D&D 5E I think we can safely say that 5E is a success, but will it lead to a new Golden Era?

[Imaro]

Well, no. But that has nothing to do with the AEDU structure because it could easily have been supported if WotC so wished. WHY they did not so wish is completely beyond me. They added the ability to play a paladin with nothing but ranged blasty magic but no bows for fighters. /boggle

I was just using it as an example of lacking customization, though they did rectify it (somewhat) much later with the Slayer... but then according to [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION]... the essentials classes lacking dailies aren't balanced, so were back to square one.

 

[Halivar]

I was just using it as an example of lacking customization, though they did rectify it (somewhat) much later with the Slayer... but then according to @Tony Vargas... the essentials classes lacking dailies aren't balanced, so were back to square one.

I'll be honest, I never really looked at Essentials; I only ever played one character in 4E because our campaign lasted that long. I recall playing a side campaign for a couple months using Essentials, and while the increase in at-wills and encounter powers was nice, the classes felt less customizable.

In any event, I think maybe I lucked out by playing a paladin; that class in particular was more interesting and diverse in 4E than I was used to in previous editions.

 

[Imaro]

In any event, I think maybe I lucked out by playing a paladin; that class in particular was more interesting and diverse in 4E than I was used to in previous editions.

We had a paladin in our 4e campaign and the one thing we couldn't wrap our heads around was why he didn't have Athletics as a class skill... it just seemed off...

 

[Siberys]

The thing is each of these settings had compromises made in order to facilitate the 4e mechanics (as an example Dark Sun wasn't as gritty and deadly, especially in the early game, as it was originally because 4e made certain assumptions about the type, gonzo action hero, of characters you were playing and that assumption stuck no matter the setting).

The original 2e boxed set recommended you start at level 3, because characters from Athas were more powerful and competent. 4e didn't need that because characters start out powerful and competent.

Compare with the compromises DS had to make to work with its original 2e ruleset - like the weird hoops the designers jumped through to put clerics in a setting without gods. 4e just said "no Divine characters" and was done with it.

In other words, so what? Compromising the setting to account for the rules is part and parcel of being a game setting.

(As an aside, though I think someone else hit on it; yes, there is a "sword and bow" fighter, and it's the Slayer. Most of their features work just as well with a bow as a sword, and I've seen that put to very good use. It was later in the game's lifespan, but it's out there.)

 

[Tony Vargas]

The thing is each of these settings had compromises made in order to facilitate the 4e mechanics (as an example Dark Sun wasn't as gritty and deadly).

Meh. Dark Sun had a terrible time in it's native 2e because of the lack of clerics, and thus healing. A non-issue in 4e, which had 'Leaders' of every Source to fill the void. Dark Sun simply worked better in 4e. From what I recall of the Dark Sun Encounters Season, it was plenty gritty and deadly. You weren't going around looking for treasure, you were constantly struggling to get enough food & water to survive - and the combats were brutal, even with the PCs slightly powered-up by feats.

Deadly just isn't an issue when you have solid encounter design, you can dial it up as high as you need to. Gritty is mostly a matter of DM presentation.

I also don't consider re-skinning anything like the type of customization we were speaking of in 3.x.

Re-skinning was a 3e thing, it just applied to less. The level of customization in 4e was pretty high, though, apart from that, just a good deal less abuseable.

In 4e can I play a balanced fighter whose equally adept at the sword and bow?

Sure. You just have to write 'Ranger' on your character sheet. The fighter class isn't stretched so thinly over the martial archetypes in 4e because of the addition of the Warlord and the non-casting status of the PH Ranger. Fighter doesn't cover as much because it doesn't have to.

4e did still suffer from D&D's long-standing inability to give martial archetypes their due, though, even if it was to a lesser extent.

(As an aside, though I think someone else hit on it; yes, there is a "sword and bow" fighter, and it's the Slayer. Most of their features work just as well with a bow as a sword, and I've seen that put to very good use. It was later in the game's lifespan, but it's out there.)

Yeah, I even played one. (it's almost off-label, too, the class is very clearly designed to be melee-oriented, it's power attack doesn't work with a bow, but it's DEX-to-damage striker feature makes it a natural DPR machine when using one) But, it's Essentials, and we were discussing the balanced version of 4e. ;P

I also have my doubts about your "magic rich" setting working since number and power and availability of magic items was tightly regulated in 4e.

There's a guideline, but it's really only important in the terms of enhancement bonuses. You can flip the Inherent bonuses switch, and have a low/no magic game below those guidelines, or you can use the guidelines and have a decidedly high-magic game. Since, at that point, you have magic items that can be readily made/bought or even dis-enchanted and transferred or transformed from one sort to another. That's about as magic-rich as I was thinking. You could heap even more magic on the campaign if you wanted, maybe by a factor of 5 or so before too-high-enhancement bonuses started cropping up (and, if you wanted to go there, could nix various feat taxes to bring the math back into line).

At what cost... if I don't like the AEDU structure can I pick a character that doesn't use it?

