All classes need to be of equal complexity and be equally fun to play.
If you violate this maxim, you are a failure at game design. It is okay for a player not to understand this, but it is immensely bad for a game designer not to understand this.
I guess this would be true if all players were equal wanted the same things equaly.
Which is to say, not true at all.
So clearly, all players who dislike complexity will want to play fighters, right? Because they definitely wouldn't want to play wizards or anything else.
Oh wait, Harry Potter is probably the fantasy background of most new players under the age of 20, so they will want to play wizards.
If complexity is an issue then you need to make the game simpler across the board, because disliking complexity and wanting to play class X have nothing in common. Indeed, what if a veteran player wants to play an archetype that is less interesting than any other class mechanically, but they want to play that sort of character? What if that character type is essential to party composition?
It doesn't really matter what the class is, making different classes of different complexities is just a bad idea.
3.5 is too complicated and the end result of 3.x was a major fracturing of the market. The game is horribly, horribly broken from a mechanical standpoint, leading to all sorts of unfun situations for both GMs and players once you get up to the higher levels, and the game is complicated to the point where it is too much work for new players to get involved with it. I know plenty of people who would like to roleplay but find rolling up a character, be it 3.5 or 4th, too much work, or who find the systems to be unfun to actually deal with due to the rules baggage. And yes, that includes 3.x.
3.x is also terrible to DM for; 4th edition is much nicer on DMs, and any future system needs to make sure that DM usability is a major consideration, as without DMs, you won't have any players either.
3.x took the market down the wrong path; it overcomplicated the game and while 4th fixed many of the issues with 3rd edition, it didn't fix the fact that 3rd edition was probably the wrong approach to begin with. 5th edition needs to be simpler than 3rd and 4th editions.
One thing that 4th did right, though, was making sure that fighters were just as interesting as any other class, and any attempt at changing that is 100% a mistake.
I agree that D&D Next needs to be as simplified as possible, and a lot of what I see in the paytest seems to be trying to accomplish this.
It appears that our experiences with 3.5 were very different.
First, I would say that 4E and not 3.5 fractured the market. I was a D&D player until 4E took the game in a direction that was unfun for me. I also never really had a problem DMing 3.5 and subsequently Pathfinder. Then again, I have always been very clear with my players about my expectations and any rules restrictions. If you came to my table with the intent of "breaking" the system or powergaming to the exclusion of everything else then we probably wouldn't be gaming together very long.
All that said, I do love the idea of 5E reducing some of the overhead for DMs. 4E is easier to run mechanically and this should be emulated. Advantage/disadvantage & Skill Mastery are huge steps in this direction.
I found that introducing new players to 3.5 was only troublesome if they were left to swim on their own. We regularly assigned a more experienced player to guide them through the first couple adventures.
Our experiences with 4E seem to be divergent also. I orderd the 3 core book set and had it sent to me in Iraq so we could start a new game. I was able to bear it only for about the first six sessions of the campaign. Then we quickly switched over to the Pathfinder Playtest Book.
I agree with you that 4E made fighters as interesting as the other classes. But it wasn't difficult to do this from my group's point of view because all the classes seemed to be boring copies of each other with different fluff trappings.
I'm optimistic about where 5E is now because I know that hasn't gotten where it's going yet. I like the differences in classes. I accept that something needs to be done about the fighter, and I believe that it will be. But I also recognize that absolute combat balance is an anathema to many players.
Shane
Combat Mastery: When performing combat maneuvers such as bull rush, disarm, sunder, trip, hip toss, eye poke, ball kick, hair drag, blind with sand, slide down banister, swing on chandalier, walk on barrel, use enemy as shield, interpose self in front of arrow trying to kill wizard, intimidate, etc, the minimum check result is 10.
Help make Combat Mastery happen: If you like the idea of Combat Mastery, as outlined below, for fighters copy it onto your signature and add interesting combat maneuvers to the list. Two new examples could be throat punch or spit in eye.
Combat Mastery: When a Fighter performs combat maneuvers such as bull rush, disarm, sunder, trip, hip toss, eye poke, ball kick, hair drag, blind with sand, slide down banister, swing on chandalier, walk on barrel, use enemy as shield, interpose self in front of arrow trying to kill wizard, intimidate, pick up kobold by the neck, etc, the minimum die result is 10.
Fighter Combat Maneuvers: On a given round the fighter can bull rush, disarm, sunder, trip, hip toss, eye poke, ball kick, hair drag, blind with sand, slide down banister, swing on chandalier, walk on barrel, use enemy as shield, interpose self in front of arrow trying to kill wizard, intimidate, etc, in place of his/her move action. This is a nonattack action that might cause the fighter's opponent to be rendered prone, unarmed, blind for a round, etc, or otherwise grant the fighter advantage or his/her opponent disadvantage as the Fighter sees fit.
All classes need to be of equal complexity and be equally fun to play.
If you violate this maxim, you are a failure at game design. It is okay for a player not to understand this, but it is immensely bad for a game designer not to understand this.
