Legends & Lore: What Worked, What Didn't

[Derren]

Player 1: "What? I didn't read that."

This is the only problem in your example. Not the rules, but the Player not reading or even trying to remember them.

 

[Primal]

I dunno. I'm not defending 5e. I'm not particularly excited about it myself. But the topic is why the 5e they are actually developing doesn't have weapon-specific powers. Given that they are shooting for a very traditional D&D, the kind of re-design that would have been required to accommodate them was never realistically in the cards. That's all.

For me it's not about "weapon powers", at least in the 4E sense of the word. It's about simple properties that make wielding a greatsword different from, say, a halberd or a heavy flail. If the core rules only use weapon size, damage type (P/S/B) and damage dice, I wonder if it wouldn't be just the same to use the same dice for all weapons in the same category? For example, all one-handed martial weapons would use 1d8, while two-handed weapons would be 2d6 or 1d12. That way your sword-n-board guy could be wielding a morningstar, a battle axe or a longsword; whatever suits best you image of your character.

There's nothing revolutionary or "non-traditional" about this, but I guess it'd be too dramatical a change for Next.

I'm not very enthusiastic about 5E, either. I had high hopes for it, but the more I hear about it, the more it looks like the house-ruled version of AD&D + Skills & Powers books we were using in the 90s. And I don't think I want to go there again.... *shudder*.

 

[Primal]

This is the only problem in your example. Not the rules, but the Player not reading or even trying to remember them.

Yep. Besides, I'm kind of expecting that it's not so bad if you don't remember to add your +2 tripping or damage bonus every now or then; I'm far more concerned about even remotely complex rules being shoved into the rules modules. How many optional rules will there be in the core game, let alone after two or three supplements? If you have trouble with adding temporarily 1d4 or +2 to your dice rolls, how are you expected to remember which rules, dials and switches your group is using in each particular campaign? And each time you play with strangers, how much time will it take to walk through all the stuff they approve and disapprove at their table?

To me it looks like binders full of notes and house-rules, all over again. And it's not as if this problem didn't already exist in 3E, too, with all sorts of alternate wounding and mana systems and Bo9S and whatnot. However, the 3E core game was already quite complex, and I guess many/most groups didn't use optional material all that often, not at least in every campaign. This time, the devs seem to emphasize and encourage "tinkering" with rules and campaigns.

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

I'm quite disappointed that they didn't try to evolve weapon powers, but they did end up with the awkward maneuver dice.

If the fear was complexity then as many people have said, there could be simple weapons with no powers, or simple options, or unlockable powers. I would personally have liked to see a system like 2nd edition weapon proficiencies - every so often you get another slot to spend, with Fighters getting plenty compared to non-martial classes. Rather than granting proficiency, you get to unlock a series of weapon maneuvers. The simple option would just be getting +x to hit and +y to damage, like the old mastery system, whereas the complex option would be letting your halberd now make a sweeping trip attack, or spinning the blade as a multiattack. I mean, they had some great ideas for powers in 4E, but tying into the rigid power system made most of them awkward.

 

[gweinel]

All this could be avoided by making the combat system is little bit more complex so that it actually supports different advantages of weapons besides damage die and crit. But oh no, we can't have complexity now, can we? What would the new players think?

It isn't about what new players think. It is about what the old players think. The new players can't judge if something is more or less complex than something else because they don't have the experience. The old ones are the ones that have fed up with the fiddliness and complexity of 4th and sometimes of 3rde that want something less time consuming because they value more the telling of the story than the tactical battle (which nonetheless i think it should plays major part in the structuring of an adventure).

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

This is the only problem in your example. Not the rules, but the Player not reading or even trying to remember them.

I have a mix of players at my table. Some scan through the character creation rules as quickly as possible without reading every word. Sometimes they miss stuff. My girlfriend is one of those, we're pretty much constantly finding out midway through a session that she forgot to add the AC bonus for her armor or something like that. At least once she was halfway through a character and changed her mind about what armor she wanted to wear and never changed her AC when she did. At least once she took 2 or 3 feats that only worked when she was wielding a Rod and then chose a Wand as an implement in a 4e game.

She tries to remember stuff, she's just not good at it. She's my girlfriend so I don't walk around telling her she's an idiot for not remembering the rules.

