D&D 5E What I want out of 5th edition and my thoughts on what we have so far.

[Ahnehnois]

It's only "spotlight sharing" if your DM shines the spotlight on the activities your character is good at.

It's also only sharing if the people who aren't in the spotlight willingly participate. This could happen for any number of reasons, some mechanical, some not. It could be that a character's abilities are useless in a given fight or banned by some external authority, but it also could be that some social interaction only involves one character and not the others, or any number of things.

Given that almost all D&D parties consist of more than two characters, it stands to reason that the typical D&D player can expect to be actively engaged only a minority of the time. Learning to share the spotlight is inherent to this hobby.

To me, balance enables easier adventure design for the DM. Not all of us have time for tailor-made adventures

I certainly don't. In fact, I don't have time to worry about things like balance. I just run the game and let it play out, without thinking too much about things like that. Some variation between characters is inherent to the game, but large enough variations to merit special attention, let alone active intervention, are rare enough that I don't see the point in devoting time to preventing them.

 

[Derren]

I think this is spot on. If you're playing "the halls of the zombie king" for the next several sessions, and much of those sessions will be, unsurprisingly, fighting zombies, the rogue with a dagger might want to be able to contribute something during the hours of combat.

Now it's a huge step from that to say "all roles must be balanced at all times and in all places."

So: shine the light on different things, but also design the game to keep everyone in it as much as possible.

Imo it is very bad adventure design to have a module which is only straight combat for hours/days. Even in the Halls of the Zombie King a rogue can scout, disable and lay traps,create diversions, etc. And at least in 3E he could use pretty much all magic wands and scrolls he came across which gave him an alternative to normal attacking or otherwise supporting in combat (I do not consider a rogue fighting zombies impotent. he just has to change tactics).

Anyway, imo, the game should not be build on the assumption of bad adventure design.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

I certainly don't. In fact, I don't have time to worry about things like balance. I just run the game and let it play out, without thinking too much about things like that. Some variation between characters is inherent to the game, but large enough variations to merit special attention, let alone active intervention, are rare enough that I don't see the point in devoting time to preventing them.

In the specific examples brought up in this thread, like SA, time was devoted to limiting a class' participation. By omitting any references to limits on the use of SA, you are lessening the time devoted to the design of the ability.

And I would rather, in general, the designers devote time to making the opportunity for involvement based more upon player in-game choices and story direction than player character building choices instead of having to do this myself to make the game more enjoyable. D&D has ALOT of recreational competition for someone to continue playing a game they feel isn't fun.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I think this is spot on. If you're playing "the halls of the zombie king" for the next several sessions, and much of those sessions will be, unsurprisingly, fighting zombies, the rogue with a dagger might want to be able to contribute something during the hours of combat.

I don't think the rogue needs to really contribute in those cases. However, this is a special case because there was never really a strong rationale for rogue abilities not working against undead in the first place. They should, albeit not for balance reasons but because undead do have discernable anatomies and catching them by surprise and using selective targeting ought to be effective.

But there are plenty of other cases where characters are rendered useless for extended periods of time, and it's fine. If you go somewhere where spellcasting is banned, your wizard turns into a smart commoner, and that's okay. If you go into town, your fighter likely has no one to fight. If you go into any civilized area, your barbarian is unlikely to be satisfied and probably can't use any of his abilities in most situations. These things are okay. Urban intrigue is for the skill guys.

Conversely, if you're tracking some demon across extraplanar boundaries using divinations and plane shifting spells, it's probably going to be all wizards and clerics for a while, because mundane characters don't know how to do that. Which again, is fine.

If the structure of a campaign renders a character completely useless, there's probably a point at which something needs to change, either the player needs a new character or the DM needs to change the rules of engagement. But I think it takes quite a while to get to that point. Normally what happens is every character has their good weeks and bad weeks and the player is mature and patient and takes this in stride.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

Imo it is very bad adventure design to have a module which is only straight combat for hours/days. Even in the Halls of the Zombie King a rogue can scout, disable and lay traps,create diversions, etc. And at least in 3E he could use pretty much all magic wands and scrolls he came across which gave him an alternative to normal attacking or otherwise supporting in combat (I do not consider a rogue fighting zombies impotent. he just has to change tactics).

Anyway, imo, the game should not be build on the assumption of bad adventure design.

So you've noted numerous ways that the designers made the rogue still viable (in 3E) in the Halls of the Zombie King, but if they decide to add another viable method by not limiting SA, that's not OK?

 

[Derren]

So you've noted numerous ways that the designers made the rogue still viable (in 3E) in the Halls of the Zombie King, but if they decide to add another viable method by not limiting SA, that's not OK?

Because by giving the rogue SA against undead they take away a interesting and defining attribute away from them.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

Because by giving the rogue SA against undead they take away a interesting and defining attribute away from them.

To each their own. I don't find them taking away certain creature types from the class' signature ability interesting at all. It reminds me of the complaints people have when high-level adventure writers take the "cheap way out" by creating a list of spells that auto-fail in the adventure setting.

 

[Derren]

To each their own. I don't find them taking away certain creature types from the class' signature ability interesting at all. It reminds me of the complaints people have when high-level adventure writers take the "cheap way out" by creating a list of spells that auto-fail in the adventure setting.

For clarification: An interesting feature of undead, not rogues.

 

[tuxgeo]

The things I want from 5E Next are:

1. Superb internal play-testing and editing, with the result that the printed books, boxed sets, and modules need zero errata. (I don't want to have to hand-write the updates on Post-It notes that I then have to try to fit into the white spaces in the books.)

2. Rationalize the categories. In 3E, all of the spells that allowed characters to regain hit points were in the Conjuration school; so make it the same in 5E. The last playtest packet had the healing spells all over the place, with:
- (a) "Cure Minor Wounds" missing, replaced with "Spare the Dying" in the Necromancy school;
- (b) The Paladin's "Aura of Life" in the Abjuration school;
- (c) The Paladin's "Aura of Vitality" in the Evocation school;
- (d) The Cleric's "Beacon of Hope" in the Abjuration school;
- (e) "Cure Wounds" in the Conjuration school (where it belongs);
- (f) "Heal" in the Conjuration school (where it belongs);
- (g) "Healing Word" in the Evocation school; and
-(h) "Prayer of Healing" in the Evocation school.

3. Ability Score Improvements cut in half: let them simply improve one ability by one point. Parallel to that, divide the feats into smaller parcels; and give each class more opportunities to make that choice of either a feat or an ability score improvement. (This won't happen, because WotC has already said that the bulk of the playtesters preferred the larger feats.)

 

[Halivar]

For clarification: An interesting feature of undead, not rogues.

This is one area of the game that I think could stand to be just a tad bit more fiddly for the sake of being interesting: undead are too uniform IMHO; instead of granting blanket immunities, I would toughen them up HP-wise and then grant unique vulnerabilities that befit the type of creature and provide "spotlight" moments. Define the spotlight by player ability, rather than inability.

EDIT: I might even go so far as to say that undead should require the kind of precision attacks that more befit an opportunistic rogue than a methodical fighter. But that's my personal mental schema, and may not translate to how other people envision the fight.