dave2008
Legend
That seems to be a snarky response when I was being earnest (hard to tell on the internet though). I was asking for an explanation and/or example of useful complexity in RPG design; or even better, how you would apply that to 5e.
D&D 5E Does anyone else feel like the action economy and the way actions work in general in 5e both just suck?
- Thread starter Son of the Serpent
- Start date
I thought you wrote it with the tongue in cheek sarcasm it looked to have ;D How about the fate fractal as an example of useful complexity in an rpg? All of the rules for it can be fit on a handwritten 3x5 index card (I've done it & handed it to players before) but the results are hugely complex & deep
and that says nothing about all the relevant examples in the sections about character & npc aspects/stunts/etc elsewhere. In order to play fate, you need to have the understanding you can get from the first couple pages in this cheat sheet, however it takes about 200-300 pages of the fate core rulebook to truly explain what those rules mean & how they interact before you truly realize how deep that apparent puddle goes (especially from a gm point of view)
with some abilities allowing you to react to one of those or do one as part of the ability.
Ignoring the 4e numbers it amounts to adding words saying that moving more than 5 feet when adjacent to a hostile opponent triggers an opportunity attack as some point in phb181/182 where movement is described & adding "this does(not) provoke an opportunity attack" to various abilities.
This whole discussion people have just been mking a blanket statement that things like tactical combat are too complex as if they were saying water is wet without making any attempt to prove or show how it was too complex. You can literally omit all of those rules and achieve 5e's AoO's with a single sentence along the lines of "for simpler less tactical combat a gm or group may want/choose to limit the number of things capable of provoking an opportunity attack to moving away from a hostile opponent without disengaging or firing a ranged weapon while in melee range with a hostile opponent." while still including rules for people who want those who want a more tactical combat or feel that level of simplicity is too much.
dave2008
Legend
I think that would be the wrong approach. The base should be simple and then you layer in the more complex "tactical" options. I think WotC took the correct approach, it is just the execution that is lacking. If no one does it before me, I will write a tactical rules module that works with 5e and put it up on the DMs Guild, I just have more pressing assignments at the moment.
Right. So basically recreate 3.5 rules. Which you are free to do. Not sure how you'd do shifting because you can move/action/move in 5E but I guess you can just say it's the only movement you get for that turn (but then what about dash?). Might be some wonkiness with rogues and whatnot, I'd have to think about it.
As far as the bonuses, 5E went away from minor pluses and minuses and came up with advantage/disadvantage. It's a slippery slope that I handled in 3.5 by having a chart and rolling ahead a lot for my fighters. But again, if it's what you want go for it.
Again this is simple, simple stuff which you are free to do. Encouraged to do even. The fact that the rules WOTC did not write them exactly as you wanted them is not relevant. Had they done that, someone else would have complained about it.
But all of this, every single thing you complain about incessantly is just personal preference and your opinion. Get over yourself, the rules work for the vast majority of people. If it doesn't work for you accept reality and come up with something else.
atanakar
Hero
About combat complexity:
Having played 4e for good 2 years I can tell you that I felt tired after each game. My fatigue grew with each level gained. It felt like I was playing a wargame against 4-5 other opponents simultaneously. I felt drained. Monsters add too many special abilities to prepare before hand and to use during the games. There were too many conditions and recharges to track. The battle map was critical so I had to prepare advanced tactics for the encounters and monitor each player actions very closely - to make sure they didn't forget anything or abuse the system. Also, the constant arguing among the players about which order to best activate their individual powers was unpleasant to me. I had to do too much baby sitting.
At first, I thought I was getting too old to GM. I never felt like that before with any edition of D&D - including 3.5. We stopped playing D&D 4e and I tried several other games, which included Savage Worlds - it uses miniatures and a grid - and didn't feel drained at the end of sessions. I felt energized and anxious to get home afterwards to take notes for the next game. None of these other RPGs I tried left me drained afterwards. I have the same high level of positive energy after games of 5e D&D.
So, while I'm willing to have a certain level of complexity to combat in my rpgs, there is a threshold were it becomes unpleasant to me as a GM to run a game. The same thing happens at very high levels of D&D. I don't go there either regardless of editions. With 4e that «high turbulance zone» was activated far too soon for my taste.
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Making a chocolate cake is more complex than making a plain/vanilla/white/yellow cake on an objective level because it has an extra ingredient but that doesn't make it complex.
You didn't say anything to prove or show how those things are complex or that they are too complex. Should they drop to one save & remove all the feats & spells because those are complexities that coul be layered in later? They already use my approach of having the rules there & allowing them to be used or not by the gm though, feats are there & built into the system, but you can choose not to use them & just take the ASIs given
As to just writing a suppliment for dmsguild, you keep throwing that out like there are not people in this & other threads on the topics with dmsguild titles. More importantly it ignores the fact that in order to simply add it to 5e you need to change a ton of stuff & pretty soon are no longer playing 5e because you are playing $dmsguildTitle.
Aye, 4e's problems were on a completely different level & those problems in addition to major system differences cimplicating the comparison* are likely a big part of why people rarely use it for example/comparison sake but people were getting quite nasty about 3/3.5 comparisons & the basis for AoOs in 4e were easier to show. Having gotten dragged into a few d20 games in the last several months I can understand the hassle of its pain in the ass skill system (recent relevant thread). But that does not mean that there are not things in them that were done better than 5e & should have been preserved rather than taking 5e's overly streamlined too much of a good thing approach.
* 1e/2e also have so many differences that comparisons are often overly difficult so3e & 3.5e ggt the lions share of the comparisons.
atanakar
Hero
I don't disagree that some rules of 3.5 and 4e are better written when taken individually.
After a long play test and many surveys the designers decided they needed to create a game that was entry level and that was appealing to the «soft clienteles» of both the TSR and D20 periods. The risk of alienating the hard core Old School and d20 Proselytes was not a risk, since it was going to happen anyway. There was also the possible gain of «soft» Pathfinder players who switched because they didn't like D&D4e. D&D5e was designed to be strategically placed as a bridge (sweet spot) between AD&D2e and D&D d20.
That is why D&D5e is the way it is. It's simple, easy to understand and offers fast customization. It's wide and semi-vague (impressionist) as opposed narrow and focused (hyper realist) like d20 and 4e. This design strategy allows each «table» to play the game the way they want - just like during the old school era, as opposed to the d20 and 4e era in which the rules attempted to force every «table» to strive to play a single (correct) way. Plugging hyper realist rules into an impressionistic system does not work.
I vastly prefer the D&D 5e design approach. Honestly, D&D hasn't felt like D&D to me since I moved from AD&D2e to D&D3e. Now with D&D 5e I have the same «feel good» buzz I used to get in the 80s-90s.
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You are overstating things still ignoring the fact that wotc felt certain playstyles & needs were important enough to include variant rules but didn't bother to make sure those rules work as is. There's been a lot of back & forth between people about things like tactical combat AoOs & the half baked Facing/Flanking rules with one side simply chanting what amounts to "that isn't the niche that the rule is supposed to fill" rather than addressing the obvious unfinished & massively lacking state of those variant rules, but it's impossible to read the
Since it's been a while lets go back to
edit:typo
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atanakar
Hero
It's the weekend. My wife is off for two weeks because of the Pandemic and I work from home. We will resume her solo player Essential Kit campaign, very happy and content with the 5e rules are written. They work for us. I'll rise a glass to your health tonight. You need more Fast & Loose in your life. It's more fun that way. / mic drop
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