D&D 5E Will there be such a game as D&D Next?

[GX.Sigma]

Power has almost nothing to do with the amount of damage you can deal. Most of the power in D&D comes with the ability to solve problems. Monsters are one type of problem, but they have many solutions. Dealing damage is one way to deal with one problem. If that's all you can do then you are a one-trick pony if that one problem is the only problem you ever face.

So you're saying that, while Fighters are better at fighting monsters, Wizards are better at other things.

That sounds alright to me.

 

[n00bdragon]

Clearly.

That's absolutely what I meant. Fighters, barbarians, monks, and everyone else who lacks magic is A-OK in next because they deal
MORE DAMAGE!!!

In the immortal words of Al Borland: "I don't think so Tim."

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think everyone wants that. That's not in conflict with anything.

Oh, you would be quite surprised, there are MANY people who claim to not care one bit about class balance, and quite a few who have flat out stated that "magic is just better, it is ridiculous that a fighter could be as powerful as a wizard" or something to that effect. No doubt this thread will soon contain some such statements

That sounds like the perfect kind of stuff for optional rules. That's not the kind of game that I usually want to run, but I'm totally down with including this. (Out of curiosity: do you think 4e has this? If so, in what form?)

Well, many powers can certainly be seen as having a very strong or primarily meta-game aspect. Its quite possible to spin that as "player, fill in some sort of world explanation for this". Even powers that aren't explicitly meta can very often be construed that way in 4e. The decoupling of flavor from mechanics and all greatly assists this.

Most powers can be seen also as plot coupons. Daily powers in particular, especially the less magical seeming ones (you can prefer other narrative explanations for magic, but see above, the player is still likely inventing in-world explanations). For the more unique martial powers you virtually have to see them as coupons since there's not usually a really plausible in-game explanation for why you can only use them once.

APs and to a lesser extent HS are exactly plot coupon type meta-game resources. You can say HS are a form of 'hit point', but hit points have always been meta-game constructs anyway, so that doesn't change much.

4e's form of this is certainly mild compared to indie games, Feng Shui is one example, FATE and BW would of course be others.

Not sure what you mean here. If you mean you want every class to use the exact same mechanics (ala AEDU), well, that's going to be pretty hard to reconcile with the people who want each class to have a unique thing.Have you tried the playtest recently? In my experience (and from a skim through the rules) Fighters are way more powerful than Wizards.

Yes, my point is that it isn't the structure of the subsystem people actually have a problem with. I think it has more to do with the narrow closed-ended powers. Of course changing the nature of powers has effects on their use in the meta-game, etc. OTOH I think a line can be hewed where you can get very flexible mechanics and still a more varied and interesting flavor than 4e powers have. Particularly in terms of things like daily powers for wizards and at-will or encounter powers for fighters, as examples (the rest fall somewhere in between anyway). One can most certainly try, and there are substantial benefits to be had in terms of increased system flexibility and ease of use.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

So you're saying that, while Fighters are better at fighting monsters, Wizards are better at other things.

That sounds alright to me.

Yeah, except fighters aren't actually better at anything. In the current PT my cleric stood back and kicked ass and took names. The fighter took a LOT of damage, but I healed his butt left and right AND killed off more of the enemy than anyone else. It was fun, but the fighter wasn't exactly blowing me away. They can do quite nice damage but damage is the hard way to win, and while its great it gets old real fast when your only response to a fight situation is to hit it with a stick. If that isn't a good solution, you're kinda borked. Any decent DM / module author is not going to make all the really interesting action be knock downs.

It is just like good old AD&D play frankly. Its not bad to have a fighter along. Downright good idea, maybe even vital, at low levels, pretty decent option up to maybe around 6. After that, not so much. There's only so much they can do and more spell slots outweighs almost any amount of single-target melee damage.

I will give DDN this much, the fighter so far is WAY better off than in 3e, but that's not saying a lot. He might even be slightly better off than in 1e, which is certainly an improvement. OTOH he's not the 4e fighter, and even the 4e fighter is only 90% of the way there (which is probably as good as it will ever get).

