D&D 5E Doctors & Daleks - Cubicle 7 Brings Doctor Who to D&D 5E

Cubicle 7 -- makers of the official Doctor Who roleplaying game -- has announced that the Doctor will officially be coming to 5E soon under the name Doctors and Daleks. There are no dates or details yet, over than that the Doctors and Daleks Player's Guide will launch 'soon'.

A NEW COMPANION FOR YOUR ADVENTURES THROUGH ALL OF SPACE AND TIME!

The wild adventures of everyone’s favourite Time Lord comes to the world’s most popular roleplaying game in Doctors and Daleks. Take your gaming group into the TARDIS and travel anywhere, anywhen. Want to meet Leornado da Vinci? Or see what life is like in the year 3,000? What about another planet entirely? All of space and time is your Venusian macro-oyster, but keep your wits about you — there’s a lot of danger in the vastness of eternity.

We are delighted to announce that we are working on Doctors and Daleks – a new line of products that brings Doctor Who adventures to your table using 5th Edition rules! The first release – The Doctors and Daleks Player’s Guide will launch soon.

The wild adventures of everyone’s favourite Time Lord comes to the world’s most popular roleplaying game in Doctors and Daleks. Take your gaming group into the TARDIS and travel anywhere, anywhen.

We’ll also continue to support the new Second Edition of our award winning Doctor Who: The Roleplaying Game, with a host of new products on the way soon!

 

[Yaarel]

Before going into a new thread, is it desirable for one 5e class to use the 5e spell FORMAT to describe nonmagic 4e-style martial maneuvers?

A 5e Warlord could be written up this way. It would use the Warlock chassis for powerful at-wills (invocations), per-rest "maneuvers" (spells), and per long rest "exertions" (arcanum).

The per-rest slots could be slots, "stamina points", or utilize the superiority dice.

A benefit is, just as it is relatively easy to create a new spell, it is likewise easy to create a new maneuver.

Also, when spells and maneuvers parallel each other exactly, the balance between arcane and martial becomes transparent.

 

[Yaarel]

IMHO one of the main reasons the issues you highlighted have never been addressed post 3e, is that by and large the designers at WotC also like it that way.

I see the problem from a different perspective.

I want to play reality-bending mages at high levels. But some Fighter players that want to end the game at level 12 and to keep on playing in the Lord of the Rings setting only, are holding the D&D game back.

For me, making sure that Fighters have fair access to high level challenges, by access to rituals and magic items, are an important solution to keep up with the mages.

 

[overgeeked]

I see the problem from a different perspective.

I want to play reality-bending mages at high levels.

And you get to because that's how the game is currently designed.

But some Fighter players that want to end the game at level 12 and to keep on playing in the Lord of the Rings setting only, are holding the D&D game back.

But that's not true. The game goes to 20 where casters regularly thumb their nose at reality. Fighter players aren't holding anything back. They're left in the dust...around 7th-12th level. That some other poster wants a thing doesn't mean it's actually how the game is handled by the designers. The game isn't being held back. It's just a poster's preference. The game is designed for the "f-bomb reality" wizard players. Explicitly so.

For me, making sure that Fighters have fair access to high level challenges, by access to rituals and magic items, are an important solution to keep up with the mages.

But that's not how balance works. Wizards also have access to those exact same things...so it doesn't give fighters more. It gives everyone more...including the already reality breaking casters.

But there are several threads about this already. Maybe this tangent belongs in one of those.

 

[Yaarel]

As excursive as the Wizard-versus-Fighter seems, it is somewhat on topic in the sense that the Adventures in Middle Class created classes that were unbalanced with each other and incompatible with 5e Players Handbook classes.

Hopefully Doctors & Daleks will keep these Wiz-v-Ftr issues in mind to design balanced and compatible class options for this setting.

 

[Morrus]

e Adventures in Middle Class

You’re thinking of the Downton Abbey TTRPG.

 

[Yaarel]

And you get to because that's how the game is currently designed.

Yeah, but I want to enjoy the game. I dont want to feel guilty!

I care about balance. I want both the Wizard and the Fighter to be equally useful and desirable at the highest tiers.

