D&D 5E How Can D&D Next Win You Over?

[pemerton]

How odd a lot of people remember you reciently arguing that people wanted 15 minute adventuring days... Guess it depends upon if it supports your position or not.

I'm not sure what you're talking about here - [MENTION=710]Mustrum_Ridcully[/MENTION] has been one of the most coherent and thorough posters on this forum concerning the balance problems around the 15 minute day that result from different resource cycles for different PCs.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

How odd a lot of people remember you reciently arguing that people wanted 15 minute adventuring days... Guess it depends upon if it supports your position or not.

I don't necessarily want or not want 15 minute adventuring days.

There are two components to 15 minute adventuring days that bother people

1) The idea that a party goes into a dungeon for 15 minute, then leaves and waits for 24 hours to return, so it has all its resources refreshed.

2) The problem that a 15 minute adventuring day leads to imbalance between classes that have powerful abilities they can use only a limited number of times per day and other classes have only abilities they can use as often as they want, but come with less power.

The imbalance reason that people dislike in 2 is a major factor for 1 - if you fight for your survival, and your best survival tools has only limited uses per day, you will want to recover them as often as you can.

But fixing 2 does not require elinimating daily resources, it just requires every type of character to have similar types of resources. Fixing 1 would require removing daily resources, or create very strong incentives to not recover them despite their benefits. Non-mechanical ways are things like adventures on a clock or wandering monsters, mechanical ways could be milestone mechanics.

Fixing 2, on the other hand, is not necessarily helped by the non-mechanical ways. 2 can also manifest in ways that would not really bother anyone in regards to 1. For example, an adventure that involves a lot of research, legwork and socializing but little resource use, but that culiminates in a single scenario (combat typically) where these resources can and will be used. It's not really a problem for 1, since the scenario is entirely believable - people don't just sit around doing nothing while there is an unexplored dungeon with kidnapped princesses and hostile monsters and what not, they were busy doing adventurer-worthy stuff, but 2 is, since the imbalance will shine.

Personally, I can deal with 1 in the bad form and any other scenario that involes a single large encounter per day, but I do not want to deal with 2.

So maybe that's why you believe that someone "wants" the 15 minute adventure day, I don't know. I don't particularly care for it, but the real problem to me is not that the adventures are only busy 15 minutes of the day, but that characters outshine other characters purely due to the 15 minutes day (and not because the player is particular clever that day, or I've engineered a scenario that gives a certain player some more spotlight then usual...)

 

[Neonchameleon]

Well, field hockey uses sticks, which makes it different. If you'd have gone with rugby then, yeah, they are variants of the game game.
Football (both), rugby, and the like are classified under 796.33 in the Dewey decimal system. Basketball, not using feet, is an odd one out there.

I'm surprised. I actually picked [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]'s sports as Polo, Water Polo, Lacrosse, and Wheelchair Basketball. Because so much was left out. Just like your examples.

But I didn't. I removed the name, the description, the keywords (relevant to the game, irrelevant to individual powers), and damage type (also irrelevant without extra rules).

You mean you removed almost all the fiction. Ffs you even removed what sort of defence was being used - I might believe the move-through-enemies power as a rogue thing (I didn't because it used too much brute force, although my initial guess was that it was a Monk daily) but I can't recall a single time a rogue attacks fortitude because that isn't what rogues do. In short you stripped information out and this lead to confusion.

Next time don't remove important information and you won't mislead people as much.

In short, looking at the actual power itself and just the power, judging it for what it is and not involving feats or items or secondary content.

No you didn't. You took away details of what it actually does by removing information like the defence being targetted as well as things like damage types. You then disguised information by by your own admission picking random numbers for the weapon powers, providing false information.

This isn't just the matter of fighters getting spells.
The one person to actually guess picked a spell as an exploit. This particular spell turned the caster (a warlock) into ooze where they slid around the battlefield and burned foes with acid. But the spell was so unremarkable, it could be mistaken for something a rogue could do by changing the damage from acid to untyped. How is that magical?

It's about as magical as a wizard doing 20 points of damage to a target. By your logic every single ray spell in 3.X is non-magic.

If all that magic has going for it is different types of energy then how is magic special and not mundane?

Who says that's all magic has going for it? It's all some simple combat spells have going for them.

And you seem to be trying to say that only magic should be special. Why?

Also let's take an actual play example. From memory these are the At Wills of my PCs, stripped of the same information you've stripped them of. Note that I'm still presenting the caricatures you are - but I'm also presenting more than one power as that's more than one datapoint.

