D&D 5E What direction should 5th edition take?

[Garthanos]

In some games awarding narratively awarded points relate to well... having your character limited in some fashion. Drawing back in fear of the Dragon can be the impact of a DM's bribe ;-), or conforming to a predefined weakness of your character when it actually hinders you.

 

[Nifft]

This is sort of on the topic of 4e and 5e, but I'm interested to know what ENworld thinks about it.

Do you think that monsters need ability scores anymore?

My reasoning is that the rules in the DMG for making monsters pretty much outline their statistics as they need be. If you want to make a monster more more agile, more buff, more intellectual, you can do this with combat stats instead of ability scores. I don't see a need for anyone but player characters to have ability scores, and therefore I don't see a need for any ability scores to start at 10.

Only as a tool for helping to manage player expectations.

For example, "the huge, strong ogre":
- probably has a good Fort defense
- probably has a decent Athletics check
- probably has a high carrying capacity

Those last two don't matter in a flat, featureless arena combat, but they might matter a great deal if the PCs are getting creative, or the DM wants to craft a mixed combat / environmental challenge.

In other words, having a high Strength has both combat and non-combat implications, and if we get rid of that "bundle", we need to compensate for it with some other intuitive short-hand.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Flipguarder]

Also there's the whole ability check thing that nobody seems to use anymore.

 

[Tai]

That's because ability checks have always been terrible. The stat means pretty much nothing beside a d20 - an average human has something like a 20% chance of beating the Sarlacc in a tug of war. These days there are skills to use in place of most of the stats, so at least you can be trained or untrained in them...

As regards narrative control of player resources, there are several good examples of them being used in play. Spirit of the Century gives out extra fate points if you agree to be compelled by your character traits - or penalises you if you refuse. Burning wheel has all kinds of different points you get for various different problems suffered - although I think that does get a bit over the top. Personally, though, I don't think having multiple resources does make the system more complicated. Having a unified resource would make balancing so difficult that the variety of the game would suffer as a result. Milestones already give a degree of narrative control to the DM, and the moment you start rewarding players with combat ability resources for roleplaying, the game becomes a competition.

 

[SuperGnome]

I like that 2e was powered by imagination and guidelines (you could play with just some characters and dice). I like that 3e gave us more options and brought in more balance (to a point, and with great faults, but there's power creep for ya). I like that 4e is easier to run in general (though routinely managing 3-4 effects each on 8 PC's and Monsters is lame).

I didn't like the extreme race/class limitations of 2e. I didn't like the min-max aspect and different-rules-for-everything apprach of 3e. I can barely stand the soullessness of 4e (no mystery, sense of wonder, or any sense of actually being your character in a fantasy world).

How about 3e race/class rules and core mechanic, 2e general rules, and 4e quality books?

Really, I enjoy tactical combat, but it has to make some sort of sense. I can only explain a halfling moving a bulette all over the place in random fashion so many ways. UGH!

 

[Nifft]

the moment you start rewarding players with combat ability resources for roleplaying, the game becomes a competition.

Exalted takes advantage of that competition to its benefit, so far as I've seen.

You want the RP award to be strictly limited, both in magnitude and in duration. Exalted makes the dice bonus small, and the duration instant.

Cheers, -- N

 

[eriktheguy]

I like that 2e was powered by imagination and guidelines (you could play with just some characters and dice). I like that 3e gave us more options and brought in more balance (to a point, and with great faults, but there's power creep for ya). I like that 4e is easier to run in general (though routinely managing 3-4 effects each on 8 PC's and Monsters is lame).

I didn't like the extreme race/class limitations of 2e. I didn't like the min-max aspect and different-rules-for-everything apprach of 3e. I can barely stand the soullessness of 4e (no mystery, sense of wonder, or any sense of actually being your character in a fantasy world).

How about 3e race/class rules and core mechanic, 2e general rules, and 4e quality books?

Really, I enjoy tactical combat, but it has to make some sort of sense. I can only explain a halfling moving a bulette all over the place in random fashion so many ways. UGH!

I'm not sure I understand your argument here. Saying that 2e was powered by imagination seems like a euphemism for 'imagination was necessary for things that the rules didn't cover'. I haven't seen anything in 4e that limits players from using their imaginations. As far as I'm concerned 4e is a combat system and a skill system and imagination/role playing are the responsibilities of the players. I find that my groups play 4e with the same level of imagination that they used in 2e and 3e. The main differences are the level of simplicity (which I appreciate for my newer players) and the level of balance (which I appreciate for my older players).
I think if you have been playing since 2e, then it is your responsibility to understand that the DM always has final call. If a campaign does not have as much mystery as a particular group prefers because of the new rules, I believe the DM is responsible, not the rules. I don't think it takes an experienced DM to tell the party that 'you have never heard of this monster before', or 'even after a short study, you still don't know what the magical blade in your hands is capable of'.
If you are having trouble with satisfying the tastes of your table due to the ways 4e is designed you might find them enjoying the sessions a bit more if you start throwing a few curve balls. I think 4e is designed this way because that's how most players would like to run things.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I would not be so quick to assume that 5E will necessarily be a complete overhaul and different system. That might depend a lot on the context in which it is undertaken.

