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I was largely happy with the direction of Next until the most recent playtest packet.  Most of the problems are minor issues (why was Perception changed back to separate Listen and Spot skills, dead levels in character development, etc.).  But the only changes significant enough to make me consider not purchasing the product when it is released are the changes they made to spellcasting in the October 29 packet.  

I don't understand at all why they removed minor spells and converted them into 0-level spells; it was much simpler and far more streamlined as a series of at-will powers, and were in no way gamebreaking.

I at least understand why they reduced the number of spells per day for spellcasters.  The designers thought the casting classes needed some balance.  But instead of powering down the offending spells they gutted their spellcasting capabilities.

 

About the only thing that would upset me that badly would be to see heavy armour get screwed as badly as it had in certain previous editions.  As long as light armour-using classes can't approach the AC of a heavily-armoured warrior, then I'll be happy.  So far, I'm pleased with what they've set up for D&D Next.

The reasons for why my group played one session of the first packet and then never wanted to look at Next again:

*Balance of hit points and damage

In our first adventure our wizard fell down into a trap andr right after a bunch of rats ganged up on the rest of the group. The fighter would kill a rat hit or miss and the others would try to hit a rat on the turns they had. This then went on and on and on. At the same time, the rats almost killed the PCs. I had a look at the bestiarity or whatever it is called in the lates playtest packet, and still seems like the same problem. I much prefer the 4e balance of damage and hit points. Also, I much prefer the general level of AC in 4e. I think that the chance to hit was fairly good there, and I guess everyone has a larger chance to hit in Next compared to 4e.

TL;DR: I prefer HP, damage and AC as they are balanced in 4e compared to Next. Unless I find that they have fixed that I will be more likely to stop play D&D than to buy 5e (or participate in playtests). ALso, it I lose access to 4e Charbuilder, Monster builder and compendium I will most probably stop playing D&D 4e (and hence D&D at all).

For me it's simple: currently the math of nearly everything put out is wonkey in one way or another. This edition desperately needs to be fixed on a mathematical level for it to be acceptable to me.

Advantage/disadvantage is a god awful kludge if you understand stats and/or probability
Monsters can't hit, defend, take a hit but can one shot a squishy.
HP/damage out of whack for both monsters and PCs
Balancing by gold = bad
and a whole lot more.

Other no-nos
Gameplay pillar spotlight design. No more fighter goes and plays X-box when social time comes round please.
Mechanical allignment.

I for one don't want to see another game in which every class is good at everything. Some are good for exploration, some are good for social interaction, every class needs to be good at combat but some really excel at it. If every class can do all three just as well, then why not just make every party five fighters? Sure, it could be great for the individual, but where does the party balance come in? Isn't this game about teamwork? I think your class should reflect what type of character you want to play, and they all need strengths and weaknesses.

Strengths and weaknesses = fine, strengths and gaping voids =/= fine.

Being ~75% as effective as the speciliast in the pillar is fine and leaves you able to contribute but the specialise will lead the charge in the task.

Sadly the design of the past and the direction of the current characters is far closer to strenghts and gaping voids than it is to strenghts and weeknesses.

Remembe the days of the bard that sucked in combat and could talk a vestal vergin into his bed vs the fighter who could decapitate orcs in a single swing but had BO and drooled on the counts carpet so got told to stand in the back and look dangerous as thier sole contribution to negotiations with the count and his Senechel. I've been there and it sucks.

But how exactly is a Barbarian with 9 Charisma supposed to contribute to delicate negotiations? If you want to be a Fighter who can talk his way around a town like a Rogue, there's nothing stopping you from training in the relevant skills to do that, they don't need a class feature for it. If you were constantly shoved off to the side during non-combat scenes, sounds like a problem with the group, not with the rules.

Nov 23, 2012 -- 3:48PM, Lord_Kyrion wrote:

But how exactly is a Barbarian with 9 Charisma supposed to contribute to delicate negotiations?

Impossible to say, because we need more information.  What are the barbarian's stats and what is his background?  What are the delicate negotiations about?

If the DM decided for some reason that the only way to contribute is through Charisma checks, then of course this character would be at a disadvantage (mitigated if they have relevant skills).  But I can't imagine ever doing that as the DM.  There are countless ways for characters to contribute during negotiations.

I worded that badly. Of course you can have low Charima and still be useful in social situations, but that's all about how you build the character. I don't believe every class should have built-in features for it. I think the game already allows you to compensate for your class's weaknesses by non-class means like skills, especially now that trained skills aren't linked to your class.

Rage Quit?

• Alignment mechanics
• Racial class restrictions
• Ability score restrictions to classes
• Lame multiclassing rules. (at least as good as 3.X, but there is a lot of room for improvement.)
• Monsters using a different core system than the PCs for creation
• Non-working skill challenges. (Leave them out, or include a working system, don't give a non-working system on this)
• +X items

Red Flags: vancian magic in the current form, alignment mechanics, hit die

I'm getting closer and closer to the "Rage quit" on Next:

• Alignment mechanics in ANY form (if people want to have an alignment, fine... but keep the mechanics out of the game)
• Alignment requirements of ANY kind (yes... this is a bit redunant... but I can't say it enough.)
• VANCIAN ANYTHING!
• Hobbit Fatlings.  Halflings were finally becoming something of their own, and now this **** is back? 

Ellyh:  Love the avatar.    In all seriousness, I came to this thread and I was like - WHOA!  Did I already post somehow in my sleep or something?  

OP:  What I hear you saying in most of your "red flag" list is that you don't like how skills are being handled.  I think you might be looking at things in a little too much detail.

There is honestly no single mechanic that will cause me not to buy 5.0.  That's because I know how D&D works in real life:  you houserule the crap out of whatever you don't like.    Let's say rogues never got sneak attack or something silly like that in the final product.  Who cares?  I'm just going to fix it for my own games and keep going.  In that respect, no one thing is going to make me "ragequit."

Now, I'm not saying that I will buy 5.0 no matter what.  Certainly if some systems are so effed up that I cannot reasonably work around them, then it's a wash.  Right now, I agree with you that the entire skill system is broken beyond tweaking.  It would take way too much effort for me to repair the entire system, so if this were the final product, I would not buy it.

What I mean in my first sentence is:  don't let a single detail drag you down.  "Use rope?"  Just ignore it (I sure have).  That's not a dealbreaker.  Even Vancian magic (*shakes fist*) isnt' a dealbreaker for me, so long as they give me the option to play another way.  If it's the only possible way to cast magic - then yeah, that's a dealbreaker.  What really matters are the systems, holistically - not the details.

Also, love The Tick.  

Rage Quit
Sneak Attack in its current implimtation ('nough said).  Just bring back the previous version of Sneak Attack and divorce it from the expertise system, please.

Annoyed
Two-Weapon Fighting Rules (might be better once whatever TWF feat specilization they're thinking of comes out).  Specifically, as it stands, you can never sneak attack with Two-Weapon Fighting (unless you were "flanking").
Humans.  We can do everything better than you can, we can do everything better than you.  (Seriously though, when a human rogue can have a higher dexterity than a halfling or elf rogue, in addition to plus +1 to everything else, something is wrong.)

Iffy
Rogues having the same hit points as wizards (I can see an argument for it, and honestly, don't mind that much so long as rogues have options to avoid damage to make up for it).
Non-Customizable Magic Items: Flexible item creation gives you a lot more options for loot and diversity in magic items, and it can be prevented from becoming customizable outfitting like 3.5 with strict magic item creation rules for players.

Try to guess what archetype I like and hunger for the most? :P

On the Flip Side...
I love the Word of Power spell system, as it stands for clerics at least.  The warbringer dorf cleric I played was awesome, casting bless and healing spells and still smacking things with its axe.  I think its a nice system for creating a combat cleric now that it can't stack buffs to make it more powerful than the fighter.
Expertise is also a nice system, in theory.  Just needs to have the kinks and idiocracies ironed out (seriously, Warriors start with a choice of maneuver and deadly strike for free, rogues had to use their only first level maneuver for their damage mechanic!?  How the heck did that pass whatever internal testing they use?)

The biggest piece of feedback we received was that the rogue came across as a lame fighter. This was a key test to see how much tolerance people have for varied combat strength across classes. There's some give, but it looks like people want to avoid dramatic differences.

Mike Mearls - Legends & Lore Archive | 12/3/2012
 

I haven't played 4th edition, was waiting for a video game to come out like neverwinter or something to try it, but I have played some of 3.5. Most of what I play is a mix between 1st and 2nd and one of the things I like about it is the maxes. While there is no limits on level or how powerful a character could get in game there are maxes on stats, ac, etc and I like that. In 3.5 starting a character with a 30 str and +10 to hit and only going up from there isn't something I am fond of. I would like to see some maxes on stats, ac, etc in 5E. Could have str max for size, ie huge can have more str than a Med. Otherwise you are designing monsters to hit the guy with a 78 ac every-now-and-then and wasting the rest of the group. 

2nd ed allowed characters to get to -10 ac. monsters could surpass that, yet characters could have a 24 strength and be stronger than a dragon, that also isn't good. 

My main concern is that the system remain flexible enough to house-rule to my liking, since they will inevitably do (and have already done) things I don't agree with.

While any one of the following wouldn't be enough to make me "RAGEQUIT", I would if 5e included enough of them.

* Totally unbalanced classes, and/or classes being "balanced" across pillars (i.e. fighters being allowed to dominate combat because they totally suck in the social and exploration pillars).

* Alignment restrcitions/mechanics. Alignment as anything but totally, 100% optional fluff.
 
* Humans getting +1 to all ability scores.

* Rolling for hit points. I don't care how "traditional" it is. It was stupid 4 decades ago and it's still stupid now.

* Hit points starting with single digits at level 1, making me avoid playing before level 3 at the earliest, as I had to in the past.

* Excessive HP and damage bloat. For the same reasons Bounded Accuracy is good for the game, so too is bounded damage and HP.

* Expertise Dice being used as the equivalent of BAB progression. 

* Ability modifiers, particularly Strength, not adding to damage.

* Anything resembling the 3.x skill list. If spot and listen, or move silently and hide are separate skills (instead of Perception and Stealth), or if there's a Use Rope skill, I will be very displeased.

* Players not being able to choose any of their skills, either because they're all chosen for you by your background, and/or you never gain any more from leveling, leaving all characters who share a background with the exact same skills.

* Monsters that are difficult to design or manage as the DM, particularly those with spell lists that force me to look up spells in the PHB to be able to use the monster effectively. Or, monsters that are boring blocks of stats without special abilities. Basically, if they throw away all of the amazing progress they made with monsters in 4e.
 
* Cantrips not being at-will. After 4e and Pathinder, I've come to take this for granted.

* Spells that have HP thresholds, as we saw in the first two playtest packets.

"Vancian" Magic is the top of my list.  And sadly, it's not ever going away. 

Major turn-offs

Bond accuracy - please for the love of god, no, just NO.

Expertise dice - really the designers couldn't come up with anything better. 

Specialties and backgrounds - Just allow free from feat and skill selection. Give suggested feat paths in the DM's guide if you have too, but just assume most people like feats/skills and want to choose them freely.

Too few feats - One at first and then one at every even level thereafter feels about right.

Every class/character feeling the same - Everyone's using vancian magic or expertise dice, come on mix it up, give us creative options. Heck I liked the idea of different sub systems being related to your class choice, could we go back to that.

Non-combat skills feats spells and especially class abilities - Give fighters and all classes abilities that relate to exploration and interaction.

Advantage/disadvantage - I actually don't mind the idea, but include a more specific and advanced system for people like myself, and give it equal support.

Action resolution - A specific action system, please again add more options. Combat doesn't have to be so fast, I like more then one action on my turn.

Humans - As they are currently written.

Fat halflings - I prefer them athletic.

Alignment system - Easy fix include non-aligned as an option, and make alignment a allegiance of sorts and completely optional.

Hit dice - just use some kind of second wind system.

Hit points - up everyone's hit points per level, wizard's stay at d6's, fighters move to d12's, clerics d10's and rogues d8's.

Strength and dexterity attack bonus - You want a better accuracy system give only half the bonus from high strength or dexterity adding to attack rolls, in other words a 18 in strength equals a +4 to damage but only a +2 to hit.

Ability scores caped at 20 - I want my character to feel more heroic at higher levels.

Better weapons and armor - More robust system, I like 3e weapon system in regards to critical hits and 4e system in that all weapons had special maneuvers tied to them and got a attack bonus.
 
Mostly everything, really.

I've only given it a quick scan so far, but there is one complete killer for me so far.

• Reversion to the (IMO) retarded though traditional for D&D spell casting mechanic of memorising spells and forgetting them when they are cast. ie. Vancian magic. I rejoyced when I saw the way magic is handled in 4E.

Nov 16, 2012 -- 8:00PM, Saelorn wrote:

RAGEQUIT: Advantage/Disadvantage is basically a giant flag saying "we don't care".  The math doesn't work out, and promotes counter-intuitive gameplay.

Nitpick: Quadratic progression of expertise dice.  Getting more dice and bigger dice creates an incredibly erratic (who rolls 3d10 for damage?) discrepancy between people who can and cannot fight.

