Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Keldryn" data-source="post: 5497562" data-attributes="member: 11999">I agree.  It's still got way too many fiddly bits for those two players.  And too many fiddly bits for my liking as well.  I was hoping that Essentials would dump the "until the end of your/ally's/opponent's next turn" effects, but they're still there.  And one of the big problems with those effects is that a leader's most effective use of his powers is to grant those bonuses to temporary hit points, attack rolls, damage, or defences to the party's strikers.  And of course, the players who really don't want to have to deal with a different set of buffs each round are the ones playing the strikers, because they are simpler characters.  The slayer is a simple class (by 4e standards), yet he's the one who is having to apply all of these modifiers each round, unless the more experienced players are willing to make less tactically sound decisions. As ridiculous as it might sound at first, I actually find 3.x to be less complicated to deal with than 4e (including Essentials).  Now, taken as a whole (even with just the core rules), 3.x is a more complicated game.  However, players are much more able to choose the level of complexity that they want to deal with.  My more casual players can be fighters and can select feats that simply give static bonuses that can be pre-calculated.  They never have to worry about attempting to disarm, trip, grapple, or anything other than just hitting the bad guy with a sword unless they decide they want to try.  The more experienced players can have fun with the character build mini-game if they so choose.  Sure, you may run into theoretical problems with optimized vs non-optimized characters, but if the casual players are having fun and aren't complaining about it, then there isn't actually a problem.I don't really have a problem with the paradigm of AD&D (1e).  If you want to create a skilled archer, you make a fighter, put a high score in Dexterity, and stay out of melee range.  Take a longbow proficiency to reflect the fact that he has dedicated some time to learning that specific weapon.  If you want your fighter to be really good with a sword, then don't spend weapon proficiencies on axes or bows.  While it's nice to have some of a character's traits reflected mechanically, it isn't strictly necessary.A set of "talent trees" for each class that focus on certain themes or techniques would be a nice way to allow for some player choice and mechanical customization without opening up a Pandora's Box of ever-expanding options.  I much prefer a more limited set of very meaningful options over a wide array of less significant options.  If you want your fighter to be a skilled archer, then take the Archer talent, rather than having to select an array of feats to accomplish the same thing: Weapon Focus, Weapon Specialization, Point Blank Shot, etc.  This could be applied to a core system as simple as B/X D&D and still give a good range of character options.I agree.  There are way too many (this applies to 3.x and 4e).  There are also a lot of feats which are way too situational (if you are a ranger fighting with two weapons and you critically hit the target of your quarry...) that I can't imagine anybody taking.  Even if those type of feats are retained, I would rather see all class-specific feats either in write-ups of their respective classes or in a sub-section for each class at the end of the Feats chapter.  If I'm selecting a feat for my human fighter, then wading through all of the feats for elf wizards, half-elf clerics, and tiefling warlocks just make it more difficult to find what I'm looking for.  It's also overwhelming for beginners.</blockquote>

Verification