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

[pemerton]

I would either find something else in the system I'm more or less happy with, find some other table to play at that delivers what I want, or not game at all before I would be inclined to work with a DM to create what I wanted homebrew.

Yeah, this resonated with me. From my own observation, there's always the danger of a good-faith homebrew fix for one problem, causing other balancing problems. I'm all for homebrew but sometimes they have to be considered carefully.

But surely this is a matter of degree.

At one end there is building an entire new class.

Somewhere towards that end, but not quite as far, is allowing wizards to learn Cure Wounds, which contradicts nearly all prior D&D lore and gameplay.

And then there is letting a sorcerer character have Rope Trick as a known spell, which was part of the game in 3E, could be part of the game in 4e (if the sorcerer learned Ritual Magic, which was not hard), and looks non-gaming breaking and non-flavour wrecking from pretty much any angle (at least as far as I can see).

That barely counts as home-brewing!

 

[pemerton]

I simply cannot understand a player wanting to read the Monster Manual.

Players reading the Monster Manual (or its predecessors, for pre-AD&D versions of the game), was pretty common back when the game was first being played.

That's one reason why new monsters were such an important part of the game - they gave the GM a device for surprising players.

 

[JonnyP71]

That statement, more than any other you have made makes me realise that you play a different game to me. I simply cannot understand a player wanting to read the Monster Manual. For me that would completely ruin the game.

Fully agree with this.

No matter how hard a player tries to avoid it, it makes metagaming (whether conscious, or instinctive) all the more likely.

My group encountered a Troll for the 1st time, one of them asked - 'would our characters *know* about what Trolls do?'.. 'Make an Arcana check' - they rolled badly - it regenerated from 0hp 4 times before they used anything fire based to damage it - once the PCs realised it was not staying dead they tried poison, chopping it into pieces, and scattering those pieces in a river, before finally lobbing a vial of alchemist fire at it so well done players!

If a player used their personal knowledge about a creature to influence a fight in which the creature's specific traits would be unknown to their character I would award them no xp for that fight.

 

[BryonD]

A possible difference is that 5e is less "change and progress"

Again, the nose count would be unlikely to agree with this.
It is silly to assume that "change" == "change and progress".

And none of that addresses the real point, which was that hostility and how one reacts to change have everything to do with perspective no matter how much an individual insists that their perspective is objective truth.


But bounded accuracy and ADV/DisADV are pretty core to the feel of this system, and that is very much "change".
Is it "... and progress"? That depends on perspective.
Is turning off huge chunks of fanbase "... and progress"?
Is is turning around and going back the way you came "... and progress" when the way you came failed?

 

[TwoSix]

No matter how hard a player tries to

My group encountered a Troll for the 1st time, one of them asked - 'would our characters *know* about what Trolls do?'.. 'Make an Arcana check' - they rolled badly - it regenerated from 0hp 4 times before they used anything fire based to damage it - once the PCs realised it was not staying dead they tried poison, chopping it into pieces, and scattering those pieces in a river, before finally lobbing a vial of alchemist fire at it so well done players!

Ugh. That's why I never throw standard monsters at experienced players. Forcing them to pantomime ignorance when their characters are in real danger is a mummer's farce.

 

[Imaro]

Assume this is my spell list (at third level)
Alarm
Find Familiar
Floating Disk
Rope trick

And I can Extend and Subtle spell (maximum 3 times per day unless I start losing slots)

The wizard can have the following spells prepared (6)
Burning Hands
Sleep
Shield
Mage Armor
Rope trick
Invisibility

(But Alarm, Floating disk & Find Familiar are rituals so he can do these too)

The wizard can still do the same as I and more. Why so worry about not being able to shine by rope tricking when he can do more things with that slot? (While I can't do anyhting else with the same slot?)

Look @MoonSong it honestly doesn't matter what I think since I don't run games for you... in a nutshell all I was saying was if a player comes to me with a sorcerer but then says they want access to specific wizard spells that they will pick as they go along... I might be a little hesitant to just allow that. I gave my reasoning and you honestly may not feel it's good reasoning but then again I don't think the reasons you've given for turning down every possible non-homebrew & homebrew method for attaining what you want are really in the spirit of working together with the DM to make a better game for everyone. This isn't 3e or 4e but it isn't impossible to get the spells you want, you just don't like the method 5e uses to grant them to you (which is fair because some felt the same way about 4e and/or 3e's methods)... As a DM I am always going to lean towards using the rules to grant a player what they are trying to achieve and I am going to expect them to work with me in that aspect not fight against it at every point.