WHAT?! I demand an explanation. If there's one thing I liked MOST about 5.0 its the Advantage/Disadvantage rules... its quick, (assuming you throw both at the same time.) and completely removes the boring and arbitrary minuses and pluses DM's throw at challenges. It also reduces the amount of finger-counting arithmatic. Flavor-wise it CLEARLY feels like an advantage/disadvantage! What makes you say it's counter-intuitive???

Dec 9, 2012 -- 12:22PM, Slimbokid wrote:

WHAT?! I demand an explanation. If there's one thing I liked MOST about 5.0 its the Advantage/Disadvantage rules... its quick, (assuming you throw both at the same time.) and completely removes the boring and arbitrary minuses and pluses DM's throw at challenges. It also reduces the amount of finger-counting arithmatic. Flavor-wise it CLEARLY feels like an advantage/disadvantage! What makes you say it's counter-intuitive???

I'll grant that it's quick, and rolling two dice clearly feels like it matters.  The math doesn't back it up, though.

Dis/advantage is the new way to model the old large modifiers, the +4 or -4 (or more!) from a really significant situation: blindness/invisibility, prone, that sort of thing.  The great thing about +4 is that it increases the chance of success by a hard +20% regardless of the base success rate.  Advantage, however, increases success rate anywhere between ~5% to ~25% depending on the base success rate.  The math which underlies the completely simple feeling system is not intuitive whatsoever.  

Without checking any references, tell me who has the better chance to succeed at climbing the DC 20 wall: the ranger with a +18 bonus, or the rogue with a +15 bonus and advantage?  Now, what if it's DC 25?  DC 30?

If you were out of your league, and needed a 19 to hit, then a +4 would increase your chance from 10% to 30%, while merely rolling twice would increase your chance from 10% to ~16%.  Even worse, since advantage doesn't stack, there's nothing more you can do.  Under the old model, you could always try to add more situational modifiers to eventually possibly succeed.

And while that should be enough to condemn the system outright, the simplicity doesn't even live up to its claims.  Because it only models large bonuses and penalties, the small bonuses still exist.  Half-cover gives a +2 to AC, rather than granting disadvantage to attackers.  When they get the grid rules in, I can guarantee that something as simple as high-ground or flanking are not going to grant advantage or disadvantage; they're too small, so also going to be a +1 or +2 to hit.

As it stands, you need advantage exactly once before it stops mattering, regardless of whether or not you have disadvantage.  If you designate one character as the trip monkey, then the rest of the party can ignore any major tactical advantages because they would be redundant and pointless; rather, they can freely jocky for as many small bonuses as possible, because a +1 or +2 does stack with advantage.  If you have the choice between blinding your foe (a major situational bonus), or getting behind half cover (a minor situational bonus), then the answer depends on what else is going on at the time - because blindness is meaningless to a target who is already prone or otherwise debilitated.

Long story short: if it's going to be a significant part of the system, then there will need to be many sources of dis/advantage; the more sources of dis/advantage that exist, however, the less valuable any of them are.

Dec 10, 2012 -- 12:44AM, Saelorn wrote:

Dec 9, 2012 -- 12:22PM, Slimbokid wrote:

WHAT?! I demand an explanation. If there's one thing I liked MOST about 5.0 its the Advantage/Disadvantage rules... its quick, (assuming you throw both at the same time.) and completely removes the boring and arbitrary minuses and pluses DM's throw at challenges. It also reduces the amount of finger-counting arithmatic. Flavor-wise it CLEARLY feels like an advantage/disadvantage! What makes you say it's counter-intuitive???

I'll grant that it's quick, and rolling two dice clearly feels like it matters.  The math doesn't back it up, though.

Dis/advantage is the new way to model the old large modifiers, the +4 or -4 (or more!) from a really significant situation: blindness/invisibility, prone, that sort of thing.  The great thing about +4 is that it increases the chance of success by a hard +20% regardless of the base success rate.  Advantage, however, increases success rate anywhere between ~5% to ~25% depending on the base success rate.  The math which underlies the completely simple feeling system is not intuitive whatsoever.  

Without checking any references, tell me who has the better chance to succeed at climbing the DC 20 wall: the ranger with a +18 bonus, or the rogue with a +15 bonus and advantage?  Now, what if it's DC 25?  DC 30?

If you were out of your league, and needed a 19 to hit, then a +4 would increase your chance from 10% to 30%, while merely rolling twice would increase your chance from 10% to ~16%.  Even worse, since advantage doesn't stack, there's nothing more you can do.  Under the old model, you could always try to add more situational modifiers to eventually possibly succeed.

And while that should be enough to condemn the system outright, the simplicity doesn't even live up to its claims.  Because it only models large bonuses and penalties, the small bonuses still exist.  Half-cover gives a +2 to AC, rather than granting disadvantage to attackers.  When they get the grid rules in, I can guarantee that something as simple as high-ground or flanking are not going to grant advantage or disadvantage; they're too small, so also going to be a +1 or +2 to hit.

As it stands, you need advantage exactly once before it stops mattering, regardless of whether or not you have disadvantage.  If you designate one character as the trip monkey, then the rest of the party can ignore any major tactical advantages because they would be redundant and pointless; rather, they can freely jocky for as many small bonuses as possible, because a +1 or +2 does stack with advantage.  If you have the choice between blinding your foe (a major situational bonus), or getting behind half cover (a minor situational bonus), then the answer depends on what else is going on at the time - because blindness is meaningless to a target who is already prone or otherwise debilitated.

Long story short: if it's going to be a significant part of the system, then there will need to be many sources of dis/advantage; the more sources of dis/advantage that exist, however, the less valuable any of them are.

Saelorn... you're thinking too hard about the wrong mechanics. The math you're doing doesn't apply any more. There simply won't be DC 30 challenges, because those are ridiculous. Nearly impossible difficulties like climbing a vertical sheet of oiled glass is represented by DC 25! Which with a mere +5 there is actually a chance you could scale that sheet of glass, and and even better chance with advantage. (However, I don't know what could possibly give you that advantage... maybe a wink from god?)

A black dragon has AC 18 where in 3.5 he would have had AC 23. So with the best roll out of 2 you're upping your odds of hitting quite a bit. 

And in reference to your Grid rules comment... advantage is advantage, if you've got the high ground, you get to roll two dice. Its as simple as that. There's no +2 bonuses for attacking with the sun behind you or some crap like that. The DC's are low for a reason, and IMO it works great.

Dec 10, 2012 -- 12:09PM, Slimbokid wrote:

There simply won't be DC 30 challenges, because those are ridiculous. Nearly impossible difficulties like climbing a vertical sheet of oiled glass is represented by DC 25! Which with a mere +5 there is actually a chance you could scale that sheet of glass, and and even better chance with advantage. (However, I don't know what could possibly give you that advantage... maybe a wink from god?)

While I disagree that DC 30 challenges won't exist, you can see the same effect by dropping the other bonuses by 5.  If the ranger is +13, and the rogue is +10 with advantage, then their capabilities relative to each other change based on whether the DC is 15, 20, or 25.

A black dragon has AC 18 where in 3.5 he would have had AC 23. So with the best roll out of 2 you're upping your odds of hitting quite a bit.

There were level 1 PCs running around with AC 20+ in the last playtest.  The idea that everything in the game will have AC between 5 and 20 seems unlikely, especially during late-game play.  I can't foresee a world where that black dragon's angry mom isn't going to have at least AC 21.  Numbers will go up, even if it's not via some pre-scribed formula that applies to everything based on level.  Bounded Accuracy doesn't mean that objectively difficult tasks will not exist.

And in reference to your Grid rules comment... advantage is advantage, if you've got the high ground, you get to roll two dice. Its as simple as that. There's no +2 bonuses[...]

if that were the case, then cover (half cover or 3/4 cover) would grant the attacker disadvantage to attack rolls rather than granting the defender +2 or +5 AC.  Even if that was true, then we'd be playing in a world where every melee attack ever gets advantage (or at least negates disadvantage) due to something as trivial as flanking or high ground.  Blindness, tripping, spells that grant advantage - huge chunks of the game become meaningless, because advantage doesn't stack.

Dec 10, 2012 -- 12:34PM, Saelorn wrote:

Dec 10, 2012 -- 12:09PM, Slimbokid wrote:

There simply won't be DC 30 challenges, because those are ridiculous. Nearly impossible difficulties like climbing a vertical sheet of oiled glass is represented by DC 25! Which with a mere +5 there is actually a chance you could scale that sheet of glass, and and even better chance with advantage. (However, I don't know what could possibly give you that advantage... maybe a wink from god?)

While I disagree that DC 30 challenges won't exist, you can see the same effect by dropping the other bonuses by 5.  If the ranger is +13, and the rogue is +10 with advantage, then their capabilities relative to each other change based on whether the DC is 15, 20, or 25.

DC 15
Ranger: 90%
Rogue: 93.75%  (+3.75)

DC 20:
Ranger: 65%
Rogue: 75%   (+5)

DC 25
Ranger: 40%
Rogue: 43.75% (+3.75)

Thanks, mellored.

I suppose that's what I get for making up numbers on the spot, though.  See how counter-intuitive it is?  Their relative advantage gained by advantage does change (from a 3.75% difference to a 10% difference), but not quite to the point where the rogue actually falls behind the ranger.  That might just be from my specific examples, though.

If you have the time, mellored, could you see which values are that extreme?  Is there any set of bonuses for which the rogue would only pull ahead on DC 20 but fall behind for DC 15, or any such values?

Why does this thread proceed from the assumption that we'll buy the new edition unless given a reason not to buy it?

As it stands, Next isn't being made for me in any way whatsoever, so I won't buy it.

Totally agreed on pretty much all of the OPs nitpicks.

Although many things in DnD 5E sounds good (and I hope it will be called 5E) and I am excited about it, there are plenty of things that I'd do differently.

My dislikes are the following:

Red flags:
Too much canon flavor. It's only a playtest, but we already have things like halflings having a default deity (a lame one, at that). The 4E pantheon was way more lovable to me, choosing a deity as a flavor, matching your religion to your character instead of boxing up all halflings (and maybe others) for a single deity. Leave more to interpretation about the races. In 4E, all we had about dwarves was many of them worship Moradin, (yet this got countered right away at the first adventurer example, with a dwarf worshipping Kord, letting us know that it's okay to worship others) they live in the mountains, they use geometric shapes in decorations, and that was enough. That was a good way of going about it. Let the campaign settings set the specifics if they want it to.

Change the make your own background system - more generic and more choices. If you choose a trait from the existing backgrounds, that trait has a big neon sign on it saying which background you picked it from. It doesn't feel like you are being creative, it just looks half-assed.
Make the make-your-own-background THE default system, (with each trait having a generic name and an easy to interpret flavor, like the 4E backgrounds) and make the existing backgrounds into examples. Remember the podcast you did with the Penny Arcade guys and Scott Kurtz? They made backgrounds up on the spot, and it was WAY better.

Balance. I didn't get to play yet, but I can do math in my head and imagine in which scenarios who's good at what. Currently, it seems like you are taking the old-school route and making the players do the party setup the old-school way too: "We'll need one of each base class, fighter wizard rogue cleric, who's who?". Seems like rogues will be trap-monkeys who are way subpar unless they are sneak-attacking, clerics are (once again) walking medkits... That's tunnel vision on nostalgia and putting gameplay balance on the back burner. It's not good. 



Yellow flags: 
Subraces. You are either a Hill Dwarf or a Deep Dwarf. Can't I just be a dwarf, like I am a human in real life instead of "White Human"? It's just another useless bracket of unneeded background info and annoying canon. I liked the 4E system better where we had Dwarves and Duergar. They were different too, but their races were one word instead of three, like Dwarf (Hill Dwarf). It just bugs me. Nitpick.

Expertise dice nitpicks: On top of balance problems (which I'm sure you'll fix), there are the d4s. Everyone hates rolling d4s. Please don't make us roll d4s.

Low HP: Okay, I see that this is old-school D&D again, but first-level wizards having to tremble at every single goblin dagger is not cool. You fixed that in 4E. Now you're about to go back to the subpar system just to comfort the nostalgics. Eh.

Use Rope and their kin: Come on. These skills were useless and far-fetched even in 3.5, why return to it? Ugh.



Now, let me repeat that I did not play 5E yet, but I did play 3.5 and didn't like it as much as I did 4E. I'm just saying, please don't walk back into old mistakes just so the new game will feel old-school. 
Thanks.

Dec 10, 2012 -- 12:34PM, Saelorn wrote:

Dec 10, 2012 -- 12:09PM, Slimbokid wrote:

There simply won't be DC 30 challenges, because those are ridiculous. Nearly impossible difficulties like climbing a vertical sheet of oiled glass is represented by DC 25! Which with a mere +5 there is actually a chance you could scale that sheet of glass, and and even better chance with advantage. (However, I don't know what could possibly give you that advantage... maybe a wink from god?)

While I disagree that DC 30 challenges won't exist, you can see the same effect by dropping the other bonuses by 5.  If the ranger is +13, and the rogue is +10 with advantage, then their capabilities relative to each other change based on whether the DC is 15, 20, or 25.

A black dragon has AC 18 where in 3.5 he would have had AC 23. So with the best roll out of 2 you're upping your odds of hitting quite a bit.

