Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7751363" data-attributes="member: 996">Mildly different impressions, then.  I'm sure we can agree that 5e & it's community is /far/ more amenable to DM 'hacking'/modding/variants/house-rules/fiat/etc than any prior WotC ed. Bits of them doubtless did, but FWIW, 3.x declined to tag Stunning Fist as such, no (SU) - maybe because they /did/ make it a fighter bonus feat.  So we can't say D&D has never dropped the 'daily' on a non-caster ability.   It's a matter of scale & effect.  A fighter taking Stunning Fist wasn't suddenly the equal of a mage. I can't say I was ever a big fan of n/day limitations, myself, even, or especialy, in the form of Vancian magic.  Early on, I did appreciate it, however ironically, on what I guess today would be a 'gamist' level - there was a challenge to picking the right spells and using them at the right time.  That challenge diminshed rapidly in later eds, when you could make/buy bushels of scrolls, or cast spontaneously, or, now in 5e, prep spells /and/ cast them spontaneously (if the 3.5 Wizard could've done that, it'd've cracked the mythical Tier 0). <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />It's as much or more the 'except for magic' than the 'daily sux' part that I disagree with on a philsophical level, I guess.   Ok, it was not a post-hoc rationalization, but a design goal, how 'bout that?  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />  Seriously, though, the idea of 'choose when to be awesome' is implicit in a limited use/higher-power ability.   Casters had been doing it for decades, so nobody cared, but the fighter gets to do it?  Casus Belli for an edition war.  I think that just cycles back around to familiarity and expectations.  Even those of us who don't care for n/day limitations (which, ironically, is both of us), got used to Vanican.  Not the worst reason.  Vance was one of the greats of Science Fiction, The Dying Earth was actually very inflluencial in the genre, MZB's Darkover, and Wolfe's Urth both owe a huge debt to Dying Earth...  of course, neither of them used Vancian /magic/.   Not a valid definition, IMHO.  You're defining a goal: game that works, essentially, by what you fear it will have to give up to get there, rather than by what it will have to do to get there. For instance, right in the old DMG, EGG said that the 'relatively short spoken spell' of Vance's Dying Earth was chosen to make the magic-user playable as a PC, as opposed to the long rituals & elaborate materials that were more typical of magickal traditions & folklore.  It was a gamist reason.  Yet, now, it's enshrined as an 'in-world rationale' (that, I guess, is a post-hoc rationalization).  And, remember, the Vancian 'memorization' has long since been dropped in favor of another post-hoc rationalization, 'preparation.'  We see that a lot with discussions of complexity, too.  You'll see folks going "the game needed a simple fighter for old-school fans, the game needs a complex fighter for those who liked the 4e version."  No, the virtue of the 4e fighter was never that it was complex (it really /wasn't/ in the more complex half of a continuum of all D&D classes ever, because, well, casters), it's that it was part of a balanced game.  The 3.5 fighter, was more complex to build, but simpler to run than the 2e fighter, it was a better, more elegant, more customizeable design, but the 2e fighter buzzed out huge DPR with multiple attacks & specialization, a broken design in a broken system can be good.  A good design in a broken system can be pathetic. Liberating is not the word I'd use:  Easy.  DMing 4e was just straight-up easy.  I saw brand-new players transition from playing to running in a fraction of the time it had seemed to take in prior eds. One reason for the vehemence of the edition war, I think, is the dominant position of D&D.  It's easier to find a current-ed D&D game than anything else, by, like orders of magnitude.  I could play 5e four nights a week around here, no problem.  If you want to play Night's Dark Agents, you'll have to know somebody who knows somebody who might be able to get you in next year... Yep, I know it sounds crazy, but in a game where the primary activity of the player is making decisions for his charcter, a well-balanced game will give every player similar opportunities to make decisions......and some players are just annoying.  ;| I missed the transition from problem players to DM-proofing.  Balance /does/ help with certain types of player problems, and it makes the DM's job easier, rather than making the game immune from him doing his job. It seems like Stun (save ends) with long turns is still better than held or paralyzed or whatever for 1min/caster level or 3d6 10-min 1e 'turns' or, yeah, now that you mention it, dead.   <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />   I can't say I've seen barbarians & avengers taking excessively long turns - often, it's a particular player, regardless of what they play.  I guess it's what those players were playing in your group at the time?</blockquote>

Verification