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6 months ago ::
Dec 14, 2012 - 6:35AM
#41
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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.
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6 months ago ::
Dec 14, 2012 - 11:22PM
#42
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Date Joined:
Feb 20, 2007
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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?
I've finally figured out how to put in a sig. Yes, I'm including this here for no other reason than to express how happy I am that I could finally do this. For goodness' sake, change these forums back (or just change, I don't care).
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6 months ago ::
Dec 14, 2012 - 11:34PM
#43
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Date Joined:
Dec 14, 2012
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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!*
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5 months ago ::
Dec 23, 2012 - 1:28PM
#44
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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. :-)
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5 months ago ::
Dec 23, 2012 - 1:46PM
#45
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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.
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5 months ago ::
Dec 26, 2012 - 2:13PM
#46
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Date Joined:
Dec 23, 2012
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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.
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5 months ago ::
Dec 29, 2012 - 11:13AM
#47
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Date Joined:
Apr 14, 2004
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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.
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5 months ago ::
Dec 29, 2012 - 3:08PM
#48
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Date Joined:
May 12, 2012
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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.
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5 months ago ::
Jan 03, 2013 - 6:02PM
#49
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Date Joined:
Jan 14, 2012
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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%!
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4 months ago ::
Jan 21, 2013 - 5:53PM
#50
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Date Joined:
Aug 19, 2008
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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.
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