D&D 5E So whatever happened to the Tactics Variant/Module or Whatever

[Monayuris]

I apologize. I’m taking this off topic.

So, I’m going to back out of this.

 

[Krachek]

for now they are more concern about lower the entry level than to add complexity.
the game is setup for a long time, and any new tactical rules will be options like those in the DmG.
the game won’t be more sharp, tactical or balanced than what we get now.

 

[pogre]

I was excited by the idea of modularity, but so many players seem to consider any new rules - even those labeled optional - must be included. D&D is a kitchen sink game for us these days.

 

[dave2008]

Because increasing the tactical element of play interleaves with every class used and any combat spell and every monster in use. How many bits and pieces do you have to interact with just for one element is what makes it difficult?

I already mentioned the bloodied condition I will point out more broadly why that example works. It can give us monsters who have tactically interactive abilities defenses and powers which change over stages of a combat what makes them inducing/encouraging different kind of choices and approaches by the players. There could more stages if one wanted to notch it up.

Honestly I am not asking for identical to previous editions. One hopes for better.

I guess it depends on what you mean by "Tactical Module." For example, the bloodied condition is not something I would have thought as part of such a module. So I guess the first thing would be: what is needed for you to consider it a tactical module?

FYI, we use a version of the bloodied condition in out 5e games and it hasn't been a problem.

 

[Tony Vargas]

[sblock="off topic"]

i’d have To disagree here. In my experience, once you start talking about builds you are getting away from accessibility.

That's the thing, you don't need to talk about 20-level builds to new players. They can play a 'starting package' or pregen. Really, in any edition, pregens are a good idea, that's why modules had 'em back in the 0e days (In Search of the Unknown, which came with the c1977 basic set had pregens in the back), and 5e has 'em in the Basic PDF. Encounters pregens came on laminated half-sheets. Though, TBH, one of the whack things WotC has done in both 4e & 5e is take the language used to say mean things about it's predecessor and incorporate it into the new one as jargon - so 'build' was actually 4e jargon for what, in 4e, is sub-class-chosen-at-first-level, and amounted to picking a first level feature)

But, if you don't, in 3e, and they play the character any length of time, they'll likely run up against a 'mistake' at lower level that prevents them from taking an optimal, or even viable, development path. That's less of an issue in 5e (a non-issue in AL before 4th level). It was a non-issue in 4e, you could retrain at each level.

You had to choose your powers at first level and you had to know how powers and their keywords work and interact. A new player is presented with a large number of choices that have complex interactions (race, class, background, 2 at-wills, one encounter, one daily). That’s 7 choices for a new player. All of which have complex interactions because of the keyword approach.

Actually, backgrounds weren't in the PH, and you left out 1 feat, so still 7. That's also fewer choices than any caster faces in any other WotC edition (or 2e, I'm pretty sure - in prior eds, most of those choices would be made for you by the dice). Oh, you also left out choosing several skills. We could call it 10 choices, all total, to have a complete character. There were default packages that made almost all of them for you, but that aside...

5e distills this down to race, class, background. These choices are presented more organically as well.

I'm sorry. So fighters don't choose Fighting Style? Wizards don't choose Tradition, and known spells, and cantrips, and no one chooses skills?

Let's look at a 5e wizard in the same detail you did the AEDU character (who, are all /pretty close/ in how many choices they get, and when - which simplifies the game, making it more accessible... more on that later).

Chose Race, choose Sub-Race, choose Class (Wizard!) OK, choose Tradition (there are 8 of 'em they have to do with the way spells are grouped, there are a couple hundred of them, only 26 are first level though, but you might want to familiarize yourself to make the right choice for the kind of wizard you want)(oh, is there a list of the 26 I can read through)(of course, it's a list, though, you need to look each one up alphabetically), (OK, Evoker sounds cool and simple all about blasting). OK, choose 3 cantrips, (from this list of 14). (OK! hey, some of these are Evocation, so I get to use my Evoker's "Potent Cantrip!")(Weeeell not exactly, there are some, but they're in supplements, we're not using those right now), now choose your 6 known spells for your spellbook, from this list of 26. (But it says I have 2 spells to go with the 3 cantrips) (No that's spell slots you can cast per day) (So I can cast 3 cantrips and two spells per day?) (Cantrips all you want, but slots aren't spells, they power spells, you'll know 6 spells, but cast only two of them per day, form a list of INTmod+1 spells known that you /prepare/).
Also, pick 2 skills and a Background, and we're practically done, you just might have to choose a language or tool proficiency or something from your background.

