How is 5th Edition? I haven't had a chance to see what its

It's a watered down fourth edition with most of the stuff that REALLY pissed off the grogs hidden behind double meanings and mirrors.

It manages to make threeaboos angry because it still has residual aspects of 4e and the rules are explicit that if they go nova, no, taking a six hours nap won't refresh their spell slots, while simultaneously angering the threeaboos because monsters can actually kill them and "muh venetian casting"

>>51708837
>simultaneously angering the threeaboos
obviously meant fourries

What I do know is a lot of elder grogs seem to like it the best out of the 3 WOTC editions.

>>51708799
If you've played DnD before you already know how to play it pretty much entirely.

The only new thing to my games is advantage/disadvantage were in certain circumstances a player can roll two d20s and choose the best/worst depending on the context.

It's simple, watered down 'back to basics (but not really guys :P) edition that I'll probably play forever as my favourite edition. Because I like to play fast and loose and the rulebooks are very easy to read and learn from for beginners. This is a GREAT edition for starting DnD and this is clearly it's purpose more than anything (and rightly so) evident in how damn good the little starter set box is. I wouldn't be surprised if they're selling it at almost a loss.


That said for that same reason I would absolutely resent paying full price for the core players handbook. Even the font is about twice as big as 3.5 to try and humour it as a full length rulebook.

I recommend.

>>51708854
As a 4e fan the thing about 5e that bothers me the most is that 5e hit die are what 3.5 fans incorrectly claimed 4e healing surges are and used as an excuse to badmouth 4e, and yet no one seems to give a fuck.

I've played each edition since Ad&D, and I think this is probably one of the best editions there's ever been.

Just makes things really fast moving, very little returning to tables or sheet checking. More intuitive, real quick for new gamers to pick up fast.

Drastically limits player strength too, which I like. Characters don't get too strong.

>>51708837
Why pretend 3.5 players have an issue with the game at all? 3.5 is still popular and Pathfinder remains a supported game.
If anything, the truly upset people would be 4rries, since 5e was the 4th nail in the coffin of their game.

>>51708799
5e is pretty great. It's still a very young system, so there's not a ton of material for it just yet, but it's got a solid core mechanic and is both pretty easy to run and create things for. While it's got less combat depth than 4e and less mechanical depth than 3e and less fluff than 2e, it manages to not have the dramatic weaknesses of the earlier editions, and is generally a good step forward in the evolution of the game.

Overall, as the years go on and we learn more about the system we will be finding more and more flaws, but there's been a good sign of immediate responses and fixes to things like rangers being too weak, as an alternate ranger was produced. I'm very optimistic, and hardly need to be, considering it's already the overwhelmingly most popular game with the largest player base.

>>51708915

Shh, don't tell them that! We need their mongoloid wallets to support our hobby.

>>51708799
Easily the most straightforward D&D edition.
It plays with miniatures as well as you'd expect, but is also smooth enough that theater-of-the-mind play works without compromise. Partly because there aren't as many things demanding player attentions at any one time.

It can bore people if they want to rigorously play one only one RPG or if they demand a dense character creation engine from a system; it doesn't have the staggering amount of content that 3.X, PF, and 4e had, and it's not trying to. There have only been a handful of official character options released over three or so books, and every other release has been an adventure.

I recommend it. Even if it's not something your go to game there's fun to be had.
There's an options-lite free PHB, and more race/class/spell options you can pull out of the SRD.

>>51708915
It's probably because 4e used them as a near-absolute daily limitation for all healing, which is awful and counter-intuitive. It makes sense from the perspective that they wanted to have encounter healing powers (which would break the game if there was no daily limit to how much a person could heal), but over all it was a very clunky system that made DMing harder and playing more arduous.

5e hit die are basically just "everyone can heal between battles", which is a nice way to reduce dependency on magical healing. It's the best part of 4e healing surges, without the additional headaches of 4e trying to have them be a resource that could be expended to make other people's powers work.

>>51709062
No, I remember the old arguments clearly, the complaints being made were about how healing surges gave everyone "free healing". As if anyone could spend healing surges at any time to recover health, and then healing spells and potions were available on top of that.

If the old complaints were like your complaint, it wouldn't bother me, it's just a matter of taste. But they were based on misinformation, and now that the system they had imagined up to complain about actually exists, everyone's somehow okay with it

>>51709173
>still holding the torch of ancient edition wars

C'mon now.

>now that the system they had imagined up to complain about actually exists, everyone's somehow okay with it

Wouldn't you call it misinformation to say that the system they had imagined up to complain about exists, when 5e isn't "anyone could spend [hit dice] at any time to recover health"?

>>51708799
It's a very stripped down 3.5 with very low number scaling(except for HP, because fuck you, I guess) and 4E-esque combat in terms of rounds.
>>51708953
>It's still a very young system,
It's almost three years old you fucking liar.

5e is a very safe and familiar game. After the backlash at the attempt at innovation in 4e, WotC went back to people who could make a very iterative sequel. It adds almost nothing new to the series and mostly focuses on refining and streamlining elements from previous editions into a package that's quite easy to use and understand.

Personally I'm kinda sad they didn't do more to capitalise on some of the great new ideas they had in the playtests, but it's clear I wasn't their target audience given how well the damn thing is selling.

>>51708799
5e's the best thing that WotC has come out with in years. So, of course, they give it fuck-all for support.

It winds up being more narrative because they dropped a lot of what they did in 3e and 4e for trying to make a complicated and detailed system of fightan'. That has the benefit of making things like combat maneuvers, grappling, tripping, pushing, etc. very simple and accessible for characters, instead of trying to make every possible combat action something that you need to specialize in.

This means that the traditional "Fighter jumps on a chandelier, hops over a Bannister, and then pushes the bad guy out the window" is something that literally any character trained in Athletics can do, which IMHO leads to much better narrative support than earlier editions.

It feels a lot like 2e, in this case. It's all about what you can think of to do, instead of trying to tell you every single thing you can do.

>>51709362
Three years old still makes it pretty young, especially when we've got people still playing games that are over three decades old.

>>51708811
the most false post on /tg/ right now

>>51709455

>This means that the traditional "Fighter jumps on a chandelier, hops over a Bannister, and then pushes the bad guy out the window" is something that literally any character trained in Athletics can do, which IMHO leads to much better narrative support than earlier editions.

This was true in 4e, though? They had rules for improvised actions in the DMG with almost exactly this as the given example.

I'd also kinda dispute that less rules innately makes something 'more narrative'.

>>51708799
5e is kind of a mixed bag. It's not as mechanically in-depth as older editions and it's a bit lacking in content. What it does have however, is a simpler ruleset that doesn't try to invent a rule for everything like 3.pf, and one that supports multiple styles of play. It's a system that (rightfully) leaves much of the minutiae to the DM so there's less flipping through books and more actual playing.

>>51709362
Three years old is fucking fetus-tier in tabletop years.

>>51709495
>This was true in 4e, though? They had rules for improvised actions in the DMG with almost exactly this as the given example.

It's a damn shame those improvised actions were pretty mediocre mechanically, and got worse as the slow power creep of the system rendered them just about useless. While you can't deny the option was available to improvise, the issue is that the options were effectively discouraged by the game mechanics rendering them as a 2nd or 3rd best option at best.

>>51709550

I guess that depends on how optimised the game was? I've mostly played in low op games, so the improvised actions were always useful, since they were still better than an at will or basic attack.

>>51709532
Which means literally less than nothing when his point was that 5E doesn't have material because it's new. That's complete fucking bullshit - 3.0, 3.5, and even PF had mountains of new material within the same time that 5E has been out. 90% of 4E came out within a 2 year span, so obviously it's not because it's a new system.

File: giphy.gif (806KB, 640x480px) Image search: [Google]

806KB, 640x480px

>>51708799
Recent 3.5 convert here, get ready for a rant

All cards on the table:
-I always have and will continue to love 3.5 to death, but I will acknowledge that it was certainly not perfect.
- I think pathfinder is *alright*, but super bloated from all the 3rd party crap. Plus, not a fan of the power creep between it and core 3.5
- Been playing at the tabletop for years, but only can find groups that want to play D&d, so that's what I'm experienced with.

That being said, when I look at 5e for what it is trying to be, I can say that it very much succeeded. 5e is quicker to set up, fun to play, and easy to GM. There are virtually no barriers to play in the mechanics, the game will never slow down to crunch the numbers like it could in the past. There are no "trap" options; you'd have to be trying to build an unplayable character in 5e. New players can learn RPGs in the system well and veteran players (especially from 3.5) can slide into the game no problem.

And the magic! Spells are fuckin' rad in 5e at every stage of the game. Cantrips being unlimited use was SUCH a good idea, and most spells scale well enough that lower level spells are still useful in late game. Overall, martials and divine characters are scaled up at about the same rate as the new arcane casters, which is a welcome change from the casters being unstoppable war gods from 3.5. Prepared casters no longer have to prepare individual castings of spells, which is also a great change. Material Components are now ALL treated like a focus, so now they're one-time costs. If there's one thing that I would say is the best in the edition, their magic system is beautifully executed.

File: 1tzsp57.png (952KB, 720x336px) Image search: [Google]

952KB, 720x336px

>>51709701
continued

The saving throw system used to be awful. Come mid to late game, nobody was failing a save against anything. I like the new saving throws, which are based around core abilities. Individual saving throw stats are gone, which were admittedly an unneccesary step of complication, I'd admit. ACs are also kept to be manageable numbers. Pretty much nothing short of dietic figures or endgame monsters is going to have an AC even approaching 30, let alone 30+. Good change.

However, I still have a few gripes. Advantage vs. Disadvantage, on PAPER, sounds great: a quick change that drastically alters your chances while still allowing for fluke success/ extreme failure. In practice, I think a important amount of nuance that was present in older editions of the game is missing. E.g. Oh, so your character is wounded in their leg and has to outrun the bad guys? Disadvantage. You're exhausted, wounded, in unfamiliar territory, and its pouring rain in the same case? Disadvantage. I understand that the simplicity of advantage vs. disadvantage and the nuance of older numerical modifiers are diametrically opposed to each other, but I don't necesssarily consider either to be perfect.

Class Archetypes, also on PAPER sound like a good idea. I definitely miss the ability to micromanage the build of my character with 3.5's feats. Archetypes feel kinda like an illusion of choice. Like, sure, there's archeypes already there for the most common builds, but if I want to deviate from those I don't want to homebrew a new class, I'd want to just take the feats. Granted, feats are still a thing, but they've been made nonessential to character creation. I'm not sure; maybe I'll grow to see this differently, but for now I miss the intricate character creation and the power that it gave me as a player.

Overall, It's neat. I'm warming up to it more and more as I play it more.

>>51709645
New System + New release strategy.

Also, the general point is that if your main issue with the system is that it doesn't have as much content as the older editions, than the simple remedy for that is time, especially because they've put a fair amount of effort into restructuring the 3rd Party production.

There's also a lot of effort being put into porting over older edition material into 5e, since it's all generally compatible.

>>51709724
>than the simple remedy for that is time
When there's barely any material getting printed and 3rd party content is very rarely allowed? No it's fucking not.

>>51709701
>There are no "trap" options
bladelock

>>51709793
There's plenty of content coming from over the horizon, and there's plenty of material that's being published without getting printed, including a number of additional class archetypes, adventures, and the like. I understand that many people are just hungry for more though, but it really seems like giving the system time to develop has been working out for the best, since what does get printed is of fairly decent quality.

>>51708799
It's a lot worse than [edition you like], but much better than [edition you hate]. As intended by the marketing division.

