What went wrong?

>>48035890
What didn't go right?

>>48035890
Nothing.

>>48035890
Well I can't speak for literally every aspect of the game as I haven't interacted with more than half of it as of yet, but the only thing I was disappointed with was the elemental monk.

Ya'll posting in a Virt thread.

DCs, skills, saves
playing levels passed 10

player options are limited and wildly varied in effectiveness at their supposed tasks, but to a much lesser extend than 3.finder

It's good.

>>48035890

Nothing significant went wrong. Only relatively small parts of the system like elemental monks or beastmaster rangers. At the same time, not much went right for me. If you like D&D 3.5/PF and a streamlined version sounds interesting, 5e works fine. If you don't like D&D, this edition probably isn't going to change your mind.

It's the status quo. The only things it really adds, besides doing D&D-style magic very well, are inspiration and dis/advantage. Neither are revolutionary design concepts.

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>>48035890
Trapdoor Technologies was a shit dev, causing the planned 5e VTT/digital distribution system to be canned in favor of 3rd-party licensing with Fantasy Grounds.

The licensed D&D video game, Sword Coast Legends, flopped super-hard because it was a bad game, no matter how hard Wizards pushed it. Not really on 5e's head though, since it was nothing like 5e mechanically.

They decided to turn half of all their future monthly playtest articles into shilling for 3rd-party homebrew posted on their homebrew market place.

Matthew Mercer's homebrew is of questionable quality but has dominated the DMs Guild's "most-purchased products" section since the site's inception, for little reason besides him being a celebrity of sorts.

The first adventure module for it was a railroady, poorly-designed piece of garbage that put a blemish on it from the start.

3.PF still manage to exist, somehow.

Other than that, it's pretty good.

>2 years into the game's life cycle
>You can still only play as a Fighter, Rogue, Barbarian, Wizard, Warlock, Sorcerer, Cleric, Druid, Ranger or Bard.

Their problem is they don't value choice. They think that making the exact same Rogue or Fighter every time you need a character is somehow enough to keep the game interesting. It's not.

They have said that they are no releasing new class options or archetypes, that's why the DM's guild exists. They're not releasing non-campaign-length modules either for the same reason.

They don't publish non-physical books.

Fantasy Grounds is literally the worst thing they could have ever done.

Wizards is fucking retarded.

>>48036286
I was pumped when 5e was ramping up for its release because I had started the hobby when 4e was already dead and buried circa 2010, so I was excited about getting in at the start and riding the hype train. Compared to PF which I ran for years, I enjoy running 5e so much more because I don't have to worry about a lot of crunch and floating modifiers. That said, I'm seriously tired of the lack of officially published options available to players. In one of the books coming out in September, Orcs are finally getting outlined as a playable race. Why the fuck did that take two years when full-blood Orcs are usually one of the first monstrous races to get the PC treatment? One one hand, I understand the stance of "Only DMs buy the books" so that's why they're not pumping out splat. On the other hand, having such a sluggish release schedule and sparse amount of options is simply ridiculous.

>>48036188
>
The first adventure module for it was a railroady, poorly-designed piece of garbage that put a blemish on it from the start.
To be fair, it's because the system wasn't finished as the adventure was being finished. It's why your party can encounter both an adult white dragon and a full vampire in the same dungeon.

>>48036540
Unless you are running AL games there is plenty of WotC materials and quality 3rd party stuff. I'm glad the first party published goods are focused on adventures and DM centric books.

>>48035890
They went back to magic supremacy and haven't even made a token effort to balance the classes
Also, the people that made it obviously can't do math: Some "balanced" encounters will TPK and others will be stupidly easy.

>>48035890

Nothing went wrong. They made a streamlined version of 3rd edition which appealed to a lot of people. The only thing that I can say went wrong is that they released it about sixteen years to late for me to care about it personally.

>>48036693

This

>>48036188
I really want Critical Role to go the fuck away.

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OP I'm going to give you the straight scoop.

They tried to pander to grognards.

This is a mistake because grognards are all playing AD&D and don't give a fuck about new editions.

Fighter and rogue are still underpowered as fuck, monk and ranger are total shit, and the game lacks flexibility.

The ability score caps mixed with all races getting a +2 to different abilities plus getting a +2 every four levels means you are effectively standing on a stepstool under a low ceiling and jumping. Repeatedly.

Bounded accuracy is fucking shit. It's a good idea but they took it way too far.

The adventure modules are kike crap except for Curse of Strahd which is actually really good.

It is only successful because it is "safe" and watching all these spergs literally praise a game just for not trying anything new and thus not being TOTAL SHIT, just goes to show why D&D is a broken game that is going down in flames.

If you play D&D, kill yourself. You're a cancer on the gaming community. Play games like Dungeon World that are far better designed and promote small indie devs like Sage LaTorra and Adam Koebel.

>>48036833
>REEEE WHY DOES NO ONE PLAY MY HIPSTER INDIE-SHIT SYSTEM. FUCKING NORMIES the post
Here's your (You) spend it on some deodorant and to wash that retarded pink dye out of your hair and unkempt beard.

>>48036693
This. They didn't slaughter nearly enough sacred cows. At least Vancian casting isn't as terrible as it used to be, but at the same time, the magic/melee divide still exists and no real effort was put into fixing.

Also seconding the CRs being fucking weird, with some CR 1 creatures doing enough damage to one-shot level 3-4 characters, and some CR 3 creatures being easy enough that a party of level 1s could take them on.

>>48036667
I'm an asshole in that I don't let my players use homebrew shit they found on the internet. The only 5e compatible third party stuff I've seen that doesn't appear to be total garbage is the bestiary and spell book put out by Frog God. I'm certainly open to suggestions, though.
I don't know if I'd call a handful of new races and archetypes "plenty" but to each their own.

>>48036945
>Also seconding the CRs being fucking weird, with some CR 1 creatures doing enough damage to one-shot level 3-4 characters, and some CR 3 creatures being easy enough that a party of level 1s could take them on.

[citation needed]

>>48036876
He was right about them pandering to Grogs and failing, but otherwise he's just another whining hipster.

>>48036959
I don't have any specific examples but the CR balancing does seem wonky. I've yet to have an encounter that challenges my players instead of it outright killing them or being a cakewalk.

>>48036833
>It is . . . successful
>D&D is a broken game that is going down in flames.
You really should try harder than not at all, Virt.

>>48035890
Your mother didn't abort you.

>>48036833
>Play games like Dungeon World
I didn't need to fully read the whole thing to know it was Virt. A quick skim is all you need.

>>48036952
>The only 5e compatible third party stuff I've seen that doesn't appear to be total garbage is the bestiary and spell book put out by Frog God
Those are some of the most garbage 3rd party stuff out there, though.

>>48035890
besides what everyone else has said already?

Biggest, most glaring design flaw of 5e is NOT the lack of options, but the lack of synergy between options. Don't get me wrong, everything here >>48036286 is an issue, but the main problems is how little each option interacts with others. I can't think of a single combination of class/archetype/feat/magic-item that both improve the same thing without countering each-other (except for the pitiful statboost some feats come with).
You will never, for example, see that you have an archetype that lets you add CON to AC, and decided to take a feat that lets you use CON for will-saves. Even the most rudimentary synergy that's found in every other RPG on the market is almost nowhere in 53.

High-level play is fucking retarded. High-end boss monsters have stupidly broken Lair Abilities that, instead of buffing the monster like a good mechanic would, instead nerf the party significantly (especially if you're a spellcaster).

The pandering is unbelievable. Trying to market it to the nostalgic adult who hasn't played in years and to the hipster who thinks DnD is the new thing to do to seem unique.

The only good thing they added was rerolls.


Basically, it's about as shit as all other DnD editions, but the actual meat and substance of the game is too boring to distract you from this fact.
Next time you want to play DnD, just use Mutants and Masterminds as the system instead of whatever bullshit WotC is pushing this decade.

>>48037065
>I'm open to suggestions

>>48037087
>You will never, for example, see that you have an archetype that lets you add CON to AC, and decided to take a feat that lets you use CON for will-saves.

I'll tell you why, though, and it's pretty simple. Besides the obvious fact that straight up, they're not publishing player options period, I mean.

The reason is because they don't care about this thing that 3.5 invented called "builds". They don't care about having a way to make Fighter A mechanically different from Fighter B. To Wizards, that's all stuff you should be doing without the use of mechanics.

Not to mention holy FUCK is every list so limited. I play a lot of 5E with different characters every time, and every time I play a spellcaster, I just end up sitting there bored because I have so few spell slots and fucking nothing worth using.

And let's never forget that the game is 50% 3.5 crunch, and 50% rules-like "the DM should make it up", not because anyone on the team thought that was good design, but because halfway through their development process of NEXT, someone said "Hey, Dungeon World and it's clones are real popular now. Let's just fill every blank space with a line about how the DM should make it up, and call it finished. Print it!"

>>48037185
It's not even that there are so few options. Even the options they do have don't interact together. I've seen more synergy in games like Savage Worlds than I have in 5e.
They were afraid of making another powergamer's system like 3.5, and avoided this by gutting any meaningful synergy. They threw the baby, bathtub, floor, sink, and tiles out with the bathwater.

5e is what happens when you take a rules-heavy system and strip away as much as you can until it's "rules lite."

>>48037280
Except that 5E isn't rules-lite. It's crunchy as hell. There's a TON of rules, but there's no actual logical parallel between which rules they kept and which ones they through out, as there really wasn't any design that went into it.

This is how 5E design went:
>Ok, so we've got D&D. That means D20 rolls, classes, levels, magic items, skill checks, feats and some other stuff.
>That all has to stay in, because if we remove it, it won't be D&D anymore.
>Ok, what else can we remove?

And the result is you have a game that half wants to be rules-lite, and half wants to be "legacy D&D", because those are sacred cows they can't remove.

So now you have a system that is crunchy in places that make no sense, non-crunchy in places that make no sense, and doesn't mesh with itself in any way that makes any sense.

>>48037185
>The reason is because they don't care about this thing that 3.5 invented called "builds". They don't care about having a way to make Fighter A mechanically different from Fighter B. To Wizards, that's all stuff you should be doing without the use of mechanics.
A thousand fucking times this.
When I looked at 5e, what really got to me me was the fact that everything looked so fucking samey it hurt. I mean, when I first went to Fighter, I looked at the five pages dedicated to what the Fighter could do, and I thought,
>"That's it? All of it?"
>"Where's the rest of it? There has to be more."
>"More feats, more options, more paths, more ANYTHING."
The fact that the God damned Soldier in SW Saga Edition has more options than the 5e Fighter AND uses a whole page less is a fucking crime against humanity.

>ITT Butthurt because mechanical options are "not available" or "limited".

I need muh options and muh modifiers and muh codified shizzle or it's a bad game design. Waaah.

>>48037051
>>48037062
I thought Virt hated Dungeon World? When did this change?

>>48037780
It doesn't have to be GURPS-tier splatbooks for everything, but come the fuck on, are you serious?
If you're supposed to make shit up as you go along like you do with Cortex Plus or FATE, then do that. But they didn't do that, because status effects and levels and hit points and modifiers and detailed spell descriptions still exist, meaning the game still lies within the limitations of the mechanics and what you can do is ACTUALLY and not figuratively limited to what the mechanics say you can.
If you're supposed to make a specialized build and generate a character where fluff and crunch mesh, then the game should provide options to do this, like GURPS and other point-buy systems do.
So it doesn't let you have the freedom of light game mechanics and it doesn't let you have the versatility or power of heavy game mechanics.
It lies in a painfully generic and mediocre middle ground where rushing your 20 STR/WIS/DEX and Great Weapon Master is more important than anything about how your character came from a lineage of warriors (which doesn't, in fact, affect the game worth a damn unless your DM stretches the power of backgrounds, awards Inspiration extensively, or flat-out ignores the rules) or studied the Black Wolf Style (which costs your character at least three levels in Barbarian and his Fighter Capstone to emulate in any meaningful way).

>remove Strength and a half for two handing a weapon
>add the Versatile trait that lets has you rolling one die above the normal roll
>i.e. two-handing increases damage by an average of one point
>putting Knowledge Religion, or whatever the equivalent name is, into Int
>stripping out mounts to the point that the rules for Mounted Combat are mostly about mounting and dismounting rather than changed AC, targeting, etc.


Only major gripes off the top of my head. I think the lack of shields is well enough known.

>>48037353
You'd better not look at any D&D book published prior to 1989 or so. You'd have a goddamn heart attack.

