Chat stream with M. Mearls and M. Cook on D&D

CapnTthePirateG · Post by **CapnTthePirateG** » Sun Jan 29, 2012 9:16 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:
CapnTthePirateG wrote:http://www.enworld.org/forum/news/31749 ... cores.html

Do you like magic tea party?
My favorite part is this one:

Rob: Right now, Cha is linked to saves for fear and charm effects. However, if you describe it well, you could use different stat.
Seriously? Seriously? Magic Teaparty to determine whether we use good stats or shitty stats to defend against enemy spells?

What the fuck?!

-Username17

But..but Frank, my Wizard generates a magical force field which is based off intelligence and not stupid or contrived at all!

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Jan 29, 2012 9:33 pm

Seriously, who said "I want to have an argument with the MC about what my defenses are every single time my character is attacked." ?

Because rolling an attack roll and then having the target roll a defense roll and then rolling damage already takes too much time. This thing where the attacker spends some time trying to bullshit into using his best stat on his attack roll and then makes an attack roll and then the defender spends some time trying to bullshit into using his best stat on the defense roll and then rolls a defense roll and then you roll damage - that is a fucking nightmare. And that's not the end of a campaign or anything, that's me casting Magic Missile. Me casting Fireball is even better, because it hits five enemies who separately have to bullshit up different bullshit for why they should be allowed to use their various best saves before making their separate rolls. And then and only then is damage rolled.

It's not the blatant and horrendous unfairness of the process, although there is of course that, it's the fucking time. People should not get into narrative arguments about relative levels of vulnerabilities in the middle of other peoples' attacks. That just should not happen. Under absolutely no circumstances should anyone be negotiating with the MC for what defense they are allowed to use against an attack, because that breaks the narrative flow of the other character's action.

-Username17

Previn · Post by **Previn** » Sun Jan 29, 2012 9:38 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:Seriously? Seriously? Magic Teaparty to determine whether we use good stats or shitty stats to defend against enemy spells?

What the fuck?!

-Username17

I was with them up to that point as my own system ditched saves in place of ability checks and it's worked out really well. Of course you don't get to MTP to figure out which save which essentially defeats the point.

I see some other problems I'm not sure how they're going to solve. Call it a Stat Death Spiral. Basically if you have a 15 str you jump over a pit automatically as one their examples. But the guy who has say a 10 str has to make a check? One that he's more likely to fail and less likely to sacrifice feats for to improve things since they seem so narrow?

The lack of actual skills also means that you're going to be taking an even bigger chunk out of your combat resources for non-combat things, so I expect there to be even great divides between 'joins in combat' and 'sits there and does nothing for 2 hours.' So they seem to be getting players less involved, unless everyone is fantastic at MTP.

Red_Rob · Post by **Red_Rob** » Sun Jan 29, 2012 9:39 pm

And of course, when it comes to bullshitting the GM the magic classes are king.

You can see where this is coming from though. Every recent edition of D&D has been a reaction to the one before it. 2e was popular but too heavily house ruled, so 3rd edition clarified and standardised the ruleset so everyone was on the same page. But people complained 3e was unbalanced, so 4e was all about the "balance" at the expense of freedom and variety. Now the complaint is that 4e doesn't allow people to roleplay, so 5e leans heavily on MTP in an attempt to convince people that "its not all about the dice this time!"

Pretty much everything I have heard so far from the 5e team has convinced me this edition won't be for me. It reeks of an attempt to be all things to all people. I would rather have a game with a clear vision of what it wants to do and a focus on getting that right.

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Sun Jan 29, 2012 9:42 pm

Negotiating defenses and uses of abilities with the MC is sort of a bread and butter thing in rules-light systems. It assumes a level of trust between MC and player and requires a certain amount of tactical/narrative system looseness that D&D doesn't have, though.

It really sounds like they're trying to go rules-light with a bunch of D&D sacred cows strapped to their backs.

EDIT: Wasn't a big complaint of 4e also "it didn't feel like D&D"? So they're cramming as many D&D sacred cows in as possible. Also:

Red_Rob wrote: Pretty much everything I have heard so far from the 5e team has convinced me this edition won't be for me. It reeks of an attempt to be all things to all people. I would rather have a game with a clear vision of what it wants to do and a focus on getting that right.

There is a clear vision and a clear focus; it's pander to everybody!

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Sun Jan 29, 2012 9:51 pm

With all of the sacrificing bonuses for options, it sounds more like it's an aim towards effectively a point-buy system. And with as much variation this is showing, allowing one to give up everything to have 100% damage, then we're talking BESM level point-buy.