Player-side, the system is pretty meh. None of 3.5's customization, none of 4e's clarity, none of 2e's uniqueness and none of OD&D's simplicity.

GM-side, it's 3.5 all over again. CR system is a broken mess, monster design is arcane and prep in general is a slog.

>>51709864
"plenty" only by shithouse indie standards. It's basically nothing by any edition of D&D's standards.

>>51708915
FWIW I use to like 4e, possibly more than 3.5 (I started with 2e and dad's old 1e grog group that had been running games since college, 3.5 gave my borderline innumerate ass options paralysis while 4e at least gave me the impression that the choices were going to work with each other well enough)

>>51709362
2e lasted well over a decade, 1e was actually still in dev for like 5 years after tsr launched 2e, and 3.5 had nearly as much time as either AD&D edition alone.

And AD&D itself was essentially one very long running system as you could more or less use 1e statblocks in 2e without significant pain - I was still using dad's MM2 to plug holes in junior high.

>>51709815
That's a warlock thing, right?

I'm still not knowledgeable about that class yet. Can you tell me about why that is a bad choice?

>>51710123
Again, see >>51709645

It's not about how old the system is, it's about people using "but it's new!" as a fig leaf for its release schedule when this is obviously bullshit if you know anything about any other edition of the game. At least be honest and say "they want a slower release schedule".

>>51709815
I find the Champion Fighter more egregious.

>>51710172

The slow release schedule makes sense. 5e has a shoestring budget at this point. It's a holding pattern by Hasbro to keep the brand occupied and alive while they look at making money off other uses of it.

>>51710158
Fragile melee caster that does significantly less damage than their ranged equivalent.

>>51709911
I've found the CR/Challenge system of both 5e and 3.5 to be actually far more useful compared to similar systems of other games, with only a paltry few being better. Aside from a few minor exceptions, they are pretty decent guidelines, and I don't really get why people persist with trying to force this odd meme about them being broken when it mostly sounds like they didn't read the full explanation of how to construct challenges presented in the DM's guides.

>>51710196
It's still a fantastic class for dipping into, especially because they can provide a second attack with only a three-level dip.

>>51710205

CR 1/2 save or dies. Low CR monsters with immunity to non-magical weapons. Low CR casters with area save or sucks.

I've not much experience of 5e's so I can't comment on that, but 3.PF's CR is a fucking minefield of monsters with abilities or spells that completely throw encounter balance out of whack but aren't reflected in their actual challenge rating. It's like they based it almost entirely on HP, defences and attack damage rather than the parts of the system which are really dangerous.

>>51709396
i wasn't around for the playtests, can you elaborate a little bit on what you're talking about regarding the new ideas? Thanks in advance.

>>51710205
An ogre is not equally threatening to a party as a monstrous crab.

>>51710246
Every martial(and battle Clerics) was basically a Battlemaster with dice that refilled every single round.

>>51710246

There's a few key examples I can think of. The biggest one? The fucking Dragon Sorcerer.

Sorcerers operated on a spell point system, able to spend points from their pool to cast spells, paying more points for higher level spells. A pretty simple variation on the classic limited casting style. The awesome twist?

They also had a set of passive abilities that they unlocked as they spent more spell points. Other Sorcerer types would have their own, but the example Dragon Sorc developed draconic strength, scales and stuff that made them, by the time they were out of spell points, a decent second line fighter- Not as good as the main guy, but by no means useless. It was thematically awesome and a really interesting solution to the five minute adventuring day, where as you ran out of spells instead of just not being able to do anything you transitioned into a different role.

Martial characters were also fucking awesome. IIRC one Fighter archetype gets a shitty toned down version of expertise dice that refresh every rest. the playtest fighter got those dice every round, giving them a reliable resource they could spend to just do extra damage or assign to a variety of effects. They never quite nailed the balance but it was such a great concept, giving martial characters actual interesting choices to make and making them fun to play- Something which published 5e mostly abandoned. Even if martials work in that system, they're still dull as dishwater to play.

>>51708894
By "watered down" he means he hasn't read the entire core rules, despite a 5th edition general being posted with mega links at least once a day.

If "there are not explicit rules for saves against wand attacks while falling down stairs in full armor" is watered down for you, you can rest easy in the knowledge that the RAW core books provide all the tools necessary to create such cumbersome bullshit if you really want it.

The best part about 5e is that, if you bother to fucking read the CORE RULES, you know that you can play an easy-to-understand RPG or use the system to handcraft your own autistic paradise with tons of guidelines, tables, and advice on how to craft your own magic items, spells, creatures, NPCs, encounters, and even rules to very deep levels of complexity.

And that's from just three books. That isn't even touching the Unearthed Arcana, additional splat/errata books, or SRD/ORG material that is officially supported by WotC.

File: 20170213_Wizrd_Wrlck_UAv2_i48nf.pdf (1B, 486x500px)

1B, 486x500px

>>51710224
>>51710196
>>51710158
>>51709815
Funnily enough, today they put out a new test document with a lot of new toys for Warlocks. There are some pretty compelling bladelock options in here now (though there should also be some sort of scaling built into the Blade Pact to make it a *little* more commensurate with Eldritch Blast's)

>>51710318
that sounds really cool, why'd they get rid of it?

>>51711166

Impossible to say. How they handled the playtests was also a total clusterfuck, with them deleting forum posts, rigging polls and other stuff, basically making it clear that the player feedback side was an utter farce.

>>51710322
>Martial characters were also fucking awesome. IIRC one Fighter archetype gets a shitty toned down version of expertise dice that refresh every rest. the playtest fighter got those dice every round, giving them a reliable resource they could spend to just do extra damage or assign to a variety of effects. They never quite nailed the balance but it was such a great concept, giving martial characters actual interesting choices to make and making them fun to play- Something which published 5e mostly abandoned. Even if martials work in that system, they're still dull as dishwater to play.


that sounds fucking terrible. they really should have tried harder to balance that. seems like it could have been really cool.

>>51711198
>with them deleting forum posts, rigging polls and other stuff


what the fuck?

>>51709455
>5e's the best thing that WotC has come out with in years.
>It feels a lot like 2e
As someone who started out with 2e, I couldn't agree more.

3/3.5e was a super abusable munchkin system. Just take a look at Pun-Pun.
4e was absolute shit IMHO.

>>51711505
I started out with 2E and 5E feels nothing like any game of 2E I have ever played on any level except vaguely similar fluff.

>>51711166
At and above 5th level it was be a big pain in the ass, especially if there was more than one martial. A few reasons from my own experience:
- at fifth level most martials get their Extra Attack, which is compounding the number of extra rolls if you prudently threw an extra die in per attack roll
- it threw the math into a woodchipper when one of the design tenets was and is "bounded accuracy"
- Many players would be reticent to dole them out, effectively using them to make things more boring rather than more exciting or interesting
- If you DO spend all your resource and roll super shitty, it *feels* super shitty.

It's a good idea, but not necessarily in that form.
That's the same reason why they ended up moving away from "proficiency dice" and went with static values. More predictable and less opportunities for players to feel like they got fucked over by capricious chance.

I say bolt a version of it onto Champion fighters to give them another tool in their scant toolbox. You'd have an interesting mechanic while also giving Champion a bit more flavor and granularity.
You can add it to any attack roll you make, expend to reduce damage as a Reaction to getting attacked, add it to any saving throw as a Reaction, or add to the Second Wind feature's healing.
3rd level: Champion Die at d6
7th: increases to d8
10th: can expend it after an attack connects to add it to the weapon's damage (and as weapon damage it also gets doubled on a crit)
15th: increase to d10
18th: gain an additional Champion Die

It's pretty good, and stands out as being particularly approachable to new players. There's flaws of course, and everyone seems to have some house rules to patch things up, but I wouldn't have a group if it wasn't for 5e. So I'm fond of it.

>>51712184
Except you paid for your extra attacks with your dice.

>>51712275
Not always--it depends on which revision we're talking about. I'd have to get onto my laptop to find which one exactly, but there was definitely a phase where the Expertise/Maneuver system happened alongside extra attacks.

>>51712184
>>51712275


so after they took away the dice per round and made it per encounter, did they give something new to compensate for the loss?

>>51712825
No.

>>51713021
why would I play this then?

>>51713058

Well, to a degree they did add something, in the terms of more flat numbers.

Martials in 5e aren't worthless like they were in 3.PF. The combat is better structured and they are both significantly tougher than other characters and do a lot of reliable damage.

The just have almost no interesting options or actual complexity to them, which sucks if you compare it to the depth of options every class had in 4e.

Then again, some people like simple martial characters. I don't really get it, the idea of designing an entire class to be mechanically simple as some sort of tutorial choice is kinda baffling, but apparently for 5e's primary demographic it's what they wanted.

The only thing that would make me care about 5e is if they published a Tome of Battle equivalent for it, though. The ToB (and later Path of War) are the best fucking things about 3.PF.

>>51713120
yeah, i'd hate to have one or more characters be reduced to full attack bots in any of the games I GM so i'll probably wait for some equivalent of ToB like you mentioned before I deviate from what I'm using now and go back to D&D.

>>51708799
It's fine. It's the second best version.

>>51713494
After?

>>51713836

Whichever one you prefer.

That's 5e's strength, the core of its design. No matter what edition of D&D before was your favourite, even if it doesn't replace it it will be the second best.

>>51708799
4e>5e>BECM/RCI>2e>1e>3.P>O

>>51714111
That's pretty much what I'd go for, the only change is I'd switch 5e and BECMI/RCl, but both are super close in how good they are. The real gap is between 1e and 3.x.

>>51708799
It's a great edition for people either just getting into tabletop or just looking to play sort of fast and loose with certain aspects. It's my go to system

>>51717482
>Normie system

>>51708799
it's a wargame with bare minimum roleplaying

>>51708799
It makes everyone angry, but it's mostly okay.

>>51714725
Glad you more or less agree, anon

>>51713120
Monks should have just been based off of 3.5 swordsages. With fighters having an archetype choice that effectively makes them warblades

>>51708799
I'm sort of dissapointed, but then again I wasn't expecting much. It's not particularly distinguishable from any other 3.PF d20 SRD game save for a few improvements. Granted, all of these changes are almost universally improvements, but a polished turd is still a turd.

It's pretty cool! I enjoy it.

>>51713174
Some people seem to need, or at least think they need, this option. Anything more than "I move then attack" is too much.

>>51719510

It always strikes me as so fucking bizarre.

personally it's my second favorite edition after 3.5/pathfinder it's a lot simpler and has less stuff at the moment but it's easy to pick up and interesting enough

>>51708799
Combat is worse than 4e, the monster math is all fucked up, and the saving throw system is retarded.

It's great. Me and my group love it. It's simple to play, and there's enough options. The UA release cycle has been very welcome, hopefully these shittards will quit crying about it and actually submit some playtest feedback so it ends up in a book.

>>51719556
I like the idea behind the saving throw system, but the actual usage of it is awful

The vast, vast majority of saves are con, dex or wis, to the point of their only being 7 abilities in the game that require an intelligence saving throw, 3 monster abilities, 1 class feature, and 3 spells

>>51719705
which all line up with the old reflex fortitude will saves
old habits die hard I guess

>>51719756
What makes it worse is that 4e fixed the stupid thing about wisdom and charisma, by having wisdom and charisma both apply to Will, it meant that charisma, which had always been fluffed as "force of will" now actually applied to your willpower

Then they changed it back in 5e, with spells like charm person, suggestion and hypnotic pattern requiring wisdom, not charisma, saving throws

I will never understand this

>>51713120
I personally like options, but I know certain players who literally just want to toss dice and look at special abilities as needless clutter.

