So what if spellcasters (clerics, wizards etc) are uber-powerful compared to non-magic users? Each class has their own abilities and specialization. Fighters and rogues cannot use plane shift when necessary, and they cannot fly on their own or create a prismatic sphere like wizards can, but the basic definition of being a fighter or a rogue means that you don't have or require the knowledge or expertise to do those abilities anyway for those classes. Fighters and rogues cannot raise the dead or create food and water from thin air like clerics could before 4E. But the very nature of being just a fighter or a rogue means that you cannot just pray to your deity to give you those abilities like a devoted cleric is able to do. In fact, a cleric's ability to raise the dead basically comes from being an agent of the Divine deities. One cannot perform resurrection without being a cleric of a deity. Fighters and rogues are basically heroes who's limits are that they don't use magic..whether it's arcane or divine.
Fighters and rogues can do very well without magic, and a party of fighters might do very well without any arcane spellcasters, but they still need clerics to heal them and to raise their fallen comrades.
You cannot expect a decent character to be able to resurrect the dead without being a cleric with a deity's approval or without at least having a magic item that has that spell prepared. THAT sort of spell at least has always been balanced because it has always been restricted to higher level cleric characters and the resurrection and raise dead spells have always been expensive and tough to cast.
I'm... I'm not sure what you're getting at here, to be honest. You say each class has its own abilites and specializations, and then just list why casters are important.
Funny enough, that's one of the issues I have with the game. Go figure.
So what if spellcasters (clerics, wizards etc) are uber-powerful compared to non-magic users? Each class has their own abilities and specialization. Fighters and rogues cannot use plane shift when necessary, and they cannot fly on their own or create a prismatic sphere like wizards can, but the basic definition of being a fighter or a rogue means that you don't have or require the knowledge or expertise to do those abilities anyway for those classes. Fighters and rogues cannot raise the dead or create food and water from thin air like clerics could before 4E. But the very nature of being just a fighter or a rogue means that you cannot just pray to your deity to give you those abilities like a devoted cleric is able to do. In fact, a cleric's ability to raise the dead basically comes from being an agent of the Divine deities. One cannot perform resurrection without being a cleric of a deity. Fighters and rogues are basically heroes who's limits are that they don't use magic..whether it's arcane or divine.
Fighters and rogues can do very well without magic, and a party of fighters might do very well without any arcane spellcasters, but they still need clerics to heal them and to raise their fallen comrades.
You cannot expect a decent character to be able to resurrect the dead without being a cleric with a deity's approval or without at least having a magic item that has that spell prepared. THAT sort of spell at least has always been balanced because it has always been restricted to higher level cleric characters and the resurrection and raise dead spells have always been expensive and tough to cast.
A lot of that can be solved by having a rule that says your character doesn't die. I mean go read books or watch movies with heroes in them. The hero might go down in battle, but they don't die. They might fall off a cliff, but they don't die. They might be covered by a pile of rocks, but they don't die. Basically the character wouldn't die unless the DM and player agree that the character should die. They might have to lie up in a hospital/old ladies house/small village/etc...etc... for a while or have scars or mental problems (most of the time it follows the 'hero's journey' story).
Whoops. Probably not 'choice' (though it might be true if they have plenty of spells to swap out per day). More like spellcasters will clearly roll out with more stuff to do.
@Melwick
I'm not even sure where to begin with that one. If you're being sarcastic you might want to point that out.
Ok, but conversely there are a ton of people that don't like 4th, and wouldn't be interested in a game that emulated that. Don't get me wrong, I'm not overly fond of 3rd either, but if the goal is to bring people together you can't do it by producing a repeat of what broke them in the first place.
So, do we trust that they'll enable options to approach varying style preferences, or just give up now and stick with what we have in an unsupported line? Because frankly those are the options at this point. I'd rather they'd gone a different direction entirely, but they didn't, so here we are.
The perceived issues with spellcasters and the overall balance of earlier editions is what split the base, 4th just made it apparent that the base was split by catering to one segment over the other. I agree that 4th, but with lip-service to players of older editions and some lecturing as to why they were wrong, isn't going to unite the fanbase. 3.5, but sorta kinda balanced if you look at it sideways, isn't going to do it either.
I firmly disagree.
The base was split because we're dealing with 3 generations of players, each with entirely different upbringings, environments, norms, and expectations. I used to spend hours playing pong. My daughter, not so much.
The base was also split because it was actually split from the start. People have differing playstyles and preferences. In the beginning there were no other good options. As soon as those options appeared the people inherently geared towards those systems migrated.
There is NOTHING inherent within the systems that split the players of D&D...it's inherent within the players themselves and they're only now having enough options to cover everyone. Problem is, only 4th edition players have current support. What's needed is active support for all three groups and styles (preferably with room to include more as they define themselves).
