What exactly is wrong with D&D 5e? I've heard a lot

There's a lot of different reasons people dislike 5e.

Personally? I just think it's boring. It's a game without any coherent design direction of its own, no real vision, no real innovation. It exists to fill the gap that D&D occupies, to feel familiar and samey, to cater to their core audience.

And in terms of doing that? It's a good system. It achieves all that very well, and I can see why a lot of people love it.

I just expect better of the grandfather of RPGs. I want them to innovate, to drive the hobby forward, to be willing to take risks and try new things... Then again, after 4e, I can see why they shirked away from it. I loved 4e, it remains my favourite iteration of the system, but their attempts at innovation seemed exactly what the larger part of their core audience didn't want. All I've really learnt from all this is that I'm not part of their key demographic. Then again it doesn't bother me too much, there are plenty of other games out there for me to play.

>>52669363
>I loved 4e
Then get back to /v/ or one of the MMO generals on /vg/ where you belong.
The problem is that 5e took the worst part of 4e, the blandness and almost non-existant versimilitude of the rules and continued with that. 5e's take on classes with their weird sub-sets is almost as bad 4e's MMO style striker/tank/leader/controller nonsense

>>52669437

Protip- Those roles existed in 3.5. The system made a lot of the same assumptions about having access to them. They just fucked up giving the classes tools to properly fulfil their role in some cases (fighter), while giving others the tools to fulfil multiple roles in others (full casters) due to playtesting with blaster wizards and healbot clerics, with GMs playing along to let fighters actually defend them rather than realising the mechanics at their disposal were not fit for purpose.

All 4e did was remove the layer of obfuscation and make the design ideas actually function. Everything else was explicitly present in 3.5 as part of its intended design.

>>52669363
you seem like a cool dude

5e doesn't really have any really overt design problems that don't come down mostly to preference. There are smaller problems, like some archetypes and skills being bad/useless, or some feats being more or less mandatory. And high level casters are ridiculously versatile compared to non casters (as usual) both in and out of combat, but you know what you have signed off when you picked D&D (except 4e).

The big sticklers are the small modifiers compared to the dice range, making the characters relatively less reliably skilled than previous editions, and advantage/disadvantage being not granular enough.

Compared to the previous two version there's a dearth of new material/player options, and combat is a lot simpler.

>>52669504
Then why does nobody cite them as problems? Simple, because you don't need to be told this shit explicitly, it's a roleplaying game. Use your imagination for once.
If you cram it full of MMO terminology, of course nobody will view it as a RPG anymore and 5e is almost halfway there

>>52669580
>Shadowfell

Shadowfell was a SERIOUS improvement over what it replaced. The fucking Negative Energy Plane.

Hey, here is a plane where nobody can actually adventure or if you can, there is fuck all do to.

The Shadowfell and Feywild were great replacements for Negative and Positive respectively.

>>52669659

You're replying to a post full of casual racism and buzzwords. They're either a troll or so catastrophically stupid they're not worth a reply.

>>52669643

>If you cram it full of MMO terminology, of course nobody will view it as a RPG anymore

...which MMO terminology?

>>52669363
>I just expect better of the grandfather of RPGs. I want them to innovate, to drive the hobby forward, to be willing to take risks and try new things... Then again, after 4e, I can see why they shirked away from it.

I remember someone describing 5e as everyone's second favorite D&D edition. It is a good system but seems to stretch itself in who it tries to appeal to. It seems popular among those who just want a no-frills D&D game, which is perfectly fine.

On that note, I wish I got into 4e earlier.

>>52669643
>MMO terminology
Hello, child, maybe you don't know that mmo's took those terms from pnp rpgs, not the other way around.
The real issue, as denoted by >>52669612, is that players these days, weaned on 3e, believe D&D to be something it wasn't UNTIL 3e.
Their skewed viewpoint leads to backlashes against anything that isn't 3e.
The only reason I don't play 5e is because I can pick up my 2e books, cut out the splat glut from the later years, and have the exact same thing without spending money.

>>52669659
>Shadowfell and Feywild were great replacements for Negative and Positive respectively.
They don't replace those planes you doublenigger. Plane of Shadow and Feywild were always there as mirrors of the prime material. Plane of Positive and Negative energy are still there and always will be so long as the planes remain the way they are. 5e doesn't have much info on the planes beyond the DMG because it doesn't expect people to actually go to them.
>>52669673
>casual racism
Yeah, you're on 4chan. Get with it or get the fuck out newfag.

>>52669643
>Then why does nobody cite them as problems?
Because 3.PF's issues were so vast that having a cavilier with a taunt ability or introducing racial 1/day powers were peanuts compared to everything else wrong with the system.

Besides, most people who hated 4e only hated it because it was vastly different that 3.PF, not because it was a poorly designed system overall.

>>52669698
>Plane of Positive and Negative energy are still there
In 4e, no, they expressly were not.
You... don't really know anything about 4e, do you?
It's almost cute.
Alright, pack it in, everyone. This guy is trying to get the thread deleted like the WoD thread.

>>52669698

What's the point of a plane that you can't go adventuring in? Better get rid of all the trash and focus on places that actually provide useful plot hooks to GMs.

>>52669580
Virt is at it again! The madman!

>>52669304
>What exactly is wrong with D&D 5e?
There's a lot of good ideas strewn about its design but it's marred by how lacking a lot of player options are overall.

Like Battlemasters get a shitload of awesome maneuvers and martial dice were a great idea to give Fighters extra umph, but compared to the amount of spell slots a mage gets, they scale too slow to remain relevant and you end up resting more often than the mage does overall.

Then you have to deal with some of the same issues that plagued 3.PF, but on a marginally smaller scale so people don't actually notice the issues, like how mages still run roughshed over the martials but are stopped by concentration checks and how HP bloat is still an issue even though martials can blow their load to take out a chunk of HP.

>>52669731
>In 4e, no, they expressly were not.
What page? Cause in 5e they are left out but more or less in there since the planes are distinctly classified as higher or lower.
>>52669733
Because you still can go to any of them with some degree of preparation. Because some DM's like planescape style of real high fantasy where you go dimension hopping regularly. Because maybe they want to try to add some rhyme and reason why shit works the way it does in case a DM likes to build up on that.

>>52669675
He means having powers that only work a certain amount of times per day even though 3.PF introduced those concepts to D&D in the first place.

>>52669580
You sound like a person who's opinion I should take seriously.

>>52669304
I'd rather play 13th Age or Shadow of the Demon Lord. WotC is a shadow of what they used to be.

>>52669791

I'm not sure how any of that actually relates to my core point.

You're in a game about fantasy adventure. If the game bothers to detail a location, it should be somewhere you can go adventuring. All of the stuff you mention can also still be included, but a lot of the old planescape places were huge, featureless emptiness that only existed for symmetry and the actual interesting places were few and far between. Better scrap the distances and focus on the stuff that's actually fun to interact with instead of just wank pseudo-philosophy.

>>52669304
There's nothing wrong with 5e. It's just a bunch of 4rries being butthurt that people actually like it, unlike their tactical wargame which failed so badly, it literally created Pathfinder.

>>52669791
>What page?
DMG?
Manual of the Planes?
Also, you do know that every edition of D&D changed the cosmology, and the one you are talking about is Forgotten Realms cosmology, which in 5e is the standard setting, whereas the Points of Light setting was standard.

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>>52669304
Nothing, it's just boring mechanically, which you won't notice with an enthusiastic group.

Any horror stories about mechanics you hear are 99.99999999999999999999999999995% of the time some butthurt Pathfinder faggot or 3.5 loser trying to 'fight back' against the system that is gradually choking theirs out.

>>52669829

>4rries

But it's 3.5 fanboys who seem to hate it the most. Or 2e grogs.

>>52669817
>Better scrap the distances and focus on the stuff that's actually fun to interact with instead of just wank pseudo-philosophy.
You do realize that travel is part of the adventure. That running into random encounters of cool shit to interact with rather than big, fuckheug set pieces is part of the gameplay style. Some people would rather weave sense and style together rather than string every fucking landmark together by 15 mile intervals.

>>52669580
>Stupid shit literally no one cares about
>A bunch of things that have literally nothing to do with the game or the rules set
>T-T-THE SJWS

3.5 fags everybody

>>52669829
Nuking the OSR created pathfinder.

4e could have been the second coming of Christ and PF would still be a thing.

>>52669876
>*OGL

never drink and post, kids

>You do realize that travel is part of the adventure. That running into random encounters of cool shit to interact with rather than big, fuckheug set pieces is part of the gameplay style.

You don't really run into anything on an infini

>>52669876

The OGL, you mean?

>>52669888
jesus

*You don't really run into anything on an infinite featureless plain.

5e is not bad it's just very vanilla. They have a good base but they aren't really doing anything with it and just leave it to the GMs to homebrew to add flavor to it.
I prefer to play TSR era D&D because it's simple but also has flavor to it, and more than enough things that are actually interesting.

>>52669698
4chan was pro-nigger in 2006. Get off my lawn.

>>52669863
Anon, you do know that many of the planes had nothing in them, right, or had any real details about them at all, and existed because they needed to bookend planes?
What you are talking about could easily be found in the elemental chaos.
My players were once meandering thru a portion of the air plane, when, out of pique, I told them that a firestorm of planar energy was bearing down on them. In this firestorm was an efreeti's castle broken away from the City of Brass.
They manage to survive the firestorm by finding an attached "well" of the castle, climbed it, and were in it's basement.
Cue mad adventures.

>>52669304
5E is just an overly elaborate way to codify "roll 1d20, 1-5 fails, 12-20 succeeds, for the rest, plead your case"

I mean yeah, that's how a lot of people play D&D, but I don't know why you need a big book full of rules if you're going to do that anyway.

>>52669643
>Then why does nobody cite them as problems?
Practically every fucking person who criticizes 3e considers them problems, explicitly or not.

>>52669976
>D&D is just an overly elaborate way to codify "roll 1d20, 1-5 fails, 12-20 succeeds, for the rest, plead your case"
Fixed that for you, because that was the case in AD&D (usually), 3e, and 4e (by explicit design).

>>52670040
That's only true at low levels in 3.5. Later everything becomes auto-success or auto-fail.

And it's not true at all in 4E, where all the skill DCs are so wonky that nobody can accomplish anything.

>>52670120
>Later everything becomes auto-success or auto-fail.
That is more the fault of the charop community's mindset of "if it isn't guaranteed to succeed, it's useless".
>where all the skill DCs are so wonky that nobody can accomplish anything.
Stop using the skill charts from the dmg, and use the one in the Rules Compendium.
Further, you need to cotton on to the fact that skill dcs are not keyed to the pc level, but to the level of the opposition. The real problem came from people who cheesed out their skill bonus to absurd heights, then keyed other skills to their cheesed out skill.

>>52669580
wtf i love 5e now!

But seriously, anything that makes someone as dumb and incoherent as you this mad must be a quality product.

Lot of 4e autists

A quick flickering of lights should remove them

>>52670120
>where all the skill DCs are so wonky that nobody can accomplish anything.

That's a first.

They had to increase skill DCs later because things became a bit too easy IIRC.

>>52670224
>The real problem came from people who cheesed out their skill bonus to absurd heights, then keyed other skills to their cheesed out skill.

This, arcana twink wizards were ridiculous.

