I'm still wonder why he said a classless system is faster. Was it simple, did he help them make it?
In 3.5e, if you pick a fighter then you only need to pick your skills, feats, equipment, and you are done. Like I said, something is off.
That's a load of BS. Have you SEEN the amount of Feats to go through? Which ones have prerequisites, which ones are part of a chain that have to be taken sequentially? And that's just ONE part of the character creation system.
It takes quite a while for someone new to gaming to pick out what they would want. 3.x is incredibly complex, and worse it's built on the ideal of players mastering the system to get the most out of it. This is not something you just drop on someone new.
I'm still wonder why he said a classless system is faster. Was it simple, did he help them make it?
In 3.5e, if you pick a fighter then you only need to pick your skills, feats, equipment, and you are done. Like I said, something is off.
That's a load of BS. Have you SEEN the amount of Feats to go through?
What's so hard picking cleave, power attack, and/or weapon focus?
Because not all players know or want those, they will look through the list and bodger and slow.
I think that you're letting your biases show instead of trying to be objective about this.
[Edit]Actually, what if you want to make a chain tripper, instead? You know how many books you need to go through? And what feats you should be looking at for the later levels?
In 3.x you HAVE to think ahead, depending on the type of non-caster you're making, because each feat interacts in a certain way, and some just don't synergize well with others. Not to mention that there are 'traps' in that list, feats that no one should ever waste a slot on because they don't scale, and there are only so many slots to fill.
What makes D&D in general worse, is that unless the DM prohibits the caster from taking spells and/or learning them at higher levels, only the non-caster has to either A) make sure that he plans way ahead of time, because he has to beg the DM to let him change his feats (via story or out of table discussion) should he find out that those feats aren't what he likes -- as opposed to the casters simply swapping spells after a few hours' worth of rest -- or B) be prepared to create characters repeatedly as he learns more about the system
4E mitigated this inflexibility by formalizing what is probably a common houserule: allow the player to swap out stuff (a.k.a. retraining); it's a bit restricted though, in the sense that the player has to wait until level 2 before he can start retraining, and even then not only is it restricted to 1 class resource (feat, power, feature, skill) per level, but there has to be a story reason behind the swap. In addition, 4E had Martial Reserve, which allowed martial characters greater flexibility with their encounter exploits (a nod to Book of Nine Swords apparently).
You are both rational and emotional. You value creation and discovery, and feel strongly about what you create. At best, you're innovative and intuitive. At worst, you're scattered and unpredictable.
If you're crossing the street and see a city bus barreling straight toward you with 'GIVE ME YOUR WALLET!' painted across its windshield, you probably won't be reaching for your wallet.
This is what I believe is the spirit of D&D 4E, and my deal breaker for D&D Next: equal opportunities, with distinct specializations, in areas where conflict happens the most often, without having to worry about heavy micromanagement or system mastery.
and in 1st and second editon if you wanted to trip someone with a chain all you had to do was make a to hit roll and have a weapon proficency or take the penalty for not having it. wow no crappy feats to sift thru and the same people that support feats say the spell list is way too long, but again they only say that because its something that dosent benefit their character.
It's not the total spell list that's too long, it's the individual character spell lists, or in the case of the cleric where they are the same exact thing that renders the casting classes into veritable gods and the non-casters lucky if they can live up to their own hype.
Ok why even bother to have a class system with such disparate levels of power and versatility?
It's not the total spell list that's too long, it's the individual character spell lists, or in the case of the cleric where they are the same exact thing that renders the casting classes into veritable gods and the non-casters lucky if they can live up to their own hype.
Ok why even bother to have a class system with such disparate levels of power and versatility?
The part in bold is exactly what increases the time it takes to build a character, regardless if it's class-based or classless. Character creation steps must be streamlined in order to lessen the bloat faced by the players.