I agree with Phoenix on this one. The major problem with a long running franchise like this one is that a fandom is always going to be "split" or "fractured" along certain opinions and viewpoints. the trouble with this is that it's virtually impossible to please everyone at once.
Yeah, it's all a generation split, the Power system and its billions powers, the enforcement of flavor/crunch separation, the removal of rules that personified D&D for a LOT of people (Vancian being one of them), and the nuking of the Realms had nothing to do with it.
Those are all things that serve a genreational preference. Not always, but a lot of younger people prefer the system choices 4th embodies. They like it in video games, they like it roleplaying, etc. Remember that younger people had no attachment (or often even knowledge) of previous editions.
Most people didn't think they loved everything about 2nd edition, then think they loved everything about 3rd edition, then think they loved everything about 4th edition. They had preferences which weren't well served in older editions. Maybe they liked 3rd more, maybe not. Then 4th came along and they found a system that did what they had always wanted anyway. It's nothing more than exposing something that was always present.
DISCLAIMER - Everything said by anyone is absolute subjective opinion. There are no objective claims being made by me, or anyone else, unless they overtly state 'The following is an objective claim'. At this point if you choose to be offended by anything I (or anyone else) say the problem is ENTIRELY your own.
WotC won't let us give them money because they won't produce a game we want to play.
So what if spellcasters (clerics, wizards etc) are uber-powerful compared to non-magic users? Each class has their own abilities and specialization. Fighters and rogues cannot use plane shift when necessary, and they cannot fly on their own or create a prismatic sphere like wizards can, but the basic definition of being a fighter or a rogue means that you don't have or require the knowledge or expertise to do those abilities anyway for those classes. Fighters and rogues cannot raise the dead or create food and water from thin air like clerics could before 4E. But the very nature of being just a fighter or a rogue means that you cannot just pray to your deity to give you those abilities like a devoted cleric is able to do. In fact, a cleric's ability to raise the dead basically comes from being an agent of the Divine deities. One cannot perform resurrection without being a cleric of a deity. Fighters and rogues are basically heroes who's limits are that they don't use magic..whether it's arcane or divine.
Fighters and rogues can do very well without magic, and a party of fighters might do very well without any arcane spellcasters, but they still need clerics to heal them and to raise their fallen comrades.
You cannot expect a decent character to be able to resurrect the dead without being a cleric with a deity's approval or without at least having a magic item that has that spell prepared. THAT sort of spell at least has always been balanced because it has always been restricted to higher level cleric characters and the resurrection and raise dead spells have always been expensive and tough to cast.
A lot of that can be solved by having a rule that says your character doesn't die. I mean go read books or watch movies with heroes in them. The hero might go down in battle, but they don't die. They might fall off a cliff, but they don't die. They might be covered by a pile of rocks, but they don't die. Basically the character wouldn't die unless the DM and player agree that the character should die. They might have to lie up in a hospital/old ladies house/small village/etc...etc... for a while or have scars or mental problems (most of the time it follows the 'hero's journey' story).
Heroes die in tons of good stories. Conans girl dies, Dumbledore dies, most everyone in Song of Ice and Fire dies, Karl Cullinane dies, King Arthur dies, Obi Wan dies...I mean I could go on all day. Heroes die. It happens. It adds to the story.
DISCLAIMER - Everything said by anyone is absolute subjective opinion. There are no objective claims being made by me, or anyone else, unless they overtly state 'The following is an objective claim'. At this point if you choose to be offended by anything I (or anyone else) say the problem is ENTIRELY your own.
WotC won't let us give them money because they won't produce a game we want to play.
Comment From Kamikaze Midget Can you tell us about anything you guys have discovered in focusing the game on the entire adventure, rather than on the individual encounter? 11:38 Jeremy Crawford: The poor goblin and his butt. 11:40 Mearls: The biggest thing is making it OK for one character to own a particularly encounter. If the wizard casts sleep and KOs a group of six kobolds, that's OK. In the next encounter, the rogue might sneak up on the kobold shaman and gank him, or the fighter blocks a doorway and takes down a wave of attackers. Same goes for characters with good social abilities, and so on. 11:40 Mearls: It also means for a much faster game - characters contribute in each encounter, but we can let someone shine without feeling that everyone must have at least 4 or 5 turns to do their thing. 11:41 Jeremy Crawford: There is a tremendous amount of world texture that we can include when there isn't pressure to make everything count in every single combat encounter. We can include character options that speak to social situations, exploration, traveling on the high seas, hopping into other planes of existence, and so on, without segregating those options into little buckets.
11:42 Mearls: It also means that "unbalanced" options are more viable. For instance, in one adventure the characters fought a gang of hobgoblins. One of the hobgobs was a beast master who used a whip and a prod to drive a pair of giant scorpions forward. The rogue sniped the beast master, so the scorpions turned around and had their revenge on the tribe.