>>52669304
For the most part, >>52669831 hit it on the nail. 5E isn't the best PnP RPG system, not by a long shot, but it's not terrible either. Its rules are at least semi-balanced (there's no gaping class / spell / creature imbalances in the original material) with a focus on KISS for DM and Player's sake, it is not inflexible in what it can do / how it must be played, etcetera. Most of the complaints I've seen aimed towards it being "WORST GAME EVER!!!1one!" come from 3.5 / PFers who are attached to that system at the hip and dislike, among other things…
1) That casting =/= God Mode and make non-Caster classes irrelevant outside Multi-Class purposes at higher levels.
2) That most people can't stack Skills out the ass anymore leading to the horrific 3.5 / PF Skill Bloat of "Right the party's Level 8 so I'm setting the DC check at 35 so you need someone at least halfway competent in the skill to reliably pass".
3) Seriously, "REEE I'M LEVEL 11 WHY IS THE FIGHTER DOING COMPARABLE DAMAGE TO MEEEEE?"
4) That much of the excel sheet formulas from the 3.5 / PF era mean jack and the difference between tiers (barring a handful of exceptions like Yuan-Ti Pureblood PCs or Berserker Barbarians) is much less noticeable

Again, are there problems? Yes. It's KISS rule set means several options are sorely lacking (Have fun never crafting) and the DM will probably need to house rule things to fix overly simple rules instead of overly complex, and there's a bit of setting dissonance for some of the class / race options (just to name a few issues). But for the most part all the horror stories I've heard about 5E stem from people upset that their Dragonwrought Warforged Psion with six classes by the time they hit Epic has no direct comparison and how their "streamlined" replacement can't even render an optimized Level 20 Fighter irrelevant by the time they get their third ASI.

>>52670465
>several options are sorely lacking (Have fun never crafting)

from what I gather, I think you can be proficient with a set of tools, which includes smithing tools
instead of a Craft (Smithing) skill you just have the tool proficiency instead

at least that's how i got it, but the first time i played i REEEEd at the lack of craft/smithing skill

>>52669304
The rules are inconsistent and flimsy, the designers already admitted they made things purposefully vague.

The mantra of 5e is "DM fiat" which entirely defeats the point of having a rulebook in the first place. They wanted to make DnD more accessible so they made an edition for people who don't care much about rules and mechanics.

>>52670532
The issue is less that you can't craft, more that it's fixed at 5GP / day productivity regardless of level or proficiency bonus or so-on. Meaning that be you a Level 1 or Level 20 Wizard (as an example), you're still going to take ten days to craft a single Alchemical Fire flask.

>>52670465
In addition to balancing the power level, concentration in 5e does negate a large chunk of being creative as a caster though.

Question for the 5e people in the thread. I'm primarily a 3.P player that dabbles in Shadowrun and World of Darkness, and all three have solid and easily understood summoning options that allow for many various flavours of minions.
What if any sort of support is there for that sort of thing in 5e?

>>52670573
>>52670686
>balancing the game means not arbitrarily giving one group overly grand means to swing the game in any one direction, from stacking of spells to item creation
Surprising, that.
>>52670700
None, if the devs have an iota of sense.
PC armies are among the most abusable tactics in all of the games you have mentioned, on top of slowing the game to a crawl.
And I say this as the guy who popped for a force 8 spirit of man with an avenger for a particularly ugly wet run I sorta had to do.

>>52670700
Summoning spells exist. There's also summoning familiars/mounts and some other utility stuff.

You are not going to be going around with armies though. Unless you are a necromancer.

>>52669697

>The only reason I don't play 5e is because I can pick up my 2e books, cut out the splat glut from the later years, and have the exact same thing without spending money.

This, pretty much. It's a solidly designed system that uses some of the core design elements of 3e to sort of reverse-engineer the best of what 2e was, but then just doesn't have much content for it. At all.

2e shows its age a little but has tons and tons of content, some of it very very good. Since my favorite setting is Planescape, I'm pretty much bound to 2e.

>>52669363
>innovation
Let the new stuff be called other name than D&D, because trying to sell cheese labeled "bread" will result in skub like discussing 4e was

>>52670686
Sort-of? I won't deny it prevents certain combinations that use to be staples as far back as the original D&D, but at the same time the main thing it limits is stacking multiple buffs / effects from the same source without the aid of magical items. A number of the spells you'd want to stack together also have a short enough duration (another one of the changes made to balance spells) to last only a single encounter anyways, let alone to get stacked ahead of time.

The bigger issue casters face is that they tend to have some of the worst action economy (comparable to that of Barbarians) due to a lack of Bonus Action actions (that don't rely on spell slots), ways to increase their number of actions / turn (compared to Action Surge or certain class abilities), and their Reaction generally being saved for a Class feature or a specific spell (often Shield). Despite being Level 1, Expeditious Retreat remains an actually not-terrible spell even into higher levels because "Can dash as a bonus action" gives them something to do with their bonus action.

As said, valid things to complain about 5E about, but generally minor gripes and nothing game breaking. Unless "Aren't a god as a caster" is game-breaking for someone, but see earlier 3.5 / PF comment.

>>52670465
>Have fun never crafting
What is yesterday's Unearthed Arcana: Downtime for 50, Alex?

>>52670754
>implying a character wanting to be rewarded for investing in a skillset or artisan tools is arbitrary and unfair

>>52670547
it's less about the car and more about who's your company and where you ride

>>52670700
Necromancy, but nobody likes necromancers coz they take long to move their shit.
"Conjure" spells also let you summon a legion of small critters or a small squad of stronger ones.

>>52670547
>"DM fiat" which entirely defeats the point of having a rulebook in the first place.
You can only believe this if you think book rules are more important than the GM being able to both run the game AND make decisions wisely.
This mindset is ultimately the gift of 3e on tabletop gaming, and it honestly runs counter to the vast majority of games on the market.

>>52670864
UA crafting is still pretty shitty, something simple like melting down a chandelier into 10 silver bullets for a sling will take you 2 weeks.

>>52669304
Nice, I thought WotC wouldn't spend money on shills and focus on development, but I guess that isn't the case.

>>52671110

He's not saying that the GM shouldn't be free to mess with the rules, he's arguing that building an entire system around the idea of the GM being able to ignore the rules is dumb, which I agree with.

You should always try to build a coherent, logical functional ruleset. That a GM can and will ignore and modify things at will is always true, but it's not something you should rely on in your design or use as a crutch.

>>52671115
Aye. Mention it in a survey when next UA comes out so that they fix it when it becomes an actual thing and not "playtest material".

>>52671110
Lay off with the false dichotomy, there's a difference between a DM able to make his own decisions out of his own volition and a DM forced to make his own decisions because the core rules have holes in them.

>>52671189
Has anything from any of the UAs moved from the playtest stage?

5e has it's own drawbacks but is a much more balanced system than 3e or 4e. Martials and casters are better balanced, though still not perfectly. Everyone is better out of combat since the DCs are less stratified so it makes the dice roll mean more than it used to. Honestly every game will still come down to the DM but 5e is more approachable mechanically so it allows people with less time/experience to both play and DM thus bringing more focus to creativity and roleplaying

>>52671214
Not yet.
Well, storm sorcerer, maybe. Whatever was in SCAG.

>>52671218

>More balanced than 4e

Nope.

>>52671237
For the 3 pillars

>>52671110
>>52671169
>>52671207
I agree with those two but wanted to add that this is the reason why Neverwinter Nights was a shitty game. The main story was crap but they gave people tools to make their own game instead of making a good game on their own.

>>52671169
>You should always try to build a coherent, logical functional ruleset
It is functional.
It's just that the vast majority of games do not try to put to rules the things that 3e D&D did, and 3e D&D is the metric most people use (Even ignoring other highlights like SR and WoD already mentioned for being exceedingly crunch heavy).
The GM is obliged to ignore the rules whenever they want, but must also understand when not to. It's rule 0, which I've noticed in many of the game threads that a LOT of people on this board have problems with, along with a general malign towards GMs as a whole.
>>52671207
>the core rules have holes in them.
>implies that since something does not already have a rule written for it, it must be "missing", rather than purposefully not there
2e would drive you fucking nuts then, when it was assumed the DM would in fact use their own best judgment for the many situations not even attempted to be covered by rules, and it was understood that the DM's word was to be accepted at face value rather than be challenged and undermined.

>>52671537
Video games != pnp games, no matter how much people try to make that comparison.
The human interaction element is what makes pnp games, along with an arbitrator that makes decisions based not on preset directives, but whatever serves the game at the time.

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>>52669304
>mfw I still play 3.5 because I own all the books
They'll never get another cent from me!

>>52669363
>I loved 4e

Oh boy here we go.

>>52670821
It's also a mirror of 2e in the mindset. 5e is wizards going "holy shit people hated 4e, just make something as unassuming and unhateable as possible" and 2e was tsr going "holy shit people think dnd is Satan, just make something as unassuming and unhateable as possible"

>>52669304
Personally, I find it extremely DM dependent and after playing for two years with very little new content a little repetitive as well. If you got a good group that gets along well it can still be fun to play.

I personally wish there were more items that players can buy or use without needing a DM to give them to you. I understand that they wanted to stay away from the magic item amrket in 3.5 but I wish they'd at least give you the option to buy better healing potions instead of just the basic ones. spending your action to regain 2d4 + 2 hp can help out early game but it's absolutely a wasted turn to use one late game where it's barely a bandage.

But the biggest gripe comes from how slow wotc gives new content for players and DMs to use aside from adventures. And after playing for two years, and playing each class at least once, the player options don't feel that different overall so if you play one class variant, you've pretty much played them all.

5e has potential to be good but it needs more stuff for the players to sink their teeth into or else they will grow bored of it. I finally decided to start wanting to DM a game and when I told my group I'd be using 5e half of them said they'll pass unless I change the game to pathfinder, 4e, or find something different. Our last DM who ran a 5e game was too busy playing overwatch to prepare a session so he wouldn't work on his campaign until the day before or day of the session and it was obvious he didn't have anything really planned. So that put a final nail in the coffin for our group giving 5e a chance.

I still have no idea what to try and run for them. Pathfinder has too much shit and I'm not experienced enough to run it, I know nothing about 4e and so far every other system i had skimmed has had some major fault to it that i know my friends won't want to play the game.

It's a god damn shame if you ask me. 5e could have been great.

>>52671576
3.5 had always been the didn't realize there were other versions version

>>52669659
>>52669781
>>52669812
>>52669875
>>52670234
Repost the post you fags. I wanna laugh too!

>>52671572
What's the difference between an MMO and roll20?

At the end of the day, you and a few other people are still making characters to interact with the world. I mean sure, ttRPG's CAN offer freedom but how much freedom you get is highly dependent on the DM, while in an MMO, the amount of freedom you have as far as mixing different abilities together is much more consistent.

>>52671613

It's the nature of 5e.

Hasbro pushed 4e hard, trying to make it as profitable as a brand as MtG. Regardless of what they did, it was an impossible and unrealistic assessment, and despite making money the game didn't reach their expectations.

5e is very much a budget project. It has a very small amount of money and staff involved and mostly exists as a passion project for WotC and to occupy the brand so they can license it out for more profitable ventures like videogames. It sucks, but it's the economic reality of the situation.

>>52671656
>What's the difference between an MMO and roll20?
Roll20 is an electronic medium that facilitates pnp gaming, which I've already said is incomparable to video games in scope.
This is the first time I've ever seen someone actually try to argue that video games and pnp games are comparable on any real level.

>>52671234
I think the total list is Swashbuckler, Storm-origin Sorcerers, Undying Light Warlocks, part of the Tiefling variant, and the "Ranger, Revised" version generally being seen as the superior of the two (but not put out in a book just yet due to being a bit big for most Adventure Books but not enough to justify a PHB recall / reprint).

>>52671756
>Roll20 is an electronic medium that facilitates pnp gaming, which I've already said is incomparable to video games in scope.
By that logic, MMO is just another electronic medium that facilitates roleplay opportunities.
>This is the first time I've ever seen someone actually try to argue that video games and pnp games are comparable on any real level.
That's probably because most people don't care or knows that there's really no difference and the people who argue the most about it are generally elitist who think that their nerd hobby is inherently more legit than another nerd hobby.

>>52671826
>By that logic, MMO is just another electronic medium that facilitates roleplay opportunities.

Well, I guess if you sit down and use the chat function to roleplay with one of you as the DM and its chat has built in roll function, sure.

But that's a bit meta.

>>52670547

This is exactly the kind of attitude that shows a near-total misunderstanding of what makes a good game and game system.

