D&D 5E Evolution of D&D, and choices

[RangerWickett]

I imagine a group of designers could pretty easily come up with examples for a 'typical' D&D world, with tropes rather than specific names. Then settings could have more precise versions.

Like, do you remember back when they were teasing 4e, and wizards were going to get to pick stuff like "golden gryphon school" or something? And it was going to have a suite of bonuses and powers. (I think it was stuff like, 'your spells that deal acid damage do +2 damage,' and the like.)

But people balked because it wasn't from an established setting, so WotC filed off any worldbuilding?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

If that is roughly right, associating ability boosts with class does the following. For most players, it's what they'd do anyway. For a few players, it's annoying. For a few novices, it saves them from a trap. My take is that it is more important to help out those novices.

I don't think it does save them, though.

To fall into that trap, they have to essentially decide to ignore what the class' primary abilities are, and the DM and other players have to be jerks enough to ignore that and not politely point it out, and just encourage them to play what they know will be a dubious character.

Further, if they're ignoring the primaries, they probably already used their stat array or rolled stats wrong. They're the guy who put 15 in INT because they want to be a "smart Fighter" and then 12 in STR and 11 in DEX or whatever. Having the class attempt to dictate that they must put +2 in STR or DEX isn't going to save them, because to even get here, they already had to ignore the primary stats, and everybody had to decide not to help them.

Am I missing some reasonably common scenario where this does help? It really seems to be like they have to both ignore what the primary stats for their class are, and not by helped by the DM or other players, and this still doesn't produce a safety net. Forcing a 16 or 17 in the primary would, but this doesn't do that.

 

[clearstream]

I don't think it does save them, though.

To fall into that trap, they have to essentially decide to ignore what the class' primary abilities are, and the DM and other players have to be jerks enough to ignore that and not politely point it out, and just encourage them to play what they know will be a dubious character.

Further, if they're ignoring the primaries, they probably already used their stat array or rolled stats wrong. They're the guy who put 15 in INT because they want to be a "smart Fighter" and then 12 in STR and 11 in DEX or whatever. Having the class attempt to dictate that they must put +2 in STR or DEX isn't going to save them, because to even get here, they already had to ignore the primary stats, and everybody had to decide not to help them.

Am I missing some reasonably common scenario where this does help? It really seems to be like they have to both ignore what the primary stats for their class are, and not by helped by the DM or other players, and this still doesn't produce a safety net. Forcing a 16 or 17 in the primary would, but this doesn't do that.

I think so, because many novices that I have directly observed joining the game, follow the behaviour I described. They don't read the class information in enough detail to notice the primaries. They don't know the nuances of their powers (such as ability modifier being a factor in number of spells).

The problem isn't - novice player knows their primaries are Charisma and Wisdom, and fails to appreciate their significance. The problem is - novice player has no idea that there even are primaries. They don't own a PHB. They don't want a lecture on the rules before getting down to playing the Wood Elf Druid they have their hearts set on. Etc.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I think so, because many novices that I have directly observed joining the game, follow the behaviour I described. They don't read the class information in enough detail to notice the primaries. They don't know the nuances of their powers (such as ability modifier being a factor in number of spells).

The problem isn't - novice player knows their primaries are Charisma and Wisdom, and fails to appreciate their significance. The problem is - novice player has no idea that there even are primaries. They don't own a PHB. They don't want a lecture on the rules before getting down to playing the Wood Elf Druid they have their hearts set on. Etc.

Ok that actually makes sense. I do think a different workflow for character generation might also solve that, but certainly being told "PUT +2 HERE" is going to be hard to avoid.