Also, if you're playing without minis, some options really can be a pain to play with, and often aren't that useful in practice

>>51719813
I always thought charisma was more force of personality than force of will
a person with a lot of charisma could be very weak willed at the same time you know celebrites and such

>>51708799
It's fine

you can watch the recent acquisitions inc stuff if you want to see it in action

File: 1474293081301.jpg (51KB, 1024x576px) Image search: [Google]

51KB, 1024x576px

>>51714111
Damn, a lost brother with my own taste.

>>51719705
This
>What people think it means
Oh man, all the stats are useful against magic now!
>What it actually means
Every single character under the sun has a gaping weakness, oh and the stats that are most commonly targeted are EXACTLY THE FUCKING SAME AS IN 3E WHY?!

>>51714111

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSrTnWDTdwI

>>51714111
>Basic above Advanced
What's it like, being wrong?

>>51709550
There was an updated improvisation table to bring them more in line in the compendium IIRC. Of course, optimized characters (especially essentials characters with optimized at-wills) will outscale them still, but it's easy to just always use the best values/increase the effect by a few levels (about as much as you need to increase the encounter levels for them to stay challenging) and call it a day.

>>51708799
The combat mechanics are the same miniature based bullshit as 3/3.5/4, but with all of the useful examples and pictures removed.

>>51721027
I wish, they removed everything that made 4e combat fun.

Fuck, they removed most of the things that made 3.5 combat fun that weren't in 4e.

>>51709058
The flip side of this is that the game is barely a notch of an Asterisk World game using a D20. Except in combat, where it is simply a dumbed down version of the miniatures combat system from 3/3.5/4

People who are saying it's the most straightforward have obviously never played anything before 3.5.
Give b/x or a retroclone a go (Labyrinth Lord if I may reccomend), you might just have more fun.

>>51721046
>The flip side of this is that the game is barely a notch of an Asterisk World game using a D20

Nope. Those games have actions that serve a purpose mechanically and narratively. I'd hence argue that the 5e stat/skill system is a step below.

>>51721034
Oh, yeah it's incredibly shitty, but I'm sick of theater-of-the-mind faggots pretending the game doesn't have a fucking short and fucking specific list of allowed actions in combat and nothing else is allowed.

>>51721069
That's fair enough. You have a higher opinion of Asterisk World than I do. My time with 5e so far has convinced me that I'm better off making a 3.5 clone for a project than writing a supplement for 5e.

>>51721162
>You have a higher opinion of Asterisk World than I do

Well, I prefer when mechanics/skills/etc serve a well defined niche.

Like, as shit as OD&D Thief was, its % skills very obviously served a singular purpose (as shoddily as they did). 5e skills don't really do much. They don't (on a systematic level) give you new things to do, they just make you slightly better at things you already could. A good DM can circumvent that, but it still sucks.

Am I the only one that doesn't mind that 5e hasn't gotten a whole lot of new content since its release? I mean one of 3.PF's biggest problems was that it had way too much shit, and like 90% of it was poorly balanced one way or the other.

I'd still like a PHB2, DMG2, and some new Monster Manuals though.

>>51722072
With the huge amount of previous editions adventures and lore to use, I don't care either.

>>51710516
Yes and if you water something down it retains all the same chemical elements but appears thinner.

I meant watered down and I stand by it and it's a good thing. Comparing to the 3.5 PHB to that of 5th. 5th looks like less but is much more useful in my opinion.

5th is great.

Suffers from all the problems of DnD,
so,
>no real translation between character personality and mechanics.
>health bloat
>Very swingy and random, rather than dependant on your characters abilities and stats due to the d20

>>51708799
I understand the 5th was supposed to be a slimmed down version but i can't help but feel like half the game isn't there.
A weapons list that barely fills more than half a page and that's WITH a fancy border and illustrations, the scaling spells are nice but not at the cost of variety, a small list of feats that are totally optional, and a seeming lack of magic items, but that might just be my dickhold DM.
The archetype system seems like a good idea and i like how they gave options in Pathfinder, but when the game tells you "all rouges are one of these three types" it feels more limiting from a character creation standpoint.
Same goes for how skills are handled. You have a short list of class skills, pick like three of them and fuck you that's all you get. Oh you wanted to play a rouge who despite being a thief is very religious and tries to balance his larceny with prayer so he has a few ranks of religion? Nope fuck you. Oh or you wanted to sink a few ranks into Survival because even though you're a paladin you worship the god of the hunt so you're know your way around the woods? HA!

Like i just sat down trying to work out an idea i had a while back for the 5th game by DM is starting. Snooty high elf wizard who specialized in summoning (because fighting and heavy lifting is for other people) who is the 3ed child of a weathy family of magic item merchants.
then i look at the book, hardly any summon spells, no magic item crafting, elves don't get rapier anymore so the aristocratic weapon was gone. man.

On the up side i DO like that they made weapon finesse a simple ability and two-weapon fighting much simpler

>>51723306
Are you retarded?
Holy shit, about your complains regarding skill choice, that's the point of feats and backgrounds.

>>51723381
Right okay again backgrounds seem like a great idea, kinda making even the most crunchy gamer put some backstory on, only its what ten options that mostly come with shit you'll never use?
And feats are heavily abreivated AND you need to sacrifice your ablity score boosts to use them. Enjoy falling behind the rest of the party just so you can do more than hit thing with sword

>>51723421
>only its what ten options that mostly come with shit you'll never use?

You mean like the skills you were bitching about? Including the outdoors man background basically replacing the need for the ranger class.

Or, say, the money/cart of a merchant for your elf?

> Enjoy falling behind the rest of the party just so you can do more than hit thing with sword

Classes already do more than hit things with sword.

Fuck, the only classes that need feats are the ones that hit thing with sword to hit things with sword better.

Your ability to evaluate shit is absolutely fucking atrocious anon.

>>51723421

You don't need to sacrifice a skill upgrade if you're a human, you get an extra features by default.

Idk when tho, haven't played a human.

>>51723306
>want to be a religious rogue
>take religion skill

Wow that was so difficult. Also what do you mean by skill ranks? You either have proficiency or you don't, and you get at least 4 skill proficiencies by default.

I've played it for a year. 5e doesn't feel like real D&D. Now we're back to good old 3.5.
Everything is so streamlined and simplified, like Apple products compared to Windows or Android.

>>51708811
>>51708894
>>51723306
>>51723421
>t. didn't read the phb

>>51723617
If this is satire, it's spot on.

>>51708799
We've just started playing again after a loooong time. I was always a 2e guys, but 5e was the first edition that could convince me to switch. We haven't looked back since.

I still consider 3.5 better for a group, where all members are interested in the nuances of number crunching, but if roleplay and the flow are the main focuses and the system is distant third, then 5e is superior.

>>51723306
>Oh you wanted to play a rouge who despite being a thief is very religious and tries to balance his larceny with prayer so he has a few ranks of religion? Nope fuck you

Make your background Hermit or Acolyte.

> Oh or you wanted to sink a few ranks into Survival because even though you're a paladin you worship the god of the hunt so you're know your way around the woods? HA!

Make your background Outlander or Folk Hero

> no magic item crafting

Magic Item Crafting is in the DMG

>>51719510
Care to explain, anon?

>>51719510
>move then attack
>being such an obvious troll

>>51719510
>>51719539
>samefagging this hard with such poorly conceived bait. C'mon, senpai.

>>51722380
>wanting to force mechanics to determine personality when most games specifically avoid that
>the "I don't understand HP" meme
>thinks the dice are what determine how "swingy" a game with binary outcomes is, rather than the height of the passing numbers

You sound like one of those guys who thinks "anything that's different must be wrong" without even trying to understand anything.

On a side note, can anyone explain how ability checks were ever a good idea? Rolling a d20 and adding an ability modifier leads to such variance. For instance, the wizard with 10 str has around a 35% chance of beating the 20 str barbarian in a strength check. It's insane and unrealistic. I think something like a d6 or d8 would be more appropriate. This is especially noticable with 5e's rounded stats that in some cases skill checks have the same problem.

>>51724388
It adds a bit of interesting variance to the game, if the barbarian always succeeded at pushing down doors and the wizard always succeeded at finding the book in the library then it'd become boring, and some interesting scenario's can be created through failure, if the barbarian slammed against the door and didn't break it then that may lead to an intersting combat situation where both parties know where each other are but neither wants to attack first due to the door in the way, and the times where the weak character does something requiring great strength is more interesting than the buff dude doing the actions he's been doing the whoel game, it also helps humanize characters, they aren't always going to succeed at the things they're good at, but they're not excluded from taking actions they're bad at, it adds drama to character actions and creates stories, and if you think that it doesn't make sense for a wizard to do then setting the DC higher and making it relevant to the abilites of a character (dc 15 dex check versus dc17 dexterity acrobatics checks when the rouge has acrobatics as a skill) can tip the scales.

>>51724454
>>51724388
Part of the issue is that a lot of the scaling in the game is provided by adding proficiency, which you don't do in straight ability checks.

>>51708854
>What I do know is a lot of elder grogs seem to like it the best out of the 3 WOTC editions.

Well, they also liked THAC0 and fetishized simplicity, so they would like it. Ask a grog WHY they like 5e and that will give you the real crux of 5e's "quality"

>>51708939
>intuitive

How?

> fast moving

How?

> simple

I'll give you that

> real quick for new gamers to pick up fast.

That's not necessarily a good thing.

I like 5e, too, by the way, but your assertions are unsupported.

>>51709058
>it doesn't have the staggering amount of content that 3.X, PF, and 4e had, and it's not trying to.

This is why it will never beat Pathfinder, and why it will never improve the D&D concept. All because Wizards of the Coast think that, if they did something wrong in a previous edition, they can never do that again, because that would require actual work and self-reflection to try to figure out how to improve the concept, instead of making a phone-in for the new edition that is only good because of how little effort the developers put into it.

>>51708894
What i like is that the relative simplicity of it allows for new players or players that have difficulty with 3.pf for examples sheer volume of crap to easily get into what they are doing. The background system also gives them an easy to start in place for role play that isn't cringey as fuck on its own.

I also like the changes to the magic system, where-in rituals and cantrips help a great deal with action economy on mages but also limit their more powerful effects to X a day. A mage isn't useless once he's expended all his daily spell slots, but he certainly won't have the impact he did. Its a neat idea.

>>51724388

>how ability checks were ever a good idea
They're a great idea if you follow basic DM advice regarding when to allow a roll to influence the narrative. If you're using the dice and rules to dictate the--for lack of a better term--"physics" of the world you are making a mistake.

If it doesn't make sense for an event to occur according to in-universe standards, don't roll to see if that events occurr-- it just doesn't.

The caveat to this is that there are some people (of which I am not one) who enjoy "I'm going to roll an attack against THE MOON XD lol" and will gleefully allow someone to roll on the 5% chance they do it! I think those people are entitled to have their fun, but I nonetheless stand by my advice.

>>51709062
>>51708915
Except both mechanics are fucking stupid and awful. Regaining all lost HP after a short rest destroys all concept of long-term injuries. Healing 1, maybe 2 hit points per hit die per day of rest, worked fine.

>>51708894
>The only new thing to my games is advantage/disadvantage were in certain circumstances a player can roll two d20s and choose the best/worst depending on the context.

That is not even close to the only new thing, dude. You've clearly never played 5e, only read about it in 5e threads.

>>51708799
It's okay. If you are running a game for people who have never played dnd before, use 5e. If you're running a game who have played dnd before, they already have a favorite and it isn't the latest one.