As to your point above... it still isn't addressing my point. What spell at this level is an alternate to Rope Trick or Find Familiar? As it stands right now in the game those are spells the Wizard brings to a party that's unique to the wizard and allows him to do unique things. However you want access to that and numerous other spells... why do you not think being granted that (without some type of trade-off) would be stepping on the wizard's toes?

Sorry, I thought it was a ritual.

No worries...

Basically is that, unless I'm on a particular mood I refuse to learn and cast outright combat spells, they aren't really needed for utility and I find blasting the most boring kind of magic. You would have to force me to take those spells.

So who picks up your combat slack in the game? 5e stresses the 3 pillars so you are expected to participate and have resources for combat... with you missing any, who takes up the slack and how do you know they want to?

Now on the list of spells I actually miss (Only go to certain level, remember I can only have a few each time, because my problem isn't an specific build for a single character, but to be able to have the kind of characters I enjoy to play. I know there are named spells in there, but WotC broke that rule themselves in EE, and I want the effects for my characters, they tend to be some of the most fun, world changing and overall non-destructive spells)

Alarm
Find Familiar
Identify
Illusory Script
Protection from Evil and Good
Tasha's Hideous Laughter
Tenser's Floating Disk
Unseen Servant

Arcane Lock
Locate Object
Magic Mouth
Nystul's Magic Aura
Rope Trick

Bestow Curse
Glyph of Warding
Leomund's Tiny Hut
Nondetection
Phantom Steed
Remove Curse
Sending

Arcane Eye
Conjure Minor Elementals
Control Water
Fabricate
Hallucinatory Terrain
Locate Creature
Mordenkainen's Private Sanctum
Stone Shape

Conjure Elemental
Contact Other Plane
Dream
Geas
Modify Memory
Passwall
Rary's Telepathic Bond
Scrying

So like I told @pemerton earlier in the thread... much more than just Rope Trick, As a DM I would have to think through how spell points/metamagic interact with these different spells before granting them? And even after that if there's a wizard in the party you are stepping on his toes. Honestly I would much rather we work through a home brewed innate casting Wizard than have to vet all these spells, have someone else make up for your lack of combat spells and have you potentially stepping on the toes of anyone in the game who plays a wizard.

It isn't that overpowered, the other bloodlines are just that bad, Dragon is for resilient blasters (and basically fire blasters, and when everybody thought it was amazing and even OP they were playing it wrong, the errata basically nerfed it), Wild magic is very DM reliant and only if you enjoy the randomness, Storm is flavorful but still limited to one kind of PC, Favored soul supports a variety of concepts, from healers, naturey casters, gishes, blasters, thieves, and even scholarly types. (I don't comment on shadow, I stopped reading by the time I got to "you never blink", and "you look like a corpse")

I'm going to disagree here and assume that anything in an optimizing guide that's rated gold and specifically called out as overpowered... is overpowered. The fact that a single subclass can be everything you listed above kind of speaks to this IMO.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

That statement, more than any other you have made makes me realise that you play a different game to me. I simply cannot understand a player wanting to read the Monster Manual. For me that would completely ruin the game. I like the challenge and danger of not knowing what I am facing. It seems to me that you want to master a system and win. 5e is more swingy and bounded accuracy makes enemies more dangerous for longer. For me, that is a much better game. I can see why it wouldn't be for you.

Fully agree with this.

No matter how hard a player tries to avoid it, it makes metagaming (whether conscious, or instinctive) all the more likely.

My group encountered a Troll for the 1st time, one of them asked - 'would our characters *know* about what Trolls do?'.. 'Make an Arcana check' - they rolled badly - it regenerated from 0hp 4 times before they used anything fire based to damage it - once the PCs realised it was not staying dead they tried poison, chopping it into pieces, and scattering those pieces in a river, before finally lobbing a vial of alchemist fire at it so well done players!

If a player used their personal knowledge about a creature to influence a fight in which the creature's specific traits would be unknown to their character I would award them no xp for that fight.

Is there really any difference between reading the 5E monster manual and having played D&D for 20 years over 3 previous editions, most of which were as the DM, and all the D&D monster knowledge accumulated from that.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

Again, the nose count would be unlikely to agree with this.
It is silly to assume that "change" == "change and progress".