I've cut two PCs from the list - there is no way to present Thieves Tricks or Full Disciplines that doesn't make them obvious.

Seven PCs, four power sources. All PCs I have designed and played.

PC 1:
[sblock]
At Will
Standard Action
Ranged:
Target: One creature
Attack: Ability vs. Defence
Hit: 1d6 + Ability modifier damage, and if the target misses an attack roll before the start of your next turn they are knocked prone

At Will
Standard Action
Melee:
Target: One creature
Attack: Ability vs. Defence
Hit: 1d8 + Ability modifier damage, and the target takes -2 to a defence of your choice until the end of your next turn[/sblock]

PC 2:
[sblock]
At Will
Standard Action
Ranged:
Target: One creature
Attack: Ability vs. Defence
Hit: 1d10 + Ability modifier damage
Special: This power may be used as a Ranged basic Attack

At Will
Standard Action
Melee:
Target: One creature
Attack: Ability vs. Defence
Hit: 1d10 + Ability modifier damage, and the target takes -2 to hit until the end of their next turn and you slide them one square.[/sblock]

PC 3: (This one's a no-brainer)
[sblock]
At Will
Standard Action
Ranged:
Target: One square
Effect: Create something in that square. Any enemy entering a square adjacent to the object takes 1d6 + stat modifier damage

At Will
Standard Action
Area Burst 1:
Target: Each enemy in burst
Attack: Ability vs. Defence
Hit: 1d6 + Ability modifier damage, you slide the enemy one square[/sblock]

PC 4: (And just as much a no brainer)
[sblock]
At Will
Standard Action
Ranged:
Target: One creature in ten squares
Effect: One ally within five squares of you may make a basic attack against that creature

At Will
Standard Action
Melee:
Target: One creature
Effect: One ally adjacent to you may make a melee basic attack aganst your target. If they hit they gain [your secondary stat mod] as a bonus to damage

At Will
Standard Action
Melee:
Target: One creature
Attack: Ability vs. Defence
Hit: 1d8 + Ability modifier damage
Effect: Your target may make a basic attack against you with combat advantage. If they do one ally may make a basic attack against them with combat advantage.[/sblock]

PC 5: (OK, so this one's easy too)
[sblock]At Will
Standard Action
Melee:
Target: One creature
Attack: Ability vs. Defence
Hit: 1d8 + Ability modifier damage and the target is subject to your Divine Sanction

At Will
Standard Action
Melee:
Target: One creature
Attack: Ability vs. Defence
Hit: 1d8 + Ability modifier damage and you gain a bonus to your next save
Special: This counts as a melee basic attack
[/sblock]

PC 6: (OK, so this one's easy too)
[sblock]At Will
Standard Action
Melee:
Target: One creature
Attack: Ability vs. Defence
Hit: 1d8 + Ability modifier damage and you slide the target one square

At Will
Standard Action
Close Blast 3:
Target: One creature
Attack: Ability vs. Defence
Hit: 1d8 + Ability modifier damage
Effect: All enemies in the zone until the start of your next turn grant combat advantage

At Will
Standard Action
Ranged:
Target: One creature
Attack: Ability vs. Defence
Hit: 1d6 + Ability modifier damage and you get to make this attack again if the target does something that would provoke an opportunity attack
[/sblock]

PC 7: (The role's going to be obvious for this one, the power source simply because it's a well known power)
[sblock]
At Will
Standard Action
Ranged:
Target: One, two, or three enemies
Attack: Ability vs. Defence
Hit: 1d4 + Ability modifier damage

At Will
Standard Action
Area Burst 1:
Ranged:
Target: One enemy
Attack: Ability vs. Defence
Hit: 1d10 + Ability modifier damage
Special: This counts as a Ranged Basic Attack
[/sblock]

It's not just one individual power that matters - rays according to you are archery. It's the whole PC built up from the component parts. And you need multiple parts - for instance there is no reason most of the Barbarian powers couldn't be Martial. But raging really isn't martial.

And these are all recognisable despite having stripped actually important information from them like what the target defence is.

 

[Shadeydm]

So maybe that's why you believe that someone "wants" the 15 minute adventure day, I don't know.

I never claimed to want 15 minute adventuring days. In fact in my 30 years of gaming they rarely if ever happened. In fact the last 15 minute adventuring day I experienced was in 4E when the defender essentially ran out of surges after the first fight of the day.

It was you that advocated that some people wanted 15 minute adventuring days not me.