There were level 1 PCs running around with AC 20+ in the last playtest.  The idea that everything in the game will have AC between 5 and 20 seems unlikely, especially during late-game play.  I can't foresee a world where that black dragon's angry mom isn't going to have at least AC 21.  Numbers will go up, even if it's not via some pre-scribed formula that applies to everything based on level.  Bounded Accuracy doesn't mean that objectively difficult tasks will not exist.

And in reference to your Grid rules comment... advantage is advantage, if you've got the high ground, you get to roll two dice. Its as simple as that. There's no +2 bonuses[...]

if that were the case, then cover (half cover or 3/4 cover) would grant the attacker disadvantage to attack rolls rather than granting the defender +2 or +5 AC.  Even if that was true, then we'd be playing in a world where every melee attack ever gets advantage (or at least negates disadvantage) due to something as trivial as flanking or high ground.  Blindness, tripping, spells that grant advantage - huge chunks of the game become meaningless, because advantage doesn't stack.

Hmmmm, to me it sounds like you're not following the rules as given. If you're playing by the current rules, its impossible for your players to be running around with AC 20, much less 20+. If they dodge or are using cover, that doesn't count as having AC 20. Dodging and using cover are tactical choices that have serious drawbacks. (Like being stuck in one location, or not being able to attack.) So please explain how the level one characters were able to acquire +1 Plate to go with their shield?

And again, as far as the advantage/disadvantage rules go, you're confusing things and misunderstanding the purpose of advantage. Advantage is great, in that rolling two dice and picking the higher one will always be better than rolling one. It will always feel like an advantage even when you roll both of them low. It's that feeling that matters, and is the very definition of Intuitive. ^{(Using or based on what one feels to be true even without conscious reasoning; instinctive.)}  Also, it has nothing to do with cover, blindness, tripping or other things that have rules and modifiers for. 

Also, stop arguing about the DC's. It's clearly stated that they do not go above DC25. *period* The equipment, creatures and abilities are all catered for lower numbers. Complaining about what "might become" is counter-intuitive. (To use your words.)

Dec 11, 2012 -- 12:06PM, Slimbokid wrote:

Advantage is great, in that rolling two dice and picking the higher one will always be better than rolling one. It will always feel like an advantage even when you roll both of them low. It's that feeling that matters, and is the very definition of Intuitive.

Everything else aside, because some of it is speculation, this is still a fundamental disagreement.  The feel is not more important than the underlying system math, in my opinion, and catering to feel rather than math is a huge red flag marking this as a game I would never want to play.

Dec 11, 2012 -- 7:09AM, Zoju wrote:

Totally agreed on pretty much all of the OPs nitpicks.

Yellow flags: 
Subraces. You are either a Hill Dwarf or a Deep Dwarf. Can't I just be a dwarf, like I am a human in real life instead of "White Human"? It's just another useless bracket of unneeded background info and annoying canon. I liked the 4E system better where we had Dwarves and Duergar. They were different too, but their races were one word instead of three, like Dwarf (Hill Dwarf). It just bugs me. Nitpick.

Because actually making human subraces would cause cries of 'RACISM'!  Although, frankly, the idea of a 'Barbarian' human, who gets like a +2 to Strength or Constitution and then gets a free proficiency with a heavy (twp handed) weapon of choice is pretty cool to me.

But I am SICK AND TIRED of the Human Monoculture.  Living in the mountains is not going to create the same type of human as one who lives in the desert.  Or near rivers and seas.

If you don't want to worry about stats, then don't change them.  Give every human that +1 to every thing, but at least give some cultural packages.  And don't bother basing them off real life...

Dec 11, 2012 -- 7:09AM, Zoju wrote:

Expertise dice nitpicks: On top of balance problems (which I'm sure you'll fix), there are the d4s. Everyone hates rolling d4s. Please don't make us roll d4s.

I have to agree with this one, D4s are best used as weapons agains break-ins and thieves.

Dec 11, 2012 -- 7:09AM, Zoju wrote:

Low HP: Okay, I see that this is old-school D&D again, but first-level wizards having to tremble at every single goblin dagger is not cool. You fixed that in 4E. Now you're about to go back to the subpar system just to comfort the nostalgics. Eh.

The problem is that with 3 and 4e hit points were obscene, and damage didn't match.  It was more prevalent in 3.x, but it's still there at 4e.

Dec 11, 2012 -- 7:09AM, Zoju wrote:

Use Rope and their kin: Come on. These skills were useless and far-fetched even in 3.5, why return to it? Ugh.

The issue here is that some skills, which people would need don't exactly fit.  And let's face it 'Use Rope' would be a Boating and Survival skill, and when it would matter people wouldn't even know it existed, despite the fact that the tension and adventure created by needing to tie a rope can be kinda fun.

Dec 11, 2012 -- 7:09AM, Zoju wrote:

Now, let me repeat that I did not play 5E yet, but I did play 3.5 and didn't like it as much as I did 4E. I'm just saying, please don't walk back into old mistakes just so the new game will feel old-school. 
Thanks.

Maybe you should play the game before complaining about some of these things.

The human subraces comment wasn't the point, it was just an example. "The same way I don't call myself a White Human, the subrace system feels odd and unnecessary." I think cultural packages should be left up to campaign settings and not the base game.

And yeah, I can deicde whether I like something or not, I played enough games for that.

Red Flag
 
The alignment mechanics (really, them existing).

Especially with the Monk.  They didn't even list the acceptable alignments for the Monk as "Lawful good, Lawful neutral, Lawful evil, or unaligned", either.  They go to the trouble of keeping unaligned in the game to provide an option for those of us who simply do not buy into that crap, and then fail to keep that option available for us across the board.

And they did it on the first playtest class outside of the core four (Ftr, Rog, Clr, and Wiz).  One shudders to think of what else they're going to backtrack on.

I mean, weren't we done with this by now?       

After having dungeon mastered for 20+ years (OMG I AM OLD !) I can only offer this:

There are NO rules that are "red flags" that should keep you from purchasing, playing and enjoying the game.

You are forgetting the single most important rule:
The DM has the final say.

Ergo we can conclude that if you do not like a rule, then you can change it.

*pulls out DM wand /chants/ changicus rulesius POOF ! rule changed, have a nice day!*

Dec 3, 2012 -- 9:41AM, Sifaka wrote:

The biggest piece of feedback we received was that the rogue came across as a lame fighter. This was a key test to see how much tolerance people have for varied combat strength across classes. There's some give, but it looks like people want to avoid dramatic differences.

Mike Mearls - Legends & Lore Archive | 12/3/2012
 

If this is taken too far and the classes all look and feel to similar I would continue to use older books and skip this edition;  with that said, there is still a lot of development left to go and so far I have very much enjoyed the playtest.  I hope that 5e is a system that I will enjoy playing for some time.

...wait... so is he saying the replies they've been seeing are in favor of little to no difference between rogue and fighters?  cuz um... what?!?    they should be completely different.  in my unprofessional opinion anyways.  :-)

Unfortunately I don't have a real social life, so I will most assuredly get 5e, even if it's far worse than previous systems... because that's how our group does things... awesome!

but that aside, some of my gripes are:

alignment.  it's pointless.  that should be just part of character description.   my fighter generally upholds laws and blah blah. 

monks - man i hate martial arts in fantasy settings.  but i think it's gawd awful that they get a billion different powers at every level, that every other class would have to have about 5 magic items just to have a similar effect.  and they fight just as good as fighters... disgusting.  i of course will play them because they overpowerd and i want to "win," but still, i'll hate myself for it.  :-)

the way spells are handled.  melee types won't ever run out of their main attacks, which is ramming a sword into the yapper of the bad guys.  so spell casters should be able to unleash the fury on fools too.  the word "vancian" sounds stupid to me, but apparently that is what is referred to as the current style.  i think it might be neat if spellcaster had magic points, like hit points.  and spend them.  i guess this is the other style of play that people are calling for.  which it sounds neat-o to me.  and i think that you should tie in healing into regaining the spell points as well.  i only played 1 caster in 4e, because i thought they were all worthless. 

hit points:  i have always disliked it in the games where the first level monsters, typically orcs, could 1 shot pretty much up to a 3rd level character with 1 hit.  It's stupid.  I like what they did in the star wars saga edition for starting hitpoints.  which is what they used apparently when fleshing out 4e.  where basically you start with 3 times hp and then got con mod or whatever.  I think that would be spiffy.  if say fighters started out with 30 hp + con mod or heck con score and then do away with that negative hit point thing altogether.  which is stupid.  rogues would start with like 24 hp, clerics maybe 24 or 28 or something.. wizards would start with say 18, etc.  that way,  they could take a hit or two and not fold like a card table.

classes not fulfilling their archtypes / roles.   i don't know the words i'm looking for here, but the 4 archetypes, fighter, rogue, wizard, cleric.  All should be the very best at what they do.  Every other class they come up with should be a less good version of those.  Fighter should be the best non-magical combatant bar none, whether swinging a sword or loosing a bow.  Rogues should be the best at skills.  Wizards should be the best at arcane spells and knowledge, clerics should be able to heal some fools and blast the poop out of undead and devils / demons.  everything else should be all secondary

race should matter less than class.  I can see why they do what they do with the races, but in all honesty, i think everything should be based off class and the features that class gives.  things like race, character gender, alignment, etc. should all just be background roleplaying stuffs and fluff.  in my unprofessional opinion.

well, I could piss n moan for decades, but i suppose i'll quit for now, since i'll just be rehashing same old stuff that most everyone else is saying.

Dec 14, 2012 -- 11:34PM, dOmega wrote:

After having dungeon mastered for 20+ years (OMG I AM OLD !) I can only offer this:

There are NO rules that are "red flags" that should keep you from purchasing, playing and enjoying the game.

You are forgetting the single most important rule:
The DM has the final say.

Ergo we can conclude that if you do not like a rule, then you can change it.

*pulls out DM wand /chants/ changicus rulesius POOF ! rule changed, have a nice day!*

Well yeah... but why would I spend my hard earned scrilla on a rule set that doesn't (mostly) do what I want? I can house rule and homebrew all day, but why would I pick D&D for a gritty urban fantasy game when I could go with Unknown Armies?

My Red Flags at this point:
Caster superiority: It doesn't look like it's as bad as 3.5 (a game I wasn't allowed to play any class with full caster progression) but there still seems to be a real disparity as to what a fighter or rogue brings to the table in comparison to someone who has spells. 

Encounter Creation: After play testing the 14th level module this past weekend I am sad to say I have no clue, whatsoever, as to how an encounter is supposed to be put together.

Loss of Niche: 4e did an excellent job of giving everyone a job to do in combat and the tools to do it. The fighter could defend, the rogue could move around and apply knives to things that needed knifing, the wizard could control the flow of combat, the monk was just awesome to play, etc. With the way the expertise dice (which I love in theory if not execution) work the warrior can hit really hard, or soak a lot of damage. What he can't do is force an enemy to deal with him before moving onto the much weaker dude in a dress.

Quarterbacking via Spells/Skills: There has been discussion of what Knock means for rogues, but the return to the 3.x style skill list means that certain characters will carry the scene, meaning that other players have to sit quietly and watch someone be awesome and hope they get a turn next time. While not a huge fan of  the skill challenges I thought it was a step in the right direction in that it allowed the entire group to participate in social scenes. Someone asked what a giant barbarian brings to a delicate negotiation earlier in this thread: by assisting via intimidate or strength/con checks (Tharg yawns, flexing arms thicker than the negotiators torso) he can provide assurance that if things don't go as he wants the negotiations can become very un-delicate in a heartbeat.

Bad Math: Look at Mummy, Giant in the current bestiary. Why is that a level 10 monster? It gets a ten round save or suck stun just by showing up. On hit it give you a curse that will kill you in a matter of weeks unless treated (faster if you have to fight anything since you can't regain HP), and requires a level 7 spell to get rid of.  The Automaton, a level 18 baddie, has four attacks that do enough to potentially outright kill a player a round. 

Dec 11, 2012 -- 7:09AM, Zoju wrote:

Totally agreed on pretty much all of the OPs nitpicks.

Although many things in DnD 5E sounds good (and I hope it will be called 5E) and I am excited about it, there are plenty of things that I'd do differently.

My dislikes are the following:

Red flags:
Too much canon flavor. It's only a playtest, but we already have things like halflings having a default deity (a lame one, at that). The 4E pantheon was way more lovable to me, choosing a deity as a flavor, matching your religion to your character instead of boxing up all halflings (and maybe others) for a single deity. Leave more to interpretation about the races. In 4E, all we had about dwarves was many of them worship Moradin, (yet this got countered right away at the first adventurer example, with a dwarf worshipping Kord, letting us know that it's okay to worship others) they live in the mountains, they use geometric shapes in decorations, and that was enough. That was a good way of going about it. Let the campaign settings set the specifics if they want it to.

Change the make your own background system - more generic and more choices. If you choose a trait from the existing backgrounds, that trait has a big neon sign on it saying which background you picked it from. It doesn't feel like you are being creative, it just looks half-assed.
Make the make-your-own-background THE default system, (with each trait having a generic name and an easy to interpret flavor, like the 4E backgrounds) and make the existing backgrounds into examples. Remember the podcast you did with the Penny Arcade guys and Scott Kurtz? They made backgrounds up on the spot, and it was WAY better.