>>52670465

I'm mostly a GURPS player these days, so I don't have a dog in the fighting of the edition wars. But I think this guy has it spot on. 5th is a good game overall. It's great for what it is supposed to be. I preferred 3rd to 4th, but partisans of both editions are watching their favorites dry up and so now are butt hurt. So the whining is mostly sour grapes.

>>52670573
This isnt conpletely bad.

1+1=2 no matter if youre a mathematician or a preschooler

>>52671693
>>52671693
tbqh the lower budget thing is almost kind of working in that we get less releases of higher quality, and if you don't count UAs nothing official has been broken or unusuable like some of the splatbooks of earlier editions. You can maybe look at the yuan-ti pureblood or something but that's fucking nothing compared to earlier edition's problem supplements

>>52671771
Well, I mean, these complaints basically boil down to "Shit that started before 5E", "Fucking SJWs", and "Fucking SJW shit that started before SJWs was even coined as SJW". I don't think you can even pin this post on 3.5 / PFers at this point and more "My shit don't smell" + "Non-whites? In my official material? REEEE!" Next thing you know the original poster is going to complain that Zakharans in the Al-Qadim setting didn't resemble the Francs.

>>52671826
>By that logic, MMO is just another electronic medium that facilitates roleplay opportunities.
Incorrect, as video games are inherently limited by orders of magnitude.
What you are saying is that preselected choices with no variation is equal to full variation limited only by the human imagination.
Your sole argument is that preselected creativity by committee can occasionally surpass what a singular individual/s can create, but the limitations of one do not exist for the other while both have the same strengths.
You are playing devil's advocate for the loser side of a long finished battle, anon.

>>52671894
>This is exactly the kind of attitude that shows a near-total misunderstanding of what makes a good game and game system.
This.
I've played a lot of different games, many good for their own reasons even if I don't particularly like them (gurps, owod, besm), and this idea that a game must have X or it's shit is incredibly foreign to me.

>>52671877
>Well, I guess if you sit down and use the chat function to roleplay with one of you as the DM and its chat has built in roll function, sure.
Are you so inept that don't use voice? Also, you don't need dice because action resolution is already handled by the mechanics of the game.

Honestly, one could argue that it's purer roleplay because the time that would be spent planning out the setting, NPC's, quest, etc. is already handled by the game, meaning that you can spend more time roleplaying and the mechanics are consistent enough to where you don't have to double-check every other minute with the DM to ask "so hey, can I use X in this way to do Y?"
>>52671924
>Incorrect, as video games are inherently limited by orders of magnitude.
Honestly, a shit DM is way more limited in comparison to most MMO since an MMO is consistent in what you can or cannot do while the effectiveness of anything will always be dependent on the whims of the DM.

>>52671894
>This is exactly the kind of attitude that shows a near-total misunderstanding of what makes a good game and game system.

I agree with him in the sense that I prefer rules-like language massively to natural language when describing rules.

Otherwise, I agree that it strikes a good balance with what it has described in its rules and what the DM needs to rule on.

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>>52671693
Yeah that's a shame. I'm super dissapointed our last DM killed any interest in our group wanting to play 5e. I read the rules, learned most by heart and now my friends don't want to play it.

I knew we had been growing bored of 5e, but our last DM's lack of preparation made the game so god damn boring. It started off great, we had awesome characters and had a blast roleplaying them but after overwatch started getting popular in our group, the sessions started lacking anything for our characters to do and aside from our dialog between our characters there was nothing for us to attach ourselves too.

If our last DM hadn't have completely ran a campaign with no work put into it at all, maybe my friends would have been open to me running my first game in 5e. But damn. That last session was such a slog and was so boring players began dropping out and eventually the campaign was killed.

I sweat if they give it another chance i can find a way to make it more fun. I know one player still probably won't join because he likes the crunch of 3.5 and pathfinder but I might be able to convince the others with a little help. I just don't want all this time I spent reading and rereading the rules to run my first 5e game be for absolutely nothing.

The majority of what our group loves to do that keeps us playing campaigns is our character interactions not the game mechanics. So since the 5e game was boring, they feel like any more games will be just as boring so i really really want to convince them to give it another chance. I'm even allowing them to come to me with homebrew classes they can find but so far nobody seems interested.

>>52672026
Are you really so stupid that you didn't catch that I was saying that you use the MMO as ghetto Roll20?

>Also, you don't need dice because action resolution is already handled by the mechanics of the game.

I want to climb over a wall in WoW.

>Oh no! I can't even attempt it because invisible walls! I can just jump in place!

I want to try digging a trap.

>Does your class have "dig trap" ability? Nope? I guess not then.

I want to parlay with the pirates. Take one live, maybe

>They attack the moment you enter aggro range and die the moment the HP runs out.

>>52671538
>implies that since something does not already have a rule written for it, it must be "missing", rather than purposefully not there

Not sure if youre either trolling, never played 5e, or are just stuck with a negative int mod, I stated that the core rules have holes in them, whether that was intentional or not doesn't matter nor does it imply one way or another.
Noone is arguing against DM judgement here, but the rules should not rely on the DM to have them make sense, and players should expect a certain degree of consistency, which is quite hard to achieve if the DM cant even rely on the rulebook.

>>52671572
That was not what I was trying to say, I meant it in a way that you should have a good base game and not a half ass one and expect people to modify it. If I wanted to modify a game to my needs, I would honestly just play GURPS

>>52672091
Again, if you're playing with a shit DM, you wouldn't really be able to do any of those things anyways.
>I want to climb over a wall
"Uh...you can't, the wall has no handholds and it's guarded 24/7."
>I want to try digging a trap.
"Okay, you spend an hour digging a hole that's only two feet deep, now let's move on to something more exciting."
>I want to parlay with the pirates. Take one live, maybe
"They ignore your attempts at diplomacy, roll initiative!"

Hell, with how wonky the skill system is in certain editions, you can actually find more versatility in WoW than playing as most martial characters.

>>52672224
Yes, but while in the MMO it's guaranteed that whatever the designers didn't think of when making the game, I can't even attempt, with a DM there's a chance I can.

To say nothing about more narrative RPGs.

>>52669697
>I can pick up my 2e books, cut out the splat glut from the later years, and have the exact same thing without spending money.
>without spending money
Bingo. That's why I stopped buying new D&D stuff after 2e, I just didn't see the need to spend more money

>>52672284
>Yes, but while in the MMO it's guaranteed that whatever the designers didn't think of when making the game, I can't even attempt, with a DM there's a chance I can.
Depending on the DM, you can't even do an action that isn't listed on your character sheet even if there's no logical reason why you wouldn't be able to do a thing.

Even then, there's no guarentee that your abilities will work as intended depending on how much the DM really wants you to remain on the railroad.
>To say nothing about more narrative RPGs.
There's nothing really stopping you from gathering a group of people and roleplaying together with the intention of playing your character.

Hell, there are some MMO's out there that allow you to age, get married, have children, own property, or even spread a deadly pathogen that wipes out most of the world due to an unintended gameplay glitch, so if you want to roleplay, you can easily do so depending on the game you're talking about.

>>52672394
You win, I'm too tired for this.

>>52672394
Yes, a shit GM is shit and won't allow you to do anything outside of his pre-scripted event. Congrats.
Most GMs aren't like that.

>>52672475
Contrarians always have an answer.
Now his argument is "the DM can tell you no!", when the DM putting down limits in situations where some skill sets do not apply is a part of the game, but taking it to absurdium.

I have so much 3e material (shelves) I don't think I'll buy D&D every again. Not that I have anything against the other editions (I tried the free version of 5e and liked it). It's just that 3e works well enough for my purposes so I see no point in investing in another edition of D&D.

>>52669363
>I want them to innovate, to drive the hobby forward, to be willing to take risks and try new things
they havent done any of that for more than 225 years. 3.X, for example, wasnt innovative in any sense of the word.

>>52669643
go back to your tabletop diablo or play a real game like 2e

>>52673001
It's funny because 2e has a Diablo supplement.

And 3e has a WoW supplement.

I expect there's a 5e vidya supplement or 5 up on the DM'sG as well.

Only OD&D and 4e don't have vidya supplements, which cements them as the purest editions, bereft of the taint of /v/.

>>52669437
t. 3aboo

>>52669304
4e>5e>2e>Basic/BX/BECMI/RC>1e>O>>>>>3.PF

Damage imbalance is probably the biggest issue.
A level five human bow fighter with archery style and sharp shooter can more or less one shot anything with an action surge (4d8+56)

Meanwhile the best anyone else is doing at that level is 2d6+14 or 1d8+14 (for a 2h or ranged non-fighter class respectively)
Spell casters have a similar issue only doing around 2d10 or 3d8 depending. Many will yell out 'but they have utility!'

Utility really wont save the party from a total wipe because they didn't have enough damage output for an encounter to actually drop the enemy.

>>52673135
Someone repost the article from 3e's release from a 2e player, screaming about how 3e is "tabletop diablo". (I can see why they say that, it really is)

Back to the original topic, 5e is fairly bland and low-content, and doesn't completely fix the problems of previous editions, and grognards killed some good ideas in playtest, but overall, if I'm going to play DnD and not any other fucking system, 5e's chassis is easy enough to build the fantasy game I want on.

>>52673205
>the "optimized" character built around doing damage, and blowing a limited resource to do so, is doing a lot of damage!!!
>this is somehow a problem

>>52673205
>Utility really wont save the party from a total wipe because they didn't have enough damage output for an encounter to actually drop the enemy.
This is how I know you are a new player that looks at encounters like enemies in a video game. Do you know how many times we have had our wizard save us with spells like Sleep, Hold Person, or all of the different illusion spells? usually if it got to the point of a real encounter it meant that the Wizard ran out of spells or that the enemy was immune to said spells.

>>52672085
replace overwatch with meth and you have a real mind changer

say no to video games, say yes to D&D

>>52671693
I always figured they made a shit ton off 5e

>>52673296
They are.

>>52673296
They don't spend much money on it and it's attracting a ton of new players, so yes.

Amazing what a <10 man team can do for the franchise.

>>52669304
5e's strength is being easily homebrewable, which is good, because it needs homebrew badly to remain interesting.
>>52669363
This. It's the pizza of roleplaying games.

>>52669304
I don't know, but I feel just bored when I play it. Maybe it's the campaign itself, or the character I'm playing (low level wizard) but the game just doesn't feel interesting to me.

At the same time I played Call of Cthulhu and that was extremely enjoyable, so in the end maybe D&D just isn't for me.

>>52671645
http://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/52669304/#52669580

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>>52673260
foudn this

>>52670573
>5GP / day productivity
New downtime activities UA for 5e dropped with decent enough crafting rules.

>>52673709
>500 work weeks (approx 10+ years) for a Legendary Item
I bet the elves did this.

>>52671218
>since the DCs are less stratified so it makes the dice roll mean more than it used to.
Except that's exactly why 5E's skill system sucks so hard.

>>52673737
Or why it is better, depending on your preference. But it is a d20 game so there is no reason to have highly stratified modifiers since that removes the point of rolling the dice. With 5e the bumbling barbarian could get lucky and convince someone to lend him an ax whereas the smooth talking Rogue would have to be unlucky to do it.

>>52669437 >>52669504
>striker/tank/leader/controller nonsense
>Those roles existed in 3.5.

Properly speaking, those roles exist in all of D&D...but prior to 4e they were defined differently, as "warrior, rogue, priest, mage".

The thing is that in 3e and previous the roles described more than just what you were up to during the fighting - a "rogue" does more than just backstab for massive damage, for example, he's also the guy who picks pockets, disables traps, fast-talks the guards, sneaks up to and spies on the enemy camp, and so on. 4e stripped them of that and reduced them simply to combat roles and what they were doing to defeat a given enemy.

That is why it fails.

5e, to its credit, has brought back the old roles. Actually I think if anything it succeeds better than any other edition of D&D. When I was playing my Rogue (thief) character in 5e, for the first time I felt like I was playing a THIEF, not just some dungeon-delver that moonlights in larceny. Everything from being able to pick pockets on the fly, to being climb at absurd speeds or jump further distances, to being extra-skilled at various tasks, to even the simple detail of bringing back Thieves' Cant, all rolled together to make my character to just "feel" right.