As for the having a skill or not, I wonder if they might choose this: If you choose to not have skills written on your character sheet, it's not quite going to be a MTP next to the 3E skill ranks fellow. Instead, you are considered to have a bonus of X to ALL skill checks. The person who chooses the skill point module gets to redistribute this bonus, being better at climbing at the expense of picking locks.

Gah. Did Monte drink the Mearls kool-aid since his work with 3E?

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sun Jan 29, 2012 10:18 pm

Lets see...
First part looks not so much like MTP, but "You must be this tall to ride." Ie, obstacles will have some kind of "Auto-succeed if you have [x]" thing. Maybe that's not how it will end up, but that's how it sounds here.

Next, they seem to be doing away with Fort/Ref/Will/Etc. in favour of something more akin to Palladium's saving throw model. So Con affects saves versus disease and poison, Cha saves vrs. fear/mind control, etc. Basically, it works similarly, but you're told "Roll Charisma" because you're seeing if your force of personality is enough to hold off the effect.

"D&D Next."
Oh god why?

They're not going to have skills? They're going to say "Rogues get +2 to stealth shit."?

fuck. That's dumb, even palladium at least classifies shit into skills. Most people are going to wind up making something that looks like a skill list anyway, it'll just read:
Breaking +4
Sneaking +2
Lock Picking +5
etc.

And it seems like you may skills like "Boxing: +2 Str" or "Gymnastics: +2 Dex." We know how this works from Rifts. A player tries to get all the stat boost skills he can.

Advantage=Exalted Stunting. I'm nominally in favour of such a mechanic, but I'm afraid to see how it'll work here.

Feats that give at will abilities could be interesting. Themes look interesting, potentially.

As I've said, I don't like the de-emphasizing of magic items.

Honestly, when it gets down to it, this edition is looking like it's going to be terrible just because it will make joining a new group harder. Even if you're not picky about your complexity, and are willing to take what you can get, the DM will have to give you a list of every single modular option he allows. Which will be a pain in it's own right. But worse than that, people are idiots, and they're being given even more trivial shit to be elitist about here. "Oh, you play with themes? Well, I guess if you just don't have the imagination to just say your fighter used to be a blacksmith and have to use the crutch..." and such shit.

Midnight_v · Post by **Midnight_v** » Sun Jan 29, 2012 10:45 pm

... The horrible thing about this is what someone touched on up above, outside people here at the den, people don't seem to be concerened even seem optimistic.
I'd almost think theres somekind of confirmation bias going on here with new shit. Maybe its just rampant consumerism, where people think anything "NEW" = "GOoD" or maybe people are just too stupid to see whats wrong, having blind faith in the devs to "finally get it right".

The horrible thing about this is a metric fuck-ton of people are going to buy it when its fresh off the shelf, saying stupid shit like "Oh I think I've GOTTA give it a chance" and Ole' M&M will fap to hasbro claiming victory.

I had a friend who was a salesman, he got commision for whatever shitty job he was doing and he told me one day that he managed to sell lots to 3 types of people.
1. People who like you. You have a pleasant personality or a nice rep so people buy from you based on your name or "how you make them feel" at that moment.
2. People who can't say "no", they normally try to avoid you at first but once you make eyecontact and start talking they just don't know how to break it off without talking.
3. People who are afraid to miss out... even when they have no idea what your selling... they'll go stand in a line cause a line is forming under the right circumstances. . .

I look around the various boards outside this one and I see a LOT of those people. People who'll buy it just cause it says D&D, all of that shit.

So... I keep thinking back to the pathfinder "playtest", and how that was a trainwreck, and how people got on that train anyway, even being filled of fail and lies. It just makes me really unhappy, to think these assholes statistically WILL generate millions, on yet another shit game.

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Sun Jan 29, 2012 11:12 pm

That's how marketing works, Midnight; there's a customer born every minute. People are excited for new shit and generally trust the people who make their games. You've got to remember that Denners are anomalous to pretty much every kind of TTRPG sample group. And people are stupid, but that's a given.

The skill check thing is probably a "you must be this tall or you just can't consistently do it", but in the hands of competent designers would be DCs low enough for whatever arbitrary ability score point to be autosuccesses anyway.

If advantage is a mechanical benefit like Fate points instead of stunting, then the save swapping bullshit could be curtailed if it cost advantage and if the save system was a six-stat SAME, with an attack, damage, and soak stat.