 

[GX.Sigma]

That's absolutely what I meant. Fighters, barbarians, monks, and everyone else who lacks magic is A-OK in next because they deal MORE DAMAGE!!!

Well, what's your solution? Give fighters magic (or take away wizards' magic) so everyone's the same?

Yeah, except fighters aren't actually better at anything. In the current PT my cleric stood back and kicked ass and took names. The fighter took a LOT of damage, but I healed his butt left and right AND killed off more of the enemy than anyone else. It was fun, but the fighter wasn't exactly blowing me away.

Interesting. We haven't had many Clerics in my playtest games, but the Wizard definitely feels under-powered. What character level was this at?

 

[pemerton]

Out of curiosity: do you think 4e has this? If so, in what form?

Just agreeing with [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] that yes, 4e did have this sort of stuff. Encounter and daily powers (especially martial ones); action points; hit points and healing surges. Plus it has this sort of stuff more intangibly too - because it tends to favour level-scaled DCs/damage etc first, description second (via p 42 and its extensions/derivatives), 4e tends to create more space for players to write their desired narrative over the top of the resolution engine, and have narrative lead resolution, rather than vice versa.

Here is an example to try to illustrate my "intangibles" point: in 3E, in working out whether or not a high-level fighter could shove his bare hands into a forge to help with the forging of a magical warhammer, you would look up a whole series of rules subsystems about burning damage, conditions, their effect on the action economy, the fighter's crafting skill, etc. Whereas in 4e the process is more like: Is this the sort of thing a character of that level can do? If so, is it Easy, Medium or Hard? Assuming you decide it's Hard (I did), make an Endurance check at the appropriate DC.

That's an important part of the game for me, and in my experience significantly opens up the space for players' narrative control.

 

[GX.Sigma]

Well, many powers can certainly be seen as having a very strong or primarily meta-game aspect. Its quite possible to spin that as "player, fill in some sort of world explanation for this". Even powers that aren't explicitly meta can very often be construed that way in 4e. The decoupling of flavor from mechanics and all greatly assists this.

Most powers can be seen also as plot coupons. Daily powers in particular, especially the less magical seeming ones (you can prefer other narrative explanations for magic, but see above, the player is still likely inventing in-world explanations). For the more unique martial powers you virtually have to see them as coupons since there's not usually a really plausible in-game explanation for why you can only use them once.

Just agreeing with @AbdulAlhazred that yes, 4e did have this sort of stuff. Encounter and daily powers (especially martial ones); action points; hit points and healing surges.

Weird. Can you expand on this? I don't really understand what you mean when you say action points and daily powers are "narrative control" or "plot coupons" - to me they just look like mechanics that the designers added to make combat more fun.

 

[Pour]

Well, what's your solution? Give fighters magic (or take away wizards' magic) so everyone's the same?

I think the only way to make the Fighter as versatile thematically as he may be mechanically would be to broaden the class and provide lateral movement so that you could effectively use the Fighter to build a really great Barbarian, Ranger, Paladin, Monk, and Warlord. In essence, boil down the classes and give Fighter all the martial warriors, then provide more robust specialties to accommodate further customization.

 

[GX.Sigma]

I think the only way to make the Fighter as versatile thematically as he may be mechanically would be to broaden the class and provide lateral movement so that you could effectively use the Fighter to build a really great Barbarian, Ranger, Paladin, Monk, and Warlord. In essence, boil down the classes and give Fighter all the martial warriors, then provide more robust specialties to accommodate further customization.

That's not really a more versatile class, though, just a more diverse one.

 

[pemerton]

to me they just look like mechanics that the designers added to make combat more fun.

Well, narrative control mechanics are mechanics added by designers to make a game more fun. So I don't really see the contrast.

In the case of action points and daily powers, they are narrative control in so far as they let the player choose (i) when to break the normal action economy limits, and (ii) when his/her PC's best shot will take place.