Skills Bloat
2E had its fair share of this, 3E had it worst, 4E lessened this greatly
5E attempts to remove lessen the impact of skills bloat by allowing skills to apply to any situation as long as it's appropriate to the character's background, so even if the skill normally doesn't work that way
it kinda makes me wonder: why even bother with the skills middleman? Why don't we just ditch the skill list -- or keep it optional -- and simply state that if your character background (and in the case of the rogue, class background) applies to the situation they can roll their skill die, no need to look up what exact skill is applicable to the situation?
Feats Bloat
3E and 4E both have it worst due to the sheer number of generic feats available, in addition to the number of class-specific and race-specific feats (and even weapon-specific feats at times)
5E attempts to mitigate this by limiting the number of feats available, while providing packages (specializations) to help in the creation process, especially for newbies
the way I see it, this only works with the initial bloat; as more feats are introduced, expect people to CharOps this like crazy
the 5E solution to the problem -- keep feats optional -- seems a bit like a cop-out, since feats are a great way to customize a character and the only solution they found to bloat was "remove it wholesale"
personally I like 13th Age's solution to the issue: keep generic feats very small, and have every other feat tied to specific powers (spells, maneuvers, etc.) and class features. Not only does it help keep bloat down, but it also encourages its use as a means of specialization / customization.
Powers Bloat
pre-4E spellcasters had it worst because of the shared power pool. 4E appears to be even more bloated than pre-4E spellcasters, but that perception is largely fueled by an excessive compression of the power pools that each class had. When you look at how characters were actually created in 4E, you never actually saw any of the 3000+ powers beyond the 10-30+ powers you had in front of you as you tinkered with the Character Builder, and once you actually started playing, at level 1 you only had what, 2-3 at-wills, 1-2 encounter powers (including racial power), and 1 daily. Once you took those powers, you normally didn't get any more until the next level, so in effect you don't have the "I have to juggle between 30+ spells between my spellbook and my spell slots to find the best thing to use this turn" of pre-4E.
Currently 5E takes a bit of a compromise here by providing Vancian magic but in a heavily toned down fashion, while keeping the spell slots far more than what 4E offered.
While I'd say that they did it somewhat right, there's a lot that has to be done to fix the issues, especially with their HP/damage scaling and number of martial damage dice (or equivalent), combined with dead levels and such such
hence, my proposals in prior posts
Class can either deliver subsystems, or work as feature packages. Either way, it's not so much in the existence of classes in the system as the complexity in the system's mechanics & design vs. complexity in the system's dynamics.
You are both rational and emotional. You value creation and discovery, and feel strongly about what you create. At best, you're innovative and intuitive. At worst, you're scattered and unpredictable.
If you're crossing the street and see a city bus barreling straight toward you with 'GIVE ME YOUR WALLET!' painted across its windshield, you probably won't be reaching for your wallet.
This is what I believe is the spirit of D&D 4E, and my deal breaker for D&D Next: equal opportunities, with distinct specializations, in areas where conflict happens the most often, without having to worry about heavy micromanagement or system mastery.
I agree with chaosfang. 5e class system is fast and simple.
Faster then any classless system out there as far as I know.
Only because everything is pre-packaged. The moment players start actually exploring the possibilities -- customizing backgrounds, specializations, classes, class features, maneuvers/spells/tricks/etc. -- it's going to take a bit more than "choose array, choose race, choose class, choose background, choose specialization, choose class feature package".
I'd actually say that Gamma World 7E (a classless system) is just as fast, if not slightly faster than, D&D 5E. Character creation-wise, that is. After all,
Only 4 out of 6 random stats are rolled Race determines almost all features Equipment list is extremely small (or extremely large, if you fancy adding the random junk part at the start of the campaign)
You are both rational and emotional. You value creation and discovery, and feel strongly about what you create. At best, you're innovative and intuitive. At worst, you're scattered and unpredictable.
If you're crossing the street and see a city bus barreling straight toward you with 'GIVE ME YOUR WALLET!' painted across its windshield, you probably won't be reaching for your wallet.
This is what I believe is the spirit of D&D 4E, and my deal breaker for D&D Next: equal opportunities, with distinct specializations, in areas where conflict happens the most often, without having to worry about heavy micromanagement or system mastery.
