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

[AbdulAlhazred]

As boring as this sounds, I don't particularly like cinematic action in my games, either as a player or DM. It doesn't feel real to me, as silly as that sounds. I like a much more somber game. Combat should be avoided, not encouraged, and crazy stunts frowned upon.

I'm also not sure I agree with your 1e assessment since my experience with the system was the opposite. Players were always doing crazy stuff, which is probably why I resist it as much as I do (cinematic not 1e). There were no limitations do taking actions in 1e, you were pretty much free to do anything you liked. You could easily kill a higher level monster with a torch and a pint of oil, if you didn't leap in and try to do crazy stuff. Again, everyone's experience with any particular edition is going to be different, and that's okay.

I rarely play a fighter, since I prefer support characters, but when I do, it's because all I pretty much want to do is swing my sword and draw the attention of the baddies (as much support as a fighter can provide).

I'm not going to analyze the why of anything, I just wanted to point out that cinematic is not for everyone and the system needs to support that somber approach, which I feel it could easily do in the core rules and expand upon in modular/optional way without either type getting the shaft.

That's fine. Honestly stance and meta-game and in fact all the other stuff is really somewhat independent of 'tone'. In other words you could play a super realistic sort of low key 'gritty' fantasy (which actually 1e will do fine, just have the DM rule harshly against stunts, taking a very literal real-world slant to it, you won't have any sort of acrobatics in fights, oil won't work for squat, etc). However, you could do that in a 1e sort of pure sim type of way, or you could do it in a purely narrative kind of setup where the player and the DM decide based on some sort of story telling mechanics how the characters highly realistic only slightly fantastical stories go. The players may have to work harder to make their plot coupons fit the narrative, but there's always coincidence, luck, serendipity, and just plain assumption of authorial power that will still work fine, even if magic and favor of the gods are right out. In other words you could play what you're talking about easily in FATE just as you could in 1e.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Myself, i tend not to look for cinematic in standard D&D. If I am running a regular campaign setting, my style is usually not cinematic. But I think a cinematic options book would be great for the times I do want it. Right now I am doing a cinematic 3.5 campaign and could definitely use spme handy options (in fact even though I complained about it for default, I am going to use mearls level/hour heal rate because that seems like a good fit for my wuxia style campaign where the players may get trounced by the bad guy but crawl into a hole and face him again 8 hours later).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The super quick fight does exist at my table in RCD&D. If there's a "speed bump" encounter where the goal is some level of attrition and to provide a little progress, we don't use minis and it's pretty easy for people to figure out what they want to do. We use group initiative, declare actions at the beginning of the round, and insist that people don't have a lot of time to think things through. A person is usually ready with both to-hit and damage dice when we get to them, they roll, declare results, and we're onto the next person. I often roll a handful of different color dice for the monsters at the same time and can adjudicate things fast. I won't say we have 5-minute combats, but 10-20 minutes happens.

For pacing, I try to have a mix of short speed bumps, long climactic set pieces, and occasional more-involved encounters in the middle to round things out. Short ones are 10-20 minutes, medium ones 45-60 minutes, and set-pieces are the focus of an evening.

Oh, if you're willing and able as a table to play "speed combat" then sure, you can burn through fights, but that's true in 4e as well. I know with a group of experienced players that are hankering to burn through a fight ASAP we can do them in 20 minutes flat including setup most of the time. It just isn't that FUN to keep pounding out fights at that pace, you don't get a chance to enjoy it any, and it gets mentally exhausting after a while. Its fine for tourney play or "lets just get this over so we can go get pizza" or whatever, but I don't want to play that way week after week. I agree, short encounters are say "under 30 minutes" average ones are up to an hour, but optimally a little under 45 mins, and then you have your big setpieces, which can be any crazy thing. I had one 'encounter' that lasted 3 sessions once, but it was super fun!

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.

The problem is when fights devolve down to a level of abstraction where every attack is dropping people there's not much room left for tactics or distinctions between how different characters work, etc. It becomes a matter of a few dice rolls and someone marginally rolls better and things wrap up, there's nothing left to skill or even character differentiation. The main consequence is any player with a good sense of min/maxing will go right for attack and damage bonuses. There is little point in being able to do other stuff when attack = hit = kill with high assurance. Its pointless to have "hold person" in that sort of fight for example, just fireball the hell out of everything, it'll die. Ranged attacks also become super potent, they deny the enemy any chance to fight at all. It just isn't much of a game.

 

[Bedrockgames]

The problem is when fights devolve down to a level of abstraction where every attack is dropping people there's not much room left for tactics or distinctions between how different characters work, etc. It becomes a matter of a few dice rolls and someone marginally rolls better and things wrap up, there's nothing left to skill or even character differentiation. The main consequence is any player with a good sense of min/maxing will go right for attack and damage bonuses. There is little point in being able to do other stuff when attack = hit = kill with high assurance. Its pointless to have "hold person" in that sort of fight for example, just fireball the hell out of everything, it'll die. Ranged attacks also become super potent, they deny the enemy any chance to fight at all. It just isn't much of a game.

well, miniature tactics are not of much interest to me, so we have a style difference here. I really think this is a preference issue. You certainly have a valid point of view, but my experience is completely different from yours, as are my conclusions. Personally I am fine with a light system, with no minies, that allow the GM to ajudicate special maneuvers or actions with bonuses or special conditions as needed. Again thoughit is the stuff around the combat that I find most interesting anyways. I honestly found 3E and 4E length combats dull (and I didnt find the aedu power structure added much excitement or texture for me). This is just preference of course.

