D&D 3E/3.5 Thoughts of a 3E/4E powergamer on starting to play 5E

[pemerton]

the 'all caster party' neatly side-steps the problem of caster dominance. Worked for my old AD&D campaign from 1984-95.

In the first of two near-decade-long Rolemaster campaigns, we ended up with this solution.

For the second campaign, we changed some rules to reduce caster potency (basically, make melee warriors as effective as a nova-ing caster).

you shouldn't expressly need a DM. You should be able to reasonably open the book and everyone mechanically plays the same game.

<snip>

A rule-set is not a story book.

In any fairly traditional RPG, the GM is needed to handle the backstory and to frame the PCs (and thereby the players) into challenging situations. In more traditional D&D language, this is world design and encounter design.

Also, RPG rules will inevitably need some sort of adjudication (eg did such-and-such a bit of roleplay count as playing to a flaw so as to earn inspiration?). Someone other than the player who has an outcome at stake needs to make this call - traditionally that is the GM. And it's not a problem if at other tables the call would have been different.

 

[dave2008]

You know that lack of consistency also reduces hackability? Yes 5e empowers DMs by having less rules, but it doesn't mean they will know how to make the right rulings or the effects of houserules. 3e is extremely hackable as is 4e, 5e on the other hand isn't that good for it, it is just too unreliable to know.

Not my experience, I find 5e to be at least as hackable as 4e, probably more.

 

[dave2008]

You should, yes, since it's relevant to at least 3, maybe 4 editions of D&D.

The Holy Trinity is a game concept that as the basis for a party you need a Tank, Healer and one or more DPS. So when people talk about how such-and-such game really makes it feel like you "need a healer" or "we would have gotten crushed if it wasn't for our defender" people are talking about how the game relies on the Holy Trinity. 3E was very big on the Holy Trinity, you needed a healer. 4E provided the most distinct roles based along the "expanded" trinity, typically Defender(Tank), Striker(DPS), Support(Healer/Buffer) and Leader(Buffer), but at the same time provided one of the easiest systems to avoid the trinity, by giving everyone a little support, defense and buffing abilities, along with healing surges.

5E is moderately reliant on the Trinity.

I have never played in a group (AD&D, D&D, 4e, & 5e) that had the holy trinity and the game has always worked fine for us. So its relevance can vary.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

The latter was the way 5e went, if it was acceptable then, why not now?

Because it wasn't boring, trivial, or over too fast like 5E tends to be.

Like the 5MWD that often leads to it, it's one of those things clearly a potential issue based on the rules, but that you can always find an anecdote to confirm or deny. In 5e you can always toss the rules aside, though, so just because the rule clearly point to a given stumbling block doesn't mean any given DM will actually stumble over it.

The problem is there in the mechanics either way. Some people being naive or choosing to ignore it doesn't make it not there.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

That's because a lot of what one group of people want out of D&D is 180 degrees away from what another group of people want. In August 2011 (before 5e was even announced) I made a blog post (A New Edition of D&D Designed to Unite D&D Players -- Can It Be Done?) about how it would be almost impossible to develop an edition of D&D that "almost everyone" would be able to play and really enjoy. I list some 12 points where different groups really want almost completely opposite things from D&D -- and mentioned that there were probably many more. As far as I can tell advocating for anything one wants/does not want in an D&D edition is going to be asking that what at least some other major group of players wants be excluded. People simply want too many almost completely opposite things in their D&D to have one edition that works well for most people.

That being said, during the playtest I found a lot of people/comments/circumstances where excluding people/styles they didn't like was more important than positive support for what they wanted.

 

[JonnyP71]

you shouldn't expressly need a DM. You should be able to reasonably open the book and everyone mechanically plays the same game.

The requirement for a human element only adds to the game.... I don't want to be governed by a specific list of standard responses, or indeed be a player interacting with faceless NPCs - you might as well just play a PC game. I also don't want to have to memorize reams of situational minutiae.