>>51709701
>Cantrips being unlimited use was SUCH a good idea,

One that was already in Pathfinder and 4e. Get with the times. Spells are also weak as shit in 5e because the devs are fucking cowardly cocksuckers who think that if they call the damage types different things it will change the fact that all the combat spells are basically straight damage with minor debuffs.

Wizard is just fighter with more bookkeeping. There is no real difference in the classes besides flavor.

>>51709911
This.

>>51709815
No shit there are trap options. Champion fighter, bladelock warlock, the four winds monk, and most of all, Ranger.

>>51709719
Feats aren't non-essential. If they were the same thing as in 3.5, they would be, but now that any one feat can encompass so many different effects, they can be really important.

For example, war caster is almost mandatory for a cleric with the war domain.

>>51713120
>Martials in 5e aren't worthless like they were in 3.PF.

Except they weren't. They were just inferior.

> they are both significantly tougher than other characters and do a lot of reliable damage.

Also true in 3.5 and Pathfinder. Wizards just obliviated that with SoD spells that raped the encounter right off the bat.

> The just have almost no interesting options or actual complexity to them, which sucks if you compare it to the depth of options every class had in 4e.

And 3.5 which actually had lots of interesting options for martials, they were just inferior to spellcasters.

>>51724548
It's definitely better than 3.5's method of making wands of cure light wounds a cheap and easy stream of endless healing so long as you buy enough

>>51714111
What a waste of trips.

3.5 and 5e are equal, 4e is slightly behind, and AD&D is garbage. A trimmed-down AD&D with the same comfy organization and mechanics would blow the other editions out of the water, though. Fuck HP bloat, fuck damage escalation, fuck background mechanics, and honestly fuck skills and feats, too. Bring back the fucking rogue tables.

>>51724548
>Except both mechanics are fucking stupid and awful. Regaining all lost HP after a short rest destroys all concept of long-term injuries. Healing 1, maybe 2 hit points per hit die per day of rest, worked fine.

The DMG has a nice rest variant where a short rest is 8 hours and a long rest is 7 days.

>>51719539
>>51719510
Maybe because it's there as an option for grill players and newbies? Also sometimes I just want to move and attack. Not every turn has to be a fucking explosive mix of 20 different actions by expending 12 daily exploits or whatever the fuck, and shifting 10 squares to super-double-crit the enemy with 12 ongoing damage. That's why I fucking hated 4e. The entire structure of everything in it pissed me off.

Not a horrible edition, though. It's just (1) not really D&D, and (2) I didn't like it.

>>51711166
Because Mearls hated it and was basically forced by the playtest community into designing it.

It's no coincidence the mechanic got taken out the instant it went into closed playtesting.

>>51719703
>The UA release cycle has been very welcome, hopefully these shittards will quit crying about it and actually submit some playtest feedback so it ends up in a book.

Maybe they should stop reprinting Weapon Focus instead of, I dunno, that cool stunning feat that Merals threw out because "it would slow down combat." Then reduced it to when you have advantage. Fuck off merals Make it stun on a crit then, or make you take a -4 penalty to hit in order to use it.

>>51724507
>a lot of the scaling in the game

You mean how the 20th level rogue is only 20% better at picking locks than a level 1 rogue? That's 1% per level. That's fucking pathetic.

>>51724599
Then remove wands of cure light wounds. Easy peasy. The over-dependence on magic items was the worst part of 3.5. 5e "fixed" that by removing buying magic items entirely and destroying a fun part of the game.

>>51724620
Except the point is you have a cleric to heal you, too. Since, you know, that's his actual job.

I started with 5e and played for over a year then played a game of pathfinder with some friends.

I wouldn't have picked up the hobby if my first game was pathfinder. I felt like I should be taking a 5 hour long introductory class into the theory of pathfinder to build a character. With 5e I picked what looked cool and i was happy.

Also for all the options, when I tried to make a cleric that predominantly used necromancy I couldn't hit shit and the only good thing I could do for the party was cast the channel energy thing at the end of the session to heal and Bear's Strength when I realized I had like no chance to hit these enemies.

>>51723464
You get it and the extra skill immediately on chargen.

In exchange for losing a +1 to all stats, you get +1 to two stats, a feat (which are much more broad in effect than they used to be), and an extra skill.

In other words, if you aren't MAD to start with, you can get some extra features at little actual cost to yourself.

>>51724670
>Remove the option to buy magic items

Yeah sure, put even more power in the hands of the casters by removing the option to buy them, making you either dependant on the whim of the GM or on a caster with item creation feats, not to mention how much you need casters now just to use healing spells after combat

I understand your complaint, but you have to cut out a hell of a lot of 3.5 before it functions as you want it to

>>51724653
I saw you making the same argument in the 5e thread. I won't take bait in the 5eg but I will here.

A level 1 Rogue has +7 to sleight of hand with 16 Dex. A level 20 Rogue has +17 to the check AND if he rolls a 9 or lower takes 10. The lowest a 1 Rogue can roll is an 8. The lowest a 20 Rogue can roll is 27.

I really have no idea where your 20% better is coming from but you seem to be saying it about 5e.

>>51724653
A rogue at level one has +4 proficiency, assuming expertise. A rogue at level twenty has +12 proficiency, assuming expertise.

If you're not assuming expertise, then why wouldn't you, since the entire point of expertise is specifically for the purpose of making you have super high-scaling skill rolls.

>>51711324
>deleting forum posts
People were pissed after a number of "interesting" design decisions were made as soon as the game went into closed playtesting, and made posts on the playtest forums letting the devs know they were upset. The forum suddenly "crashed" a short time later, then came back up a few hours later with a number of the threads about it mysteriously missing.

>rigging polls
Wouldn't be surprised if most of them were rigged, but the most blatant one was the Casting Systems poll, where they were asking about favorite casting systems( I remember Vancian casting, spell points, AEDU, and Words of Power were there among others I think).

Long story short, lots of people voted and Vancian casting was basically dead last the entire time by a significant margin at that. The day after the poll went up, it suddenly vanished from the site and came back up the next day with the numbers reset. Of course, a lot less people voted in the remake because they assumed they already did, but Vancian was still last. About...I want to say 10 or so hours after the poll went up, Vancian suddenly jumped up by about 500-600 votes in the span of about 30 seconds(which was about as many votes everything had combined in those 10 hours) and the poll was closed right then and there, with Mearls making a big song and dance about how excited he is that the fanbase loves Vancian Casting as much as he does.

As expected, the topics of people pointing out the poll rigging were lost when the mysterious site crash mentioned above happened.

Other stuff wasn't quite AS bad, but the main thing I remember is the feedback surveys being fucking awful, and most of them boiled down to "Do you like what we did this (x), and why is your answer Yes?" levels of useless for gathering info.

The whole playtest fiasco made me(and quite a number of others) refuse to touch 5e for the year after release just because of how much of a fucking shitshow it was.

>>51713917
>That's 5e's strength, the core of its design. No matter what edition of D&D before was your favourite, even if it doesn't replace it it will be the second best.

Of course, that's also the biggest issue with 5e's design: If I like this edition of D&D and 5e's designed to be "the second best," why would I play it when the edition I like still exists, and I can play it without a bunch of other shit I don't like from other systems shoved in there?

>>51724612
How do you find time to post with that aggressive cock sucking schedule?

>>51724670
>Except the point is you have a cleric to heal you, too. Since, you know, that's his actual job.

Of course, and the benefit is that it's immediate (magic) but at the cost of resources (spell slots). But for mundane healing I prefer the slower rest variant.

In the standard system you rarely need to return to town. If you're exploring a wilderness/dungeon you just need to set up camp or hide in a room for 8 hours, then everything (except items) gets fully reset. I get that they didn't want healing dependency or short adventuring days, but isn't that the point of hanging out in town?

>>51724767
Wow, you sound like you're pretty butthurt. Tinfoil-hat-level butthurt.

I'm actually sort of glad you and your two friends decided to boycott the system, though it would have been better if you never touched it again.

>>51724818
I'm not sure what exactly you're arguing for here, but here's a pity (You) for the road.

>>51708799
In my opinion it trims a fair bit of the fat off of previous editions and gives all player classes something interesting to do rather than just "I hit the man with my sword"

The best feature for my group is the removal of number crunching for things like skills and a simplified advantage/disadvantage system.

The rules themselves are rather light on actual roleplaying a nice touch however is the backgrounds chapter which give each player a small amount of backstory with a virtue and a vice to help shape their character. Most of the actual roleplay stuff though is very DIY.

All in all though it's my favorite fantasy system to run and seems unanimously loved among my group who like to keep the numbers on their sheets simple.

>>51724861
Wow you must be pretty dense.

>>51724982
If your implying the stuff didn't happen, I can't help delusion.

>>51725008
Nah I just think you're dense if you're "not exactly sure what you're arguing for here". It was pretty obvious.

>>51711274
I've played only Fighters so far in 5e in each Archetype and I've had a lot of fun.

Champion is pretty straight forward but powerful in it's own right.

Eldritch Knight can lead to some really fun builds provided you put some thought into it.

Battle Master is weird for me. Most people who play fighters a lot tell me that Battle Master is the strongest option, and I'd have to agree with them. The thing that makes it less fun for me is that unless you get to a very high level when you run out of superiority die the game becomes a bit of a drudge.

I would say the best way to balance it is to give the Battle Master less dice, but make the dice come back after encounters instead of after rests.

>>51724957
I'm in a recently started campaign, and i made a cleric with the hermit background. Since it gave the "Discovery" feature, my DM said that my character knows about the existence of dimensions and planes, and can sense when she isn't in her own dimension.

We boiled this down to she's got a dimensional spidey sense, and it fit in so well with the campaign we were doing that its great. This also affects her as a character though, because part of the stuff i chose is that she's basically an insomniac as a result of that dimensional spidey sense. Which i tied into her war domain by saying she completely exhausts herself in combat to get some semblance of sleep.

It all just rolled together really well. i wouldn't have thought of any of that if it weren't for the background roll tables.

>51724818
Wew nice counterargument lad
You wanna retarded that's up to you, but the rest of us don't like being lied to.

>>51725137
uh.... i think you fucked up a little bit of everything there anon

>>51725137
Congratulations.

>>51725068
Well, my mistake then. You're just kind of autistically sperging at nothing.

>>51725148
The only thing that got fucked up was the handling of the play test m8

>>51725167
Whatever helps you sleep at night I guess.

>>51725183
Ah, the old "I've run out of arguments, so I'm fleeing" sign. Good times.

>>51710196
>>51709815
I can't see why anyone would want to play something like that when Bladesingers exist.

Well okay I can think of one dumb guy who would want to play that but he used to play Warlocks in melee range WITHOUT that so it might actually be an improvement for him, specifically.

>>51725205
M8 he never had an argument to begin with

>>51725225
Also true.

>>51725087
I played BM and was blindingly fucking pissed at how shit it was to play the entire time.

>>51724569
Pathfinder cantrips are all fairly useless though. He meant useable cantrips.

>>51724612
It's a trips post. You can't argue with a trips post.

>>51710322
Omg that sounds like such a better way to do sorcerer than what we got.

Does anyone have a still existing copy of the class?

>>51724511
I'll break your fucking back and fuck your god in the ass

File: 3b9f5a0904-1486793650254.png (543KB, 799x666px) Image search: [Google]

543KB, 799x666px

>>51724511
>> real quick for new gamers to pick up fast.
>That's not necessarily a good thing.

you're on the wrong board buckaroo

>>>/v/

>>51725205
You are just a treat.