Mechanically, I don't know if 5e is the best D&D system. I doubt it is, in fact. But stylistically, D&D 5e succeeds with flying colors.

>>52673737
I'd argue the opposite: 5E's system works pretty damn well without having the hilariously bad bloat that is 3.5 / PF's
>"Well, in a non-optimized setting DC 15 is complex and DC 20 something even a skilled professional would have trouble doing repeatedly with more successes than failures."
>"And in an optimized setting?"
>"… DC20 might slow down a Level 1 PC. Maybe."
>"And by level ten?"
>"If it isn't at least 35 they'll probably pass unless it's an untrained skill."

This isn't well designed stratification. In a party built for fun a DC 35 check could be damn-near impossible for a Level 10 party whereas if someone specialized in that skill could quite literally be looking at something like +20 or more to the respective roll. Conversely in 5E the difference between literal expertise and somebody entirely untrained is only +8, disregarding any Attribute differences, or +4 comparing either to someone Proficient. In a d20-based system, a +4 or +8 variance is much easier to work around than a 20+ point variance. If a DM wants to make something especially easy / difficult they can always add Advantage or Disadvantage too (Disadvantage DC 15 turning a +4 to a skill check from a 50% success rate to a ~25% success rate without any change to DC, likewise Advantage changing it from a 50% success rate to nearly 75%).

5E's issue with skills lay more in the nebulous difference between "passive" and "active" checks and when to invoke either.

>>52673724
Well yeah, legendary items should either be an individuals life work that they devoted entire years of their life (and probably their actual lives) to creating or made by whole teams of dudes with magical means like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGvVHt6UP2U

>>52673782
>4e stripped them of that and reduced them simply to combat roles and what they were doing to defeat a given enemy.
And then it gave all rogues training in Stealth and Thievery. So what's your point?

>The thing is that in 3e and previous
>in 3e
Ha.

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>>52673782
>4e stripped them of that and reduced them simply to combat roles and what they were doing to defeat a given enemy.

>>52673832
Generally only use passive when its obvious the party is already actively doing something like searching for traps using perception so they don't roll every 5 feet or its something that doesn't actually have a chance of meaningful failure attached to it. Like when it doesn't matter if he fails picking the lock 5 times in a row, he'll get it with some time and equate the passive to the time taken to do something.

5e is also a lot more fun if you go full heroic fantasy and let everybody be a mythological hero.

>>52673832
It's still stupid
>Be master swordsman
>Still miss an absolute amateur 5% of the time
>Be amateur swordsman
>Can kill the master swordsman 5% of the time

Or even worse
>Have best perception in group
>Miss finding a trap
>Guy with -2 Wisdom shows up
>Finds trap

I don't like d20.

>>52673962
>>Be master swordsman
>>Still miss an absolute amateur 5% of the time
>>Be amateur swordsman
>>Can kill the master swordsman 5% of the time

Can HIT the master swordsman. Good fucking luck killing with one hit.

The master swordsman will also have more than 1 attack.

These are also the results of silly crit hit/miss rules, not the modifiers. Don't confuse the issues.


>Or even worse

Ugh, perception is so easy to max in 5e that you basically never miss traps.

>>52669363
>I want them to innovate, to drive the hobby forward, to be willing to take risks and try new things...

But then it "wouldn't be D&D". D&D has survived this long because marketing, nostalgia, and word of mouth have established it and its tropes are considered classics and any attempt to change them ruins that. It's kind of a victim of its own success.

People often compared 4e to New Coke and they were exactly right. Not that New Coke was terrible -countless studies showed people liked it- but Coca Cola is just such an established product in the minds of people that any radical attempts to change it are met with resistance from a significant minority dedicated to the "classic" version.

>>52671207
wait, what holes does 5E have? serious question, i havent played it yet.

>>52669801
>He means having powers that only work a certain amount of times per day even though 3.PF introduced those concepts to D&D in the first place.

4e's downfall in that regard was simple formatting. Everything was presented in a table with easily understandable keywords as opposed to more naturalistic language that other editions are more fond of.

People didn't like it because it felt too clinical and well defined. At a glance, everything looked the same unless you were familiar with the differences between keywords, some of which were kind of subtle.

Even though the effects were, in action, the same as if it had been typed out in a paragraph style description.

I think spells could get away from that stigma because D&D magic is supposed to be all formulaic and often analogous to "hacking reality". Which of course makes D&D magic very much unlike the mysterious/ill defined/unpredictable magic of most fantasy settings.

>>52669304

I don't have any problems with it outside of not offering a bundle deal on the Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Manual like other editions have. I would love to buy physical copies and read it over, but until then I am going to hold any judgment on the game as a whole.

I have heard nightmare stories of the game being run, but I would think that they are mostly anecdotal. That or their DM was rather lax.

>>52673936
Yeah, no, the whole thing still feels entirely bland. It's perhaps an ineffable quality of 5e that just makes its Thief feel more like a Thief than a 4e (or 3e) Rogue that's been built to be a Thief. Probably because as I was gaining levels I felt more like I was gaining Thief abilities that I could apply to an adventuring lifestyle, than adventuring abilities that I could apply to being a Thief.

It's just some ineffable quality about the system.

...the lack of fucking powerboxes probably helps, though. Jesus Christ I hate the 4e PHB's layout. Though on that note I note with interest that two of those powers, which are pretty fundamental to the idea of "thief", had to wait for the PHB 3.

>>52673962
>Can kill the master swordsman 5% of the time

I rather doubt it. You can "hit" the master swordsman 5% of the time, but it wouldn't be for any appreciable damage given that the master swordsman is going to be much higher level than you and as a result have many more hit points.

>Still miss an absolute amateur 5% of the time

It's not like the absolute amateur is going to just stand there letting you hit him.

Besides which, it's more cinematic this way - D&D is not and has never tried to be a Real Life Simulator. If you want realistic sword fights, then the sword fights should only be about 4 seconds long max.

>>52673962
>>Be master swordsman
>>Still miss an absolute amateur 5% of the time
>>Be amateur swordsman
>>Can kill the master swordsman 5% of the time
This is not unique to 5e.
This has been in since 2e. Rolling a 1 on an attack roll has always been an auto miss even if you would've hit and rolling a 20 on an attack roll has always been a hit even if you wouldn't normally connect.

>>52673782
>The thing is that in 3e and previous the roles described more than just what you were up to during the fighting - a "rogue" does more than just backstab for massive damage, for example, he's also the guy who picks pockets, disables traps, fast-talks the guards, sneaks up to and spies on the enemy camp, and so on. 4e stripped them of that and reduced them simply to combat roles and what they were doing to defeat a given enemy.

4e let Rogues do all that.

This seems a good a place as any to ask. The last three editions of dnd get talked about all over, as well as their problems. 3/3.5 is bad balance. 4e is a video game and so on. What about the early editions? Are basic or whatever else fairly good all around?

>>52674143
>Yeah, no, the whole thing still feels entirely bland.

Sure. "Feels". Not gonna argue with that.

> Probably because as I was gaining levels I felt more like I was gaining Thief abilities that I could apply to an adventuring lifestyle, than adventuring abilities that I could apply to being a Thief.

I can literally build a thief with basically the same abilities in 4e as the one in 5e. Bonus action item use and everything.

So yeah, "feels".

>...the lack of fucking powerboxes probably helps, though. Jesus Christ I hate the 4e PHB's layout.

And more feels.

>Though on that note I note with interest that two of those powers, which are pretty fundamental to the idea of "thief", had to wait for the PHB 3.

Two things:

PHB 1 was (in the context of 4e) shit, and I only checked the first two levels because I'm lazy. I don't even know what else the PHB1 may have.

>>52674198
Basic is the only other D&D aside from 4e that was still designed as a game first with a goal in mind instead of a jumble of legacy rules. It is, however, quite archaic at parts.

AD&D has great settings but rulesbloat.

>>52674174
It's almost as if people just saw 'powers' and 'roles' and shut down, huh?

>>52671900
>1+1=2
Sometimes 1+1=0

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>>52672487
>Most GMs aren't like that.
Please, most GM's are garbage, especially if you're meeting with rando's online, a cursory glance at most primers on roll20 make this obvious.

>>52674244
0 - Kickstarted it all but is almost unplayable
Basic - game first, designed to teach people how to play the game and little else.
1e - Gygax's attempt to cut Arneson out of a paycheck
BX - Implemented to originally lead people into 1e, but didn't quite cut it.
BECMI - Arneson wins the case out of court.
2e - TSR's attempt to cut Gygax out of a paycheck, beginning of the end of TSR as well as you can print all you want but if no one buys...
3e - WOTC wanting to do their own thing. Great PR and brings thousands into the fold once more.
3.5e - Wanted some errata in the game, massive explosion of 3rd party and rules bloat
4e - attempt to streamline game, define roles, and make the classes and races effectively equal for once with the class and race structure allowing massive modification for the DM to play with. Also perhaps the best setting since Mystara/Known World.
5e - Attempt to blend the styles of the previous games to make a moddable game that can play how you want it to with little effort and some more streamlining. Return to the Linear Fighter Quadratic Wizards but it's no where near as bad as 3/3.5 was.

>>52674256
>It's almost as if people just saw 'powers' and 'roles' and shut down, huh?

Pretty much. It's like how D&D introducing alignment.

Whereas people have no issues describing a character as, "a guy kills people in cold blood for money but at home he's a loving husband and father." A very common character trope.

But trying to play that under an alignment system just results in people going full retard because they can't agree on how to resolve it within the 9 categories so they want to believe that no such characters can actually exist.

So the idea of a character with the fighter class that isn't a "defender" just drives them nuts.

I often find these are the same players who- in character- refer to other characters as "rogue" and "fighter" and "cleric" in character even if said character is a cat-burglar, a mercenary, or a bishop by profession.

>>52674174
And yet something was still missing. 4e hid the rogue's ability to do such in among its combat powers and presented them as basically additional combat powers. Basically, what >>52674095 pointed out: everything is too clinical and gamey. When I rolled up a 4e rogue with the intent of building a thief, the character just utterly lacked a soul to it.

It's a well put-together system, but it's not a D&D system except for the brand name.

Although, again, fuck its layout. I despite the layout. Jesus Christ.

>>52674198
AD&D 2E is as far back as I go, but…
>Pro's
>It's VERY good for roleplaying somebody with flaws or that you normally wouldn't play. Seriously: Most of the stat differences between 8 and 14, barring in the use of Proficiencies (which is something heavily DM dependent in both use and application), are just thematic or minor miscellanea such as your odds of surviving a Raise Dead spell so if you wind up rolling two really good stats two mediocre and two below average "Ah well I guess I'll just have a stutter and be a bit clumsy at times".
>The most fleshed out D&D settings in terms of number and material, with - IMO - some of the best settings too
>Fighters are better than they are in 3.5 / PF without being quite as indistinguishable / reskinned as they are in 4th. RAW, at least: A lot of minor DM / House Rules tend to drag this closer to the 3.5 / PF Ghetto after 14th level
>Lots of non-combat experience rewards

>Cons
>Attributes don't give you shit until 16+ outside aforementioned Proficiencies, meaning your first 1-2 levels will hopefully be spent getting non-combat experience or enjoying balls-to-the-walls fights that likely end in at least one party member dying
>A lot of the settings are shit, too: 2E basically threw mud at a wall and saw what stuck.
>There's a lot of contradictory material that ranges from broken in the best of ways to broken in the worst with everything in between. Ask a DM if you can play a Lizardfolk and watch them pull out a stack of books before asking "Which kind?"
>The first few levels are living hell for non-martials, but anything more dangerous than a pair of ruffians will likely need a caster or the like's aid to win without casualties

The game's not bad, but it definitely is not as streamlined or forgiving as many modern PnP RPGs. You also have to understand that it was designed for role-play first, functionality / balance second.

>>52674260
yes but, depending on how you define it, in those case 0=2.