Balance. I didn't get to play yet, but I can do math in my head and imagine in which scenarios who's good at what. Currently, it seems like you are taking the old-school route and making the players do the party setup the old-school way too: "We'll need one of each base class, fighter wizard rogue cleric, who's who?". Seems like rogues will be trap-monkeys who are way subpar unless they are sneak-attacking, clerics are (once again) walking medkits... That's tunnel vision on nostalgia and putting gameplay balance on the back burner. It's not good. 



Yellow flags: 
Subraces. You are either a Hill Dwarf or a Deep Dwarf. Can't I just be a dwarf, like I am a human in real life instead of "White Human"? It's just another useless bracket of unneeded background info and annoying canon. I liked the 4E system better where we had Dwarves and Duergar. They were different too, but their races were one word instead of three, like Dwarf (Hill Dwarf). It just bugs me. Nitpick.

Expertise dice nitpicks: On top of balance problems (which I'm sure you'll fix), there are the d4s. Everyone hates rolling d4s. Please don't make us roll d4s.

Low HP: Okay, I see that this is old-school D&D again, but first-level wizards having to tremble at every single goblin dagger is not cool. You fixed that in 4E. Now you're about to go back to the subpar system just to comfort the nostalgics. Eh.

Use Rope and their kin: Come on. These skills were useless and far-fetched even in 3.5, why return to it? Ugh. 

Except for expertise dice, this is pretty closs to mine. Just add in my loathing alignment in just about any mechanical form. Narrow skills should be folded into larger skills, making a managable skill list.

I don't really have a ragequit dealbreaker per se (at least not yet). I have no intention of throwing a tantrum over something that has been changed. If I end up disliking 5e to a great degree, I'll just continue with 3.5.

One thing I really don't like is the effing up of elves with the introduction of the elf-like eladrin in 4e. I really didn't mind them being a player race but why retcon existing elf types as eladrin? For D&D Next, I would prefer that the existing elf types were left as-is, including grey or high elves.

The bottom line is: New races are more than welcome but please don't retcon existing races because that makes setting a campaign using Next rules in, say, 3e's time period impossible. This, for me, is an extremely important factor in keeping at least some form of modularity concerning the setting and lore so that groups can explore the worlds of the past and not just 'keep up with the times' of the running settings. A truly adaptable ruleset would make me stick with Next if it meant that I could use those rules to realise any setting I want.

As far as mechanics go: I'm seeing quite a bit of modularity with backgrounds and skill selection etc (which gets a thumbs up from me), however, I really dislike the martial damage dice. It's just another extra factor with so many different effects and ways to be used that you'll be referencing all the time and you have to keep tabs on how many have been used in addition to having to remember everything that you can use them for, lest you miss an opportunity to do something effective. They were never needed before so I don't see why they are necessary now.

I really don't see the point in removing most static modifiers and adding a load of dice instead. They just make everything more convoluted imho.

Nov 16, 2012 -- 8:00PM, Saelorn wrote:

RAGEQUIT: Advantage/Disadvantage is basically a giant flag saying "we don't care".  The math doesn't work out, and promotes counter-intuitive gameplay.

Nitpick: Quadratic progression of expertise dice.  Getting more dice and bigger dice creates an incredibly erratic (who rolls 3d10 for damage?) discrepancy between people who can and cannot fight.

I agree 100%!

What I need for me and my group to buy 5E is the use of the classic spell progression for wizards and clerics.  It is fine if they want to create other classes that use different systems.  And I mean spell progression like in BECMI through 2E or maybe 3.x 

If they want to use zero level spells or cantrips that is fine.  If they want to redo the power of the spells to meet some balance that is fine.  But it is an absoulute must.  Without this it does not feel like D&D to me.  I intend absolutely no disrespect to anyone who feels otherwise.  I was just asking the question of what I need to buy D&D next.  And ironically my favorite class was the Dwarven Fighter. 

Nov 16, 2012 -- 7:53PM, waltron wrote:

Perhaps I'm mistaken, but over the course of life I've noticed that internet forums are prone to hyperbole. Even when it's a legitimate critique, this hyperbole can make it hard to figure out what needs tweaking, and what is a major red flag.

Case in point, I tend to play wizards. So when I find myself thinking "waaah, wizards need moar power," I can step back, notice my bias, and realize after some number crunching that it's fine. Similarly, as a DM, I used to haaaate Monks getting Wis to AC, because in high level games everybody took 1 level of monk to get that bonus. But, when I take a deep breath and think about bounded accuracy, I stop worrying. 

But when you think about the playtest packet now, what would you ragequit over? What's your hardcore, red flag, rage quit, never-play-5E-again gripes? And what's just grumbling, personal preference, and nitpicks? I don't mean to imply nitpicks don't matter. They do! But on forums, it's hard to tell the diff between red flags and yellow flags. Here, I'll start with mine. 


RAAAAGEQUIIIIT!!!

• Sneak Attack. Nothing new to say that hasn't been said already. I'd bet this is the top of everyone's list
• Skill Mastery. With no dice-per-round pool outside of combat, 10th level rogues can get 1/3D10 to almost every non-combat skill check.
• 1st level spells that DON'T scale. Signature spells mean that a tactician mage's scaled-to-5th-level encounter Thunderwave is WAAAY better than the illusionist's non-scaling equivalent Color Spray. Either specify that it can't be memorized to higher levels, or make sure other 1st level spells that might get a Tradition built around them do scale. 
• Polymorph's broken. Should be tied to hit dice, much like druids back in the day. 
• Hold Person. 3rd level wizard spell, 2nd level cleric spell!?!?!? That's gotta be a typo. 
• Heavy Armor at High Level. 5E's big goal has been to think about flavor first. In 3E and 4E, epic level characters rarely could be seen wearing plate, and I think something flavorful is lost because of that. 
• Use Rope Get rid of it, please. It's entirely covered in a combination of Escape Artist, Sleight of Hand, Climb (rappelling), Ride (block n' tackle), and Profession (Sailor).  

Nitpicks 

• Skill Bonus from levels. Is this a new skill you get? +1 to existing skills? Mostly just need more info.
• Ability bonus to spell damage? Do they get this? The language isn't clear. My number-crunching for damage implies no, they don't. 
  
• One stat classes. A really nice touch in 4E was that Wizards were rewarded for other stats; otherwise, it was the core example of dumping everything into 1 of 6 abilities. Some Wizard traditions that bring that back would be nice.
• Give Magic Attack to martial classes. Sure, it's hard to picture them using it. But what about magic items? What if they multiclass? At least throw in an optional rule that says "if it pops up, a Fighter's crappy magic attack is equal to a wizard's crappy physical attack." 
• Same with Save DC bonus. Sure, fighters will probably never use it, but they might. 
• Rogue HP should use a D8. Fighter's the high end of the spectrum, wizard's the low end. If a class ain't low end, don't put 'em in the low end. 

What about you? If you have to separate your gripes into Boycott-level gripes and Nitpick-level gripes, what makes the cut? 

***EDIT: Let's be honest. If you're into D&D enough to have an active account on the forums, you won't not buy 5E; you'll buy it and make a 30 page homebrew errata. But just pretend for argument's sake that you're not a lifetime D&D junkie XD

3e style multiclassing/level progression.

So I guess I wont buy.

Red flag: overpower spell casters
               heavy armor being worse than light armor and medium armor (without dex mod, but has disadvantages)

Jan 23, 2013 -- 7:07PM, Chibikabki wrote:

 3e style multiclassing/level progression.

So I guess I wont buy.

I have much misgivings about 3e style multiclassing as well.  I feel that it is open to much abuse when people dip into a class for one level.  If they had a hard cap of number of classes at 2 (perhaps 2 + 1 prestige class), or required an even split of xp (2nd edition style), it would be much better.

I am waiting for the actual rules before passing judgment on this, but if it is open ended 3e style multiclassing I will house rule it into oblivion - or in the spirit of this thread play a different edition... reprinting first edition and putting early modules online can keep me in gaming nirvana for a long time and raises the bar that dnd next must clear.

Rage quit:  Extremely limiting spell casting ability.  I don't need to be some uber caster that destroys the world with a fart, I just want to be able to have SOMETHING to show for being a caster.  They need more spells per day to cast.  Far more.  Otherwise, I'm just a warrior with pisspoor at-will damage and a few "dailies," while the warriors get infinite martial dice, better health, better armor, better damage bonuses, and more weapon selection.

Nitpick:  I completely agree with you on making more than one stat important.  One thing that I loved about 4e was that you generally wanted to raise two different stats up depending on your class and build.  This lead to a wider variety of builds.

Like:  Your choice of race doesn't give you such a massive boost in stats (save for human).  Now I can feel like I can play an elf, dwarf, or halfling whatever-the-hell and not feel like I'm screwing myself over because I didn't choose a race that boosts my main two stats.

Honestly, I think I'll buy d&dn anyways.

However, will I play it? Will I buy more than just the core books? If some long awaited fixes aren't part of future packets, I guess I won't play d&dn a lot if not at all.

Ragequit:

D&Dn has been since day one the heavy armor and shield edition. Lots of game mechanics strenghthen  the heavy armored builds. I will try to explain it hereunder:

- Bounded accuracy: Though a great idea, bounded accuracy means that high AC is more valuable in d&dn than in any prior edition because it will always be the best way to mitigate melee and ranged damage.

- Advantage/disadvantage: Again, it's a great game mechanic, but, combined with feats such as combat superiority and high AC values, it makes PC or NPCs nearly impossible to hit.

- Expertise dice: Great idea also, however for the fighter class expertise dices damage can easly  exceed weapon damage, meaning that weapon choice becomes nearly unrelevant. The best choice is then obviously to wield a weapon that allows to use a shield.

- Monsters low attack bonus:  monsters melee and ranged attacks are no serious threat to a PC party. For the DM, the only standard ways to threaten a good pc party is through spells/special abilities/save or die mechanics.


Nitpick:

- 3rd edition style multi-classing. Multi-classing should be an option, it shouldn't be in the core.

- No Stat damage modifier to spells and limited spell choices make the current wizard underpowered and quite boring.

- Sneak attack still needs to be fixed.

- War cleric seems to be the only current viable option. Other builds could  be encouraged.

- Fighters are too powerfull.

- Dual wield still isn't interesting.

Personally, I played since 1979 1st and 2nd ed and I got an huge amount of fun, we used house rules because some stuff felt wrong. Then I played 3.5 and quite enjoyed it, again it was not perfect but I still had fun. Then came 4th ed, I was hoping a corrected, tweaked 3.5 ed, Oh boy how wrong I was. They broke my game, they broke Forgotten Realms where I was having fun !!!
When they announced a 5th ed, I started praying. Please take the real D&D and fix what was wrong in the game mechanics so we can play again D&D and have fun.
Again (from what I've seen in the playtest so far) they break everything. They listen to people whinning because the wizard is too strong, now the warrior is too strong, so we have to balance evrything, the thief is no more, it has to be a rogue. The wizard is just ridiculous. The game mechanic isn't D&D, I hate the skill dice thing, I hate advantage/disadvantage. I hate the cleric, I hate the rogue, I hate the wizard. Everything I liked went to pieces. So here you have it, I won't buy 5ed. On top of that, I never tried Pathfinder before and now it seems to me that they made more or less what I was waiting for. So I think I will go Pathfinder when the majority will go for the 5th edition of a game that is no more.

Jan 30, 2013 -- 4:46AM, Khadrin wrote:

Personally, I played since 1979 1st and 2nd ed and I got an huge amount of fun, we used house rules because some stuff felt wrong. Then I played 3.5 and quite enjoyed it, again it was not perfect but I still had fun. Then came 4th ed, I was hoping a corrected, tweaked 3.5 ed, Oh boy how wrong I was. They broke my game, they broke Forgotten Realms where I was having fun !!!
When they announced a 5th ed, I started praying. Please take the real D&D and fix what was wrong in the game mechanics so we can play again D&D and have fun.
Again (from what I've seen in the playtest so far) they break everything. They listen to people whinning because the wizard is too strong, now the warrior is too strong, so we have to balance evrything, the thief is no more, it has to be a rogue. The wizard is just ridiculous. The game mechanic isn't D&D, I hate the skill dice thing, I hate advantage/disadvantage. I hate the cleric, I hate the rogue, I hate the wizard. Everything I liked went to pieces. So here you have it, I won't buy 5ed. On top of that, I never tried Pathfinder before and now it seems to me that they made more or less what I was waiting for. So I think I will go Pathfinder when the majority will go for the 5th edition of a game that is no more.

Just imagine how us 4e fans feel about it. Pretty much 0% of what I enjoy about 4e has gone into Next (imho it should be called D&D Past). So yeah, I think I'll pass as well.

but to be fair, I do like Next's backgrounds determining trained skills. I might try houseruling that into 4e.  

I don't care if they change ALL the mechanics as long as it allows for interesting play in the heroic fantasy genre by mature players who can accept the possibility of character failure, even if that failure means character death. My intention is to buy Next and if I see a 5 anywhere in it to tape a 4 over it and pretend that the actual 4e never really happened.

Character 'roles' such as Leader, Striker, Controller, Defender, Buffer and Fluffer would definitely keep my wallet in my pocket. And if these roles become systematized, I'm rage-quit out.

