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GM's are you bored of your combat and is it because you made it boring?
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<blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 8092091" data-attributes="member: 87792"><p>On the contrary. If I look at a setting-first approach then I find that D&D characters are all professional adventurers. And if I want the setting to contain people who are <em>not</em> professional adventurers (and indeed may never have taken part in a single fight) I need to be able to ignore PC creation rules</p><p></p><p>If I want to make the world's best breadmaker and he's using PC rules, he either needs (in 3.X) a spectacularly high BAB or (in 5e) a maximum level proficiency score. Which he has somehow obtained by staying in the bakery for ten hours a day for the past 30 years always baking and refining recipies to the point that he knows things about dough that no one else does. He is an inhabitant of the setting - but he is not an adventurer who spends much of their time fighting for their life. This is perfectly fine if NPCs don't have to use the same rules as PCs of course.</p><p></p><p>It's even stronger over on the caster side of things. D&D mages are ultimately combat mages, and any D&D wizard can, with only a little time and a couple of books become an excellent battle mage. If my setting has academic institutions of magic then I want my wizards to be academics. And I don't necessarily want the Chancellor to be an Elminster level mage. Instead it's just as likely that he's a political infighter who wrote his thesis and then did his research and lecturing on portal spells. He's not been in a physical fight in his life because why would he have been? And why does making him a master of portal magic mean he can suddenly cast Meteor Swarm with only a little research just because it's the same level for PCs.</p><p></p><p>Using a class-and-level system and NPCs using the same rules as PCs more or less shatters any hope of a setting-first perspective that is less artificial than Order of the Stick from working. Not that I'm saying OOTS is <em>bad - </em>just that calling it setting first is ridiculous.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>And yet I find it far less empowering than 4e. And no one has told me a single thing that they, as DMs, can do in 5e but not 4e. Merely things they <em>have </em>to do, and they are claiming that this is empowerment.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Possibly it's that I'm used to the standards of 4e - but I never put down just 12 orcs either. But 5e gives me less for that sort of mix than 4e did - or a number of other systems.</p><p></p><p>As I have mentioned earlier in this thread one of the core design mistakes in 5e in terms of tactical considerations is throwing and finesse weapons, and another one is that the penalty for being in melee is disadvantage, which has no effect at all on spellcasters using saving throw spells. This means that archers with shortswords hit almost exactly as hard and accurately with their shortswords as with their bows, orcs with axes and javelins are almost exactly as accurate and hard hitting with the two, and spellcasters can still use almost all their combat spells in melee with exactly the same level of danger. Oh, and there's no flanking.</p><p></p><p>That's why tactics in 5e are boring - they are almost all focus fire, with positioning not meaning much. And then the game is slow because of the default bullet sponge design; an AD&D ogre had 19 hit points and could be one-shotted on a good roll by a fighter with a greatsword and weapon specialisation but a 5e ogre has 59 hit points. Even the humble goblin has 7hp and with it a good chance of taking a hit from a low level fighter and surviving.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>This is 100% backwards. 4e is the only version of D&D where you <em>don't </em>have to gut the system to remove all heroes with mystic powers. Every other version of D&D is built round the assumption that there will be healing magic in the party (and that fighters are mechanically bland) - but 4e does not require it in the slightest and you can have an extremely well rounded and competent party using only the martial classes and light oversight of the powers chosen. (And no, Inspiring Word is not actually mystic). Yes you have to be careful especially with barbarian or ranger power picks - but that doesn't mean gutting the ruleset - it just means approving character sheets.</p><p></p><p>To put things into perspective if I want to remove heroes with mystic powers I need to start by tearing out nine of the thirteen classes in 5e because every member of every one of those classes above a set level casts spells. Then I need to take out the Eldritch Knight, Arcane Trickster, and Four Elements Monk (not that anyone will miss that last) before looking hard at the monk and barbarian builds. I've most fighters, most rogues, some barbarians, and a few monks left.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>That's only from the player side in my experience but is definitely true. There were more feats by the time the run came to an end in 4e than there were in 3.5.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The thing here is that you're not describing anything I haven't seen from Apocalypse World other than a slightly more shared workload. You can lay down the themes early and hard in what the threats are and what exactly the Apocalypse was. It will fight you if you try to <em>script </em>but you can definitely set up themes.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>It's fixable - but D&D has several factors that mean that you need to fight the system to fix it. Power being bound up in magic items so players fighting against losing them the way they did level drain is one. Another is how difficult it is to get away. And a third is how inconsequential hit point loss is. If you're even using a WoD style death spiral then pursuers don't want to take injury, and there comes a time when one side is too injured to continue. The assumption of victory or death flows from the game design even if it isn't strictly necessary.