D&D 5E Explain your Modular Class Ideas

[Kobold Stew]

Except that the idea of differing complexity and styles, even among players at the same table, has been a stated goal of 5e.

It seems like having AEDU alongside Vancian alongside whatever else is an end goal. I don't think this turns D&D into GURPS - I think it says, "here's everything D&D has done, pick the one you want, and we'll do what we can to make sure they're all balanced and reasonable options."

It's a question of granularity.

It's not that I don't want modules, but if there is nothing fixed then the value of the larger-grain choices is devalued across the board: if all skills can be swapped out, then background choice becomes irrelevant -- you may as well just choose any four skills.

One can meet the stated goal of modularity/variable complexity while still having some defining qualities to the game. I'd rather see the designers actually care about the choices they are presenting than simply having more choice.

It's my opinion that "balanced and reasonable" -- an idealistic goal that is itself ultimately subjective -- would be gone with the first supplement, even assuming it could be achieved to start with. They're used so freely that it feels like empty buzzwords and a cop-out.

 

[DEFCON 1]

One can meet the stated goal of modularity/variable complexity while still having some defining qualities to the game. I'd rather see the designers actually care about the choices they are presenting than simply having more choice.

But why do those defining qualities need to be defined now? That's the issue. There's still 2 more years of playtesting. What possible reason is there to lock into defining, unchanging principles besides just giving the playtesters a chance to make themselves feel better (or worse, if those defining principles aren't something they like?)

I can see no reason to decide now that 'Healing is X!', and that all modules will be built off of that... except to shut up the playtesters who do nothing but complain that "WotC appears to have no idea what they want or what they're doing!" But I don't think WotC cares one lick about those whiners who can't seem to grasp what a playtest actually is or is supposed to accomplish.

 

[I'm A Banana]

It's not that I don't want modules, but if there is nothing fixed then the value of the larger-grain choices is devalued across the board: if all skills can be swapped out, then background choice becomes irrelevant -- you may as well just choose any four skills.

It's then a question of DM authority.

If what you want at your table is a strong association between class and mechanics, you can have it: you pick Mechanic X, tie it to Class Y, and tell players, "If you want to be a Wizard, you use Vancian slots. That's what wizards are in my world."

D&D, if it's smart, isn't going to tell you that you have to do it one way or another. The game is yours, after all, not theirs. Identifying classes with mechanics can be a powerful way to create an identity or a unique twist on your world. When Billy (who loves to play wizards) plays a wizard in your "Wizards are Vancian" table, it's going to be a unique experience from when he plays a wizard in Erica's "Everyone has AEDs" world.

D&D isn't a game that must be played a certain way, so it'd be a mistake to say that a given class MUST be played with a certain mechanic at the level of the rulebooks.

It's fine for individual DMs to say that, though, and if it's important to them, they should.

It'll give you a default -- simple, basic, functional, and easy. Something that newbies and eight year olds and casual players can grasp and play quickly. And then it'll leave it up to advanced DMs (like us here on ENWorld) to tweak the system to the way they want it. DMs like us do that anyway, this just makes it easier.

If what you want is a strong class identity at your table, I imagine D&D5e has your back. If what you want is people you're not playing with to share that identity...that might be off the table for the basic game. But I also don't know why what other people do at their table would necessarily matter to you.

 

[Kinak]

Just so long as that fixed world uses the D&D rules you want to play with. Because if that fixed world is BECMI style, or 3E style, or 4E style (whichever game style you don't actually like)... then you're probably not going to play the game.

And thus WotC doing what you just asked them to do has been all for naught.

You assume that they won't lose people by pushing every difficult decision into modules. That's simply not true.

Speaking for myself, I don't like 4e. I'm not really enthralled with 3rd or 2nd either and OD&D has its faults. I haven't played 1st Edition, but the idea doesn't appeal to me.

But they all already have ways to play with different mechanics (including 4e with Essentials). They're just called classes.

I understand the urge to please everyone, but a class-based game where the classes don't even define how your characters work isn't going to please everyone.

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[Kobold Stew]

But why do those defining qualities need to be defined now? That's the issue.

