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

[Lago PARANOIA]

PCs however I think shouldn't all be more or less identical, and rolling for HP, while creating small differences, does make characters feel a little different. It's not so much about balance or mechanics as feel there (and that's why I advocate hp rolling systems that weight things in favor of a tighter rng, just a still existant one).

I don't. All random hit point rolling does is just make one character better than another. And unlike attribute rolling it's not better in a way that can be quantified by roleplaying. Yes, Roy Greenhilt is objectively better than a bog-standard fighter but at least his Intelligence score can be recycled into character developed. How would Roy Greenhilt be an appreciably different character if he had an extra 30 hit points?

Of course, I care for randomized attribute rolling even less. Sure, it creates character differences, but it also makes some characters objectively more shallow than others. Which is unacceptable for a game in which you're supposed to hold onto a character for several months.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Look, assuming level-appropriateness and leaving out weirdos like puzzle monsters and metal slimes, people generally want a few separate categories of defense:

[*] Characters who have across-the-board top defenses but have a low attack/threat value.
[*] Characters who have across-the-board top defenses with a glaring weakness in some defensive category.
[*] Characters who have across-the-board bad defenses except for one glaringly good defense. These creatures either have some mechanism to guard their weaknesses or they're supposed to be closet trolls.
[*] Characters who have across-the-board bad defenses, period. These are supposed to be squishy characters who either need to watch their back or be defended by others.
[*] Characters who have across-the-board medium defenses at all times, for when the role assigner is being lazy.
[*] Characters that have a variable good or bad defense depending on their current tactical positioning or overall tactical situation like a golem shedding its armor when bloodied and gaining reflex/dumping fortitude.

Now, because generally a lot of people don't think that, say, the wizard class should suddenly do a switcheroo from being good at Will Defense to being good at Reflex instead or a paladin should start out being tanky but become more vulnerable over time as they get simultaneously more offense it seems to me that you can take care of these situations by just assigning a one-time bonus at first level.

Then after that you can universally shift the defenses around to fit the needs of the game. Meaning that you can increase defense at a greater than (or lower than) rate as the game goes on as you did before. But I get the feeling that generally people don't feel that a wizard with a good roll and some clever min-maxing should be able to have a defense as good as a paladin unless they paid the price for it somehow.

[OgreBattle]

That is what 4e did. And it was bad, because characters who are strong and tough are a lot less resilient than people who are smart and pretty - and that is fucking retarded.
-Username17

So how should it be done for D&D? Which edition had saves that worked?

[tzor]

That is what 4e did. And it was bad, because characters who are strong and tough are a lot less resilient than people who are smart and pretty - and that is fucking retarded.
-Username17

So how should it be done for D&D? Which edition had saves that worked?

Er ... First?

Sorry I just had to say that. I'm trying to recall major topic among the ROTC gamers of RPI during the years of 1980-1983 and I don't think we ever had debates about the saving throw system. Everything else was generally fair game.

(Granted there were some discussions over "which save should we use in this most bizzare situation" but they were easily answered by puting the bizzare situaiton into a proper category based on the 1E saving throw categories.)

[Username17]

That is what 4e did. And it was bad, because characters who are strong and tough are a lot less resilient than people who are smart and pretty - and that is fucking retarded.
-Username17

So how should it be done for D&D? Which edition had saves that worked?

3rd edition's Saves and 4th edition's NADs both "worked". They also both had properties which most people agree are bad. Both, for example, give much higher Saves and NADs to some character types than to others in a way that is fairly counterintuitive. Both have the spread between a high and a low defense rise as levels rise. And so on and so on. But they do work at all. You can play them. You at no time have to have an argument about whether having acid poured out of pot should provoke a dragon breath save or a spells save.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

So how should it be done for D&D?

The underlying conceit behind 3E D&D and 4E D&D's defenses (I prefer 3E D&D) actually work pretty okay. The problem is that the math doesn't work right in either case and it'd be pretty much impossible to fix them at this point without overhauling the game.