...hm...sounds like 16-20 choices. Not counting picking prepared spells, because, hey, that's 'in play,' not technically chargen.


so, yeah, let's use pregens.


… and then there's 2nd level.

In the olden days, different characters would reach second level at different times. Since, 3e, it's mostly been at the same time, which does make things more accessible. Except. What do you get at 2nd level?

Well, in 3e or 5e, look up your class table, and see what you get, it'll be different for everyone, might be a specific feat or a choice of a bonus feat from a list of 20+ in 3e, might be a specific ability or choice of an ability, or another known spell from that same list or a character-defining choice of sub-class, in 5e. Check if your Proficiency has gone up (5e nope), or in 3e if your BAB bumps and your saves (different for 'good' vs 'bad'), and spend anything from 1 (Fighter 8 int) to 10+ (Rogue, high int) skill ranks.
In 4e. Everything implements by 1, pick a feat, and, pick a utility power from your class, from a list of 2-5 under your class, in the PH1. Not exactly staggering - it's a compromise between customization (feat), simplification (the DM can just tell everyone, once, what they get), and class differentiation (each class had it's own short list of 2nd level utilities).

but also I don’t care about builds or customization and all that. I think they are bad for the game....

Customization /is/ good for the game for experienced players (or /really/ enthused new players who have their heart set on a concept that doesn't neatly fit a bog-standard class) who like that sort of thing. Which made 3e something a lot of us loved, and others couldn't get into. Optimized Builds are only 'bad' (cater to one preference at the expense of another) for the game if they're too OP and make non-optimized characters non-viable compared to them. Which also made 3e something a lot of us loved and others found... discouraging.

But, customization is really an option that you can dive into or not. There's generally a default or obvious choice that you can coast with if you don't care for that dive.

5e /does/ optionally open up some additional customization through Feats and MCing, and also puts forward some up-front with non-optional Backgrounds (and 4 optional characteristics...), sub-races, & sub-classes. But, it's still a lot less than you could do in 3e and 4e.

Tactical richness was the strength of 4e. Other editions didn’t handle that as well but handled other aspects of the game better.

4e specifically tried to get away from the 'static combat' that often got in the way of 3.5's otherwise equally rich set of tactical options, mostly inherited from 2e C&T. And tactics were never exactly entirely lacking from D&D - all the way back to Chainmail, it did have roots in wargaming, afterall! So, no, it wasn't a particular strength of 4e, it was just something 4e did well, while avoiding the 'static combat' pitfall that tripped up 3e, and the more general issue of the 'tactics' employed by non-casters being obviated as casters became increasingly over-powered, in other editions.
Class balance, for instance, was far more significant. Simple, reasonably dependable encounter building guidelines were pretty significant. A viable structured way of involving everyone in a non-combat encounter, that was weighted the same as combat encounters, was a pretty significant innovation, too. And, since I ran a lot of introductory games, the greater accessibility of the system to new players was also a very significant strength.

I actually find that 5e fixes a lot of the problems I had with 4e while at the same time adds a lot of the elements I miss from older editions.

Sure. Most of the problems people had with 4e were with things it had changed from older editions - often, ironically, to fix well-known problems - and 5e returned to a lot of those.[/sblock]

 

[Garthanos]

4e is /easily/ the most accessible of the WotC editions, to brand-new players. Now, sure, you /could/ do 30-level builds if you were so inclined, but it wasn't /necessary/, you could just pick whatever looked cool each level, and you'd be fine, you could build highly-customized build-to-concept, highly optimized, or just obvious/intuitive and you'd have a comparatively viable character. The rewards for system mastery were just marginal.
In 3.5 it was "necessary," to generally be on roughly the same system-mastery page, preferably similar-Tier classes, if you wanted a fully-participatory campaign, and if that page as PvP or CharOP, genuinely necessary to go full-on optimization - but if that page showed more restraint & was core only, or if it was E6, such optimization was not necessary, at all.