In terms of character skill it still matters though. In my game characters abilities are all skills and keyed to dice pools. If you are good at light melee, that matters a lot in close combat. The skill categories are siloed so you can take points in combat and still take points in knowledges or physical skills (and you can burn a whole category for extra points,so you can customize the guy who has no combat skill if you want).

 

[Obryn]

Oh, if you're willing and able as a table to play "speed combat" then sure, you can burn through fights, but that's true in 4e as well. I know with a group of experienced players that are hankering to burn through a fight ASAP we can do them in 20 minutes flat including setup most of the time. It just isn't that FUN to keep pounding out fights at that pace, you don't get a chance to enjoy it any, and it gets mentally exhausting after a while. Its fine for tourney play or "lets just get this over so we can go get pizza" or whatever, but I don't want to play that way week after week. I agree, short encounters are say "under 30 minutes" average ones are up to an hour, but optimally a little under 45 mins, and then you have your big setpieces, which can be any crazy thing. I had one 'encounter' that lasted 3 sessions once, but it was super fun!

Oh, I dunno. The lack of a really effective quick combat system is my biggest issue with 4e. Its lack is also a big part of why I keep a shelf full of AD&D and retro-clones.

I can absolutely understand people who have a problem with 4e's long default combats. My ideal would be for a seamless switch between short combats and longer, tactically deep ones. The latter is important to me, but it'd be nice to have the former for when it makes more sense in the fiction.

It's the same reason I have an issue with assumed numbers of fights per day - it constrains the stories I want to explore.

-O

 

[thecasualoblivion]

Oh, I dunno. The lack of a really effective quick combat system is my biggest issue with 4e. Its lack is also a big part of why I keep a shelf full of AD&D and retro-clones.

I can absolutely understand people who have a problem with 4e's long default combats. My ideal would be for a seamless switch between short combats and longer, tactically deep ones. The latter is important to me, but it'd be nice to have the former for when it makes more sense in the fiction.

It's the same reason I have an issue with assumed numbers of fights per day - it constrains the stories I want to explore.

-O

The way to do that in 4E would be to develop a system where in the trivial fights they end as soon as the PCs have clearly won. Play the combat as normal until the tipping point is passed, and then end it right there.

 

[El Mahdi]

deleted

 

[Ratskinner]

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.

I dunno, seems to work for Halo. Though I expect a similar engine for D&D would be well below the modern paradigm of rules-fiddliness.

 

[Obryn]

But since we seem to be getting crossed up with that word, I'll restate. Mechanically there is no real difference to mitigating damage with healing, or mitigating it with another thematice idea (whether proactive or reactive), the end result is the same. It's a fundamental conceit that can be remedied by changing ones perception, just as 4E players have been advising non-4E players to do so they can get past their perception of divorced mechanics and fluff, and enjoy 4E.

It seems to me that there is a strong resistance being expressed by 4E fans in this thread against such adjustments of perception, which I find ironic (among other things).

It's not ironic at all when you consider you're objectively wrong about the end results being the same.

If I turn healing powers into temp HP, I'm not re-fluffing them. I'm house ruling.

-O

 

[thecasualoblivion]

The argument I'm seeing about this, especially as pemerton put it, is that proactively mitigating damage is thematically different than reactively mitigating damage (healing vs. other, differentiation based on an inspiration motif is one of theme). The only difference mechanically is proactive vs. reactive...with the end result the same either way; though I'll admit that I'm not sure what pemerton means by risking waste.

Thematic differences are all about perception, not mechanics. Which is something that 4E players have been telling non-4E players from the very beginnings of the edition. Perception does include "fluff".

But since we seem to be getting crossed up with that word, I'll restate. Mechanically there is no real difference to mitigating damage with healing, or mitigating it with another thematice idea (whether proactive or reactive), the end result is the same. It's a fundamental conceit that can be remedied by changing ones perception, just as 4E players have been advising non-4E players to do so they can get past their perception of divorced mechanics and fluff, and enjoy 4E.

It seems to me that there is a strong resistance being expressed by 4E fans in this thread against such adjustments of perception, which I find ironic (among other things).

That is a load of crap because the reverse isn't true, or is it? Can you re-fluff healing into mitigation? The problem with mitigation is that certain limits are placed on it in terms of timing. Mitigation either has to be performed before, during, or in immediate reaction to damage being taken. You can't mitigate damage taken two rounds earlier, and you can't mitigate damage taken during combat after combat has ended.