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1 year ago ::
Jan 10, 2012 - 9:38AM
#1
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Date Joined:
Sep 20, 2004
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I am a little worried by Monte Cook working on 5e design. Don't get me wrong, Monte is a great designer. His World of Darkness is a lot of fun. However, Monte once wrote an article in which he stated that he believes in system mastery, and "bad" options were intentionally added to 3e in order to support system mastery. This facet of 3e ended up turning me off the system. Indeed, in order to play Monte Cook's World of Darkness I am forced to do a lot of houseruling designed to balance the game. So, I am curious, is it the designers' intent to add such features, designed to foster system mastery, into the game again with 5e? I ask, because that is a major factor in whether I will want to purchase the game or not. I assume the same is true of the 4e crowd in general (though, maybe not, because 4e does feature quite a bit of system mastery as well).
Additionally, will an effort be made to balance classes? No edition of D&D is perfect in that regard (including 4e). However, 3e was simply atrocious. The disparity in power between spellcasting classes and non-spellcasting classes turned me off the game. I do not own most of the 3e materials as a result. Will efforts be made to ensure that non-spellcasters and spellcasters are equally effective? Will the lessons of 4e roles (defenders, strikers, leaders, and controllers) be incorporated into 5e?
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1 year ago ::
Feb 04, 2012 - 1:09AM
#2
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Date Joined:
Aug 13, 2008
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Dave hi
Is that your daughter? I have a daughter too. It's awsome that your taking her to the park.
What do you mean by system mastery, you may have mis-understood Monte, I for one am grateful that hes on the design team.
It is very hard for players like me to have a voice on this forum, I am one of the few D&D loving Pathfinder players, that have come back in hopes that "5ed" will bring back the old principles that we love.
A couple points.
There are many of us that are not a fan of the roles ie tank DPS Crowd control etc. We do not want to be pigeon holed into a role.
And that actually is related to your other comment. Balance
Balance can be good or it can be bad, we should not sacrifice distinction for balance. The 3ed classes were truly disctinct they felt so different, especially for example a Bard. I played a Monk for many years, when i switched to a Bard the game was a totally new horizon in my life. I tried to play a Bard in 4ed and i did not enjoy it.
Anyways you like apples, I like oranges but we can both love D&D. Editions aside I hope I can have a game with little more chaos, a little more death, less balance and not to much focus on roles. And you can have one with roles and balance.
Your worried about Monte Cook
I'm worried that the 3ed/ Pathfinder players won't have much of a voice on this site. We are standing at the door and knocking, wanting to come back to the Grandfather of Role Playing games, you need to let us back in. Believe it or not Pathfinder (the core system itself) is not that great, it is great because it was built on the foundation of another, it's basically 3.5 + better combat manuevers + a lot of power creep to attract players that think they will become powerful but it's really just an illusion of power, now we can only hope that 5ed does not turn to that method of feeding the frenzied munchkins, which you will find in every game, you gotta feed 'em but don't over feed them.
VR
Will
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1 year ago ::
Feb 04, 2012 - 1:15AM
#3
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Date Joined:
Jun 17, 2003
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I'm worried that the 3ed/ Pathfinder players won't have much of a voice on this site.
I think you're right about that, but what makes you think that 4e players are going to have any more? If you're read Monte's L&L articles and public comments, it seems clear to me that he is barely familiar with 4e at all, and doesn't seem to want to become familiar, and when you look at what is actually known about DnD 5e, it seems that the actual hard decisions (we know about thus far) cater to NEITHER PF players NOR 4E players. As I see it, Wotc seems to be taking 4e players for granted (which actually makes some sense in a grim business way.....Wotc can kill 4e at a moments notice which means that 4e players have no choice) and don't really seem interested in luring back PF players under the (probably realistic) assumption that the PF players have an actual system that's theirs and they don't need to 'come home' to DnD. Instead, Wotc (or at least the Devs) seem to be going well out of their way to cater (frankly IMHO pander) to lapsed retro players that haven't given DnD/Wotc a dime in DECADES (if ever).
