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

[thecasualoblivion]

For fights to be fast people need to drop. For easy fights, enemies with low hp are great for this. Fights against harder foes are trickier. In those cases, i think both sides bing able to ish out heavy damage works well. I dont want two sides whittling away at each other one lugubrious round after the next. I want people to drop. Ups the speed, raises the stakes and (for me) makes it more exciting. But again, i come at cinematic from a very non-D&D approach.

If monsters drop fast and PCs dont, combat is boring because its trivial and non-challenging. If PCs drop fast, the game is too lethal.

 

[El Mahdi]

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[El Mahdi]

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[Bedrockgames]

If monsters drop fast and PCs dont, combat is boring because its trivial and non-challenging. If PCs drop fast, the game is too lethal.

It doesnt have to be. You can have low hp monsters that have strong attacks. Certain opponents will be trivial. others will not. And some combats will be more evenly matched. In those cases both pcs and monsters will be doing a good amount of damage. If the issue is, you want to make sure players have an edge in such cases so they are never truly in danger, there are ways to do that with the HP/Hero points. Lethality is easy to scale.

 

[Bedrockgames]

What kills cinematic for me is the PCs actions being boring and mundane and having to rest because of injury or running out of 'bullets'. Being fast paced is more important than being fast. As long as combat is fast paced and exciting, it can take 45-60 minutes and I'm fine with it.

That is cool. We just want different things. I dont want to soend an hour on each combat.

 

[Obryn]

I wasn't referenceing the fact that they are different. What's subjective is the opinion that it's impossible. That is not an objective fact. Making such statements as if they are fact is incorrect.

You're talking in circles here. This is in response to your bemusement that 4e fans of martial healing can re-fluff damage mitigation.

The definition of refluffing means the mechanics don't change, only the fiction does. Damage reduction has very different mechanics from healing, and therefore cannot be refluffed as healing. Hence, "impossible." If you change the mechanics you're no longer refluffing, you're houseruling.

-O

 

[Nagol]

I can think of one case where damage mitigation was refluffed as healing -- The Incredible Hulk originally was hard to hurt. That was refluffed as "instantaneous regeneration" in at least one of the comic book streams.

The result was the same; i daresay the mechanics were the same. Only the corner cases changed.

 

[Obryn]

I can think of one case where damage mitigation was refluffed as healing -- The Incredible Hulk originally was hard to hurt. That was refluffed as "instantaneous regeneration" in at least one of the comic book streams.

The result was the same; i daresay the mechanics were the same. Only the corner cases changed.

Bringing someone back to consciousness and healing in between fights are not corner cases.

 

[Nagol]

Well, if the marshal may get something like the following, it may go a long way to cover those cases.

Inspirational Frenzy: 1 minute actvation, Range 30 feet, Target all sentient allies [Mind-affecting, Language];
All listeners receive temporary hit points equal to their Con score with a miniimum of 10 points gained. The hit points will last one hour or until the next battle is complete whichever is less.

That substitutes for a bunch of healing. It may not bring someone back to consciousness, but it prevents them from entering that state in the first place when they normally would. And as for healing between fights, if the individuals took less than the temporary hp damage, it's as if they're untouched.

Now it is true that the character couldn't use this during a fight, but he may have something like the following:

Rally: Standard action actvation, Range 30 feet, Target all sentient allies [Mind-affecting, Language];
All listeners receive temporary hit points equal to the Martial level of the character and develop unshakable morele. Use of the ability reduces the Marshal's hp the same amount granted. This can leave the marshal unconscious at the end of the round. The hit points will last 5 minutes or until the next battle is complete whichever is less.

Thee abilities will only shine if hit points and damage are reduced to pre-3e inflation levels, of course.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I can't, in my mind, justify encounter based resources. I've tried. I tried looking at it like, they know that trick now so I have to use another one, but it just doesn't feel right for me at the table. Daily resources sometimes have that effect for me as well, but I've had 30 years to get used to those. I suppose it would be less of an issue if encounter based resources weren't limited to one per an encounter, instead worked like daily resources and recharged with a short rest. (Which I mean you can use your powers x times/encounter total and you choose what to use each encounter.) At least then I wouldn't feel like I was being forced to do something that interfered with my immersion. Whether this is considered meta-game or not doesn't concern me, but if it breaks my immersion because I start asking those questions, then it's an issue for me.

I think it isn't quite that hard and fast, but clearly people often perceive some sort of meta-game aspect to powers being rate limited. I think it is pretty clear from reading the DDN articles and the actual rules packets that one of the main goals of the design is to stomp out even the slightest possible smell of any character touching rule that gains justification from game mechanics or player stance thinking.

Clearly many of us are just not interested in a game that avoids those things. To ME powers are plot coupons, as are pretty much all other player resources. Its a game where you tell a story about trying to defeat evil forces (or whatever) and part of the game is you get to do cool extraordinary stuff sometimes. Your character sheet tells you what stuff you, the player, can do in the game by virtue of what sort of character mechanics you picked (and conveniently also probably holds info on narrative aspects of your choices as well presumably, but that's really outside of rules discussions). I actively do not want to be limited to PC stance thinking. The players are a vital part of my game and they need the ability to shape the way it goes in active ways. The rules can help a LOT with that.

Honestly I think in general there's just not any going back. RPGs have evolved past "process simulation". They can still largely be about character options that are largely embedded in character stance, there should always be SOME connection there, but it doesn't need to be direct. This is the very reason I don't play 2e anymore and never was really interested in 3e either. Its the 21st Century, not 1975 anymore.