All of the monumentally dumb shit said could be mechanically salvageable. Doesn't mean it will or should be, but it can.

gourdcaptain · Post by **gourdcaptain** » Sun Jan 29, 2012 11:44 pm

Actually, you didn't get the full insanity of the Magic Tea Party saves on display:

For example the big monster is grappling you, you might use dexterity to save and get out. But you can also have some other ways of getting out that grapple. Maybe there's a gem on that creature's head and you can make an intelligence saving throw to realize that if you mess with it, the creature would die and let you go. "

First, "maybe there's a gem?".

Second, they didn't even go for the obvious "use strength to force its grasp open" option.

Third, you can MAGIC TEA PARTY SAVE A MONSTER TO DEATH.

sake · Post by **sake** » Mon Jan 30, 2012 1:15 am

Here's a interesting maybe rumor/maybe leak. Seems they've tried to deal with the depleting a parties' renewable resources/15 minute work day problem by, get ready for it... just giving up and saying 'fuck no, you don't get to do that!'

You get 4 rests per day; 2 short 10-minute ones, a 1-hour one, and an 8-hour one. 10-minutes give you back your level in HP, the 1-hour lets you get back 1/2 your hp OR re-prep some spells (one or the other), while an 8-hour gives you back both 1/2 HP and all your spells. There were no healing surges in sight.

Also a lot of the basic stuff like HD, dying, crits, and such seem to be an unholy hybrid of 3E/4E rules. Rolling for hp and the 3x3 alignment grid's back. Tieflings and halforcs are in the basic book. Also this bit which sounds odd;

Casting spells was a mishmash of 4e and 3e, opposed attacks vs rolled defense, with the attacker setting the DC with a roll and the defender rolling against that.

I'm hoping that's bullshit. I really can't believe they'd want to bog down play by adding an opposing roll to a single attack action.

NineInchNall · Post by **NineInchNall** » Mon Jan 30, 2012 1:29 am

Wow. That's like the munchkin's dream. Sacrifice every single stat except one and then argue that yes, you can totally use that one stat for everything.

CapnTthePirateG · Post by **CapnTthePirateG** » Mon Jan 30, 2012 1:42 am

sake wrote:
Casting spells was a mishmash of 4e and 3e, opposed attacks vs rolled defense, with the attacker setting the DC with a roll and the defender rolling against that.
I'm hoping that's bullshit. I really can't believe they'd want to bog down play by adding an opposing roll to a single attack action.

This sounds like Bruce Cordell and the pile of shit that was the 3e psionics handbook. I can't imagine them wanting to bring that back.

Can you link the source?

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Mon Jan 30, 2012 2:30 am

sake wrote:Here's a interesting maybe rumor/maybe leak. Seems they've tried to deal with the depleting a parties' renewable resources/15 minute work day problem by, get ready for it... just giving up and saying 'fuck no, you don't get to do that!'

You get 4 rests per day; 2 short 10-minute ones, a 1-hour one, and an 8-hour one. 10-minutes give you back your level in HP, the 1-hour lets you get back 1/2 your hp OR re-prep some spells (one or the other), while an 8-hour gives you back both 1/2 HP and all your spells. There were no healing surges in sight.

That either means it's the stupidest most bullshit game ever, or you can already do the Crusader/DFA/X/X endurance party.

If they don't have characters with infinite usage abilities like DFAs/Fighters/ect, I'm not even going to play the boring ass game, and if you tell me they aren't going to end up with some methods of healing everyone to full HP rest or no, I'm telling you that you are a liar, because even 4e had that.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Jan 30, 2012 2:37 am

Man, I am loving this thread. I remember 4-5 years ago when we had 4E previews we were actually pretty excited about a lot of them. I mean, there were some bad signs like Andy Collins wanting to make race more relevant or that bullshit example combat with a dragon, but at least the design goals sounded pretty darn good.

Here? Good Lord.

Also, rolling for hit points? Oh fuck no.

5E D&D is going to end quite a few careers, it seems.

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Mon Jan 30, 2012 3:09 am

As terribad as 5e sounds, I don't think that the Den typifies what people want from a game. We are an insular group of elitist snobs that take games far too seriously.

That said, I have a feeling that Pathfinder is going to stay pretty popular unless Legend manages to break through to the larger market. We'll still be playing (or at least ranting about) archaic games that have been house-ruled beyond recognition.

