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

[Prestidigitalis]

I'd like there to be some pizzaz to the wizard, but only if they sauce up the rest of the classes, too.

Pizzaz with more sauce??? No, that would be cheesy.

Seriously though -- the reason my own suggestions are small is that I really, really like 4e. I guess maybe I should take my comments to the "What direction should 4.5th edition take?" thread...

 

[billd91]

Did anyone here ever play Saga edition? Did you happen to play with a Jedi in your group? How long before you just started phoning it in? Or jumping in front of blaster bolts so you could roll up a Jedi, too?

I've played Saga, SW d20, and SW d20 revised. Only rolled up a couple of Jedi (for Jedi-only campaigns) even after watching Jedis in the group being played. Having too much fun playing other classes. So, not agreeing with the premise of this paragraph of yours. SWSE, in particular, seems to be doing quite well at giving non-Jedi pizzazz.

That said, I can't say that any character class should lack some form of pizzazz compared to others. But I have quite a bit of tolerance for widely divergent sorts of pizzazz.

 

[KarinsDad]

That's silly. The wizard will also Shield himself _infinitely_ more than the sorcerer. How relevant is it?

Further, the sorc power takes a standard action. The wizard can Jump his allies through all kinds of hoops _without losing his standard actions_.

Have you played a character with this power? You're likely not to use it more than once every 3 encounters! It's too costly or just not very valuable in the rest.

Just make some lower level fly powers for the wizard if you truly care. Don't try to compare apples and oranges and expect it to endear anyone to your point of view.

You're correct. It won't be used every encounter since it is a Standard power.

It will be used to get the Sorcerer out of Dodge and to assist allies to get to hard to reach foes.

It will also be used out of combat to access hard to reach locations, across pits, etc.

With the advent or more terrain features in 4E, it is a very nice option that most PCs do not have.

Course, not every player is concerned about making sure they do damage every round with a power. Some of us are more interested in solving problems using unique miscellaneous powers than blowing away the enemy ad infinitum.

Using up a Standard Action at low level to get away from trouble or for other reasons means that the Sorcerer is not doing an average of 5 points of damage that round against an individual target or an average 10 points of damage that round against a group.

I bet if you polled Sorc players whether they'd want the flight power (Sirocco something, right?) or Shield, you'd be a bit surprised.

No, I wouldn’t be surprised.

DND 4E is super combat oriented. Many players would be more interested in the defensive Shield over the miscellaneous Sorcerous Sirocco.

No doubt.

But not everyone. Some people enjoy a game with is not all about just do damage and do as much as you can.

 

[keterys]

... but at the end of the day trying to compare Sorcerous Sirocco to Fly is near meaningless. Action type. Duration. Frequency. Level. Type of things it'll get you around. Even more meaningless than trying to compare Dazzling Ray to Visions of Avarice, and I'd find it fairly silly to do _that_, given their completely different goals.

5e, when it happens, should not be about changing one class, the wizard. It should be about fundamental changes in concept. I do agree that it'd be nice if there were certain rituals you could do very quickly, and ways to make those rituals able to happen in a combat - possibly at great expense, but at least an option. Tenser's Floating Disc at 1 minute cast time, with the ability to make it standard action with a feat or scroll? Sure.

At any rate, I've had Sorcerous Sirocco - you don't use it to cross pits, not unless maybe you only have 2 people in your group. You just jump them, or rope them, or put a piece of wood across them. But resting 5-15 minutes at every obstacle? No need. I did find it tremendously useful for getting a fighter type out of a bottleneck up to base a ranged attacker on a catwalk. I did find it very useful for getting myself and another to a more advantageous location so that both of us weren't losing our action, just me. And I also find myself not using it in several encounters.

I thought about using it some other times, but on examination, it wasn't a good idea.

 

[KarinsDad]

It opens up space for more strategic play.

How?

What kind of options in combat are you looking for?

I'm looking for variety. I think many of the more minor rituals (knock, floating disk, detect secret doors, water breathing, etc.) could be fine spells for in combat use.

I had a house rule that the players got two powers instead of one each time for level powers, a primary and a secondary (they had to be the same type, both encounter or both daily or both at will).

They had access to the primary power (e.g. Shield), but could swap it out for the secondary power (e.g. Jump) at a slight resource cost (a healing surge and 0 to 2 action points in a house rule system where they get 2 action points per encounter).

Out of about 25 encounters, it was only used 2 or 3 times out of 6 players. We dropped the house rule because it was a pain to have all of the powers on sheets or cards, to keep Character Builder up to date, etc. and because nobody was really using it.

When we came up with the house rule, it sounded really good to give the players options (just like rituals sound really good). But, the players found out that they really didn't want to spend the resources when they typically had something else in their arsenal that was almost as good for the situation.

4E is extremely damage oriented, so having the versatility really didn't matter. 6 ways to do damage is not necessary, 3 ways will suffice.

I find the same to be true in our game for rituals. About one session in six or so, a ritual will be trotted out. Otherwise, they aren't used. And alchemy is not used either. A few PCs have alchemy potions on their character sheets and never use them.

Getting back to the variety subject, variety does not appear to matter in 4E. The game is hack and slash, even beyond what earlier versions were. When the non-hack and slash costs resources, some (even many) players will not use that aspect of the game system.


As mentioned earlier, a bothersome aspect of 4E is the bookkeeping (even placing tokens on miniatures) of the conditions.