I just don't see them as this huge system problem. Most of the 15 minute adventuring days i've seen described on these boards seem more like issues with static unchanging worlds, social contract issues, encounter/adventure design issues and bizarre corner cases.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I don't really get this. In Gygax's AD&D only rangers can surprise on a 1 to 3, only monks and thief-acrobats can ablate falling damage. So some capacities in the fiction - being sneakier, being able to roll with a fall - are limited by class. That's what a class-based system is.

So your case is that in earlier versions of the game, characters had inappropriately restrictive abilities that have been made available to more and more players and characters over the editions, and we should go back to that? D&D has become less and less class-based over time, treating classes more as a convenient way of packaging abilities that helps people understand what they're getting but less and less as a choice that puts you in a box that you can't get out of.

The 3e mentality was that you could make a character that fit that mold (single-class, standard race, typical feat and skill choices), but you didn't have to. As 3e has been revised and Pathfinderized, classes have gotten more and more flexible; how many classes don't have some kind of option to select evasion?. Not really looking for a backwards step here. Not really buying the appeal to tradition, and Gygax's name in and of itself doesn't carry much weight with me.

If the player of a fighter in AD&D says 'I want us to make-believe that my fighter rolled with the fall', I would expect the GM to decline the invitation.

The say-yes mentality suggests that if a player of any character says that and it seems possible, you shouldn't say no, you should roll something.

In a game of round-based combat, everyone can attack two foes, of course. You just have to take two rounds to actually get to roll the d20 against each (but nothing stops you narrating your swings and parries against both of them in the abstract combat round - especially the AD&D 1 minute round). Multiple attacks just increases the number of d20 rolls you get.

The significance of a power that lets you hit and slide enemies isn't that it changes the fiction. Just as a multiple attack ability in AD&D or 3E doesn't change the fiction. But like those abilities, it interacts with the abstraction of combat rounds.

I see what you're saying. I just don't think that either iterative attacks or those combo powers are all that "significant". Anyway, there are lots of feats in 3.X that let you attack and bull rush, attack and trip, move and full attack, etc. Those are not limited to a set number of uses, and are available to anyone who qualifies, which is a better way of getting to the same game effect (you can do more in a combat round than the base rules allow).

Widespread use of out-of-turn movement or attacks is, in fact, a major innovation in 4e, in my view, compared to earlier editions of D&D. It allows round-based, turn-by-turn combat to be used without creating such an impression of a stop-motion world.

I'm all for out of turn actions. Trailblazer does a wonderful job of expanding the attack of opportunity concept into a mechanic that covers blocking and dodging as well, but doesn't require anything like the power structure.

Some people hate the complexity though.

What's happening is that the ally is moving. It's nothing to do with magic - it would only look like magic if you assume that the fiction's natural behaviour is stop-motion. As soon as you recognise that stop-motion resolution is an abstraction, the rationale for out-of-turn movement and out-of-turn attacks becomes pretty clear. Mechanically, they have an interesting dynamic (not unlike multiple attacks in AD&D and 3E, as I noted above). And in the fiction, they represent the fluidity of combat (just as multiple attack rolls represent the skill of a combatant).

That's not really the issue. The issue is that a character is causing another character to move-this is generally considered a bull rush-without physically touching him. Why you're not in charge of your own movement, I don't get.

***

To me, it's all a matter of perspective. You could look at the following four characters:

1. Strong guy: Str 18, Con 10, Dex 10, Int 10, Wis 10, Cha 10
2. Agile guy: Str 10, Con 10, Dex 18, Int 10, Wis 10, Cha 10
3. Smart guy: Str 10, Con 10, Dex 10, Int 18, Wis 10, Cha 10
4. Persuasive guy: Str 10, Con 10, Dex 10, Int 10, Wis 10, Cha 18

and say either:

A: None of them are special. They all have one 18 and 5 10s.

B: They are all special. One is super strong, the second is really agile, the third is very smart and the fourth is extremely persuasive.

I'm going to go with option B.

But, as D&D players know, those ability scores are not necessarily equal in value, so those characters are "unbalanced".

Anyway, lets say you have four characters:

1. Strong Guy: Smashes things
2. Agile Guy: Stealthy and skilled
3. Smart Guy: Reshapes the world
4: Wise Guy: Heals people

So, either:

A: None of them are special. They all have distinguishing characteristics.

B: They are all special. One is a good fighter, the second is a good rogue, the third is a good wizard and the fourth is a good cleric.

If you were to say B again, we could conclude that the classic D&D archetypes are all special (and thus, "balanced"), despite the fact that their abilities are, even in such abstract terms, not equal. A contentious point to some.