As a DM, 5E gives me the freedom to apply common sense, and to keep a game moving at a comfortable pace. A good DM needs to be a generally benign dictator (not a simple rules encyclopedia), and the focus of 5E is to bring that back to the table.

 

[Imaro]

Because it wasn't boring, trivial, or over too fast like 5E tends to be.

I find the fast pace of 5e combats more exciting than the drawn out slog that many (though not all) combats in 4e became as people counted out squares in different combinations, looked over pages of powers, counted effect squares, interrupted (often technically too late) with reactions and so on. 5e moves at a pretty good pace for me and my group, the combats are fun and we get much more done outside of combat in a comparable time frame than we did with 4e.

The problem is there in the mechanics either way. Some people being naive or choosing to ignore it doesn't make it not there.

No the problem (where there is one) tends to arise because one is not following the suggested encounter/adventuring day guidelines... or not adequately compensating for the fact that you've chosen not too...

 

[dave2008]

Because it wasn't boring, trivial, or over too fast like 5E tends to be.

For you. I have never found D&D combat to be boring or trivial in any edition. It as always been the part I am my group enjoy the most. Aditionally it could go to fast some times in any edition, but that has always been caused by good play by the PCs in my group (which I like) or design intent on my part (DM). I have not noticed any difference in my or my groups enjoyment in combat with 5e. It is not baked in (boring, trivial, fast) as you seem to imply. It may be those things for you, but that doesn't make it a systemic issue for the game.

The problem is there in the mechanics either way. Some people being naive or choosing to ignore it doesn't make it not there.

Yes and they have been their in every addition. If you were on the 4e boards at WotC you heard many a complaint about the 5MWD. Some people felt it was worse in 4e because everyone had daily resources. To be clear, I have never had an issue with this in the groups that I have been the DM. My players just don't think that way.

 

[Imaro]

Bringing this discussion back around to my original point that I made early in this thread: It's not that 5E lacks the ability to powergame. What 5E lacks is reliability. It's unreliability is reinforced through their systems of "rulings not rules" by essentially saying that the "game" is whatever the DM happens to feel like it should be. There's no consistency. Every table has always been different, but the difference is different in 5E. Typically, people play the same system in different manners, through different campaigns, each one more befitting to someone's flavor of D&D than another. Now, however, what's different isn't just the types of games that exist, there are literally no expectations between tables. You can't even count on the rules to be the same.

Disagree... all you have to do is look at the vast array of OSR clones and OSR retro-clones to see that most people weren't playing the same system... they were modifying the system (and still do) to suit there own needs. I don't think most people (or at least kids) understood AD&D well enough to all be playing by the same rules (I can admit I didn't). And BECMI, while more approachable had rules spread out over numerous supplements... so again I don't think most of us were playing the same system with a different coat of paint. Even 3.x with it's massive support by 3rd parties was played differently across tables. About the only edition I'd say I saw the type of uniformity you are speaking to was 4e and I think that was more an effect of the DDI than the actual culture or rules of 4e.

That's NOT a good thing for a game.

And yet here it is... still #1... and #2 in the industry, must be something about the approach that makes for good gameplay.

I'm not denying that and IMO, that's a good thing. Much like not needing the Holy Trinity in a party, you shouldn't expressly need a DM. You should be able to reasonably open the book and everyone mechanically plays the same game. That doesn't exist in 5E. A rule-set is not a story book. You're not supposed to picture the mechanical resolution of an action differently in the way that everyone can picture Aragorn or Gimli differently. You're not supposed to have different "interpretations" of how class abilities work, in the way you have different interpretations about how the One Ring affects Frodo's mind.

I have this game... it's Neverwinter on my Xbox One... but no it's not D&D and that's a good thing.

5E is a game that is trying to be a story.