>>48037780
I completely understand if you don't give two shits about mechanics/customization. Personally, these aspects are among the most important in a system, but I'm not gonna sit here and claim my personal preference is superior to yours.

That being said, there's a large population of people who consider this very important - for whom a lot of the fun of an RPG comes in rolling up a new character in a class they've never played before.
It is EXTREMELY bad game design to create a system that is so crunch-oriented yet completely lacking in good mechanics. These are the kinds of people who actually play these games, and if you can't provide crunch and mechanical depth, these people aren't gonna play your game.
The fact that pathfinder still exists is testament to this fact.

>>48038166
Okay, let's put that into context. The game of the year for 1989 by Gamist awards was fucking Tetris.
If you're going to polish Tetris, maybe two mechanics in the modern day and expect me to buy it for anything more than a buck or so, you're delusional.
Attempting to remake the original Dungeons and Dragons with a new sheen of paint and calling it the next big thing and a breakthrough of the gaming industry won't cut it. It just won't, beside the niche of 'the rules don't really matter and are just guidelines, homebrew every other thing', which is the only thing I've found 5e good for, and if you'll notice, that type of play has ignoring or rewriting the rules hard-written into it.
When Rule Zero is the rule you call on the most to run a game, it's poorly designed. It functions because a good DM runs it, not because it runs on a good ruleset. Like a good video game designer can make a good game for an inefficient and weak system.

>>48037353
Its because one 5e edition figther can do more things easily than a pathfinder one.
You dont need 3 feats to fight efectively with a rapier
You dont need a guide to make a switch hitter is something that a figther can do naturally.
You dont need tons of feats to have manouvers and styles.
In my opinion 5e and AD&D figthers are the best of D&D.

Anon saga,D&D 3º 3.5, and pathfinder dont give options they chop the figther as they like and then they give options to fill the gaps with feats and archetypes.

>>48035890
3rd ed. for tards

>>48038310
>The game of the year for 1989 by Gamist awards was fucking Tetris.
That's because Gamist is shit.
Games released in '89 include such things as Super Mario Land, Castlevania 3, and Phantasy Star 2.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:1989_video_games

>>48038564
I'll give you feat taxes, but I'm not inclined to agree with you when what I see is
>get 40% of your useful features at 3rd level
>get slightly better at everything every level afterwards
>get extra ASIs, so basically what 3.5 did but less so?
The two things 5e did right were proficiency bonuses and (dis)advantage.
Having played 5e since before it was released (did some NEXT playtesting at my LGS), I'm more disappointed than anything.
Goddammit, when did I turn into a grognard?
Now let me rot in peace as I dream up a fantasy heartbreaker that will never exist in published form and play systems I can't invest enough time into to improve.

>>48036188
DM Guild is limited to Forgotten Realms material only so people who might make quality stuff that deviates wildly from that setting are forced to navigate the nightmare that is the OGL.

2+ years of life always the same classes
Ranger is terrible
SCAG is the worst manual ever realesd
After 10 lv the game sucks hard

>>48035890
The halfling artwork.

>>48037087
I'm glad that feat stacking 'build' bullshit is gone. Nothing worse than being unable to drop interesting or plot relevant gear and items because the spergs at the table don't want to lose their cool combos. Also, the more a system allows players to focus on stacking one stat, the worse it gets. I've never seen a system where this wasn't the case.

>>48038839
Too much room for optimization and broken synergy is bad, obviously, but this is only after a point. every RPG needs at least some room for mechanical character variance (or else you might as well be playing Lord of the Dice).

5e is severely lacking in this department, and suffers for it.

Marketing, mostly. The D&DNext thing was a bit awkward and caused them to make too much of the idea of "pulling from all previous editions" and "modularity" which cost them the opportunity to make a strong, clear case for themselves off the bat.

I'd have teased it with add/billboards/signboards that said "2 + 3 = 5" with the WotC logo at the bottom to build up a little bit of hype. Then arrange for a presentation at pretty much any major con and announce that 5th edition is coming, that will combine 2's creativity with a more streamlined version of 3's rules, that the basic rules will be free, and that play will be designed for the "Big 3" books + a single sourcebook with an optional "organized play" guide in the works.


WotC probably would have never gone with it given how committed some of the marketers were to pushing it as "the edition made for everybody everywhere" but I think 2+3=5 would have done better in the long run by giving everybody a clear idea what to expect and helping the people who would actually like 5e's style of play find it much faster.

>>48038896
Sure, I'd love a second book of expanded archetypes and feats, but especially with how few you get I'd rather they be package deals. If you want to master swords, there should be one feat for that, not a 5 step feat chain over the course of the character.

Also, the point at which it becomes that is closer than most think. Variant human is rated extremely high for martial builds, for example, simply because it gets a feat out the gate. That alone should caution people on feat synergy.

>>48038970
Why not have a feat that gets better as your proficiency modifier goes up?
Like, instead of one feat requiring two others, one feat 'improves' into another, and can 'improve' into two different feats at a later level.
It would be a start, I guess.

>>48038759
It's open to Ravenloft now, too.
The general impression is that as they introduce (or rather reintroduce) new settings they'll add them as a supported setting for the service.


They're taking their time, which is irksome, but on the whole it's pretty fair I say. Can't fault them with wanting to establish tone and direction for their settings.

It's also worth noting that Forgotten Realms also includes Kara-Tur, Maztica, and Zakhara, so there's carte blanch for writing and selling adventures and general content to those ends, as well as them allowing setting-agnostic stuff like multiplanar adventures using the shared cosmology.
And, given that Sigil's straight-up in the DMG and is a canonical part of that shared multiverse, you can also do Planescape stuff.

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>>48039061
>Forgotten Realms also includes Kara-Tur, Maztica, and Zakhara
If you want to get really technical about things, Forgotten Realms includes all pic related and Realmspace, so there's even more room for bullshitting something up.

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>>48038970
It's not that they have to be chains. It's just that they have to interact. Even a little.

Lets take your example of a sword-master fighter. Obviously we're gonna want to play a fighter, and we're gonna want to use a fighter archetype that gives us bonuses for specifically using swords... except there is none.

Well that's OK, we'll just use one of these good, general archetypes that work with swords (and everything else). So, we have our class, our archetype, our first feat; we're ready to go adventuring.

So we go adventuring until we hit level 8, and, oh look, we get our second feat. Well, we already have our sword-master feat, so maybe we'll take a feat that combo's well with our sword-mastery. Maybe we'll take something like Power Attack, so we hit harder with our greatsword. Or, we could get something like Improved Critical to tear people to bits with our scimitars... except there are no feats like that.

That's fine, we'll just get Improved Athletics, since it gives a very marginal boost to strength. What an interesting, worthwhile, memorable upgrade. Truly 'build' defining. But that's OK, we keep adventuring until we raid this massive dungeon. filled with all sorts of loot - and hey, look, its one of those magic headband thingys that gave +4 strength in previous editions... Except now it just locks your strength at 19. It was already at 18. The headband - your most prized and potent magic item - does nothing for you.


Are you starting to see why I don't like 5e's character customization?

>>48039095
Are we talking about the Whatever of X Strength? I thought those had always set your STR to a given number.

>>48039125
Nope. They gave flat bonuses to stats in previous editions.

Obviously you wouldn't see that in 5e, though. That could maybe bring your stat to above 20, of all things. Disgusting! Stats higher than 20 are unnatural witchraft.
If the gods wanted us to have more than a +11 to melee at max level, we wouldn't be playing 5e.


But that's besides the point.

>>48039171
>They gave flat bonuses to stats in previous editions.
Only 3.X and 4e, prior to that they were set strength numbers, with the exact strength determined by random roll.

>>48039171
It's funny that people are so butthurt about the stat caps. In 2nd Edition, PCs couldn't have a natural attribute above 19, and nothing at all could have more than a 25 in any attribute.

Suddenly, they are the worst thing ever.

>>48039095
...not really. I mean, not to pick apart your item example, but there are magic belts that put your STR past the attainable cap, which will always be amazing for melee characters. The gauntlets are for the rogue and cleric if they want to moonlight.

As to your feat example, I would love a feat that gives more techniques like whirlwind, power attack etc, but it's not like that is specifically linked to swords. Besides, there IS power attack, it's called Great Weapon Master.

Basically I'm okay with improved athletics being your secondary choice, or even something else like Actor to round out the character. If there are 9 feats for 'optimal' sword mastery people feel obligated to take them.

>>48039187
Oh really? OK. 2e was before my time, and I've never really looked at it much (except for its weird/cool art).

>>48039206
The operative word being "natural" attribute. This is not a natural attribute. This is an attribute enhanced by rare and potent magics, giving me the strength of ten men.
There is no reason why it should be capped at an arbitrary level, especially if monsters and other NPCs are not similarly capped.

>>48039171
every belt of giant strength variant pushes your srtength above 20, as does the barb capstone. So while rare, it's already been included in the game and probably will again in the future.

>>48039234
That always kind of bugged me anyways. I mean, why optimize a stat if a magic item is going to end up replacing it anyways? You'd be better off taking all 14s or whatever and deal with the 10% accuracy penalty until it eventually gets fixed.

>>48039095
Not the guy you're talking to, but...

>a fighter archetype that gives us bonuses for specifically using swords...except there is none.
Well now, that depends: better how? More accurate? Have tried-and-true tricks up your sleeve? Let's start with the concept. What are you envisioning when you say you want a swordmaster?

>So we go adventuring until we hit level 8, and, oh look, we get our second feat
Fighters also get an ASI at 6; they're designed so you can experiment more with feats than other classes and so get more ability score increases with which to swap out, or just throw those points around for more expertise or versatility as the case may be.
It also means they suffer much less for multiclassing.

>sword-master feat
Do you mean the Blade Mastery feat from that recent Unearthed Arcana?

>Power Attack
Great Weapon Mastery, if you aren't offended by holding a longsword in two hands.
It also nets you some cleave ability on crit or kill.

>That's fine, we'll just get Improved Athletics, since it gives a very marginal boost to strength.
If you want to boost your Str. just put 2 points in Str instead of getting a feat.

>The headband - your most prized and potent magic item
...the one you just got? Got attached to that pretty quick.

>Are you starting to see why I don't like 5e's character customization?
Frankly, I understand it less than I did before.

>>48039206
I can not stand stat caps because they remind me of 2e, which houses a majority of the terrible campaigns and game groups I was in during that time.

I honestly believe a lot of shit that turned people off of dnd were the dms that finally had to start branching out for players since their pool of players dried up then went back to how they were doing things before they trapped new victims.

>>48039270
It's sadly a two-way street. Flat +'s to stats encourage stacking nothing but those, and they are unambiguously for the local fighter/barb/pally/whatever. Stat setting items are better in situations I described earlier, where someone who might like some str but doesn't want to invest heavily in it uses them. Ultimately, all of those belts are super rare, so unless your DM is very willing to pander then leaving your stats low is a fool's errand imo. The optimization you gain from a hypothetical best case scenario isn't worth risking having the worst case scenario.

>>48035890

It's the best D&D edition.

But still a very mediocre RPG game.

>>48035959
Why is he so active lately?

>>48039358
Any system that does not mow my lawn, suck my dick and do my taxes for me as I play is shit and all your games in these inferior systems are pathetic stabs in the dark at true roleplaying. You should feel like shit for playing them and move on with your sad, pathetic life. Real men love curves, bacon, hoo-rah.

>>48036188
>Matthew Mercer's homebrew is of questionable quality but has dominated the DMs Guild's "most-purchased products" section since the site's inception, for little reason besides him being a celebrity of sorts.

It could be because people actually like his work, which - if you had ever visited a 5e thread - would know people do.

>>48039238
>There is no reason why it should be capped at an arbitrary level, especially if monsters and other NPCs are not similarly capped.
They have a different cap. Not no cap. Besides, D&D has always had NPCs play by different rules. Before recent games had action points, healing surges and other shit that NPCs don't have, older editions had class levels and morale rolls for NPCs.

>>48039395
I like the caps both for thematic reasons, and because if they didn't exist people would just pump their attack stat and little else.

>>48039390
>It could be because people actually like his work, which - if you had ever visited a 5e thread - would know people do.
He already had a following for his voice acting and for Critical Role. He also got his Gunslinger and Blood Hunter or whatever on there as basically the first DMs Guild products, that were purposely pimped by Wizards to get people to use the site.

Some people like his stuff, certainty, but exposure and a pre-existing following are certainly the better part of their success, same with basically any product anywhere.

>>48039551
Sure.

...I don't see the problem.

You can't be arguing that WotC don't put the spotlight on other work in the DM's Guild, because they do.