 

[pemerton]

The issue is that a character is causing another character to move

No. The player is enabling another person's PC to move. It is not ingame causation. In the game, the other PC moves because s/he wills her leg muscles, etc.

Why you're not in charge of your own movement, I don't get.

Because of the way the game distributes action economy. In most (all?) cases, these "slide an ally X squares" powers could be rewritten as "an ally may shift up to X squares as a free action" - the only difference is that the sliding ignores difficult terrain, the shifting doesn't. It's not a big deal. It's a bit like the 10' x 10' horse in 3.5. No one really thinks a horse is 10' wide. It's a mechanical convenience - describing the horse within the constraints of the mechanical the game makes available.

If you were to say B again, we could conclude that the classic D&D archetypes are all special (and thus, "balanced"), despite the fact that their abilities are, even in such abstract terms, not equal. A contentious point to some.

TThis is not contentious at all - because the only sense in which it is clear that they are not equal is that they are not identical - and no one is calling for identicality, only (rough) equality.

 

[Neonchameleon]

So your case is that in earlier versions of the game, characters had inappropriately restrictive abilities that have been made available to more and more players and characters over the editions, and we should go back to that? D&D has become less and less class-based over time, treating classes more as a convenient way of packaging abilities that helps people understand what they're getting but less and less as a choice that puts you in a box that you can't get out of.

The 3e mentality was that you could make a character that fit that mold (single-class, standard race, typical feat and skill choices), but you didn't have to. As 3e has been revised and Pathfinderized, classes have gotten more and more flexible; how many classes don't have some kind of option to select evasion?. Not really looking for a backwards step here. Not really buying the appeal to tradition, and Gygax's name in and of itself doesn't carry much weight with me.

To me there are two crippling flaws with 3.X. The first is the skill system - you have 36 skills (not breaking out crafts and knowledges) and a maximum of about 10 skill points/level. This isn't enough. But the overwhelming flaw with 3.X is the dominance of magic. Shoot any caster capable of casting level 9 spells (and psionics) and you've a much better game there.

I'd be happy playing a game involving the Bard, the Bo9S classes, the Dread Necromancer, and a back-converted 4e thief. (And probably in that environment the Artificer would work). You could possibly throw in an evocation-only warmage or sorceror or back-convert something like the Elementalist Sorceror from 4e.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I never claimed to want 15 minute adventuring days. In fact in my 30 years of gaming they rarely if ever happened. In fact the last 15 minute adventuring day I experienced was in 4E when the defender essentially ran out of surges after the first fight of the day.

It was you that advocated that some people wanted 15 minute adventuring days not me.

I wasn't saying that you wanted the 15 minute adventuring day, I was trying to explain why you may think that I "wanted" the 15 minute adventuring day. Which I do not actually do, but I think there are valid situations where 15 minute adventuring day happens where all the stuff stuff like social contract and unchanging worlds do not apply, but nevertheless all the "resource intensive" action is condensed into a single encounter where some classes get to use their dailies to full effect and others seem ineffectual in comparison.

I just don't see them as this huge system problem. Most of the 15 minute adventuring days i've seen described on these boards seem more like issues with static unchanging worlds, social contract issues, encounter/adventure design issues and bizarre corner cases.

Well, encounter/adventure design seems a cop-out. Is it wrong to design an adventure that involves the player doing a lot of non-combat stuff where tehy don't need spells, hit points or magical potions, but culminates in a violent conflict?

 

[Ahnehnois]

No. The player is enabling another person's PC to move.

Then why is the ability that's causing it on the character sheet and selected as part of character creation and occurring as part of an action that the character takes?

If character #2 has an ability that says "I can move 10 ft. once per round on someone else's turn", that's very different than character #1 having an ability saying "I can move someone else 10 ft. etc. etc.".

TThis is not contentious at all - because the only sense in which it is clear that they are not equal is that they are not identical - and no one is calling for identicality, only (rough) equality.

If rough equality is enough, why would any major rpg be considered not sufficiently balanced?

 

[Shadeydm]

Well, encounter/adventure design seems a cop-out. Is it wrong to design an adventure that involves the player doing a lot of non-combat stuff where tehy don't need spells, hit points or magical potions, but culminates in a violent conflict?

Sorry I am not following your logic here. Are you saying that bad adventure/encounter design can't lead to a 5 minute adventuring day? That if the DM starts the day off with an encounter that totally thrashes the party and expends all thier hit points/healing surges/resources that he bears no responsibility for this 5 minute adventuring day?