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What is the essence of D&D
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<blockquote data-quote="Campbell" data-source="post: 7812262" data-attributes="member: 16586"><p>As someone who has grown apart from 4th Edition I can say that I am definitely not a fan of the primacy of magic, but have found other games that address it better without elements like abstract martial resources, bloated monster hit points, or abilities that do not correspond to something your character is doing in the narrative. I do not like the stuff like this in Fifth Edition either and it is all over the place.</p><p></p><p>Also while Fourth Edition addressed this pretty well in combat, it never really addressed the noncombat prowess of a fighter or rogue in a meaningful way. Casters still very much had an advantage here due to the power and versatility of Ritual Casting, particularly because without daily limits casters could almost do more outside of combat. Classes like Fighters also had a real dearth of skills.</p><p></p><p>I find with the way this works in practice that Fifth Edition feels pretty close to Fourth Edition. In combat there is pretty good parity between our Fighter, My Barbarian and the casters in the party (Sorcerer, Cleric/Druid, Warlock), but outside of combat they have significant advantages that the rest of us lack. A large part of this is that the martial characters just are not broadly skilled enough to represent competent adventurers. The other issue is that skills lack the same sort of defined niche that spells have. Also spells (and rituals in practice due to the way skills worked in Fourth Edition) are basically automatic.</p><p></p><p>My own experience tells me the way to really do this is to define a clear conceptual space for each caster so they are as specialized as anyone else, make spells less certain, and define a clear conceptual space for martial skill and be fine with letting at will things be awesome. My experience also tells me that many Dungeons and Dragons players would not like that.</p><p></p><p>This is pretty much what RuneQuest and Legend of the Five Rings do. It's also basically what Pathfinder 2 does.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Campbell, post: 7812262, member: 16586"] As someone who has grown apart from 4th Edition I can say that I am definitely not a fan of the primacy of magic, but have found other games that address it better without elements like abstract martial resources, bloated monster hit points, or abilities that do not correspond to something your character is doing in the narrative. I do not like the stuff like this in Fifth Edition either and it is all over the place. Also while Fourth Edition addressed this pretty well in combat, it never really addressed the noncombat prowess of a fighter or rogue in a meaningful way. Casters still very much had an advantage here due to the power and versatility of Ritual Casting, particularly because without daily limits casters could almost do more outside of combat. Classes like Fighters also had a real dearth of skills. I find with the way this works in practice that Fifth Edition feels pretty close to Fourth Edition. In combat there is pretty good parity between our Fighter, My Barbarian and the casters in the party (Sorcerer, Cleric/Druid, Warlock), but outside of combat they have significant advantages that the rest of us lack. A large part of this is that the martial characters just are not broadly skilled enough to represent competent adventurers. The other issue is that skills lack the same sort of defined niche that spells have. Also spells (and rituals in practice due to the way skills worked in Fourth Edition) are basically automatic. My own experience tells me the way to really do this is to define a clear conceptual space for each caster so they are as specialized as anyone else, make spells less certain, and define a clear conceptual space for martial skill and be fine with letting at will things be awesome. My experience also tells me that many Dungeons and Dragons players would not like that. This is pretty much what RuneQuest and Legend of the Five Rings do. It's also basically what Pathfinder 2 does. [/QUOTE]
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