D&D 5E What needs to be fixed in 5E?

[AbdulAlhazred]

It depends somewhat on the class. For wizards, it doesn't bother me that Int dominates, but for fighters it seems like a high con or dex build should be very effective alternatives. For warlords, it's even worse -- why can't you have an effective charismatic or intelligent warlord without making him brawny as all hell?

-KS

I think the question is calibrating what 'class' means exactly. A Warlord in the sense imagined by 4e is a warrior leader. If you want to be a high INT leader, then you use a different class, though honestly you can certainly have a warlord with a good INT. The point is the character archetype that the Warlord implements is a military commander type.

Lets suppose you wanted a high INT Warlord. How would that work? What powers would he use? Warlords powers are primarily "smack stuff with weapons" oriented. To make a different variation you'd have to have a whole other set of powers, and now you're back to V classes, which seem pointless to me at this point. At best such a thing would essentially be the 'lazy' build, which can already dump STR.

I think the problem is that all these kinds of discussions rapidly get back to larger questions, which in turn require looking at how the details fall out when you dig down. This is why good game design is NOT easy, you have to iterate over the whole design a number of times, go down some blind alleys, rethink, recalibrate, do it again, etc. Frankly I don't think any of the things you guys are saying are not good commentary and depending on what choices you make different possibilities may turn out to be better or worse. I've kind of gotten to the point in the whole debate where pen has to hit paper and something has to be mapped out and tested in order for any of the different concepts to be really evaluated.

 

[Stalker0]

I think the question is calibrating what 'class' means exactly. A Warlord in the sense imagined by 4e is a warrior leader. If you want to be a high INT leader, then you use a different class,

This is a design question that 5e will have to answer for itself. In 3e, classes were generally flexible enough, especially combined with multiclassing, you could create a lot of architects with a few classes.

In 4e, each class is designed to a more narrowed architect.

The original offers more flexibility, the latter more structure and balance.

Now I will say that early 4e version was a lot worse because there were only a few classes. As a more classes were introduced, the system began to work better.

 

[MerricB]

Do you mean "archetype"?

Cheers!

 

[Stalker0]

Do you mean "archetype"?

Cheers!

And once again my entire point is negated by spelling, my 10th grade english teacher holds her head in shame

 

[FireLance]

So, let's say you have 3 fighters...

1: 18 Str, 14 Con, 14 Dex
2: 14 Str, 18 Con, 14 Dex
3: 14 Str, 14 Con, 18 Dex

Let's say, then, that...
1) Deals more melee damage
2) Is tougher and harder to kill
3) Is faster and more acrobatic

None of those have anything to do with a bonus to attack rolls, and each gets a benefit from a different investment in a stat. That's just fine.

What doesn't make sense is now where you might choose between, say, a bonus to attack, damage, ac, ref, init, your best skills _and_ hp (with a handy background)... or a mild bonus to some secondary stuff (say fort, and a skill check you'll rarely make like endurance). Stats get too overloaded.

For some time, I've been wondering whether it would be possible to reverse the relationship between benefits and stats. In other words, you don't choose (or otherwise determine) your stats and your stats then provide you with bonuses to various checks and other benefits. Instead, you directly choose the benefits you want, and these influence your stats.

For example, someone who wants to play a tough fighter might choose a benefit that grants him extra hit points, and a bonus to his Constitution. A brute fighter might choose a damage bonus benefit instead, and gain a bonus to his Strength. An acrobatic fighter might choose a bonus to Acrobatics checks, and gain a bonus to Dexterity. Similarly, a bonus to Will defense might increase Wisdom or Charisma, and a bonus to attack rolls could increase any ability score, depending on how it is flavored (Are you breaking through your enemy's defences through brute strength? Making precise attacks? Outwitting or outlasting him? Are you guided by insight or drawing on spiritual might? And so on).

 

[Bluenose]

This is a design question that 5e will have to answer for itself. In 3e, classes were generally flexible enough, especially combined with multiclassing, you could create a lot of architects with a few classes.

In 4e, each class is designed to a more narrowed architect.

The original offers more flexibility, the latter more structure and balance.

Now I will say that early 4e version was a lot worse because there were only a few classes. As a more classes were introduced, the system began to work better.

The original? That isn't 3e. I think it's very arguable that 3e deviates far more from OD&D/AD&D in respect of classes than 4e does. Multiclassing works very differently, just as one example.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This is a design question that 5e will have to answer for itself. In 3e, classes were generally flexible enough, especially combined with multiclassing, you could create a lot of architects with a few classes.