Unneccessary jargon might also be enough to cause a nitpick quit.

If I see a mechanic that allows the players to over-ride a DM decision by anything other than civil discussion, I will not only NOT buy it, but I might even go to a hypnotist to see if he can help me forget I ever saw it so that I may live the rest of my life not knowing the folly of my fellow man. Although this one is easy enough to house rule out of existence, that type of philosophy is a cursed copper piece that would likely show itself in subtle or not-so-subtle ways throughout the rest of the game rules and likely make 5e not worth fooling with.

So far it looks like WOTC is on the right track, though.

Jan 30, 2013 -- 4:46AM, Khadrin wrote:

Personally, I played since 1979 1st and 2nd ed and I got an huge amount of fun, we used house rules because some stuff felt wrong. Then I played 3.5 and quite enjoyed it, again it was not perfect but I still had fun. Then came 4th ed, I was hoping a corrected, tweaked 3.5 ed, Oh boy how wrong I was.

Up to this point, our experience was pretty much the same.

Every edition felt like an improvement. 3.5 was well on the right track; it felt like FINALLY the mechanics are awesome, customizable characters, simplicity in multi-classing, and so on. Then 4e was like some wierd tangent, really really wierd tangent (IMHO I think it should be recalled).

I have grown accustomed to 4e over time (butI spent way more on 3e and the previous editions), though 3.5 is still my favorite edition.  There is little that I would ragequit next over, but I do have a few nits:

1) I agree with the posters who commented that the designers are going thru pains to recreate 4e mechanics that worked under new and slightly different names.  Hit dice are healing surges under a different name - allow second wind and stable values for these like in 4e and be done with it.  That is the most glaring one, but there are a few others.


2) Heavy armor should be a strong option; I want a plate armored fighter to rule!


3) Weapon choice should be important - MDD shouldn't be more important than whether I use a dagger or greataxe. Rules to peform weapon-specific maneuvers should be added also.


4)  I think the human ability score bonus is too much; it is not terrible, but is a huge low level boost to any human, whereas the other race abilities are focused to specific sorts of characters.  It is not as bad as 4e's racial bonuses (which were anti-human), but tips the other way instead.


I am still puzzled by all the Vancian casting hate; I don't love it, but it is the traditional system.  We will obviously get other options at some early point in next's life (if not in core, than the 1st supplements); 4e still had Vancian elements, but added encounter (which are still play as Vancian) and at-wills (which are now minor or 0-level).  Did you play up thru 3.5 hating it all the time, but are still in the game because of 4e (or using late edition add-on spell point mechanics)?          

Feb 4, 2013 -- 8:54PM, rutkowsk7847 wrote:

I am still puzzled by all the Vancian casting hate; I don't love it, but it is the traditional system.  We will obviously get other options at some early point in next's life (if not in core, than the 1st supplements); 4e still had Vancian elements, but added encounter (which are still play as Vancian) and at-wills (which are now minor or 0-level).  Did you play up thru 3.5 hating it all the time, but are still in the game because of 4e (or using late edition add-on spell point mechanics)?

I would also like to know more about this.  Vancian seems like it's always been the way things were done, until 4th.  It has seemed to me like there's a lot of carryover between people who don't like Vancian, and people who don't like 4th.  (Could be wrong!)  Anybody want to chime in in response to rutkowski's question?

What mechanics would cause me to not buy 5E?  Honestly?  The ones they're currently using.  Things like martial damage dice & lack of contrast between races ability score wise have caused me to start playing Pathfinder.  Could they fix 5E to my liking?  Certainly.  Do I think it likely?  Certainly not.

Please keep in mind I don't mean to offend anyone, nor am I here to debate anyone and will not post further on the matter.  WOTC wants opinions & I just gave them mine, as simple as that.  WOTC should also keep in mind that if this post is deleted for any reason they will PERMANENTLY lose the business of a faithful D&D player since 1983.

What I find really weird is that the declared goal of WotC was to bring together as many players as possible whatever editions they were playing. So I thought, if for example 4th edition players are like 55% of the playing community, they gonna start working with 4th edition and correct/modify/tweak it toward features that were really popular in 3rd, 2nd etc. If it's like 57% from 2nd edition, they'll take it as a starting basis and cotrrect it to bring other edition players. And so on and so forth, you get it. Instead, the feeling I have is that they created new mechanics that are not related to the most popular editions, they changed the classes so they are neither 3.5 ed nor 4 ed but something different still not satisfying.

I agree with the poster who said there’s no going back to 4ed.  DDN may have its flaws, but our encounters group felt like a complete game, rather than a hash and slash.  There’s room for character development, exploration, and adventure.  DDN is also challenging our DM in all the right ways, which will only make him a better DM.

There’s a lot of discussion about how to entice a new players while maintaining strong relationships with core D&D players. When it comes to out of the box RPG’s, Fantasy Flight nailed it with Descent: Journey’s into the Dark, 2nd ed.  Here’s a game that’s out of the box, with well defined dungeon/map tiles, mini’s and cards that work seamlessly to engage and teach new players.  If my Mom’s grasping core rpg concepts (including dice rolls) from Descent, while keeping us long-time gamers challenged and entertained, then the product is quality. 

Wizards needs to study the appeal/playability behind Descent, come up with a ‘branded’ version that’s DDN (like Drizzt).  Allow the game to teach the players, while maintaining DDN ruleset to entertain current players.  A boxed design which can be played as a stand alone or as a good introduction, or conversion, into DDN.  Complete the game with quality tiles, and creatures and adventures (with the ability to create adventures).  Have Hasbro place it on the shelves of every major retailer--Target, K-Mart, etc.  From that, Wizards will have the opportunity to draw new players from the box, on to their website, and into their local game store.

I want to emphasis the word opportunity, because Wizards has one shot to draw in new players while maintaining good standing with D&D’s base players.  The absence of conversion (from old maps, tiles, minis, adventures) will tick off many players.  Keep all edition components somewhat compatible (allow for house rules) and pump out quality products: mini’s, maps, map tiles, adventures, creatures, etc.  

Keep the player’s handbook simple and core to the game, with minimal revisions.  An introduction to D&D, and DDN, should be fun and simple, with majority of the adventure being played out in the imagination. If Wizards can successfully engage a more mainstream base while keeping long-timers content and challenged, then DDN could be Hasbro’s next best thing.  If not, the brand will collapse into the shadow and labled a once great vintage RPG war game.               

I would probably avoid 5E if saves or attacks were resolved with the ole "flip a coin" mechanic.

Feb 14, 2013 -- 11:50AM, WintersKnight wrote:

I agree with the poster who said there’s no going back to 4ed.  DDN may have its flaws, but our encounters group felt like a complete game, rather than a hash and slash.  There’s room for character development, exploration, and adventure.

Could you say what made 5e a complete game vs 4e hack and slash? And what character development, exploration, and adventure options 5e has over 4e? I'm curious why you think this way.

Feb 16, 2013 -- 6:09PM, elecgraystone wrote:

Could you say what made 5e a complete game vs 4e hack and slash? And what character development, exploration, and adventure options 5e has over 4e? I'm curious why you think this way.

I know it's not directed at me, but this really has me thinking, because I kind of agree with WintersKnight and I can't exactly put it into words. Maybe it's a presentation issue?

The clearest I can say, I think, is that 4E felt like an extremely structured game - you had to convert actions into game mechanics before resolving them - where 5E feels like you can just make up something and not worry about the exact mechanical effects.

Sorry, I know that's not exactly clear

Feb 5, 2013 -- 9:16AM, Caralon wrote:

Feb 4, 2013 -- 8:54PM, rutkowsk7847 wrote:

I am still puzzled by all the Vancian casting hate; I don't love it, but it is the traditional system.  We will obviously get other options at some early point in next's life (if not in core, than the 1st supplements); 4e still had Vancian elements, but added encounter (which are still play as Vancian) and at-wills (which are now minor or 0-level).  Did you play up thru 3.5 hating it all the time, but are still in the game because of 4e (or using late edition add-on spell point mechanics)?

I would also like to know more about this.  Vancian seems like it's always been the way things were done, until 4th.  It has seemed to me like there's a lot of carryover between people who don't like Vancian, and people who don't like 4th.  (Could be wrong!)  Anybody want to chime in in response to rutkowski's question?

A disclaimer before I lay into Vancian magic: I don't mind it. It's not my perferred system for spellcasting, but it's the one D&D has, and I'm fine with that. That said the vancian hate makes perfect sense to me.

To many people, going back to vancian magic is like going back to THAC0 (Which by the way 3e players, some people DO want to do). When trying to build a system that is intuitive and easy to grasp for new players, having these bizarre memory "slots" is immersion breaking and gamey.

I've brought quite a few new players in, and often they want to play wizards. When they get told, "Nah, you should probably play a fighter," or they play a wizard and it seems confusing and difficult so they don't enjoy themselves, you've lost a potiential fan of the system.

With other areas of the game this would be addressed and refined, to make enty-level play better, but vancian magic is a sacred cow that can't be driven away, because, "vancian magic IS D&D."

The real question I have is apart from tradion, what do players like about vancian magic?

Feb 16, 2013 -- 11:20PM, Saelorn wrote:

Feb 16, 2013 -- 6:09PM, elecgraystone wrote:

Could you say what made 5e a complete game vs 4e hack and slash? And what character development, exploration, and adventure options 5e has over 4e? I'm curious why you think this way.

I know it's not directed at me, but this really has me thinking, because I kind of agree with WintersKnight and I can't exactly put it into words. Maybe it's a presentation issue?

The clearest I can say, I think, is that 4E felt like an extremely structured game - you had to convert actions into game mechanics before resolving them - where 5E feels like you can just make up something and not worry about the exact mechanical effects.

Sorry, I know that's not exactly clear

This is the saddest part of 4e for me. It's so codified that people think that's all you can do.

They gave players so many options, they think of things that aren't those options as limitations.

With a few exceptions, anything you can do in 3e, you can do in 4e.

The real crime is that WotC took way too long to challenge these assumptions. 

Feb 16, 2013 -- 6:09PM, elecgraystone wrote:

Feb 14, 2013 -- 11:50AM, WintersKnight wrote:

I agree with the poster who said there’s no going back to 4ed.  DDN may have its flaws, but our encounters group felt like a complete game, rather than a hash and slash.  There’s room for character development, exploration, and adventure.

Could you say what made 5e a complete game vs 4e hack and slash? And what character development, exploration, and adventure options 5e has over 4e? I'm curious why you think this way.

Thanks for calling me out.  There are many things about 4ed I really like.  I really enjoy the map tiles, and the combat could be fun.  WoC delivers quality products, such as Dungeon Command.  My personal experience with 4ed is a little different because I came into D&D a few months ago because my friends wanted to start a campaign (then they backed out).  So, I was left going to my local game store for encounters.  

BTW--Coming into the game was highly frustrating, which is why my friends backed out.  WoC needs to do a better job in retaining new customers.  When I looked at their website, I was told to buy the red box.  In reality, I never used it, so I picked up the players handbook, DM guide and MM, as recommended in past forums.  When I got to the table, I realized everyone was using Essential products, which annoyed me.  It became a complete turn-off when I saw the community transitioning to DDN.  WoC needs to direct new players to the correct products.  (I really like the 1ed modules they're selling as pdf). 

As a whole, I might have more of a problem with the encounters group vs. 4ed.  Being encounters, it was heavily combat focused, with no room for character and story development.  The players never developed their characters and as our xp developed, it was like we were investing in another skill, a maneuver, attack, etc. 

My store switched to DDN a couple weeks back.  We had an awesome turn out.  Making my character in DDN was a lot of fun.  The focus went from investing in skills to investing in character development.  The idea of creating a character that could be generic or developed into a specialized and focused hero, appealed to me.

This season, the encounters group seem much more RP oriented-rather than combat oriented.  So we went from a world that was static and stuck on a grid (4ed.) to something that was more spatial.  Our current encounters feels more home-brew and the players seem more interested in developing their characters rather than slashing and hashing.

I know this is only a play test (an everything will prob. change), but I seem to be connecting to the rules and the game as a whole.  I really can’t pinpoint exactly where, when, or how that shift happened.   

       

Ragequit:

• Vancian Magic
• Pre-4E HP Levels
• Not enough specialization for martial classes to be on-par with spellcasters
• The general attitude of 'going back to the old way' rather than 'make awesome new stuff' design.

So... yup, we're done here. =)

While I agree with many of the commonly mentioned points of high concern (such as alignment mechanics or expertise dice), I'm rather disheartened to see how many people are fixated on wanting a highly detailed rules set of crunch, with lots of cool abilities, and really, really, really well balanced.

Well, guess what? Balance is boring. Real life is not balanced, and not fair. A lonely goblin with a cheese knife does have a good chance of slitting your little newbie wizard's throat in one try. Your party is very likely to turn a corner and run into a monster they clearly can't handle; none of this "we must be able to handle it or the DM wouldn't have had us meet it" nonsense. And when someone says "balance", what I hear is a bunch of interchangeable character types that lack all flavor.

Most of the people here don't want a role-playing game. They don't want to actively play anything. They want a video game they can passively experience.

