@Pashalik: I see you're point. The hard-coded nature of spells indeed enables them to do something unless the DM says otherwise, but really, the DMG kind of says that everything a player wants to do should be treated that way, hard-coded or not. I'm not saying there shouldn't be hard-coded non-magical abilities, only so many abilities can be hard-coded, and players are highly creaitve beasts.
I would like to see a lot more non-feat based hard-coded non-magical abilities that aren't just variations on attacks, but, there are so many things players will think of doing, they'll always come up with something that falls under the category of "not explicitly covered, rule in favor of the player." I guess the question is, how much do we want to hard-code, and how much do we want to leave up to the player to come up with?
@Pashalik: I see you're point. The hard-coded nature of spells indeed enables them to do something unless the DM says otherwise, but really, the DMG kind of says that everything a player wants to do should be treated that way, hard-coded or not.
It sure does say that, and again, it still totally should. But there is a gap between what the book says we should do, and what ends up happening at the table. Sometimes that gap is a stingy DM, sometimes it's an impatient or shy player. Sometimes it's that while an action might be reasonable, the player just doesn't think it's cool enough to be worth hashing out. Sometimes you've all been gaming for several hours already, everyone's just a liiiiiittle bit tired, and not on their game. Sometimes it's someone making a mistake, and sometimes it's just life, but the point remains, the two are not equal in execution.
I'm not saying there shouldn't be hard-coded non-magical abilities, only so many abilities can be hard-coded, and players are highly creaitve beasts.
Definitely. You can't hard-code everything, and if you could, you probably shouldn't. It stops being worth it after a time, and things get too clunky.
I would like to see a lot more non-feat based hard-coded non-magical abilities that aren't just variations on attacks, but, there are so many things players will think of doing, they'll always come up with something that falls under the category of "not explicitly covered, rule in favor of the player." I guess the question is, how much do we want to hard-code, and how much do we want to leave up to the player to come up with?
That is indeed the question, and the answer will vary from person to person. Personally, I found 4e's approach to be just about right. There was a set of widely applicable guidelines for stuff that wasn't hard-coded, and the powers that were written up did a good job of setting the tone at "Awesome things are good, you should do them", though I'd honestly shoot for a few less powers than 4e had, just because it got bloaty. What I'd set as a reasonable guideline, though, is just to make sure that there are about the same level of hard-coded non-magical stuff as there is hard-coded magical stuff.
Seriously, though, you should check out the PbP Haven. You might also like Real Adventures, IF you're cool.
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@Pashalik: I see you're point. The hard-coded nature of spells indeed enables them to do something unless the DM says otherwise, but really, the DMG kind of says that everything a player wants to do should be treated that way, hard-coded or not.
It sure does say that, and again, it still totally should. But there is a gap between what the book says we should do, and what ends up happening at the table. Sometimes that gap is a stingy DM, sometimes it's an impatient or shy player. Sometimes it's that while an action might be reasonable, the player just doesn't think it's cool enough to be worth hashing out. Sometimes you've all been gaming for several hours already, everyone's just a liiiiiittle bit tired, and not on their game. Sometimes it's someone making a mistake, and sometimes it's just life, but the point remains, the two are not equal in execution.
Yup. While it is true that the DMG always talks about handling improvised actions, there is definitely a difference in how they are perceived vs premade actions or powers. Anything that has an official writeup automatically becomes, well, official. DMs will assume that it has the Official Seal of Approval stamped by the designers.
For example, take disarming. If the book contains a distinct Disarm Action, complete with rules for resolving it, DMs know how to handle it. Player wants to disarm? Fine, turn to page X, and it will tell you what to do. But now say there is no such defined rule. Now the DM has to go through a number of things in his head (and do it quickly, because the game is on):
1) Could such a thing be done? 2) How easy would such a thing be? 3) How often do I want them to be able do this thing? 4) Does this thing overlap with any existing powers/abilities that other classes might get? 5) How should I have them do this thing?
Unfortunately, at least in my experience, most DMs will simply say, "No" in order to avoid having to go through that process in the middle of the session. The next most likely outcome is the "Yes, but" which effectively means "no" because it tacks on so many penalties or hindrances as to make the player say, "Forget it, I'll just attack."
If there is one thing I think the DMG should spend a lot of space and effort on, it is teaching DMs how to make rulings on the fly that are both fun and fair.
Two major things I liked about 4e's power system was the provision for options for every class, and the small-effect yet reliable spells for the casters. I may not necessarily agree with the broad execution of the system, but those were in fact two things that I had problems with that got fixed, which was nice. Not trying to start an edition war, but I liked Pathfinder's fix for that better. I thought 4e's caster at-wills were too powerful, and there was too much bloat on the side of the martial classes. That and the universal nature of the AEDU system kind of turned me off. Anyway.
One thing in 4e's power system that I was never a fan of (And this goes for 3e's magic system too.) is that rather than allowing a few spells to scale, every couple levels, a new spell/power was given that was just a new version, or at least really similar to the old version of a previous ability. I think it's much less work, and creates a lot less bloat, to create a scaling system with more unique effects.
