FlyingChihuahua
Hero
God, if only.Or for WotC to spring for some much-needed therapy for its fan base.
Then we could have people stop getting upset when someone else uses a demonstrateable measure of success. :V
God, if only.Or for WotC to spring for some much-needed therapy for its fan base.
13th Age did that. The term used in that game is "staggered."You might not be able to get water from a stone, but you can get blood - if you do it right.
More seriously, all it'd take would be to change the name of the mechanic to something more generic (if less evocative) such as "damaged", and poof - this issue goes away.
Of those: bloodied is great and has a viable place in any edition, limited healing wasn't all that relevant as you still got all your hit points back overnight, skill challenges are a good idea in principle but seem too often to be used by adventure writers as a quickie way of solving what should have been much more in-depth exploration or roleplaying challenges, damage on a miss was a bad idea*, and minions (along with the whole idea of a monster's stats being malleable depending on which PCs it happens to be facing) sacrifices far too much setting consistency on the altar of gamism.There's a handful of 4e-isms that were rejected out of turn immediately by some people that I find it amusing when they come back later and go "huh, you know, actually, that wasn't a bad idea".
Bloodied, damage on a miss (there was a huge and almost violent group of people posting about this one during the Next playtest saying "it didn't make sense"), limited healing, skill challenges (overused in 4e, IMO, but occasionally useful), or minions.
WotC in general haven't ever really supported any kitbashing of their versions of the game. TSR didn't either, but at least it was acknowledged and accepted as a Thing People Did.I've had a second thought regarding 5e's modularity. I wonder if the "rulings not rules" approach came out of early discussions of "plug and play" rules modules. For example, the Stealth rules they claimed they had made in-house but didn't launch with the final product.
Perhaps what they landed on was the idea to leave the game open enough that DM's could easily replace large sections of the rules with their own preferences, since I can't think of anything off hand that would cause 5e to collapse like a house of cards if you were to change it.
Even bounded accuracy could be done away with, if you gave some thought to what DC's and AC's you wanted to see.
The only problem I've ever had with this approach is there's little guidance to let you know how to go about this, and, well, there does reach a point where you feel like you're doing the developer's work for them- the effort required makes you wonder why you didn't save some money and make your own game, lol.
I can only assume that when they made 5e, they were like "ok, we don't want to force people to play a Cleric, so all our healers have be equally good casters at a baseline", so the Bard turned into a strange fusion of his 3e and 4e versions.
THe lack of guidance is crucial to the problem at hand.There's a handful of 4e-isms that were rejected out of turn immediately by some people that I find it amusing when they come back later and go "huh, you know, actually, that wasn't a bad idea".
Bloodied, damage on a miss (there was a huge and almost violent group of people posting about this one during the Next playtest saying "it didn't make sense"), limited healing, skill challenges (overused in 4e, IMO, but occasionally useful), or minions.
It's as if there was a curse on the whole edition, and people wanted to avoid the lot of it like a plague!
I've had a second thought regarding 5e's modularity. I wonder if the "rulings not rules" approach came out of early discussions of "plug and play" rules modules. For example, the Stealth rules they claimed they had made in-house but didn't launch with the final product.
Perhaps what they landed on was the idea to leave the game open enough that DM's could easily replace large sections of the rules with their own preferences, since I can't think of anything off hand that would cause 5e to collapse like a house of cards if you were to change it.
Even bounded accuracy could be done away with, if you gave some thought to what DC's and AC's you wanted to see.
The only problem I've ever had with this approach is there's little guidance to let you know how to go about this, and, well, there does reach a point where you feel like you're doing the developer's work for them- the effort required makes you wonder why you didn't save some money and make your own game, lol.
I don't think this is mutually exclusive. I think you start with the shard play experience, but leave your design open so, after a few years, you can begin to bring in fun modules to really expand the game. Its what they are trying to do with settings, and it would work a lot better if they had designed their open game faithful to this possibility.I was really intrigued by the idea of modularity for 5e. However, it probably worked out best for WOTC/HasBro that it did not work out that way.
Shared play experience and new player introduction would be much harder with a truly modular system.
