the whole idea of Rogues as being the go-to primary damage dealers is IMO faulty. There's a middle ground there somewhere.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

But Rain of Steel didn't give you an attack. It was automatic damage to everyone around you. Didn't matter if their AC was 10 or 30.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that. It's not great, but it doesn't bother me (and not because I don't care about "logic" - but because I can come up with many alternative things that are occurring in the moment, depending on exactly what the details are of what's going on. It doesn't have to directly line-up with striking everyone with your sword, or whatever.

Or take Come and Get It ... I'm surrounded by wolves and I insult them so they attack me no matter what the situation? How do I do that? You're so lame your chew toy is mashed potatoes so you don't hurt yourself? Your mother was a Chihuahua and your father smelt of elderberries?

Again, yeah, sometimes situations come up where it's harder to come up with a good story for what's happening. I appreciate the humor in coming up with silly ideas like you do here, but I find that I can always come up with something that works without resorting to illogic.

There were other issues as well with how things worked that were simply illogical. Although I think 6 seconds is too short of a round at high levels, I can simply state that a round averages to 6 seconds over the course of your entire career as a PC. It's an oversimplification but it doesn't scream "It's just a game" every time I take an action.

100%. A round really can't be exactly 6-seconds, but it's close enough.

In any case, I simply burned out on 4E. But it's water under the bridge. If you enjoyed it, great. I'm just trying to explain one aspect of why I don't care for the edition and it was not because of presentation or lack of imagination.

Yeah, that's fine. I don't disagree. I liked 4e for some things and not for others, myself. Ultimately I was quite happy to move on to a new edition. I miss a few things about it - mostly part of monster design. Not the numbers, those were mostly really off, but other parts of the design).

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I don't know. The capabilities granted by the 2014 background features are pretty light. Sending a message to your contact, getting free passage aboard a ship -- these are not game breaking abilities. I don't know why those types of events might not be a fit for a campaign or whatever. I also have no idea what you mean by "gotcha abilities". Care to elaborate?

I think it was elaborated enough in this thread.

 

[soviet]

That's the sword doing the pulling, not you; and the cagi ability implies you can pull them without having such a fine weapon on hand.

Sure, but I don't think that much matters. You could say it was a mixture, with the character using the magic of the sword to apply a combat trick he already knows to a particular enemy.

That sounds like you proactively moving to intercept the construct, rather than the construct moving to you. If you were already close to (or in) the construct's path I'd have no problem with this; but otherwise you'd likely be out of luck unless other factors were in your favour e.g. the wizard running to hide behind you.

I agree, that explanation is dependent to some extent on battlefield positioning.

I played with CaGI through the life of 4e, I used it a whole bunch of times against a variety of enemies. If there had been a situation where using it made no sense at all, and I couldn't find a plausible justification, I wouldn't have used it. I vaguely remember that coming up once where some enemies were up the stairs or something, and would have had to walk past a trap to get to me in a way that was nigh-suicidal, so I didn't use it. But the vast majority of the time I was able to find a good explanation.

 

[mamba]

I don't think anyone has answered those questions. Are you saying the Vistani never travel to the Material Plane? That's not what I read.

1) they basically always stay within Ravenloft domains, 2) they have no control over where they go when entering the mists

So they never visit the Material Plane?

pretty much

Is it important to the adventure that no one in the party has ever heard of them?

no, it simply is a consequence of you coming from wherever and having been sucked into Ravenloft. Because of that you know no one

If not, it seems kind of arbitrary for you to just decide what the PC knows or doesn't know without telling them that's what they're signing up for.

it is not arbitrary that you do not know the people on a plane you have never been to, it is not even arbitrary to tell you that about a different continent...

As to not knowing what they signed up for, that is not part of this discussion, the question is whether the feature would work, not why the character has it. For one I assume they know this when playing Curse of Strahd, that is on them. For another it might very well have been discussed. All we know is that they are playing CoS and one player chose the Criminal background for some reason.

 

[Raiztt]

Ravenloft is coolest and most interesting in it's original form where barovia is literally just a backwater country in the mountains. No planes or domains of dread nonsense.

 

[tetrasodium]

You're operating under the assumption that it's ok for pyromancers and fire dragon sorcerers to suffer for their theme.

Yes because there are other times they are simply using a good attack or effectively brought a gun to a snowball fight. We disagree and it says a lot you have been relying so much on a white room that overrepresents the commonality of these encounters in play or hides key details about the campaign.

 

[Hriston]

Very little, if you accept the premise that the DM might say no. The port they might be in is very small, one boat a week. The last twenty ships that docked there might be nothing but lizard folk sailors peddling their swamp jewelry. That is what the others are saying. The world and the place the PCs are exploring might have other considerations only thought about by the DM. In your case, there can be many reasons the DM says no. Maybe the port has been blocked for a month due to political tension. Maybe the port had a natural catastrophe, so the sailors you often associate that make the long journey over here, have not come for years. because it wasn't profitable. Maybe in this port, the navy has considered your native port vessels as pirates. The list goes on and on. That is my point.
I am fine with the DM saying sure, we can make room for your background feature. But it is a two-way street, the player needs to make room for the DM's knowledge, which they might not be privy to.

So for it to be very little extra work for the DM, I need to accept the premise that the DM might come up with any number of a myriad of reasons on the spot to shut down my feature without even telegraphing beforehand the adversity of the situation for my character. No thank you.

 

[Hussar]

1. I didn’t say that?
2. It has nothing to do with the post I just quoted of yours.

So I really don’t get this comment about world of Warcraft.

A copy of the post referenced above.

You didn’t. Others did. Perhaps you have them on ignore?

 

[mamba]

So for it to be very little extra work for the DM, I need to accept the premise that the DM might come up with any number of a myriad of reasons on the spot to shut down my feature without even telegraphing beforehand the adversity of the situation for my character. No thank you.

It is not about the work involved, it is about whether it makes sense for your feature to work... this also is not adversarial, in a pretty open campaign there can be situations that were not considered before, so the DM cannot tell you about it in session zero

If the feature possibly not working is too much for you, oh well...