>>52674345
>Muh Feels :'(
Okay hon, it's okay, the big bad formatting can't hurt you. WotC is more afraid of you than you are of it. It's okay baby girl.

>>52674331
>But trying to play that under an alignment system just results in people going full retard because they can't agree on how to resolve it within the 9 categories so they want to believe that no such characters can actually exist.

No, that character is still pretty firmly Evil. Killing in cold blood for money is Evil. Without knowing further details I can't tell you Lawful, Neutral, or Chaotic, though.

The thing is that only beings fundamentally composed of their alignment, like demons or modrons, are expected to 100% perfectly reflect their alignment all the time. They're the only ones for whom alignment dictates actions.

For everyone else, actions dictate alignment. And making a living out of ending lives for no reason at all other than getting paid rather outweighs the fact that you get along with your immediate family.

>>52669304
>Barebones skill system
Skills have been super reduced in scope and usage, and there are barely any rules governing them, so using them pretty much forces the GM to create a system to make them workable. The books don't even let you know how long general uses of skills take, aside from a few that take an action, like pick-pocketing, which you would only know in a few class ability sections, suggesting that all skills, even something as quick as a knowlege check take a whole action. Don't even think about clever uses of skills in combat.

>All design revolves around combat
in part to do with the skill thing above, but there's more to it. Almost every thing you get in the game is directly tied to combat with a few extremely rare fluff abilities. The only real way to get fluff abilities is by using your precious few feats to buy something like skill in cooking, so in the end everyone is pretty much a death machine and nothing else, aside from Rogues and Bards.

>Game of Exceptions
This is part largely because it's a class-based game, but everything that makes a character, aside from a few things like HP and abilities scores, is by being an exception to a rule. Bards and rogues are the skill monkeys? That's because they have a special ability that lets them get higher scores than possible. Fighter can fight well? That's because his attack ability is an breaking the rule of "1 attack per turn" which, for better or worse, replaced his high BAB. Compare to a game like Shadowrun, where the person who's good at driving isn't good because of a specific feature that changes how driving works, but because he has skills and abilities that make him good.

>Doesn't do anything particularly well
Despite focusing some much on combat, the combat is super bland to be honest. There's no complex tactical considerations like some games. Honestly 4e had the best combat down for DnD, even if other things about it were pretty lackluster, 4e was at least a really good grid game

>>52674422
>And making a living out of ending lives for no reason at all other than getting paid rather outweighs the fact that you get along with your immediate family.

All mercenaries, professional soldiers, and executioners are evil, got it.

>>52674405
I never understood why the 4e formatting bothered so many people.
Why wouldn't you want the rules for an rpg presented in a clear and uniform manner?

>>52674146
>This has been in since 2e. Rolling a 1 on an attack roll has always been an auto miss even if you would've hit and rolling a 20 on an attack roll has always been a hit even if you wouldn't normally connect.

Its frustrating sure, but it personally has led to a pretty funny story moment. I was playing a dwarven fighter, decked out for defensive combat, wielding two shields as weapons in a PF game. Sometime after a story element around mid level and my effective AC was in the 30s some big brained kid would not leave our group alone and apparently came to idolize me and my actions repeatedly asking to be my squire/student. After a while I finally gave up and told him "if you can land a single hit on me I will accept you as my squire" Total defence maxed out, hahaha maybe this will keep him off my back for a while. NOPE nat 20

Guess what, I have a lv1 commoner as a squire now that I am honorbound to protect.

Its kinda a shitty thing as a result of lold20, but it can lead to interesting events in a campaign.

>>52674422
>>52674449
And just like that, we have a firm example of why alignments will never be good. Hell, even being an adventurer is evil when you consider that most characters are murderhobos who kill sentient beings to steal their shit.

>>52669782
>Like Battlemasters get a shitload of awesome maneuvers and martial dice were a great idea to give Fighters extra umph,
This was one of the flaws though, imho.
Yeah, it's great they made fighters more balanced, but all of a sudden a simple maneuver that logically anyone should be able to attempt because a core feature for a class. Now a rogue can't try to trip someone, and if they are able to then something that made the battlemaster unique and interesting has been stripped away.

>>52669612
>small modifiers compared to the dice range

Why don't more people complain about this? It's easily my biggest problem with 5e.
The difference between being complete shit at something and being fucking amazing and godlike is usually just an extra 30% chance of success.

>>52674531
>Now a rogue can't try to trip someone

He can. He just can't attack AND trip.

This is what maneuvers are.

>>52674531
They can still attempt those things, Battlemasters just have a bonus to doing it. Read nigga read.

>>52669682
>I wish I got into 4e earlier.

No you don't. 4e's early days were very rocky mechanically.

>>52674563
>>52674573
The arcane arcana suggest giving feats like trip, which more or less implies that otherwise you really can't.

>>52674603
unearthed arcana*

>>52674603
Of course it does, can't have martials do anything more than attack and attack harder.

>>52674603
>The arcane arcana suggest giving feats like trip, which more or less implies that otherwise you really can't.

What the fuck is arcane arcana, and why does it give stupid advice?

>>52674615
Oh.

Well, everyone has the shove action, so everyone can trip. Picking up the trip maneuver just lets you do it as part of an attack.

>>52674481

It didn't bother me, but I can understand it. It's just a "feel" thing.

>>Why wouldn't you want the rules for an rpg presented in a clear and uniform manner?

It's a pretty common conflict in the RPG community.

Some believe that the rules kind of model the way the world works and by making things vague and more difficult to understand, it makes it feel more like the vagueness of reality.

Personally, I never saw D&D as a game that should accurately represent what I'd do if I were dropped into reality + dragons and demons and magic and shit. I always saw it as a "fantasy story simulator" where I collaborated with others to tell mythical/fantasy stories- replete with overarching, themes, archetypes, plot contrivances, and yes even "plot holes".

For example, some people believe that a game system's rules should be able to- even in the absence of the PCs- resolve situations like what happens when a Dragon stumbles upon a town full of people. That way they know that when they interact with it, what's happening is the result of their choices and not contrivances of the system.

While others think the mechanics should be such that when the PCs meet a dragon, it should facilitate the kind of story one would find reading Baldur/Lancelot/Beowulf/the Hobbit because that's more entertaining to them.

Most RPGs are a mix, but some lend themselves more overtly to one style or the other.

>>52674358
But doesn't that just end up defining 2 as the sum of 1 and 1, making the statement "1+1=2" very self-evident and somewhat removed from the intuitive notion of the number 2.

>>52674622
Yeah, and the system should support them being able to do it in a more natural way rather than awkward artificial limitations, such as by making martials particularity good at doing these sorts of actions. I'm glad they tried to give fighters something, but they did it pretty poorly.

>>52674626
Okay, you can shove to trip, but there are other things, such a disarm. The issue is that at the core basic actions are treated like special abilities.

>>52674603

Usually maneuver cost an action. Trying to trip someone is an action. Trying to disarm someone is an action. Trying to blind someone is an action. If you fail, then you just wasted an action.

Battlemasters spend expertise dice to do that cool stuff as part of their attack. Even if they fail, they still get to do damage so it doesn't feel like a total waste of an action.

Feats are intended to give players a Battlemaster-like ability to do that maneuver stuff as part of their attack too.

But since most people don't want to risk "wasting" an action on some maneuver or trick when they spent so much effort pumping their hit/damage bonuses to reliable levels, they feel as if those options are non-viable to the point that they don't even exist.

>>52674048
Stealth and surprise are pretty notorious for lacking a proper ruleset, there were endless threads on the WotC forums on how they were supposed to be handled.

>>52674449
> All mercenaries, professional soldiers, and executioners are evil, got it.

No, mercenaries are not necessarily evil. Few mercenaries are hired with the specific intent of killing people. Most mercenaries in fact tend to serve defensive roles, such as protecting a given area or person from attack. They use violence if necessary.

Mercenaries hired specifically to kill a person or group of people who haven't done anything to deserve it (hence "cold blooded")? Yeah, that's fucking evil.

Soldiers are in basically the same position.

Executioners do not "kill" people, they execute them after a trial and in accordance to the law. Execution is a different concept from "killing" even if the end result still produces a corpse.

>we have a firm example of why alignments will never be good.

Well, you're objectively wrong there: three of them are explicitly good.

> Hell, even being an adventurer is evil when you consider that most characters are murderhobos who kill sentient beings to steal their shit.

Are they? That wasn't my character's motivation at all in my most recent campaign. Hell, I made it all the way to level 8 and only killed two people, one of them accidentally (I landed a critical hit on a sneak attack and dealt so much damage that the DM ruled it was impossible that I didn't kill the poor kobold), and the other in self defense.

>>52674717
>Stealth and surprise are pretty notorious for lacking a proper ruleset, there were endless threads on the WotC forums on how they were supposed to be handled.

...how? They seem pretty straightforward to me.

>>52674323
>Points of Light setting
>Good

I mean, I get favoritism but god damn man make it believable.

>>52674805
Not him but when have D&D settings actually mattered?

>>52674859
Planescape, Spelljammer, Dark Sun, Ravenloft?

>>52674740
>>who haven't done anything to deserve it (hence "cold blooded").

Cold blooded doesn't mean, "for no reason". It means without much emotion or personal attachment.

And people don't pay you to kill people for no reason. They usually have a reason. People killed by hitmen are pretty much never just little old ladies or random schmucks going about their day all innocent like.

And a mercenary force unwilling to kill would pretty quickly find itself out of a job. People you hire to just stand around and guard stuff with the idea that they'll do so without killing people don't get deadly weapons and are generally called simple guards, bouncers, orderlies, etc.

Mercenaries got payed to attack and kill all the time. Killing was part of the job. Usually why they carried those deadly weapons.

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>>52673782

>>52674805
PoLand is great!

>>52674805

I actually really liked Points of Light, but it suited my GMing style. A solid structure of scattered settlements and small civilisations amidst a vast, dangerous worlds full of relics of the ancient past works best when it's not overburdened with details. There's enough there for players to have a solid frame of reference, and the. lots of lovely blank spaces I can fill in with my own ideas.

But, as mentioned, I'm the kind of GM who will almost never use a detailed, prewritten setting, at least not without remixing it a bit or otherwise finding the vague areas I can fill in myself.

>>52674872
The Al-Qadim and Maztica settings aren't terrible either, though both take place on the same world as Forgotten Realms so if you dislike the latter you may be against the former.

>>52674874
>Mercenaries got payed to attack and kill all the time

Yeah, and a lot of them were Evil.

>And a mercenary force unwilling to kill

Like I said, most mercenaries are hired in a defensive capacity; their job is to protect and asset or location. They use violence to do so if necessary, up to and including killing people, but that in and of itself is neither Good nor Evil.

>>52674983
I agree PoL is pretty good as a near blank slate, but I think a lot of people wanted something more robust, not to mention 4e pretty much forced every other setting in DnD to be more like PoL.

I also hate how they took out the subtlety of Tieflings, making them less secretly a horrifying monster and more just a regular monster.

>>52671609

Yeah but the difference is that in 2e they did this in ways that were just cosmetic and otherwise it's pretty much the same game as 1e.

5e really has brought back a certain attitude from AD&D that 3e lost somewhere along the way when it buried everything in endless rules.

>>52675082
What are you even talking about? Unless you're specifically talking about modern times, mercenaries have more often than not been employed in an offensive capability. Why would you send your men to die and fight and leave a bunch of foreigners to protect your subjects?

>>52675083
>I also hate how they took out the subtlety of Tieflings, making them less secretly a horrifying monster and more just a regular monster.

To be fair, I find PLAYERS did that. I remember back in 3e that one DM even suggested I play a Tiefling back when I was new to D&D and had no idea what they were and had no intentions of playing a demon-related character.

>>52674143
>Though on that note I note with interest that two of those powers, which are pretty fundamental to the idea of "thief", had to wait for the PHB 3.
It's true that skill powers for all classes only showed up in the PHB3, but every Rogue utility power in the PHB was a skill power.

>>52675083
Most art of tieflings in other editions (even Pathfinder) had horns, tails, and/or hooves. 4e just exaggerated them.