11:43 Mearls: It ended the fight pretty quickly, but it made for a fun adventure. The characters ended up luring the scorpions into a room with a window, locking them in there while the rogue climbed out.
11:43 Mearls: Next!
Biggest disappointment so far. If D&D Next goes this route, there is a huge chance it won't be tha game for me.
Comment From Andrew Can you comment on adventure pacing versus the wonder of magic? In 3e, PCs were often required to rest after the cleric/wizard were out of spells, regardless of the state of the rest of the party. In 4e, everyone can keep going until out of surges, but there was less "magical pizazz" across the classes -- a sword being a magic missile being a druid's claw. 11:49 Jeremy Crawford: We have been striving to connect pacing to concrete things in the game world: magical resources, such as spells; hit points; and various options that might rely on a character expending some of his or her vitality. 11:49 Mearls: That's a great question. We want magical to feel magical yet rooted in the world. The cantrip thing ties into this. Cantrips aren't specifically made to blast people, but a cantrip you use to create a small amount of acid as part of an alchemy experiment can also be a useful weapon. Spells should feel magical and maybe even mysterious in some way. 11:49 Mearls: For instance, going back to cantrips, we specifically didn't want to just make a spell that was the same as a crossbow but it did fire damage. That sells magic short, IMO. 11:49 Mearls: Next!
Second biggest disappointment so far. Not only D&D Next is going to be less focused on my play style than 4E, but the things that were keeping me around (in this case, the idea of controlling the pacing of the adventure with more ease) are going to be discarded in favor of realism too. Not a good day for me.
Comment From Jools I'd love to know what your thoughts are on conditions in 5e. Something spoilery would be nice! 11:29 Jeremy Crawford: We've been discussing conditions quite a bit lately. They're certainly in the game. I'll be revising them this afternoon, in fact. 11:30 Jeremy Crawford: We're fans of conditions that make sense both as game mechanics and as something in the world. Prone, for example, is a useful game concept, and it matches what's going in the story. You're knocked on your butt! 11:31 Mearls: We're trying to keep the list of conditions slim and make it apply to things that are obvious changes in the world. For instance, right now invisible and ethereal are on the list of conditions. We also added intoxicated. Basically, what are things that when they happen to you have a clear effect on how you interact with the world?
here's another thing - with stuff like paralyzed, we're dealing more in describing what happens rather than trying to make everything mechanical. So paralyzed says that you can' t move your limbs. Spellcasting specifies that you need to move your arms to cast a spell. Thus, a paralyzed creature can't cast spells.
The idea is that we give the DM clear mechanics, but also make it clear what's happening in the world so the DM can make any judgment calls as needed. 11:31 Mearls: Next!
Third biggest disappointment, disassociated mechanics are out, no chance of seeing anything similar to disassociated mechanics as they are striving to kill it off. No ease of reflavoring, no ease of improvising, not a chance to see a game that goes in the direction I want it to take.
And to top it all off:
Comment From Somnambulant gamer
Everyone's incredibly excited about this initial offering, do we know what kind of timeframe we're looking at for materials to generate new characters and a chance to see more of the core classes that will be released? 11:45 Jeremy Crawford: Even in the playtest spells, you will see elements from classic spells and elements from powers. 11:45 Mearls: Let me check our schedule. It's on a white board on the other side of my desk... AFK 11:46 Jeremy Crawford: We plan to roll out character-customization options this summer. 11:46 Mearls: OK, if things go smoothly you'll have that stuff before the end of the summer. Keep in mind that feedback is a part of this, and it's all contingent on how much we need to change based on round 1. 11:46 Mearls: Next!
End of this summer? Ok, I'm wasting way too much time on this. It's apparently not a game I'm going to like, and serious feedback starts at the end of summer. The package they are presenting on the 24th has nothing even near to interesting for me - I'll take a look at the rules but honestly the things I am looking forward to are character customization and inter-party balance, DM tools and encounter creation mechanisms, and ease of reflavoring / retexturing. Nothing a premade character with a premade adventure is going to net me.
At the end of the day conclusion is: I don't need to be here.
Are you interested in an online 4E game on Sunday? Contact me with a PM!
Reflavoring: the change of flavor without changing any mechanical part of the game, no matter how small, in order to fit the mechanics to an otherwise unsupported concept. Retexturing: the change of flavor (with at most minor mechanical adaptations) in order to effortlessly create support for a concept without inventing anything new. Houseruling: the change, either minor or major, of the mechanics in order to better reflect a certain aspect of the game, including adapting the rules to fit an otherwise unsupported concept. Homebrewing: the complete invention of something new that fits within the system in order to reflect an unsupported concept.
So what if spellcasters (clerics, wizards etc) are uber-powerful compared to non-magic users?
So I want to play a Conan, Roland or Fafrd who is a HERO or anti hero and not simply a caddy for some Harry Potter wannabe.
