Pathfinder and 4e's love child, what I want in 5e

[RHGreen]

What I hate from both 3E, Pathfinder and 4E is Charisma and Constitution.

Oh, and all the other editions and retro-clones.


Get rid.

I would explain why but I can't be bothered. Just trust me, I'm always right.

 

[qstor]

So, given that hit points and damage are abstract, why should healing be concrete? The hypothetical Fighter above is physically fine, why does magic(or long recovery time) need to be involved for him to regain that lost plot protection? Why not just have him shrug it off?

Guess I missed it last time. For me I can't think of another RPG system ie Champions, GURPS, 1e, Star Wars d20,2e etc at a fantasy game "level" absent magic, regeneration or "natural" ie body rest/surgery that allows a character to recover lost health/hit points own their own. I'm not talking supers. So my objection to healing surges is that they seem like regeneration and "every character" has that ability. And with healing surges its like BANG spend an action on my own and I'm regenerated.

I understand your point about D&D what ever edition hit points being abstract but that's why D&D typically doesn't have hit location tables. Where as GURPS has hit location tables so I aim with a ranged weapon and hit you in the foot, my character is not typically going to die, where as I aim for your head and bang you're typically dead particularly with a modern weapon. So I think hit points are abstract to a point in previous editions you didn't get them back absent magic or bed rest. So my objection is the abstraction is continued to the point where it involves some sort of regeneration on the "normal" generic fantasy characters own. If you can think of a fantasy system that allows recover on a characters own just by spending a combat turn healing absent some other action I'm unaware of it.

Mike

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Which raises a key point:

In discussions like this, should we stick to what we see as best for the *game*, or lob in consideration of what's best for the industry and-or company? It matters; as all too often the two are at odds, with splats being an obvious example (generally bad for the game, good for the industry).

Winston Churchill said something along the lines that you cannot make good compromises until all the people involved know their positions and are willing to state them.

I think the same thing about early design with competing claims. Sure, what will sell matters a whole lot. It has to be advanced and considered. But if in the early discussion, people are already compromising what they want because they think it won't sell, or other people don't need it or want it or whatever--then we merely get this big fuzzy mess.

It wouldn't hurt to say, "my idea is probably impractible because I can't see it working with the sales plan." But then having established that you aren't a raving loon, tell us the idea in all its ugly glory.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Interesting - it wasn't that I didn't know what the spells did in 3.5E, it was that I had so many options between spells, class/template/PrC abilities, magic items and also magic weapons, that it was inevitable that I would forget something important. For example: my lich archmage had a ring of protection +4, but also a ring of positive energy protection that I completely forgot about. When deciding which quickened and regular spells I could cast that round and where to move to minimize attacks against me, and which other spells I could use, and which buffing spells were left on my lich - I think it took the party 9 or 10 castings of various Dispel Magics to finally completely debuff the lich - it just completely slipped my mind.

My solution in late 3E was to do something very similar to the 4E monster blocks, but built out of the 3E pieces. Basically, I'd put every caster in a faction, set the spells by faction, provide a few key characters worked out by the levels that would matter, and then flavor them differently to keep it interesting. So my human and elven evil mages allied with the neogi all cast the same spells. A 5th level mage cast the same spells as the 3rd level equivalent, plus the extras. I also standardized most of the magic items. I even went so far as to copy the most critical spells into the Word document. After all, if I get all the main information for such a caster on one page and print, I can keep reusing it, right?

It was a lot of work to do, but a net decrease in work if I used the creature several times. But I did wonder at the time about a possible solution that would be a compromise between the RAW 3E and 4E. Use building blocks in the core rules that are broader than single items or spells, but narrower than complete creatures. You might have a set of spells (and equipment) that are appropriate for a "blaster" mage or a divination mage or whatever. Critically, the list would be short enough that each mage could have more than one. Then you build your creatures, quickly, out of those lists. (This is not the 3E monster adjusting guidelines or templates. Those are too fine for this to work. Nor is it the 4E templates, though it comes closer to that. If you could build a complete, valid creature out of nothing much but templates--and maybe a core racial stock--that would be close.)

