D&D 5E L&L: New Packet Hits This Wednesday

[Greg K]

Y
Should be solved by creating a decent reason for wearing each armor.

Not for me. The game penalizes characters for wearing armor in which they are not proficient- disadvantage. If the character is supposed to be a woodsmen warrior proficient only in light armor due to background, then ,in my opinion, they should not be proficient in the heavier types and should suffer the same disadvantage as other non proficient characters for donning heavier types.

 

[keterys]

Not for me. The game penalizes characters for wearing armor in which they are not proficient- disadvantage. If the character is supposed to be a woodsmen warrior proficient only in light armor due to background, then ,in my opinion, they should not be proficient in the heavier types and should suffer the same disadvantage as other non proficient characters for donning heavier types.

So don't wear heavy armor on that PC. Or are you suggesting that you should be able to say "This PC shouldn't wear heavy armor, so he should lose proficiency. And now since I gave that up, I should get something I want more to replace it." Cause, a DM can probably work with that. Though, frankly, I don't see why a PC who is just as well off wearing lighter armor should get anything for "losing" armor proficiency they won't use.

 

[TwoSix]

It's very important to divorce Fighter and Warrior, in my opinion, because making the Fighter into the Fighting Man is what leads to all the opacity the class has suffered from in these years. People often go "Is this character doing anything special? No? He's a Fighter then", which in turns make the entire concept of "Fighter" fairly lame.

Fighters should be as rare as Rangers and Paladins: they should be the elite troopers, the battle hardened veterans, the sword saints, and if no room for the Warlord is left, then also the generals and the commanders. If the definition of the Fighter is "anything with a sword that isn't a paladin, ranger, barbarian or rogue", then you have an archetype that probably doesn't deserve a place in a class-based system.

This. +lots.

 

[TwoSix]

Is there any functional difference between a spell and a magical supernatural ability? Because it seems quite often some players will decry the idea of paladins and rangers having spells, but be okay with them having magical supernatural abilities.

Be careful taking that train of thought too far. That way lies madness, and the 4e power system.

 

[TwoSix]

Narratively, there isn't. Which is why by the way I often pop up ranting that cleric's energy challenging is a redundant feature for a class that already has spells.

I wonder if fans of old-school stuff would have a problem with a spell that had special text that said: "You may cast this spell 3 times before this slot is expended."

 

[Visanideth]

Be careful taking that train of thought too far. That way lies madness, and the 4e power system.

Urgh, that terrible, streamlined, intuitive, flexible and customizable system. I still dread the idea of being able to give classes all kinds of different abilities without calling them magic .

 

[Visanideth]

I wonder if fans of old-school stuff would have a problem with a spell that had special text that said: "You may cast this spell 3 times before this slot is expended."

At that point I'd rather borrow the Bonus Spell slot system from 3.X. "At level 1 your Cleric can memorize 3 extra spells, as long as they're that one spell that heals people".

 

[TwoSix]

Urgh, that terrible, streamlined, intuitive, flexible and customizable system. I still dread the idea of being able to give classes all kinds of different abilities without calling them magic .

Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!

 

[Gorgoroth]

Urgh, that terrible, streamlined, intuitive, flexible and customizable system. I still dread the idea of being able to give classes all kinds of different abilities without calling them magic .

Yeah, the system that gave us even more of a glut than the feat system, where 90% of them were complete garbage and you die of boredom due to spamming them endlessly? And also, where they all felt magical and disconnected to the world you were in, because each one had implicit, uber-simplistic physics that the DM couldn't override or they were nerfing your toon?

The only thing the power system achieved for me in the end was a disdain for descriptions of the game world as "fluff". It made me feel bad about playing the game with real DMs. I wanted a videogame of those mechanics. When you get tired of the "fluff" of describing the action because they always "just work", why do you even need a DM? Write some code to do his job, and a random encounter generator and you can keep playing 4e till the end of time. DMs and even other PCs don't need to be humans, even, because computers can play the game just as well as people can (better, probably).

Ever hear of Deep Blue? Bet you any money a properly trained bot could p0wn a human in most encounters. But a team of PCs can almost always beat a DM in that system, they really don't stand a chance. That is the real reason why it failed. Players got bored of beating the DM all the time, and so did the DMs. It required tactics, not imagination. There's a difference. It took the literacy component out behind the shed and shot it.

 

[Visanideth]

Yeah, the system that gave us even more of a glut than the feat system, where 90% of them were complete garbage and you die of boredom due to spamming them endlessly? And also, where they all felt magical and disconnected to the world you were in, because each one had implicit, uber-simplistic physics that the DM couldn't override or they were nerfing your toon?

The only thing the power system achieved for me in the end was a disdain for descriptions of the game world as "fluff". It made me feel bad about playing the game with real DMs. I wanted a videogame of those mechanics. When you get tired of the "fluff" of describing the action because they always "just work", why do you even need a DM? Write some code to do his job, and a random encounter generator and you can keep playing 4e till the end of time. DMs and even other PCs don't need to be humans, even, because computers can play the game just as well as people can (better, probably).

Ever hear of Deep Blue? Bet you any money a properly trained bot could p0wn a human in most encounters. But a team of PCs can almost always beat a DM in that system, they really don't stand a chance. That is the real reason why it failed. Players got bored of beating the DM all the time, and so did the DMs. It required tactics, not imagination. There's a difference. It took the literacy component out behind the shed and shot it.

I'm sorry you had a poor experience with 4E. However, none of what you describe has anything to do with how the Powers system divorced the concept of "character-triggered effect" from "magics", which was the point of my post.

I'm not gonna pollute the thread with a detailed response on your criticism of 4E - suffice to say I don't share it, but you're entitled to your opinion. I will only point out that I never felt 4E removed the "literacy component" from the game - the game supported creativity as much as any other edition did - but it did separate DMs who legitimately knew how to challenge the players on fair ground and those who needed superior authority to do so. 4E gives you all the tools, as a DM, to challenge your players. It also gives the players the tools to defeat the GM if they outplay him. I honestly can't see anything bad in that. After 20 years of 2nd and 3rd edition, I felt it was liberating for me to be able to play a dragon as a smart creature that would go for the most frail target and keep hammering it because my players had the tools to counter such behaviour, instead of making up a reason to explain why the Wizard didn't die first in each and every combat.

Your comment honestly sounds like you're claiming 4E was bad because the players could win without asking for the DM's permission. Once again, as a DM, that's one of the most liberating experiences I've had in D&D. But to each its own.