What is the essence of D&D

[Zardnaar]

Sure till you don't like the fluff....

Sure but they aren't Beowulf

I've said multiple times they can put immersion breaking stuff on feats or a splat book. Beowolf is also fairly obscure relative to ye olde Knight in Shining armor.

 

[Garthanos]

I'll never understand folks who need to restrict mundanes on the most strict possible terms, even erring on the side of going beyond how restrictive real life is. Just let them be cool, guys. It's fine.

Archers regularly IRL out firing epic fighters in d&d land is my current go to for that and football players with a standing broad jump of a 20 strength and myself as a 16 year old having the jump of 16 Strength character for example.... Its almost like the game examples wanted to make sure martial types are very mundane

 

[Zardnaar]

Archers regularly IRL out firing epic fighters in d&d land is my current go to for that and football players with a standing broad jump of a 20 strength and myself as a 16 year old having the jump of 16 Strength character for example.... Its almost like the game examples wanted to make sure martial types are very mundane

Once again so that's what people want.

Doesn't bother me if they make some sort of feat letting you breathe underwater.

Merman Ancestor

Done.

 

[Nagol]

And who, when the chance was there, failed to bump the wizard in mid-casting thus ensuring the whole party had to stay put until s/he could memorize up another teleport? The Druid, Fighter, and Barbarian did have a choice in the matter...

And given that the thing that was discovered (the portal) was itself magical, I don't see it as unfair that it took magic to find and 'unlock' it. Had it been a non-magical secret door, that's different...though I notice the party has no Thief/Rogue in its lineup so even there the options would come down to magic or hammers.

The players were tired of arguing at that point mostly, I think. It's not unfair precisely. It's just spellcasters need the utility of others to help them out but provide both utility and opportunity for different stuff. I think the game would be stronger if there were other sources (not necessarily as good as spell casting companions) of opportunity. The editions have slowly and probably without consideration been removing the opportunity systems originally in place. I provide such (factions, expert NPCs, henchmen, specialist tools/drugs/herbs, weird items) when I run, but as a player I've been in campaigns where such stuff doesn't exist because the rulebooks don't touch on it and DMs have a lot of other things to think about.

At one point the party noticed that lack too and decided to head back to town and recruit a rogue... where they got distracted and wandered off without actually, you know, recruiting anyone only to realise it in the middle of a different dungeon when the first trap went off.

 

[Garthanos]

Beowolf is also fairly obscure relative to ye olde Knight in Shining armor.

Like the one who simply reached into boiling water and pulled somebody out? Or fought off a dozen round table knights barenaked the two actually have that "not really dependent on their tools aspect" to put it in Fate terms in common.

 

[Nagol]

Not sure, but I think it would have given it a better chance of being accepted at all, or at least taken out for a test drive by more groups.

Personally, I would love to see 'Orcus' the abandoned draft that caused 4e to be time-squeezed.

 

[Zardnaar]

Like the one who simply reached into boiling water and pulled somebody out? Or fought off a dozen round table knights barenaked the two actually have that "not really dependent onf their tools aspect" to put it in Fate terms in common.

A fighter can do that in D&D, modern encounter guidelines sorta prevent it.

Reaching into boiling water is just damage, a high level fighter can take down mooks unarmed.

Hell 2E you could build an unarmed fighter.

 

[Campbell]

Interesting. I find Concentration to be one of the best 5e mechanics.

It is a massive balancing factor to spell casters that makes shenanigans easily possible in prior editions not work in 5e - while still retaining the spell caster feel so many people seem to like.

My concerns are pretty much about game play rather than game balance. Game play is all about the ability to make decisions that matter and impact your success or failure whereas game balance is more about equality of outcome. My primary beef with Fifth Edition is a game is that it makes concessions to game play in order to have a more balanced game.

It feels like every opportunity they sought to bring the skill floor and skill ceiling closer and closer together. This touches on all points of the game from class design to spell design to monster design. Concentration instead of Sustaining a Spell, Hit Dice instead of Healing Surges, Neovancian Casting instead of Vancian Casting, Split Movement instead of positioning, Weak Combat Maneuvers, Champion being nearly as good as a well played Battle Master, relying overly on Advantage and Disadvantage, and monsters that are big bags of hit points are a few of my least favorite things.

I get it. All this stuff makes the game more accessible, but by removing a whole host of interactions they have cut down on a skilled player's ability to punch above their weight class. One of my favorite parts of playing and running Fourth Edition was that you could play a Fighter well in the same way you could a Wizard well in previous editions. I would like a higher skill ceiling.

 

[Garthanos]

A fighter can do that in D&D, modern encounter guidelines sorta prevent it.

Reaching into boiling water is just damage,

Yeh sort of a side effect of hit points I grant and even the original story sounds possibly like an odd sort of euphemism because the person he pulled out was a woman and unharmed. So not exactly certain what it meant. But vivid. LOL

a high level fighter can take down mooks unarmed.

Well what was intended and why I specified roundtable knights was these would be assumed anything but mooks (in context of the Greatest knight even very prestigious (call them level 9 in almost any version of D&D).

I actually enjoy parallels over much broader gaps I think being able to tear down monsters in Beowulfs case and the bad guys even unarmed and unarmored in Lancelot's was maybe the only obvious one. Cuh Cuhlainn and Sampson and Lancelot now those three all used Berserkergang and had empowering oaths which conflicted with other social oaths... only Lancelot managed to dodge between his... perhaps both his were indirectly both empowering and that made a difference.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

...Champion being nearly as good as a well played Battle Master...

Say wot mate?