>>52673202
Obvious bait is obvious

>>52675405

Seems dead on accurate to me.

>>52671125
>le epic shill meem XDXD

>>52673296
I imagine it's a really high profit _margin_ item for them. Revenue almost certainly isn't what it was for 3e, 3.5, or 4e, simply because they are producing so few supplements for it. But they also aren't investing tons of time and money into putting out splats every month that maybe 1/3 of the playerbase will buy.

>>52674298
I only play with GMs I have fun with, if I don't I leave.

>>52674983
>>52675083
My problem with PoL is how generic and blank slate it is, it doesn't really feel like a setting at all.

>>52675993

I think that was part of the point. Like a lot of other things in 4e, it was a response to how people actually used the system, as opposed to the ideals.

A lot of people will just make their own campaign setting, rendering any setting specific stuff you provide in core materials pretty useless. Something so vague and easily adaptable as Points of Light, however, was able to be used directly with little to no effort, no matter what you were doing with the system- as long as you weren't trying to run an established setting. And if you were trying to run an established setting, you had all the fluff right there.

>>52675411
Thank you

>>52675993

Can you describe negative qualities to the setting without using vague statements or buzzwords?

>>52673832
Well, good, you're wrong, because what it actually results in is everyone who doesn't have double proficiency bonus to skills being within shooting range of each other on checks for over half the game because it's using a d20 with bonuses that can be counted on two hands. It is not even remotely uncommon to see a specialist fail repeatedly while someone with zero investment manages to luck their way into succeeding on the same fucking checks.

Bounded accuracy is a terrible idea.

>>52675993
>>52676330

Not that anon, but:

It's not so much blank as it is hiding from you. You have to really seek out material to flesh it out into a thing. Even then, PoL doesn't bother with the Prime Material plane past the Nentir Vale for some reason, even though Nerath could potentially be interesting.

Between the Manual of the Planes, The Plane Below, The Plane Above, and the Sigil content in the DMG2, you could run some really quite impressive Paragon-tier stuff, but actual Nentir Vale expansion only came in a handful of softcover supplements and folder-format adventure modules. Plus, again, once you get past the edge of the Vale, the world's completely blank.

While I understand and respect the desire to create a setting that's friendly to homebrew, Points of Light DEPENDS on you to homebrew if you want to do anything outside of Vor Rukoth, Hammerfast, Fallcrest, or the published modules.

3.X Greyhawk had basically the same problem, because the only thing they published for it was the Living Greyhawk campaign, but TSR Greyhawk was a whole setting with enough content to feel like a full world without strangling the DM's ability to do cool stuff with it. Even 4E's two-books-each Dark Sun and Forgotten Realms settings felt a lot more complete than Points of Light did.

4E was neat (or eventually became so once they fixed the math), but the setting needed work. Trouble is, the whole reason WOTC didn't do much for settings is because from a business perspective they're a bubble that delivers short-term profit and long-term ruin, like what happened to TSR, so...

>>52669304
5e, if I recall, was more like a stand-in for people who resented 4e (for credible reasons).
It's not 3.5e (thank fuck) but it will do the job of letting you D&D.

>>52676536
Shooting range from a 3.5 / PF perspective.

Now, this might be something of a surprise to you, but… in other systems? That are d20 based? Being a net +5 different from someone (let's say the person who isn't trained in Persuasion is not so because their Charisma is shit, for example, or that the person who took proficiency in Stealth did so because they had 14 points of Dex) is actually kind of significant? As in can turn a DC 15 check into a 55% chance of success while their peer in the party has only a 30%?

As I said way back in the thread, a lot of the whinging over skills seems to boil down to "Wah I can't break the system over my knee anymore to the point that DMs have to inflate DC checks into the 30's / 40's range to keep things at least slightly challenging by the mid-way point."

I'll repeat this one more time, louder for those in the back, to drive the point home: Your +30 to skill checks is shit game design for a d20-based system and should have been taken behind the shed with a pump-action instead of allowed to fester and shit the rug in the house time and time again.

>>52677166
Why is the difference between being good at something and being bad at it only 25%?

>>52676536

It was kind of needed. The bonuses get silly in games like pathfinder when you have the guy with +39 to diplomacy.

Attack-wise, the bonuses still add up. Your 5th level 5e fighter with 20 strength and +1 weapon is swinging at +9 which is pretty beefy.

I agree that skills should be a bit more definitive. It's an easy house rule to apply a penalty if non-proficient so the gap is wider.

>>52677166
No, it's shooting range from every d20 system's perspective and this bullshit would never ever EVER fly in a game like WoD or Shadowrun. The only time any d20 game's skill system handles even remotely like 5E is at the extreme low end.

>>52676536
Bounded accuracy is great.

>>52677287
Because this is talking about lower- / middle-level variances between someone with training and someone without from a DMing / gameplay perspective.

And while such a system not perfect, it is in the least far better and more reliable to plan / design for when working with a random group than "Well depending on how the party stacked their attribute gains and what magic items they're wearing and their starting race and whether they're using masterwork items and how many skill points they invested and all that crap a DC 25* check at level 10 ranges anywhere from only a PC trained in it to have a chance to some of the people in the party could literally make it in their sleep".

With skills bound as they are you can generally look at the DC recommendations given in the 5E DMG and treat them as accurate (for example, a DC 20 check will prove near impossible for someone without the respective training and attributes to succeed, while someone with both could possibly even pass as much as they fail). Conversely, in 3.5 / PF era "DC 20 check" runs anywhere from "Only someone trained in it could reliably pass it as much as they fail" to "By level 8 this PC literally could not fail without the Nat-1 rule."

*Something most non-PCs / untrained NPCs would find impossible, along with even a fair few NPC specialists finding five-or-more times more likely to fail than pass.

>>52677287
Nearly double?

>>52677453
You say that like that's not an immediate indicator of something wrong.

>>52677446

So instead you end up with a system where the +5 STR barbarian fails to break something because he rolled low and the -1 STR wizard succeeds because he rolled high

>>52677514
Sounds reasonable.

>>52669437
>Hurr I play a 3.5 Wizard/Bard
>I cast my do anything spell
>The rest of the party is irrelevant

>>52677540

The difference between a 90 pounds soaking wet bookworm and a 250 pound roid raging behemoth who deadlifts 1000 pounds shouldn't be a slightly higher chance of being able to break something.

>>52677587
You can't deadlift 1000 pounds in 5e, you'd need 67 strength for that. Or about 34 with strong body feature.

>>52677514
Mechanically, the +5 Str Barbarian has a 30% success rate advantage over the Wizard (which increases even higher if they're raging, now having Advantage on the roll) before accounting for proficiency. Assuming the Barbarian has proficiency in Athletics and the Wizard does not, this gap has now increased from a 30% higher chance* to at least a 45% higher chance (50%+ higher chance if they're Level 9 or higher).

If the Barbarian fails and the Wizard succeeds it's a matter of luck, something the DM could not plan for (unlike the test itself, which if they did plan for probably included in the planning "What if there's somebody athletic and strong in the group?"). Conversely if we go by 3.5 / PF standards if all the DM planned for is "What if there's somebody athletic and strong in the group?" the number they use for the DC (especially if it's intended to be one that a -1 Str Wizard couldn't succeed on) could range anywhere from "So high the players are frustrated about having no plausible way to meet it with their sheet spreads" to "So low the players are wondering if the DM is shitty at game design because honestly who throws a DC 30 Str check at a Level 9 Barbarian and doesn't expect them to bowl it over?"

*Practically even higher yet, as with the way statistics work if you have +10 added to your roll and the DC is something like DC 15 your odds of success work out to be 80% versus the Wizard's 25%, which is not a "55% more likely" but "320% more likely".

>>52677675
To go back on this and expand further: Your example is p-goddamn shitty as a Raging Barbarian w/ Str 20 and Athletics is looking at a sum total of:
+9 or more to their ability check
+Advantage (two dice pick the best)

Compared to the -1 Str Wizard (presumably w/o Proficiency) who is at a sum total of:
+ -1 to their ability check
+If the DM decrees it, possibly at Disadvantage for being 90 pounds wet and antithetical to manual labor

So to use even just a DC 15 check (because a DC 20 check, even without Disadvantage, literally could not be passed by the 90lb squib), the final odds of success / failure come out to…

Barbarian: ~93.7% (96% if the Barbarian is Level 9 or higher)
Wizard: 25% (~6.25% if they're at Disadvantage)

Yup. Totally the DM's fault and a sign of terrible game design if the Barbarian fails their 96% chance of success while the Wizard passes their 6.25%. Only… wait, you do realize you just described the Critical Hit / Miss success / failure odds, yes?

>>52677675

That sounds like a better problem to have honestly. If no one in the party can break down the door surely there can be another way to get past it. If the wizard can smash the door with his fists, you start to wonder why anyone even bothers to specialize.


>>52677603

that's pretty retarded then considering real life people can deadlift that much, a 20 represents the maximum humans are capable of, and barbarians can go above 20 STR

But to be fair it does match well with how strong you feel in game, so good job there, I guess

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>>52675124
>mercenaries have more often than not been employed in an offensive capability

Actually the most common use of large companies of mercenaries has been in an auxiliary role, as forward scouts or second-line troops who operate in support of an army's larger offensive capability. Not many nations have depended upon mercenaries to serve as , and the ones that have tend to meet bad ends since they can't be relied upon. Hence Machiavelli's first rule of hiring mercenaries - "don't hire mercenaries."

Ultimately that's beside the point - killing someone for no other reason than the fact that you have been paid to do so is an Evil act, and a lifestyle dedicated to such likely makes you Evil, regardless of your home life.

It says it right in the Book of Vile Darkness:
>"Murder is the killing of an intelligent creature for a nefarious purpose: theft, personal gain, perverse pleasure, or the like."

Killing someone for money is killing for personal gain, and therefore, Evil.

So to return to the original hypothetical, a cold-hearted killer for money who loves his wife and kids, is still a cold-hearted killer for money, and therefore going off of just that information, is Evil.

Why has no one read the Book of Vile Darkness and the Book of Exalted Deeds? They're in several of the megas floating around here and they answer most of the Good/Evil questions people posit about D&D.

>>52677737
The fact that the Barbarian has to use limited resources to make sure the check doesn't go full retard isn't helping your case.

>>52677755
Nah, he's right. Just like a wizard has a limit resource. It works for the comparison you wanted. Good job anon, you've convinced me that the bounded accuracy is actually pretty good.

>>52677755
If they don't use Rage their odds of success still hover around 75% / 80% (again, dependent on level), the Wizard's 25% to ~6.25%. This remains anywhere from three times as likely (least generous) to ~13 times as likely (most generous).

Also, don't think nobody in this thread is noticing your conspicuous ignoring of the whole "This is the exact same fucking statistical range as the Critical Hit / Miss range".

>>52677737
>+Advantage (two dice pick the best)

why would you burn a rage out of combat just to break down a door?

>+If the DM decrees it, possibly at Disadvantage

Yeah, if the DM decides to take it upon himself to force the game to make sense, it can. I agree.

Discounting that, the difference between +9 (75%) and -1 (25%) still looks quite small to me. I mean it is big, but not big enough when you consider that one is the absolute strongest guy in the party and the other is the absolute weakest.

>Only… wait, you do realize you just described the Critical Hit / Miss success / failure odds, yes?

EPIC NAT20 shit is cancer as well, fuck off with that

>>52677794
No, he's a retard and that comparison was stupid as fuck. One character using a highly limited resource to get advantage and then slapping someone with disadvantage for no reason didn't do anything he wanted it to.

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>>52669363
>Personally? I just think it's boring.
Ding ding ding. We have a winner. What does he win?

A boring game.

>>52677838
You already convinced me guy, the bounded accuracy system is nice, effective and efficient.

>>52677829
>>52677838
Disadvantage / Advantage is built into the system explicitly for this sort of situation, however?
>Consider imposing disadvantage when…
>Circumstances hinder success in some way
>An element of the plan or description of an action makes success less likely

I'm fairly certain "90lb wet Wizard tries to break down a sturdy door with their fists" counts as at least one of those.