My mistake -- our arguments are missing each other. Modularity in playtesting is not interesting as a problem, and you are right that nothing needs to be defined now.

My interest is in what positions the designers finally take when the game is done. If it is ultimately flexible, offloading all decisions onto players and/or the DM, then the result will almost certainly not be tight and meaningful.

It's then a question of DM authority.

<snip>

D&D, if it's smart, isn't going to tell you that you have to do it one way or another. The game is yours, after all, not theirs. Identifying classes with mechanics can be a powerful way to create an identity or a unique twist on your world.

<snip>

D&D isn't a game that must be played a certain way, so it'd be a mistake to say that a given class MUST be played with a certain mechanic at the level of the rulebooks.

It's fine for individual DMs to say that, though, and if it's important to them, they should.

<snip>

But I also don't know why what other people do at their table would necessarily matter to you.

This is just rhetoric: you are arguing against a straw man.

Of course the game is mine, and I am free to make it what I want, as is everyone else. And I am certainly NOT saying THOU SHALT PLAY MY WAY. Ugh.

Modularity is fine (as I've said), but so's asking the designers to pull together something coherent that they believe will make a good game. Something that players can and will hack to bits. Infinite granularity and plug-and-play won't do that -- or so I am claiming.

I think Wizards is gun-shy because of the response they got -- and the customers they lost -- when they did make decisions for 4e. Regretting making certain particular decisions, though, does not mean they shouldn't make decisions for the future.

It'll give you a default -- simple, basic, functional, and easy. Something that newbies and eight year olds and casual players can grasp and play quickly. And then it'll leave it up to advanced DMs (like us here on ENWorld) to tweak the system to the way they want it. DMs like us do that anyway, this just makes it easier.

It's nice to flatter ourselves about how clever we are here, but it's not that straightforward. At any one table, there are going to be players of different experience and abilities. The modularity isn't helping that, it just sets different levels of complexity to be used across each individual table.

Adding more modules (based on what we've seen so far) actually makes the day-to-day playing easier: your proposed default characters have fewer abilities and are proportionately weaker by necessity than the "advanced" ones. As a result the "advanced" players will be having an easier time through ANY conflict than the starting players.

That isn't rewarding system mastery; it is simply making some options undesirable.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I understand the urge to please everyone, but a class-based game where the classes don't even define how your characters work isn't going to please everyone.

Well, it's not like going the opposite way pleases anyone either. ;-)

Look at this situation: 4E specifically said that you were meant to refluff and jigger classes as needed to get the experience you wanted. Every class was defined by a role, defined by how and when and why they did what they did, and if you wanted something different... you were supposed to find another part of the game you liked and adapt it to what you wanted. The rules didn't give you specific methods for doing that... but rather just for you and the DM to use your best judgement.

So if you wanted to play an archer... you were supposed to use the mechanics of the Ranger, because that was the class with the mechanics for ranged exploits. And if the fluff of the Ranger wasn't your style... the game said to change the fluff (and the occasional skill or whatever) to get you what you wanted.

But we then heard a veritable shatstorm of complaints from players saying that they didn't want to play Rangers, they wanted to play Fighters. And the game wasn't allowing them to. And no, refluffing and changing the Ranger to be a Fighter didn't help. They wanted a Fighter with archery, and that was the end of it.

So here was an example of a game making those concrete decisions about what a class was and how it defined your character... and the game getting crapped on because of it. Because the problem is... as I pointed out in the post you quoted... those "concrete decisions" only are any good if you happen to agree with the decision that was made. If they make a decision that you happen to disagree with... then the rule or mechanic is a P.O.S. regardless of how well it was crafted or how "concrete" or "character defining" it was. If you don't like it, then it does you no good.

It seems like what WotC is trying to do is get everything "character defining" pushed into the fluff of the class as much as possible. If the fluff can give you as much of a sense of a particular class... then you don't have to rely on the mechanics to do it. Which is important, because we see all over the place that nobody can agree on what mechanics define a class (or even more importantly... a quality game experience.) If the Wizard can be defined mainly through its fluff... then it doesn't matter if a DM and players in a particular game have 3 different spellcasting mechanics to choose from to assign to the Wizard to use (whichever set of mechanics they happen to think is the most fun to play and helps support the fluff.)

