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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 8384248" data-attributes="member: 87792">And those of us who actually like emergent narratives find that 4e is the best version of D&D and 5e is vastly inferior at this. You don't spend much less time on combat and tactics in 5e than 4e. You simply have much more of a pre-canned sequence of events and much less of an emergent narrative that reflects the people involved and the choices they make. Deciding that the choices people make (like flanking) shouldn't do anything and you shouldn't interact with the environment is the opposite of narrative. It's simply letting cookie-cutter abilities unfold against cookie-cutter abilities until the inevitable end. And partial success mechanics (like skill challenges) have far more interesting and flexible narratives.But actually liking unfolding and unpredictable narratives that can be changed by the environment and don't end where expected would require changing how you think.On this we can agree.So everyone would be happier if they didn't play characters who cared that much about survival because they knew it was a given? There's nothing wrong with that but D&D is a hacked tabletop wargame, right from the start.If you don't care whether you have the skills to survive in the setting it's because you don't care about the narrative.Believe it or not I do this. And I enjoyed my Shadow Monk. But my monk was good enough that he could contribute significantly to the party rather than being something dragging them down that they need to rescue.There's a huge difference between caring whether you are razer-optimised and caring whether you are a valuable member of the team.In other words you can play a beastmaster ranger if and only if the DM decides not to roleplay the bad guys ever going for your pet. The pet only has melee attacks and worse survivability than a wizard who uses almost no defensive spells.At this point the narrative becomes "the animal companion has a mystical aura protecting them even from the regular risks of being a party member".Indeed. Because you seem to want "narrative" to take out all the uncertainty. I want to play to see what happens and get an emergent narrative that surprises everything. Not have the GM force everything and have long drawn out combats where nothing is surprising and everything is force-balanced to work.</blockquote>

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