In 4e, each class is designed to a more narrowed architect.

The original offers more flexibility, the latter more structure and balance.

Now I will say that early 4e version was a lot worse because there were only a few classes. As a more classes were introduced, the system began to work better.

Yes, if there is a 5e it will have to answer these questions for itself. My point is that each answer changes the game and then demands different answers to other questions, etc. No one element of design stands on its own. Someone says "we should be able to use most any stat allocation and it should be close to balanced with any other" and that might be a reasonable idea, but if you for instance drive a stake into the ground on that, then you've got to design around that, and the knock-on effects of that decision are only obvious when you actually put together the rest of the design. You may find in the course of that design that the consequences of your decision may exclude other design goals, or simply not produce the 'game feel' that you desire, etc. Games aren't simply random assemblages of mechanics. I'm sure we all know this. I just feel like at this point so many ideas have been tossed around and so many statements about what different people want have been made that few meaningful statements can be made about them in the context of a new game at this point.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

For some time, I've been wondering whether it would be possible to reverse the relationship between benefits and stats. In other words, you don't choose (or otherwise determine) your stats and your stats then provide you with bonuses to various checks and other benefits. Instead, you directly choose the benefits you want, and these influence your stats.

For example, someone who wants to play a tough fighter might choose a benefit that grants him extra hit points, and a bonus to his Constitution. A brute fighter might choose a damage bonus benefit instead, and gain a bonus to his Strength. An acrobatic fighter might choose a bonus to Acrobatics checks, and gain a bonus to Dexterity. Similarly, a bonus to Will defense might increase Wisdom or Charisma, and a bonus to attack rolls could increase any ability score, depending on how it is flavored (Are you breaking through your enemy's defences through brute strength? Making precise attacks? Outwitting or outlasting him? Are you guided by insight or drawing on spiritual might? And so on).

I was advocating precisely that, earlier.

I do like the way it then fits to use Abdul's idea of connecting the stat benefits to weapons instead of classes/races. That is, one of the ways you get to buy up Dex is by using a "Dex" weapon, such as a dagger. Or rather, learning more about using such weapons, which is selecting feats, powers, and class abilities that apply to them.

I'd also like to see this tied into skills, though it gets a bit trickier there. You have to have concrete picks on skills, over the course of time that you want the ability scores to increase. 3E Ranks are too fiddly for that (and not that I would want to go back to them), but an occasional skill focus might be too coarse. It might simply be that hitting certain thresholds in skills gives you a bonus in the relevant stat. Get Athletics to +5, gain a +1 Str. Doesn't matter if you got it fast with training, or slow with the +1/2 per level increase. This might replace those general stat bumps.

Note that the skills need not necessarily grant bonuses at the same thresholds. This allows some balancing between stats that have more skills than others, without having to jump through a bunch of hoops to make it work out. Or maybe they do use the same thresholds, and the bonuses from weapons, magic, and the like fit in well with skills.

For a semi-wacky variant, you do all of this and still keep the first 4E tying of stats to attack bonuses. (That is, each stat is well represented, but there are no feats to switch a Str-based power to a Dex-based power, and such.) Then adjust the normal progression of attack bonuses in the rest of the system to account for this. In effect, you are baking in a certain amount of niche protection. The guy that decides to build up Str with his weapons has to commit a certain amount of his choices to that, to get a good enough Str to have the attack bonus where he wants it. I think this would probably cause more trouble than it was worth, having gone to the effort to be able to cut the link between attack bonus and stats. But if niche protection was diminished too much, this is one way to get some of it back.

 

[KidSnide]

I just thought it was worth calling out that today's Rule of Three response addresses an issue that appears several times up thread. Rich Baker says that they regret keeping totally separate powers list for each class and wish they had created a single appendix and just given different subsets of those powers to different classes.

-KS

 

[Tony Vargas]

I hope they don't go the 3e way with a single, monsterous alphabetical list of powers in the back, with powers crossing source as well as class.

Organization by /level/ is sooo much friendlier, especially to the casual player. You flip to a given page and see your choices for your new level.

Actually, if every class isn't to have it's own power list, then, it might be better for /no/ class to have it's own exclusive powers (or, at least, very few such).

All classes of a given Source could chose from a list of powers that reflected that source and dependend upon class features to support their Role. Or, I suppose, conversely, all classes of a given Role could choose from a list of mechanically-role-apropriate powers, with fluff and features painting the class's source.