CapnTthePirateG · Post by **CapnTthePirateG** » Mon Jan 30, 2012 3:09 am

To be fair, the 4e previews are probably what's setting off our massive cynicism now.

Hell, there's even a huge thread on WoTC where people are going "what the fuck is with the skill system, this is bullshit".

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Jan 30, 2012 3:31 am

Look, I'm willing to suspend my cynicism about implementation at this stage as long as the design goals sound good.

What part of:
[*] Randomly rolling for hit points
[*] Four discrete resting periods which you cannot violate ever
[*] Use another stat for a save if you MTP it
[*] A basic attack procedure in a game with frequent combat that requires rolling against two DCs
[*] Some players will be 100% damage
[*] You can trade vertical advancement for horizontal advancement and vice versa
[*] Psionics being core -- which I can support, if done right.
[*] Psionics being core while Bruce Cordell has a lead design credit. WHICH IS THE FUCKING WORSE IDEA EVER SERIOUSLY WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS?!

Can possibly sound good to anyone?

Seerow · Post by **Seerow** » Mon Jan 30, 2012 3:38 am

Personally I don't mind the rolling of hit points too much. I'd prefer something like set hp + roll, or any of the dozens of other possible hp mechanics, that semi-normalize gains, so you don't have weird levels where the wizard gains more than the barbarian, but still have some RNG involved.

But yeah the rest of it minus core psionics seems ridiculous.

Previn · Post by **Previn** » Mon Jan 30, 2012 3:55 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Look, I'm willing to suspend my cynicism about implementation at this stage as long as the design goals sound good.

What part of:
[*] Randomly rolling for hit points
[*] Four discrete resting periods which you cannot violate ever
[*] Use another stat for a save if you MTP it
[*] A basic attack procedure in a game with frequent combat that requires rolling against two DCs
[*] Some players will be 100% damage
[*] You can trade vertical advancement for horizontal advancement and vice versa
[*] Psionics being core -- which I can support, if done right.
[*] Psionics being core while Bruce Cordell has a lead design credit. WHICH IS THE FUCKING WORSE IDEA EVER SERIOUSLY WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS?!

Can possibly sound good to anyone?

Add in randomly rolling for stats which are the core component of the skill system. You roll bad at the start and you're always going to be trying to make it up for the rest of your character's life. You put an 8 in str and you're going to fail every meaningful climb/jump/swim check ever.

CapnTthePirateG · Post by **CapnTthePirateG** » Mon Jan 30, 2012 3:58 am

And the "you can get I win abilities by trading out damage, and these abilities can be used to win combat AND social encounters!"

Fighters. Will. Suck.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Mon Jan 30, 2012 4:02 am

So how many attack bonuses do I trade in to unlock Prone Shooter

and how many hit points do I trade in to unlock Death or Glory

and what do I trade in to unlock Vow of Poverty

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Mon Jan 30, 2012 4:15 am

OgreBattle wrote:So what do I trade in to unlock Vow of Poverty

Ten American dollars.

EDIT: wasn't the Den only positive on 4e before we knew anything about the mechanics and as soon as that came out, the death knells began to ring?

And isn't that roll against thing a soak roll or am I being dumb?

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Mon Jan 30, 2012 6:02 am

Regarding using alternate stats, y'all know it says that in the 3e PHB too, right? At least for skills and stat checks, and feats for attacks, and so on; 4e is full of using your best stat to just automatically do everything.

But two rolls? So saves are now 2d20+stat vs DC 20+stat, or attacks are 2d20+stat vs Def 21+stat, depending on which way you look at it, only with twice as much calculation going on to slow it all down.

Why do they want the extra 40% variation? Sort of works to crush the value of stat bonuses, but ... ew.

A problem with 3e/4e is they should've used 9-12 +0, 13-16 +1, 17-20 +2 if they wanted a universal bonus system. I hope they're not using more dice just to hide the stupidly large stat mod. Gary Gygax was an actuary, his math works out in the long run really well; can any of these guys do the math?

Vebyast · Post by **Vebyast** » Mon Jan 30, 2012 7:02 am

tussock wrote:Regarding using alternate stats, y'all know it says that in the 3e PHB too, right? At least for skills and stat checks, and feats for attacks, and so on; 4e is full of using your best stat to just automatically do everything.

You can take feats that let you attack using a better stat, and you can choose skills that play to your best attributes, and so on and so on, but I can't find the bit where it straight-up says "If you argue with your DM and win, you can use a stat of your choice for any roll." Is it somewhere other than the beginning of PHB Chapter 8 (page 133)?

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