>>48039375
I think you need to calm down anon.
5e isn't your mother. I'm sure there's a black dick 5e hasn't sucked yet.

>>48036876
That's not a hipster you dumb shit, it's just virt false flagging. And you fell for it.

>>48038059
He still hates it, he's just false flagging.

>>48035890
It's design is pretty conservative. It's a fixed, streamlined 3.5. Which, unless you preferred 4e, makes it the best version of AD&D. There's nothing objectively wrong with it, but it doesn't do anything new. It fixes the worst flaws of 3.5 but doesn't do anything to improve the game that isn't just fixing flaws. It doesn't advance the mechanics.

D&d 5ed is 3.5 + aD&D + 4th ed. for retardeds

>>48035890
>What went wrong?

I don't know what went wrong, please tell me anon. I play in 5e campaigns twice a week and there's a growing circle of 14 friends all clamouring to get in on campaigns.

>>48035890
Nothing went wrong. It's a great game. Saging as usual.

>>48036188
What a weird-looking cat. I've never seen that colouring in a real animal.

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>>48039669
Paranoia thy name is anon.

I like how virt went from "namefag" to "guy who shitposts about certain topic" to "literally every post I don't like is virt, even stuff that contradicts things virt has said in the past, because it's all a massive virt conspiracy."

I never thought I'd regret seeing that asshole banned, but nine months later people are still accusing everyone else of being virt.

>>48036952
Being a shitty DM in the single most home brew friendly edition of D&D will result in disappointment. What's different approving 3rd party stuff from customizing sourcebooks for your campaign anyways?

Or are you the kitchen sink not-Europe with kitsune type?

>>48038233
>Pathfinder exists yet 5e has easily overtaken it, but there are not enough players to target with a system like 5e

>>48041631
Ever heard of ban evasion?
And it doesn't matter if it's actually virt, it's still someone acting exactly like him.

>>48042019
>someone acting exactly like him

What, someone making bad, overly wordy arguments? Welcome to /tg/- next to /his/ and /lit/, we're the most pretentious fucks in this shithole. Doesn't mean everyone is your boogeyman.

>>48035890
They forgot to make it fun.

>>48035890
>>48035906
>>48035911
You lose a massive amount of authority over your own character and it's hard to make anything interesting. It's like going from Lego to Duplo, except with considerably less room to be creative or unique.

>>48038564
Pretty sure 4e fighter is the best it has ever been and ever will be.

>dat spear shield pushing
>dat polearm reach and control
>dat flail sliding
>dat hammer dazing

>>48035890
nothing went wrong you shit lord it's the best edition with the best storytelling tools rather than shitty combat calculator simulator.

I don't like the concept of the adventurer's league though. same with the pathfinder society. fucking 0 story and roleplaying. if I want to play a turn based combat I would play a game on my pc rather than calculating shit at a table with fat neckbeards on my free time.

>>48045234
>inb4 if you need mechanics to make your characters unique you can't roleplay

>le Virt boogeyman

>>48039273
>What are you envisioning when you say you want a swordmaster?
Ask the other guy. He mentioned sword-mastery, and I ran with the concept. I'd imagine, though, that it would be an archeytpe that has a number passive or active abilities concerning swords and their use. It could, for example, give you advantage on X attack rolls with a sword per short rest.

>Fighters also get an ASI at 6
The specific level was not what was being argued.

>Do you mean the Blade Mastery feat
No. I did not know this feat existed, and was referring to the hypothetical feat the other anon mentioned.

>Great Weapon Mastery
Excuse my ignorance, I only own the PHB for 5e. Again, I was just thinking of a well known feat in a hypothetical sense to make an example.

>just put 2 points in Str
What an interesting, worthwhile, memorable upgrade.

>got attached to that pretty quick
It's the most powerful magic item you own, obtained from the first major dungeon you cleared. You know, the kinds of dungeons with powerful liches and sleeping dragons, not whatever cave the local Ogre warlord is sleeping in.

>Frankly, I understand it less than I did before
Let me give you some real world examples, then, instead of all hypotheticals. In my current game of Shadowrun, I'm playing a street shaman focussed on summoning. The core of this specialization is a benefit which gives me +2 to summoning, but I've also decided to augment this by taking a mentor spirit that makes summoning water spirits easier.
Do you see how two mostly unrelated options work together, and allow my character to play to his strengths? It is my argument that 5e's feats/options cannot do this, and that they don't interact with each-other nearly as well as the feats/options in every other RPG on the market.

>>48041907
1) I never said they were a majority, just that they were a significant population.
2) Judging by roll20 stats, if you look at pathfinder and 3.5 combined, it's almost neck-and-neck with 5e in terms of popularity.

>>48045694
No, it's just fun to make a creative character as well. The abilities they impose on you are so strange and specific that they intrude on the flavor, especially with Ranger and Druid. All those abilities should have been options among many instead of a forced default.

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>>48045694
It's not a zero-sum game. While roleplay is what makes one character unique, it's the actual mechanics that make your character FEEL unique. If there's little to no mechanical difference between "grizzled old knight veteren" and "traveling samurai duelist," people are less inclined to play the traveling duelist, since they've already played the grizzled old vet. If you do play the traveling duelist, gameplay becomes samey and boring.
This isn't a problem in games like World of Darkness or Dark Heresy, which are more focussed on politics and story-telling rather than DnD's combat-focussed dungeon crawling (ironically, both these rpgs have various options available to the player and flourish because of it).

If you want the only differences between characters to be skin deep instead of actual mechanical difference, just play pdf related. God knows, it's easy enough to transfer roleplay elements from one system to another.

>>48045857
>Great Weapon Mastery
>Excuse my ignorance, I only own the PHB for 5e
Great weapon master is in the PHB

>feats don't interact
Sentinel + polearm master would like a word

>>48035890
It's really boring.

>>48037185
Dart fighter builds were a thing in 2e

>>48036015
And yet the marketing machine ran on full gear when it came out. You can sell nerds anything as awesome.

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>>48036833
You had me up until shilling Dungeon World.

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>>48046372

>>48046139
The fact that I only own the PHB was to show that I was ignorant, not to imply that great weapon master wasn't in it.

>Sentinel + polearm master would like a word
It's nice to see that 5e has at least 1 pairing of feats that interact. With the rate that splats are coming out, 5e might just have the synergy of most rules-lite systems by the end of its lifespan.

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>>48045674
>best storytelling tools rather than shitty combat calculator simulator.
I don't even

It's a combat simulator with no rules outside of the 5-ft grid-locked war game besides "lol whatever the GM makes something up".
Every single class is designed for killing things with the exception of the Ranger and the Ranger is regarded as the worst class because their forte is something that gets skipped over because the system has no rules for it because it isn't combat.

>>48036833
I liked the adventure modules.

This is the best edition of d&d so far imo

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For me it's the customization. If two people make a fighter they're going to feel very similar, even if one's a champion and the others' a battlemaster.

Also NO WARLORD WHAT THE FUCK

>>48047157
>I liked the adventure modules.
Really? Even the hardcore 5e fans think the adventure modules were crap.

>>48047196
5e fans tend to think Tyranny of Dragons was bad.

>Everyone complains that 4E classes feel too same-y
>WotC's response is to make every class have even less distinguishing options.

>>48047196
>>48047217

What was bad about it?

>>48047047
what forte

>>48047269
railroady as fuck

>>48045857
Year over year 2014-2015 5e doubled and Pathfinder shrunk by 20%. Roll20 as a whole grew. 3.5 games stayed the same.

There are no 2016 numbers, but Paizo released a new fucking system in a different genre to compete. 5e's popularity is despite 3.pf fans.

>>48036693
>They went back to magic supremacy and haven't even made a token effort to balance the classes
High level mages are supposed to be OP
Class balance doesn't have to be a thing in every single game. Each class has its purpose.

>>48047299
Really? I played through hoard of the dragon queen and my GM let us do pretty much whatever. We set up a military base in the fort that the villagers were hiding in and started launching an prolonged guerrilla campaign against the cultists. It was a blast.

>>48047269
The game wasn't finished when the module was, so you have a railroad with horrible balance that at one point has level 7 PCs fight a vampire and an adult white dragon.

It also doesn't try to utilize 5e's mechanics well, the opening scene practically uses a skill contest for a group stealth roll.

>>48047321
Announced, not released

>>48047299
>>48047349
I hear Tiamat is worth the going through the first book. what do u think?

>>48035890
The only thing that went wrong was 4E came out instead of this way back then.

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>>48038564
>Its because one 5e edition figther can do more things easily than a pathfinder one.
I wouldn't take "better than one of the most horribly gimped classes in the most horribly unbalanced game" as much of a compliment.

>>48047291
Wilderness survival and navigation.

>>48047321
And obviously this growth will continue forever and never decline even slightly.

>5e's popularity is despite 3.pf fans
My point exactly. They're not playing 3.pf because its a well designed system. They're playing it because 5e doesn't provide a good alternative.


>>48047397
Tiamat can be beaten if you have a shit DM. otherwise, she mops the floor with you.
Spellcasters can't hit her with level 6 or lower spells, and she can auto ignore level 7+ spells 3 times a day.
Ranged characters can't hit her nearly hard enough, and they're gonna get targeted by her first
Tiamat can easily maneuver any melee characters in the group.
Even though she poses a grave threat to the entire multiverse, you cannot ask for help from the gods or anything because reasons.

>>48038059
Virt hated and enjoyed whatever was convenient at the time to annoy the most people in a thread.

>>48046893
In 5e you get ability score increases every major tier of advancement (unless you're a Rogue, who gets one more, or a Fighter, who gets several more). Taking multiple feats is often a bad idea unless you're a Fighter. Or a Variant Human who gets a feat for free at first level.

And if you have a heavily class-based game like D&D relying on the feat system is a bad idea for distinguishing characters. 3.X did it and 4e did it and it caused a good number of cascading balance and interaction issues.

Personally I think one thing needs to be introduced to 5e to make it definitively great: a more thorough skill usage system, like Fantasy Craft uses.

>>48045234
Yeah, maybe comparing 5th to 3.5. But this is coming after the equivalent of playing with fucking Quatro.

>>48039372
His group probably abandoned him because he's awful.

>>48048207
>In 5e you get ability score increases every major tier of advancement...
Derp, forgot the whole point of this bit.

To get a feat you give up that ability score increase.

They're a big deal.

>>48045857
>The core of this specialization is a benefit which gives me +2 to summoning, but I've also decided to augment this by taking a mentor spirit that makes summoning water spirits easier.
As someone who's played 5e and not Shadowrun--wow, what an interesting, worthwhile, memorable upgrade.
It doesn't sound compelling or mean anything to me because I don't play the game and lack any context for what's supposed to be meaningful.
Main difference being I'm not trying to use this to prove a game I don't play is shitty.

As a total aside, the captcha system is completely shitting the bed. I've been trying to post this for 5 damn minutes.

>>48036812
>Critical Role

I encountered this for the first time the other day and finally understood my DM's ire. For context, I had been told some time before that our That Guy had been watching it and it was framing his method of play, but did not have a frame of reference yet. We went to visit him and watch East Asian Pictograms and found him already watching a session of people trying to fight a dragon... from the inside. I also learned that I fucking hate watching videos of other people playing D&D even more than I hate watching videos of other people playing video games.

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>>48048057
Except for Elves. He always hates the Elves.

>>48035890
They pandered to the 3.PF crowd.

>>48036833
>>48036876

Stop falseflagging, virt.

>>48048334
>wow, what an interesting, worthwhile, memorable upgrade.
Not that guy but you have no argument there and just parroted him to try and mock his points.
I've played 5e a lot and never touched Shadowrun and I can still understand what he means. Choices in 5e are rare and tend towards non-specific general abilities that result in all characters of a certain type feeling the same. You can't make summoning certain types of things easier, you can just take the spell and it ends there and you're the same as any other wizard who picked that one spell for their collection of many.

>>48048375
I enjoy Critical Role, but I don't take it as the model for every D&D game. The problem is people who watch it and let that determine what they expect every session of D&D to be like. Mercer made it clear that there's a lot of homebrew going on, but people seem to forget that.

>>48037025

>I don't have any specific examples

Stopped reading here.

Bring evidence next time.

>>48035890
The challenge rating and encounter building math is fucked.

>>48048956

They tried to pretend that the design for a mook and a boss could be covered under the same stat block.

There's a reason that downgraded bosses as mooks in video games have less complexity despite having higher statline.

>>48048542

Different anon here.

Without proper context, numbers are meaningless.

