D&D 5E Should martial characters be mundane or supernatural?

[Remathilis]

Other games have a coherent playstyle and design philosophy.

So does D&D, except it's not the one you (and by you, I mean anybody reading this) wants. D&D 5e has been fairly consistent in what its play style is, but people keep wanting it to be the play style THEY want and get saddle sores when the rules don't align with their preferred style. This thread is proof of that.

 

[Voadam]

Do Call of Cthulhu fans want an option for fighting vampires?

My 6th edition Call of Cthulhu core book has vampires in the bestiary with multiple options. Page 209.

 

[Oofta]

They've never surveyed the vast majority of players. The ones who take their UA surveys are the self-selected folks who go online to argue rules and stuff. They aren't the average Joe Player.

Also, do you have a link to where they said that? I can't recall hearing that from them.

I may make some time to look later, but it was in a pretty recent article. They also discussed that they only added artificer because it was so iconic to Eberron.

 

[Remathilis]

But again, they're selling books which contain diminishing proportions of worthwhile content. Every time someone buys 1/17 of a product off D&D Beyond, they're telling WotC they have no interest in the other 16/17. This to me says they need to step up their content game.

So I'm going to voice a VERY unpopular opinion.

WotC is repeating the Original Sin of TSR by trying to support multiple settings. I don't need a Dragonlance book. I'm not running the module, I'm never using the setting, and the few bits I did care about (Lunar Sorc and monsters) could have been put in the next Tasha and MotM respectively. At the same time, each setting is under baked because they have to move on to the next one.

WotC had it right in the beginning: focus on one setting. The Sword Coast was actually fairly developed. The SCAG was bare bones, but it was a decent primer. Each module was a mini gazetteer. Books like Volo and Tome of Foes were supposed to add lore to races and monsters. The idea was sound, the execution lacking. More importantly, it felt like it was supposed to work together as supplements to the same game and setting.

But, WotC has opted to go MTG in it's world building. Rather than focus on one world (Dominaria) they are focusing on hyper-specific one-theme settings and the notion of jumping across the Multiverse from setting to setting. Need a horror adventure? Go to horror world! Want a dragon adventure? Run dragon world. They will return to popular settings (they have done multiple Innistrad runs for example) but each set is a self-contained world and story with only a few plane-hopping returning characters.

So to will D&D be scattered, its options designed for specific settings and adventures, no setting getting more development than what is needed for that one product. And if you do them this is a good idea for D&D, let me remind you where MTG went after a decade of diving into that well:

MTG: Worlds Beyond.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I find the counter of a slippery slope being less and less convincing as the years roll by.

I find the opposite. “Where does it stop?” Always has the same answer. “It stops when it going further doesn’t make any sense, feels bad to most people, and/or isn’t plausible anymore.”

Experience has taught me more and more that the slippery slope is basically always a fallacy.

I can picture a time where Wizards doesnt release everything in books (actually they already dont) and instead drive traffic to Beyond. I can further picture a time where they release content that is player facing, that I would want, that is only available via microtransction.

I can picture a time where citizenship requires military service and people who don’t do so can’t vote, and military requirements are manipulated in order to be used to keep certain groups from ever becoming major voting blocks.

I don’t actually think it will happen, but we are all people who imagine things as a hobby, here.

And to echo someone else, what is a microtransaction, in this context? Does it cost more per…idk page of text iguess…than a full book, thus manipulating you into spending more money than you realize over time? Does it somehow make your PC more powerful and have more agency?

Or is it just buying the Grung on ddb because they only exist as a result of an extra life charity game featuring them and so haven’t ever been in a print book, or buying just the magic items from Tasha’s because it’s the only part you want?

Or at least, I can see them trying, because they are run by an executive level that would love that.

Sure, but is it actually plausible? I really strongly don’t think so.

I just dont think thats a good direction, and offering small bits of content individually is absolutely a microtransaction.

That said, I'm not interested in a long pedantic back and forth, its too early, been too long a month, and I need an energy drink.

Well…I hope you understand that when you tack this onto the end of a post replying to me at length with arguments…I’m still gonna respond to those arguments. If you decide not to engage further I get it, though I think it’s an interesting conversation without ever needing to get pedantic. How we each are defining the term microtransaction is an important distinction in order to understand the arguments the others in the conversation are making.

For my part, while technically I guess any small transaction that isn’t the whole game or a sizeable expansion for it is technically a microtransaction, the common usage IME is more specific. That being, 1) a transaction that either manipulates the buyers perception of cost vs value as compared to “full” transactions, or 2) that gets money from buyers by way of promising “pay to win” benefits like buying higher build points in an MMO with build points* on the fairly benign end (imo) or exclusive gear or other game artifacts that make your character significantly more powerful and thus make the game easier for you than it is for others who can’t afford to pay to win.

