Legends & Lore 16 Jan 2012

[LurkAway]

2. My second concern is on varying playstyles at the same table. To me it seems like some of the barriers between fans of different editions seem to strongly orbit around playstyle. If you have players who think that wuxia, space flying, half-hamster, teleporting, shard minds are silly. Will they be cool with playing at a game with one at the table, even if they get to play their fighting man?

I wondered exactly the same thing. I assume that conflicting playstyles is still a social contract. Ideally, you play with like-minded players and DM. However, if there's only one gaming group in town, or if you really just want to play with your best friends only, then at least the system mechanically allow you to play together and then the rest is part of the social contract (which I think D&D Next should provide explicit advice for!)

 

[Argyle King]

But that was always the choice in older editions:

be a fighter and be mediocre all the day, or be a cleric and be great in one encounter per day.

4e originally had the "elegantly balanced" approach: every class is equally useful at each encounter.

4e Essentials+core allows fighters that are equally good over the course of a day, and about equally good in each encounter... just play a knight and a normal fighter in a game of 4e and you see how good it works.

And it is not just extra work. You can build a fighter that has some cool tricks in his sleeve and can do things the other one can only dream of. But you also have to work more during the game to make most out of your abilities.
Good thing: your more/less efficiency delta is only about 20%... which is no problem in the actual game.

The most basic fighter, seems well enough. The only thing you need to run it are few lines of text, and guidelines like those on page 42 in 4e.
It only does not work that easily in 4e to incorporate this page, because of the "elegant balance"... You are drawn into this isolated combat, because everything works so well together and you don´t need to improvise. Also it is difficult to allow cools stunts as a DM, because you must be careful not to make those stunts better as powers.

You have a point, but I'm not only looking at D&D with my comment. Personally, I'd prefer all parts of my character to be available at all times. While it's slightly off topic, that's one of the main gripes I had toward Skill Challenges. I like the concept a lot, but I did not like how my 4E characters sometime felt like two (or three) characters stitched together, and which one I got to use being determined by the mode of gameplay currently in. If I'm attempting Uber Sword Slash technique, I believe the game should invoke my character to use (roll against) that technique rather than having me as a player define that technique with powers, uses per day, and things like that.

Contradicting myself, I will also say that I do understand the concept of putting certain limits on casting spells and calling for divine favor. I understand those because you're calling upon an energy source which realistically (in terms of the game world) can be depleted. I'm not sure I'd go the Vancian route though. I'd instead have the fluff say (as it does in many areas already) that channeling supernatural power through your body has the potential to be harmful. I'd want to work out some sort of system where casting fatigues you. When fatigued you could still attempt casting, but it would cause detrimental effects for the caster.

An alternative would be some sort of threshold limit for magic. Someone who knew spells would have a safe threshold within which casting spells was relatively safe. In this way a mage could attempt to cast spells which were higher level than normally allowed, but doing so would have a high chance of causing harm and backlash to the caster.

I suppose a way to balance the two ideas would be to allow fighters to also push beyond normal limits with some sort of pool of threshold. Putting extra oomph into an attack for extra damage or sprinting for a few extra squares of movement or trying to push yourself to make an incredible leap would require extra effort granted by the pool.

I don't think this would be accepted as D&D by most of the community though. Honestly, now that I think about it, I'm not sure if I would either. I like the concept though.

 

[malkav666]

I wondered exactly the same thing. I assume that conflicting playstyles is still a social contract. Ideally, you play with like-minded players and DM. However, if there's only one gaming group in town, or if you really just want to play with your best friends only, then at least the system mechanically allow you to play together and then the rest is part of the social contract (which I think D&D Next should provide explicit advice for!)

Yeah its just a concern for me. I don't think it is a deal breaker for my group in specific. But just a generalized concern. My group just games in general and sometimes we play some pretty out there games but manage to have a good time. One of my players once brought a game about "magic girls" to play on an off day. Even though he was the only person in the group that had even a remote interest in it, we played it and had fun with it. We ended up only playing 3 sessions and finishing one major story arc. But the hentai fueled tentacle jokes are still lurking about about to this day, in the duct work.