I guess this would be true if all players were equal wanted the same things equaly.
Which is to say, not true at all.
So clearly, all players who dislike complexity will want to play fighters, right? Because they definitely wouldn't want to play wizards or anything else.
Oh wait, Harry Potter is probably the fantasy background of most new players under the age of 20, so they will want to play wizards.
If complexity is an issue then you need to make the game simpler across the board, because disliking complexity and wanting to play class X have nothing in common. Indeed, what if a veteran player wants to play an archetype that is less interesting than any other class mechanically, but they want to play that sort of character? What if that character type is essential to party composition?
It doesn't really matter what the class is, making different classes of different complexities is just a bad idea.
Right, so if I wanted to play a Harry Potter character then you telling me to play a Cleric or Rogue or Fighter and to suck it up because I should enjoy all classes equally just does not cut it.
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"If you can't make an interesting human fighter, then you aren't ready to play anything else yet" Edymnion
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Sometimes that story is short and sometimes it is long. They can be tragic, comic or absurd. Some teach. Some are just to fill the empty spaces in our lives. Rarely it is a transcendent fugue only half remembered but wondered at. And frequently: "it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." -William Shakespeare
First, I would say that 4E and not 3.5 fractured the market. I was a D&D player until 4E took the game in a direction that was unfun for me. I also never really had a problem DMing 3.5 and subsequently Pathfinder. Then again, I have always been very clear with my players about my expectations and any rules restrictions. If you came to my table with the intent of "breaking" the system or powergaming to the exclusion of everything else then we probably wouldn't be gaming together very long.
In my experience the fracture actually occured during 3.5, not 4th - 4th just made it obvious that it had actually happened already. There was a rather large playerbase who was no longer content with playing 3.5 and who were experimenting with other systems, be it GURPS, M&M, ect. They weren't spending much money, but they were poking their noses around. 4th came along and a lot of them thought it was what they were looking for, whereas a lot of people who never could understand why 3.5 didn't work had little incentive to change. Add to that the usual dose of intense nerd rage and another company (Paizo) fuelling the flames and you saw a conflagration, but the actual issue had occurred years earlier - its just that it wasn't obvious until 4th came along that it was actually a problem.
The problem is, fundamentally, you are a player - even as a DM, you are actually playing the game, you aren't a game designer. And players are very bad at fixing things - it is the job of the developer, NOT the player, to do this, and this is where 3.x failed, and Pathfinder, being a 3.5 rehash, also failed. This was actually an issue with earlier editions of D&D, but earlier editions were so heavily fatal and so slow in experience gain that a lot of the larger balance issues with it weren't really that noticable. Plus, I suspect the internet probably didn't help - once you go from 1% of your players being online to 99% being online, internet communications start to become an issue if your game is broken, as the players can work together to break the game all the faster, and then everyone can see what the most broken things are.
3.x just doesn't work right. Its not about breaking the game in half; the game is already broken. Its not about powergaming either. The truth is that casters are just massively better than every other class in the game even without trying; ToB helped, but it didn't really fix the other underlying problems of the system (SoS being a rather large one). The players don't cause the problem; the system causes the problem, even if the players aren't trying to be obnoxious.
Right, so if I wanted to play a Harry Potter character then you telling me to play a Cleric or Rogue or Fighter and to suck it up because I should enjoy all classes equally just does not cut it.
You seem tired; I'm not sure if I am understanding what you are saying.
Are you trying to say that wizards cannot be simple? Because I disagree, there are simple ways of representing wizards mechanically. I've played in a system where all characters have exactly three combat statistics, and three special powers they can use in combat, and three quirks - all of which, put together, take up less than a half page of paper, and yet somehow, there were wizards.
Or did you misread my post? My point was that people need to be able to play whichever character archetype they want to play, within the limits of pseudo-midieval fantasy.
All characters in the system need to be of equal complexity because your love of complexity or the lack thereof has nothing to do with what sort of character you want to play. The complexity level of the game is designed for what you need for your target audience; you make the classes work within that complexity level, not the other way around.
How-TosFirst, I would say that 4E and not 3.5 fractured the market. I was a D&D player until 4E took the game in a direction that was unfun for me. I also never really had a problem DMing 3.5 and subsequently Pathfinder.
I agree with this. The groups around my area eaily transitioned from 2e to 3e to 3.5 and just balked at 4e.
Combat Mastery: When performing combat maneuvers such as bull rush, disarm, sunder, trip, hip toss, eye poke, ball kick, hair drag, blind with sand, slide down banister, swing on chandalier, walk on barrel, use enemy as shield, interpose self in front of arrow trying to kill wizard, intimidate, etc, the minimum check result is 10.
Right, so if I wanted to play a Harry Potter character then you telling me to play a Cleric or Rogue or Fighter and to suck it up because I should enjoy all classes equally just does not cut it.
You seem tired; I'm not sure if I am understanding what you are saying.
Are you trying to say that wizards cannot be simple?