1) I can see happening, but not particularly successfully. Too much of the game is out of their hands, the fans are too vocal and ready to rhetorically skewer even small creators much less big corporate ones, and it’s just vastly too easy to just get the digital exclusive $8.99 super-tabaxi pc race without paying for it.

2) I would posit is not only implausible, it may be impossible, for wotc to accomplish with D&D at all. Even if they lock the vtt down like crazy, people will just use other vtts, and someone will make a more open version that uses the SRD and makes it easy to add homebrew PC options and monsters. Outside the vtt, the DM can veto anything. That fact you payed 9 bucks for it doesn’t matter, and if the DM is fine with it in general or sees an easy balance tweak, they’ll just make a homebrew version based on a pirated screenshot they found on tumblr and add it to their game.

 

[Micah Sweet]

So does D&D, except it's not the one you (and by you, I mean anybody reading this) wants. D&D 5e has been fairly consistent in what its play style is, but people keep wanting it to be the play style THEY want and get saddle sores when the rules don't align with their preferred style. This thread is proof of that.

That's because they keep treating D&D like it's all the same game. By that standard it most definitely is incoherent. Treat all the WotC editions as the separate games they are, and not like D&D just changes what it's about every now and then, and that confusion goes away.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I may make some time to look later, but it was in a pretty recent article. They also discussed that they only added artificer because it was so iconic to Eberron.

Yup. WotC does not want new classes.

 

[Tonguez]

My 6th edition Call of Cthulhu core book has vampires in the bestiary with multiple options. Page 209.

HP Lovecraft mentions vampirism in a few of his stories, Joseph Curwen in the Case of Charles Dexter Ward is an undead necromancer who drinks blood. Other Lovecraft stories have ‘vampires’ that are very very different to the ‘dracula’ model.

 

[ECMO3]

Cavalier: Unwavering Mark and Warding Maneuver have too few uses per long rest.

To start with Unwavering Mark is unlimited. I played a Cavalier and this was awesome. You are pretty much forcing everyone you hit to attack you or attack with disadvantage. This is the ultimate defender ability. The disadvantage mechanic is extremely powerful and unlimited.

I think you are talking about the bonus action attack, which is limited but that is only is a ribbon feature of this ability and most fighters are going to have ways to use their bonus action already, through things like PAM, GWM, TWF or Shield Master, not to mention Second Wind which all fighters get. There are some fighter builds that have limited bonus actions, but those builds are probably not playing Cavaliers. As a result this is not a limit that comes into play when playing the subclass. In my case I played a Two-Weapon Fighter with a 12 Strength. So I only had 1 use of this bonus attack per day, but I was almost never in a position where I could not attack with a bonus action anyway.

Warding Maneuver is limited, but when I played a Cavalier I rarely ran out of it because enemies usually attacked me anyway and when they attacked others they had disadvantage and usually missed. Honestly I can't remember running out of uses of Warding Maneuver a single time. I am sure I did, but I don't remeber it.

That said, the relevant question is can you play the kind of character you want to play. Thematically the Cavalier is spot on, and that is what matters, not how many uses of x power they get. If you are not playing a mounted campaign it is less so, but then you probably are not playing a Cavalier for such a campaign.

Can't do your subclass thing often. So it scales poorly.

Like I said Unwaivering Mark is unlimited and I could do Warding Maneuver every time it offered itself.

Morover born into the saddle, Hold the Line and the Charger thing are also unlimited.

Samurai: Same problem with Fighting Spirit. Too few uses. Scales poorly. Rapid Strike is cool but it's level 15.

Scaling is not really relevant to this discussion I don't think. Who cares if it scales well? 5E is easy anyway once you get a subclass and even if subclass abilities didn't scale at all it hardly matters, you will still defeat most level-appropriate enemies easily. What matters is does the class do what it is supposed to thematically. You could take a fighter with no sublcass and roll through most enemies.

I have not played da Samaurai, so I don't have personal experience to draw from like I do Cavalier, but again the subclass seems to be very well designed, doing thematically exactly what it should do.

 

[Voadam]

HP Lovecraft mentions vampirism in a few of his stories, Joseph Curwen in the Case of Charles Dexter Ward is an undead necromancer who drinks blood. Other Lovecraft stories have ‘vampires’ that are very very different to the ‘dracula’ model.

Yeah, there are a number of options for CoC RPG blood drinking vampires which are also completely separate types of creatures from star vampires.