If you really want to just use something straight, you use the final product out of the monster manual, or maybe put together by someone else in an online tool. If you want to do some quick customization, you grab several building blocks and write them down (and software would help a ton here, too). But if you really want to delve deep, you can swap things off a package for something else, make your own packages, etc. What this method essentially says is that the monster in the monster manual is not the creature. Rather, it is some crib notes about what someone thought was the most important aspects of a few examples of those creatures.

 

[NewJeffCT]

If you really want to just use something straight, you use the final product out of the monster manual, or maybe put together by someone else in an online tool. If you want to do some quick customization, you grab several building blocks and write them down (and software would help a ton here, too). But if you really want to delve deep, you can swap things off a package for something else, make your own packages, etc. What this method essentially says is that the monster in the monster manual is not the creature. Rather, it is some crib notes about what someone thought was the most important aspects of a few examples of those creatures.

Part of my problem was that the BBEG in my campaign was the high priest of a tyrannical god of slavery, so (by necessity), a lot of the major villains in the campaign were followers of said deity.

And, since I was trying to be a good DM, I did try to vary these clerics up in flavor, as well as spell choices (though, having certain domains did mean I was using Dominate Person, Greater Command and similar quite often). But, one cleric was a mystic theurge, another had a different PrC, another had a template, another had a few levels of blackguard or paladin of tyranny, etc. (And, if people think Dominate sucks in 4E, it sucks a lot worse in prior editions where it could last for hours/days)

And, of course, the support for each cleric had to be varied as well. One cleric had a planar ally of a devil and several human warriors and low level clerics, another had ogre barbarians, while the drow priestess of this religion had a nasty drow war party (featuring a long time party nemesis), etc, etc.

So, nothing was really by the book, or straight out of a book.


So, it was nothing that was straight out of the Monster Manual.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Part of my problem was that the BBEG in my campaign was the high priest of a tyrannical god of slavery, so (by necessity), a lot of the major villains in the campaign were followers of said deity.

And, since I was trying to be a good DM, I did try to vary these clerics up in flavor, as well as spell choices (though, having certain domains did mean I was using Dominate Person, Greater Command and similar quite often). But, one cleric was a mystic theurge, another had a different PrC, another had a template, another had a few levels of blackguard or paladin of tyranny, etc. (And, if people think Dominate sucks in 4E, it sucks a lot worse in prior editions where it could last for hours/days).

Yep. I ran into some of that same trouble in my first 3E campaign, where the BBEG was a lich, former human wizard, almost a demigod now.

So when I got to that last 3E campaign, where I started using the stock faction creatures, I made five BBEG (most of them organizations, instead of individuals). The neogi faction was one of the five. Then I added allies to each faction for color, instead of varying the stock each time. Sometimes the allies were things like "the corrupt merchant guild in a particular southern naval town, with their fingers in every port nearby". But mainly I stuck to things that were obviously thematic for magic use.

Of course, I wasn't doing that only to keep prep work down. I wanted something fairly complicated, and this helped me keep straight of it all without having to keep 200 pages of notes. If only one faction went in for demon summoning, then that meant most demons running around were allied with them (well, as much as any summoned demon is ). I did throw in a handful of unallied, fringe creatures and NPCs, and had three "factions" that were generally allied with the party, or at least neutral. But 90%+ of what the party actually fought was in one of those five factions.

The players also enjoyed this because as they learned more about the factions and their allies, it became a strategic edge that could be exploited.

 

[Mercurius]

I have not read the thread or anything other than the title. All I want to say is the lovechild of 4E and Pathfinder would be a monstrosity--two shambling mounds of overly complicated fiddly bits doing the nasty, producing a creature from some unknown layer of the Abyss. No thanks.

Now if we were to combine, say, the best of 4E and/or Pathfinder with Fabled Lands or FATE or Talislanta or some other simplish game that better facilitates ad hoc imaginative play and less reliance upon What The Rules Say, then yes, now we're talking.

 

[Glade Riven]

There is one major thing I noticed missing from this thread: How DDI's data will effect 5e.

I don't expect 5e to return to be more like 3e, although it may pick up a few good pointers from Pathfinder. In fact, with the fractured market it may be best if 5e goes in a new direction, rethinking everything from the ground up - looking at what worked, what didn't work, etc. across multiple versions of D&D, look at what people like and use from DDI, etc.

Granted, people hate change, so some 4e-ers will know how 3.5ers felt when 4e came out. I, for one, and cautiously optimistic.