In 5e, it's simply not possible to build characters to that level of customization or optimization, because the options aren't there.

It is. It is a slight to 5e and it's goal of 'big tent' inclusion of fans of all past editions.

One can use all the option rich elements not to optimize for potency or balance but for flavor which is why I liked even Hybrids in 4e.
5e multi-classing doesn't live up to my expectations for enabling broad richness, it appears to make somethings prohibitively costly for little reason and other things trivially easy because of coincidence or something. Like having to go 17 levels before I even get a level 1 character equivalent swordmage.

(And the idea of 'tactical richness' as defining 4e is also a bit of faint praise, since it was also the only version of D&D to at least /try/ to cover out-of-combat in a functional full-party-participation way, that was weighted the same as combat. Yes, 4e got away from 3.5 'static combats' - but that was far from the only thing it did.)

There may even I feel be potential modules which can help out of combat arena balance in 5e primarily enhancing non-casters that make skills richer and more impactful but that is admitted not the focus of this thread.

 

[CapnZapp]

It's there in the class design and optional rules in the DMG.

I think the fanatics took things a bit to literally. They said fans of 1E to 4E could play together not that it would be 1E to 4E.

You're telling us this despite us all already being aware, and despite the OP clearly wanting *more*...

 

[CapnZapp]

They may also have realised that modularity was a bit of a blind avenue sales-wise. It might bring in more people in the initial wave by catering to more varied play-styles, but in the long term creating a fractured fanbase each playing a different version of the same game doesn't actually provide a solid foundation for expanding the market.

The real reason is that they just wanted a bit of market speak to lure in a few more paying customers and head off a bit more griping despite it being empty promises.

 

[Monayuris]

[HI][/HI]

That's the thing, you don't need to talk about 20-level builds to new players. They can play a 'starting package' or pregen. Really, in any edition, pregens are a good idea, that's why modules had 'em back in the 0e days (In Search of the Unknown, which came with the c1977 basic set had pregens in the back), and 5e has 'em in the Basic PDF. Encounters pregens came on laminated half-sheets. [sblock="WotC & pedantics"](Though, TBH, one of the whack things WotC has done in both 4e & 5e is take the language used to say mean things about it's predecessor and incorporate it into the new one as jargon - so 'build' was actually 4e jargon for what, in 4e, is sub-class-chosen-at-first-level, and amounted to picking a first level feature)[/sblock]

But, if you don't, in 3e, and they play the character any length of time, they'll likely run up against a 'mistake' at lower level that prevents them from taking an optimal, or even viable, development path. That's less of an issue in 5e (a non-issue in AL before 4th level). It was a non-issue in 4e, you could retrain at each level.

Actually, backgrounds weren't in the PH, and you left out 1 feat, so still 7. That's also fewer choices than any caster faces in any other WotC edition (or 2e, I'm pretty sure - in prior eds, most of those choices would be made for you by the dice). Oh, you also left out choosing several skills. We could call it 10 choices, all total, to have a complete character. There were default packages that made almost all of them for you, but that aside...

I'm sorry. So fighters don't choose Fighting Style? Wizards don't choose Tradition, and known spells, and cantrips, and no one chooses skills?

Let's look at a 5e wizard in the same detail you did the AEDU character (who, are all /pretty close/ in how many choices they get, and when - which simplifies the game, making it more accessible... more on that later).