But here are the points in which IMO saves in 3rd Edition worked.
[*] Defender consistently rolls effect dice. For these schemes you pretty much have a tradeoff between giving attackers the joy of more viscerally causing their success (see: critical hits), preventing player frustration from being taken out without touching the dice, or keeping the dice routine down to a reasonable number. Personally, I think preventing frustration is more important than increasing joy, so I liked this.
[*] Saves were theoretically different with archetype. You can disagree with the archetypes as presented but they did make archetypes feel different.
[*] Saves increased with level. This is why I don't care at all for 4E's system, because there are a bunch of low-level effects in that game that are all 'fuck you, you're getting action-disadvantaged for X amount of time regardless of your level'.
[*] There were tactical decisions to be made to protect your saves or exploit the bad saves of other people. This rewards knowledge and foresight.
[*] Saves diverged to create MVPs but not so much (theoretically, anyway, we all know what actually happened) so that people felt picked on when it was their turn to be LVP.

If they fixed the math for 3E D&D saves, I would actually be pretty pleased with the overall effect and demand no changes. I don't feel the same way for other core D&D conceits, like hit points and spell charges.

[Mask_De_H]

That is what 4e did. And it was bad, because characters who are strong and tough are a lot less resilient than people who are smart and pretty - and that is fucking retarded.

-Username17

Swapping Con for Wis would fix that; there's no good reason outside of derp for each save not to have a physical and mental counterpart.

That just moves the problem around. Now someone who is Strong and Wise is low resilience and someone who is smart and pretty is high resilience. It's the whole "Crossed NADs" thing from 4e no matter how you slice it. You have a prime stat and a secondary stat, and if those are arbitrarily classified in the same defense, you are an eggshell and if they are arbitrarily classified into different defenses then you're a tank.

Let's go with some common characters with the Str or Wis == Wil, Int or Dex == Ref, Con or Cha == Fort paradigm.

• Ranger (Dex, Wis) Tank
  Bard (Cha, Dex) Tank
  Illusionist (Int, Cha) Tank
  Cleric (Wis, Str) Vulnerable
  Rogue (Dex, Int) Vulnerable
  Warlock (Cha, Con) Vulnerable

Does that make any sense to you?

When you look at 5e as vaporware/the designers throwing out ideas, it gets a lot less terrible; this may be one of the few times a product not existing in a meaningful form is a net benefit.

Well, yes. Once you realize that it's vaporware, most of the weird evasiveness about ability interaction stops being as big a problem. There's still a pretty big problem though: the open beta is in 3 months and right now they haven't come up with a mechanical implementation for Fighters to Talk. Right now, the ability of your Fighter to convince people to do things has 100% to do with the force of personality of the actual player, and 0% to do with what is actually written on the character sheet. I don't think they can solve this in three months.

-Username17

Ah, I see what you're talking about. Making the NADs line up by physical/mental stats doesn't fix the fact that given the system you're arbitrarily squishy or tanky given your defensive spread. So to fix that do you either decouple defenses from stats or give each stat something to do for defense (like SAME)?

I think one of the other guys at the panel corrected Monte or whoever and said that everyone could contribute to talking, but only if he/everyonw took the talking module. So there's a chance they have the ability for the Fighter to talk, but also that nobody could be able to talk outside of MTP, which is its own problem.

[OgreBattle]

I have a feeling they're going to wind up creating Palladium Fantasy with the complexity dial set to RIFTS

[K]

Am I the only one who doesn't agree with their "three pillars?"

I mean, my three pillars don't match up at all except for "combat."

[CapnTthePirateG]

Am I the only one who doesn't agree with their "three pillars?"

I mean, my three pillars don't match up at all except for "combat."

Not sure what your pillars are, but I do feel the three pillars are missing something like "interact with the world in a meaningful way" (fabricate a castle, teleport around).

[ModelCitizen]

Am I the only one who doesn't agree with their "three pillars?"

I mean, my three pillars don't match up at all except for "combat."

You're not.

Combat is when you kill orcs. Exploration is when you go find where orcs are. Maybe there are some traps to find too, but you're finding things and learning things, not affecting things. It's what you do to get to part of the game where you solve a problem, not a way to solve problems itself. So if I want to affect the plot rather than just find out about it, and I want to do it through some means other than combat, all that's left is the "Roleplaying pillar." Which sounds suspiciously like nothing in it has any fucking rules.

Also it's been said before around here, but the whole thing smacks of Mearls trying to shoehorn GNS into D&D.

[Prak]

Monte has famously said that his ideal RPG system would provide rules for combat, and then stay out of the way. While I used to laud this, really it's not fair to expect people to always play characters whose social skills they can reliably imitate.

