D&D 5E Expertise Dice = Vancian Magic = ADEU

[I'm A Banana]

So, I think I'm beginning to understand something about how 5e might have to work to keep folks happy: game mechanics can't be tied inherently to classes at the system level anymore.

The wizard/warlock/sorcerer stuff makes this pretty clear: some folks want no vancian magic, others want all vancian magic, some want spell points, some want recharges, some want at-wills.

But the rogue/fighter stuff ALSO makes this pretty clear. Not everyone wants to use Expertise Dice for those classes. A "simple fighter" and a "simple rogue" still need to exist.

What is interesting to me is that this is actually the same issue. Expertise Dice are just another power-management-mechanic. You could replace them with a Vancian slots system (though that might not make a lot of in-world sense), a points system (spell points = endurance points), a recharge system, etc. Expertise Dice could also be used for magical classes: you could have a sorcerer who adds dice onto blasts of fire, or a cleric that uses them for healing.

This might mean that 5e, while it might have a "default" (and the default will probably be the easiest and simplest model), is not going to be tethered to any specific class mechanics.

Want your fighter to use slots? Want your cleric to use expertise dice? Want every class to use the same points system? 5e probably has got your back.

This means that, on the one hand, class and mechanics are not necessarily tightly tied together. Expertise Dice won't necessarily be "the fighter thing," because any class could use them. HOWEVER, the trick is that with big DM empowerment, you can mandate mechanics for certain classes in your own games.

Want wizards to be vancian and fighters to be simple attackers? Yeah, that's possible. Want fighters to be endurance-point based and wizards to be recharged? Yeah, that's possible, too. Want to make everyone dead simple for your six year old's birthday party? Easy peasy.

This sounds -- potentially -- like one of the most interesting innovations in 5e. The ability mix and match mechanics and classes would be an unmatched versatility and option boon. It would also be easy to slot in new systems -- something like the 3e Tome of Magic or Tome of Battle systems, the psionics system, or the incarnum system. These wouldn't need to have their own classes -- rather than play a "warblade," you could play a fighter who used warblade mechanics. It makes it easy to swap out magic systems, too: instead of being a "Defilier" or "Preserver," dark sun arcane magicians now have to use a deeper underlying system. Conceptually, you could have a world where Fighters and Rogues were all ki-based! Or a world where they all had to have supernatural patrons that taught them combat arts!

The "default mode" (made for newbies) is likely to involve a bit of the big ones that have been used in various editions (at-will, vancian, expertise dice likely...), but is also likely to be very simple. Maybe your fighter has two options, maybe your wizard has two spells, maybe your rogue can hide and stab, maybe your cleric can heal and buff. That's the basic D&D game.

But underpinning that is a place where the DM or the player can decide what the mechanics exist in their games and in their classes.

Potentially, this is awesome, and also potentially, it means we can stop fighting over the "TRUE VERSION" of a given class (*cough*wizard*cough*) knowing that the version at our tables can be that true version without having to impose it on anyone else.

And that's bound to be good for people who take their make-believe princess pretend game very seriously.

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

How will you decide what the default is? You could not I suppose, but then..
Isn't this trying to construct multiple games all at once? Taking up many excess hours work and goodness knows how ugly the book would be. Besides..
How on earth do you make anything about the classes unique? You could collapse it into a classless system of course, but to me, the mechanics used to express a class are part of what evokes the feeling of that class.

All in all, this sounds like a terrible idea.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Besides... How on earth do you make anything about the classes unique? You could collapse it into a classless system of course, but to me, the mechanics used to express a class are part of what evokes the feeling of that class.

This is true. But you're missing that one important point in your statement.

The specific mechanics you see that makes a class unique are not necessarily the same specific mechanics someone else sees that makes a class unique.

And therein lies the problem.

You might have very specific ideas on how the Fighter / Rogue / Cleric and Wizard should look when it comes to the mechanics used to illustrate and highlight how the class is. And 15% of the D&D player population might agree with you. But those won't match the other 85% of the players out there.