Chose Race, choose Sub-Race, choose Class (Wizard!) OK, choose Tradition (there are 8 of 'em they have to do with the way spells are grouped, there are a couple hundred of them, only 26 are first level though, but you might want to familiarize yourself to make the right choice for the kind of wizard you want)(oh, is there a list of the 26 I can read through)(of course, it's a list, though, you need to look each one up alphabetically), (OK, Evoker sounds cool and simple all about blasting). OK, choose 3 cantrips, (from this list of 14). (OK! hey, some of these are Evocation, so I get to use my Evoker's "Potent Cantrip!")(Weeeell not exactly, there are some, but they're in supplements, we're not using those right now), now choose your 6 known spells for your spellbook, from this list of 26. (But it says I have 2 spells to go with the 3 cantrips) (No that's spell slots you can cast per day) (So I can cast 3 cantrips and two spells per day?) (Cantrips all you want, but slots aren't spells, they power spells, you'll know 6 spells, but cast only two of them per day, form a list of INTmod+1 spells known that you /prepare/).
Also, pick 2 skills and a Background, and we're practically done, you just might have to choose a language or tool proficiency or something from your background.

...hm...sounds like 16-20 choices. Not counting picking prepared spells, because, hey, that's 'in play,' not technically chargen.


so, yeah, let's use pregens.


… and then there's 2nd level.

In the olden days, different characters would reach second level at different times. Since, 3e, it's mostly been at the same time, which does make things more accessible. Except. What do you get at 2nd level?

Well, in 3e or 5e, look up your class table, and see what you get, it'll be different for everyone, might be a specific feat or a choice of a bonus feat from a list of 20+ in 3e, might be a specific ability or choice of an ability, or another known spell from that same list or a character-defining choice of sub-class, in 5e. Check if your Proficiency has gone up (5e nope), or in 3e if your BAB bumps and your saves (different for 'good' vs 'bad'), and spend anything from 1 (Fighter 8 int) to 10+ (Rogue, high int) skill ranks.
In 4e. Everything implements by 1, pick a feat, and, pick a utility power from your class, from a list of 2-5 under your class, in the PH1. Not exactly staggering - it's a compromise between customization (feat), simplification (the DM can just tell everyone, once, what they get), and class differentiation (each class had it's own short list of 2nd level utilities).


Customization /is/ good for the game for experienced players (or /really/ enthused new players who have their heart set on a concept that doesn't neatly fit a bog-standard class) who like that sort of thing. Which made 3e something a lot of us loved, and others couldn't get into. Optimized Builds are only 'bad' (cater to one preference at the expense of another) for the game if they're too OP and make non-optimized characters non-viable compared to them. Which also made 3e something a lot of us loved and others found... discouraging.

But, customization is really an option that you can dive into or not. There's generally a default or obvious choice that you can coast with if you don't care for that dive.

5e /does/ optionally open up some additional customization through Feats and MCing, and also puts forward some up-front with non-optional Backgrounds (and 4 optional characteristics...), sub-races, & sub-classes. But, it's still a lot less than you could do in 3e and 4e.

4e specifically tried to get away from the 'static combat' that often got in the way of 3.5's otherwise equally rich set of tactical options, mostly inherited from 2e C&T. And tactics were never exactly entirely lacking from D&D - all the way back to Chainmail, it did have roots in wargaming, afterall! So, no, it wasn't a particular strength of 4e, it was just something 4e did well, while avoiding the 'static combat' pitfall that tripped up 3e, and the more general issue of the 'tactics' employed by non-casters being obviated as casters became increasingly over-powered, in other editions.
Class balance, for instance, was far more significant. Simple, reasonably dependable encounter building guidelines were pretty significant. A viable structured way of involving everyone in a non-combat encounter, that was weighted the same as combat encounters, was a pretty significant innovation, too. And, since I ran a lot of introductory games, the greater accessibility of the system to new players was also a very significant strength.

Sure. Most of the problems people had with 4e were with things it had changed from older editions - often, ironically, to fix well-known problems - and 5e returned to a lot of those.

You responded before I decided to pull back from this.

I think I flat out have a completely different outlook towards the game than you. But that’s ok. I don’t see any need to derail the thread about it.

 

[Tony Vargas]

[HI][/HI]

You responded before I decided to pull back from this.

I think I flat out have a completely different outlook towards the game than you. But that’s ok. I don’t see any need to derail the thread about it.

No problem. I'd've not replies if I'd noticed you taking down the post I was responding too...