[hogarth]

Am I the only one who doesn't agree with their "three pillars?"

I mean, my three pillars don't match up at all except for "combat."

For an old school, dungeon-crawling D&D game, their suggestions of "walk around", "talk to people" and "kill monsters" seem about right.

[Fuchs]

Ugh. Is it "Back to the Dungeon" again?

[Username17]

Ugh. Is it "Back to the Dungeon" again?

Way beyond that. There are two things to understand:

• 5e is Vaporware. There is no game. It's just a list of possible mechanics held together with deepisms and appeals to nostalgia. The closest thing to a real "game" is vague pronouncements of Magical Teaparty.
• Every edition is a reaction to the previous edition. 4e was made with the strange idea that players were like the folks on the CharOp board and wanted to move little numbers around in pursuit of "balance". 3e was made with the idea that people wanted a more unified ruleset. And so on. The thing that the 5e team has convinced their bosses was the thing that sunk 4e was that it "did not feel like D&D".

What does that mean? It means this:

Monte said that because of these factors they’ve been focusing on the story of D&D. What is a fighter? What is a wizard? What makes the D&D wizard different from say, Gandalf or a spellcaster in Skyrim? Figuring out whether you get a +2 or +3 is the easy part, he said. Making a D&D ranger that feels like a D&D ranger is harder. Is that class more Aragorn or more Drizzt?
Monte said that the most important feedback you can give if you’re able to playtest the new edition is “Does this feel like D&D to you?” and “Does your class feel like it should?”

What does this mean? It means that the game has no mechanical elements at all (adding numbers and game-spanning interactions between numbers and ability sets "is the easy part" according to the charlatan in chief), and right now they are simply adding and subtracting story elements until they get the highest polling numbers that the entirely imaginary game they are describing "feels like D&D". Since it is absolutely inconceivable that a Dungeon environment would score lower on subjective "Does this feel like D&D?" polls than any non-Dungeon environment, the Dungeon environments will be placed front and center.

-Username17

[Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp]

Frank,

If you feel that 5E is vaporware, care to make a new thread so that we can announce it to the world?

[BearsAreBrown]

Maybe I'm less experienced or maybe I'm less jaded, but Frank, why are you so sure about all this? You seem to be extrapolating heavily from a few paragraphs of text. Are the drawing from some source material I'm unaware of?

[Username17]

You know what? Fuck it, you're right, this needs a new thread.

-Username17

[DMReckless]

Oh, come on now, how can a game with dials and options not be popular?

[CapnTthePirateG]

http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx ... l/20120130

New Legends and Lore column, in which Monte spouts a bunch of shit about what players of all editions want (apparently 1e and 2e players needed to be in here, because so many people play them on a regular basis). But 2e players want "well-developed stories", which is weird because I associate it with "Gygaxian dick waving".

[fectin]

Oh, come on now, how can a game with dials and options not be popular?

Wikipedia's description suggests that min-maxing is basically required in that game. As in, it costs different amounts to get the same stats based on whether you buy them up-front or in game. Is that wrong

edit:sp

[Morzas]

http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx ... l/20120130

New Legends and Lore column, in which Monte spouts a bunch of shit about what players of all editions want (apparently 1e and 2e players needed to be in here, because so many people play them on a regular basis). But 2e players want "well-developed stories", which is weird because I associate it with "Gygaxian dick waving".

He seems to be basing a lot of his analysis of earlier editions on GNS theory. Which, in my time reading these forums, I've learned is complete bullshit.

He says OD&D is Gamist, AD&D is Simulationist, AD&D 2e is Narrativist, 3rd is Simulationist and 4th is Gamist... I think?

[Chamomile]

My guess? 2e sucks as a game and sucks at simulation, so he calls it "narrativist" because narrative is subjective enough that it's really hard to definitively prove that a game is bad at it.

[Lokathor]

Also it's been said before around here, but the whole thing smacks of Mearls trying to shoehorn GNS into D&D.

http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx ... l/20120130

New Legends and Lore column

Funny, because this weeks' poll literally has people rating how much they want their DnD experience to be "Story-Based", "Tactical Combat", and/or "Simulationist".

[Mask_De_H]

Trevor somethingorother from WotC is running damage control in the ENWorld thread. Apparently the Charm Person not having a specific status tag thing is because they can't talk about (don't have) the actual text.