5e is a game that is trying to be adaptable to a wide swath of fans at numerous tables that have varying tastes and ideas on what D&D should encompass... being a "story" might fall under that, though I'm not sure this follows from the argument you've presented.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

D&D has come a long way from being a "specific game". CoC is a specific game. You can really only do one thing with CoC: and that's play a game of CoC. That is simply not the case with D&D. Even if you use the same rule set, the extraneous fluff is not tied to the mathematics. That is to say: when you play CoC, you're playing a game dealing with elder horrors invading the "real world". When you play D&D, you might be playing that very same game, or you're playing an early-Renaissance themed werewolf vs. vampires game, or you're playing a classic Swords and Sorcerery, or you're playing a low-magic Conan/Savage Worlds game. The underlying rules all remain identical. The only thing that changed is the shape of the windows and the color of the paint.

I don't entirely agree here. Over the past two editions D&D has become more of a specific game than it ever had been in the past. Early D&D/AD&D wasn't really a specific sort of game because the rules/system was very vague and often incomplete, leading to a lot of variation from table to table. 3E was the polar opposite and tried to be everything to everybody all at once, and the game was so big you almost had to cut it down to size and there was a lot of variation in how to do that.

In contrast 4E and 5E are much more specific in what they try to accomplish. 4E was a balanced, robust yet option rich and crunch heavy game focused on cinematic action above all else. 5E is a fairly robust stripped down D&D that focuses on speed of play and classic feel above all else.

You can have your ideal RPG good, robust, or flexible, choose two.

For D&D:

AD&D/early D&D wasn't really designed to aim for any of those three specifically.

3E aimed for flexible above all else with as much good as possible, while taking robust for granted and failing spectacularly at it.

4E went for max good and robust at the expense of flexible, and what flexibility was there was only within its own parameters.

5E is kind of a muddle of all three. It's robust in a general sense but leaves so much to the DM that the end result is dependent on the DM. It being good is more or less a matter of taste, as the system is thin to the point where there's not much there if it doesn't appeal to you by default. It's flexible from the DMs side, but has an almost overwhelming bias towards a fairly specific style of D&D

Gaming the DM has always been a way to "win" at D&D. 5E hasn't changed that.[\quote]

It hasn't always been necessary. In 3E, a Wizard player with more system mastery than the DM had more power over the game than the DM did at higher levels. In 4E system mastery and being skilled at tactical wargaming typically had much more impact than gaming the DM.

You should, yes, since it's relevant to at least 3, maybe 4 editions of D&D.

The Holy Trinity is a game concept that as the basis for a party you need a Tank, Healer and one or more DPS. So when people talk about how such-and-such game really makes it feel like you "need a healer" or "we would have gotten crushed if it wasn't for our defender" people are talking about how the game relies on the Holy Trinity. 3E was very big on the Holy Trinity, you needed a healer. 4E provided the most distinct roles based along the "expanded" trinity, typically Defender(Tank), Striker(DPS), Support(Healer/Buffer) and Leader(Buffer), but at the same time provided one of the easiest systems to avoid the trinity, by giving everyone a little support, defense and buffing abilities, along with healing surges.

5E is moderately reliant on the Trinity.

In AD&D, healing was a nightmare without a healing PC or heavy houseruling. The tank role was a team effort, you wanted half or more of the party to be able to stand up to melee attacks. It was never just one guy. The specific role of DPS didn't really exist.

In 3E none of the trinity was important in optimized play(optimized 3E is the only objective standard for that game, otherwise it varied from table to table so much that generalizations are impossible). Battlefield control and save or suck was king in 3E, healing was best done by wands, tanking was irrelevant, and hit points were best bypassed altogether.

4E the trinity was optimal, but not necessary. It was really really optimal though, and you really did miss the trinity if pieces of it weren't present.

5E the trinity is mostly there. HP are a precious resource, both for the party and as something the party has to deal with in terms of the monsters. The three roles tend to be ill-defined and erratically supported however.