>>52677912
If that was the case, having a negative stat would automatically inflict you with disadvantage on checks to that stat.

>>52677912
But the wizard is already at a at a penalty by having a low strength and no proficiency.
Adding disadvantage is just deciding to punish them for even trying.

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>>52670834
>>52672934
>>52674005


Please read

>>52669697
>players these days, weaned on 3e, believe D&D to be something it wasn't UNTIL 3e.
>Their skewed viewpoint leads to backlashes against anything that isn't 3e.
>>52669698
>Casual Racism
>Yeah, you're on 4chan. Get with it or get the fuck out newfag.
Yeah, you're on /tg/ now. Grow the fuck up, or go back to /b/. We're here to talk about children's games like adults m8

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>>52669304
5e isn't full of crunch and charts and long addition and stacking bullshit.

This means when you sit down to a table with boring, crunch obsessed autists, they don't have enough character sheet density to keep them focused off of the social interaction that's nominally part of the game.

The worst part is when the GM asks one of these people to "roleplay" out an interaction with an NPC, rather than rolling a skill check with appropriate bonuses for relative social standing, alignment differences, religious modifiers and racial compatibility bonuses.

Earlier editions are a safehaven for people who are awkward when they aren't adding up all their "sweet modifier bonuses" on their armored kill-bot.

>>52677912
Advantage is tacit admission that the game's core mechanic is inadequate for representing characters being able to reliably succeed at a task.

>>52669304
I don't hate it, but I do have serious gripes about it. It largely comes down to personal taste though.

>1. Non caster PCs aren't versatile enough.
>2. Character creation isn't customizable enough.
>3. Adv/dis goes too far in the other direction and isn't granular enough.
>4. Everything is way too swingy - characters are too incompetent and dumb luck is the major component of every action. X+Lv/4(Roundup) would be fine for proficiency bonus advancement, but since it starts at a 1+Lv/4 the entire game takes place when you're playing as incompetent bumbling idiots, like the levels of D&D we always skip in 3.x.
>Guidelines for higher level starting gear are shit.
>Benchmarks for DCs are vague and worthless and prevent any consistency of expectations. Even in published adventures they're all over the place.

>>52678075
Well it's nice then that Advantage/Disadvantage takes care of that nicely then, isn't it?
>reliably succeed at a task
You sound like one of those DMs who make the Ranger roll to climb an apple tree. Or a player in one of those games. Tasks that the player could expect to reliably succeed at shouldn't be rolled for in the first place.

>>52678096
>>Benchmarks for DCs are vague and worthless and prevent any consistency of expectations. Even in published adventures they're all over the place.
That one really pisses me off both as a player and a gm.

>>52678075
No, Advantage is an outright admission that accumulating +1s was the cancer that killed 3rd and 4th edition, and was determined to be the best solution to the problem without ruining the bounded accuracy they'd crafted.

>>52678096
Read that as
1. "I need layers of combat feats"
2. "Piles of feats, more feats/level. Feats, feats.
3. "And more situational bonuses and modifiers"
4. "I need to start at 6-7th level because always hitting/succeeding is now I define my character"

You're a 3.babby. All of your characters have to be Han Solo, you hate Luke Skywalker, fresh off the moisture farm.

>>52678178
I agree with everything he said and I started with BECMI. Eat shit.

>>52678131
It's not that hard to set benchmarks, I have them down for all skills, as well as a system for tools/kits/instruments for crafting valuable/masterwork items. Took all of a few hours.
>published adventures
There's your problem, you want a spoonfeeding. Maybe you should stick to MtG or something.

>>52678178
Not that Anon, but I've got to admit that I also find myself wishing that there were more options for characters after character creation.

A number of new 5e style feats would be nice.

Personally, there is probably nothing wrong with d&d fifth edition, my problem is that they didn't wait long enough between editions and are trying to drive Pathfinder out of the market, which is a better quality product and has a better community.

>WoC firing panic shots cause Paizo creeping into their territory
>Brief resurrection of boxed set nightmare times when RPG's were dead as doorknobs.

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>>52678203
You both stink of Munchkin with little to no genuine imagination beyond optimizing.

>>52678222
Can't they do the thing where there is D&D and Advanced D&D?

Like Pathfinder is for high rollers and D&D for pickup games?

>>52678215
It's not a matter of difficulty of homebrew it's that something so basic as benchmarks for skills shouldn't have to be homebrewed.

>>52678235
I kind of would like to see WoC bring Paizo into the fold. But there would have to be a change in management for that to happen

>>52678222
Pathfinder is a bloaty mess of a game.

>>52678215
I think it speaks to how much of an afterthought skills were that they didn't even include basic benchmarks.

>>52678272
Yeah, Pathfinder teams would have to be put in charge of development and WoC in charge of marketing.

>>52678222
>Pathfinder
>better community
>better quality product

Holy shit, you have some serious brain problems.

>>52678276
But its rules work. It has all the nice parts about 4th edition without all the bad parts of 3.5. I'm telling you, Pathfinder is going to explode like Macs did back when Windows 3.5 was a thing.

>>52678222
>my problem is that they didn't wait long enough between editions

They waited as long as they did between 3rd and 4th. 3rd Edition was 2000, 4th Edition was 2007, 5th Edition was 2014.

Although AD&D 2nd Edition was 1989, so that was only 11 years.

>>52678290
You sound like the kind of obnoxious socially inept retard who can't distinguish between being frank and being a obsequious little snot.

If you are going to spout toxic shit it doesn't matter whether or not you have a valid criticism, your just acting like a punk.

>>52678319
Jeebus, has it been that long?
Still, 5th Ed's release party was anemic. They hardly put any work in, it was all meta fixes. You can't fix what ain't broken.

4th ed had a really good system, it just lacked depth and background. Pathfinder is a mess, but at least if you need a splat you can find it.

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>>52678300
>Windows 3.5

My point is, if you want me to pimp 5th, your going to have to sell me on something it does better than Pathfinder or 4th ed.

Its like Windows 8, no one wants it.

>>52678283
It's amazing to me how people who think they are "elite players" because they can min-max a pile of feats and modifiers some other guy wrote down in a book, utterly fall flat when they are asked to intuit some goddamn skill DCs.

Basically you want a 300 page book that gives difficulty charts for everything.
DC example
NR climbing an apple tree unencumbered
5 climbing a normal tree with gear
10 climbing a normal tree with weapon ready
15 climbing a bare pole with gear
20 climbing a rain slicked tree in heavy storm
25 climbing a greased tree with wargs snapping at your heels
30 climbing the World Tree in the Fimbulwinter

>>52678411
Lets face it, the 5th ed community is a bunch of duds. It puts the 'special' back in special forces.

>>52678427
Kek, sounds like White Wolf. They act like thier 4th and 5th dots scale logorythmically instead of linearly.

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>>52678411
No one wants to pimp you anything. the better-adjusted gamers are already playing 5e, you are lurking on 4chan wishing you could be "that guy" around someone's table.

I'm in the second year of a very entertaining campaign,why should I care what you play?

>>52678427
>30 climbing the World Tree in the Fimbulwinter
No Scion thread so you're in here championing 5e or what?

>>52678442
Exhaulted is pretty good at that. Unfortunately, only mathmatically inclined asians can run it and you know how they are about storytelling.

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>>52678442
>They act like thier 4th and 5th dots scale logorythmically instead of linearly.
Bounded
Accuracy

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>>52678452

>>52678488
I must have struck a nerve. Are you just here slumming from Pathfinder Theorycraft General?

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Since 4E is being brought up as a point of comparison: I remember thinking that 4E had a lot of solid ideas, but in practice across a few months of play with two different DMs my biggest problem ended up being that combat took fucking forever regardless of what we were going up against. Everything seemed to be scaled with the assumption that every encounter needed everyone to pop off their "once/twice per encounter" powers and their special actions and their interrupts and all their other abilities, so even encounters with goblins turned into really drawn-out ordeals.

Was that a constant in most people's experience with 4e, or was that an effect of poor judgement across the people who were running my games? I think there were a lot of ideas that were worth keeping from 4e that got thrown out, but the biggest thing that keeps me from going back from 5e now that I have it is how much smoother ends up going.

>>52678533
>my biggest problem ended up being that combat took fucking forever regardless of what we were going up against.
this is intentional, the game is intended to be a combat vidya game. There's nothing to prevent you from roleplaying, but the game is designed for people who think roleplaying is for faggets and really want a 6-hour dice rolling smackdown.

>>52678504
I guess. I tend to get lost in the meta.

>>52678459
Well, the DCs themselves are straight from the 5e DMG (pg. 238). The descriptions are his own, though.

>>52678557
So you're saying it's D&D for Warhammer players?

>>52678533
I hate to say this, but 4e really has a cutoff in terms of how intelligent and academically gifted you have to be to play it.

You can't just be good at math, you have to be sort of great at it. If you want to bring in novice players, you have to avoid fight scenes at all costs.

>>52678557
It actually went REALLY fast once we had a solid group. Everybody knew what they were doing, everybody had a strategy, 4th ed was the smoothest D&D i've ever played.

It was like playing shadowrun.

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>>52678591
You also have to think a night of running Math Exercises is an enjoyable way to blow an evening.

You can be "intelligent" enough to play 4e smoothly and still find the whole thing a colossal bore.

>>52678557
>>52678591
It's also worth noting that 4E was originally designed to be released side-by-side with a Roll20-style online application that never manifested because the guy behind it killed his wife and then shot himself.

A lot of the minutae of 4E would have been streamlined and automated in most games had the app ever come out.

>>52678621
Except shadowrun always has problem players. I don't think I'd want to play shadowrun with somebody who has never even tried marijuana.

>>52678637
>>52678640
whoa. thats heavy.

Its not so much learning the math exercises as learning the rythym. You have to surrender the story to the dice and let the combat resolve itself.

I am not a big fan of the +2 modifier theory.

>>52678533

It can be pretty slow if the GM doesn't use minions enough. Minions exist to help speed up the game/allow you to fight groups quickly.

>>52678648

>I don't think I'd want to play shadowrun with somebody who has never even tried marijuana.

How does that link up with anything?

>>52678688
I loved minions. I loved the idea that if you threw enough minions at PC's, no matter how strong or tough they were, they would eventually die due to crits.

Our parties strategy worked pretty well, but the "glass cannon theory" didn't ALWAYS work. I think minions should be a little more squishy.

>>52669304
>horror stories about 5e
from buttravaged 3/pf cockmonglers I presume?

that being said, 5e has its problems - clunky legacy systems and bland mechanics due to wotc's 4e ptsd

>>52678704
it didn't.
apologies.

>>52678704
Maybe he's just acting as an example of the issues with shadowrun players?

>>52678713

>I think minions should be a little more squishy.

Hard to get more squishy than 'Only a single HP'.

Minions and Swarms though are a GM's best tool for representing groups of enemies. You can easily represent an enemy formation as a swarm.

>>52678731
See, I'm not even criticizing the system, I'm just saying, "What does it do better than 4th Ed or Pathfinder?"

>>52678745
I mean they should have lower AC and higher HP.

>>52678731
I think 5th ed was a desperate gambit to win back grognards from Pathfinder/3.5. They really should be focusing on finding a new audience for their games.

I mean, have you ever thought about what these edition wars have done to sales? What a clusterfuck it must be to for new players?

I remember back when I first started playing, I accidently bought a Greyhawk supplemant thinking it was the 2nd Ed players handbook. I didn't know anything and had no links to the community. I was also a little young, maybe a little too young, if you ask me.

>>52678803
I mean, the point is that kids start getting interested in D&D before they are able to play. You need to sit down with your kids and have a talk about D&D.

>Its 10 o clock. Do YOU know where your children are?

>>52678781
>They really should be focusing on finding a new audience for their games.

I'm pretty sure that's exactly what they're doing, given that I've found a 5e PHB at Wal-Mart, and a D&D movie is in the works.

