D&D 5E You can't necessarily go back

[Steely_Dan]

Spells are plot coupons.

I have never found magic missile to affect plots.

 

[Tony Vargas]

There isn't a way if they are dailies.

So, really, the complaint that fighter dailies are 'dissociative' or 'plot coupons' is identical to a demand that fighter dailies not exist under any circumstances.

If daily resources are compensated for their 1/day use with greater power, then the only way to keep the game balanced across many play styles (and thus different-length days), is to give all characters some daily resources.

So, it's also a demand for imbalance.

What is so great about class imbalance?

I keep thinking that if the 4vengers are really happy with 5e there is no way I will be. They just want a different game.

I don't know what every '4venger' or 'h4ter' wants, apart from one side wanting 4e to continue, and the other wanting it dead, which has been settled.

But, I was hoping to nudge the discussion towards what, on what was so 'wrong' about fixing a lot of known problems in a way that was mechanically functional. Is it the insult of acknowledging that D&D had some perennial problems? Were the wrong problems fixed? Were they 'features not bugs' in some way?

But, yeah, 5e has set a tough goal for itself. It's made harder by people talking around what they actually want. For instance, when Essentials came out, they said they'd gotten a lot of feedback that the fighter was too complicated, so they came out with the Knight and Slayer - which, didn't have dailies, BTW. Did that and other attempts to address complaints about 4e and appeal to nostalgia make Essentials a success? No, it was with Essentials that Pathfinder finally pulled ahead of 4e. Why then, would addressing the same complaints and appealing to nostalgia again work for 5e? That didn't work, so do it again 5x as hard?

I get that WotC has to try to get the fan-base buying their stuff again, they don't have a choice. I'm afraid they're not getting the decision-support they need to do it, though, because, among other things, the stuff that gets yelled about isn't always the stuff that's the real problem.

My hope is I can pop out their module and put in my own. But I'm not really confident the devs understand the issues either. If they don't understand the issues then of course they are doomed to fall into problems.

Yep. For one thing, there are some qualities that simply can't be 'modules,' it either has them or it doesn't. As a hypothetical example, if being 'well written' in the sense of using proper grammar and spelling were an issue, you couldn't have a 'spelling module' and a 'mis-spelling' module that morphed every sentence in the book to match the dialect preference of the reader. (Well, on an on-line product, you just might.) Some things are systemic. Basic things, like game balance, clarity, or playabilty, are qualities that permeate a game, not something you can serve on the side. For that matter, while a game can be more or less cleansed of 'tone' or 'feel' or 'flavor' it probably can't easily be one tone, then, with a 'module' change to a different tone throughout.

To provide for a broad range of play experiences, then, 5e would have to be a bit bland, so as to 'force' no particular style/tone/feel/etc, and then, mechanically, very customizable. Games have done that. None of them have been hugely successful. Ironically, the very broadly-useable game is a rather small niche. ;(

But CS is definitely scaring me away.

CS is? It's certainly not /daily/. What does it take?

 

[pemerton]

it is not at all unrealistic to know that if you take another hit you may die.

The point is that you can know that if you take another hit you will die (if you have 1 hp left and the assailant is a storm giant), or that no matter how far you fall you will never die (if you have 121 hp left, given that maximum falling damage is 120 hp). And furthermore, as [MENTION=57948]triqui[/MENTION] has pointed out, this information is vitally relevant to many play decisions.

The player still doesn't know what his condition will be before the damage is rolled. At 1 hit point he is disabled if the attack does exactly and only 1 point of damage... if the attack does 2 to 8 points of damage he is dying, more than that and he was outright killed. In this situation... how does the player know something the character doesn't? He doesn't know what his state will be until after the damage is rolled and applied.

The player, in many situations, knows that the damage will be 11+ - for example, if the PC jumps over a cliff of more than 100', or if the attack is from a giant wielding a two-handed weapon.

Now who is moving goalposts... the original assertion was that the player knew what condition his character would have if he is hit. He doesn't, plain and simple

You can contrive such situations - for example, where the PC has 1 hp left and the minimum damage is 1. My point is that there are many situations where the PC has X hp left, and the minimum damage is greater than X (or X+9 for 3E, or X+3 for AD&D 1st ed, etc), and many situations also where the PC has Y hp left, and the maximum damage is less than Y. And the player can know those maxima or minima, and hence can know what the PC cannot know.

Falling is an obvious source of such situations.

But there are many others. If my PC has 20 hp left, and a single militia member is pointing a crossbow at me, I know my PC can't die from that shot (max damage will be something like 6 or 8 or 10, depending on precise edition). The PC can't know that.

And if my PC has 1 hp left, and is about to be breathed on by an ancient red dragon, I know that my PC will be unconscious, probably dead, after that breath, whereas the PC can't know that, given that s/he miraculously survived the earlier breath still conscious!

Even for those who run hit points as meat, this is still pretty weird - becaue the meat is hacked away completely predictably like lengths of a plank of wood being sawed off.