Some Fighter players feel less happy at those tiers (13-16 and 17-20) that I enjoy as mage classes. I empathize with them. It would suck if I felt the mages were subpar at those tiers.

I want Fighter class to be able to keep up with the high tier possibilities.

The Fighter has feats to spend. Let the player choose a "destiny" (a high tier feat with a level requirement) or a bonded magic item by spending a feat for it. An experienced DM can do this on the fly for a Fighter player spending a feat. Designers can write up formal rules for these feat options.

Let every character do rituals via skill checks to access important narrative magic.

But that's not true. The game goes to 20 where casters regularly thumb their nose at reality. Fighter players aren't holding anything back. They're left in the dust...around 7th-12th level.

Some Fighter fans love powerful magic. Either they love wielding powerful magic items or else they want mythic or superhero characters. These Fighter players can keep up with Wizards at high tier. For them high tier destiny feats and magic items are an easy fix.

The difficult Fighter players are the ones who hate magic, want to end the game at level 12, and feel that "powerful" is in itself the "wrong flavor" for the Fighter class. These are the players that are holding the Fighter class back, causing the imbalance with the Wizard class, and thereby harming the entire D&D game. I dont know if there is a way to make the Fighter class powerful that is acceptable to them. It might be, e13 is the only solution for their own tables.

 

[Micah Sweet]

In theory? Yes, sure.

In practice? Not in this edition. If anything, magic items have been increasingly deprecated over the course of the past 8 years in the official modules and leagues. The game feels like it's moving away from loot-driven pulp fantasy towards epic high fantasy where the rewards of play are the narrative rewards.

Why does that matter to your game? The rules are there. The magic items are in the books.

 

[Weiley31]

Also, anybody that says that Dr. Who can't really or isn't particularly known for combat/fighting, I gotta say: I've been watching a good number of episodes of the original Dr. Who series on Pluto TV's Live tv stream and a number of Tom Baker Episodes had some action packed scenes. One episode had two Cybermen advancing against a bunch of aliens and pretty much gunning em down with their Rotary Head cannons. Their killstreak was so high against the group of aliens that you could almost hear the Unreal Tournament announcer going "Killing Spree, Rampage, Dominating, Unstoppable, GODLIKE, WICKED SICK!!" with how many guys got gunned down in a single episode during entire sequence.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Also, anybody that says that Dr. Who can't really or isn't particularly known for combat/fighting, I gotta say: I've been watching a good number of episodes of the original Dr. Who series on Pluto TV's Live tv stream and a number of Tom Baker Episodes had some action packed scenes. One episode had two Cybermen advancing against a bunch of aliens and pretty much gunning em down with their Rotary Head cannons. Their killstreak was so high against the group of aliens that you could almost hear the Unreal Tournament announcer going "Killing Spree, Rampage, Dominating, Unstoppable, GODLIKE, WICKED SICK!!" with how many guys got gunned down in a single episode during entire sequence.

Look how the cybermen fare against the Raston Warrior Robot (The Five Doctors)!

 

[Jer]

Also, anybody that says that Dr. Who can't really or isn't particularly known for combat/fighting, I gotta say: I've been watching a good number of episodes of the original Dr. Who series on Pluto TV's Live tv stream and a number of Tom Baker Episodes had some action packed scenes. One episode had two Cybermen advancing against a bunch of aliens and pretty much gunning em down with their Rotary Head cannons. Their killstreak was so high against the group of aliens that you could almost hear the Unreal Tournament announcer going "Killing Spree, Rampage, Dominating, Unstoppable, GODLIKE, WICKED SICK!!" with how many guys got gunned down in a single episode during entire sequence.

That's not really the objection - there's a LOT of fighting and killing in Doctor Who's history. The trick is that usually the violence is at best a futile effort or a holding action to let others get away from the threat and at worst makes the problem worse. The real problem is generally solved not by fists but by brains or compassion. Or the problem isn't solved in the end at all and the Doctor just leaves people behind to stew in their own bad choices (some of those 70s/80s episodes get pretty dark).

It's tough to pull off in an RPG. It can be done, and done well, but it's tough to pull off.