My choice of class should not inherently keep me from being a hero.
But just because you're a Conan or a Roland doesn't mean you aren't a hero when paired up with a Harry Potter type. It means you are a differentkind of hero than the Harry Potter type.
Spellcasters train at being Harry potter types. Fighters train at being fighters. I think it's not about inherent ability to cast spells or to wield a sword that forces your character into one class or another (although the basic Strength, Constitution, and intelligence scores factor into it),realistically it's the CHOICE of career your character makes that determines the class your character is.
One has to study at casting spells to be a wizard. One has to study and train at swordplay and weaponry to be a fighter. Fighters and rogues simply choose not to train to use magic. I think this the only thing that sets them apart from the spellcasters. It's simply a matter of career training, in my opinion. And both the spellcasting and non-spellcasting classes havve their uses and their roles. No one judges that a professionally trained engineer or doctor is any more important than a farmer. Both have their important roles to play in society
I agree with Pheonix182 that 4th finally gave me most of what I want from a game.
Regarding Heroes dieing in the story I kind of agree and disagree. With historical and mythological references sometimes it adds to the story (Cuculane and Roland come to mind) and sometimes its just where the story ends (David and Thesus [IIRC, my Greek mythology is a few decades out of date]).
In fiction its somewhat of a different matter. Its been awhile since I read Rosenberg's Guardian of the Flame books (and I stopped reading shortly after The Warrior Lives) but in some ways, while Karl was the initiating spark so to speak (in changing the way the world worked with his vow to the oracle), I always felt the engineer guy (who lost his mage powers), Walter and Ahriane (spelling, the dwarf who was a parapalegic in real life) where the ones who really made things happen. Jason seemed to take his place a little to easily for my tastes. Many of your examples aren't even the heroes (while Obi-wan is clearly the hero of the first trilogy, he's still not the primary protaganist, that was Anakin, and in a New Hope, he was clearly intended to be the sacraficial mentor, Luke was the hero).
I think it may be that we are using different definition of hero. The word can mean anyone who's good and important to the plot, as well as the protaganist(s). I certainly would not regard any of Conan's girls in REH's writing to be a hero except Valeria and Belit (and Belit was intended to be the heartwrenching lost true love who comes from beyond the grave to save Conan, its even lampshaded in Queen of the Black Coast). This makes sense to me, I prefer to play protaganist Antiheroes.
Damn, there's something to this considering other people's point of view thing after all.
So what if spellcasters (clerics, wizards etc) are uber-powerful compared to non-magic users? Each class has their own abilities and specialization. Fighters and rogues cannot use plane shift when necessary, and they cannot fly on their own or create a prismatic sphere like wizards can, but the basic definition of being a fighter or a rogue means that you don't have or require the knowledge or expertise to do those abilities anyway for those classes. Fighters and rogues cannot raise the dead or create food and water from thin air like clerics could before 4E. But the very nature of being just a fighter or a rogue means that you cannot just pray to your deity to give you those abilities like a devoted cleric is able to do. In fact, a cleric's ability to raise the dead basically comes from being an agent of the Divine deities. One cannot perform resurrection without being a cleric of a deity. Fighters and rogues are basically heroes who's limits are that they don't use magic..whether it's arcane or divine.
Fighters and rogues can do very well without magic, and a party of fighters might do very well without any arcane spellcasters, but they still need clerics to heal them and to raise their fallen comrades.
You cannot expect a decent character to be able to resurrect the dead without being a cleric with a deity's approval or without at least having a magic item that has that spell prepared. THAT sort of spell at least has always been balanced because it has always been restricted to higher level cleric characters and the resurrection and raise dead spells have always been expensive and tough to cast.
A lot of that can be solved by having a rule that says your character doesn't die. I mean go read books or watch movies with heroes in them. The hero might go down in battle, but they don't die. They might fall off a cliff, but they don't die. They might be covered by a pile of rocks, but they don't die. Basically the character wouldn't die unless the DM and player agree that the character should die. They might have to lie up in a hospital/old ladies house/small village/etc...etc... for a while or have scars or mental problems (most of the time it follows the 'hero's journey' story).
Heroes die in tons of good stories. Conans girl dies, Dumbledore dies, most everyone in Song of Ice and Fire dies, Karl Cullinane dies, King Arthur dies, Obi Wan dies...I mean I could go on all day. Heroes die. It happens. It adds to the story.
Agreed, Phoenix. Death is always an important part of mythology and fantasy.
You cannot have a rule that says characters are unable to die until all of the players want them to. It might remove all of the suspense and the necessary element of fear and danger that would motivate players to keep their characters safe. The fear of death adds spice to the game. That's partly why raise dead and resurrection spells have to be expensive and cost prohibitive for lower level characters. And that's also why only the higher level clerics get to learn them, in my opinion.