My concern was more aimed at something like organized play, or the act of actually unifying folks who love different editions who would not play together previously due to rulesets.

love,

malkav

 

[RoboCheney]

Not that we know that much about it yet, but I'm not sure the design goal of D&D Next is even a good one. No game can, or should, be all things to all people. And having each player independently choosing what level of rules to use just seems like it would be messy in play. Do some characters not have feats or skills or whatnot? Are there differing tiers of the same class? What set of player assumptions are monsters and adventures designed with? These seems clunky conceptually, and I'm skeptical.

The focus on unifying previous editions also seems misplaced--what sort of game could 5e become if the focus was on evolving the game forward? 3e and 4e both did a lot to improve the mechanics and playability, and I'd like to see 5e continue this trajectory, while incorporating its own innovations. The 'G' in RPG

I'm very curious, and will be participating in the playtests, but skeptical . . .

 

[Gundark]

Some people are suggesting that D&D Next will basically allow them to "port" older edition characters alongside newer ones, or run 1st Edition modules out-of-the-box. I don't think that's what's intended. When they talk about "taking the best bits from each edition", they don't specifically mean rules: it's more about play styles:

"Your 1E-loving friend can play in your 3E-style game and not have to deal with all the options he or she doesn't want or need." I don't take this to mean we're actually using 3E rules: we're just playing a version of D&D Next that uses more rules add-ons, giving the game a 3E, simulationist bent.

My money's on a new core rule set heavily based on a mix of 3E and 4th (or more specifically, Essentials): very basic, with a whole bunch of optional add-ons that cover varying situations. As for playing highly-customised characters alongside simpler characters, IMO the Essentials Slayer is a probably the sort of thing they'll be pitching for.

this. We are looking at a new but familiar core. Go back a read earlier Legends and Lore articles.

 

[Stalker0]

Lan-"what is the AC of a star anyway"-efan

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKprayAW1EM&feature=related]ITS OVER 9000!!! - YouTube[/ame]

 

[Dragonblade]

Based on what Monte is saying, I think its safe to say that Essentials is a sort of 5e preview, at least in terms of concept.

So you have an Essentials Fighter which is very simple. No dailies, one simple encounter attack power and some encounter utilities. That's it. The 5e version could be even simpler.

Now you have the 4e PHB Fighter with all its build options from the core PHB plus Martial Power. It has multiple at-wills, encounters, and dailies to choose from. Its very customizable.

Both fighters co-exist quite elegantly in the same game. I know, because I have DMed for both in the same game. The PHB fighter has a better ability to spike with their dailies and in certain situations where they happen to have the perfect power to use, but overall the Essentials fighter is rock steady and consistently on par but without the hills and valleys of the PHB fighter. Mathematically both are balanced and neither one outshines the other. One is just more customizable with more options to choose from.

I could see this in 5e and I think it would be awesome!

You have your core 5e fighter which would play and feel very similarly to a 1e fighter. But you could dig into the options book and really go to town with options if you want.

 

[Stalker0]

Diving back through the Legends & Lore Articles, we find this:

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Head of the Class)

Rereading this does give me a better idea of how they intend to implement the complexity idea.

But what's funny is I ran a poll a week ago asking people if new players should make characters or pick sample ones, and the vast majority said they should make a character.

But in a lot of ways this is picking a sample character:

1) (Sample Character): Choose class and race. Gain a sample character that has a preselect list of abilities and skills.
2) (5e Basic Class): Choose class and race. Gain a preselected list of abilities and skills.

I think the idea makes a lot of sense, but is that what people want?

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

I wondered exactly the same thing. I assume that conflicting playstyles is still a social contract. Ideally, you play with like-minded players and DM. However, if there's only one gaming group in town, or if you really just want to play with your best friends only, then at least the system mechanically allow you to play together and then the rest is part of the social contract (which I think D&D Next should provide explicit advice for!)

Fundamentally, I hope that 5E allows for multiple styles of play, but that's on a per-game or per-table basis. To expect multiple styles of play to work at the same table at the same time is too much to hope for.

That's to say: if the rules are modular, the gaming group decides on which "rules modules" to employ at their table. I don't think you can apply "rules modules" on a per-player basis, aside from having different complexities of character builds to choose from which remain balanced with respect to one another.

 

[Zaukrie]

5 pages, and not one comment on the part that I thought talked most about what needs to change.....

that the game is about our shared stories and experiences, and WotC basically abandoned writing great adventures that we all share. They'll also need to figure out a way to do that again, and not just write elegant rules.