In my own system, I have about 80ish "arcane" spells, and they do the work of the hundreds of spells in 3e, because they scale anywhere from basic to maximum potential, depending on how many "spell points" are dumped into them at the time of casting. I mean, we have magic missile; is mordenkainen's force missiles really necessary? In 4e, it seems like half the reason so many powers are there is because they only scale to a certain point (XW). Scaling reduces redundancy.
That was one reason why I was so happy at the implementation of expertise dice. They tied scaling to the most basic and intrinsic element of the fighter's combat toolkit, and then gave new abilities that worked off that same scaling system. Then they went and gave the same scaling method to everyone else...anyway. This isn't the place for me to complain about the DDN fighter, that thread is a few notches down.
I guess in short, make the abilities scale where possible, and make the effects as unique as possible. This way we can do a lot with a little.
If there is one thing I think the DMG should spend a lot of space and effort on, it is teaching DMs how to make rulings on the fly that are both fun and fair.
Whole post was good but I think this deserves special attention. It makes sense that DMs that for whatever reason who want to avoid work, would just veto something like that, regardless of whether or not it's true to the spirit of the game to do so.
10. Going back to thac0, saving throws, and any other way of making something simple 'sound' hard 9. Classes or options that make other classes obsolete (like Mages being better rogues) 8. Bloat (class bloat, race bloat, skill bloat, feat bloat) 7. Ridiculous Bonuses to everything 6. Not having Bounded accuracy 5. Not enough emphasis on Roleplaying and Exploration Pillar 4. Too much imbalance between the classes, and too many loopholes that allow players to create broken characters 3. Excessive system complexity, unclear rules design, rules writtten as prose (not bullets) and poor formatting. 2. Universal Mechanics for every class, such that they all are the same
AND... THe Number 1 reason why I woudl not buy Next, THE BIGGEST DEALBREAKER.... 1. Squares
Mike Mearls has stated, on multiple occasions, that the core is close to being done. Assuming that the core will be along the lines of what we've seen, and I don't think that's a stretch, I don't think the pessimism is premature at all at this point.
Considering the public acknowledgment that the 3rd playtest packet deliberately included something they expected would be unacceptable (i.e. they trolled us), so they could judge *how* unacceptable...
...it's pretty unreasonable to assume that the core will be along the lines of what we've seen.
Now as for what's in 5E as of right now that would stop me from buying it.
1) "so little". As in, there is so little in it. (Extremely likely they'll fix this.)
2) Seriously unbalanced classes, which by the way is what they trolled us on.
3) Boring classes and races. They can have SOME of those (tastes vary), but they shouldn't have MOSTLY those.
4) Classes that cannot be reliably balanced against each other except under certain assumptions, because their resource-management models are so wildly divergent. (I think they are more likely to advertise this as a feature than to fix it, but they may surprise me.)
5) Classes that are pretty much useless in one pillar or another, as a way of balancing against being overpowered in some other pillar.
"The world does not work the way you have been taught it does. We are not real as such; we exist within The Story. Unfortunately for you, you have inherited a condition from your mother known as Primary Protagonist Syndrome, which means The Story is interested in you. It will find you, and if you are not ready for the narrative strands it will throw at you..." - from Footloose
Bounded accuracy. Srsly. That's the biggest turn-off for me. Unless my accuracy singnificantly improves against lower level enemies as my character levels, count me out (and for the record, no, I'm not interested in re-flavoring additional damage as being more accurate).
Please, can we edit that to "excessively tightly bounded accuracy"? Every edition has had bounded accuracy, but where the boundaries are has varied. (For 4E I believe the upper bound is somewhere around +50 to +60, and I'm willing to accept that this may be excessively loose.)
"The world does not work the way you have been taught it does. We are not real as such; we exist within The Story. Unfortunately for you, you have inherited a condition from your mother known as Primary Protagonist Syndrome, which means The Story is interested in you. It will find you, and if you are not ready for the narrative strands it will throw at you..." - from Footloose
Bounded accuracy. Srsly. That's the biggest turn-off for me. Unless my accuracy singnificantly improves against lower level enemies as my character levels, count me out (and for the record, no, I'm not interested in re-flavoring additional damage as being more accurate).
Please, can we edit that to "excessively tightly bounded accuracy"? Every edition has had bounded accuracy, but where the boundaries are has varied. (For 4E I believe the upper bound is somewhere around +50 to +60, and I'm willing to accept that this may be excessively loose.)
You misunderstand bounded accuracy.
It's not about the upper limit to rolls. It's about ACs and DCs being static. The result of Bouned Accuracy is that you don't get higher bonuses, because who want a +20 to a roll when the AC never gets higher then 22.
It means that players get better at hitting and better at skills as they level.
If there is one thing I think the DMG should spend a lot of space and effort on, it is teaching DMs how to make rulings on the fly that are both fun and fair.
Whole post was good but I think this deserves special attention. It makes sense that DMs that for whatever reason who want to avoid work, would just veto something like that, regardless of whether or not it's true to the spirit of the game to do so.