>>51725167
I'm beginning to think that using "autistic" as an insult has become the new smug anime girl.

>>51708854
>the 3 WOTC editions.
That's not really a fair description.
5e is 'fixed' 3e, sure. But 4e is only related to siphon IP revenue.
4e is 'fixed' D&D Miniatures Game (which itself was leeching the IP).

4e is a better game than 5e, but 5e is an RPG and 4e is not.

File: 729.gif (227KB, 600x600px) Image search: [Google]

227KB, 600x600px

>>51725556
>I don't have a rebuttal so I'm just going to yell 'SMUG ANIMU GRIL'

>>51725687

4e is a better game than 5e, but 5e is an RPG and 4e is not.

Can you justify or explain this at all? Because I have never seen an actual argument as to why 4e isn't a fully functional roleplaying game that doesn't boil down to 'I can't use spells to solve every problem'.

>>51723306
>"all rouges are one of these three types"

That's purely mechanics. You can fluff them however you want, that's why there are backgrounds.

>>51725369

The playtest documents are still hanging around somewhere.

>>51725293
>>51725087

The BM you're looking for was in the playtest. Except they got their dice every single round.

>>51725718
>'I can't use spells to solve every problem'.

That's pretty much it.

9 times out of 10 when I see people bemoan 4e for a lack of roleplaying options, any question about what 4e is missing just results in them spitting out a bunch of spells and mechanics from 3.PF that let them roll dice to avoid having to roleplay, like Charm Person and mind control Diplomacy.

>>51708799
I like it. It has rules that mostly make sense, I've yet to find a class I didn't enjoy playing(except possibly the beast master ranger subclass), and for me it's just the right amount of crunch. You could add more to it with house rules very easily, and homebrewing for it is a breeze.

>>51725556
Autistic is the new retard in the insult world.

>>51725743
>my lack of ability to roleplay and need for options that completely avoid it mean that games without said options aren't roleplaying games

Thats so hamhanded and backwards i'm not sure how i should feel about it.

>>51724737
>>51724757
I'm not sure why the guy picked the rogue as an example, when it's actually the class that gets the most better at skills.

Everyone else aside from the bard are SoL though. My level 20 fighter can solo 50 orcs (going from being able to fight equally maybe one), but he only jumps about 5 foot longer on average than at level 1. The skill scaling is really low compared to the HP/damage scaling.

>>51725797
That is absolutely true, and I have no idea why he chose the one class that is an exception to the rule.

Yeah statwise you don't gain a huge difference from 1 to 20. It's mostly class features that do the job of making you feel more powerful.

>>51725847
Right, I just wish that a level 20 fighter would be the castle-wall breaking, airship-to-airship jumping, tarrasque wrestling badass partner of the meteor showering wizard.

>>51724631
Could anyone clarify which parts of this posts aren't complete hyperbole?

File: 081712_Classes.pdf (1B, 486x500px)

1B, 486x500px

>>51725369
Don't have the packet myself, but some google diving helped me find this which has the Dragon Sorcerer in it.

Dont remember if that's all that ever came of it, will see if I can find later versions of the playtest later.

>>51714111
If you like Mentzer Basic, why is 2e above 1e? And where's Moldvay Basic?

>>51724631
>Not a horrible edition, though. It's just (1) not really D&D

I mean, from your description, I can't actually tell you what game you were even playing besides that it certainly isn't 4e.

>51725491
>I have to reply or else I'm wrong

>>51726015
Good job.

>>51725965
I guess if he played before essentials he didn't really have the option to play a simpleton.

>>51725785
Righteously indignant at 3.PF for breeding that kind of insanity might be a good start.

>>51725965
Yes.

>(2) I didn't like it

>>51725998
His example isn't accurate in the least. It's the most shameless hyperbole.

>>51726078
But his example isn't any game I ever played so I don't know what it is that he doesn't like.

>>51725871
I feel like martial classes do have that though, in the form of the Barbarian, who can, depending on build, have 24 strength, get flying movement, and roll 24 on every strength roll at minimum.

The fighter's more of a supporting, jack of all trades class. This results in him being kind of boring at high levels except to a certain minority who like weird little intricate mechanical interactions (like me).

>>51726078
His example isn't extracted from any Gamenight ever played so I have no idea what he's talking about.

>>51725978

Man, that had the interesting version of fighter Expertise Dice too. Anyone who was disappointed in the battlemaster needs to read this to see how fucking cool it could have been.

>>51726063
Fair.

Its an issue in my group playing 3.pf. No one wants to roleplay anything that doesn't have to do with shiny new equipment or retarded gags, so the 10 cha monk is the party face as he's the only one that will talk like a regular human being, despite having a rogue and a bard.

Actually, scratch that, we also have a chaotic neutral barbarian thats exactly as disruptive and retarded as that entails. Said monk has had to tackle him and provoke him into chasing the monk so as to prevent him from killing anyone important.

File: SFiJTgn.jpg (246KB, 890x497px) Image search: [Google]

246KB, 890x497px

>>51725743
>>51725718

are you niggas serious

The problem with 4e is that everything your character is allowed to do is itemized into a list of class features like a MMO power hotbar.

Flexibility had been insanely reduced from 3.5. Multiclassing was nearly entirely gutted and basically amounted to WELL. IF YOU -INSIST- WE'LL LET YOU TAKE -SOME- CLASS FEATURES FROM OTHER CLASSES. IF YOU'RE GOING TO TWIST OUR ARM.

You couldn't build a character for CHARACTER reasons, you built your character to fill a party role slot.

It's not a bad GAME but it's not a very good ROLEPLAYING game. It's closer in spirit to a tabletop miniatures skirmish game like Age of Sigmar than an actual RPG.

I enjoy it.

>>51726188
Name one character concept that requires multiclassing to make sense.

>>51726188

So you never played it then? Cool.

The improvised action rules in the DMG had more support for doing things not on your sheet than 3.5 did in core. How effective they were is arguable, but they were there.

I prefer 4e multiclassing to 3.PF. Rather than worrying over level by level modifiers and not wanting to ruin my 'build', I could make a multiclass selection based on what seemed interesting for my character, getting a couple of small benefits for it and unlocking other options I could explore.

As for character building? You're a moron if you feel like you couldn't express your character. The difference between 3.PF and 4e is that no matter how you built your character in 4e (unless you found one of the relatively few but still extremely unfortunate trap options or entire classes) you'd be able to fulfill your role.

Were there super high op games where you had to stick to a few specific builds? Probably. Did I play them? Fuck no. I enjoy building fleshed out, interesting characters in 4e because I know the system isn't going to screw me over for not going down the optimal path.

So yeah. Please stow that tired horseshit unless you're better able to support it with argument.

>>51726137
I guess, but that still leaves amazing feats of all the other stats in the dust.

Also, while having a 24 minimum is great, his max is still just 27 for STR checks (up from 23 at level 1... although of course his average goes to like 24,5 from 13 which is a big step), and 33 for skills. Good, but still not "breaking through walls" tier, I think, though I may be mistaken... thinking about it, the other problem is that there's really no guidelines for that sort of legendary displays of strength, although the barbarian could possibly pull it off.

>>51726238
>you'd be able to fulfill your role.

Some people want to play adventurers, and not MMORPG units.

>>51726269

Guess what?

The 4e roles existed in 3.PF. They always did. The game just didn't tell you they existed, or properly equip classes to fulfil the role they technically fit.

The game wasn't that different. It just didn't obfuscate the mechanics behind layers of bullshit.

>>51726188
>The problem with 4e is that everything your character is allowed to do is itemized into a list of class features like a MMO power hotbar.
That is 3.PF. 4e has rules for improvising attacks, with powers merely being unconditionally working options.

>Flexibility had been insanely reduced from 3.5. Multiclassing was nearly entirely gutted and basically amounted to WELL. IF YOU -INSIST- WE'LL LET YOU TAKE -SOME- CLASS FEATURES FROM OTHER CLASSES. IF YOU'RE GOING TO TWIST OUR ARM.
Hybrids.You can combine up to three classes, which is more than enough for any kind of character.
Sure, it got rid of insane class dipping, but that's just powergaming wankery.

>You couldn't build a character for CHARACTER reasons, you built your character to fill a party role slot.
As you always have in D&D. 3.5 just seriously fucked up any sort of niche protection.
And refluffing is both possible and encouraged to flesh out characters.

>It's not a bad GAME but it's not a very good ROLEPLAYING game.
It did away with a lot of the restrictions 3.5 put on roleplaying, so I don't understand this complaint.

>>51726127
>>51726144
I just pointed out what of that post isn't complete hyperbole. It's an understatement instead.

>>51726296
>>51726287
Guys.

He's either a troll or someone who you can't convince anyway.

I had a guy like this, played 5e with, had some beers, talked it over, went through things step by step, he even agreed that his shit was kinda irrational, but it's not like I convinced him. He's throwing a hissyfit over hexblade being able to attack using CHA with a weapon in 5e right now.

>>51726269
>game with a book full of combat rules
>game with a book full of combat rules that function much better to represent interesting tactical choices

"It's about the adventure, Anon!"

Why don't you just play Fate or something then?

>>51726287
Hamfisting classes to try and fit into your MMORPG vision only reveals that you are like the poor 4e designers, who were adorable failures who have no comprehension of how to build anything other than a board game.

A decent board game, but as far as being an actual RPG, there's a reason why it's nowhere near as popular as both the previous and following editions, and I love how you're forced to go through the mental gymnastics of avoiding the truth (4e is really not all that fun to play) and to come up with blanket statements like "the majority of players just don't like it because it's too different" or "the majority of players don't like it because they're mean poopy-heads."

File: Glamdring-Gandalf_Sword-2.jpg (28KB, 629x419px) Image search: [Google]

28KB, 629x419px

>>51726231
Gandalf.

>>51726263
I'd roll it as an attack against the wall.

Though I guess that's part of the problem.

>>51726357
>interesting tactical choices

I wish that were the case, but the grindy-style of play that is a halmark of 4e only really seems to suit the kind of player who finds WoW an immersive experience.

>>51726391
Bladesinger.
Sword mage.

Wizard with spiral tower PP/Eladrin Sword Wizardry.

>>51726429

At launch you might have a point. That you're repeating things so long after they're fixed just shows you don't care about being right.

>>51726429
Grindy? You just want combat encounters (what the whole book is about) to end in a trivial amount of time? Why aren't you playing Fate or something?

File: guards__guards__by_sharksden-d51mkqxred.jpg (160KB, 1066x750px) Image search: [Google]

160KB, 1066x750px

>>51708799
easy to pick up if you want to bring in friends who aren't that experienced with the game. maintains a good difficulty curve that means players should always have a decent threat of death from monsters during combat.

Easy to adapt for homebrews with more complex settings and unforgiving rules. Though at some point it might just be easier to go back to 3 or play a different table top.

Most importantly, it's fun.

>>51726439
All the latter fixes did was make individual battles shorter, but the play hardly shifted from the same tedious, repetitive combat.

It's good for a session or two at most, but hardly for a full campaign.

>>51726429
>grindy
Maybe if you weren't such a shitter at this game, you could win your combats in reasonable numbers of rounds.

>>51726505
How the fuck is 5e fun? Martials still get shit for options compared to casters.

File: conan-the-barbarian-12-17-15-2.png (338KB, 585x320px) Image search: [Google]

338KB, 585x320px

>>51726430
none of that is core in 4e. If you have to create a new base class to even MAKE a character concept that would otherwise be viable with the options presented in previous editions, that's not roleplaying flexibility, that's a MMO patch.