You might as well ask what if you don't like hps or don't like rolling a d20 or don't like classes or levels. It's just an underlying structure of the system. It really has very little bearing on the character you can play or what you can do with that system.

If every class has to use powers and they have to be in an AEDU structure... how is that not rigid?

It's not rigid because the resulting balance leaves the game very flexible. You can vary pacing radically without suffering from class imbalances. That's flexibility, not rigidity. You can focus a campaign on certain types of characters or themes, you can have a campaign with or without deities, with or without magic. You can focus on one pillar over the others. Players can play the general concepts they want, because the broader archetypes modeled by source can handle many roles, /and/ because no role is absolutely vital. With a robustly balanced game you can do more /without breaking it/.

Now, if you were on the other side of the publication model, you'd notice something like rigidity. When Mearls decided to let some cracks into the neatly-balanced AEDU system with Essentials he called it "opening up design space," because robust balance requires a lot of design discipline. It's just harder. If you've ever tried creating a new class for 4e, for instance, you probably found it /very/ difficult compared to creating a 3e class (especially a caster, where you could just build a list from existing spells).

But, I don't think you were talking about homebrewing classes.

 

[prosfilaes]

I'm not sure what you're getting at, here. Can someone willfully choose to be in effective? Sure. They can stand in a corner and do nothing.

What I'm getting at is that is that my worst problem with balance came from a player who played her character extremely ineffectively. Telling me that balance is terribly important and mocking my balance problems is less then convincing.

Balance is a very real quality that games have. The only reason to /want/ an imbalanced game is so that you can leverage that imbalance to ruin the game for others.

So playing 3E is badwrongfun. Got it.

I'll note that people keep wanting to play the imbalanced game that was 4e, instead of a game that distributed the same character to everyone. There's costs to balance. There's also people who just don't find it necessary; Dannyalcatraz has mentioned having good times running Rifts for a Vagabond and Juicer, and that blows any type of imbalance findable in most any form of D&D out of the water.

Not exactly hard to do that kind of character, is it? In 3e, you'd play a barbarian, and use a daily (EX) ability to Rage. In prior editions he'd've been a fighter and unable even to do that. In Essentials, he'd be a Slayer and use Power Attack (an encounter resource) to hit harder and wilder, and, before that, in 4e, a Battlerager fighter and use powers like Brute Strike to hit harder and wilder.

I'm not familiar with Essentials, but in 4e I would have the same number of daily powers and encounter powers no matter what class I played. So yes, it is impossible to make a character that reduces that complexity, that doesn't have to deliberate in combat over any number of options.

The common AEDU class structure was a solid framework for balance and made learning and understanding the game much easier. It was a big enough difference that edition warriors felt the need to attack it with false and misleading labels like 'homogenized' or 'samey'

That's word games. If it's a common structure where classes don't have a lot of new stuff to be learned, then homogenized is an accurate label. "Samey" is more of a subjective thing, but it's rich to talk about all the differences that were ironed out of the classes and then get outraged when someone considers them "samey".

Ironically, the one time absolutely wasn't true - that is, when the fans of the old edition were able to look forward to a constant stream of new material, supporting material, complementary games that would introduce new players to the same system, and even virtual-reprint 'clones' - was the one time those fans had the most violent and destructive reaction against the new edition. That reaction was so destructive, we call it the edition war.

So you really believe the only time people have been upset about an edition change was 3.5 -> 4E? There's a reason most of the rest of us call them "edition wars" and not "the edition war". Moreover, there wasn't material for 3.5; it was for Pathfinder, a different game with all sorts of rules variance that needed to leveled out. Most of the third party support didn't want to try and support a dead system, particularly in the absence of the D20 license.

 

[Keldryn]

Obviously, people can play a game however they like, and make whatever claims they like on the internet. (And also snip a quote out of context to make it sound like a sweeping generalization.) One persons experiences, however considerable, is just a set of anecdotes, so are several persons' recountings of what they remember from 30+ years ago. So lets set all the unverifiable anonymous anecdotes and revisionist history aside, and actually look at something that at least some of us can dig out of a box and crack open:

Look at the game itself from those days. 0D&D came right out and called itself a wargame, for use with miniature figures, right on the cover. AD&D's rules were still very much those of such a game, with everything in scale inches, dicing for initiative, and checking morale and on and on.
And there's no dispute that D&D grew out of Chainmail, a medieval wargame.

In the process of setting aside unverifiable anonymous anecdotes and revisionist history, let's not set aside an entire parallel product line that TSR produced alongside AD&D throughout most of its history.

The first D&D Basic Set (Holmes, 1977) was designed specifically for players who were not familiar with miniatures wargaming.

B/X D&D (1981) and BECMI D&D (1983-85) did not assume the use of miniatures. None of AD&D's terminology about "figures" in battle or scale "inches" can be found in this version of D&D.

The front of the'83 Basic Set box itself states that:

This game requires no gameboard because the action takes place in the player's imagination with dungeon adventures that include monsters, treasures, and magic.

