D&D 5E (2024) So, what does the Artificer "replace"?

[CreamCloud0]

So, make Jack of all trades the default?

the bard ability i take it you mean? yes i suppose so.

 

[Parmandur]

because after adventuring for a bit you'll just end up picking up some things, it'd probably be statistically impossible NOT to, from watching and listening to your fellow party members, from chats with shopkeepers and bartenders, from practical experience, i'm sure you have an amount of bits of stray knowledge rattling around in your head that aren't related to whatever you do for a living that you never went out of your way to specifically pick up, just things you've learned because one day you read it in a book or a family member needed your help as a second pair of hands.

i'm not saying they should be as competent in these areas as their own area of expertise (i noticed you changed that bit of phrasing), i'm saying that after a few adventures they shouldn't be as incompetent in these areas as the day they started.

I am not better at carpentry or horseback riding at age 40 than I was at age 18, because I have not applied myself specifically to those skills. I don't particularly care for the idea of every character being competent at everything: areas of incompetence can be almost as much a defining characteristic as competence or expertise.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

bounded accuracy is good and all but i don't think the 1/2 level bonus is something to get rid of either, one of the criticisms against 5e i think has merit is that a 20th level character likely still has exactly the same bonuses to their non-primary skills and saves as they did at 1st level, i think experienced adventurers should have enough field knowledge that you can expect the barbarian will of picked up some arcana, the cleric knows how to disarm a basic trap or the sorcerer knows how to swing a club.

In 2014, I thought 5e was simply wrong-headed on most things.

Now? I think it grew from reasonable roots--its success points to that, if nothing else--but went too far. Just as 4e went too far for what it was doing. Just as 3e went too far with what it did, even though it too came from reasonable roots.

The golden mean fallacy is a fallacy because it says that middle-of-the-road solutions are always correct. I don't buy that, and anyone who's read my posts for a week or two would know that. But I don't think it is fallacious here to say that something between 3e, 4e, and 5e would probably be a better fit--because it actually would be striving for the so-called "big tent" folks have repeatedly talked about.

5e claimed it was going to be that. That it was going to be an edition for all fans of D&D. And then it flipped the bird to anyone who has even somewhat gamist preferences. Which is why it's so frustrating to hear folks act like simulationism is suddenly getting extra special hatred, when I've been dealing with openly venomous disdain for anything that even thinks about gamist priorities, let alone actually includes them. I had people say to my (internet) face that I should be glad that dragonborn got included at all--that I got even the tiniest nods to 4e. That's the "big tent" we got.

Would be nice if the folks looking for friendliness now had been more interested in giving friendliness a decade ago. But that can't be changed now. We can change whether we accept that a game that validates "all approaches" has to recognize that narrative concerns and gameplay concerns should be on equal footing with world-building concerns. We can't pretend that we want a big tent, that we want everyone's concerns to be recognized, and also get mad when sometimes that means our concerns need to be put on the back burner. Those stances aren't compatible--because the first one says everyone gets an equal slice of the pie, and the second says my slice needs to be bigger than everyone else's.