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

[Falling Icicle]

They seem to be trying to go back to how things were, an "old school" dungeon crawling system left vague on purpose, but without the circumstances that led to the magic.

I really don't see the comparison. Pre-3.x editions of D&D were clumsy assemblages of rules and haphazardly thrown together mechanics. Everything was resolved differently from everything else. Attack rolls worked one way (remember THAC0?), rogue skills were percentile rolls, skills (nonweapon proficiencies) were d20 rolls, etc. There was no unified mechanic. It was a jumbled mess.

Of course, that jumbled mess did have its charms. But I don't think there's any comparison to 5e. 5e uses the same basic unified d20 mechanic that has been a part of the game since 3e. There is no THAC0 or weird tables or random percentile rolls just for the heck of it. Everything is consistent and alot of thougth is clearly being put into the rules, even though it's far from finished.

You can make an argument that 5e is harkening back to some of the viewpoints of older editions, such as DM empowerment. But that is more of a rules philosophy than a mechanical thing. But that kind of thing is really just a matter of personal taste. Some people prefer that approach and other people don't.

5e may not be your cup of tea. That's fine. 4e wasn't really mine either, but I still admit it was a very well designed game. There's nothing wrong with liking 4e better than 5e, but let's be fair here. Saying that they're deliberately using poorly constructed rules because they think we don't know any better is going too far. I also think it's unfair to say that they're just redoing what older editions did. I've seen alot more innovation in this edition than I ever expected to.

 

[Lanefan]

I found 1e AD&D to be incredibly detailed, possibly needlessly so. Definitely, it was as least as detailed and comprehensive as 3e, but not streamlined at all.

Fair comment, and from long experience I can say 1e plays just as well and in my opinion much better with some of the detail (e.g. weapon speed, weapon vs. AC, etc.) intentionally left out. 1e can handle this and very much remain playable.

3e is also very detailed, but the difference is you can't nearly as easily just leave the details out that you don't want. Personally, I'd far rather play 3e without skills and feats than with them; but so many other things depend on skills and feats being part of the game it's hard to just strip 'em out and leave a playable system.

I'm still holding out hope 5e will have things like skills and feats as optional modules, that I can ignore at will.

Lanefan

 

[Lanefan]

I really don't see the comparison. Pre-3.x editions of D&D were clumsy assemblages of rules and haphazardly thrown together mechanics. Everything was resolved differently from everything else. Attack rolls worked one way (remember THAC0?), rogue skills were percentile rolls, skills (nonweapon proficiencies) were d20 rolls, etc. There was no unified mechanic. It was a jumbled mess.

Of course, that jumbled mess did have its charms.

It also had its uses.

There's a lot to be said for using the best mechanic available for any given thing, rather than trying to shoehorn as many things as possible into one unified mechanic whether it suits or not...which I worry is a trap 5e may already be failing its save against.

In some cases the granularity of a percentile roll makes sense. In some cases roll-under makes sense. Not all things have to progress in a perfectly linear fashion as one advances in level (I'm thinking of the 1e combat matrix here).

Lanefan

 

[ExploderWizard]

I'm still holding out hope 5e will have things like skills and feats as optional modules, that I can ignore at will.

Do you have that as an at-will power?

Actually from reading the playtest packet, both backgrounds (skills), and specialties (feats) are described as optional.

 

[slobster]

Because "Orc, hp 4" takes forever to write down.

It was mostly NPCs that used classes which ate up gobs of time, especially any with caster levels as I needed to draw up a spell list which is challenging and thematic without being unrealistically powergamed. Demons and other powerful foes who could cast or had a lot of spell-like abilities also took a lot of time, as I had to figure out how to use their extensive list of abilities. Dragons were the worst, as they had all of the above, and then I had to make a hoard.

Not that it was always bad. The dragon hoards in older editions had a lot more character than I feel they do these days, with the demystification of magic items and all.

Of course, yes, my time quote was an average. Some encounters were easier to prepare than others. And a lot of the time spent was by choice; back then I didn't quite realize that my players didn't care about or notice the difference between an NPC I fudge stats for and one I painstakingly crafted according to the rules of the game, using six sourcebooks.

Pluses and minuses both ways, yadda yadda.

 

[SteveC]

I'm pretty much behind the OP's assessment. For me, it comes down to believing that RPGs have advanced in design, and that the development makes newer games objectively better. From what I've seen, 5E is not continuing this trend.

The problem is that ultimately, that belief of mine is entirely subjective. I can tell you how unified classes or mechanics and balanced play are objectively better, but anyone else is entirely justified in saying "who cares" about that.

So I'd say that Wotc is trying to capture lightning in a bottle again by distilling the essence of the game from 25 years ago. They have obviously caught the attention of a lot of folks, but at a cost of alienating some of their current customers. Will that ultimately work? I hope it does, even if the game isn't something I want to play. To me, D&D is too important to RPGs to fail.