How about Conan? He doesn't make any sense without abilities core to both Rogue and Barbarian.

>>51726509

>tedious, repetitive combat.

Even if this is the case (it's not), how is this any different from 3.PF? Where most people have even less options?

>>51726384
Aside from half of that being ad hominem at best, roles have always existed so far as having multiple people in a party has.

Not everyone will do large amounts of damage. Not everyone will tank large amounts of damage. Not everyone can heal, not everyone can support. But they are all necessary things to a well functioning party.

Can a party work without one or more of them? yes. But undeniably, they will face hurdles that would have been solved via some action that another role could do. They may even TPK because they didn't have that role.

Literally every system has this. The only one doing mental gymnastics is you to avoid seeing that.

>>51726539
Pick a class, and just train the necessary skills you don't have.

File: Spiral power motherfucker.gif (811KB, 500x281px) Image search: [Google]

811KB, 500x281px

>>51726430
I read that as spiral power.

>>51726539
>gandalf
Wizards can swing swords decently as long as you buy the ability scores.
>core
Fuck off retard.

File: 1480517555475.png (509KB, 596x628px) Image search: [Google]

509KB, 596x628px

>>51726536
I'm fine with the bulk of martial stuff. Quite a bit requires tweaking here and there but overall I enjoy playing with martial classes (fighter and ranger)

>>51726539
>none of that is core in 4e

Wizard of the Spiral Tower is actually PHB.

http://funin.space/compendium/paragonpath/Wizard-of-the-Spiral-Tower.html

You could just run an elf/eladrin wizard with a longsword in core easily either way. Plus core 4e was meh anyway.

>How about Conan? He doesn't make any sense without abilities core to both Rogue and Barbarian.

Such as what? If you identify what abilities you want, I'm pretty sure I can single class Conan (he'll probably be a fighter though).

>>51726539
Dude, use core 3.5. No supplements. no completes.

You are limited as FUCK.

going "if core can't do it its bad" works for both editions

>>51726605

Does the lack of combat options not bother you?

>>51726552
>But they are all necessary things to a well functioning party.
Only if the game self-defines itself around making them necessary.

>Literally every system has this
Most games actually do not. In fact, it's actually a bit of a rarity to find games with those four types of roles enforced, largely because even 4e had a hard time justifying its invented "controller" position.

How can you even argue that every system has these as necessary roles? Have you literally only played 4e?

>>51726605
So you like martials after you overhaul what the book says they are?

>>51726384
Again, MMO shit has been a thing since 3.PF as a whole. X/day abilities, 5 ft. shift, etc. all started in (or at least were popularized by) 3.PF with the designers becoming more and more blatant at the parallels until we got classes like the cavalier that have, what is effectively, a taunt from fucking WoW.
>http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/cavalier/#TOC-Challenge-Ex-
The worst that 4e did was say "y'know what, we fucked up a bit, so let's tear down the bullshit and use some transparency and revel in how gamey our system has become" which people hated even though it's been a thing since 3.PF.

Cognitive Dissonance is a bitch.

>>51726391
Gandalf would be a solar in human form. Nothing remotely like a wizard or indeed like any kind of PC other than a deva invoker in 4e.

>>51726539
>none of that is core in 4e
Everything non-homebrew in 4e is core material.

>>51726617
Literally every system does, because no matter what you specialize your character in some manner, giving up something else.

Also, i never specifically said there were four types. I simply gave four examples of roles.

In fact, its a construct that all of human society is based on. Not everyone can do everything, so we band together and use our varied skills to make great things.

Denying that simple fact is just retarded.

>>51726617

If you don't believe the roles existed and were important in 3.PF you're literally retarded.

The only difference is that in 3.PF the caster classes could generally fill three of the four roles with ease while martials were restricted to being barely competent at just one. Which was not intended.

If you look at how they actually playtested 3.5, it was with tank fighters, healbot clerics, AoE blaster wizards and backstabber rogues.

Now doesn't that seem oddly familiar?

>>51726639
>The worst that 4e did was
>explicitly use MMO terms to describe classes
>have MMO refresh mechanics for abilities
>etc

But hey I'm glad to see the 4rrys haven't died out

>>51726611
>You are limited as FUCK.

Really? I mean, yes, compared to the dozens of books and the thousands of options available in them, yeah, but even just the core rulebooks provide enough material for thousands of unique characters that can fit into thousands of different play styles.

>>51726669

So your problems with the system really boil down to terminology and formatting? Do you really need game designers to lie to you so you can enjoy the system?

>>51726509
3.PF was even worse in this regard because either the caster threw a SoL/SoD spell that ended the encounter in 3 turns at worst or you had to swing through several layers of HP until you finally killed something as a martial.

>>51726614
For martial combat options is what I do as a character. A person can only swing a sword in so many ways. If i fight a giant, I don't expect my character to have mastered a super warrior technique that allows him to bisect it in one swing.

What I will do however, is use my speed to get behind it, my dex to climb up its back and slash it. Or maybe move between trees to inhibit its wide swing for enough time to allow me to cut it down. Alternatively I can tank and create an opening for our caster to land a decisive blow.

But thats just my personal play style, I wont pretend its THE way to play. But I enjoy it.

>>51726610
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conan_the_Barbarian#Abilities

>>51726672
>hurr durr thousands of unique characters
>original argument was against multiclassing
Are you illterate?

>>51726672
If you can't make your character unique by how you play it rather than the options you chose, thats your own issue.

Your character shouldn't be the options you choose, it should be how you use them.

That said, without multiclassing everything but casters and maybe rogues is outright gimped comparatively, and rogues only pass by UMD.

>>51726696
Okay, so be a fighter or warlord and train in thievery and stealth skills. Retard.

>>51726696
Well, he seems to be a powerful allrounder. Considering he's strong, but also intelligent and a leader of men, I'd actually peg him as a Warlord.

>>51726669
So your problem is that WotC told the truth rather than hide how MMO-lite D&D had become behind purple prose and errata?

A spade is a spade no matter how many times you call it a shovel.

>>51726168
Fuck, I didn't notice that and was just looking at the Sorc.

Honestly, I was just even gonna homebrew the thing myself too and let Fighters give up their Expertise Dice to bypass rolling skill-checks for in-combat manuveurs.

FOr example

>Fighter John wants to attack an enemy far away with his sword. He has..let's say 2d8 dice.
>To reach it, he can make a check to swing across a chandelier, slide down the railing to the stairs, then make an attack roll.
>I say it's a STR check for the chandelier, a DEX to slide, and then an attack roll.
>John is confident in his STR and just rolls it. Passes of course, and swings on the chandelier.
>He's not so hot on his DEX, so he gives up one d8 to just do it.
>He reaches the enemy and strikes, adding the d8 he didn't spend earlier on it.

>>51726652
>Denying that simple fact is just retarded.

Trying to say "the 4e roles existed in other editions" is ridiculous, because it can even be argued that the 4 roles they tried to set up fell apart due to poor initial design. Backpedaling it to the point of saying "all games have roles of some kind" is such a vague and pointless statement, I'm questioning why you even bothered, especially since even then its still not wholly true.

When you look at narrative systems, players are often encouraged specifically NOT to try to limit themselves into a particular role, but to remain versatile and adaptable.

>>51726696
>Linguist feat
>Rolled for stats

Are you literally retarded?

>>51726684
>hyperbole by someone who's never played the game

I guess that's what all these edition war discussions end up being in the end.

>>51726684
Doing enough damage to kill was never the problem with martials, it's that doing damage was the worst option to end a fight and that monsters played intelligently made it much, much, much harder for martials to get into position to full attack in the first place.

>>51726766
>I have never dealt with a power gamer who knew how to cheese the game
Can't really be mad at you, in fact, I'd say congrats on avoiding the worst the 3.PF community had to offer and finding a decent group who doesn't make half the group feel useless past level 5.

Shine on your crazy diamond.

>>51726751
>When you look at narrative systems, players are often encouraged specifically NOT to try to limit themselves into a particular role, but to remain versatile and adaptable

Yeah, but the system will also reward being good at what you do. Having some tricks up your sleeves for situations is never a bad idea, but you should always have a specialization.

There's issues with both overgeneralizing and overspecializing. This is where roles as we think of them come from.

roles are just a label to say "this person generally is good at this"

>>51726766
>retardation from someone who has no idea how 3.5 actually plays
Do you think monster stats in the MM are just for show?

>>51726751
>Trying to say "the 4e roles existed in other editions" is ridiculous, because it can even be argued that the 4 roles they tried to set up fell apart due to poor initial design.

Wat.

>When you look at narrative systems, players are often encouraged specifically NOT to try to limit themselves into a particular role, but to remain versatile and adaptable.

I can't think of a narrative system where this is true. It almost always gives you some sort of incentive to take a role of some kind; even if that role is just "guy who has all the thinky stuff".

>>51726769
Thats something they tried to fix with pounce in 3.5, but in the end there were far too few options that gave it without losing a level to lion totem barb or something.

Honestly, one of the issue's with monk is that flurry can't be used as anything but a full attack action. had this been changed to just be part of an attack action in general, monks wouldn't have suffered nearly as much.

Unfortunately, wizards go and break all of that simply by using a single standard action anyways, so i suppose its a moot point.

>>51726623
For Ranger yes, fighter no. I only ever play barbarians as OTT characters for oneshots so I can't really critisise it.

>>51726658
>If you don't believe the roles existed and were important in 3.PF you're literally retarded.

But the roles didn't exist. And weren't important.

You can say they existed, and design your own games around making those roles important, but that's hardly reflective of the larger game, and more of just a fault of you and you specifically limiting your perspective.

Ultimately, what most people had a problem with in 4e is that they WANTED their predefined roles to matter, and geared the game towards that (to the point of introducing the rather unpopular "minions" concept to try and push their controller role). They grew to realize that building around those four roles was limiting and produced a very artificial and awkward game that required players to adjust their expectations towards new definitions of what characters and enemies can do, and they actually began to move away from the roles serving any major purpose beyond loose/initial classification of a class towards the end of the life of the system.

4e roles didn't work, and even the 4e designers realized that.

>>51726769
>Doing enough damage to kill was never the problem with martials
Yes it was, unless you min-max'd to shit and abused every exploit in the game, your martial was never going to keep up with a creature that's equal to him in CR.

Between Damage Reduction, Spell-Like abilities, monster abilities that either ignored physical attacks or hit the martial's shitty saves, and the fact that most monsters are just plain stronger, faster, and tougher than the martial will be without the aid of magic items.

Not to mention, some low level spells can outright render certain means of attacking useless, such as wind wall making ranged archery attacks auto-miss or flight making the user unreachable by melee weapons.

It's just a crap shoot honestly, made worse by the fact that anything that actually gave martials useful options to play with were hated by the community and auto-banned from most public venues like PFS, which meant that less people knew that they even existed.

>>51726896
Mearls, is that you?

Shouldn't you be working on the Mystic?

>>51726896
>But the roles didn't exist. And weren't important.

They existed, but they weren't important because every caster was kitted out with enough different and powerful spells to make them obsolete and not matter, which then gave rise to the hate for caster supremacy and Wotc getting a ton of flack for the game design.

Saying they don't exist is pretty fallacious. Saying they weren't important is right, but as a result of a serious design flaw.

>>51726789
I've known power gamers that cheesed martials, as well as casters. But, I've also known good players.

To try and lay claim that all the combat of a game is based around how the worst kind of people would play it is basically just admitting that all you know about the game is the memes haters repeat about it.