>>52678781
>They really should be focusing on finding a new audience for their games.

If reported sales numbers are to be beloved, 5e HAS been really good at bringing new blood into the hobby - though I wonder if that's more the effect of stuff like Critical Role and Adventure Zone taking off than the game system itself.

5e seems to be designed less as a system to "win back grognards" as it is a system meant to be as streamlined and approachable as possible. I think it greatly succeeds at that, but whether that's a good thing is going to be a matter of personal preference.

>>52678781
>They really should be focusing on finding a new audience for their games.
Objectively speaking this has been the most normie-friendly and successful iteration of D&D in a long time.

>>52678758
better than pf
>reduced ability bloat and less rewards for system ‘mastery’
>simplified rolling mechanics that get rids of a billion situational modifier in favour of a simple albeit a bit more abstracted system
>reduces disparity between class tiers
>removes the retardation that are 3.pf magical item dress-up

as for 4e
>more tools for out of combat roleplaying for those who needed them
>combat that doesnt need 4 hours to resolve at

imo the few really bad things 4e had were hp bloat and shit feats.

13 is the cutoff age. But for things like pathfinder to be able to play you have to be 18+. For things like 4th ed it works better if you're in college, preferably in STEM. If you want kids to play, you have to have a kids version.

Boxed Beginner sets used to do this. I saw someone trying to make a box set revival but it bombed.

>>52678843

>more tools for out of combat roleplaying for those who needed them

...which tools? 5e has very little there.

>>52678745
minions are amazing - I've been using them in every game since seeing it in 4e

>>52678824
>D&D movie is in the works.
Oh god not another one.

>>52678862

Yeah. They are a very good addition to all but the most gritty of games if you want to add bulk to a fight without adding a heap of extra complexity.

>>52678857
i remember 5e dm guide had quite a bunch - cant be specific because I am phoneposting from an airport and havent played a game in more than a year - normie life is fucking rubbish.

the truth is that i do think that 4e was a very decent and fun system in its own right

>>52678857
The tool kit proficiencies alone offer more than 4e ever did.

>>52678862
Spycraft 1.0 (A third-party d20 game that was sort of a prototype d20 Modern) did it first. Actually Spycraft 1.0 did a LOT first. Action die, minions, balanced classes built around a standard progression...

>>52678928
>The tool kit proficiencies alone offer more than 4e ever did.
So i take it you never looked at 4e past the first PHB?

Okay, I will say this: Its a BITCH to play 4th ed without software. Also, 5th ed adding more hit points to a monster only makes it more of a slog. Unless you're monster does lots of cool shit its going to feel like a grind.

Especially if your not fighting "solos" or "minions", a drag out fight with a team of high HP monsters is boring as shit.

Also, I feel like quick battles reinforce the realism and deadliness of a fight. It adds dramatic tension.

>>52678988
>So i take it you never looked at 4e past the first PHB?

The fact that out-of-combat options were deemed so secondary that they weren't in the first PHB speaks volumes about the edition's intentions. It kind of puts the final kibosh on the idea that it wasn't just meant for combat, combat, combat.

>>52673737
This. It's an extremely bland one size fits all approach where previously a smart DM could do interesting things:
>very easy DC for trained characters, but everyone's expected to make the check
>middling DC with additional benefits for high results so extremely skilled characters have a lot of value
>difficult DC so that only specialists have a chance of success
Every d20 game should just rip off SWSE's core skill formula of bad - decent - great but expensive. Skills in that system felt great even when burdened with horrendously inconsistent skill coverage (Perception and Persuade cover everything; Climb, Swim, Jump still separate) not to mention the travesty that was UTF.

>>52679008
Past character creation it's not too bad but fuck making a character without some sort of digital assistance.

>>52679048
The trained/untrained thing worked really well, actually. The difficulties of most things scaled appropriately.

If you are a freeform player, then you aren't going to rely much on the rules anyway, and if your not, they were perfectly adequate for most social and non combat encounters. Easy things are easy, Hard things are hard. Simple.

>>52679048
But there were out of combat options in the core books there were just more in following books.
Kinda like 5e where they just recently release guidelines for downtime.

>>52679058
I still have that somewhere. I'm worried about it losing its file integrity.

Another 4e thing that was sort of a mixed bag was the loot system. The magic items felt very gamey. I did enjoy it but I get the feeling a lot of people really wouldn't.

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>>52669925
No one remembers those days, back when longcat was long and Snacks was celebrated for namefagging. Kneel and say an Ave, we shall n'er see it's like again.

4e kind of had that problem. It was very pretty, but it was also ditzy. The game didn't have a lot of background or depth. I could see why it might be hard to get invested.

>>52679123
I much preferred the inherent bonus system.

>>52679142
Well I sure as hell didn't.
The effects at least added a flavor to your gear.

I'm talking more about random magic items, miscelanious artifacts and things that could cleverly break the game, like the smoke bottle or the canteen that had an unlimited geyser of water.

>>52679166
and all the spells had set limits and durations that would prevent them from being abused. I think high level casters should have a little more flexibility in how they use their spells.

>>52670700
>shadowrun
>solid rules for anything

I love the game, but shaman spirit cheese is the easy road to one-man runner groups, or at least to making the sammy sit in the corner until the GM litters everywhere with mana barriers.

>>52678586
More or less, yeah.

>>52678686
+2 modifier theory?

>>52679166
See i thought you were talking about the obligatory +1weapons and +1 stat whatevers when you were talking about "gamey" magic items.
The miscellaneous magic items are always a hoot.
Can't get enough magic tokens.
Cause seriously who knows when you're suddenly gonna need a boat or a giant tree?

>>52678865
A couple, actually.

I've heard there working on both a dragonlance movie and a forgotten realms movie.

Hopefully they're better than the generic "D&D" movies.

>>52679051
>Every d20 game should just rip off SWSE's core skill formula of bad - decent - great but expensive.

That system...didn't work as advertised. Going from memory here, but as I recall the system was that your modifier was 1/2 character level + ability score + 5 (if trained) + 5 (Skill Focus), right?

So let's take, say, Persuade. A Noble by 10th level could reasonably be expected to have a +4 to Charisma, be trained, and have Skill Focus. So that's a +19. An untrained 10th-level Solider, meanwhile, likely only has a +5.

That's a fairly huge difference and basically means that the same problem that plagued 3rd Edition D&D is still present: DCs either need to be low enough that anyone could hit them; or high enough that only those specialized could hit them. Using the Persuade example, the Noble can hit a DC 15 check 100% of the time, while the soldier can only hit it 55% of the time. The soldier is still better off just not making the check at all and instead letting his noble friend make the check.

(This is even more relevant with something like, say, Climb or Jump - the soldier can probably pass such checks easily, while the noble has no chance at all and is better off looking for a route that won't require them).

D&D 5e has basically the same problem on paper. In practice, however, since the numbers never grow as absurdly large (90% of 10th-level characters, for example, will only have at most a +9 to a check even if they're trained in it), it means the DCs don't need to climb to a point where it's nonsensical for someone without training to even attempt them.

>>52679225
>Using the Persuade example, the Noble can hit a DC 15 check 100% of the time, while the soldier can only hit it 55% of the time. The soldier is still better off just not making the check at all and instead letting his noble friend make the check.

Isn't this the whole fucking point of having each party member specialize in different things? Let the strong guy do strong guy things and the talky guy do charismatic things? In 5e everyone can potentially succeed almost every roll, so differences in builds feel like they barely matter.

>>52669849
Pf and 4e players both tend to dislike 5e for different reasons.

4e players dislike it's simplified less tactical combat.

Pf players dislike the fairly cookie cutter character building.

Personally I don't like dis/adv, or how swingy it is (particularly for skills) (the swinginess is caused by bounded accuracy - imo they did a shitty job setting those bounds).

>>52679254
>Isn't this the whole fucking point of having each party member specialize in different things?

Sure. However, it was emphasized during development that the reason why they were doing the Untrained/Trained/Skill Focus system was to emulate the fact that in Star Wars, every character generally seems capable of anything they're doing. For example, Luke doesn't need the controls of the Falcon's guns explained to him, he just slides down to the turret and starts firing. Or in more modern terms, they'd probably have used Rey piloting the Falcon as an example.

The specific intent was to create a system whereby you don't have to worry about whether or not characters are capable of climbing a wall or riding a tauntaun or whatever; that unlike in 3.5, you won't run into situations where half the party is useless 'cause they can't pass a given skill check (sneaking around, surviving in the wilderness, jumping across a chasm, chasing folk across the desert on giant lizards, etc.)

It failed pretty spectacularly, however, because the numbers were still just too damn big. D&D 5e doesn't have quite the same problem because its numbers are smaller, which means its DCs can be lower and reasonably achievable by even someone with a low skill modifier.

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>>52669304

I still prefer 3.5 & 2nd edition to 5E.
5e is a good system, especially for new players. But i think players do not see how simple the system really is.

Character creation for me as a dm is where i have fun & i just do not enjoy it in 5e. The classes have limited options and it usually comes down to 2 set paths. The feats give players good options but there are not nearly enough of them , and some of them are very overpowered. SKILLS! why do players not like skills? in 2nd edition there is a fleshed out skill system for nearly every skill imaginable. 3.5 downgraded and kept a good chunk of them, 5e though butchered the skill section(spot,listen,bluff,use rope, hide, move silently,craft). Even though some skills are barely used, it still gives the players flavor & a unique specialization . I do not really like the advantage/ disadvantage system . It is fun in the beginning but in the later levels it becomes a crutch to replace the plus's & minus's that 3.5 is known for.

Outside of characters we have the modules. I only have experience with Princes of the Apocalypse, which was a total train wreck. Seriously if you get a chance read through it and try to figure out how to run it properly . It is not impossible but it is a mess. I have heard good things about curse of strahd but from my experience with potc im done for now.

Splat books are my favorite thing about 2e. They are no longer a thing since they usually dont have the best quality but i miss them .

>>52679179
4th ed.
talking about 4th ed Shadowrun. I don't give a shit about 5th ed, there hasn't been any technical epoch that has come to end that required writing a new set of rules.

>>52674095
This is definitely true, at least in part. I have a player that hates 4e with a passion, but I just made a Not!4e system for a one-shot that used 5e's terminology and lacked the power cards/boxes and she was totally fine with it and enjoyed it.

>>52679378
Well, you might like Pathfinder.
Just Sayin'

>>52674481
I actually really liked 4es stat blocks. I did have other gripes though.

I thought codified rules for regular combat maneuvers were lacking though, and I could have used more standardized guidelines for using powers for unusual uses, particularly outside combat.

I also really hated aedu. I really wished the entire game had instead been designed around a universal MP setup or strain system like in Shadowrun instead.

I didn't care for the giant text, tons of white space, and tiny page count though. It felt like the books were half the size for the same price.

Other than dark sun (which was under supported) I generally thought it's published settings were shit.

And the adventures were initially awful, too (Though I hear they got better towards the end).

D&d isn't my favorite game (that would be Shadowrun) and D&D 5e isn't my favorite d&d, but I do prefer it to 4e, and as a gm I prefer 5e to Pathfinder (as a player I prefer Pathfinder in a high tier party).

>>52679410
My problem is that Pathfinder is going to start have start hiring bouncers for its events, there are just too many shitlords who try to crash in.

Senior DM's are really going to start having to pull their own weight. They are going to have to run one game with shit players and one game with good ones, every week. You have to take in the shit players because everybody was a shit player at one time or another, and if you don't you won't get any new players, which means no new fanbase and no new book sales.

>>52679473
If they want free swag and good playspaces, they are going to have to do their patriotic D& Duty.

>>52679490
>D& Duty.
I wasn't aware that we punners had invented a nuclear option.

>>52679473
>new players, which means no new fanbase and no new book sales.
Why would i care about any of those things?

>>52679500
>Duty.
"lolkek!!! It even has the word 'duty in it"!

>>52679503
cause you are a very important person in the gaming community who frequently visits this forum. I have no reason to think otherwise.