I find it ironic so many people here provide gripes to 3.x and 4, yet if WOTC listens to what the people in these forums want the result will be the exact same as what came before. Basically, the same product with a different mix of rules.

This is all based just my own preferences of course. But these threads often devolve, and I felt like tossing in some alternate perspective. Maybe it'll jar things out of the rut.

Awesome post!  As a guy who played Basic, AD&D, 3.0, 3.5 and came to love 4.0, I playtested D&D Next at a convention yesterday.  Here is my rage list using Traxis' ranking sytem: 

Tarrasque in my pants:   Memorized spell lists (aka. Vancian Casting).  I never again want to play with characters that have spells from splatbooks I've never heard of or feel like I need to double-check the scribbled-down full-page spell lists they put together or wonder if they are crossing spells off the list after the third time they cast Magic Missile.

Red Dragon Wedgie:   Leaving so many good 4th Ed mechnics on the roadside.  My pet peeve is losing Fortitude, Reflex and Will saves based on two abilities each.  The DM I played with really hates the use of savings throws in place of attack rolls.  And hit points, second wind, and short-rests seemed to work well keeping 1st level parties in the game so why is it broken now?

Drunk Hill Giant:  I don't rate Expertise Dice as evil as the Terrasque, but more dice rolling is not necessarily better if it is a different way to get to the same place.  Granted Ranger and Rogue damage dice were probably excessive, but I put Martial Combat Dice in the same 'not-an-approvement' category.  (And the Rogue's loss of the chance to get Combat Advantage by Flanking is egregious, but because everyone is complaining about the way DDN handles that class, I assume it will be fixed.)

Rust Monster in the outhouse:   Paths, Specialties & Themes are a transparent way to enshrine pre-gen-like characters with a little "flair."  Experienced players will quickly create the "Optimized" Fighting Style, and the "Kick@ass" Rogue Scheme and the "Batman Wizard" Background.  Once again, I thought 4th Ed had less of this than 3.5 but, hey, a dead cat is never so flat that you can't back over it one more time.

Bottom Line:  I will give D&D Next a chance but it might be impossible to please both types of players so I hope WotC gives us the chance to stay with 4th Ed.  

We see a lot of posters poopooing balance. Let me put it a different way.

No to having a character burn out really quickly and be ineffectual. This does not encourage new players to a class.
No to having to keep the above cinder alive through hours of play, possibly across multiple sessions.

And at the other end of the scale:
No to every other player having to keep God alive so God can do everything. This is not conducive to group cohesion.

The skill/die system they persist in pushing.  Skills are a characters chance to shine outside of combat, and a way to flesh out your character.  Limiting us to so few skills, little chance to develop or increase our skills, and this weird skill die that fails to reflect increased expertise, are all a mistake.  3e did skills just fine.  If it isn't broke, don't fix it.

Hiding class fundamentals behind a feat cost.  Feats should be used for customization, not the ability to perform the default functions of your class.

The pack mechanic for mobs seems a bit dangerous.  Allowing such a big bonus to hit, especially for low level mobs, while at the same time limiting the bonuses to players is a bit harsh.   

My biggest rage quit.

Way to much like 3.5 and not enough improved on 4E.

Skill system, seriously wth.

The classes feel tastless.

Missing the wide variety of choice in from 4E,

nit picks,

Combat could use some tweeking.

Advantage and disadvantage are well.... pointless.

Hit points need to be upped at level one, I suggest the starting hp done like constitution score, and max hit dice at level 1. then roll for hp after that, adding in the con Mod every level.

Cantrips feel under powered.

Spells per day to low, low level spells need to become cantrips later on in spell casters levels, (i mean the description of a cantrip says it all)

To many good qualities left out from 4E. some mentioned in rage quit, this this includes monster levels and roles, at wills, encounters dailies. i enjoyed being to pick from these big list's of power's i could use and picking one that fit my theme.

Add "apprentice levels in core" to my Tarrasque level.  I think that and Legendary should both be modes of play, not mandatory.

One big one for me: if it remains stuck in the paper publishing world I'm not interested.  I don't mind paying for the books; what I DO mind is not having the convenience of a modern (ie.., not circa 1996) online resource.  

If I do play Next, it will be on a virtual tabletop with friends scattered around the country.  If I have to flip through physical books to find out what treasure to roll for an orc, I will lose all interest.

Mar 8, 2013 -- 10:14PM, GeneralGarrison wrote:

While I agree with many of the commonly mentioned points of high concern (such as alignment mechanics or expertise dice), I'm rather disheartened to see how many people are fixated on wanting a highly detailed rules set of crunch, with lots of cool abilities, and really, really, really well balanced.

Well, guess what? Balance is boring. Real life is not balanced, and not fair. A lonely goblin with a cheese knife does have a good chance of slitting your little newbie wizard's throat in one try. Your party is very likely to turn a corner and run into a monster they clearly can't handle; none of this "we must be able to handle it or the DM wouldn't have had us meet it" nonsense. And when someone says "balance", what I hear is a bunch of interchangeable character types that lack all flavor.

Most of the people here don't want a role-playing game. They don't want to actively play anything. They want a video game they can passively experience.

I find it ironic so many people here provide gripes to 3.x and 4, yet if WOTC listens to what the people in these forums want the result will be the exact same as what came before. Basically, the same product with a different mix of rules.

This is all based just my own preferences of course. But these threads often devolve, and I felt like tossing in some alternate perspective. Maybe it'll jar things out of the rut.

I'm Elfcrusher, and I approve this post.

Apr 11, 2013 -- 3:22PM, Elfcrusher wrote:

One big one for me: if it remains stuck in the paper publishing world I'm not interested.  I don't mind paying for the books; what I DO mind is not having the convenience of a modern (ie.., not circa 1996) online resource.

But on the flip-side of the coin, there should be absolutely no 'online only' or 'Facebook only' books. Believe it or not, there are still fairly large swaths of the United States (and when you start talking globally this number grows significantly) that do not have access to the internet outside of old school dial-up. And if you haven't tried to browse the modern internet with dial-up lately, it's gotten slower than you remember due to design trends.

Apps and other online resources should definitely be useful and prevalent, but never necessary.


As for my own contribution to the topic: Nothing. There are certainly things that would make me not enjoy the game, and there are certainly things that would make me turn around and sell the book to a local bookstore after two sessions, but I cannot think of anything that would make me not give it a chance.

Apr 11, 2013 -- 3:24PM, Elfcrusher wrote:

Mar 8, 2013 -- 10:14PM, GeneralGarrison wrote:

Well, guess what? Balance is boring. Real life is not balanced, and not fair.

I'm Elfcrusher, and I approve this post.

I'm sorry you guys aren't getting enough imbalanced unfairness IRL.  Believe me, there is a lot of it out here...

I'm happy to get away from it a bit when I game.    Though, balance isn't boring - balance means that the choices the game presents you with are viable.  Lots of worthwhile choices isn't boring.  No choices (or lots of choices but only one good one), that's boring - and that's imbalance.

ALREADY MENTIONED
- Balance of hit points and damage. Damage is way out of line, with Maximize Magic one of the worst offenders. As an example, a starting party with max HP will lose all its non-fighters to a level 1 wizard's Maximize Magic Burning Hands even through a save, then a regular Magic Missile can clean up the survivors.

-  Low AC ratings on monsters. When none of the monsters in the bestiary have more armor than a freshly rolled cleric with chain mail and a shield, ya dun goofed. Somebody point Asmodeus, King of Demons to the nearest shopkeep.

- Advantage/Disadvantage mechanic. Imagine if THAC0 somehow mutated into a virus that spread to ability checks, saving throws, contests, and other places it wasn't wanted. Pretend it mutated from a confusing implementation of a simple system to a simplistic representation of an inscrutable concept that corrupts everything it touches. That's the advantage/disadvantage system.  
The point about it being an obfuscatory copout for an imbalanced game are absolutely correct. So was the point about how it rewards minor stacks of tiny bonuses over "major events" which only apply a single stack of advantage/disadvantage. If they're really commited to this mechanic, let's hope they dial it back to specific abilities and keep it out of the rest of the game.

- Sneak attack. What kind of a sneak attack involves standing right in front of someone and putting yourself at a disadvantage? Who came up with this?

PERSONAL VENDETTAS
- The current mishmash of combat skills, non-combat skills, and character backgrounds. All of these things need to be de-coupled from one another. Under the current system, players are gimping their characters by investing in roleplaying skills.

- Tying basic class skills to feats. Rogues are in a sad state right now. No matter which variant you pick, you're still missing proficiency in at least half the archetype's old kit.

- Hazy math. Weird values and systems make it a time-consuming process to estimate the likelihood a player will succeed. Good luck trying to tune an encounter when the massive amount of die rolls and modifiers preclude the intuitive understanding you can get from a little mental math. It'd be nice if they supply DMs with a table to convert commonly seen challenge DCs into percentage form. Right now, all we have is their word that these DCs represent an appropriate level of challenge... and those of us who've seen the math on the combat side have some skepticism.

- Recycled magic system. It is vitally important that they fix this. I'm not going to weigh in on Vancian magic or erroneous spell descriptions. What's important is that they shore up the holes caused by porting spells around from various editions of D&D. Early spells had high damage because they were designed around save-based avoidance. This was somewhat countered by significant save increases from level to level and magic resistance. Fast forward: power creep has increased damage and a desire to simplify things has taken away many of the original counters.
My suggestion is to take the numbers guys off the leash, get melee balance where the community is happy with it, and then rebalance magic around that.

Apr 11, 2013 -- 7:43PM, Expalphalog wrote:

Apr 11, 2013 -- 3:22PM, Elfcrusher wrote:

One big one for me: if it remains stuck in the paper publishing world I'm not interested.  I don't mind paying for the books; what I DO mind is not having the convenience of a modern (ie.., not circa 1996) online resource.

But on the flip-side of the coin, there should be absolutely no 'online only' or 'Facebook only' books. Believe it or not, there are still fairly large swaths of the United States (and when you start talking globally this number grows significantly) that do not have access to the internet outside of old school dial-up. And if you haven't tried to browse the modern internet with dial-up lately, it's gotten slower than you remember due to design trends.

Apps and other online resources should definitely be useful and prevalent, but never necessary.

100% agree.  Even though I'd almost exclusively play online, I'd still buy the books.  I like having the books.

Apr 12, 2013 -- 12:05AM, Tony_Vargas wrote:

Apr 11, 2013 -- 3:24PM, Elfcrusher wrote:

Mar 8, 2013 -- 10:14PM, GeneralGarrison wrote:

Well, guess what? Balance is boring. Real life is not balanced, and not fair.

I'm Elfcrusher, and I approve this post.

I'm sorry you guys aren't getting enough imbalanced unfairness IRL.  Believe me, there is a lot of it out here...

I'm happy to get away from it a bit when I game.    Though, balance isn't boring - balance means that the choices the game presents you with are viable.  Lots of worthwhile choices isn't boring.  No choices (or lots of choices but only one good one), that's boring - and that's imbalance.

Witty.  But the problem with the (admittedly noble) goal of "balance" is that in practice it results in homogenization.  Players post angry diatribes comparing apples to oranges, so eventually the developers give everybody apples and oranges.

Because everything 5e sets out to do, 13th age does better.

Apr 12, 2013 -- 12:40PM, Elfcrusher wrote:

Apr 12, 2013 -- 12:05AM, Tony_Vargas wrote:

Apr 11, 2013 -- 3:24PM, Elfcrusher wrote:

Mar 8, 2013 -- 10:14PM, GeneralGarrison wrote:

Well, guess what? Balance is boring. Real life is not balanced, and not fair.

I'm Elfcrusher, and I approve this post.

I'm sorry you guys aren't getting enough imbalanced unfairness IRL.  Believe me, there is a lot of it out here...

I'm happy to get away from it a bit when I game.    Though, balance isn't boring - balance means that the choices the game presents you with are viable.  Lots of worthwhile choices isn't boring.  No choices (or lots of choices but only one good one), that's boring - and that's imbalance.

Witty.  But the problem with the (admittedly noble) goal of "balance" is that in practice it results in homogenization.  Players post angry diatribes comparing apples to oranges, so eventually the developers give everybody apples and oranges.

I can see how you might feel justified in attacking a balanced game on that basis, but it doesn't hold up to scrutiny.  If the game is really balanced, the choices it present will be meaingful and viable.  A large number of identical choices is as imbalanced as a large number worthless choices or few choices at all. 

While balance is hard to achieve (and 'perfect balance' is of course, impossible), games can achieve much higher levels of balance than D&D has generally striven for.  If 5e doesn't even try, it'll fail.

Apr 12, 2013 -- 3:07PM, Tony_Vargas wrote:

games can achieve much higher levels of balance than D&D has generally striven for.  If 5e doesn't even try, it'll fail.

Your choice of phrasing implies (I could be wrong) that your defintion of "balanced" is the homgenization I dread.  "If 5e doesn't even try..."  suggests that you think the developers are not trying, which is silly.  

But they may not be balancing the game for your favorite play style.  If you are playing by strict tabletop rules in a PvP setting then there is a kind of "balance" that would matter.*   But if you are playing a DM'd RPG against NPCs, then the DM needs to play a role to in balancing the game for everybody.  