So just saying that you get a +2 and a bonus to summoning in SR doesn't do anything unless the person understands what that means.

Even then, that interaction isn't really all that memorable in comparison some of the other things that you can do in SR.

>>48048207
>a heavily class-based game like D&D relying on the feat system is a bad idea for distinguishing characters.
That would be a good excuse in 5e had good rules for multiclassing, archetypes weren't so restricted, and there were more than just 11 classes.

>>48048334
They actually are interesting and worthwhile upgrades. Those two qualities do a lot more for my character than just add numeric value. I only listed the bonuses because I was right at 2000 characters.

The +2 quality (I don't remember the name off the top of my head) also makes the spirits less aloof and more willing to talk to my character, which has been useful on a number of occasions (turns out, spirits know quite a bit).

The mentor spirit is even more meaningful; it's a character-defining quality. It means that I've found favor in the eyes of a powerful and primal, god-like spirit that embodies The Sea. The Sea speaks to me often, and is teaching my character magic. This includes occasionally gives me vision quests as side quests, and helping me during Initiation (which I need to do to improve my Magic stat). Also, it makes me swim better.

But, serving The Sea also has a downside associated with it. The Sea is a greedy spirit, for the sea takes what it wants and keeps what it takes. Since I have spent so much time with The Sea, its greed has rubbed off on me, and I need to make a willpower roll whenever I want to give stuff away or be charitable.

>>48048444
this guy is like, a troll, right?

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>>48050150
To be fair, there's noting wrong with genociding elves.

>>48050110
>That would be a good excuse in 5e had good rules for multiclassing
5e has nearly perfect multiclassing rules. You have to meet the requirement, get a benefit, and don't lose spell slots or proficiency bonus. The downside is not hitting ASIs on time.

>>48035890
Dragonborn and Drow as starter races. Not Holocausting all Gnomes in the lore. Not making Sorcerer a particularly attractive option over Wizard and Warlock. Other than that, it's bretty gud

>>48050217
With the way archetypes are set up (a bunch of small abilities that you're forced to take as a package deal, starting with the shit ones), you're heavily encouraged to go half-half on the classes, rather than more natural split between your classes.

>you don't lose spell slots
which doesn't matter, because you're not gonna multiclass between two spellcasters anyway. You can't learn spells of a higher level than you can cast in one of your classes, augmenting spells with higher-level slots is a bad and inefficient use of your spell-slots, and metamagic feats don't exist anymore.

>>48050349
>which doesn't matter, because you're not gonna multiclass between two spellcasters anyway. You can't learn spells of a higher level than you can cast in one of your classes, augmenting spells with higher-level slots is a bad and inefficient use of your spell-slots, and metamagic feats don't exist anymore.
Most multiclassing is between spell casters. Augmenting spells is he majority of what you will use them for anyways, only utility spells are typically cast at level. Metamagic feats are literally pure garbage and the most broken part of 3.5

>>48035890
A few things.

>wizards being hamstrung by notions of balance and versimiltude so much that they made martials boring again. I mean, look at the fucking ranger.
>using the d20 again, instead of any nonbinary roll that helps DMs figure out unintended consequences of actions. The star wars FFG dice are a good example. Apocalypse World has a good system too.
>giving every class equal access to the skill system (except for 2 other classes), giving every class equal access to the combat system, but not giving every class equal access to the spell system

etc.

Basically, it's just DnD with some of the chaff thrown out. Minor improvements overall, but still has the fundamental problems that have plagued DnD for generations.

>>48050548
FFG's dice mechanic is garbage. AW doesn't have a bad one.

>>48050504
>Augmenting spells is he majority of what you will use them for anyways
Excuse me? Are we talking about the same game here? Why would I use a 7th level spell-slot for my fireball just so I can deal 4d6 extra damage (which is gonna be cut in half because the enemy is undoubtedly gonna make their save)?

At least in 3.5, a 7th level fireball could be quickened and used in an emergency.

>>48050548
>>48050592
Since this is already a thread about complaining, can we also complain about Star Wars FFG and it's stupid fucking dice system?

The statistical bonus of skills upgrading a d8 to a d12 is almost exactly the same as the statistical bonus for skills just adding another d8.

>>48050599
Because you have fireball prepared, need to deal some decent area damage, prismatic spray is inconsistent, and you are flying.

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>>48035890
Personally, I hate 5e, but I understand that, from a focus-grouped marketing perspective, they did everything right.

The very fact that PF, a game that was literally identical to 3e, was able to become a thing, much less one of the top selling games, proved that what the market really wanted was just more 3e. 5e is basically 3e, with bounded accuracy, concentration, and advantage/disadvantage tacked on to band-aid the most glaring of 3e's flaws, without fixing the flawed core that everyone seems to love for some reason.

People wanted more 3e, Hasbro wanted to not share their profits with Piazo because of the OGL, and 3e is the carefully focused-grouped result that satisfies both desires.

Personally I hate it slightly less than I hate 3e, but I'm in the minority there.

>>48050660
God don't get me started about that critical darling that plays like hot garbage. All the danger of GURPS or RuneQuest with no way to avoid it, half of all the rolls in the game will be nothing but advantage or threats, needlessly complicated rules that take away from the dice mechanic, broken as hell force powers, etc.

The game expects you to play grunt versus grunt in Star Wars and the named characters in movies are 1000XP powerhouses that can never, ever be replicated.

>>48050592
>FFG's dice mechanic is garbage
I was super hyped when I read them, but in actual play I've found they TEND to result in one of two things happened.

A) The GM has no idea how to twist the roll and someone rolls like 5 advantage and a despair
B) The GM DOES know how to make both success and failure interesting but is restricted by the dice system when it just gives you flat success failure.

In my AoR game I ran, I found myself in BOTH situations far more often than I would care to admit. I LIKE the idea of making things more interesting than flat success/failure, but feel like I can do that with a binary dice system anyway with a trick I picked up from Burning Wheel of deciding if failure makes things interesting, and if not, just skipping the roll.

>>48050740
I 100% agree. My game constantly has dead rolls even in knight level play.

My tense, three hour social encounter ended with a roll of zero successes and seven threats after tallying up a critical dice pool multiple times. What the hell am I supposed to even do with that when the bad guys are slowly convincing the good guys to let them go?

Even worse, just try to have droid bad guys against ion weapons (especially grenades) or multiple battles without rest or using cases of stim packs. Every key battle in the system is: player 1 is unconscious, player 2 is disabled, and player 3 just dealt enough damage to destroy the ship they are standing on.

>>48050592
I like it, but the point is that binary, strict failure/success rolls are worse than trash. It's so boring. SW giving rules support and tons of examples of how to twist rolls to your player's benefit or detriment is better than DnD will ever be.

>>48045234
This is a bullshit argument.
>Waah I lost convoluted and broken rules which exacerbated fundamental class imbalances.
You've lost no 'authority' over your character, 5th ed doesn't let the DM write your character for you and you don't have less room to be 'creative' or 'unique' unless you think that creativity is only capable of being expressed through optimised builds and theory crafting. And frankly if you do you're part of the cancer in this hobby.

>>48050689
Or, I could just use Chain Lightning, and do all that but better, with a 6th level slot, and in an element that's less likely to be resisted.

>>48050740
>A)
You don't even know the half of it. we had to use a dice chart, and my DM misread the rules. We completely forgot that skill dice give successes and benefits, and we thought they only gave benefits. We ended up erasing the skills off our character sheets because we were actually more successful the fewer dice we upgraded.

>>48050952
>I mistakenly thought advantage meant roll 2 dice and take the lowest, therefore the advantage system in DnD is shit.

>>48050993
I wasn't saying it was bad, I'm saying my group made a mistake with it. Don't take it as a black mark against the dice system.

no need to get your panties in a twist, anon.

>>48047453
But 3.PF is still the system that most people pit 5e against so it does count for something. Unfortunately pathfinder appeased the caster supremacy munchkin crowd like nothing else so they're refusing to let it die.

>>48047185
Isn't Battlemaster a reskinned Warlord?

>>48050217
>don't lose spell slots
Multiclassing casting classes sucks and has no benefit whatsoever, with the exception of a few abusive minmaxer builds, such as the sorlock. Don't use that as an example of good multiclassing rules.

>>48051554
No. There are a few maneuvers that harken to Warlord powers, but they're super milquetoast equivalents. Purple Dragon Knight is just as lackluster and completely misses the idea that there were several different archetypes of Warlord that played very differently, so it should be its own class.

>>48050952
I was going with the specific Fireball in a 7th level spell slot.

>>48051599
And what multiclass are you missing out on that you so desperately need?

>>48051709
Fine, then why not Chain Lightning in a 7th level slot?

>>48050840
It gives a handful of hand tailored examples, and the mechanic is so shit in practice that it only works half the time. The books are particularly shitty advice.

Meanwhile binary success/failure is already up to DM arbitration that allows for the exact same results without mechanics that carry a lot of baggage with them.

>>48051794
Dude, you do know I said "you will use spells in higher slots a lot playing 5e" and you said "why would I do that?"

>>48051875
And I argued for using higher level spells in their proper slots. But you were like "no, it has to be a 7th level slot, we were talking about 7th level slots."

The benefit of using a higher-level spell slot for Chain Lightning is negligible anyway.

>>48051763
What?

>>48038839
Fucking this.

5e killed multiclassing and feats. The game is FAR, FAR better for it.

>>48051925
You could not be more retarded

Why does the spell slot system still exist. It's shit game design, shit fluffwise, shit everything.
Why do all damage types do the same things other than resistances, it's boring.
Why are there so few feats and why are they all shit.
Why does weapon choice barely matter at all.
Why are all the classes way too specific
Why are some options straight up better than others
Why did they waste so much space with stupid bullshit

Shit I'm just bitter I can't find a Fantasy Craft group, fuck 5e for being popular

>>48051939

Nani?

>>48052194

I feel your pain brother, I truly do.

I'd run one, but last time I made a game my dad caught terminal cancer. I dare not anger the curse again.

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>>48052335
>the dm gets hit by a car
>we play for a little while
>now he's puking blood
>the game isn't even good because he isn't a very good dm

>>48052194
>Why does the spell slot system still exist. It's shit game design, shit fluffwise, shit everything.
>Why do all damage types do the same things other than resistances, it's boring.
>Why are there so few feats and why are they all shit.
>Why does weapon choice barely matter at all.
>Why are all the classes way too specific
>Why are some options straight up better than others
>Why did they waste so much space with stupid bullshit
Because the majority of the market has a nostalgia boner for 3e, Piazo stole that market, and Hasbro wanted them back, so they made the game as close as they could to 3e, while still making it technically not under the OGL.

Artistic and game design failure, marketing success.

>>48047332
Yes, I'm well aware that mages are supposed to be OP, all the grognards keep telling me this as if its supposed to be a good thing. Intentionally making your game shitty is no better than unintentionally making your game shitty.

Also, each class doesn't have a purpose or has a purpose that a magic user can do better while still doing a hundred other things those classes couldn't even dream of doing.

>>48052434
Is it a marketing success though?

>>48052518
I always wondered why magicians had to have suge a wide range of spells. Wouldn't it be more fair if they specialized in a certain type or a couple types of magic in the same way that a martial would focus on one or two fighting styles.

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>>48052569
Yes, it would.

One thing could make me switch. Are there natural benefits for einhanding in 5e?

In 3.5, two-hander guy gets fatter weapon damage dice, often reach and some other weapon feature, and 1.5x strength to damage. No feat investment or anything, that's the natural benefit of the style. Meanwhile einhanding has you using a strictly worse one-handed weapon with fewer features, smaller base damage and only 1x strength to damage, with zero gain.

Just disregarding one style's dramatically better and lower-investment options to expand from the baseline (which was still The THF Show Starring Ape With Log, again), I want to know if they even THOUGHT about different styles at the really basic featless level of combat interaction.

>>48035890

They made a game for grogs. After they raised two editions creating a group of players who were optimizers. One focused on over the top power levels caused by poorly written content which could be combined in a million game breaking but often entertaining ways and the other on tactical wargaming.

5e was described as being modular and all things to all people, it turned out to be a second and in many ways less ambitious attempt at 3e.

That made a lot of DM's happy but they lost a lot of players in the process ... slightly less than with 4e, but still it's just silly to keep throwing the people who liked your previous edition under the bus so often. It makes no business sense.

>>48052811
Shields.

