D&D General Requesting permission to have something cool

[Scribe]

I certainly hope you're being facetious. Small-time publication doesn't get you diddly-squat in the TTRPG space. Never has. D&D is the behemoth it is because it was early. Same with a wide variety of other things. Paizo only became what it did because WotC divested so much of itself and specifically equipped Paizo to pick up the pieces.

Sure bro.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dndshorts/ryokos-guide-to-the-yokai-realms-a-5e-tome

 

[Reynard]

So, what you're saying is, it's the player's fault for choosing a garbage class? Sounds like victim-blaming to me.

Ah, hyperbole directing attention away from an argument by way of minimizing an actual real world problem. A well worn tactic.

"How dare you be interested in an archetype that is extremely popular. You should have changed all your preferences to match what the game actually rewards!"

This is you just making up stuff that other people are saying,a nd it is tiresome in the extreme. if you don't actual want to engage an argument, just don't.

Plus, your suggestion that the "extremely popular" archetype is a fighter that plays like a wizard is, at best, suspect and probably a complete straw man. Instead, what is likely happening is that YOU personally want a fighter with lots of cool battlefield control and high damage capabilities. Cool. There are some awesome barbarian subclasses that do just that. I did not say people should not want that.

What I said, the actual argument I was making that you chose to ignore in favor of yelling about victim blaming, is this: the game has a bunch of tools with which to build a character. it is incumbent on the player (with help, especially if they are new) to RTFM and pick the right tools to build they character they actually want to play.

What is not reasonable is to actively choose something that lacks those abilities you want and then blame the GM for you not having a good time. It may be that the "fighter" you are looking for is actually a Barbarian subclass. But to know that you would have to RTFM.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Which is no reason for me to stop advocacy. Quite the contrary. Advocacy is the only way that it's even potentially possible that things might, someday, change.

Sure. You don't need to stop advocating for something that most likely is never going to happen. Just like we don't have to stop reminding you that you are advocating for something that most likely is never going to happen.

Because most people (including WotC) do not have have the same disdain for the Wizard class that you do.

 

[Remathilis]

Legalos, Gimli, or Aragorn... but Boromir?

(I still remember a friend in 5th grade when we all seemed to be reading this and she got to that scene. She was crushed :-( ).

Legolas and Gimli are fantastic species. Gimli shrugs off blows because he's a dwarf. Legolas does amazing acrobat and trick shots because he's an elf. Aragorn is a ranger and descendant of the King. Boromir is a dude with a sword and shield. As mundane as can be even by Tolkien status.

 

[Quickleaf]

As someone who has sought such a thing, I can at least give my personal experience:

Every single 5e DM I have ever asked for homebrew content has said no, unless they were already a close personal friend.

Literally 100% of 5e DMs I've asked, with one friend of mine as the only exception. Most of them complimented me on my design; most of them said that they thought it would probably work out alright, or didn't comment at all. All of them were quite polite about it.

Over a year of applying for 5e games, and none of them accepted.

On behalf of GMs who run 5e, I apologize. I'm almost always more inclined to say "yes" to someone coming to me with homebrew. But I may be (almost certainly am) an outlier to how 5e seems to be played out there in the wild.

Unless it's from dndwiki, in which case I'd probably tear up your sheet and laugh smugly at you over my coffee as dark as my dark GM heart.

 

[Minigiant]

These arguments are less than a raindrop in the face of a forest fire.

We are not a voice, a representation of the wider community.

These arguments are woefully insufficient to stop anyone capable of making halfway decent money from RPG design from doing so.

There's a real reason why but it's cynically and sad.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It is not just a perception thing. Actively creating tedium in order to push people away from particular options is a game design choice. It's a poor game design choice, but it is a choice. When game designers talk about "optimizing the fun out of a game," they're referring to people willingly choosing to do tedious, un-fun things because those strategies are dominant. Other game design spaces cottoned onto this pretty quickly, and learned that making the barrier to power be tedium is simply encouraging players to do tedious things.


Name them. Getting to attack four times per Attack isn't special. Name one thing a Fighter can do that isn't "something literally everyone else can do, but faster." I'll wait. The 5e Fighter's features are Second Wind (occasional self-healing, something everyone does with Hit Dice), Action Surge (same actions as everyone else, just faster), Extra Attack (same attacks everyone else makes, just faster...and most other Fighter-like classes get equally good equivalents anyway!), and Indomitable (same saving throws as everyone else, just faster).

It's literally, from top to bottom, "the same as everyone else, but faster." That's it. Fighters don't do anything Wizards can't. They just do things a little bit faster.


Which is no reason for me to stop advocacy. Quite the contrary. Advocacy is the only way that it's even potentially possible that things might, someday, change.


I certainly hope you're being facetious. Small-time publication doesn't get you diddly-squat in the TTRPG space. Never has. D&D is the behemoth it is because it was early. Same with a wide variety of other things. Paizo only became what it did because WotC divested so much of itself and specifically equipped Paizo to pick up the pieces.


If it doesn't matter to them whether there's an imbalance, why not at least reduce it, even if we can't truly remove it? You're already saying they don't notice, so reducing it shouldn't be noticed either.


So, what you're saying is, it's the player's fault for choosing a garbage class? Sounds like victim-blaming to me. "How dare you be interested in an archetype that is extremely popular. You should have changed all your preferences to match what the game actually rewards!"

So, despite any evidence to the contrary, everyone finds playing wizards annoying? It's not just you?

Why wouldn't they reduce the imbalance, as you say? Because WotC has no financial reason to expend effort into making the changes you want, and finances are at least 90% of what motivates that company. So from my perspective what you're doing is tilting at windmills if you advocate for WotC to make changes. Noble, perhaps, but IMO a futile endeavor unfortunately. Small time publication is the only place you're going to see what you want. You're right about how it's unlikely to affect the zeitgeist, but oh well.

Edit: Oh and, yeah. Perhaps players who want to get the most out of a particular game should lean into doing what that game rewards, or change it/play a different game that rewards something else?

 

[Cadence]

Legolas and Gimli are fantastic species. Gimli shrugs off blows because he's a dwarf. Legolas does amazing acrobat and trick shots because he's an elf. Aragorn is a ranger and descendant of the King. Boromir is a dude with a sword and shield. As mundane as can be even by Tolkien status.

I mean sure, but then maybe Eowyn or Eomer? (Is Faramir a ranger?). Can we Silmarillion and take Hurin?

Or maybe Boromir is the perfect representative for the Fighter ;-)

 

[Scribe]

There's a real reason why but it's cynically and sad.

A real reason for what? Not just getting something done but instead endlessly bemoaning the status quo?

 

[Reynard]

Legolas and Gimli are fantastic species. Gimli shrugs off blows because he's a dwarf. Legolas does amazing acrobat and trick shots because he's an elf. Aragorn is a ranger and descendant of the King. Boromir is a dude with a sword and shield. As mundane as can be even by Tolkien status.

Point of order: the line of Stewards does possess some blood of Numenor, though not as strong as the Dunedain.