So if you want to issue a plea to be let back in, I'd direct it to those that Wotc is catering 5e to, and it's not the 4e current customer base.
-Polaris
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1 year ago ::
Feb 04, 2012 - 3:07AM
#4
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Date Joined:
Jul 10, 2003
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I've been very prolific in the past week or so because I see it as an opportunity to have some input on the new edition and I have 9 years of notes and half thoughts on practically everything people are talking about. One of the hardest things to explain is how everything will come together. 3e had a lot of cooks in the kitchen. From some of the logic they used, some of them weren't even good cooks. How many martial weapon masters did they consult before deciding how to implement physical weapons. Did they just jump right into the magic and leave the real world physics as an after thought? The real world physics should always be the foundation because of all the few things we humans know in the universe it should be simple physics. In places this doesn't even appear to have ever been the starting point. Example: creature size, carry capacity and strength. How do you quantify something that isn't easily or even quantifiable?
There's going to need to be one grand objective. Every idea, system, rule, magic spell needs to adhere to it and reflect its spirit every step of the way. We know a few things about what they want D&Dn to be but I can already tell you that many of them conflict and run contradictory. Will D&Dn cherry pick a bunch of old concepts, touch them up with a new paint job and cram them into a new box and call it a day? I really hope not but I worry that's what the marketing department will say is what will sell the most books.
Now onto the topic at hand. Balance of classes will depend on what sort of foundation the game operates on. Will there be a variable difference between combat oriented abilities and non-combat spells? How is each spell and ability weighted in terms of usefulness or power? How will combat function? Where are we in terms of armor class, Thac0, attack bonuses, penalties associated with doing cool things? Should break dancing my 30 feet of movement I get a round be nothing more than a cool character trait that grants no benefit or penalty but sure makes for some fun "wtf?" moments with my enemies?
Balance should probably about everyone doing the same thing in the end, but getting there a different way. If the end goal is to have all classes be able to do an average of 10.5 damage per round at level x. Do we get there with a barrage of magic missiles (lots of d4 rolls), one giant sword to the face (one giant d20), a poisoned arrow (a little from this round and a little from the last round), my dog chewing on your butt as I kick you in the groin (some damage from me, some from a companion). There are countless paths to get to the same place but as long as we all get there then we're all happy right? What if it's more than just damage? What if we throw in survivability, utility, and ability to heal? How do we measure that? If there's no solid foundation then all the answers of these questions are arbitrary. Everything will need a value to be calculated in an equation. If they don't use the same foundation (like some people use base 4 instead of base 10 in math) across the board then things will never be balanced.
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1 year ago ::
Feb 04, 2012 - 3:15AM
#5
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Spellcasters were pretty much equally effective to nonspellcasters when I ran 3E. But then, that's because I understood my job as DM to include making sure all the players had equal opportunities to be cool and have fun.
Yeah - 3E took all the brakes off spellcasters, which, in my opinion, probably wasn't the best idea. But it wasn't anything that took more than a few seconds to fix.
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1 year ago ::
Feb 04, 2012 - 4:46AM
#6
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Date Joined:
Jun 16, 2004
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Spellcasters were pretty much equally effective to nonspellcasters when I ran 3E. But then, that's because I understood my job as DM to include making sure all the players had equal opportunities to be cool and have fun.
Yeah - 3E took all the brakes off spellcasters, which, in my opinion, probably wasn't the best idea. But it wasn't anything that took more than a few seconds to fix.
In my experience, it took considerably more effort to fix caster dominance.
However, Monte once wrote an article in which he stated that he believes in system mastery, and "bad" options were intentionally added to 3e in order to support system mastery.