Why should that lessen the Wizard's character definition that those who want to use Vancian casting can do so, while those who want to use spell points can do so, while those who want 'encounter-based' spell refresh can do so? The only way it doesn't is if you actually think to yourself that because other tables can play their Wizards in a way you don't think they should play... that somehow lessens the Wizard in your own eyes. That if a spell-point Wizard might actually exist somewhere, then obviously the Wizard isn't well-defined in your eyes and thus the game somehow suffers. THAT kind of self-centered thinking is something that I think all of us need to grow up about.

 

[Kavon]

There's a point where being modular stops being D&D and starts being GURPS.

I always cringe a little when people use (a variation of) this arguement.

There are also things besides how D&D handles Classes that defines D&D, or how GURPS handles point buy character creation that defines GURPS.

Me and my group are apparently one of few that actually liked the way 2e Skills and Powers did it, and would like it to go even further.
Telling us we should play something other than D&D doesn't help us, since we want to play D&D, just with much more flexibility in how characters are made.

When they were talking about Backgrounds and Themes as being predefined collections of Skills and Feats and that you'd still be able to freely create your own combinations, that made my hopes fire up a bit that they would do something similar with Classes and Races.

I would like the base game, the Core, to give all the Classes they would give and make them all work just like they should, but also that they would give the option somewhere in the book to freely change out certain class features/abilities, or even create a new class, to be able to more precisely tailor things to what you want your character to be like.

I completely understand this goes against what quite some people want, but that's the beauty of this entire modular approach WotC is going with for 5e.
You can have what you want, and I'm hoping we (my D&D group) can get what we want as well.

Mind you, we will probably figure something out to make it work even without WotC giving this option, but it would just be nice if classes were made with a little more interclass flexibility in mind.

This doesn't mean that classes shouldn't get a class-defining thing, it just shouldn't be something like whether it casts it spells like a Vancian Wizard or a Spells Points Psion. Give Wizards something special besides its spells and Psions something besides the fact that it uses Spell Points, for example.
It would be even greater if they had several of these things, so you have some freedom within the classes to begin with.



Hm, as a tl;dr:

Me and my gaming group would like a point buy character creation module option for D&D 5e, and that it doesn't get tacked on at the last moment as an afterthought.
As long as it's a module, no one gets forced to use it, but the people that actually don't like how things like GURPS work besides the point-buy character creation, and like how D&D works besides the predefined, overly fixed classes, can actually get what they want as well.

 

[I'm A Banana]

This is just rhetoric: you are arguing against a straw man.

Of course the game is mine, and I am free to make it what I want, as is everyone else. And I am certainly NOT saying THOU SHALT PLAY MY WAY. Ugh.

Relax. Take a deep breath. We're all well-intentioned D&D dorks here.

Modularity is fine (as I've said), but so's asking the designers to pull together something coherent that they believe will make a good game. Something that players can and will hack to bits. Infinite granularity and plug-and-play won't do that -- or so I am claiming.

So, two things.

First, what makes "a good game" is very subjective. What makes your table go "yaaay" might make Barry's table go "eeeeeech." When you're trying to bring on 40 years' worth of players, all of whom want some pretty contradictory things, you are not going to get many on board by giving them only one possible option for how to do things. Give them one version of the wizard that might be a perfectly awesome wizard, but 60-80% of 'em will hate it for some idiosyncratic, personal reason, and then you've got a division: some people love it, some people hate it, and you're never going to bridge that gap. Come out with another wizard later, and the first people will feel jilted and the second people will feel like an afterthought. If you don't give people choice up-front, you wind up giving them a "This or go play a different game!" choice. And given that D&D has a lot of competitors (some of which are more successful than it!), it's not hard to find a different game. A lack of diversity is only going to harm you.

Second, the "simple default basic mode" classes will be a good game, for those who don't want to tinker with their D&D. It just won't necessarily meet the needs of a community like ENWorld, which is necessarily a more intense fanbase, given that we spend our free time babbling about D&D on an unofficial message board.