>>48052811
Einhanding? Are you talking about wielding a weapon in one hand and nothing in the other? Take a level in Monk for martial arts, a level in Fighter for the Dueling style, and a level in Rogue for sneak attack.
At third level you get two attacks, one with a shortsword for 2d6+2+dex, followed by one with your fist for 1d4+dex. Then you can mix up your levels between those three classes as you please and have an effective weapon-in-one-hand guy.

>>48052569
Extremely so. I often impose such limits as well.

Doesn't seem to get through to some people who think magic should be anything ever always.

>>48052811
Fighting styles are something the more melee classes get, and at a basic level one-handed weapons are slightly behind in damage compared to two-handers, but shields are a more meaningful benefit as well.

They're both viable options, but Two-handers still win in raw damage.

>>48052569
It would help address the imbalance but killing the notion that martials are limited to what people can do in reality and magic users are limited only by their imagination and their spell book size, and rebuilding the game from there would help more.

Most figures of myth and legend were martial characters but you'd have to multiclass like nuts (or be so high level as to practically be a god) to do any of the things Beowulf did, to give a more mundane example.

>>48053096
>beowulf
inb4 endless mythology posting

>>48035890
Save math. CR system. Complex fighter / simple spellcaster options. The whole combination of encouraged point-buy, ASIs and Belts of X Strength.

>>48035890
>They decided on "no mechanical support" was a good company policy.
>They decided character options are bad.
>They decided the opportunity to use character options is bad.

As a result it's a poorly supported game, with almost no options, and almost no opportunity to use what few options there are.

It's basically got the character variety of Diablo III.

Also, fuck all for digital support, and it doesn't even have proper PDFs.

If that's what you're going for, great. If that doesn't scratch your RPG itch, 5e doesn't have much for you, and you're better off looking at other games.

>>48036540
>I enjoy running 5e so much more because I don't have to worry about a lot of crunch and floating modifiers.
I get that, that's my biggest problem with Pathfinder.

>>48036188
>3.PF still manage to exist, somehow.

There are people who want to play D&D, and are unsatisfied with 5e.

>>48036286
>>48053459
>They don't value choice.
>They don't publish non-physical books.
>Fuck All for Digital Support

All things Pathfinder has in spades, despite it having different problems.

As I've explained to friends who asked why I (and my group) would rather Pathfinder than 5e

Pathfinder has design problems.
5e has different design problems.
Pathfinder's design problems bother me less than 5e's. So I play Pathfinder instead.

>>48052434
is this real or are you this delusional?

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>>48050150
looks to me like hes a normal /tg/ denizen. he hates elves. especially waifu elves.

im pretty sure there are a couple of people that hate him alot for that and try to shame him into silence. most likely continental philosophers or SJW types

>>48053856
Are you virt?

>>48053648
>All things Pathfinder has in spades

Which is why despite still having a mechanically unsound product that they have no intention of fixing the core of, and also being run by SJWs, Paizo is still a smarter company than WotC and I'm more interested in what they publish, because I know that at least every 3 months I'm getting a brand new book filled with lore, new options to build new character types, and all kinds of art and stuff to add to my games.

With Wizards I get...one campaign every 10 months-ish?

>>48052541
Considering the extremely revenue/investment ratio, considering the skeleton crew they have working and the slow release of books that still see sales... yeah

>>48054668
Pretty much.

But at this point, more character support for Pathfinder is *Mostly* irrelevant. You've got all the character options you could ever need, anything more is just a bonus.

At this point the main things they put out *Now* that actually improve the support for the game are more bestiaries and adventure paths.

These days I don't run Pathfinder, I run my half-finished d20FHB, which is not designed to play like pathfinder, so much as designed to allow me to leverage as many pathfinder options as possible while gutting the core system and classes to make it more to my liking. To some degree I want a game that's compatible with Pathfinder as my D&D, unless someone is going to support a game well enough that it can replace Pathfinder (I don't see any company doing that with wizards having decided not to with 5e).

>>48054784
Expanding on that:

For my "Non Pathfinder Fantasy Gaming", I've picked up GURPS.

Dungeon Fantasy, and GURPS Fantasy are a good start, toss in some stuff from GURPS Monster Hunters, & Ritual Path Magic, and you've got a decent amount of material for a fantasy game, and then use Powers, and GURPS basic to build any Races/Templates/Class Features you might like.

The options are there, or the pieces are there to build them.

Unlike 5e, I've got the lego pieces to slap together whatever I need pretty quickly.

Hell, I can use those lego pieces to convert over Pathfinder/3.X/5e/Rolemaster/RuneQuest options, if need be (and I intend to, as needed).

>>48053736
What exactly do you find delusional?

The fact that 5e is basically 3e with some new features tacked on

That that's what the market wanted?

That 5e is a marketing success?

>>48054901

> The fact that 5e is basically 3e with some new features tacked on

It's an evolution of 2e making some of the same decisions as in 3e, some different and in general simply sticking closer to 2e.

>>48050898
Not the guy you were responding to, but 3.X allows for a fuckton more flexibility in character creation. Granted, most of them are shit, but you can make them.

Part of the problem (assuming you want more options) is that 5e has barely any books out at the moment, while 3.X has metric assloads of them and they're all chock full of new classes and feats and the like.

Don't get me wrong, I like 5e's way of doing things, but I don't want to do it that way for every character for the rest of my life.

>>48054572
exactly the type of response i would expect from a continental philosopher.

>>48055044
>5e has barely any books out at the moment
>at the moment
They've made it clear you can expect it to stay that way.

I tried 5e, and decided I wasn't going to buy in until I saw what kind of support it got beyond the main books.

I was surprised to learn the answer was "basically none", and was then glad I didn't waste my money buying in.

That said, I may end up buying a campaign or two to use with Pathfinder, if they're any good.

>>48055029
I'm guessing you only know 2e through post 3e/OGL faux nostalgia. As someone who loved 2e in the 90's, it is nothing like it.

5e is literally 3e with some extra features added intended to fix the most glaring of surface problems in 3e (specifically concentration, bounded secondary stats, and advantage.) It is practically identical to 3e, hell if they hadn't already wasted the name 3.5 on a game that changed nothing from 3e, "3.5" would be the perfect name for it. It took, at best, a writing/art/aesthetic style from 2e.

>>48055044
I've got nothing against options and your point that 5e doesn't have as many as 3.X is true, but 5e has a slower release schedule in order to prevent the horrific glut of poorly written feats and spells that was the ruin of whatever balance 3.X started with.

I was taking umbrage with the original posters stupid argument that more options = better and that if a system doesn't have lots of useless, unbalanced options then your creativity as a player is somehow crippled. I was particularly annoyed because in 3.X most of the options, as you said, are shit so nobody used them.

>>48056211
Actually 5e has a slow release schedule because their funding has been gutted by Hasbro and the development team is on suicide watch.

>>48056211
>Variety of content is what was wrong with 3.x!
No anon. Poorly balanced content, and shit-worthless options are what was wrong with 3.x, and that was the case starting with the core book.

More = better, assuming similar or better quality, yes.

And even in 3.x, that was the case. The supplement books were just as good as core (often better). The problem is that's a not so much a bar as a standard as it is a scatter chart.

Some of both the best and worst options were in the core book, even after 8 years of supplements.

In 5e, there is slightly less crap options, but there are next to no options at all, as has been spelled out.

The core rules have a shit chassis for character customization, and there are very few options to pick from when you do get a choice.

Comparing it to pathfinder, if you took out all of the shit options in pathfinder and only kept the best of the best of the best (IE, ignoring all the crappy options as though they didnt exist), you's still have a dozen times the options and opportunities as in 5e.

I'd rather have to filter through the bad options to get to the truckload of good ones than only have a game with a small car load of options of any quality.

>>48056301
It's because they did market research and realized that they were over-saturating the market with books that people would use 5% of. Their goal is to hopefully lower the cost of the hobby while making the supplements more useful.

>>48056563

>More = better, assuming similar or better quality, yes.

The thing is, more quantity that's put into something, the more bloat gets shoved in just to say "eh, this will give us our quota for the book."

I'd rather have 12 options that have a degree of quality than have inumerable options that run the gamut from shit to meh to awesome.

>I'd rather have to filter through the bad options to get to the truckload of good ones than only have a game with a small car load of options of any quality.

I'd rather have a handful of options that can play with one another without one tree of options being outright better than the others than have a system where I have to buy hundreds of dollars worth of supplements, in adition to having to shift through the bullshit to find something that's worth playeng

>>48056301

Trying to convince someone to run a game when the system required more books than GURPS is a hurdle that keeps many people out of the hobby.

Especially when, unlike GURPS, you need all of these supplements since the core rulebook was so poorly written that most of the classes were either broken, meh, or fucking useless.

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5e is a good system for DMs who can create interesting adventures in well thought-out worlds, and for players who genuinely want to role play a character.

5e is terrible for min-max autists who plan their character advancement to lvl 20 and want to spend most of the game rolling against convoluted mechanics and success charts.

I've ran D&D since 2nd edition (along with a few other games), and this is the most fun I've had since 2nd.

Blessed with a good new group, most are close to age 30 (younger than me), with compatible work schedules and great enthusiasm.

>>48057306
For an experienced DM like myself, 5e has all the guts I need to run what I like.
The worst I'll say about 5e is that the books are laid out by a fucking retard, especially the indices in the back. Whoever created the index system needs a punch in the throat.

>>48056301
That's why they are paying people to stream games, run podcasts, and support third party publishing by paying for a marketplace for it? Because 5e got no support?

They went back on the best edition of D&D because nerds need their casters to be more relevant than "le sword swing man", since they never got over Chad in 9th grade both being more popular and amounting to more when he got older.

>>48057336
Even WotC admits their indexes are awful, it's a very common complaint.

The DMG layout works though, but he MM and PHB are shit in that regard.

>>48057373
Yeah, it's beyond hilariously frustrating.
And the MM wastes a shit-ton of space, and includes some really questionable monster choices out of the old Fiend Folio, which was about half garbage back in the day.

Pathfinder is a massive cash-grab.
I run 5e set in Lankhmar, with Pathfinder Pawns (and home printed ones) and flip maps, and it's been fun as hell so far. So much of it is getting good people, and I got super lucky.

>>48056301
You're an idiot.

>okay guys, lets turn dnd into a BRAND!
>uhh okay
>lets grunt out a 5th edition, which is always half off on canadian amazon for some reason
>lets update it with a whopping 2-3 books a year and make all of them boring forgotten realms shit
>even worse, lets take ravenloft and make it boring forgotten realms shit
>dark sun? Maaaaaybe :^) We'll see if you keep buying FR shit though
>thats okay though, because DnD is multimedia now!
>board games that use 4e's system
>a deckbuilding game based on the forgotten realms
>dice masters DnD
>DnD attack wing which bombed
>you cant even buy the minis you want, you STILL have to FUCKING blind buy them
>now dont be such a stinky turd, friend! because there's DnD videogames
>ahhh, the DnD videogames of 3.5 and lower were so goo-
>hiya there faggots
>my name's sword coast legends and I'm so bad, I killed the company that made me
>are you ready to play as a ranger, cleric, fighter, paladin or wizard and nothing else?
>haw haw

I hate DnD now. System is fine but I HATE THE FUCKING FORGOTTEN REALMS AND I HATE SHITTY DND VIDEO GAMES

>>48035906
>>48035911
This thread didn't really need to go past these two posts. I'm assuming it's just lonely trolls bumping it at this point.

>>48057995
Don't forget Fantasy Grounds, the fucking abomination that is so horribly priced, it's sold on Steam where almost all of it's reviews are negative because people realize they need to pay full fucking price just to use the rules.

At the recent D&D livestream thing at Meltdown Comics, they mentioned that Fantasy Grounds, and the entire fucking chat blew up about how bad it is. They mentioned that the demographics for FG2 are basically age 30-45, which tells you everything you need to know; It only appeals to retards who have no concept of anything digital and have no problem spending huge amounts of money on a product that does exactly one thing and nothing else.

>>48055414

I'm not saying it's closer to 2e than 3e, I'm saying it's a parallel branch of evolution from 2e which stuck closer to it than 3e did.

The big one is the whole check system with small bonuses except for the rogue/-likes. This is clearly closer to NWPs than 3e's large bonuses and take 10/20s etc. The smaller number of spells per day. Magic items going back to depending on DM mercy. Extra attacks being class based.

Defining 3e by core is disingenuous, what 3e turned into was something entirely different. The XPH gave the game a huge kick up the ass early on, popular classes like Binder yet more and finally ToB and MIC ... this was what 3e was to it's fans.

>>48056623
Whatever helps you sleep at night.
>>48057227
5e has a good core rulebook.