This, I think, is they key aspect of Cyber_Dave's post: The "trap" options added intentionally. Sure, it may look cool in the book, but when you actually start playing with it, you realize that....it sucks. In 3.x, these "trap" options could vary. Generally, they were feats, but sometimes, they were entire classes. The "system mastery" comment that C_D is referencing is from an article called " Ivory Tower Game Design". I've copy-and-pasted the relevant paragraphs below, with emphasis added:
Magic also has a concept of "Timmy cards." These are cards that look cool, but aren't actually that great in the game. The purpose of such cards is to reward people for really mastering the game, and making players feel smart when they've figured out that one card is better than the other. While D&D doesn't exactly do that, it is true that certain game choices are deliberately better than others. Toughness, for example, has its uses, but in most cases it's not the best choice of feat. If you can use martial weapons, a longsword is better than many other one-handed weapons. And so on -- there are many other, far more intricate examples. (Arguably, this kind of thing has always existed in D&D. Mostly, we just made sure that we didn't design it away -- we wanted to reward mastery of the game.)
The point that C_D and I agree on is that every option should be a valid option. Having some options deliberately be better than others is not the design philosophy that should be present in a co-operative game like D&D.
Gold is for the mistress, silver for the maid Copper for the craftsman, cunning at his trade." "Good!" said the Baron, sitting in his hall, "But Iron -- Cold Iron -- is master of them all." -Kipling Defenders: We ARE the wall! I've replaced the previous Edition Warring line in my sig with this one, because honestly, everybody needs to work together to make the D&D they like without trampling on somebody else's D&D. Miss d20 Modern? Take a look at Dias Ex Machina Game's UltraModern 4e! I am a hero, not a chump.
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1 year ago ::
Feb 04, 2012 - 5:00AM
#7
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Date Joined:
Oct 12, 2011
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It wasn't intentional, it was just his way of justifying the state of things. It's kinda like a free ticket to do bad design, "I intended to make a crappy feat!"
The job of the game designer is to make his job not even noticed, a well balanced game never has balance come up as an issue, because you just go on playing it.
Honestly, a lot of people never even notice it. Like Monk being a really, really, really weak class in 3e that doesn't do anything. D&D is a tabletop game with a DM so experience can vary wildly.
But if you managed to enjoy 3e with a broken class and you didn't notice the wizard's sheer potential, then you won't notice a game fixed of such flaws as long as it's not pointed out, as long as it doesn't make fun of you. It just does its job quietly and thanklessly.
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1 year ago ::
Feb 04, 2012 - 5:12AM
#8
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I don't approve of this form of 'game mastery'. All choices should be equally valid...
that is not to say that all combinations of choices should be equally valid. That is where system mastery should come in. Preferably getting the best out of such combinations shouldn't be obvious and no one combination should be significantly better than another good combination.
Good combinations are going to happen anyway and there is nothing wrong with designing synergy into the game (at least that way you know where they are). Just, please, no more traps.
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1 year ago ::
Feb 04, 2012 - 6:43AM
#9
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- Forum Guide
- Hero Craftsman Gold Medalist
- Master Dungeon Master
Date Joined:
Jun 23, 2005
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Cook made system mastery a goal in 3e, but balance has explicitly been made a goal of Next. All the Cook blog shows is that Cook actually knows how to set a design goal and pursue it. Game designers are not robots. They can actually work in several design styles.
Cook has worked on many RPG products and most of them are not known for requiring system mastery. People need to look at things in context and not take one nugget of information and run with it to the most illogical extreme.
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1 year ago ::
Feb 04, 2012 - 6:50AM
#10
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Date Joined:
Jan 22, 2008
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The game has to be balanaced every class should be equally good both in and out of combat. So far from what I've seen with vancian casting back and some crappy at will system probably for fighters its not going to be balanced at all. You cant have daily powers and at will powers balanced with each other. The legends and lore articles also do not make me very optimistic there's only so much you can get at looking at old edditons. The best thing to do with tradition is get it the hell out of the way of good design.
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