So what do you do? See an unchanging default to the game that only 15% of the population thinks is right? Or find the myriad of different mechanics you can use to illustrate and highlight how a class is... and then put into place the process for each player to use the ones they think best work.

I mean... if some D&D player out there thinks all four classes would be best served using a 'spell point' type of system for their abilities... who are we to say they are wrong? Or if Maneuvers can get tweaked to look like the AEDU powers and those are awesome for some person... what's wrong with that?

Will either of those be the default or "base" game? Absolutely not. But why not see if the game's foundation can be designed so that any DM could reach those kind of goals if they so chose?

To me... there is no reason not to think that you can design the game in such a way that you could then build a 4E lookalike from the building blocks within. Or a 3E lookalike game. Or 2E, or AD&D. And isn't that what they've been saying was their hope all along?

 

[I'm A Banana]

How will you decide what the default is? You could not I suppose, but then..
Isn't this trying to construct multiple games all at once? Taking up many excess hours work and goodness knows how ugly the book would be. Besides..
How on earth do you make anything about the classes unique? You could collapse it into a classless system of course, but to me, the mechanics used to express a class are part of what evokes the feeling of that class.

I think the default will be "the simplest possible way to get across the identity of the thing throughout editions." The default is made with the idea of newbies, casual players, and introductory play in mind. This is because these are the groups who will not do more work to then make their games less work. If you tell a casual player that they CAN make a simpler character by turning knobs X, Y, and Z, they'll go play videogames instead.

The default wizard and cleric will likely have a few daily slots; the default rogue and fighter will likely have a few Expertise options. It'll be complete, and able to compete alongside more complex characters just fine.

And as for how you make classes unique? Well, mechanically, you opt into it. You say, "All characters in my games are point based!" or you say "Psionicists in my games are point-based, but wizards are slot-based and fighters use ki!"

But you also make distinctions within those over-arching systems. Like how OD&D wizards and clerics are very similar apart from spell lists and proficiencies, maybe all your point-based characters will only differ in what lists they access and what basic proficiencies they have.

Class identity is there for DMs to give...or not...as they desire. How loose or tight that identity is is a dial you can turn at your table.

 

[GreyICE]

It's an interesting idea, but there's a problem with it. The entire system is ridiculously metagamey.

"I'm playing a fighter using expertise dice in this campaign, but in this other campaign I'm playing a fighter using maneuver slots, and the Wizard is doing the opposite, what is going on!"

I don't know how much of a problem that is for a lot of people, but I don't think it should really be supported as core. Maybe just pick one of each for the core, and you can vary it with a module.

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

This is true. But you're missing that one important point in your statement.

The specific mechanics you see that makes a class unique are not necessarily the same specific mechanics someone else sees that makes a class unique.

And therein lies the problem.

...

Will either of those be the default or "base" game? Absolutely not. But why not see if the game's foundation can be designed so that any DM could reach those kind of goals if they so chose?

To me... there is no reason not to think that you can design the game in such a way that you could then build a 4E lookalike from the building blocks within. Or a 3E lookalike game. Or 2E, or AD&D. And isn't that what they've been saying was their hope all along?

They've always offered different resource management systems in previous editions (except for 4E) - sometimes in the core, sometimes in books published later on. I never understood the hangup about, say, Wizard vs. Sorcerer, which are clearly the same class with different management systems. In fact, they were made so deliberately bland otherwise that people *demanded* more to separate them thematically. If you remove that layer, how the resource management interacts with the theme of the class, then you're either looking to bring out every class theme with every possible mechanic, or you ought to go classless, and drop themes altogether, let them be built with backgrounds, specialities and some third component that says fighting/arcane/divine/skillsy.

However, I don't think it's possible to have an AEDU wizard playing along side a spell point wizard and have them both feel like Wizards. Unless you construct a version of every class for every resource management option. You'll probably find at that point that many classes collapse in on themselves, where unique mechanics were holding them up before, they won't have anything left to show off their theme. Besides, there has always been a mechanism for the DM to construct the game they want, and that is by allowing and disallowing existing options, tweaking things and house rules. Yes, it's work, but I just don't see a future for a game that, at it's core, doesn't have a vision of how classes should be in the world.

