D&D 5E Innovations I'd like to keep in 5E

[AbdulAlhazred]

What's great about this post is that you did exactly what he said people do and dismiss something out of hand because you subjectively think a mechanic is better because it's more "streamlined" and "modern".

There's nothing subjective about it. I posted facts. Yes, they may indicate a preference but the facts were facts, nothing else.

You know what? I frickin' hate 4E defenses with a passion.

The game took what was once a crucial point in a player's interaction with the game - rolling dice - and took that away from them for the sake of "simplicity".

Ummmmmmmm...

You do know that you roll just as many dice now in 4e as you ever did in 2e on the average. In fact now that you roll attacks and never defenses it is even more, because PCs saved far less often than monsters did. Less is more?

There's a real psychological suck that comes when your character is about to potentially have some horrible thing happen to them, and instead of the outcome being in their hands - literally, with the dice - they get to sit there and have someone else roll for them. Yay.

Huh? You equally get to roll the dice when you unleash some awesome effect and win the day. There's no net difference.

This is one thing every other edition got right with saves and 4E ruined. But, hey, that's just my opinion. And I'm not presenting it as some kind of TRUTH.

Sure, and nobody is criticizing anyone's tastes. If you say 4e 'ruined saves', well who can tell you that's 'wrong'? It is still true that changing them to defenses got rid of at least 2 redundant confusing useless things that were in the game and from what I can see nobody else is complaining about this. Seems like from the perspective of the game designers it was a darn good choice.

 

[Gorgoroth]

Archetypes!

Please, something resembling this. It's the reason our groups love PF so much. Fighters feel quite a bit different than one another, so do clerics for that matter.

Thankfully I've got my beastmorph alchemist to play on saturday. Class design is something competent designers should do. Balance is good, but not the penultimate god of D&D. And I disagree with XP being unified, wholeheartedly. A doctor doesn't reach level 2 until ten years of education, probably doesn't even have a single patient before 5, even then as a student practitioner. What I'm saying is : not everyone is cut out to be a doctor, or play a wizard.

There is NO balance possible between a flying caster and a fighter on the ground, depending on the situation to be overcome. Balance should be in terms of overall utility, not necessarily damage over their lives (I'd be in favor of fighters getting more, all things considered). A smart wizard will get more XP to fill his insane XP levelling requirements by creative use of his spells and MIND. Simply blasting enemies should be low XP yield stuff, akin to a fighter just swinging his sword at paltry orcs. Blowing up an incoming army with a fireball? Sure, that's okay. But getting them stuck in mud then forcing them to negotiate a peace treaty, that's thinking big. Blaster spells are the low lying fruit in AD&D. DMs should be encouraged to reward such play less than truly creative problem solving. A fighter would get rewarded more for swinging on that chandelier onto the dragon's back, and holding on for three rounds while it tried to shake him off, while the rest of the group reloads the balista and the wizard freezes some henchmen behind a wall of ice over there.

What I'm saying is, after my experience with 4e, I believe balance is a LIE. I think there's no such thing, per se. There is no equality. The classes should do what they do, and well, and there should be mechanical reasons for them to team up. Without a meat-shield, the wizard should get stomped, fast. He should have to plan out when and where to use his spells. The cleric should research what poisons there are in the jungle ahead, but one thing 4e did well for clerics was make their healing a minor action. Yesssssss.

Even though I loved my PF dwarf cleric, I specced him to be able to fight here and there but he usually had to save his standard action for spells, regardless of my love for Hand of the Acolyte, hurling his BattleAxe.

Crit cards from PF are also super fun. But confirming crits is lame/boring. You often get all excited for nothing. Don't like that.

 

[DMKastmaria]

[*]Saving throws that make sense (For, Will, Ref) instead of RSW/DM/PTTS/BA

And they don't make sense because... why? You don't understand them, I suppose.

In 3e, a save vs. poison is always Fort.

Boring. Limited.

In earlier editions, if a pc saves vs. spider poison, maybe he snatched his hand away just in time, or the spider's fangs never penetrated his armor.

Maybe he's a Cleric and got by on sheer faith, like St. Paul at Patmos.

Maybe the PC's an MU and just as his consciousness was starting to fade, he remembered a passage from a tome read long ago and half subconsciously, hastily scribbled the sigil of the Demon Lord of Spiders into the dirt, calling upon that entity to respect a pact made long ago, with sorcerer's from the MU's lineage.