Our game has gone much better since we switched from 4e to the D&D Next playtest as there is now so much less for her to remember that she's able to do it just fine.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Well, if a player has trouble writing down his bonuses on a character sheet, he's probably going to have a lot of similar problems in the game, for example forgetting to add modifiers/dice from Bless and other buffs. Or temporary/circumstancial stuff from feats, or rolling two dice because of (dis)advantage. Or to announce that you're doing piercing and fire damage because you switched to using your flaming bow. And let's not even talk about the "super feats" in 5E; lot's of stuff to remember, if you pick several feats and don't write them down. Seriously, though, I don't know about you, but your example above is what happens from time to time, even with veteran players; we're no robots, after all.

That's why I like the fact that feats in D&D Next mostly apply static modifiers that aren't conditional. When they do add new abilities, they don't add complex ones. Also, you don't get very many feats so you don't have to worry about the complexity growing out of control. The players who find them too complex can just take stat bumps instead. You don't have to worry about too many temporary modifiers from spells because all buff spells require concentration, so only one buff per caster.

That kind of stuff does happen with veteran players. They were the ones I was talking about. That happened nearly every round of combat in our group of friends who'd been playing 3e/3.5e for 4 years straight.

Although my group composition has mostly changed, I don't believe that to be the reason our sessions no longer get bogged down in discussion of modifiers. I believe it's because we're running D&D Next now. There are basically 0 modifiers applied at the table. Turns now go:

"I attack the already damaged Orc. I hit AC 13."
"That hits."
"9 damage."

In my opinion keywords relating to weapon groups is almost the simplest kind of modifiers you can have, and no harder to remember than other modifiers in the game. If you think it's too much, it'd be simple to ignore 'em; that's why I said it'd could be an optional rules module/dial/switch/whatever.

The point is that there ARE currently no modifiers in the game. Adding one might not be the end of the world. But once you add one then it becomes part of the game design philosophy to have them in the game, that's when you start adding a second, third, and then hundreds.

 

[Desdichado]

The things that make heroes heroes have to involve a risk of failure, even for heroes, or they would not be heroic. By extension, the possibility of critical failure exists for the same reason that the possibility of critical success exists -- perspective.

Yes, thank you for the false binary choice. I made no mention of removing the risk of failure, nor do I advocate such a thing, though, so this line of discussion is a total non sequiter.

D&D has never been designed to simulate much. "Pointy end goes in the other man," and that's about it.

That assertion is not only totally untrue, but even quite bizarre. D&D has always been about simulating (or maybe emulating is a better word) sword and sorcery and high fantasy fiction. From the very beginning. In some cases, this emulation was even quite specific.. i.e. the close ties between the magic system and the writings of Jack Vance, alignment and Michael Moorcock, the thief class and the Gray Mouser, the ranger class and Aragorn, etc.

One can certainly argue how successfully it emulates this genre (in fact, that's part of my whole objection to the "dumb luck" critical failure while doing day-to-day tasks) but to say that it never was designed to emulate much is completely false. Any discussion with any developer (or even any look at the rules, for that matter) show that to be obviously incorrect.

 

[Desdichado]

You have to remember for many people D&D is about simulating that partially mentally retarded clutz that just came off the farm picking up a weapon for the first time and managing not to lop their own head off while they fight off monsters that can kill them with a single hit.

I personally play D&D like the players are hero's, a step above the common man. Having shown extreme talent in one area or another that uniquely suits them for a life of adventure.

So the rules should accomodate both groups. Something like "Farm Boy: -3 to all starting stats. Roll to see if you can walk properly...etc...etc... Hero: Roll only when rushed or threatened...etc...etc..."

I don't have to remember anything of the sort. I'm not a developer for D&D.

I also don't think its incumbant on the game to accomodate every single playstyle, especially those who (in my opinion) are very fringe, minority, low-numbers playstyles. In fact, in order to bit big tent, the game has to make compromises, which infringes on its ability to meet other design goals that are more likely to appeal to the majority of players. Accomodating unusual playstyles should actually not be a design goal of the system, unless it can be done without compromising more important design goals.

 

[Desdichado]

You took what I was trying to say to an extreme, so it seems fair I do the same.


Then why have the other weapons in the game?

That's really what it boils down to for me. If there's no difference in what they do, why not just say "little weapons do 1d4, average weapons do 1d6, large weapons do 1d8, and big honkin' two handed weapons do 1d12"? Then just have the player fluff what the weapon is because it doesn't actually matter in play.

You say that's extreme, but I have, actually seen and played in several different games where that was exactly how it was handled. *shrug* It works. In many respects, I prefer it to big, long lists of weapons that are only marginally different from each other.