>>51726929
>They existed, but they weren't important because every caster was kitted out with enough different and powerful spells to make them obsolete and not matter,

You say this as if the only way to play was with power gamers at levels 15+.

>>51726947
>To try and lay claim that all the combat of a game is based around how the worst kind of people would play it

I was literally

L I T E R A L L Y

outclassed by a druids animal companion when the first time I played I tried to run a finesse fighter.

>>51726971
Or a Druid at level 1.

How can you deny that 3rd edition was just as role based, when the playtests were all about tanky fighter/blaster wizard/healing cleric/stabby rogue?

It's the reason they kept buffing cleric until release, because nobody wanted to play heal bitch.

>>51726972
So? The animals on your side, and you're still contributing significantly to the battle.

>>51726971
It wasn't, but even without that level, prestidigitation is potentially gamebreaking with the right trains of thought. And its a level 0 cantrip that lasts an hour.

The issue is that with enough long rests, even a level 5 or 6 caster is several times superior to a martial in terms of effectiveness in almost any situation, because a wizard can have everything from social to combat solved with the use of 1 or 2 spells.

>>51726947
Again, congrats on avoiding the worst part of the 3.PF community and actually dealing with players who didn't make you feel like shit for not having system mastery (aka autism) like they did.

Unfortunately, you're the exception, not the rule.

>>51726896
>new definitions

...
They were the same definitions those particular classes had always had in previous editions.

>>51726988
I wasn't though. I was doing 1d8 damage.

In fact, I was doing 1d8 (+ like, 1 from str) damage with no way to improve it for 6 levels aside from taking weapon specialization at 4. I can't add Dex to damage, and power attack doesn't work on finesse weapons.

When I tried to disarm someone, I got hit in the face so hard I went into negatives.

>>51726947
I don't actually care about how a fucktard who doesn't know how to play the game plays it, so I'm not too concerned about basing my opinion of the game's combat based off of both personal experience of every single bad thing that people claim about 3.5 happening AND knowing how the mechanics work. Pretending that SoLs are never thrown around does nothing to help your argument.

>>51727003
>Unfortunately, you're the exception, not the rule.

I'm sorry, but considering the game is still the 2nd most popular game, you're the one who needs to provide some sort of stronger measure to establish your claims.

>>51727029
Oh fuck off Petty. Good job on trolling a thread that wasn't about 3.5, you fucking faggot.

>>51726688

But can you see why people would criticise the system for not supporting that kind of thing?

Those actions are only really possible through playing 'Mother May I?' with the GM, putting your ability to be involved in combat essentially at their whim. Meanwhile, spellcasters have a broad selection of prepackaged useful abilities that they can also use to justify improvisation just as much if not more than martial characters.

>>51727016
There's more to the game than how much damage you deal, Mr. "I built a character not for damage when all I care about is damage."

>>51726988
No I'm not, because by the time I get to do something, the Druid has already killed the thing thanks to being a bear being flanked by a bear while also being able to summon more bears to eat up the action economy.

Not to mention, if I can be replaced by a bear, why the fuck should I be a Fighter when I can take a Druid and become a bear flanked with a bear summoning bears myself and double the chances of our side winning?

>>51727029
Appeal to popularity is a fallacy, you know.

Just because its popular doesn't make it good. Look at mcdonalds. That shit will kill you and its a world wide phenomenon.

>>51727031
You're the petty one for trying to argue that the 2nd most played game somehow consists entirely of exceptions to a rule you just made up.

>>51727038
Did you not read that I tried combat maneuvers?

Well, I had 4 skill points (high INT for combat expertise, +human bonus) but I put most of them into acrobatics and ride and stuff. It was not really useful.

I guess I had fun as the ideas guy, but I could have done that playing the wolf.

>>51726988
Woosh

>>51726988
Holy shit, look at this fucking retard. It's unbelievable how stupid the posters can get.

>>51727038
Then surely you can tell me all the other things the fighter can do better than the druid.

>>51727041
This isn't appealing to popularity, idiot. If you want to claim something is an exception, you need to provide some sort of evidence. If someone provides evidence that contradicts you, that's not a fallacy, that's you being upset.

File: eab86fa7189d1f9e212d6da836bce4ff.jpg (23KB, 236x351px) Image search: [Google]

23KB, 236x351px

Been invited to a 5th game for the first time. Also playing a cleric for the first time (except for a game of 2nd with a shitty GM where I did nothing but twiddle my thumbs every session). What can I expect? And what should I look out for as a cleric?

>>51727029
The thing you need to realize is that the quality of a community is inversely proportionate to the amount of people who participate in it.

In a community of 100 people, people will generally know of one another by name and be less likely to fuck with one another because "hey, I know that guy, I'm not going to fuck with someone I know."

In a community of 10,000 people, people will be more inclined to fuck each other over because "well, I don't know that guy, so fuck him."

So really, 2nd most popular can be taken to mean "2nd worse community" and it wouldn't be false.

>>51727085
Be a life cleric so you don't have to spend as many spell slots on healing. If life cleric, take a feat or a level for the Druid's Goodberry spell if at all possible.

>>51727075
I'm petty sure you also just used an anecdote, which is only an evidence in the anecdotal sense.

>>51727075
You didn't really provide evidence though, you just claimed "hurr, it's popular" and then got butthurt when people called you out on your shit.

If you want an idea of the general 3.PF community, just take a look at /pfg/, GitP, or the paizo forums for an idea of the autism that the community revels in.

>>51727094
>The thing you need to realize is that the quality of a community is inversely proportionate to the amount of people who participate in it.

That's quite an egregious statement you are trying to make there.
That's practically a "anything that is popular is bad" fallacy being committed there.

File: test.gif (799KB, 1280x544px) Image search: [Google]

799KB, 1280x544px

>>51724511

I'm not that guy, but I'll take a swing at each of the points.

>> On Intuitive:
Once you know how combat works (Action, Move, Reaction, Bonus Action) and how spells work (One concentration, can cast 1 level 1+ spell per turn and a cantrip), then you can run combat for any class. Any time a character gets a new ability, you treat that ability as the exception to the rule. Everyone gets one attack when they take an action, but fighters get multi-attack, which means they can attack multiple times.

>> On fast moving

When I would play pathfinder, I felt that combat slowed down a lot when I would have to deal with remembering all the status ailments on a character (He's blind, prone, level-drained, and flanked). Advantage and disadvantage helped make the small number math simpler and more easily traceable. I'm running 9 goblins, and I don't want to slow the game down noting everything wrong with these about to die goblins, subtracting the -4 AC for prone, the +2 to hit from flanking, the -2 AC from blind, and the -5 hp from the level drain. Concentration in conjuncture with only one instance of advantage/disadvantage helps mitigate the ludicrous amounts of stacking effects (no more ridiculous hasted, blessed, stoneskinned, cat's graced, elementally resistant rogue/wizards running around).
when it comes to the choices characters can make in combat, it's a lot easier to move them in the direction the characters were meant to be played. If I'm playing a level 5 wizard for example, I won't be whacking people with my staff. My firebolt cantrip does 2d10, making it far better than my staff. I also don't have to hoard all my spells in the fear of me being useless for the rest of the fight. I can still do 2d10.

If there's one thing that I don't like about 5th edition, it's generating encounters. The XP budget system can be a bit of a pain.

>>51727075
Okay, i'll give some basic reasoning then.

First, 3.Pf is a massive game. Since this is the case, its where many people get into the medium. However, since it has a great deal of design pitfalls and trappings, this teaches players to minmax. On top of this, many of these people will be bad at roleplay initially, as its really awkward to do at first.

So combining the two states you get people that are only good at minmaxing, and aren't exactly great at roleplay until they've been indoctrinated into the 3.pf bad habits.

In this manner, you get a positive feedback loop of players that get increasingly worse at roleplay and increasingly better at Minmaxing, because the information gets distilled down by generation after generation of DMs bringing people in, who then go off and try to DM themselves.

There will inevitably be exceptions, but this is generally what caused the powergaming state of affairs that DnD has today.

To the point that http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Pun-Pun_(3.5e_Optimized_Character_Build) is a thing.

>>51727058
He'll never get it, if he isn't actually a troll anyway.

He's harping about you wanting to be useful in combat instead of roleplayan in a game the manual for which is entirely combat rules.

>>51727152
>That's practically a "anything that is popular is bad" fallacy being committed there.

No, this is about the fans, not the quality of the product. And it's true. The more popular something is, the likelier for its fans to be terrible.

Just look at MLP or Sonic.

>>51727124
If you want to claim that the rule for a community is that they make everyone feel like shit for not having system mastery, than there's no possible way that it could become popular or retain popularity, especially to the level of being just short of being the most popular game. It's hardly a "it's my private club" game.
Bringing up the games popularity isn't being fallacious when the topic is the game's community.

>>51727203
Big Bang Theory.

No jokes, no humor.
Only self debasing quips and comic book references.

>>51724584
Ranger is fine if you're playing a fairly fluffy wilderness campaign and you want the Rogue of the Countryside, ranger is absolute wank in any kind of grindy attrition based dungeon delve.

>>51727159
>I felt that combat slowed down a lot when I would have to deal with remembering all the status ailments on a character
This has more to do with you than it does with the system because I don't have that problem. 3.5 slows down when you start having to roll extra dice that are conditional on other rolls, like crit confirmation or miss chance, and all things considered I would take that over the piece of shit one-size-fits-all mechanic that is advantage.

And I hate 3.5.

>>51727196
That's not really basic reasoning so much as trying to craft together an odd story to support a personal hypothesis that's at odds with any objective figures you can present.

>In this manner, you get a positive feedback loop of players that get increasingly worse at roleplay and increasingly better at Minmaxing,

People don't like min-maxers. People don't like people who are bad at roleplaying. These are old complaints that are everpresent, and if anything 3.pf makes it very easy and clear to see which people are particularly bad. To say it encourages them is ignoring that no one encourages them, and also, pun-pun is only a thought experiment, and nothing anyone would ever actually allow in a game.

>>51727203
Do you honestly not like anything that is popular?

>>51710184
What's wrong with the champion fighter
>t. New player using champion fighter

>>51727320
Do you honestly can't read?

>>51727346
It's boringly simple, with literally 1 good option for all situations, and he isn't even the best fighter at it.

>>51727346
It's inflexible, has a single gimmick that forces you to build the entire rest of your character around it to still do less damage than a Battlemaster, and like a typical Fighter, barely has anything notable out of combat.

>>51727346
The Champion is supposed to be the "simple but strong" option.
Well, the Battlemaster handily outdamages him and has loads more versatility on top.

>>51727296
>people don't like minmaxers

the entire community is a giant exercise in min-maxing. Even my entire group of basically brand new people keep trying to powergame their characters so they feel useful.

And the issue with that is that 3.pf is built for powergaming. The options are several times more important than how you play things out because RAW is worded terribly and doing anything even remotely outside a certain type of thing is horribly crippled without powergaming it to shit.

Looking at monks bonus feats as an example, most of them are traps or useless. Grapple and deflect arrows as examples, unless you absolutely powergame them, and even then are situational. Fighter as an example is easily beat out by a druids companion, as someone already pointed out. Casters don't even need minmaxed because they are already that strong. Wanna do shieldbashing shenanigans? well, i hope you have X shield, 3 different feats, levels in Y class and 5 different magic items. Even then, good luck with that.

There's an endless amount of reasons to powergame the system, all built on design flaws. Like it or not, the community for them both is a bunch of minmaxers because at some level its outright necessary to stay relevant.

They may hate it, but its what the game is good at.

>>51727430

>And the issue with that is that 3.pf is built for powergaming.