I don't want all poison saves, to be based on Fort. Or all saves vs. dragons breath, to be based on reflex. Overly consistent, overly neat. Overly anal game design.

Not the first time, so-called modern streamlining, has sucked the flavor out of the game.

Though, in all fairness, I will admit to a fondness for the S&W single save.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

well then just switch it all around, all attacks are defended by the defender, and the attacker has an attack value that the defender beats...

I think the point is that it was a unifying mechanic, no longer do you sometimes roll an attack or sometimes defend against an attack, you always just roll an attack.

I've something thought of doing it a different way altogether - unifying mechanic is PCs roll all their attacks, and NPCs/Monsters don't.

Monsters have an AC, and Hit # (not bonus) etc - Hit number is 10+hit bonus.
Players have a Def Bonus and a hit bonus.
Player rolls if he hits. Player rolls to see if he is hit (ie. Monster has it's hit # of 17, and player rolls d20 and adds Defense bonus (AC-10)). Player rolls attacking DCs for spells. Player's roll Saves.

Then the GM doesn't have to roll dice, and can concentrate on running all the NPCs. And the players are completely in control of their own fate. Anything that affects them or that they affect they roll.

Never implemented it, but thought it could work.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

And they don't make sense because... why? You don't understand them, I suppose.

In 3e, a save vs. poison is always Fort.

Boring. Limited.

In earlier editions, if a pc saves vs. spider poison, maybe he snatched his hand away just in time, or the spider's fangs never penetrated his armor.

Maybe he's a Cleric and got by on sheer faith, like St. Paul at Patmos.

Maybe the PC's an MU and just as his consciousness was starting to fade, he remembered a passage from a tome read long ago and half subconsciously, hastily scribbled the sigil of the Demon Lord of Spiders into the dirt, calling upon that entity to respect a pact made long ago, with sorcerer's from the MU's lineage.

I don't want all poison saves, to be based on Fort. Or all saves vs. dragons breath, to be based on reflex. Overly consistent, overly neat. Overly anal game design.

Not the first time, so-called modern streamlining, has sucked the flavor out of the game.

Though, in all fairness, I will admit to a fondness for the S&W single save.

And what is the logic for the 'classic' D&D save categories? There's no rhyme or reason to it whatsoever. The whole thing is utterly arbitrary and each category is used virtually at random for different things, lol. At least with FORT/REF/WILL defenses there's some logic to what each save represents and why your PC has a better or worse defense in that category.

Nor is anything you mention narratively any less reasonable in 4e than it is in 2e. The spider failed to poison you, there's some reason for that, like you got your hand out of the way, etc. The narrative is attached to how things came out, not the mechanics of who rolled which die when. The difference is that in 4e at least poison hits FORT, but hey, if it is say a mind affecting poison, then maybe it hits WILL, and that makes sense. Because the system is intelligible to the designers of game material they can consistently apply the same saves to the same sort of things, and the categories make sense. My high fort dwarf resists poisons quite well simply because he DOES have a high FORT.

AD&D? Who the heck knows why any given save is what it is. Why is 'death magic' different from 'spells'??? Who knows? Half the time it is a death magic spell, so what logic says which of the two types that save should be? How do these mechanics support "this type of character is really tough and resists things", they don't... And AD&D has no way at all to portray something like "all I need to do is touch this guy" (REF defense or in 3e 'touch AC').

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I've something thought of doing it a different way altogether - unifying mechanic is PCs roll all their attacks, and NPCs/Monsters don't.

Monsters have an AC, and Hit # (not bonus) etc - Hit number is 10+hit bonus.
Players have a Def Bonus and a hit bonus.
Player rolls if he hits. Player rolls to see if he is hit (ie. Monster has it's hit # of 17, and player rolls d20 and adds Defense bonus (AC-10)). Player rolls attacking DCs for spells. Player's roll Saves.

Then the GM doesn't have to roll dice, and can concentrate on running all the NPCs. And the players are completely in control of their own fate. Anything that affects them or that they affect they roll.

Never implemented it, but thought it could work.

Sure, it would work. I'm not sure it is worth having rules for PCs and NPCs that are that asymmetric, but give it a try. It might be fun.

