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Mearls On D&D's Design Premises/Goals
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<blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 7759762" data-attributes="member: 6779196"><p>So when I say I don’t care how many options I can spend my character building resources on, I care how many character building resources I have to spend, you go find out how many options I can spend each of the character building resources on? There could be 5000 each of races, classes, subclassss, backgrounds, and Feats, that wouldn’t change the number of decision points in character building, it would only change the number of permutations possible with the same set of decision points. I don’t care how many permutations there are, I care how many decision points there are. Making decisions is the most important part of the game to me.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Really? You know that? Because I don’t give a hot turd about which options are optimal. Kindly do not assume my motivations.</p><p></p><p>I care about being able to make a champion fighter that plays mechanically differently than Tommy’s champion fighter. It’s fine if she’s worse, as long as she’s different. Character building for me is about self-expression, not power, and currently 5e does not give me the tools to express a character differently than other characters of the same class and subclass. At best, I’ll have slightly different modifiers to the same exact actions if I choose different Feats and ASIs, but those differences are minor and come several levels apart.</p><p></p><p></p><p>I thought the 5e philosophy was supposed to be about <em>not</em> designing around negative player behavior. Power gamers gonna powergame, just like bad DMs gonna DM badly. No sense hamstringing the game just to proved them less ammo.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Yes, and this is one of the many reasons I hate 3.X. Because despite drowning players in mechanical options, the over-specific prerequisites make it impossible to build a character as you go. If you want to play a particular prestige class, you have to plan all your skill ranks ahead of time so you can meet the prerequisites, which means that in effect, all of the decisions there are front loaded too. All it achieves is making character creation a painfully long and fiddly process. Conversely, 4e figures out how to give players choices to make at every level, and didnt punish players who made those decisions as they went. Sure, there were some optimized builds, but you weren’t made to feel useless for choosing the cool, interesting options as you went, rather than building the perfect optimized machine before play even starts. </p><p></p><p></p><p>Yeah, multiclassing is... an option, I guess. I’ve never really liked it. I want to make a rogue, who is a rogue, but plays a little differently than Shannon’s rogue, not a rogue who’s also a warlock and a sorcerer.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Charlaquin, post: 7759762, member: 6779196"] So when I say I don’t care how many options I can spend my character building resources on, I care how many character building resources I have to spend, you go find out how many options I can spend each of the character building resources on? There could be 5000 each of races, classes, subclassss, backgrounds, and Feats, that wouldn’t change the number of decision points in character building, it would only change the number of permutations possible with the same set of decision points. I don’t care how many permutations there are, I care how many decision points there are. Making decisions is the most important part of the game to me. Really? You know that? Because I don’t give a hot turd about which options are optimal. Kindly do not assume my motivations. I care about being able to make a champion fighter that plays mechanically differently than Tommy’s champion fighter. It’s fine if she’s worse, as long as she’s different. Character building for me is about self-expression, not power, and currently 5e does not give me the tools to express a character differently than other characters of the same class and subclass. At best, I’ll have slightly different modifiers to the same exact actions if I choose different Feats and ASIs, but those differences are minor and come several levels apart. I thought the 5e philosophy was supposed to be about [i]not[/i] designing around negative player behavior. Power gamers gonna powergame, just like bad DMs gonna DM badly. No sense hamstringing the game just to proved them less ammo. Yes, and this is one of the many reasons I hate 3.X. Because despite drowning players in mechanical options, the over-specific prerequisites make it impossible to build a character as you go. If you want to play a particular prestige class, you have to plan all your skill ranks ahead of time so you can meet the prerequisites, which means that in effect, all of the decisions there are front loaded too. All it achieves is making character creation a painfully long and fiddly process. Conversely, 4e figures out how to give players choices to make at every level, and didnt punish players who made those decisions as they went. Sure, there were some optimized builds, but you weren’t made to feel useless for choosing the cool, interesting options as you went, rather than building the perfect optimized machine before play even starts. Yeah, multiclassing is... an option, I guess. I’ve never really liked it. I want to make a rogue, who is a rogue, but plays a little differently than Shannon’s rogue, not a rogue who’s also a warlock and a sorcerer. [/QUOTE]
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