This is in arguable, by the way. Monte Cooks comments on ivory tower game design and intentionally making some options better than others to 'reward system mastery' are a matter of public record.

>>51727430
>the entire community is a giant exercise in min-maxing.

The online community? They do like to talk about character options and the like, but you're ignoring a fair amount of the online community that discusses other features of the game, including those terrible PF trolls on /tg/ who use the game as a waifu simulator.

>And the issue with that is that 3.pf is built for powergaming.

3.pf has tangible mechanics. While that makes it more engaging for complex powergaming, literally every game has exploits that can be power gamed, even ones with far looser mechanics. And, some games are even more rewarding for power gamer abuse, like Exalted or 4e, with 4e in particular having been repeatedly broken by power gamers just for the fun of it, including it being broken even before it was released, and being more rewarding since the combat is far more emphasized in that game.

3.pf has plenty of weaknesses, but it's not some mystical, magical game, with most of what makes it special being largely just it's popularity. It attracted power gamers because it's crunchy and popular, but it's a bit much to try and say that the majority of the community are power-gaming munchkins, especially when that's a specific stereotype reviled even with the community.

>>51727294

I do agree that I should have touched more on the conditionals in my post. Thank you for helping with that. A lot of the conditionals lead to a lot of fringe cases, and a plethora of fringes lead to one or more of them cropping up almost every session. For the beer and chips sessions I run at college, Advantage/Disadvantage is enough of a determinant. If you're blind, you're probably screwed up enough in a sword fight. I don't have to care much else for floaters. In a more simulation game closer to the AD&D series, I can see where this can get hollow. I am sure that you or WoTC could have stratified certain conditions in 5E. At least when I write this, I see the possibility of more fringes that I, feeling like the only person who read the rules, would have to remember. What would that look like? At least something that I've played with was putting certain conditions on a "tier," with something minor like flanking being a D4, then something like blind being a D8, then adding that to any attack roll against someone (kind of like how proficiency worked in the earlier playtest packets). That way, you can combine dice when they're screwed. While I do like grit, a lot of the players that I play with are either novices or intermediates. I like the idea of more stratification, but I also like my players knowing the rules of the game.

>>51727555

>4e in particular having been repeatedly broken by power gamers just for the fun of it, including it being broken even before it was released, and being more rewarding since the combat is far more emphasized in that game.

Hahahahahaha, seriously? You seriously think 4e is better for powergaming than 3.PF?

You are so utterly fucking delusional

>>51727555
>4e is more broken than 3.5
>breaking 4e is more rewarding than breaking 3.5

We are done here.

You are comparing a game where there was an exploit (that was fixed later anyway) to oneshot a single monster once a day if two level 30 characters work together, burning almost all of their daily resources to a game where a level 1 kobold can literally get infinite stats.

>>51727555
See >>51727443

Also
>There's an endless amount of reasons to powergame the system, all built on design flaws. Like it or not, the community for them both is a bunch of minmaxers because at some level its outright necessary to stay relevant.

As much as you may hate to admit it, if you play 3.pf at all, you are playing a minmaxing game. Its simply a matter of degree's of difference between the average player and a "That guy" munchkin.

>>51727555

see >>51727443

3.PF was literally built for power gaming. By the words of one of the lead designers. This is not something you can avoid.

>>51727596
level 5, currently.

>>51727555
4E is more rewarding for powergaming solely because you can do it and not ruin the fucking game for everyone. That's what happens when you have balance that isn't an afterthought.

>>51727612
My bad, I remembered the original being level 1.

Ivory tower design that necessitates system mastery is basically sysnonynous with power gaming.

>>51727443
Ivory Tower is a bad meme, that really only applies to the player's handbook, and comes from an article written by Cook six years in retrospect as one member of a team.

To start, Ivory Tower is about "providing the player's with the rules, without explanation." While this is in part true for the PH, it's hardly true for the entire system, with the DMG, various splatbooks, Dragon Magazine, the Wizard's Website, and various other sources going to great lengths to explain the nuances of the various abilities and options. In many ways, the Ivory Tower is just a myth.

Secondly, the intent was not to reward players for system mastery, and Cook explains that it was an incidental result of their decision to regulate help and advice to other books, likely in order to keep the PH from being a thousand page monstrosity, to keep the language impersonal, and to fit in as much content as possible. It's something that was coined looking back at the system, and in an attempt to explain in part why it was so successful.

>>51727686
That doesn't really stop the design flaws from being a present thing though.

That said, them explaining the nuance is also part of the issue. The more you get into hard terms, the more things need to be power gamed because the less freedom you have with any one option.

Take into account that some things were just poorly written or thought out, and that makes it even harder to not powergame.

>>51727686

Man, the apologist historical revisionism is getting laughable.

Early in 3.5's development, they were looking at using MtG style mechanics, with feats and classes having different powers and rarities, adding a collectable element to the game and making people want to get the best set of character traits to be the most powerful.

Thankfully they abandoned that godawful idea, but its influence never went away. 3.5 core might be the worst book in the line, but the sheer number of trap options and overpowered bullshit in the rest of the system is still notable.

>>51727722
Not to mention trap options in the core game like skill increasing feats and things like endurance. Or grappling. Or deflect arrows. Or sunder. Or dodge, unless used as a prerequisite and even then.

Especially sunder. Why have it be a thing when you are cleaving the loot you are about to get? fucking retarded is what that is.

>>51727717
>That doesn't really stop the design flaws from being a present thing though.

It dramatically changes the idea of "these flaws were put in just to reward system mastery" though.

>Early in 3.5's development, they were looking at using MtG style mechanics,

"Joking about lesson's that could be learned from Magic" is hardly the same thing as seriously considering them.
In fact, it's quite clear that they were opposed to ideas such as "with feats and classes having different powers and rarities, adding a collectable element to the game and making people want to get the best set of character traits to be the most powerful."

You really need to stop trying so hard to demonize the game. It's altering how you perceive and remember things.

>>51724241
>>51724292
>>51724306

Not same-fagging, this is a genuine observation I made while playing in a group who went from 2e to 3e to 4e to Pathfinder, in that order.

Some people don't seem interested in or are even intimidated by options. Picking a class or a feat every few levels is fine, but having to make a serious multiple choice decision based on situational awareness on every round of combat is just not fun for them.

They don't want to study a choice of several powers almost each level to pick one that synergizes the most, mechanically or role-playing wise. It just doesn't interest them at all.

I watched these players jump on 4e Essentials to help simplify their concepts and then finally revert to Pathfinder after years of 4e never really clicking with them because they didn't like the extra level of study.

These guys are lots of fun but are much more interested in showing up and role playing and throwing some dice and having fun than doing "homework" in between sessions. I tried to get them into Dungeon World as maybe something they'd like but I think they finally slowly converted mostly to FATE.

>>51727770
>>51727770
>It dramatically changes the idea of "these flaws were put in just to reward system mastery" though

To be frank, how the flaws were introduced is secondary at best, as most people these days will not ever learn of that. The fact that they are present is much larger an issue over all.

>>51727779
There's absolutely no reason for people prefer role playing over serious crunch to play Dundeong and Dragons.

>>51727853
I agree with you 100%, though maybe 5e is fluffy enough to be a good borderline. As I said I suggested Dungeon World, Warhammer Fantasy 3e, but I guess 3.PF is comfy and lazy and learning new things is hard.

>>51727853
I'd argue that 5e is a bit better for roleplay and is lighter on crunch than previous editions. It does at least attempt to give you a starting point for a character, after all, and it simplifies the mechanics down a great deal.

That said, if you are just looking to roleplay, there are a great deal of rules light systems out there

>>51727853
>>51727901

I still don't entirely buy the crunch/roleplay dichotomy.

If you want a light set of mechanics that gets out of the way? Sure, I can see why some people would prefer that.

But I'm a fan of crunchy mechanics because of how it supports and adds to roleplaying. Actual mechanical consequences to decisions and significant choices that reflect my characters choices give actions more weight, for me. This is a pure personal preference thing, just wanted to weigh in since I think the oft repeated narrative vs crunchy is a false dichotomy, even if there are relatively few systems which explore the potential of combining the two.

>>51727935
I don't think anyone is saying you need light rules to have better roleplay.

The issue we're looking at is that there is a class of players who have very little interest in crunchy bits at all but still want to roleplay, enter the low-crunch RPG niche.

>>51727779
I'm fine with 4e not being their cup of tea, but going to PF is still retarded. At least go back to OSR games or something if you just want simple.

>>51727935
>it supports and adds to roleplaying

Here's the issue. First, this is only true to a point. After a certain extent, the crunch starts to get in the way of roleplay because your actions are entirely dictated by numbers, stats, and whatever poor wording the designer decided to use.

Another problem that arises from this is the aforementioned lack of roleplay from powergamers. The crunchier things get, the more people will see their options as roleplaying. Things like "i attack" and "i cast X" and "i wanna roll for diplomacy" all become "roleplaying" because they believe their options to be better than ingenuity, thought, or words.

The two can most certainly coexist, but there is a point where crunch gets in the way of roleplay.

>>51727812
The idea is that the flaws are introduced with other considerations beyond balance, and they weren't ironed out because they considered some things more important than balance.

Take the toughness feat, for example. It's a particularly bad feat, because it's passive, boring, and basically just needed because people would ask "why isn't there a feat that increases HP"? Now, they could have chosen to make it more worthwhile by making it more balanced, but that raises the question of whether the designers should be encouraging people to take more passive feats.

Overall, in hindsight, they could have put more value in balance, but you need to keep in mind that that's a relatively modern consideration, with previous editions and games having only very, very loose standards for player/player balance. Remember that we're talking about games where stats were randomly rolled, and game tournaments were popular and largely just a way for players to show how well they could break the game.

While balance is good and fairly important, it is not and should not be the penultimate consideration for all game design decisions. While I reiterate that 3.pf could and should have been more balanced, it's important to keep in mind that there's much more to the game.

>>51728072
>Remember that we're talking about games where stats were randomly rolled,
Games where stats were randomly rolled but the stats had a much, much lower impact on the game than they do in 3.5, so balance was obviously a consideration there
>and game tournaments were popular and largely just a way for players to show how well they could break the game.
Which they did not do in the same manner as 3.5, where you build a character to break the game.

All I'm getting from this is that there was a fundamental misunderstanding of *why* AD&D worked the way it did from 3E's designers, which is pretty much what I've said about the game all along.

>>51727935
>>51727999
>>51728054
I'd just like to chime in to point out that although some prefer games that "support roleplaying", Dungeons and Dragons is a particularly poor example of this. Almost the entirety of the character options and rules presented in the 3 main books anyone would use to play the game are centered on combat encounters and some character classes are particularly ill supported for this purpose.

The closest one could claim would be charm person spells and extreme diplomacy rolling mind control but neither of those fits a strict definition of roleplaying.

>>51728217
>Games where stats were randomly rolled but the stats had a much, much lower impact on the game than they do in 3.5, so balance was obviously a consideration there

That's a bit of a joke, considering that in some editions even what classes you could pick were barred by what stats you rolled.

>Which they did not do in the same manner as 3.5, where you build a character to break the game.
Why insist on pretending that the only way to play is in the worst way with the worst people? Don't you get tired of arguing about a game that is so distantly related from the one that so many people actually play? It makes it impossible to have any fair evaluation of any game if your criteria for its examination revolves around playing it in ways contrary to how most people actually played it.

File: why 3d6 doesn't work with 3.pf.jpg (559KB, 1070x852px) Image search: [Google]

559KB, 1070x852px

>>51728301