Goodness I was worried about the Lunar Sorcerer with the initial Krynn playtest. Glad it survived. I am now totally worried on what will be the fate of the Squire/Knight of Solamnia background/feats.They let the playtest surveys dictate too much and handcuff them
I would buy Dark Sun if it gave me a Psion and some more psionic subclasses for the other classes.hey if we could get a Birthright (or BR like) setting book with mass combat and a Darksun (or DS like) setting with tactical impressive martial options I wouldn't mind so much
Here's quality for you!I get tired of this argument.
It's a game. Developed by a company with the goal of selling product. It may be the McDonalds of the TTRPG world or the Honda/Toyota instead of some obscure Indian/Mexican/Asian fusion restaurant that sells sushi tacos with chutney you personally love. It's not a Ferrari that really only makes sense on a race track.
Obviously it works well for millions of people, with more people playing every year for a decade. It is a quality product, if it weren't it wouldn't sell. It may just not work for you.
I like the Mexican food analogy: homey and basic ingredients, very customizable, not usually "fancy" or "complex."Here's quality for you!
"Eating McDonald's regularly — and fast food in general — isn't a sustainable diet. The 2004 documentary Super Size Me followed documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock as he ate three meals a day at the fast-food chain for 30 days. He gained almost 25 pounds and was told he suffered from irreversible heart damage."
There are a great many quality(real quality) foods that I could eat like that for 30 days and be better off for it at the end.
I have a good feeling about the Background Feat change.Goodness I was worried about the Lunar Sorcerer with the initial Krynn playtest. Glad it survived. I am now totally worried on what will be the fate of the Squire/Knight of Solamnia background/feats.
New rules don't equate to modules. Modules imply the ability to remove a major portion of the game and insert a new version of it. Remove races as presented in the PHB and put in place a completely new race module. Simply providing new rules for floating bonuses doesn't cut it. That's not a module, but an optional rule(soon to be the default). The optional rule to use point buy is not a module, either. Feats is major enough to be considered to be a module I suppose, but there are very few such modules in 5e and they are spread out in products you may not want to buy.Xanathar's and Tasha's are this entirely, and frankly I disagree that the Setting books aren't modular. Heck, the Adventures often include significant rules modules (Rune magic in SKT, for example, vehicles in Ghoats of Saltmarsh, etc.).
They didn't go far enough to achieve the modularity talked about the OP quote from Cook.Or is it they just didn't go far enough with the modularity you specifically wanted?
That's precisely what a module is, though. They could remove the Rave or Class system from the game, if they wanted to: Mearls actually ran some Gamma World games at Coms that replaced both with a old timer Gamma World approach, and the system would support a point buy system (because, spoilers, Rave and Class are point buy packages). They haven't done as many modules as the rules can support, because of demand more than anything.New rules don't equate to modules. Modules imply the ability to remove a major portion of the game and insert a new version of it. Remove races as presented in the PHB and put in place a completely new race module. Simply providing new rules for floating bonuses doesn't cut it. That's not a module, but an optional rule(soon to be the default). The optional rule to use point buy is not a module, either. Feats is major enough to be considered to be a module I suppose, but there are very few such modules in 5e and they are spread out in products you may not want to buy.
A few mostly hard to access modules =/= a modular edition.
Herethe thing: they made a system that could go there, but by the end of the playtest they didn't see a need to go all the way there. Can 4E combat be put in 5E? Yeah. Can 5E support a Warlord? If desired. But the desire was not there, and they adjusted the final product to work for the audience they had.They didn't go far enough to achieve the modularity talked about the OP quote from Cook.
They could. Where are the modules to replace it? I haven't seen any.That's precisely what a module is, though. They could remove the Rave or Class system from the game, if they wanted to: Mearls actually ran some Gamma World games at Coms that replaced both with a old timer Gamma World approach, and the system would support a point buy system (because, spoilers, Rave and Class are point buy packages). They haven't done as many modules as the rules can support, because of demand more than anything.
Whatever reason they had, they didn't go where they said they would and a lot of us were really exited over the prospect of the modules. I love 5e. I'm still really disappointed that it's not modular in the way that they said it would be.Herethe thing: they made a system that could go there, but by the end of the playtest they didn't see a need to go all the way there. Can 4E combat be put in 5E? Yeah. Can 5E support a Warlord? If desired. But the desire was not there, and they adjusted the final product to work for the audience they had.