But if you took all kinds of mechanical examples, lets say 500. And you then ask people like me who do understand what we are talking about even if the title is not perfect, we'd all pick the same ones.

Yes. That shows that you all have the same preferences - you don't mind hit points, but you don't like encounter powers. But it doesn't tell us that there is any deep difference between those two mechanics other than that you like (or at least put up with) one and not the other. A perfectly viable explanation, for example, might be familiarity.

But there are a class of things, a distinct set, that dissociate a particular group of people because of something they have in common.

But there is no reason to think that they have much in common besides being "metagame mechanics that were new to D&D with 4e".

Though it may run contrary to your experiences... I have seen players take an action that would lead to certain death (with no mechanical benefit) in order to stay true to their character. [/quote [MENTION=57948]triqui[/MENTION]'s point, with which I agree, is that this is a metagame choice - because the player, in making it, knows something that his/her PC doesn't know.

The contrast with a crit-based game like RM or RQ is pretty obvious. To borrow some rhetoric from Emerikol, all the people who left D&D for RQ and similar ultra-simulationist games in the 80s can non-collusively agree on what is wrong with hit points.

Look. It is absolutely the case that a person can know they are reaching the end of thier ability to defend. That if another blow lands they are going down. Nothing in the characters mind is different than the players.

Sometimes a person might. Often, as [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] pointed out, s/he might not. Furthermore, there is the weirdness in D&D that I know I'm near death except that I can walk, run, jump, swim, etc without difficulty.

But it's not willpower... if it was, by definition, it wouldn't be confined to granting me an extra action, and only an extra action.

Hmm. For the same sort of reason I have doubts about hit points as "meat" or "tiredness".

You are equating numbers which we use to communicate status between player and character with dissociative mechanics.

No. Rolemaster uses numbers to communicate status - penalties for injury, for blood loss etc. Hit points don't communicate status - they are an ablative pool that allows the player to know, in many situations, the consequences of any given injury for the status of his/her PC.

 

[triqui]

I have never found magic missile to affect plots.

[MENTION=6698278]Emerikol[/MENTION] said martial dailies are plot coupons. If "Brutal strike" affect plots, then so does Magic Missile.

And some spells are *waaaayy* much more plot coupons than any martial daily. Scry, Teleport, Speak with the Dead, Augury, Locate Object, True Seeing, Zone of Truth.... there are like a gazillion spells that affect plots way more than a martial daily does.

 

[Steely_Dan]

If "Brutal strike" affect plots, then so does Magic Missile.

Neither of them do, in my experience as a DM.

 

[Ahnehnois]

There was a clear set of issues being complained about with 3e, too, and 4e addressed them very well.

I think that's where you're wrong.

That didn't save it. It may be that what's talked about and what's really an issue to the customer base can be two very different things.

This is where the problem is. Indeed 3e has it inadequacies, and indeed there were online debates, but I don't think the content of those debates was representative of the community.

ENW, for example, is a great place, but the people who post here are typically:
*Old.
*DMs.
*Who have a lot of time on their hands.

This isn't the typical rpg player at all. Thus, what gets talked about here is not representative. Other forums (such as the WotC ones themselves) are not well moderated and have been taken over by trolls and flamers, which is why I quit them. Online settings inherently comprise a somewhat radicalized element devoid of personal responsibility that allows this. Yet, it appears to me that 4e is a product of WotC reading a few forum posts and thinking they have things down.

I see two major ways in which WotC really misread thungs.

The first is the balance issues. There are some balance issues with 3e, sure, but they aren't as bad as what gets tossed around here, they're not really different from what was in 2e, and they're not the main problem with the system. In over ten years with some varying and diverse players, I've never seen a "god wizard" or a "CoDzilla" or any caster balance problems. In practice, most players are either not interested in or not able to build an unbalanced character. Also, most of the supposed balance issues pop up around D&D's classic "breaking point" in the level 6-8 range somewhere, while the vast majority of play is at or below those levels. That's why people play E6. I haven't run a campaign that went to double-digit levels in quite a few years. Thus, the theoretical issues that could happen with 3e usually don't in practice. There are some fixes needed, but not on the level that was done.

The other, even more important one, is that WotC completely missed the zeitgeist of the past decade, and focused on a narrow group: "gamers". They assumed that current or prospective D&D players were stereotypical WoWers or some other variety of the same persona: adrenaline junkies bent on dominating a game world. In trying to make the game suitable for that customer, they ignored everyone else, and ignored the actual issues plaguing D&D. The main problems with D&D are not about balance, they're about the game not being believable enough or accessible enough for new players.

Or, it may be that the rejection of 4e had very little to do with its content.

It has to do with a lot of things other than content; but it definitely has a lot to do with content.

While we go in circles with invalid complaints and tortured logic, there probably /are/ real issues/insights that are being missed.

True.

All 5 of these have something in common. They addressed known problems with 3e (and even earlier), particularly class balance problems. Problems that had been subject to long, vigorous debates on-line, and were well-known and not really in dispute (rather, they were just 'lived with' or house-ruled or compensated for in-play or otherwise dealt with because 'D&D had always been that way').