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Neonchameleon, post: 8092091, member: 87792"] On the contrary. If I look at a setting-first approach then I find that D&D characters are all professional adventurers. And if I want the setting to contain people who are [I]not[/I] professional adventurers (and indeed may never have taken part in a single fight) I need to be able to ignore PC creation rules If I want to make the world's best breadmaker and he's using PC rules, he either needs (in 3.X) a spectacularly high BAB or (in 5e) a maximum level proficiency score. Which he has somehow obtained by staying in the bakery for ten hours a day for the past 30 years always baking and refining recipies to the point that he knows things about dough that no one else does. He is an inhabitant of the setting - but he is not an adventurer who spends much of their time fighting for their life. This is perfectly fine if NPCs don't have to use the same rules as PCs of course. It's even stronger over on the caster side of things. D&D mages are ultimately combat mages, and any D&D wizard can, with only a little time and a couple of books become an excellent battle mage. If my setting has academic institutions of magic then I want my wizards to be academics. And I don't necessarily want the Chancellor to be an Elminster level mage. Instead it's just as likely that he's a political infighter who wrote his thesis and then did his research and lecturing on portal spells. He's not been in a physical fight in his life because why would he have been? And why does making him a master of portal magic mean he can suddenly cast Meteor Swarm with only a little research just because it's the same level for PCs. Using a class-and-level system and NPCs using the same rules as PCs more or less shatters any hope of a setting-first perspective that is less artificial than Order of the Stick from working. Not that I'm saying OOTS is [I]bad - [/I]just that calling it setting first is ridiculous. And yet I find it far less empowering than 4e. And no one has told me a single thing that they, as DMs, can do in 5e but not 4e. Merely things they [I]have [/I]to do, and they are claiming that this is empowerment. Possibly it's that I'm used to the standards of 4e - but I never put down just 12 orcs either. But 5e gives me less for that sort of mix than 4e did - or a number of other systems. As I have mentioned earlier in this thread one of the core design mistakes in 5e in terms of tactical considerations is throwing and finesse weapons, and another one is that the penalty for being in melee is disadvantage, which has no effect at all on spellcasters using saving throw spells. This means that archers with shortswords hit almost exactly as hard and accurately with their shortswords as with their bows, orcs with axes and javelins are almost exactly as accurate and hard hitting with the two, and spellcasters can still use almost all their combat spells in melee with exactly the same level of danger. Oh, and there's no flanking. That's why tactics in 5e are boring - they are almost all focus fire, with positioning not meaning much. And then the game is slow because of the default bullet sponge design; an AD&D ogre had 19 hit points and could be one-shotted on a good roll by a fighter with a greatsword and weapon specialisation but a 5e ogre has 59 hit points. Even the humble goblin has 7hp and with it a good chance of taking a hit from a low level fighter and surviving. This is 100% backwards. 4e is the only version of D&D where you [I]don't [/I]have to gut the system to remove all heroes with mystic powers. Every other version of D&D is built round the assumption that there will be healing magic in the party (and that fighters are mechanically bland) - but 4e does not require it in the slightest and you can have an extremely well rounded and competent party using only the martial classes and light oversight of the powers chosen. (And no, Inspiring Word is not actually mystic). Yes you have to be careful especially with barbarian or ranger power picks - but that doesn't mean gutting the ruleset - it just means approving character sheets. To put things into perspective if I want to remove heroes with mystic powers I need to start by tearing out nine of the thirteen classes in 5e because every member of every one of those classes above a set level casts spells. Then I need to take out the Eldritch Knight, Arcane Trickster, and Four Elements Monk (not that anyone will miss that last) before looking hard at the monk and barbarian builds. I've most fighters, most rogues, some barbarians, and a few monks left. That's only from the player side in my experience but is definitely true. There were more feats by the time the run came to an end in 4e than there were in 3.5. The thing here is that you're not describing anything I haven't seen from Apocalypse World other than a slightly more shared workload. You can lay down the themes early and hard in what the threats are and what exactly the Apocalypse was. It will fight you if you try to [I]script [/I]but you can definitely set up themes. It's fixable - but D&D has several factors that mean that you need to fight the system to fix it. Power being bound up in magic items so players fighting against losing them the way they did level drain is one. Another is how difficult it is to get away. And a third is how inconsequential hit point loss is. If you're even using a WoD style death spiral then pursuers don't want to take injury, and there comes a time when one side is too injured to continue. The assumption of victory or death flows from the game design even if it isn't strictly necessary. [/QUOTE]
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