Did the Bard roll a low Charisma and take all exploration/interaction feats and spells?  Then the DM should design encounters that make sure the Bard's non-combat skills are still critical to party's success.

I suspect many tabletop 4e PvPers will be sorely disappointed if they think Next is targeting them.



*Ironic that many WoW PvE'ers feel that the introduction of Arena...and it's need for "balance"...was one of the major contributing factors to WoW's decline.

I can't say Ragequit, but the thing that makes me uninterested in 5e is as follows:

I can't see where it has improved from 4th edition.

Since my playgroup was one where people got bored spending nearly an hour waiting for others to take their turns in combat, 4e felt like an improvement over 3e.  Since there were non-combat utilities, rituals, access to more feats, and a much more flexible skill system, nobody felt that their favorite character concept had been axed.  (Note that I said concept, not class).  The separation of combat and non-combat utility meant that those who wanted to focus on the non-combat aspects of their character didn't need to take a nap when combat got started.

When 3e came along, it felt like an improvement over 2e.  Classes had all been put roughly on the same page with a unified XP table, and gone were what felt like a variety of artifical limitations on class/race combos.  A comprehensive skill system that scaled by level was a nice touch.  Spontaneous converstion meant my cleric didn't have to memorize nothing but healing spells at the appropriate slots.

I can't speak for the conversion from 1e to 2e, as I was at an age where mostly I enjoyed looking at the cool pictures while my older brother ran the game.

The thing that practically guarantees I will not buy fifth is that I've yet to see anything that can genuinely be considered an improvement, given my playgroup and their playstyle.

Apr 12, 2013 -- 4:45PM, Morthion wrote:

The thing that practically guarantees I will not buy fifth is that I've yet to see anything that can genuinely be considered an improvement, given my playgroup and their playstyle.

This whole thread (if not the entire Next forums...) would probably be more useful if each of us actually described our preferred playstyles.

I'm heavy into exploration/interaction, as well as role-playing (in the "take actions that would be in character" sense, not the "speak like ye olde English knight" sense).  "Communal storytelling."  So I like simpler combat rules, just the basic classes/races, and good support for non-combat adventuring.

Apr 12, 2013 -- 4:34PM, Elfcrusher wrote:

Apr 12, 2013 -- 3:07PM, Tony_Vargas wrote:

games can achieve much higher levels of balance than D&D has generally striven for.  If 5e doesn't even try, it'll fail.

Your choice of phrasing implies (I could be wrong) that your defintion of "balanced" is the homgenization I dread.  "If 5e doesn't even try..."  suggests that you think the developers are not trying, which is silly.

But could be true, especially if their goal is to bring back previous mechanics in an effort to bring back previous players.

Besides, one of things Starcraft has been praised for was its ability to make factions balanced without making them homogenous.  In actual play, I have never experienced the homogenity that many people accused 4e of having (granted that this is just my own experience).

If you are playing by strict tabletop rules in a PvP setting then there is a kind of "balance" that would matter.*   But if you are playing a DM'd RPG against NPCs, then the DM needs to play a role to in balancing the game for everybody.

And thus, a game should mechanically support such balancing.  And even then, there are kinds of balance that do not contribute to a positive play experience.  One of the largest for me is the aforementioned feeling that some of my players had of being just as effective by taking a nap for an hour when specific situations came up.

Did the Bard roll a low Charisma and take all exploration/interaction feats and spells?  Then the DM should design encounters that make sure the Bard's non-combat skills are still critical to party's success.

What has that got to do with the kind of balance we are discussing?  I'm genuinely confused.

I suspect many tabletop 4e PvPers will be sorely disappointed if they think Next is targeting them.

I suspect many tabletop 4e PvPers do not exist.  Every time I've played, it's been a group of us cooperating to accomplish a goal.  (I would mention as a side note that it wasn't a group of us getting together to watch one person accomplish a goal.

*Ironic that many WoW PvE'ers feel that the introduction of Arena...and it's need for "balance"...was one of the major contributing factors to WoW's decline.

Ironic that many Starcraft II players feel that a lack of balance without homogenity makes the game inferior to the previous one.  We are discussing the principle of balance making a game better.  Did WoW at any time have a class that was completely worthless in a party?  Did WoW at any time ever have a class that made all other members of the party unnecessary?

Apr 12, 2013 -- 4:56PM, Morthion wrote:

Did the Bard roll a low Charisma and take all exploration/interaction feats and spells?  Then the DM should design encounters that make sure the Bard's non-combat skills are still critical to party's success.

What has that got to do with the kind of balance we are discussing?  I'm genuinely confused.

Actually, there wasn't a kind we were discussing; the word was just being thrown around without definitions.  Since the above confused you, I'm guessing you mean "all classes do the same damage in most situations" or something very close to that.

Did WoW at any time have a class that was completely worthless in a party?

In Vanilla, Ret Pallies and Balance Druids were both kind of a joke, and I'm not sure I ever actually saw anybody but a Warrior tank a raid back then.  (You're going to nitpick and say "I said class, not spec" but if you do you're splitting hairs.)

EDIT: By the way, neither does D&D Next have a class that's "completely worthless to the party", just some that may not crunch out as well as others.  Your hyperbole suggests...well, I'll let you fill in the blank.

In PvP, there were some incredibly dominant classes/specs, and some that basically didn't even try.  Yet it was a fantastic amount of fun anyway.

Did WoW at any time ever have a class that made all other members of the party unnecessary?

EDIT: More of your hyperbole.

Not precisely, but there were "mandatory" and "optional" classes/specs in both Vanilla and TBC.  But despite that flaw/annoyance, TBC was still probably the high point of WoW PvE raiding.

Back then there were also items that were "unbalanced" (think really slow weapon speeds, or the trinket that gave everybody in the raid extra attack power, or crafted maces with random stun procs).

Ever since then it's been "my class doesn't have a stun like his class" or "my class has crappy AoE" or "my class is the worst tank so I don't get to raid" wah wah wah wah wah.  Blizzard spends so much time "balancing", mostly for the Arena crowd, that it's sucked a lot of the crazy fun chaos out of the game.

No buy=
Anything that resembles using a "power per encounter". Its like trying to give melee/rangees a spell system

Using spell point systems rather than having players "plan".

Anything that commits players to be "reactionary", by design of the game, rather than promoting "proactive" behaviour

Having a system that encourages the magic user or cleric to just spam a spell (aka, "at will") instead of focusing on ingenuity and resource management

having a system that constantly measures the damage from a rogue vs a fighter & somehow tries to compensate their potency in battle

Any system that adopts a sense of "circus act" by allowing a plethora of races and classes to work together even when they are diametrically opposed (player: "well the book doesn't say I can't" or "the player characters are the exception") [this may qualify more as a dislike, but after DMing 25 years....i may have grown just a wee bit crotchety]
 
A system that adopts a sense of "magic upgrades" via more cash, and that every magic item within a specific tier/coin cap is "available" (the magic item is DONE, theres no upgrades...this isn't an arcade game)

"preferences" (so the alternative would be a "dislike", i just wanted to put it in a positive note)

inference of rarity on potent magic items so they cannot be "purchased", but rather, can only be found due to their rarity and long-forgotten processes of crafting that sort of magic 

having the game system not only encourage thinking and creative use of items and spells within the battle scenario but also in regards to the interaction within the environment (no such thing as battle spells and "out of combat" spells.....ANY spell can be a combat spell OR a utility spell if you can think how to apply it creatively) 

training is needed for any new thing (no spontaneous spells learned out in the field when you level, no sudden specialization or whirlwind feat etc.), which includes newly "learned" things. [As an alternative the character can sacrifice earned XP to show his personal dedication to self-teaching.]

anyway, this is all personal taste and obviously a tall order. I get this all from 1st-2nd combo and suspect i'll still be playing it for years to come. thx WotC for offering a forum for feedback
 

Apr 12, 2013 -- 5:11PM, Elfcrusher wrote:

Apr 12, 2013 -- 4:56PM, Morthion wrote:

Did the Bard roll a low Charisma and take all exploration/interaction feats and spells?  Then the DM should design encounters that make sure the Bard's non-combat skills are still critical to party's success.

What has that got to do with the kind of balance we are discussing?  I'm genuinely confused.

Actually, there wasn't a kind we were discussing; the word was just being thrown around without definitions.  Since the above confused you, I'm guessing you mean "all classes do the same damage in most situations" or something very close to that.

Actually, there was, and you pobably *should* have remembered it, since you went through all the trouble of quoting the post and approving of it 100%.  Just for reference:

Well, guess what? Balance is boring. Real life is not balanced, and not fair. A lonely goblin with a cheese knife does have a good chance of slitting your little newbie wizard's throat in one try. Your party is very likely to turn a corner and run into a monster they clearly can't handle; none of this "we must be able to handle it or the DM wouldn't have had us meet it" nonsense. And when someone says "balance", what I hear is a bunch of interchangeable character types that lack all flavor.

Most of the people here don't want a role-playing game. They don't want to actively play anything. They want a video game they can passively experience.

Did WoW at any time have a class that was completely worthless in a party?

In Vanilla, Ret Pallies and Balance Druids were both kind of a joke, and I'm not sure I ever actually saw anybody but a Warrior tank a raid back then.  (You're going to nitpick and say "I said class, not spec" but if you do you're splitting hairs.)

EDIT: By the way, neither does D&D Next have a class that's "completely worthless to the party", just some that may not crunch out as well as others.  Your hyperbole suggests...well, I'll let you fill in the blank.

According to the post of which you approve 100%, we're talking about the lack of balance that would make a little newbie wizard a non-contributor to the party as soon as said goblin with a cheese-knife gets close to him.  The people who "don't want to actively play anything" are the ones who don't want a wizard to be dead for such tawdry things as losing initiative; the people who don't want to "passively experience" a game would like their character dead for the entirety of combat.

I'm sure you can see the contradiction here, even though you approve 100%.

In PvP, there were some incredibly dominant classes/specs, and some that basically didn't even try.  Yet it was a fantastic amount of fun anyway.

It was fun to run the ones that basically didn't even try?  You, personally, went into PvP with builds that couldn't even do it?  You found this fun?

Did WoW at any time ever have a class that made all other members of the party unnecessary?

EDIT: More of your hyperbole.

It's not hyperbole to ask a question in honest expectation of an answer.

So let me explain why I asked the question.

You approve 100% of a post that wants characters dead and implies it wants them dead in the first round of combat.  This makes characters completely useless, what with them being dead and all.  In proceeding posts, you have expressed fear that the balance the original poster decries leads to homogenity.

I can think of few things more homogenous -- and useless -- than corpse #83. 

Apr 12, 2013 -- 7:14PM, Morthion wrote:

Actually, there was, and you pobably *should* have remembered it, since you went through all the trouble of quoting the post and approving of it 100%.  Just for reference:

Well, guess what? Balance is boring. Real life is not balanced, and not fair. A lonely goblin with a cheese knife does have a good chance of slitting your little newbie wizard's throat in one try. Your party is very likely to turn a corner and run into a monster they clearly can't handle; none of this "we must be able to handle it or the DM wouldn't have had us meet it" nonsense. And when someone says "balance", what I hear is a bunch of interchangeable character types that lack all flavor.

Most of the people here don't want a role-playing game. They don't want to actively play anything. They want a video game they can passively experience.

A: I don't see a narrow defintion of "balance" in there.  I see some examples.

B: Hyperbole.  Pressing "quote" and typing a single sentence is not going "through all the trouble".  Just sayin'.

According to the post of which you approve 100%, we're talking about the lack of balance that would make a little newbie wizard a non-contributor to the party as soon as said goblin with a cheese-knife gets close to him.

I know what you're saying, but why do you have to exaggerate with lines like "as soon as" the goblin "gets close to him"?

 The people who "don't want to actively play anything" are the ones who don't want a wizard to be dead for such tawdry things as losing initiative; the people who don't want to "passively experience" a game would like their character dead for the entirety of combat.

Again, you're pretending "willing to accept that sometimes a player gets taken out early" and "would like their character dead" are the same thing.  Maybe that's a convincing argument for, oh I don't know, Fox News fans.

In PvP, there were some incredibly dominant classes/specs, and some that basically didn't even try.  Yet it was a fantastic amount of fun anyway.

It was fun to run the ones that basically didn't even try?  You, personally, went into PvP with builds that couldn't even do it?  You found this fun?

I'll admit I'm impressed with the way you doggedly stick with the exaggeration/hyperbole strategy in just about every single argument.  Stastically disadvantaged specs that most people wouldn't bother using is not the same as "couldn't even do it."  You keep taking relative statements and pretending they are absolutes.

Yes, I went into PvP with the disadvantaged specs.  Yes, it was fun.  You know why?  Because in the old days, pre-Arena, you could make up for a lot of statistical disadvantage by knowing the maps and being smart.  But then they turned it into homgenous group dueling, and it got boring.  More balanced, but boring.

Did WoW at any time ever have a class that made all other members of the party unnecessary?

EDIT: More of your hyperbole.

It's not hyperbole to ask a question in honest expectation of an answer.

By asking if there was a class that made "all other members of the party unnecessary" you are implicitly suggesting either that this is currently the situation in D&DN, or that this is what I am arguing for.  Making "all other members of the party unneccessary" is a far cry from "some classes are a bit more powerful than others."  Verdict?  Hyperbole.