I think the default will be "the simplest possible way to get across the identity of the thing throughout editions." The default is made with the idea of newbies, casual players, and introductory play in mind. This is because these are the groups who will not do more work to then make their games less work. If you tell a casual player that they CAN make a simpler character by turning knobs X, Y, and Z, they'll go play videogames instead.

The default wizard and cleric will likely have a few daily slots; the default rogue and fighter will likely have a few Expertise options. It'll be complete, and able to compete alongside more complex characters just fine.

And as for how you make classes unique? Well, mechanically, you opt into it. You say, "All characters in my games are point based!" or you say "Psionicists in my games are point-based, but wizards are slot-based and fighters use ki!"

But you also make distinctions within those over-arching systems. Like how OD&D wizards and clerics are very similar apart from spell lists and proficiencies, maybe all your point-based characters will only differ in what lists they access and what basic proficiencies they have.

Class identity is there for DMs to give...or not...as they desire. How loose or tight that identity is is a dial you can turn at your table.

It's interesting you suggest that expertise dice somehow represent the core fighter over many editions, when they are the biggest diversion from any system we've seen so far. This is another question - how far do you go - which systems get to be included? There are an infinite number of ways of managing resources in gaming and they belong to different game styles, but which ones do you support? You're also asking a lot of the DM, to inject the sense and theme of a class into it by deciding what system they use. I mean, really you're saying that we should all play the game we want to, with rules we like, and there already exists a way to do this called house rules. There are an infinite number of people who put these on the internet for you to use, so why make the core of D&D what will essentially be 1000 different sets of house rules, with no vision?

 

[Viking Bastard]

It's an interesting idea, but there's a problem with it. The entire system is ridiculously metagamey.

"I'm playing a fighter using expertise dice in this campaign, but in this other campaign I'm playing a fighter using maneuver slots, and the Wizard is doing the opposite, what is going on!"

I don't know how much of a problem that is for a lot of people, but I don't think it should really be supported as core. Maybe just pick one of each for the core, and you can vary it with a module.

That doesn't seem metagamey to me. That just seems like D&D to me, but with pre-made house rules instead of homebrewed ones.

 

[GreyICE]

That doesn't seem metagamey to me. That just seems like D&D to me, but with pre-made house rules instead of homebrewed ones.

Well that's an opinion of course, but some of us would see it as very metagamey.

As always, play what you like.

 

[I'm A Banana]

It's interesting you suggest that expertise dice somehow represent the core fighter over many editions, when they are the biggest diversion from any system we've seen so far. This is another question - how far do you go - which systems get to be included? There are an infinite number of ways of managing resources in gaming and they belong to different game styles, but which ones do you support? You're also asking a lot of the DM, to inject the sense and theme of a class into it by deciding what system they use. I mean, really you're saying that we should all play the game we want to, with rules we like, and there already exists a way to do this called house rules. There are an infinite number of people who put these on the internet for you to use, so why make the core of D&D what will essentially be 1000 different sets of house rules, with no vision?

It was just a possible idea. The basic game is going to have different requirements than your home game, being as it is faced toward newbies and casual players, so maybe Ex Dice fit those requirements better than just a +2 bonus to damage. Maybe not. The point being, the basic game is going to be kind of irrelevant for a lot of the people here on ENWorld.

As for which systems...well, that's part of what I imagine they'll be selling us. You can start with a few -- Vancian, Point-Based (for psionics!), probably something similar to ADEU, probably Ex Dice, maybe a recharge option. More can come down the pipe later, and with specific campaign settings or other ideas.

House rules, yes, but this is codified, math-balanced, extensible rules, used by people outside of your own table. It creates a common lexicon of players talking to each other about similar things, gaining some of the benefits of standardization, but keeping it diverse and interlocking.

 

[Viking Bastard]

Well that's an opinion of course, but some of us would see it as very metagamey.

I just don't really get what you mean. How is it metagamey? Do you just mean that it makes you more aware of the rules?