A...generous take to sat the least.

The common mechanical structure (2) was key in delivering class balance,

Fixing imbalance by putting everyone on the AEDU system is like fixing wage discrimination by putting everyone on the same wage, in that it's heavy-handed to the extreme and causes many more problems than it solves, doesn't address the actual problem (bad actors abusing the system), and isn't acceptable to many people.

Rather than throwing out the entire mechanical structure, class balance would have been better addressed by going into each class, finding the issues, and fixing individual issues. For example, the fighter has many problems: you don't get enough from advancing as one (dead levels), the high-level feats aren't there or aren't good enough, the combat system you work within is confusing (see grapple, trip, etc.) and doesn't reward you (e.g. spellcasters can bypass the hp system while you can't). Fixes would involve clearer combat maneuver rules, a health system that allows martial characters to kill people rather than ablate hit points, interesting abilities at every level, and new high-level abilities within those rules. PF addressed some of these issues pretty well without having to reinvent things; a new system could do better.

Likewise, wizards are too complex and have some unbalanced spells; fixes might involve reducing spell access and making spells less powerful and/or tougher to use, while retaining the same essential structure.

Silo'ing (while I'm a bit down on it, myself) and dropping modular multiclassing (which, again, I quite miss), was also done so classes could be balanced more robustly and the damage to game balance done with extreme mix-n-match 'builds' in 3e could be avoided.

This, unfortunately, is backwards. People build characters with 10 classes because one class wasn't getting them the flavor or the power they wanted. It is needlessly complex. The solution is to let them play the character they want without having to take 10 classes, not to tell them that their "build" is wrong and unbalanced and delete it from the game. The way to do this would be to increase the flexibility of class abilities and design the classes so that they are worth sticking with (something PF has made some meaningful strides towards). Ultimately, it would be addressed by letting people build characters without the constraints of classes.

Healing resources (5) were moved out of the Cleric's spells/day, and to individual resources, which took the pressure for 'someone to play the heal-bot' away almost completely, improved encounter balance, and made balancing classes with healing abilities much more practical.

And this is really a backwards step. The big problem with D&D healing isn't "why do I need a cleric to heal me", it's "why was I at the brink of death and now I feel fine five minutes later" and "why did I fall of a cliff and pick myself up without a scratch". What D&D needed was a tougher health system and less powerful healing, so no one would feel said pressure to play a healer (which I've never observed), and, more importantly so someone who hasn't played D&D before can look at it and see a real scenario.

That's why I have to suspect that the reasons either have little or nothing to do with the mechanics, or that the reasons are un-examined or left un-articulated for fear they'd be get an unsympathetic reception.

I think they're unexamined not really because people are afraid to. I think they're unexamined for the same reason that news misses real practical issues or medical literature doesn't really characterize healthcare issues: because the real issues don't make for the kind of flashy debates that get people's attention, and because they're tougher to examine, more abstract and philosophical, and difficult to analyze. It's a lot easier to talk about how pun-pun the kobold is broken than it is to talk about how D&D needs to be more grounded, less jargon-heavy, and simpler.

 

[Obryn]

I have never found magic missile to affect plots.

Sure it does, in the sense Emirikol was using it. Cash in your "magic missile" plot coupon, the monster takes 1d4+1 to 5d4+5 damage.

-O

 

[Remathilis]

I have never found magic missile to affect plots.

Clearly, you never had a magic-user disrupt the demon-summoning ritual with a well-placed magic missile...

 

[Remathilis]

Here's just a few off the cuff things I think 4e did wrong at launch
1. Plot coupons with daily powers for martial characters.
2. Common mechanical structure. (AEDU). - 5e is avoiding
3. Utility magic very different and mostly moved to rituals. - 5e is avoiding.
4. Every class completely silo'd with it's own power set. - 5e not sure
5. Martial healing, healing surges, the whole healing system. - 5e has yet to avoid. They have promised modularity here.
6. Attitude. We are right and superior. You are wrong. - 5e is avoiding
7. Magic items. Snooze fest. - 5e not sure.

8. Common advancement of math, which breaks down and needs feat-based fixes to keep competitive. - Bounded accuracy has (so far) avoided this.
9. Monsters that were boring, broken, and lead to grindy, uninteresting slogs or complete routes. - Quick combat so far, but lets see what happens with monsters more complex than humanoids.
10. Forcing every class into 4 roles which changed the flavor of some classes (rangers becoming more rogue-like than warrior-like, bards and artificers becoming healers like clerics) and forced certain mechanics (Leader X Word healing, Defender Marks, Striker bonus damage) to be balanced against one another, leading to stagnant classes and repetition until Psions (and later Essentials) broke the molds. - 5e has so far given each class a unique hook and restored certain role protection, but we won't know until we see more classes.

 

[triqui]

Clearly, you never had a magic-user disrupt the demon-summoning ritual with a well-placed magic missile...

Then a standard basic attack is a plot coupon also. I've had an archer dirsrupting the demon-summoning ritual with a well-placed arrow too.