D&D 5E L&L 3/11/2013 This Week in D&D

[GX.Sigma]

@GX.Sigma, you have a good point there - I wasn't thinking of the demihumans (though in OD&D I don't think they're distinct classes - isn't that a Moldvay thing?)

It seems to me that in classic D&D level is first and foremost a measure of power - with hit points, and consequence expectations about dungeon level penetration capacity, as the mechanical expressions of that. Class features were in certain ways secondary, I think.

The idea that the primary function of a character level is to dispense some mechanical feature is, I think, a more recent (perhaps 3E and onwards?) idea. But once it becomes the dominant model of levels, then dead levels become redundant.

Does that make sense? (And I'll call @shidaku into this reply too.)

I think it comes down to people's perception of progression. In a game where everyone has cool abilities, you start to think of "progression" as "getting more cool abilities." I'm certainly a little disappointed whenever I level in 4e and don't get any new powers.

But in a more quick, lightweight game with a broader focus (which is how I want to play D&DN), getting new abilities isn't really the point. For that kind of game, I'd rather just get +1 to one of my basic numbers, write it down, and forget about it.

Basically, I think dead levels should be a player option. Mearls's solution sounds good to me.

 

[Raith5]

Mike and company have said from the beginning that their intention is to put pieces in place that would allow players to emulate any previous editions they enjoyed. You either believe them, or you don't. But if you are working yourself up into a lather because every single time a column or article or webcast or interview gets released by someone from WotC that doesn't go into specifics about what is going on... you probably shouldn't follow along. Because we only hear probably a tenth of what is actually going on, and everyone is making assumptions on that based on extremely faulty information.

If you really need more concrete information from WotC to keep from freaking out... you really should do yourself a favor and just stop following along. Because you're never going to be happy for these next eighteen months.

Do I think that some of the postings on the WOTC forums are of people being over the top and freaking out? Absolutely! But it was WOTC that asked people to participate in the playtest - not the other way around. This is not unsolicited or unwanted feedback. I dont think any player of D&D, from any of its editions, should be silent, stop following the development of the game or have their voice otherwise excluded over the next 18th months.

 

[Li Shenron]

Dead levels serve no purpose.

This is quite an overstatement... If you don't like dead levels, fine, and you're definitely not alone! In a game where classes grant a large number of abilities or boosts, dead levels feels wrong especially if in other levels you get two or more boosts at the same time (this happens in 3e), because they give the feeling of some sort of jerk-like advancement: in one level you get no special ability, in the next you get two, why not arranging them one per level? In such a game, you are clearly right (and I think 5e is probably going to be this kind of game with plenty of special abilities), but in the more general sense, there is nothing wrong with a game where classes (hopefully all of them being similar, otherwise there is potentially a different problem) get sparse special abilities like one every 3 levels, and only get hit points in the other levels. It all depends on what basic design decisions were made for such game, e.g. how hit points should scale, or how attack bonuses should scale, and of course how flexible/complex should characters be in that game.

My general point being, in a game where classes already have most their levels with a special treat, then yes dead levels should be avoided and would feel better if filled with something; but there are also games where in fact dead levels do serve a purpose, and that purpose is to advance special abilities (and complexity) at a lower rate compared to other features/numbers.

 

[Manbearcat]

Instead, I could be really interested in Next if it's a "fixed" 3.X, or even better (much, much better) if it's a modernized AD&D. Because I like those systems too, and they have bigger issues than 4E, and a much bigger need of "fixing" or simply to be put up to date.

You have a solid point. I would totally be down with Next if it was AD&D 3.0. I fully support WotC supporting AD&D, and 3.X again. But 4e IS different at its very core, which is why I think it's such a poor fit for the Next design goals. I'd rather see WotC make an AD&D Next and a 4e Next.

Good post Visanideth. You pretty well hammered down the issues of trying to bolt the key 4e features onto an AD&D 2e meets Moldvay Basic updated to a d20 engine/chassis. I can't envision it working.

However, as I said upthread, as an AD&D 2e meets the simple elegance of Moldvay Basic updated to a d20 engine/chassis, this product does the job nicely. Its also got enough breadth of PC build tools to maybe capture some 3.0 folks who didn't move to 3.5/PF (and or were overwhelmed by feat/PrC proliferation). It looks a lot like the AD&D 3e that a lot of folks were hoping for when 3.0 was released (and became disgruntled when they got 3.0). So I think both of you guys might be satisfied to have 5e available in your toolkit of games...just not as a primary play experience (if you're looking for a 4e for a primary experience). I will probably use it when I play AD&D one shots with my old gaming buddies once a year.

Aren't you playtesting TwoSix?

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

I don't know anything about local compendium TBH. I wrote a program a few years ago that can suck down the whole compendium and store it in a usable form (XML files, I stole parts of it from other people, I think it will still work though I haven't really tried it in a couple years). You are right though, if you have a local web server and some sort of script that can run on it, etc then you could do it. I have no idea how this Local Compendium thingy is implemented, if it is able to run on non-windows systems, etc. If you have a link...

The place I found it has since gone away, probably C&D'd. I saved the file with the webserver app (nothing shady about that) and the file with the compendium-skimmed data (the shadier part), but the latter would need to be updated. Since you already wrote a script that could handle this, we can nicely avoid talking about the semi-illegal part. I can probably send you the local server app and you can see how it works. If you PM me your email, I can hook you up.