And none of that addresses the real point, which was that hostility and how one reacts to change have everything to do with perspective no matter how much an individual insists that their perspective is objective truth.


But bounded accuracy and ADV/DisADV are pretty core to the feel of this system, and that is very much "change".
Is it "... and progress"? That depends on perspective.
Is turning off huge chunks of fanbase "... and progress"?
Is is turning around and going back the way you came "... and progress" when the way you came failed?

Those things seem pretty minor compared to:

3E--Monsters as PCs, feats, Prestige Classes, Warlocks shooting Eldritch Blasts at will, Tome of Battle
4E--Fighters get powers too, the 4E Defender and Leader roles, Warlord(you mean I don't have to play a Cleric?), Healing Surges, the Encounter, Dragonborn and Tieflings as core PC races

 

[Aenghus]

Is there really any difference between reading the 5E monster manual and having played D&D for 20 years over 3 previous editions, most of which were as the DM, and all the D&D monster knowledge accumulated from that.

In most editions effective offensive spellcaster players had to learn as much as possible about the monsters they were fighting. I've also seen players who didn't bother to do any study or keep track of monster traits in or out of character and it was very frustrating for some of the other players in that game when they repeatedly wasted spells on monsters that were resistant or immune to them or used high damage spells on low hit point monsters. (I realise this is a case of mismatch of player goals, there's nothing wrong with suboptimal play so long as it suits that particular table).

Now I've seen D&D games with very little roleplaying where the players are straight up rewarded for recognising monsters and their stats from having studied them, but this is a rarer style in P&P RPGs AFAIK nowadays. Most tables discourage metagaming to some extent, but given the huge rewards for study, and the immense suckiness of a spellcaster with a few spells who keeps wasting them, I find it's nigh on impossible to stop players from using such knowledge if they don't blurt it out and find reasonable pretexts for discovering such information within the game. It makes in character sense for adventurers to seek out information about their enemies and how to oppose them effectively.

From some statements on this topic it's difficult not to conclude that some referees prefer their PCs blinkered, ignorant and hapless. I realise it's easier to write adventures for players who know little, but that's a relatively short part of a long term player's career. Maybe some games dump players who commit the crime of knowing too much and recruit more clueless newbies it's easier to run games for. Obviously, there's a range of tastes here in regard to learning settings, and metagaming.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

In most editions effective offensive spellcaster players had to learn as much as possible about the monsters they were fighting. I've also seen players who didn't bother to do any study or keep track of monster traits in or out of character and it was very frustrating for some of the other players in that game when they repeatedly wasted spells on monsters that were resistant or immune to them or used high damage spells on low hit point monsters. (I realise this is a case of mismatch of player goals, there's nothing wrong with suboptimal play so long as it suits that particular table).

Now I've seen D&D games with very little roleplaying where the players are straight up rewarded for recognising monsters and their stats from having studied them, but this is a rarer style in P&P RPGs AFAIK nowadays. Most tables discourage metagaming to some extent, but given the huge rewards for study, and the immense suckiness of a spellcaster with a few spells who keeps wasting them, I find it's nigh on impossible to stop players from using such knowledge if they don't blurt it out and find reasonable pretexts for discovering such information within the game. It makes in character sense for adventurers to seek out information about their enemies and how to oppose them effectively.

From some statements on this topic it's difficult not to conclude that some referees prefer their PCs blinkered, ignorant and hapless. I realise it's easier to write adventures for players who know little, but that's a relatively short part of a long term player's career. Maybe some games dump players who commit the crime of knowing too much and recruit more clueless newbies it's easier to run games for. Obviously, there's a range of tastes here in regard to learning settings, and metagaming.

For Hp and Con, Dex, and Wis saves you can usually make a pretty educated guess just by eyeballing the monsters, but that would be dependent on player skill/experience. As for resistances/immunities, those have tended to carry over from edition to edition, which is what I was getting at.

On a different note, it also depends somewhat on what you are looking at when you are reading the monster manual. I personally wasn't reading the monster manual trying to learn/memorize vulnerabilities/resistances. I was reading it more to get a mechanical feel for how combat was supposed to run looking at both sides, and seeing how many monsters were bags of hp versus monsters who did something interesting. I was reading it from the perspective of "would I enjoy playing/running this game?" as opposed to "I want to dominate this game".