>>48057306
If your DM can create interesting adventures in well thought-out worlds, and your players genuinely want to role play, why are you playing Dungeons and Dragons?

>>48057168
>muh bloat
Just ignore the supplements. It's that simple.

If you fee like the game you're playing has enough content, don't use any new content. If you feel that one supplement is far superior to another, use the good one and ignore the bad.

Stop trying to think of this as a zero sum game, where fewer options always yields higher quality per option.

>>48058497
I found FG useful when I used it back in like, 2008. Did they fuck it up hardcore with the 3.0 release or something?

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It's just fucking boring. I know 4th wasn't everyone's cup of tea and it had a lot of problems like 3.5 had with bloat and everything but it was still a step in the right direction. It tried something new. 5e is nothing new and I never imagined they could make a system that would have me feeling nostalgic for 3.5 but they did. I'd rather play a mediocre 3.5 game than the best game of 5e ever. And I am fucking sick of 3.5

I have no idea why people praise it so much. My friends love it, my FLGS plays it almost to exclusion, but it's just fucking boring, watered down, "safe" D&D. It's really baffling, but then again these are the same people who held a torch for 3.5 for 20 years.

Basic is the only D&D thing I play anymore. Maybe some 4e gamma world.

>>48059743
The thing is, for all of the "5e is totally better than 3.5 bro!", it... really isn't, unless you count being better than core 3.5 as being better than 3.5 when nobody but retards likes core 3.5.

I mean, supposedly 5E has a 'better Fighter' according to most of its fans... but if I want to play a Fighter, 3.5 has the Warblade, and the Warblade makes 5E's Battlemaster look absolutely pathetic in comparison.

I like 5E in general but it does take some major steps back from 4E. 4E is one of the best written, designed and laid out RPG books I've ever seen and the standardized presentation of powers was much much better than the lengthy blocks of text used in 3.5 and 5E.

I also don't like 5E's class design and lack of choices. Every single class and path is boring and options are limited. And even then they couldn't balance it right. WotC should have been more proactive in making interesting, unique mechanics for each class, then seeing how they could twist those for paths. The fact that every class chooses their path at a different level is ludicrous.

I was happy to hear they'd be taking it easy on the splats but absolutely nothing over two years is a drought.

But my biggest gripe by far is the dull core mechanic. 1d20 vs an arbitrary DC just isn't interesting anymore. I've gotten more into dice poker type systems, and it's so much more fun and rewarding.

Also Forgotten Realms is the most boring, bland, safe bet setting possible and I just can't bring myself to care about it.

5E is safe. Too safe.

>>48059688
>Did they fuck it up hardcore with the 3.0 release or something?

Not in a sense that it does less than it did, it just makes no sense and has no place in the current landscape of useable products that facilitate gaming.

>You still need to purchase it and download it
>And so does everyone who wants to play
>And you need to actually buy the rules modules if you want to use them.
>So, pay $50 for the basic D&D 5E rules.
>And then pay for the Monster Manual.
>And then pay for the DLC rules packages.
>No, I'm not making this up.
>It doesn't have built in camera support, it doesn't have system-agnosticism, you can't effectively run games without buying a rules module.

It's antiquated compared to more actually useful tools. If WotC wanted actual success, they should have dumped their money into building professionally-constructed tools, SRD support, character sheets, and other investments in Roll20, since that's what's actually crushing the VTT market right now, and WotC hitched their wagon to the wrong horse.

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>>48059824

You're so right, but what baffles me is a lot of the 3.5 fans, in my personal experience, HATE anything that makes fighters more than gimped loot mules. 5e again sucks casters dicks while throwing scraps to the martials.

I get it if you want to make fighters feel "realistic" but neither 3.5 nor PF even come close to succeeding at this. In real life there were warriors that could take on many men at once and slaughter them. Many fighting techniques allow you to slay your opponent with one or two good strikes. Now take into consideration that the average soldier has 11s for physical stats in DnD terms and it's really hard to take people seriously when they want your godly strong and agile hero to only be able to attack once in ~7 seconds and only hit 1/5 times. I could fucking attack faster and more accurately than that and I barely know how to use a sword.

And he'll if some autistic swede can loose 5 dead accurate arrows mid-air, don't you think a heroic Bowman could do at least that?

>>48060124
>WotC hitched their wagon to the wrong horse.
As always. They got a shitty, cheap dev for the Neverwinter MMO, they got a shitty, cheap dev for the Sword Coast game. Both run into the ground.

Seriously, why can't WotC do anything right?

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>>48035890
Well done op, you earned this one.

>>48060149
All the great heroes from myths and legends? Most of them never got past 6th level.

By 20th level, most fighters should be comparable with The Hulk with sheer durability and destructive capability. It's actually UNREALISTIC how weak 3.5 martials.

>>48035890
I've played in a 5E game as a bard, alongside a Ranger, two Fighters, a Cleric, a Warlock, a Rogue and a Druid (Not all players stayed with game/characters survived).

The ONLY thing I didn't like (And I stress "only") is Spell DCs don't scale. I understand that there's less ways to ramp up ability scores, but my big 3rd level spells are just as "hard" to resist as my cantrips, and those are just as difficult as they were 3 levels ago. Now I'm only using things that cause disadvantage or loss of actions and whatnot, so I can't imagine how a Sorcerer/wizard/warlock feels when their handfull-o'-dice top tier spell gets shrugged off by the orc just as easily as their 1d6 cantrip.

>>48060162
>Seriously, why can't WotC do anything right?
Their designers are actually nice people, and I think they genuinely wanted to make a good game in some sense.

I have no idea how their executives work, they have no fucking clue what they're doing.

And then there's the DM's Guild, which feels to me a lot like what Bethesda has done with Elders Scrolls/Fallout; They pumped a lot of money into a really shitty product, and at some point they stopped development and published a broken or unfinished mess and said "Welp, we can't possibly fix this because we just have no idea. Let's just open up a site that lets amateurs and unpaid hobbyists make mods and patches that fix our game and make it playable and add all the things we are too lazy to, and we'll just take a slice of the money."

The DM's Guild is a good idea that ALREADY EXISTED. Notice how all it is, is a copy-paste of the RPG DriveThru sites? Third-party sales of modules, supplements, and fan content already existed. WotC just put their stamp on it so they could get a cut of the money.

The fact that they've straight up said that their design plan for 5E when it comes to new classes/race/item/etc. splats and modules is "That's what the DM's Guild is for" just shows you how they've stopped actually supporting 5E.

>>48060268
I like 5E personally, but I do agree with this, lack of purely mechanical splat in favor of selling community content is bullshit.

>>48060304
Everything about 5E to me really, really feels like they're trying to make as much profit while spending as little on content as possible. Anything they can do to nickel-and-dime people to hopefully rake in more money, while spending next to nothing, seems to be how they're going.

They've hit all the notes;
>A shit P2W MMO with cash-shop stuff that is cranked out by a cut-rate dev studio and just cashes in on Forgotten Realms properties? Check.
>A release schedule of 2 books per year, which are just Adventure Paths designed to keep people entertained until the next one? Check.
>A 3PP market where they get a cut of everything sold for literally no input? Check.
>Randomized boxes of minis forcing you to bulk-buy them if you actually want a useful collection? Check.
>A horrible VTT program that they're re-selling all their rules and errata for full price? Check.
>Diving on the Critical Role bandwagon by starting their own stream, and then pinching Matt Mercer to run a second one when the Chris Perkins stream isn't doing too well, as well as milking the everloving fuck out of the Penny Arcade crew? Check.

I'm anxious to see what they do next.

>>48060403
Yeah, from what I understand the boys at Jewsbro have seriously put he screws to the D&D team after seeing magic doing so well, especially given the sales of things like modern masters.

You can even see it in MTG's current story where they are ripping off the avengers, at MaRo's own admission. I personally am getting to the point where I want the games to die so I don't have to watch something I love flaining about in agony beneath the weight of Jewsbro Toys Inc.

>>48051859
You need mechanics for nonbinary success/failure built into the system, or aggreed upon before. Otherwise you're basically asking the players to engage in freeform roleplaying where you make up random consequences to their successful actions. And that sort of arbitrariness isn't fun if your players want even some game to their storytelling.

>>48060243

Yep this pretty much. You could have 40 Str and a wizard will still slap your shit without even being there or remembering he set the trap

>>48035890
The worst parts of 5E:
>Linear fighters, quadratic wizards
>CR and encounter math is terrible
>Martial characters lack interesting options in combat
>Martials also have no significant edge Skill-wise over casters, so they suck out of combat as well
>Advantage/Disadvantage don't stack
>Armour Class still sucks as a mechanic
>Hit Dice should have just worked like 4E Healing Surges
>Infinite Cantrips with high damage scaling

The game has some good elements though; Backgrounds are neat for newbies, races are balanced (and you can just ban the ones you don't like), proficiency and bounded accuracy works more or less, feats actually matter now, and magic items are optional and work as special rewards instead of an expected gain from adventuring.

If they took the best parts of 5E, make Adv/Disadv stack, inserted them into 4E, and streamlined the powers, you'd have a damn good game.

>>48035890
Your conception faggot, don't fucking mock the best thing that happened to the hobby, you dicksplat. I swear to god you cancerous 4th faggot, you need to put a bag of holding on your head and tie it shut. You make me sick. I hope you trip on a d4 and roll down the stairs. Fucking edition wars, always assuming things have gone wrong. Fucking leper cunt munch.

>>48059022

I was referring to 3.PF, specifically.

>>48059233

Here's the thing.

For all the "options" that 3.PF offers, only like 15% of it is actually balanced for play, and that includes the bullshit in core.

You need those supplements just so you can run a game where fighting man and sneaky rogue isn't overshadowed by the mages who can end encounters in one turn, by design.

It's hard to ignore the supplements that they released when the fucking core rulebook is the most imbalanced part of 3.PF, by design and the supplements actually fix some (not all) of the issues with the balancing.

With that in mind, I'd rather just play a game where I don't need to buy a shelve's worth of books just so the fighter, rogue, wizard, and cleric can remain relevant throughout the game without GM fiat fixing what shouldn't have been a problem in the first place.

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>>48057168
>I'd rather have 12 options that have a degree of quality than have inumerable options that run the gamut from shit to meh to awesome.
And I'd rather have 120 options of qualify, even if it means having to filter out the options that aren't of quality.

>>48057168
>>48057227
>hundreds of dollars worth of supplements
>Pathfinder is under the OGL
>PRD, d20PFSRD, and Archives of Nethys have all the character options.

Corebook + d20PFSRD and you're set.

The Corebook has everything you need to run the game (except the chase rules, which might come up, and a couple of other unusual corner case rules you would just grab from PRD or d20PFSRD).

d20PFSRD/AoN/PRD for additional character options. The GM can opt to not even look at them, and just have the players hyperlink all their abilities from their character sheet so he can see what all their abilities do.

A Bestiary could be helpful for the pictures that go with the creatures, but if you're strapped for cash you can get them on 3 websites, including one run by Paizo, for free.

You might also want a copy of the Inner Sea World Guide and Inner Sea Gods if you're planning on using Golarion.

Region booklets are pretty decent if there's a region you want more setting fluff on.

Grab an Adventure Path if you're planning on running one.

But you can easily run a Pathfinder game with just the 1 book and a website that only the players really look at.

Hel, you could print out and bind this PDF (all legal) and use *IT* as your core book, and skil the $30 main book.
http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxwYXRoZmluZGVyb2djfGd4Ojc2YTE0ZDVhNjRhYTk1Mw

>Pathfinder is very much a game you can do everything with a single purchased book, and there's a free version of it available without any artwork.

>>48062074
>Linear fighters, quadratic wizards

>implying this is a problem

the D&D fanbase has clearly stated loud and clear that they want wizards to be gods, and jocks... I mean martials to be their servants.

>>48057355
>That's why they are paying people to stream games, run podcasts, and support third party publishing by paying for a marketplace for it? Because 5e got no support?
>Stream Games
Marketing.
>Run Podcasts
Marketing
>Third Party Publishing
This is their concession because they're not providing it any support, they set up a system for other people to try to support it for them.

I'm sure some of it will be quite good, but it's all very obscure, and overall the quality of the DM's Guild stuff (which is basically the only "support" 5e is getting) varies as much or more than the 3.5 stuff did, so you're back to filtering out crap, only now instead of being spread over like 25 books it's spread out over a thousand.

None of it is indexed and sorted and categorically organized (like d20PFSRD/AoN).