A second bothersome aspect is all of the powers that are printed out on cards or on sheets. Some how, we played 1E through 3.5 without all of these sheets and cards. People just knew that a Fireball spell was 7D6 at 7th level and we never had to look the spell up. If 5E could get away from the plethora of "game aids", that would help too.

 

[Turtlejay]

I've played Saga, SW d20, and SW d20 revised. Only rolled up a couple of Jedi (for Jedi-only campaigns) even after watching Jedis in the group being played. Having too much fun playing other classes. So, not agreeing with the premise of this paragraph of yours. SWSE, in particular, seems to be doing quite well at giving non-Jedi pizzazz.

That said, I can't say that any character class should lack some form of pizzazz compared to others. But I have quite a bit of tolerance for widely divergent sorts of pizzazz.

Really? My group had a jedi that seemed to dominate every combat. We didn't last that many sessions before folks just kind of lost interest in a game they had little effect on. Of course, the Jedi was disappointed.

I'm all for different pizzazz, too. Melee characters could be given a different way to shine. Problem is, all my examples of suggestions are just gimping other classes (make actobatic stunts melee exclusive, give them much greater staying power in the form of HP's, AC's, and NAD's (and Snoop D-o double G's), give them more trained skills or blanket skill/stat bonuses).

Basically I am a fan of the ability of all classes to shine, and be powerful, and I would hate to see that get lost in the quest for something else.

Jay

 

[Garthanos]

I'd like there to be some pizzaz to the wizard, but only if they sauce up the rest of the classes, too. I don't play Saga anymore for a reason.

Jay

bingo.

 

[LostSoul]

How?

In my experience, it means that PCs have to take time to rest. During that time NPCs may react to the actions of the PCs, changing the situation the PCs face the next time out.

That's in addition to the "behind enemy lines with limited resources" that can play out when PCs get trapped in a dangerous area.

I'm looking for variety. I think many of the more minor rituals (knock, floating disk, detect secret doors, water breathing, etc.) could be fine spells for in combat use.

<snip>

Getting back to the variety subject, variety does not appear to matter in 4E. The game is hack and slash, even beyond what earlier versions were. When the non-hack and slash costs resources, some (even many) players will not use that aspect of the game system.

Ah, I see. I doubt it would be worth it to house rule 4E to make it fun, eh? You'd have to change a lot. I think part of it is the HP and the assumption of damage each round. You'd want to bring in other ways to defeat NPCs, ways that bypass HP (introducing variety again) and other considerations... sounds like a lot of work!

If you do make some house rules to achieve these goals, post them; I think it would be interesting to see what you come up with.

 

[invokethehojo]

So my problem (once again), is that the things being discussed in this thread are irrelevant.

All the stuff coming up here is too *small*. You all use something for an example, and then it gets fixated on.

Jay

Dude, do you really need to keep telling us this? We can't even concieve of 5th edition or have any impact, we get it.

Seriously though -- the reason my own suggestions are small is that I really, really like 4e. I guess maybe I should take my comments to the "What direction should 4.5th edition take?" thread...

or just not listen to turtlejay, the rest of us are interested in what you have to say.

(meant to quote turtlejay here talking about, "Basically I am a fan of the ability of all classes to shine, and be powerful, and I would hate to see that get lost in the quest for something else." but I screwed it up and quoted someone else and I don't know how to fix it and don't want to redo the entire post so there)

Ah ha, he finally joins the conversation.

I always wondered about the jedi. I never played star wars but I skimmed the rule book and the jedi being way better than every class jumped out at me. I figured I would either have to run a jedi only campaign or not even play it... so I never played it. Glad to here I didn't waste my time.

That being said, and even though I am not a huge star wars fan (please don't flame me about that) I still think jedi are awesome and would love to play one anyway, so I hope they keep trying to make a game around that universe (I think star wars stuff sells ok so they probably will).

 

[KarinsDad]

Ah, I see. I doubt it would be worth it to house rule 4E to make it fun, eh? You'd have to change a lot. I think part of it is the HP and the assumption of damage each round. You'd want to bring in other ways to defeat NPCs, ways that bypass HP (introducing variety again) and other considerations... sounds like a lot of work!

If you do make some house rules to achieve these goals, post them; I think it would be interesting to see what you come up with.

Actually, I did create house rules to try to add variety back in:

1) A ritual with a casting time of 10 minutes can be cast from a scroll using one standard action. Other ritual scrolls require the normal time to cast (i.e. half time).

2) In addition to ritual scrolls, there are now power scrolls. There is a new first level ritual called Craft Scroll that takes an hour to perform. A scroll can be made for all divine and arcane powers. A given creature crafting a scroll must have the arcane or divine power in his class list and must be of the appropriate level, but does not need to know the power. Casting from a scroll takes the same time to cast as the original power, but it requires the user to have the proper power source (arcane for arcane, divine for divine). To craft a scroll costs 1% of the level cost of a same level item (see chart above) for an At Will power, 2% for an Encounter power, and 3% for a Daily power. So, a first level encounter power spell costs 2 GP. A 29th level daily spell costs 1890 GP. Only normal level based arcane or divine powers can be crafted into power scrolls, other powers such as Martial, Racial, Paragon Class, or Class Feature powers cannot be turned into scrolls.

This second rule uses our item GP cost, so the costs would not make sense to anyone using core item costs.