I think Wizards is gun-shy because of the response they got -- and the customers they lost -- when they did make decisions for 4e. Regretting making certain particular decisions, though, does not mean they shouldn't make decisions for the future.

I think it's a little more subtle than that. I think it probably has to do with WotC attempting to lock down brand identity a little too strictly, but the upthrust is that WotC was seen as trying to be the DM and decide what was good and what was bad for millions of D&D players. ADEU was better and if you disagreed, you weren't welcome. Dragonborn and tieflings were necessary, and if you disagreed, tough noogies. New fiction was good, and if you like the old stuff, well oh well, we're going this new way. There was no fun police, but there was a persistent feeling that those who weren't on board with the changes weren't welcome in the game, because the game was trying very hard to forge its own identity.

I think they realized that this was probably not a great idea, in retrospect. They realized you're never going to get everyone on board with One True Way, even if you think it's awesome. Retroclones and Pathfinder made it clear that no RPG is going to be able to drag along an unwilling fan-base. It's not enough to be the 400 lb gorilla in the cage anymore -- people have found out that the cage has doors, so there's nothing keeping them there. They will leave if you are not what they want to be around, and their reasons for leaving can be completely arbitrary -- you're not going to win them over with a logical appeal.

At any one table, there are going to be players of different experience and abilities. The modularity isn't helping that, it just sets different levels of complexity to be used across each individual table.

But the modularity DOES help that, because the DM can say, "Verner's a newbie, so he can use one of the basic default classes." And Verner's basic cleric (or whatever) can adventure alongside Olivia's super-complex monk/assassin multiclass, and they will be comparable in power over the course of an adventuring day, if 5e delivers on its promises.

Adding more modules (based on what we've seen so far) actually makes the day-to-day playing easier: your proposed default characters have fewer abilities and are proportionately weaker by necessity than the "advanced" ones. As a result the "advanced" players will be having an easier time through ANY conflict than the starting players.

That isn't rewarding system mastery; it is simply making some options undesirable.

There's nothing about increased complexity that necessarily yields a more powerful character. Regardless of their complexities, they can have similar power levels.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

If they want Vancian magic, then choose that and don't provide a module that allows you to swap in at-will spells.

I think this is the line in the sand. Swapping out Vancian prepared slots for spontaneous slots or spell points can be balanced, at least to some degree: they're all ways of doling out daily resources. It's when you start suggesting that a given spell should be available both as a daily spell with one module and as an at-will spell with another module that real design problems come into play.

It may be possible to use some daily powers as encounter powers, like the wizard signature spells, but even this takes a great amount of careful balancing. You'll notice that wizards get a single encounter spell for their entire careers, and that it's a first-level spell (even if it can be prepared at higher level to do more damage).

 

[I'm A Banana]

I think this is the line in the sand. Swapping out Vancian prepared slots for spontaneous slots or spell points can be balanced, at least to some degree: they're all ways of doling out daily resources. It's when you start suggesting that a given spell should be available both as a daily spell with one module and as an at-will spell with another module that real design problems come into play.

You can balance them, you just need to acknowledge that an at-will fireball is going to be different in power than a daily-level fireball. To keep it clean, you maybe change the name of the spell, but that's not strictly necessary.

It may be possible to use some daily powers as encounter powers, like the wizard signature spells, but even this takes a great amount of careful balancing. You'll notice that wizards get a single encounter spell for their entire careers, and that it's a first-level spell (even if it can be prepared at higher level to do more damage).

They're doing something a little different with at-will and recharge magic in wizards right now in the playtest. Using 0-level spells and 1st-level spells as recharging is okay, because it just goes into the amount of daily output your character has, and when you include a "pure Vancian" option, you give those casters EXTRA output to compensate for their lack of at-will and encounters. But when you include an "at-will only" option, you tone down the power level of those spells. A fireball cast by a spell point user and a recharge caster and an at-will caster and a daily-only caster and an expertise dice caster are going to be subtly different in terms of damage, which can be fine. You bake in that balance at the module level, and design the spell so that it can be easily module-ified regardless of magic system.