 

[Doug McCrae]

4e's class balance, fixed math, tactical combat (though not the battlegrid), monster design, easy encounter design, decoupled alignment, at-will powers, nerfed wizard, warlord, second wind, and world design more grounded in myth/folklore.

3e's coherent and consistent systematization, and skills.

2e's specialized priests.

 

[P1NBACK]

well then just switch it all around, all attacks are defended by the defender, and the attacker has an attack value that the defender beats...

I think the point is that it was a unifying mechanic, no longer do you sometimes roll an attack or sometimes defend against an attack, you always just roll an attack.

Saving Throws defended against magical and environmental attacks that are usually very dangerous, potentially life-threatening situations in nearly every case.

I'd also like to point out that the saving throw mechanism almost gives you that sense of danger.. nothing like rolling your save against a medusa's glare as you slowly turn to stone.

Yeah, I'm not talking about the system as a whole. I am talking very specifically about Saving Throws, which in 4E are "defenses".

The "4E saving throw" is NOT a saving throw like any other edition. And, while it's actually a charming duration mechanic, other than the name, it has nothing to do with the concept of a save at all.

You do know that you roll just as many dice now in 4e as you ever did in 2e on the average. In fact now that you roll attacks and never defenses it is even more, because PCs saved far less often than monsters did. Less is more? Huh? You equally get to roll the dice when you unleash some awesome effect and win the day. There's no net difference.

So, you are just going to ignore my point altogether then? I never said anything about the number of times you roll dice in a particular game. This isn't a 4E vs. any other edition argument.

I am talking very specifically about one single mechanic, one single aspect of the game, that you claim is better simply because it's modern, while I think it's a piece of garbage that actually reduces the whole concept to a shallow math figure instead of a pivotal point of player interaction with the game.

I understand if you don't get the argument. You might not. It's a deeper argument than "the maths" or "streamlined mechanics". And, has more to do with actual people at the actual table and how those people play and interact with those mechanics.

But, don't try and argue against some statement I never made about "the number of dice rolls per session" or whatever.

Sure, and nobody is criticizing anyone's tastes. If you say 4e 'ruined saves', well who can tell you that's 'wrong'? It is still true that changing them to defenses got rid of at least 2 redundant confusing useless things that were in the game and from what I can see nobody else is complaining about this. Seems like from the perspective of the game designers it was a darn good choice.

First of all, I hope the designers are looking at all editions, because it didn't get rid of "redundant" things from any other edition except 3.x. And, who cares? I don't even like 3.x that much. So, your argument is that 4E fixed a problem from an edition that "fixed" something that wasn't broken from previous editions.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

Sure, it would work. I'm not sure it is worth having rules for PCs and NPCs that are that asymmetric, but give it a try. It might be fun.

Actually asymmetric rules in play bother me less than asymmetric rules in character design - so this is no different than the fact that you make monster with different rules than you make characters in 4E(for example).

Mostly I haven't had a D&D group for a long long time. My primary weekly game is HERO and I haven't found a schedule to run D&D with other people consistently.

 

[P1NBACK]

I've something thought of doing it a different way altogether - unifying mechanic is PCs roll all their attacks, and NPCs/Monsters don't.

Monsters have an AC, and Hit # (not bonus) etc - Hit number is 10+hit bonus.
Players have a Def Bonus and a hit bonus.
Player rolls if he hits. Player rolls to see if he is hit (ie. Monster has it's hit # of 17, and player rolls d20 and adds Defense bonus (AC-10)). Player rolls attacking DCs for spells. Player's roll Saves.

Then the GM doesn't have to roll dice, and can concentrate on running all the NPCs. And the players are completely in control of their own fate. Anything that affects them or that they affect they roll.

Never implemented it, but thought it could work.

I actually love the "players roll all the dice" variant (it was actually presented in 3E Unearthed Arcana I believe).

I play Apocalypse World, and love not rolling any dice as the GM in that game. Putting the dice into the players' hands any time something bad is about to happen to their character is where it's at.

I'd still like the DM to roll dice in D&D, but mostly for things like random tables and whatnot.

I doubt 5E will go with a "roll for defense" mechanic, since AC is so sacred. But, still, I do hope they go more with "roll to save" instead of static defenses.

And, it sounds like they are with "ability checks" subbing in for saves.