It is my understanding that this version of the Basic Set was the best-selling D&D (or AD&D) product of all-time. Those of us who started with B/X or BECMI D&D (including myself) are probably more likely to have taken the same approach with AD&D than those who started with OD&D or AD&D 1e. And there are a lot of us. And apparently, it wasn't just me who more or less used the core rules of Basic/Expert D&D with the classes, spells, magic items, and monsters of AD&D.

The next version of the Basic Set (1991) included a gridded board with the dungeon map on it, as well as cardboard counters for characters and monsters. As the Rules Cyclopedia (1991) did not assume the use of miniatures, I assume that the Basic Set was done that way either because they thought that it would make it easier to teach the game or that having a game board and "tokens" made the box look more like a game so as to be able to sell it in toy and department stores.

 

[Morty]

Of all the problems 4e classes do have, I don't think the AEDU structure is one of them. And honestly, what problems there are for the most part don't really apply to martial characters - they're as good as D&D ever got, apart from Tome of Battle.

 

[Tony Vargas]

What I'm getting at is that is that my worst problem with balance came from a player who played her character extremely ineffectively.

Well, OK, if that was all. That does highlight the need to avoid 'trap options' as much as to avoid 'broken' ones - in the community, we tend to prioritize the latter, figuring most people acquire a little system mastery over time and don't willfully work towards the reverse (though you always hear about the 'real roleplayer' whose concept simply /must/ be inferior).

I'll note that people keep wanting to play the imbalanced game that was 4e, instead of a game that distributed the same character to everyone. There's costs to balance.

There are costs to balance, but they're mostly paid by the designers. A theoretical game where everyone has no choice but to play the same identical character, for instance, is imbalanced. It doesn't matter whether that is do to only one character option being presented, or to only one overwhelmingly effective option being presented amongst many dreadfully unappealing and ineffectual ones.

There's also people who just don't find it necessary

Not necessary is fine. You have it, but you don't need it. Like the guy who never gets in an accident never needed his seat belt or airbags, isn't much bothered by having them, and has no reason to begrudge them to others who may not be so lucky. The only 'loser' is the auto company that had to eat the cost of the safety systems under law.

I'm not familiar with Essentials, but in 4e I would have the same number of daily powers and encounter powers no matter what class I played. So yes, it is impossible to make a character that reduces that complexity, that doesn't have to deliberate in combat over any number of options.

Actually, it's pretty easy. If you intentionally pick functionally similar powers, you end up with very simple choices. You lead with encounters, because you'll just get 'em back anyway, and throw dailies when you're 'mad' or otherwise inclined to pull out all the stops. The rest of the time, you use your at-wills. You're not as versatile as you could be - an example of someone willfully playing a less effective character than they could - but you're right up there with everyone else power-wise. Which illustrates how robust balance addresses even the one issue you said you had with it, above.

That's word games. If it's a common structure where classes don't have a lot of new stuff to be learned, then homogenized is an accurate label.

Nope, it's not. If you had a 12 course meal would each course be 'the same' as the one before because they were all served on plates? No. That's what you're trying to assert by implying the only thing that makes classes different is something as meta-game as a resource structure like AEDU.

So you really believe the only time people have been upset about an edition change was 3.5 -> 4E?

Hardly. But it only rose (sank) to the level of the edition war in that instance.

Moreover, there wasn't material for 3.5; it was for Pathfinder, a different game with all sorts of rules variance that needed to leveled out. Most of the third party support didn't want to try and support a dead system, particularly in the absence of the D20 license.

Pathfinder is a clone of 3.5, and ongoing support for 3.5 will /always/ be legally available thanks to the OGL. Whether demand is sufficient for anyone to produce is is another question, but it seems like it has been.

In any case, it was an absolutely unique and guaranteed level of ongoing support for the outgoing edition, yet, /in spite of having that to fall back on/, the nerdrage against the new edition was the most virulent ever, resulting in the edition war.

 

[Tony Vargas]

It is my understanding that this version of the Basic Set was the best-selling D&D (or AD&D) product of all-time.

I hadn't heard that, specifically, but it sounds plausible: it's the obvious first thing to buy, and some percentage of first-timers presumably don't move on to anything else.

Those of us who started with B/X or BECMI D&D (including myself) are probably more likely to have taken the same approach with AD&D than those who started with OD&D or AD&D 1e.

I and those I gamed with at the time all took the path from Basic set to AD&D. Seemed natural at the time. Start with Basic, go to Advanced. While basic might have eased us into D&D from outside the wargaming community (who's natural path would presumably have been Chainmail>0D&D>AD&D), it was still easing us into AD&D, not into some imaginary AD&D that didn't have any wargaming-style mechanics.

And there are a lot of us.

There always were when someone's reasoning from their own experiences.

The next version of the Basic Set (1991) included a gridded board with the dungeon map on it, as well as cardboard counters for characters and monsters.

OK, so another 'grid dependent' version of the game even before C&T. I'm not shocked.