I fear that it will fail, since the core target is a much smaller segment of the market (in my estimation, it's pre 3X gamers) and they're not offering current players much incentive to switch, nor are they catering to new players. I sincerely hope that I'm wrong with this... I'm still playtesting, but it's becoming much more difficult to convince anyone in my group to play.

Now this is clearly an, "in my opinion," post, and I know that some 4E players are loving the new edition, and I'm sure it will be used to introduce new players... but it's not a win from the perspective of anyone I've spoken with, including folks at Gen Con. If you love it, I hope there are a lot more people like you than me.

 

[Hussar]

LOL

Just because it takes someone an hour or more to set up a combat in all editions but 4e does not make 1e slow or clunky.

Let me rephrase that then. I played 1e for about ten years (give or take) or at least played a game that had 1e books on the table. I haven't picked up a 1e book in about twenty years, but, I'm still kinda/sorta familiar with the mechanics.

Do you think I could whip up a good 15th level encounter in ten minutes?

And this is the difference for me. In 4e, despite only playing it for about two years, I most certainly can. Not only can I, but, if I wanted to, I could use the encounters provided in the books and be even faster. And, it's not hard to play 4e out of the book with no prep time.

So, here's the question, can I prep that encounter in 10 minutes? For you to be able to do so speaks far more to the number of hours you've spent with the system. For me to do so, speaks to the system itself.

 

[pemerton]

There were a lot of things about 4E I liked -which might surprise a few people who have seen some of my previous posts.


The main problem I had was that I did not feel the mechanical structure of the game lent itself to the kind of stories I wanted to tell very well.

<snip>

The few areas where I feel 4E improved upon the 3rd edition model were enough of an improvement that I do not feel like I want to go back to 3rd Edition. However; at the same time, I do not prefer the core ideals about gameplay and style which 4E is based upon.

<snip>

I feel part of the problem I have with 5th Edition right now is that I feel as though the designers do not understand why I didn't like 4th Edition as much as other games. For me personally, my problem with 4th Edition was not that it was not 3rd Edition.

<snip>

I also feel that -in general- the designers (WoTC) do not understand what I want out of a game.

<snip>

I fear that their lack of understanding of what I want, and my perceived lack of understanding about why I did or didn't like certain aspects of 3rd and 4th Edition will lead to a game which includes what I view as the worst aspects of both while simultaneously doing away with the parts I liked from both.

Although we have had different experiences with 4e, I also feel that the designers do not seem to undertand what I want out of a game system, and what it is about 4e that delivers that.

One of the most important things about 4e, for me, is that it turns the focus of resource management into a "during resolution" matter rather than a "between resolutions" matter: encounter powers, unlocking healing surges in combat, managing the action economy (whether in combat, or in the somewhat different context of a skill challenge).

That's not to say that there is no inter-encounter resource management: dailies, surges, and to a lesser extent action points. But at least at my table they become secondary rather than primary focuses of play. Even for very daily-heavy PCs like the wizard or invoker, "How many dailies do I have left?" never becomes the overwhelmingly important question.

I agree with [MENTION=82555]the[/MENTION]causaloblivion that D&Dnext, at least as it has emerged so far in the playtest materials, looks much more oriented toward long-term resource management with loose and flexible GM-mediated action resolution, which is pretty much the opposite of 4e: tight action resolution with a lot of loose and flexibe GM-mediated scene framing and derivation of consequences.

 

[billd91]

I agree with [MENTION=82555]the[/MENTION]causaloblivion that D&Dnext, at least as it has emerged so far in the playtest materials, looks much more oriented toward long-term resource management with loose and flexible GM-mediated action resolution, which is pretty much the opposite of 4e: tight action resolution with a lot of loose and flexibe GM-mediated scene framing and derivation of consequences.

If this really is the direction D&D Next is going, I'm far more on board with it than with 4e because I see that as being much closer to what D&D has traditionally been. 4e didn't work for me, in part, because if I wanted the action style game that you seem to get out of 4e, I already had it faster and easier with Feng Shui.

 

[slobo777]

4e didn't work for me, in part, because if I wanted the action style game that you seem to get out of 4e, I already had it faster and easier with Feng Shui.

That's a comparison that caught me by surprise.

Having played a lot of 4E and a fair amount of Feng Shui, I would say the focus on cinematic action (very deliberately in FS with many direct nods to cinema tropes in the rulebooks) and player-controlled narration of that action are two main similarities.

In almost all other respects, these are very different games. I definitely don't see one as a substitute for the other, if only because my group might play a 1-3 session adventure of Feng Shui, but will commit to a 4E adventure for 10 to 20.