I can image a system that refines the combat system and begins from the start with options that have been tested over time. Generally what would help would be a more open explanation on the "power level" of encounter powers, daily powers, action point uses and daily item powers. Maybe there will also be some aspects that will get unified, for example unifying all types of encounter and daily powers, regardless whether from an item power, class power, skill power or yet-to-be-invented-power.

 

[invokethehojo]

I think if you have been playing since 2e, then it is your responsibility to understand that the DM always has final call. If a campaign does not have as much mystery as a particular group prefers because of the new rules, I believe the DM is responsible, not the rules. I don't think it takes an experienced DM to tell the party that 'you have never heard of this monster before', or 'even after a short study, you still don't know what the magical blade in your hands is capable of'.
If you are having trouble with satisfying the tastes of your table due to the ways 4e is designed you might find them enjoying the sessions a bit more if you start throwing a few curve balls. I think 4e is designed this way because that's how most players would like to run things.

Here is my problem with your way of thinking: I play with a group at a local nerd store where most of the group doesn't talk much outside of the gaming table. When we get together it works best if we can all play off what is in the books. Telling everyone that you are running something for 4e next week tells them they should expect to play by the book. If you want to communicate to them that you intend to change things a little bit means, at least with this current editions, that you have to really spell things out very clearly. The chances are small, yet it always seems to happen, that when you change something tiny (for the sake of this argument lets say adding more wonder) you affect the entire game. When you decide to make things less explicit (which is how the book lays them out) there will inevitably be a character built around monster knowledge, or an artificer built around magic item manipulation.

In this situation it becomes very easy to 1. screw your players out of the character they want to play because your flavor changes the rules that governs the character they want to play or 2. you have to spend a lot of time specifically writing out how your flavor changes affect this or that aspect of the game. Everyone should be able to approach the game being confident that what they read in the book is what they will see at the table, so they can build their character accordingly. If a system is so intricate that a specific character can be ruined by a tweak in the flavor of it's rules (which ends up affecting those rules), then the system could use some work in my opinion. You shouldn't have to worry about walking into a game with a character that just doesn't work even though it was made by the book purely because the DM changed a little bit of the flavor of the game.

The point I'm trying to make here is that 5e could be designed from the ground up in such a way that making a small change in flavor wouldn't have potentially devastating or far reaching effects on the rest of the rules, like it does now.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Here is my problem with your way of thinking: I play with a group at a local nerd store where most of the group doesn't talk much outside of the gaming table. When we get together it works best if we can all play off what is in the books. Telling everyone that you are running something for 4e next week tells them they should expect to play by the book. If you want to communicate to them that you intend to change things a little bit means, at least with this current editions, that you have to really spell things out very clearly. The chances are small, yet it always seems to happen, that when you change something tiny (for the sake of this argument lets say adding more wonder) you affect the entire game. When you decide to make things less explicit (which is how the book lays them out) there will inevitably be a character built around monster knowledge, or an artificer built around magic item manipulation.

In this situation it becomes very easy to 1. screw your players out of the character they want to play because your flavor changes the rules that governs the character they want to play or 2. you have to spend a lot of time specifically writing out how your flavor changes affect this or that aspect of the game. Everyone should be able to approach the game being confident that what they read in the book is what they will see at the table, so they can build their character accordingly. If a system is so intricate that a specific character can be ruined by a tweak in the flavor of it's rules (which ends up affecting those rules), then the system could use some work in my opinion. You shouldn't have to worry about walking into a game with a character that just doesn't work even though it was made by the book purely because the DM changed a little bit of the flavor of the game.

The point I'm trying to make here is that 5e could be designed from the ground up in such a way that making a small change in flavor wouldn't have potentially devastating or far reaching effects on the rest of the rules, like it does now.

I'm sorry, but I find this argument to be preposterous. It might have been almost a decent argument WRT to 3.x where the mechanics of things were explicitly tied to the fluff. 4e was the answer to that. If you missed that message somehow I think maybe you want to go back and actually look at how 4e works and maybe it will start to make sense.

And the whole concept that somehow a game would be ruined if anything was varied in the slightest degree from book standard? Huh? How could you have even played 2e? We aren't talking about major modifications (or even ANY modifications) to the core mechanics of the game, the mechanics of classes, etc. All we're talking about here is ordinary reskinning of things and garden variety homebrew content like a new item, ritual, power, maybe a new race. Its expected that people will design new monsters, change existing ones slightly, etc.

The sense of wonder and imagination did not come from any rulebook and has nothing to do with the rules. I've been running D&D games for 30+ years, and the majority of that time with a lot of the same players. They have always known every single rulebook, supplement, etc cold. Any group of "game nerds" as you describe it would certainly be the same. You aren't going to suprise them with any monster that's in the book, or magic item, or spell, etc.

How you're going to capture wonder and imagination is in how you put the elements together and how you describe it. At best all a rule book can do is give you suggestions and guidelines on how to do it in a workable fashion. 4e does that better than any previous edition of D&D as far as I can tell. And its a good solid system, so if you add in a new thing or modify an existing thing, the mechanics of the game are there to deal with it.

The game could still be improved in my opinion, but going back to a poorly written set of mechanics in the misbegotten notion that it somehow adds a sense of wonder to the game is just nonsensical. It will do no such thing. If you've lost your sense of wonder in the game, I have to suggest you may need to go look for inspiration outside the rule books. Heck even within the various 4e books there are a lot of story ideas, background info, and settings you can draw from.