When Do the 5E “Ride or Die” Folks Become Grogs Like The Rest of Us in “D&D Older Editions” And When Do We Get D&D 5E Flair for Posts?

[CreamCloud0]

Not based on the info from Beyond over the past many years: moat people are not doing that level of "character build" at all.

last i checked a barb is still mostly a STR dependant melee combatant and a wizard wants INT and to cast spells from out of the fray, their design is built to make them good when doing those things, that's what i'm referring to when i mentioned 'a character build'.

 

[Parmandur]

last i checked a barb is still mostly a STR dependant melee combatant and a wizard wants INT and to cast spells from out of the fray, their design is built to make them good when doing those things, that's what i'm referring to when i mentioned 'a character build'.

Sure, ut most people don't build their characters thinking about that: hence the narrative streamlining of Background & such for 2024.

 

[CreamCloud0]

Sure, ut most people don't build their characters thinking about that: hence the narrative streamlining of Background & such for 2024.

i'd gotten the impression most people hated the narrative streamlining of '24 backgrounds, the complete opposite of what you're claiming

your statements confuse me because it feels like you're saying 'people don't think about what kind of character they want to play mechanically'

 

[Corinnguard]

i'd gotten the impression most people hated the narrative streamlining of '24 backgrounds, the complete opposite of what you're claiming

your statements confuse me because it feels like you're saying 'people don't think about what kind of character they want to play mechanically'

Aside from the streamlining, there wasn't enough of them to begin with. Thankfully there is a thread here in the EN World forums where some of us are already brewing up additional backgrounds for 5.5e.

 

[Micah Sweet]

There are games where I like this, but for D&D specifically, I'd rather see race/species as an aesthetic flavor choice.

But that's hardly the way it was designed for decades. How can you prefer D&D that way when it was never intended that way? Wouldn't it make more sense to prefer gaming to general that way over D&D specifically?

 

[Parmandur]

i'd gotten the impression most people hated the narrative streamlining of '24 backgrounds, the complete opposite of what you're claiming

your statements confuse me because it feels like you're saying 'people don't think about what kind of character they want to play mechanically'

Right, I am saying that most people don't think about the kind of character they want to play mechanically. Like, at all. That is my personal experience as the one who works to help people make characters, and what thw D&D Beyond data on character creation demonstrated some time ago to be normal among players.

Some people online have expressed frustration with the narrative streamlining, but it seems fairly obviously meant to help most players build characters without having to think mechanically about their "build" (because they won't).

 

[TwoSix]

Right, I am saying that most people don't think about the kind of character they want to play mechanically. Like, at all. That is my personal experience as the one who works to help people make characters, and what thw D&D Beyond data on character creation demonstrated some time ago to be normal among players.

Some people online have expressed frustration with the narrative streamlining, but it seems fairly obviously meant to help most players build characters without having to think mechanically about their "build" (because they won't).

Agreed. Most newer players want to be able to make a pirate elf rogue because a pirate elf rogue sounds cool. They don't want to have to make decisions like "Well, pirate will give you +2 Dex, but you won't get as many skills for rogue, and noble would make some of your elf abilities better..."

"Not focused on build" just means they want to make their choice based on concept and imagery, not gaining synergistic bonuses. Which is exactly how modern D&D should work. Keep starting options siloed, and additive instead of synergistic as much as possible.

 

[Parmandur]

Agreed. Most newer players want to be able to make a pirate elf rogue because a pirate elf rogue sounds cool. They don't want to have to make decisions like "Well, pirate will give you +2 Dex, but you won't get as many skills for rogue, and noble would make some of your elf abilities better..."

"Not focused on build" just means they want to make their choice based on concept and imagery, not gaining synergistic bonuses. Which is exactly how modern D&D should work. Keep starting options siloed, and additive instead of synergistic as much as possible.

For my money, one of the best parts of the new PHB is that the process helps channels ht sort of decision making process into effective characters whether going woth type or against type.

 

[CreamCloud0]

Most people don't do "builds" at all.

okay, coming back here because my ACTUAL point got derailed debating your claim that supposedly 'people don't do builds'

so, even if people 'don't do builds' as part of their character creation builds still tend to naturally arise from playing a class unless you basically intentionally design your character against itself, and species design is being diminished from an impactful building block in previous editions to an inoffensive package which happens to provides a handful of mostly trivial perks and boons that can be useful to most anyone.

so personally, if they're not going make them important to your character's capabilites, if they're going to reduce species down to this level let's just be honest shall we? end the charade and remove all their abilities, admit that species doesn't matter and it's just there as a cosmetic, a paragraph of fluff to flavour things.

 

[TwoSix]

okay, coming back here because my ACTUAL point got derailed debating your claim that supposedly 'people don't do builds'

so, even if people 'don't do builds' as part of their character creation builds still tend to naturally arise from playing a class unless you basically intentionally design your character against itself, and species design is being diminished from an impactful building block in previous editions to an inoffensive package which happens to provides a handful of mostly trivial perks and boons that can be useful to most anyone.

so personally, if they're not going make them important to your character's capabilites, if they're going to reduce species down to this level let's just be honest shall we? end the charade and remove all their abilities, admit that species doesn't matter and it's just there as a cosmetic, a paragraph of fluff to flavour things.

I think you're excluding the desired middle here, where racial abilities are useful and character defining, certainly not "trivial boons", but also not to the point of earlier editions where 2-3 races were the "S tier" and everything else wasn't really worth playing for someone interested in mechanical strength.

Not every race is like this, of course, but I think an aarakocra fighter, a warforged fighter, and a human fighter would have pretty distinct identities simply based on their chosen race/ancestry.