Pax Prime seminar 2012 juicy news!

[Teataine]

I really don't want WotC to tell me what my character's story is.

They never could and never will.

They need to figure out what the class' place in the world is, so they can design for it. Otherwise, as it has been said countless times in this thread already, a lightly armoured fighty guy with two swords and a bow can easily be a Fighter. You don't need a Ranger class if it can be mechanically entirely represented by something else.

The fact they're trying to find the Ranger an unique niche, an identity of your own does in no way determine your character's story.

 

[Greg K]

I really hate going here, but don't buy it then. Apparently, you are fine with heavily modifying previous editions of D&D to suit your needs and playstyle, but draw the line at Next requiring house rules to make your campaign work? Maybe WotC should call you up and ask for all your house rules so they can print them in the book, too?

At the moment, I and the people that I know have no interest in buying it. In its current form, we don't even want to playtest it. It does not seem like the design team as learned much from the OGL or even some of their own more recent games. We are hoping that those things will appear in modules. Beyond that, the cleric, in our opinion, still sucks in comparison to the 2e Specialty Priest. We are, however, willing to give feedback on design decisons and aesthetics in hopes that the game will shape up into something we will want to buy and play.

I've played D&D in a variety of settings. Generic. Ravenloft, Planescape, Eberron, etc.

The only TSR/ WOTC settings that I like are Al Qadim, Darksun (original boxed set), Ravenloft, early Greyhawk (gazeteer and boxed set) and the Forgotten Realms (1e boxed set with some of the 2e setting stuff), and Mystara (minus the tortles). I won't touch Planescape, Spelljammer, Eberron, 4e Forgotten Realms, or the 4e default setting

I've always tailored my selection of classes and their origins to the game and campaign.I enjoy doing it. I'd much rather have a "default" assumption to fix than a bland, flavorless build called ranger with no meaning or purpose. Cuthbert! If we're going to do that, then just make the damn game classless already. I'd rather point-buy a character than have 20 classes that amount to "rage dude, archer dude, singer dude, heally dude, etc"

I am happy to tailor provided they make it easy to do. I don't want the hassle of having to fix their fluff when they start building default mechanical assumptions around it and it starts cutting off viable concepts, because the designers took the fluff and associated mechanics too far (I went that route with the first three editions and am done with it). The Draconic Heritage for the sorcerer is a great example, The designers decided it should be a gish and built into it additional training in armor all weapons and an additional +1 weapon bonus. By doing so, they have cut off the option for those that might draw inspiration from other fantasy sources and find a non-gish draconic heritage sorcerer to be an interesting concept. Essentially, the designers gave a big screw you to that player and many DMs by not providing an option to compensate the non-gish with something else more "sorcery" rebalance the heritage.

Edit: The Monk in 1e and 3e is another example of designer fluff and mechanics getting in the way. With 3e I saw the ability to customize the Fighter and thought it was a wonderful. Then, I flipped to the monk and was severely disappointed that we did not get the same ability to customize the monk (Unearthed Arcana in 3.5 gave some customization with fighting styles, but we were still stuck with a base class with too many prescribed abilities that did not fit various individuals version of a monk).

 

[The Shadow]

Has everyone forgotten about the AD&D assassin, druid, and monk? Those guys were so organizationally based, they had to fight members of their organization to advance to a higher level!

What WotC has planned is much more low-key than that, I feel very confident. In much the same way that clerics imply some sort of religious structure behind them for worldbuilders to fill out, rangers will imply some sort of common fellowship to be filled out. What's the problem with this?

 

[VinylTap]

I think the design team's goal is to offer fluff as a guiding tool, rather than a strict world setting. There are lots of people out there more than happy to play in a generic fantasy setting. Take the fluff or leave it, the option is there, the challenge of the design team isn't really here, its in making the Ranger-warrior subclass "feel" different enough from a sword-and-board warrior that a player doesn't feel disappointed that he can't play what he wants. Success, in a large part of this initial system, is to convince him/her that, "this is the way in which we want you to play what you want".

Everyone wants CS dice for the other classes, and this is a way to do it. Its a lot more simple to balance because you have less classes to work with. Just a wide variety of play styles within a handful of classes. Your two "physical" damage classes will be "rogue" and "warrior", one who focuses on combat, and one who's flexibility dips into skills at the cost of a play-style that includes a lot of situational requirements (like advantage) to balance out his edge in skills. He won't do less damage necessarily, just more situational. While the fighter will be more straight-forward, in your face and martially focused.

A lot of people's reaction is somewhat defensible, people want to be catered to and a "fighter-ranger" doesn't really feel as special as a "ranger", if that's where your passion lies. But those players are going to have to wait.
Most people want to play a modular form of DND, not the core rules they're producing , that's where their passion for the hobby lies. Unfortunately having a solid core means limiting a lot of options that people are going to expect. Those options will be more robustly supported in future releases, but WOTC is going to have to be really careful and not gut any potential excitement of future modules with an initial release of DND Next that doesn't assure people that they should be excited for what's coming next (no pun intended ).

 

[triqui]

This is, exactly, what I don't want. I don't want the designers'
"story" except in specific setting products.

Yes. D&D never had such things as spells named by the mage who invented them.
Oh, wait...

 

[Yora]

I don't even know what CS dice are, so there is at least one person who doesn't want them.

 

[triqui]

Has everyone forgotten about the AD&D assassin, druid, and monk? Those guys were so organizationally based, they had to fight members of their organization to advance to a higher level!

What WotC has planned is much more low-key than that, I feel very confident. In much the same way that clerics imply some sort of religious structure behind them for worldbuilders to fill out, rangers will imply some sort of common fellowship to be filled out. What's the problem with this?

Not only that, but half of 3.X prestige classes *were* organizations. It's just that most people ignored it, and run them as part of their own home campaign, just changing the fluff.

 

[Greg K]

Yes. D&D never had such things as spells named by the mage who invented them.
Oh, wait...

Nice strawman! I never said that was not the case and those names can be removed- look at the 3e SRD which pretty much required others to not use the names in their products. And, it is not as if my position is new with 5e. In my pre-3e questionaire, I stated that I wanted to see those names removed or the named spells saved for specific settings.

 

[triqui]

..,and those names can be removed-

The names in 5e can be removed just as easy.

 

[The Shadow]

I don't even know what CS dice are, so there is at least one person who doesn't want them.

Combat Superiority dice, a mechanic the fighter has. My group cottoned to them really fast, to the point I'm going to have to pry them out of their cold, dead hands.