And worse, because it's all digital, you can't read it before you buy it, so you don't know if the books you buy are shit or not, and if they're shit you're just stuck with them. You can't even resell the things.

>>48062936
Enh.

You know what happened?

A bunch of us (myself included) enjoy the high powered mage gameplay of 3.x, and that's the game we want to play.

A bunch of other people want nothing more powerful than LotR, and want "muh realistic fighters".

So 5e made the decision to support both sub-games again rather than choose one or say "you have to pick which of these two sets of classes you will allow", which means martial-caster disparity is back in full swing.

>>48062850
Everything rule-wise that is published for Pathfinder is free. Every rule, crunch bit, player option, and update, is free on the PFSRD.

Sure, you don't get the formatting, the artwork, or the lore/fluff that goes with it, but THAT is why you buy/torrent the books, if you like collecting them.

5E's SRD is not really an SRD, and does not contain all the rules content.

>>48063216
Yes?

Dude was complaining that Pathfinder required you to spend a fortune on books in order to play it properly.

I pointed out that it did not, and that 3.PF requires significantly less buy-in to play than 5e does.

>>48062850

Here's the thing though, why should I have to use so much research when the game itself is still poorly written and poorly balanced?

It's nice having a pdf with everything you need but there's so much bullshit that just doesn't work that even the best that the game offers is much less than what you can do in other ttRPGs, even in comparison to other editions of D&D.

I mean, if you want to play it then more power to you but I'm happy with 5e and enjoy not having to shift through an ocean of shit for fool's gold.

>>48063183
>So 5e made the decision to support both sub-games again

And in doing so it supports neither well. Great job.

>"you have to pick which of these two sets of classes you will allow
except that's exactly what you have to do anyway.

>>48063303
No, I understand what you were saying, I was just adding to it a little bit. Obviously the dude you responded to is long gone.

>>48063326
>>So 5e made the decision to support both sub-games again
>And in doing so it supports neither well. Great job.
Pretty much

>except that's exactly what you have to do anyway.
Wouldn't it have been nice to have two complete sets of classes depending on which type of campaign you want to run, instead of two half-sets?

Fighters could play as supernatural warriors in a high powered campaign, and wizards could be Low Magic Magicians in a low powered campaign.

>>48063332
Eh. It's 4chan, he could be back in an hour or something, you never know. And someone else who thinks similarly to him might find something interesting in my post they hadn't considered.

But yeah. PF is way more accessible than 5e's Core Book + Thousands of Fan Supplements approach.

>>48063316
>why should I have to use so much research when the game itself is still poorly written and poorly balanced?
This sentence is a non-sequitor. One does not follow from the other.

>so much bullshit that just doesn't work that even the best that the game offers is much less than what you can do in other ttRPGs, even in comparison to other editions of D&D.
You're not talking about character options, since no other edition of D&D has nearly as many as 3.5/PF. So you must be talking about...I dunno, in-game mechanics? In which case 5E still doesn't have any major advances except that maybe a Fighter can attempt a grapple without eating an AoO.

>but I'm happy with 5e and enjoy not having to shift through an ocean of shit for fool's gold.
You're happy just being given a half-game that will never actually be finished. This is likely because you've never played D&D before, and paid full price for all 3 rulebooks WotC sold you.

>>48063418
>Wouldn't it have been nice to have two complete sets of classes depending on which type of campaign you want to run, instead of two half-sets?

Yes it would.
An "apprentice" wizard type class to go with the fighter, and a "champion" to go with the wizard.

Why couldn't they do that, fucking wotc

>>48038103
it seems like your jerking off about your background instead of playing a game that's supposed to allow an expressive outlet with original content

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>>48062600
I'm sorry, did you see me mention Pathfinder in my post? Because I'm pretty sure I was talking about the nature of suplements/bloat in RPGs.

Stop seeing this from a view of "Pathfinder is shit, so if it's in Pathfinder it must be shit." a plethora of high-quality, balanced options is a feature of innumerable RPGs, all of them better RPGs than 5e or Pathfinder.

Furthermore, claiming that 3.P is flawed does not make 5e any less flawed. 5e and 3.P are two very different games with different strengths and different weaknesses. The only real similarity between them is that they both use the 20 system and they're both trash.

>>48063428

>This sentence is a non-sequitor.

I'll explain myself to you, I don't want to have to use the internet just to play a fucking tabletop game for 3-4 hours per week.

As someone who played MtG for about three years or so, it's ludicrous how much more research you have to put in just to find out that you should've chosen this one option three levels ago and are now effectively screwed until you retire the character.

But I digress.

>In which case 5E still doesn't have any major advances except that maybe a Fighter can attempt a grapple without eating an AoO.

You can improve some spells by spending a spell slot of higher level, there's (dis)advantages that replaces the checkbook balancing of stacking (+) and (-) everytime you take a swing, backgrounds are great for newbies who don't have a solid idea for crafting backstories yet, and having branching paths for classes does act as a solid replacement for prestige classes (even if it doesn't go as far as it could've gone, for the moment).

Overall, there's a solid core here, it's just that they're taking a while to come up with content, which isn't necessarily a bad thing since it means they're being careful not to repeat 3.PF's bloat and balance issues by shotgunning supplement releases.

>You're happy just being given a half-game that will never actually be finished.

That's presumptuous of you to say.

>This is likely because you've never played D&D before, and paid full price for all 3 rulebooks WotC sold you.

Actually, I've been playing 3.PF for years before switching to other systems and 5e, which is why I'm happy that they've distanced themselves from the issues associated with it.

>>48063465

>Why couldn't they do that, fucking wotc.

Because the last time they did that, everyone hated it.

3.PFags don't want balance they just want a game where one class can shit on everything after you spend three years learning how broken it is.

>>48062963
You do realize marketing a game is more expensive than making the game, right? The best games in the market have small passionate devs, and just lack the marketing engine.

>>48063770
They have never done that.

>Muh 4e!
4e didn't give you anything on par with high level 3.x mages, not did it give you anything on par with 3.x fighters, rogues, and spell less rangers.

D&D at this point essentially has two very different games built in, at different power levels and degrees of flexibility.

Supporting both would mean, like, releasing a book with low powered classes, and a different book with high powered classes, and making it clear your supporting both playstyles and they're not designed to mix and match.

>>48062850
>And I'd rather have 120 options of qualify, even if it means having to filter out the options that aren't of quality.

>there are people who unirionically want ivory tower game design

Why do you even care about 5e when 3.PF is already existing and popular?

>>48063743
>I don't want to have to use the internet just to play a fucking tabletop game for 3-4 hours per week.
I'm not sure what your point is with this sentence. Again, you could be trying to make either one of two points; 1.) "It's [current year], needing to reference more than just one rulebook is passe and outdated, and if my option is either to buy those extra books or check the free online rule repository to answer my questions, I choose neither." or 2.) "I will only ever play a game that is confined to one single rulebook, no matter how large that book is, and only if it's a physical object."

Both are retarded.

No one is MAKING you use anything to play a game. The rulebooks, both physical and online, are references. You reference them when you need clarification or information. No one MAKES you open the book and check the rules.

Let me make this clear; 5E is not "superior" because it only has "one rulebook". The 5E Player's Handbook has EXACTLY THE SAME CONTENTS AS THE PATHFINDER PLAYER'S HANDBOOK.

Everything else outside that is optional. The only difference, is 5E doesn't have any "optional". It just has the one book, not one book + all kinds of other cool stuff.

>As someone who played MtG for about three years or so
Nothing of value can come from this sentence.

> it's ludicrous how much more research you have to put in just to find out that you should've chosen this one option three levels ago and are now effectively screwed until you retire the character.
So...why are you playing D&D? Play a fucking Rules Lite like Dungeon World or Laser & Feelings, you fucking retard.

>>48063808
Yes I realize that.

That doesn't change the fact that marketing =/= mechanical support, which is what people are referring to when they say 5e is unsupported.

>>48063834

>4e didn't give you anything on par with high level 3.x mages, not did it give you anything on par with 3.x fighters, rogues, and spell less rangers.

Well yeah, because the classes are actually balanced.

>>48063743
>it's just that they're taking a while to come up with content

That's the thing, they're NOT coming up with content. They never are. They've straight up said this. WotC is not publishing player options any time in the near future, nor have they any interest in it.

>which isn't necessarily a bad thing since it means they're being careful not to repeat 3.PF's bloat and balance issues by shotgunning supplement releases.
So you think that the logical alternative to Paizo publishing tons of optional, interesting splatbooks that give players any kind of game option they might possibly want, all in a modular system is to...spend 2 years releasing literally nothing?

And somehow, spending 2 years releasing literally nothing is "being careful", rather than just, you know, not fucking doing anything at all?

>That's presumptuous of you to say.
I can quote Chris Perkins if you want.

>which is why I'm happy that they've distanced themselves from the issues associated with it.
All you've done is painted a smile on your face. You're literally just holding up a sign that says "I'm happy because I paid full price for this".

>>48063866

>The 5E Player's Handbook has EXACTLY THE SAME CONTENTS AS THE PATHFINDER PLAYER'S HANDBOOK.

Except for Warlocks, and branching class progression, and (dis)advantage, and backgrounds, and concentration that actually works, and at this point it's clear that you're just trolling and a hardcore 3.PFfag.

Do what you want, I'll stick with 5e.

>>48061394
Only shit DMs don't pace action as a series of challenges where one dice roll determines everything. This is why people treat D&D as a combat simulator - combat is the only thing they insist needs multiple successful rolls to ultimately succeed because their encounters are not 100% spelled out for them as some kind of skill challenge. Ultimately this is probably why a game like Dogs in the Vineyard or The Burning Wheel is so satisfying.

I mean, even magic solving every probably should go like this:
>Player: I'm going to use <insert spell> to do <this thing it doesn't explicitly say it can do>
>DM: The spell works, but <insert complication>

The whole point of the game is to overcome a series of varied challenges across a narative. If you never present a series of challeneges then there is no point.

A game like FFG Star Wars takes what should be a series of tense rolls and turns it into a single roll while the simple things that success/failure is really good at (like combat) those game are universally shit. I mean, FATE is binary and literally no one shits on it for being binary in its results - because the core does what it does and describes how it fits into a storyline. Just because a game like 3.pf removes all possibility for further complications with rigid and ridiculous rules doesn't mean a game that removes those shackles (5e, any edition before 3e) needs to abide by those expectations.

5e is DM edition for a reason, even if 4e was the easiest to DM on the whole.

>>48063921
>People want different things from D&D. Some want A, others want Z. It would be nice if they gave you the pieces needed to play a game in A or in Z, rather than half the pieces for each.
>People didn't like when they did that before!
>They've never done that before. 4e could do neither A nor Z.
>Well yeah, of course not, it did F!
You can't really be this retarded. I'm just not buying it.

>>48063867
If they are saying Hasbro isn't supporting 5e they are talking financials only unless you want Hasbro designing content independently.

Also, a game that isn't dead because it sells product is supported. It's just not what *you* want supported.

>>48063922
If you're going to give me a 1-3 book game, it better be as flexible as M&M or GURPS' core rules. Otherwise, no thanks.

>>48063985
>Except for Warlocks
>and branching class progression
>and (dis)advantage
>and concentration that actually works

...and 5E doesn't have archetypes, prestige classes, combat maneuvers, feats, traits, or a complete skill system.

But I love how you had to shave minor differences in the overall system as a way to prove that somehow the 5E PHB and the PF Core Rulebook are different things. Thanks for failing miserably at that.

>>48063922

Listen, it's clear you're booty bothered about someone not liking your system of choice so I'm just going to say, do what you want.

When you've calmed down, then we can talk.

>>48064087
>"I can't have a conversation so I'll pretend I'm winning the argument and walk away"

>>48064067
>M&M
Man, why can't all d20 systems be as good as M&M?

>>48063866
>The core books have pretty much the same content, pathfinder just has other books as well.
>>48063985
>They're slightly different games with slightly different options in the core book, clearly your just a troll!
No shit they're slightly different games. That's obvious to everyone.

>>48064058
>Game support means money, not more products!
Not to the players it doesn't.

>>48064125
Yeah, this guy is a fucking idiot.

>>48064124
I actually, unfortunately, can't stand M&M. But at least it's flexible enough that of you like what it plays like you can do a lot with one book.

Character generation is fun, but the gameplay is so bland and samey. Characters look different, but they play the same.

>>48064035

People who are hardcore into 3.PF don't want a game where the Fighter and Wizard contribute to the campaign equally.

To them, the mages are always godline after level 5 and the Fighters are always playable commoners who protect them before their initiative comes up.