I really haven't looked at power2ool either I guess. The last time I really went out and looked around for tools of this type 100% of them were written in .NET, Silverlight, or C++ on top of windows APIs. The only major APP I know that is 4e related that can run on Linux is the VTT, which works fine as it is a Java app, but it is now only quasi-free and not part of WotC. Its still good, and I use it, but I'd LOVE to have one that was really open.

Power2ool is flash-based as far as I know, so no ipad (boo apple), and linux implementation will depend on your patience level for dealing with it, which is probably greater than mine, lol. I haven't run linux since mucking around with Debian and Knoppix about 10 years ago, and when my patience ran out that was that, lol.

Anyway, thx. I'll look at power2ool for sure. It might be pretty useful. I actually HAVE a web server I run a wiki on for my campaign already (AWS free instances FTW) though memory is pretty tight on it. I could do it locally though.

It's cool in that it's a very visual interface and great for use as a storyboarding tool. It also has seamless integration with the Compendium. It allows for full customizing of powers, monsters, and items, and even writing your own from scratch and auto-formatting them to look just like the books. It has printer support as well. For those reasons I love it, but it doesn't have any kind of character sheet, unfortunately; you can only use it to organize your powers.

 

[Libramarian]

I think it comes down to people's perception of progression. In a game where everyone has cool abilities, you start to think of "progression" as "getting more cool abilities." I'm certainly a little disappointed whenever I level in 4e and don't get any new powers.

But in a more quick, lightweight game with a broader focus (which is how I want to play D&DN), getting new abilities isn't really the point. For that kind of game, I'd rather just get +1 to one of my basic numbers, write it down, and forget about it.

Basically, I think dead levels should be a player option. Mearls's solution sounds good to me.

The perceived value of a level where just your numbers go up is related to how closely the DM is keeping the monsters' numbers to yours. If the monsters level up whenever you do, then "vertical advancement" isn't so exciting; you need some new "horizontal advancement" toy to make it interesting. If the monsters don't necessarily level up when you do, but are fixed in level, because the DM has built ahead of time all the encounters for 3 or 4 levels in a sandbox environment, then those vertical advancement levels are not so "dead" anymore. More HP matters: it gives you more of a cushion against your current level of opposition and allows you to take on the next level with more confidence.

The classic D&D dungeon is basically a formal ("gamist") structure for this sort of sandbox environment.

4e and Next (so far) don't have rules for building a big enough dungeon to get this sort of game going on. Thus, dead levels are more of a concern. 3e is the liminal case where the rules are there, but encounter prep is so complex and touchy that the culture of the game, how people actually play it, shifted away from dungeon prep to encounter prep over the course of the edition. I suppose there were other reasons for this shift as well but I think that was the main one.

Have you played the Elder Scrolls videogames? The level-scaling in Skyrim is more complex, but in Oblivion levels were REALLY dead--the strength of the enemies was tightly coupled with your character level, so levelling was almost entirely an illusion. It's possible to beat the main quest of the game at level 1. Doing random dungeons between parts of the main quest does not make it easier. Sandboxing is not much fun unless the monsters and treasure are placed objectively.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

The amount of whining by folks over there is staggering, as a 4e player I don't see what's the problem.
the only thing missing from Next to make it a 4e clone is a tactical rules module and healing surges IMO and at been stated to get added in a tactical rules module...

Warder

No worries; the cool people are all over here at EN World anyway.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

My sense is that people are not disputing the existence of this intention, but rather the feasibiity of actually realising it.

No doubt WotC is full of clever designers, but people look at the D&Dnext core, reflect on 4e and their play experiences with it, and find it very hard to see how that gap would be bridged. For an excellent statement as to why, see @Visanideth above.

Now this may not be true for all 4e players - no doubt different people have different experiences with 4e. But what Visanideth wrote certainly spoke to me.

My contention is that maybe those same designers working for a small company that owned the rights independent of something like Hasbro (with all that entails) perhaps could do it, but I don't think the designers can do it with the current anvils tied to them.

Maybe I'm just inclined this way because I've seen a lot of good designers fail (at a variety of tasks) because of corporate nonsense before. OTOH, I have seen it over and over, and it makes me very hesitant to expect high quality design out of someone from that environment.

Or put it another way, I think if tomorrow Blizzard, for example, bought D&D lock, stock, and barrel--and then took most of the WotC D&D team in-house, we'd have a bang up D&D in 2-3 years. It might not be exactly what everyone wanted, and it would sure have all kinds of goofy gimmicks to encourage repeat buying, but the basic design would work as intended.

 

[TwoSix]

Aren't you playtesting TwoSix?

Nobody has been interested so far, sadly. My PF group is fairly conservative, and my 4e group just restarted.

 

[Remathilis]

There are very few things that absolutely infuriate me but this argument is one of them. Because it isn't an argument! By that line of reasoning why gain anything after level 1? Why even have levels? Why even play? If you don't like to have to remember things, don't play TTRPGs. But there is no need for dead levels. If you have 20 levels and 10 features, why not just have 10 levels?

There will always be something to remember, there's no difference between X and Y, so there's no logical reason to say spreading out complexity requires more memorization effort than condensing it. Dead levels serve no purpose.

Not buying this.

First off, improving numerically means that no level is dead. In 3e, you get bonuses to attack, saves every 1 or 2 levels. You get hp and skill points every level. You also get feats every 3 levels and ability score improvements every 4. Fighters get a feat every other level. Casters get more spell slots (and spells known). Other classes get a feature improvement most levels. Getting a new toy every level belies an almost impatient attitude and has lead to the "kewl powerz" mentality that clutters up both Pathfinder and 4e.