So let me explain why I asked the question.

You approve 100% of a post that wants characters dead and implies it wants them dead in the first round of combat.  This makes characters completely useless, what with them being dead and all.  In proceeding posts, you have expressed fear that the balance the original poster decries leads to homogenity.

I can think of few things more homogenous -- and useless -- than corpse #83. 

I'll just copy and paste from above:

Again, you're pretending "willing to accept that sometimes a player gets taken out early" and "would like their character dead" are the same thing.  

So now, just to illustrate my point, allow me use your own arguing technique against you:

Even if all classes are perfectly balanced, and nobody can die in the first or second round, there is still a chance for characters to die.  So you are left with two choices:
1) You want a game where it's impossible for anybody to die.  Ever.
2) You want your character to be dead by the end of every fight.  

Because, remember, accepting that something can happen is the same as wanting it to happen.  In your universe.

So which is it?  (Hey, I'm just using your own logic....)

Apr 12, 2013 -- 4:34PM, Elfcrusher wrote:

Apr 12, 2013 -- 3:07PM, Tony_Vargas wrote:

A large number of identical choices is as imbalanced as a large number worthless choices or few choices at all. ...  games can achieve much higher levels of balance than D&D has generally striven for.  If 5e doesn't even try, it'll fail.

Your choice of phrasing implies (I could be wrong) that your defintion of "balanced" is the homgenization I dread.

You are wrong.  As I said, "homoginization" would be as imbalanced as lack of choice.  A lot of folks will say that genuinely-balanced choices seem 'samey,' though.  It's not because they actaually are - its just a way of demanding imbalance without admitting it.

"If 5e doesn't even try..."  suggests that you think the developers are not trying, which is silly.  

I think a few of the L&Ls have made it clear that balance is a very low priority, at best.

But they may not be balancing the game for your favorite play style.

Balance doesn't play favorites, that's kinda the point.  Now, if an imbalanced game over-rewards a 'playstyle' that you favor, I can see the incentive to champion that sort of imbalance.  I can't agree with it, but it's understandible.

I suspect many tabletop 4e PvPers will be sorely disappointed if they think Next is targeting them.

4e is entirely unsuitable for PvP.  

Tony, could you clarify what you mean by "balance"?  I think maybe we're using the word differently.  Can you give me some examples of what you mean by "imbalance"?

(Also, why you think 4e is "entirely unsuited" for PvP.  That surprised me.) 

Apr 13, 2013 -- 6:31PM, Elfcrusher wrote:

Tony, could you clarify what you mean by "balance"?  I think maybe we're using the word differently.  Can you give me some examples of what you mean by "imbalance"?

(Also, why you think 4e is "entirely unsuited" for PvP.  That surprised me.) 

I believe what you think of when people talk about "class balance" has been prejudiced by PvP in MMO environments. To be honest, I had never even considered the notion that there were people seriously attempting to use the 4e rules for any direct player-vs-player competition until you started talking about it. In retrospect, I'm sure that there have been some people playing games along those lines, but most comparisons I had seen were Class A vs. Class B in fulfilling their role in a standard player-vs-DM-environment. The way classes are designed around fulfilling a role in an adventuring party makes it hard - in my mind - to even envision any PvP balance of the classes.

What I think of when talking about class balance in D&D is balanced in their ability to spend time in the 'spotlight' of a narrative. That each class has the ability to contribute (roughly) equally to the party's success. That it's not the case where a few particular classes (historically: wizards, clerics, druids) end up best at multiple things and overshadow another class in what is supposed to be that other class's specialty. How helpful is the Rogue's ability to be sneaky when the Wizard can casually turn the whole party invisible?

Read this article, especially the 'All Classes Must Rock' section. A brief excerpt:

Getting back to your original question, I hated the fact that once you started playing level 11+ in 3E, the non-spellcasting character classes didn't matter as much as the spellcasters. There was fun to be had as a fighter, or as a monk (mostly through roleplaying), but the truth was that adventures usually depended on the abilities of the wizard and cleric—where a missing wizard or cleric got some high-level 3E games I was in rescheduled. Did 3E games get rescheduled if the fighter was missing? Only if the character was central to the storyline of that session, not because the group actually depended on the fighter for survival while the wizard and the cleric were around.

The fact was that in the 3E world, wizards were the most powerful characters, heirs to a fantasy tradition from Dying Earth, Lord of the Rings, and Forgotten Realms in which the earth-shakingly powerful characters were usually wizards.

We had to change that for our game world. From the start we wanted to put 4E's character classes on more even footing. We hoped that more equal characters would help groups play games together longer instead of having 3E's problem of high-level campaigns breaking down without being certain why, when some of the players stopped having as much fun as the other players.

In short, it's that what your class brings to the party stays relevant to the group across all levels of play.

Oh.  Now THAT I can agree with.  That said, I believe that kind of balance is the responsibility equally of the class designs and the DM.

As for the PvP, I've wandered into gaming stores and watched people playing 4e against each other like it was Warhammer.  That's where I got that impression. 

Apr 14, 2013 -- 12:41PM, Elfcrusher wrote:

As for the PvP, I've wandered into gaming stores and watched people playing 4e against each other like it was Warhammer.  That's where I got that impression. 

WotC put out a miniatures skirmish game called Dungeon Command several months ago. While it shares some power names and some concepts with 4e, the mechanics are decidedly different and it is not just using the 4e rules.

Apr 14, 2013 -- 1:03PM, MartianAlien wrote:

Apr 14, 2013 -- 12:41PM, Elfcrusher wrote:

As for the PvP, I've wandered into gaming stores and watched people playing 4e against each other like it was Warhammer.  That's where I got that impression. 

WotC put out a miniatures skirmish game called Dungeon Command several months ago. While it shares some power names and some concepts with 4e, the mechanics are decidedly different and it is not just using the 4e rules.

I'm talking about over the past several years.

Apr 13, 2013 -- 6:31PM, Elfcrusher wrote:

Tony, could you clarify what you mean by "balance"?  I think maybe we're using the word differently.  Can you give me some examples of what you mean by "imbalance"?

A good, fairly clear definition of balance in the context of an RPG:  A game is balanced if it presents players with as many meaningful, viable choices as possible while remaining playable.  

Now, you could draw a distinctions among games that lack balance because they lack choices entirely, those that fail to balance because they have many choices but few of those choices are viable, and those that fail to balance because they present many viable choices that are not meaningful. 

D&D has rarely been very well balanced, and consistently fails for that middle reason.  D&D has always presented us with lots of choices, but the best choices were never hard to find, nor very numerous.

4e was the best-balanced version of D&D to date, but it still suffered from a lot of non-viable or 'chaff' choices - feats being the biggest offender.  4e had hundreds (if not thousands of feats) and dozens upon dozens of them were worth taking, at least, for certain builds.  Classes, OTOH, it did a lot better.  There were maybe 2 classes that really fell below the viability bar.  And, choice of class was always meaningful.

(Also, why you think 4e is "entirely unsuited" for PvP.  That surprised me.) 

Because the classes are designed and balanced around working together.  Believe me, I was surprised by seeing 'PvP 4e' like that, it's a non-sequitur.  

You did say "like Warhammer" so maybe you saw them playing DDM or Dungeon Command..?

I can agree with wanting that kind of balance.  However:

1. While it would be bad if there is a clearly "best" class or feat or weapon, it's not so bad if there are some choices (out of many) that are clearly "worst".  Right?  As long as players have meaningful choices, it's not worth getting hot and bothered (and posting to the forums) if the designers included things that don't get used.
2. Because D&D is DM'd, not controlled by algorithms, one campaign's "worst" choice could be another campaign's best.  The corollary to that is that some/much "balance" is subjective.
3. Finally, it's worth pointing out (again) that if WotC would join the 21st century, we wouldn't have to fret about balance quite so much in the playtest phase because online resources can be updated more easily.  But when your business model is publishing $50 books, there's some pressure to get it right the first time.

Apr 12, 2013 -- 4:34PM, Elfcrusher wrote:

Apr 12, 2013 -- 3:07PM, Tony_Vargas wrote:

games can achieve much higher levels of balance than D&D has generally striven for.  If 5e doesn't even try, it'll fail.

Your choice of phrasing implies (I could be wrong) that your defintion of "balanced" is the homgenization I dread.  "If 5e doesn't even try..."  suggests that you think the developers are not trying, which is silly.  

But they may not be balancing the game for your favorite play style.  If you are playing by strict tabletop rules in a PvP setting then there is a kind of "balance" that would matter.*   But if you are playing a DM'd RPG against NPCs, then the DM needs to play a role to in balancing the game for everybody.  

Did the Bard roll a low Charisma and take all exploration/interaction feats and spells?  Then the DM should design encounters that make sure the Bard's non-combat skills are still critical to party's success.

I suspect many tabletop 4e PvPers will be sorely disappointed if they think Next is targeting them.



*Ironic that many WoW PvE'ers feel that the introduction of Arena...and it's need for "balance"...was one of the major contributing factors to WoW's decline.

After reading about the balance issue here, I thought back to when I played WoW (mainly for arenas). I started playing around the release of TBC and quit after Cataclysm. Through that time I watched all the class lines start to blur and mesh together. People complained about arenas basically being a rock-paper-scissors match, but what ended up happening was it turned into a rock-rock-rock match and the things that made classes special and unique were either stripped away or given to every other class.

Obviously, MMOs are a lot different from P&P-RPGs. It's also easier to make classes feel different in D&D because you can just roleplay them differently.

But, in an extreme case of homogenization, let's say that all classes have the capability to do the same damage: Every round X class can do 1d8 damage and if he meets X requirement, he can add 1d6 to his damage. He can also expend some daily resource to do 2d8+lvl damage.

This will never happen (god, I hope not) and it's an extreme, ridiculous example.

Fix to everything : WotC starts offering an online course every month for $19.99 - "How to Homebrew"

Apr 15, 2013 -- 5:52AM, Elfcrusher wrote:

I can agree with wanting that kind of balance.  However:

While it would be bad if there is a clearly "best" class or feat or weapon, it's not so bad if there are some choices (out of many) that are clearly "worst".  Right?  As long as players have meaningful choices, it's not worth getting hot and bothered (and posting to the forums) if the designers included things that don't get used.

Inevitably, there will be some inferior abilities.  They're not desireable:  they are, at best, chaff, something worthless bundled with the good bits of the game that you actually want, like deceptive or wasteful packaging, undesireable, but once you've thrown it away, not actively detracting from the actual product in use.  At worst, though, they're 'trap' options that /do/ get taken by players who, as a result, have bad play experiences, and 'system mastery' must be acquired to navigate through them and pick out the good options.

Apr 17, 2013 -- 12:31AM, Tony_Vargas wrote:

But, they couldn't even get the on-line tools for DDI right, and that was with Hasbro presumably giving them /some/ working capital...

Bear in mind that Hasbro also owns Scrabble, and look what happened with "Words With Friends".  Hasbro does not understand the Internet.

Dealbreakers:

A 3.5/4e style skill list.
I remember someone's DM playtest feedback that I particularly agreed with. The user said something along the lines of "I never want to see a skill list section on a character sheet again." Couldn't agree more.

Unbounded Accuracy
At the very least, I want the continued non-assumption of magic items by the core math.

The return of petty bonuses (I WANT adv/dis)

Minor Greivances:

I don't want to have to remind my players that the DM is the rules. I want the rules to explicitly give all power to the DM.

Good multiclassing is a must for me.

I would really like the fighter to not suck, and for all of the classes to be relatively balanced. I don't think we need to all bow down before the all mighty balance-beast, but I would like everything to be viable. 

For me personally....

RAGEQUIT:  HP inflation, leveling too quickly, all classes feeling the same, the game being more than 50 percent orented towards combat when it its supposed to be a role-playing game, splitting popular class/races into three separate player guid books...I think thats about it.

Nit Pick: The skill system, being to scared to incorperate ability score damage/drain in some fashion (at the very least, you could say "here are some poisons that are particularly dangerious" but a dm could allways chose to leave those out of his/her game), leaving thigns out like random encounter tables, random dungeon creation tables, rules for exploration, followers, etc.  

RAGEQUIT
NOVA: This concept needs to go away. One or two powers that can be used once a day are fine, but an entire spellcasting system based on NOVA cannot help but be unbalanced. This is why Wizards and Clerics ruled the roost in 3rd Edition. This is the cause of the 15 minute adventuring day. Almost everything except a few big effects should become per encounter or per reasonable amount of time like 20 minutes.

LOW HP: You should not have an enormous amount of HP. This and lack of damage was one of the big reasons why combat in 4E took so long. But neither should you have so few hit points that any random enemy can kill you with a single sword or spell. About four hits seems like a good number.

NITPICK
UNNECESSARY SKILLS: Honestly, the skills in 4E were perfectly fine and gave you a lot of flexibility. Listen and Spot do not need to be different skills. Jump and Climb do not need to be different skills. Use Rope does not need to exist at all. These kinds of skill divisions do not increase the fun of the game.

MEANINGLESS RACES: Most of the racial abilities I am seeing in DDN are barely worth mentioning. They are tiny advantages that make your race mostly not matter. Races should have a few very powerful advantages that really make them shine.