To challenge this notion is blasphemy and not what D&D is all about, ignoring how this sort of issue wasn't really so much of one in OD&D and the editions that succeed it but I digress.

Hell, when WotC released books that gave martials some versatility and power for 3.5, people hated them and called them the worst thing ever until years later.

The closest we've gotten to balanced D&D is 4e, and thanks to that shitstorm, WotC will likely never try anything that actually does what you've suggested until the last 3.PFag has died off or converted to some other system.

>>48064086

You said that they were the exact same, I point out how that's wrong.

Also, 5e has maneuvers, feats, and a skill system too, just saying.

>>48063834
>4e didn't give you anything on par with high level 3.x mages, not did it give you anything on par with 3.x fighters, rogues, and spell less rangers.

3.x mages I'll give you that, because they were intentionally designing classes that didn't break the game over its knee.

But the 4e fighter shits all over the 3.X fighter in every respect, from damage, out of combat utility, access to skills, durability, stickiness, etc.

Hell it shits all over the 5e fighter, as well. 4e's fighter was probably the best WotC fighter in DnD history.

The Rogue is in a similar spot, with the same access to a bunch of skills, more out of combat utility, more damage, more survivability, not to mention the ability to sneak attack anything.

Rangers? The core ranger has no spells, true, but there are two more ranger variant classes (three if you count the Seeker) that have access to primal magic, and every ranger can get an animal companion (two if you get the Fey Beast Tamer theme).

>>48064196
>Characters look different, but they play the same.
Having played M&M I have *no fucking idea* what you're talking about. There's more than enough room to make characters mechanically distinct from each other even despite the shitty mechanics like save caps and the game assuming you have them maxed.

>>48064086
>archetypes, prestige classes, combat maneuvers, feats, traits, or a complete skill system.
Pathfinder archetypes suck, they are either too good or complete shit. Only a handful are possible. They're also not core, while built into classes in 5e.

Prestige in Pathfinder is the worst rules set in the entire core book. I wouldn't mind them in 5e the way some would, but thank God they proved it would be far better in 5e thanks to the UA

Actually, I take it back combat maneuvers are an abomination. Thankfully there are comprehensive and better versions in 5e.

5e feats > PF feats

Backgrounds > traits (traits are also not core)

5e skills are my preference - though I like the DMG options over the PHB.

>>48064147
You have an odd definition of players considering 5e is by all indications a huge success.

>>48064198
>Complaints about retards
Check out pfg or gitp some time. Lots of people who are really into 3.PF don't ascribe to that bs.

This is why tiers are recognized, and people tell you not to play not that 3 tiers wide (some people say 2 tiers). Which tiers people prefer varies, though the most popular seems to be 3/4, which is also what DSP aims for for all their stuff.

Personally I prefer 2/3, or 1/2, but I like high powered campaigns.

>>48064196
Echoing this >>48064263
I have no idea where you're getting this notion of everything feeling the same. And trust me, I know exactly what you're talking about when you say every character plays the same.

>>48064323
Making tier 1/2 third party products (even martials) is guaranteed to flop because players are that disparate for tier 3/4 content.

>>48064231
>Missing the point
If you wanted a high powered game balanced around 3.x mages, 4e does not deliver.

If you wanted a low powered game balanced around fighters and thieves, 4e does not deliver. (Dungeons and zombies, Rolemaster, Runequest and spin offs all do though, if that's what you want).

4e was it's own thing. And that's fine. But it was useless for the people who wanted either those kinds of game.

>>48064384
>Missing the point

I didn't miss your point, I was challenging your assertion that 4e did not give you anything on par with high level fighters, rogues, and rangers.

>>48064323

>Check out pfg or gitp some time.

/pfg/ is mostly spergs, furries, and retards, and I'm not trying to be funny either, that place is a mess.

GitP is alright but all they make threads on are builds, they're an exception, not a rule.

>This is why tiers are recognized, and people tell you not to play not that 3 tiers wide (some people say 2 tiers).

My issue is, how is one supposed to know this just by running the game right out the box?

>>48064384
Uhh... Literally everyone in RuneQuest should be a high powered mage/warrior. The upper limit for power in RuneQuest isn't there and by the time you, for instance, and as a group bind incredibly powerful demons you might as well be a Pathfinder wizard. The problem is that a "fighter" can get to that point in a campaign that lasts a couple years.

3.X casterfags explicitly want no one to be as capable as their mages built into the system.

>>48064263
And attack caps, and everything using the same attack mechanic.

Played it for a year long campaign, and at the end I was so uninterested in it that I gave my m&m book away and told my group if they ran m&m again (we try lots of different games) i would pass on it.

One of the other guys felt the same way. Two of them like it and still play it in their other group.

Just wasn't for me.

>>48035890
It's DnD.

>>48064463
>And attack caps
Tradeoff mechanic and Power Attack makes this a nonissue.
>everything using the same attack mechanic.
No, no they don't.

>>48064384

What if I want a high powered game where the martials that aren't rendered obsolete after level 5?

What if I want to run a low powered game where the resident wizard player isn't forced to play a martial just to keep things fair?

3.PF can't do these things competently unless you forcibly hack out options from your players and force them into the correct blocks, which honestly just a milder form of railroading since it's just taking agency away before game even begins.

>>48064534
> which honestly just a milder form of railroading since it's just taking agency away before game even begins.
wat

Never play GURPS.

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>>48064547
>Pathfinder = GURPS

>>48064547

There's a difference between, "we're doing an X campaign, so we'll be taking options from books A, B, and C" and "we're doing an X campaign, so ignore these sections of the PHB and pretend that these better options don't exist anymore until campaign is over.

>>48064415
It doesn't. It surpasses them. If I want a game where nobody is more powerful than a 3.x fighter, and classes typically don't have weird time limited abilities, 4e doesn't do that.

That's why you hear "in 4e everyone is a wizard" from some people, and "you can't make a decent wizard in 4e" from others.

>>48064416
>How am I supposed to know about tier mixing or of the box!
You don't. Unfortunately.

>>48064447
A lot of Runequest games are no magic, or alternate earth. But yes, in a glands campaign I agree with you.

>3.x casterfags are keeping the martials down!
That's not been my experience. From what I've seen that all comes from 'muh realism' martialfags ruining things for anyone else who likes martials.

>>48064373
I'm aware people want more 3/4 content. And that's fine.

>>48064493
>Trade-off and power attack.

In my experience, everyone has a couple different attacks using trade-off and power attack, and switches between them by situation. So that wasn't a differentiator.

>Not everything uses the same attack mechanic
Okay. Seemed pretty samey to me. It's possible or group missed something major that would have made it more fun.

>>48064534
In pathfinder you handle that by hacking out options. Fortunately you have enough options that you *can* hack out and still have lots of options left. You start hacking out options to do that in 5e and everyone is playing the same character.

>>48064609
All the RuneQuest games I have run have been heroic fantasy with lots of magic, but the magic is so fun to play along with the rest why wouldn't I?

I know a lot of RuneQuest grogs like no magic, but I refuse to do anything less than using sacrifices to regain magic points

>>48064714
Pathfinder fans who think it can do anything are the worse kind of cancer to the hobby. 5e fans at least play it in ways that make sense.

>>48064678
>It's possible or group missed something major that would have made it more fun.
Well, when all you use is generic Blasts and Strikes without paying attention to what you can attach to them, of course it's going to look like it's all the same.

>>48036002
i played a lot of 3.Finder and i've played a lot of 5e. and i really don't get the whole "there's less character options" quip. if you actually pay attention to /how/ everybody plays vs. /what/ everybody plays, there's no difference. the only characters i've seen in 3.F that i haven't seen in 5e are really niche min/max gimmick characters. all the barbarians, clerics, fighters, wizards, all of them are still the exact same shit as 3.finder. i only haven't seen some half-giant fighter/rogue/barb chainwhip grappler with a backstory of "HE WHIP. HE CHAIN."

>>48064609
Glorantha, not glands stupid autocorrect.

>>48064731
Hey, fair enough. I'm just saying it does a good job of low magic or no magic, if that's what you want to play.

>>48064609
>It doesn't. It surpasses them. If I want a game where nobody is more powerful than a 3.x fighter, and classes typically don't have weird time limited abilities, 4e doesn't do that.
>That's why you hear "in 4e everyone is a wizard" from some people, and "you can't make a decent wizard in 4e" from others.

Then my apologies for misreading you. I'm in agreement with everything else you said.

>>48064772
>and i really don't get the whole "there's less character options" quip.
Well of course you don't, you think everything that's not core is minmaxing.

My point of comparison for the 5E Fighter isn't the 3.X Fighter(although it does come up short compared to them in some ways), it's the Warblade. Why the FUCK would I be happy with 5E's Fighter?

>>48064758
I was attaching stuff to them too, and made triggered attacks and the like. I dunno. It's harder to argue feelings and impressions about a game I haven't played in over a year than when I can point to a specific mechanic and say "this is the part I dont like!"

>>48064714

You don't have to hack out options in 5e, let alone most other systems in general, because most of the options it gives you fit into most campaigns without having to create artificial scarcity for it to work.

Even if there are exceptions to the rule, It's not to point where you have to outright ban certain options just so the game maintains a level of challenge for the entire party.

>>48064836
Then I don't see how it's samey at all. I can build characters that play completely unlike each other.

>>48064835

Because it's better than 3.PF's abomination of a class that can be played without having to dig into some obscure bullshit just to have a Fighter that does what it's designed to do.

I mean, nothing is ever going to beat 4e's Fighter but I'd still call 5e the next best thing if you like playing martials.

>>48064902
>without having to dig into some obscure bullshit
Fuck off, retard.

>>48064749
>>>48064714 (You)
>Pathfinder fans who think it can do anything are the worst kind of cancer to the hobby.
I don't think that.
I think it does D&D, at different tiers.
If I want something else i play another game, like Gurps, or Runequest, or Shadowrun.

>5e fans at least play it in ways that make sense.
>Fighters and wizards on the same party, even with caster supremacy, is the only thing that makes sense!
No thanks.

>>48064933

How is someone who is new to the system going to know that the Warblade exists unless they do extra curricular shit?

That's my point, in order to play an effective martial, you have to look up some obscure bullshit from some random book and know "oh, this options sounds good and actually IS good, I'll play this class instead."

Rather than having a decent Fighter rightou out the gate who can do his job in core.

>>48064981
>How is someone who is new to the system going to know that the Warblade exists unless they do extra curricular shit?
Why is this relevant? I'm not defending 3E, I'm pointing out that 5E shouldn't be compared to core 3E, it should be compared to 3E's splats, you know, the books that usually had much higher quality than 3E's core books? Nobody but retards care that you can outdo core 3E because that's not an accomplishment.

>>48064981
>Rather than having a decent Fighter
I don't think it's decent. I think that even with its best archetype, it's a inferior retread of a class I've already played that is much less capable, hits like a wet noodle against anything that isn't a mook, and has a bad resource mechanic that encourages constant napping.

>>48064981
So your claim isn't that 5e *has* better options, you're only arguing the quality in the core book?

As for how you would know, presumably you'll be playing with other people. The odds that none of you has ever played 3.x before is slim.

But yes, you're right, pathfinder could use a new core book.

If I made one for my group, it would have no character options at all, just a rules compendium. For character options see d20pfsrd/PRD/AoN.

I'd spell out tiers though and explain them to the players, and provide a link to where people are reading the tiers of existing classes, and drop assumed treasure stacking and make the default innate modifiers, with rules that allow you existing gear replacing some of your innates. Then you don't have to worry so much about treasure distribution.

That would make it much easier for newbies.

>>48065067

>Why is this relevant?

Because having these options doesn't mean shit when the average newbie won't even be aware of their existence.

>I'm not defending 3E, I'm pointing out that 5E shouldn't be compared to core 3E, it should be compared to 3E's splats, you know, the books that usually had much higher quality than 3E's core books?

So you're one of those retards who compares a game that's roughly a decade old to a game that's only about 2 years old and say "look how little content there is hurr durr."

3.PF, after years of support, is still a steaming pile of imbalanced shit that requires you to go online just to build a decent martial who doesn't suck but is still less powerful than a mage.

5e is still early in its lifespan and still has potential to be great.

>>48065156

>As for how you would know, presumably you'll be playing with other people.

Unless they never bothered looking outside the PHB and disallow splats because they think they're imbalanced.

I'm just saying, it's quite possible to have groups that aren't aware of options outside of core, especially if their first and only experience with splats came from min-maxers coming in with bullshit builds that made them go "never again."