I think he is saying yes they could indeed be simple... but because somebody is playing a simple aim my wand wizard and zap em with dm adjudicating more complex uses of arcana doesnt mean somebody else couldnt or shouldnt be able to play the heron blade master for Wheel of Time verse along side them.
I guess we are just going to have to disagree about what it means to fail.
While I cannot speak to the behavior of rude players, I can say with quite a bit of certainty that Paizo did not fan any flames with it came to the edition wars. I have always been impressed with their classiness and level of customer service. As a player I hope we can see the same thing from Wizards.
I would say that Pathfinder or D&D are successes as long as they do 3 things. Turn an acceptable profit for its publisher, grow as a game and make positive change, and continue to be fun to their players.
What other measures of success matter?
As a longterm D&D player and a fan of Pathfinder I really want to run campaigns in a system with less overhead, 5E for example, but in a rich setting with amazing stories already in place, Pathfinder.
I really hope that WotC pulls this off. More than anything I want both WotC and Paizo to continue being successful. Nothing could be healthier for our hobby and competition is always good for me as a consumer
Shane
Help make Combat Mastery happen: If you like the idea of Combat Mastery, as outlined below, for fighters copy it onto your signature and add interesting combat maneuvers to the list. Two new examples could be throat punch or spit in eye.
Combat Mastery: When a Fighter performs combat maneuvers such as bull rush, disarm, sunder, trip, hip toss, eye poke, ball kick, hair drag, blind with sand, slide down banister, swing on chandalier, walk on barrel, use enemy as shield, interpose self in front of arrow trying to kill wizard, intimidate, pick up kobold by the neck, etc, the minimum die result is 10.
Fighter Combat Maneuvers: On a given round the fighter can bull rush, disarm, sunder, trip, hip toss, eye poke, ball kick, hair drag, blind with sand, slide down banister, swing on chandalier, walk on barrel, use enemy as shield, interpose self in front of arrow trying to kill wizard, intimidate, etc, in place of his/her move action. This is a nonattack action that might cause the fighter's opponent to be rendered prone, unarmed, blind for a round, etc, or otherwise grant the fighter advantage or his/her opponent disadvantage as the Fighter sees fit.
Right, so if I wanted to play a Harry Potter character then you telling me to play a Cleric or Rogue or Fighter and to suck it up because I should enjoy all classes equally just does not cut it.
You seem tired; I'm not sure if I am understanding what you are saying.
Are you trying to say that wizards cannot be simple?
I think he is saying yes they could indeed be simple... but because somebody is playing a simple aim my wand wizard and zap em with dm adjudicating more complex uses of arcana doesnt mean somebody else couldnt or shouldnt be able to play the heron blade master for Wheel of Time verse along side them.
The problem is that it doesn't work out in practice; the more complicated someone is, the more versatile they tend to be, and the more screentime is necessary to adjucate them, and this all combines to make them far more awesome than their less complicated friend. It also is bad for the friend if they don't really understand what is going on with the rest of the group.
Right, so if I wanted to play a Harry Potter character then you telling me to play a Cleric or Rogue or Fighter and to suck it up because I should enjoy all classes equally just does not cut it.
You seem tired; I'm not sure if I am understanding what you are saying.
Are you trying to say that wizards cannot be simple?
I think he is saying yes they could indeed be simple... but because somebody is playing a simple aim my wand wizard and zap em with dm adjudicating more complex uses of arcana doesnt mean somebody else couldnt or shouldnt be able to play the heron blade master for Wheel of Time verse along side them.
The problem is that it doesn't work out in practice; the more complicated someone is, the more versatile they tend to be, and the more screentime is necessary to adjucate them, and this all combines to make them far more awesome than their less complicated friend. It also is bad for the friend if they don't really understand what is going on with the rest of the group.
And just because your class has built in well defined versatility which is more to the point doesnt mean you lack any versatilty which might be gained improvisationally
And just because your class has built in well defined versatility which is more to the point doesnt mean you lack any versatilty which might be gained improvisationally
Hear hear
Shane
Help make Combat Mastery happen: If you like the idea of Combat Mastery, as outlined below, for fighters copy it onto your signature and add interesting combat maneuvers to the list. Two new examples could be throat punch or spit in eye.
Combat Mastery: When a Fighter performs combat maneuvers such as bull rush, disarm, sunder, trip, hip toss, eye poke, ball kick, hair drag, blind with sand, slide down banister, swing on chandalier, walk on barrel, use enemy as shield, interpose self in front of arrow trying to kill wizard, intimidate, pick up kobold by the neck, etc, the minimum die result is 10.
Fighter Combat Maneuvers: On a given round the fighter can bull rush, disarm, sunder, trip, hip toss, eye poke, ball kick, hair drag, blind with sand, slide down banister, swing on chandalier, walk on barrel, use enemy as shield, interpose self in front of arrow trying to kill wizard, intimidate, etc, in place of his/her move action. This is a nonattack action that might cause the fighter's opponent to be rendered prone, unarmed, blind for a round, etc, or otherwise grant the fighter advantage or his/her opponent disadvantage as the Fighter sees fit.
