A Review of D&D 5e

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Tue Mar 10, 2009 8:32 pm

Snarky satire is snarky (and somewhat amusing).

Discuss.

Elennsar · Post by **Elennsar** » Tue Mar 10, 2009 9:02 pm

It is rather sad that I can say with a straight face that I'd enjoy that more than actually playing 4e, and not as a compliment to the design principles, if I can use the word "design" and "principles" in relationship to that crud.

So:

And:

to the people who made 4e something I can say that about.

'nuff said.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Tue Mar 10, 2009 9:02 pm

So honest.

-Crissa

Roy · Post by **Roy** » Tue Mar 10, 2009 9:05 pm

Epic Win is Epic.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Tue Mar 10, 2009 9:16 pm

Hit points still work the same, but healing surges have been completely revamped. Now every player can use a healing surge in place of a standard action if they want, without any penalty. You won't have to rely on the Leaders to heal you up; you can solo if you want. And best of all, healing surges reset after every encounter -- infinite healing! -- so now you and your group can charge into every encounter without having to spend a half hour discussing, planning or resource managing.

Alignment has also gotten a much needed revamp. Nine alignments were way too many in 3e, and even 5 was cumbersome in 4e, so now we're down to just three: Lawful, Good, and Unaligned. This is a heroic game about good vs evil and I'm glad these rules emphasize that.

These changes actually don't sound too bad in abstract.

I do hate the idea of only being able to have a 'leader' heal, because it forces us back on the path of that idiotic 2E/4E track where if no one wants to play a 'healer' character then the game can't get standard.

It's not really a surprise. I mean, 4e was already pushing certain races towards specific classes: Tiefling Warlocks, Dragonborn Paladins. Playing things like Dwarf Wizards and Gnome Barbarians never made sense, so there was never any reason to allow it. With these Character Packages, you get perfectly balanced numbers every time.

I hate this design philosophy, but if the D&D people insist on having the game played this way they should at least show some fucking spine and honesty about it--rather than the current method of snickering behind our backs because we had the temerity to play a halfling battlerager fighter.

In fact, there's no messy character generation process at all. Pick a package, and your starting stats are all precalculated. Gone are the bad rolls when generating a character: 13 Strength, gone! Now you're a fighter, you get a 20 Strength automatically. Everything is balanced like it should be. Armor is picked with the best option chosen for your character (Paladins get their Plate, Rangers get their Scale, etc). Weapon specializations are picked, and weapons distributed, and now all weapons do a d10 damage so everything is balanced. No unfairness!

This is a good change, though it's a bit heavy-handed. His point would quickly evaporate though if he said that rangers could only get scale or hide armor or fighters could pick chainmail, plate and shield, or hide armor.

Multi-classing? Gone. Nobody did it anyway so why keep it?

Like I said, I do appreciate honesty in the system so I prefer an upfront 'NO!' answer rather than them weaselling around a mechanic they obviously don't want to include.

Class Powers also get a much-needed revamp and work the same way. Instead of making you agonize over a couple of choices at each level, each Character Package now gets a standard power tree that tells you what you get at each level. No more needless decision making or wasting time; each Character Package gets the same thing when they level up. The kickass part is you are totally free to role-play what the power looks like though. Like if you want it to be fire-based you can say it's fire-based. Sweet!

The game designer kind of shows their ignorance when they say this, since is how D&D was run for non-casters up until this edition.

Not that 4E changed anything. The vast majority of powers suck horse ass. Rangers will only pick encounter powers that let them use attacks as minor actions or have some sort of benefit that's better than immediate DPS (like the ability to impose a penalty to AC or stunning an enemy).

Plus since magic items are now tied to character advancement all the numbers are added up for you on the power displays. No math required! Just roll a die, or use the pre-built in roller embedded into the document, and go for it! Spiffy!

I've always hated how D&D broke the simulation by requiring your hero to be blinged out--which works fine for King Arthur or Hercules but sucks ass for Enkidu or Conan. I also hated how D&D encouraged King Arthur to ditch Excalibur because there was an axe with a greater plus than his current sword. So if the numbers were precalculated and we just picked up weapons according to how cool the SFX were it'd work out better.

The rest of the stuff though is actually incomprehensible, especially the DMG part. Apparently players wanting fairness and symmetry out of their adventures or surviving until the end of the campaign is something we're not supposed to agree with.

Basically, this writer doesn't seem to know what he wants out of the game or can explain why the stuff he wants is good and the stuff he doesn't want out of 4E is bad. And while I can see where he's going with the idea that people should have the option of being gnome barbarians, the fact that he introduces this idea while simultaneously mocking the idea of game balance is unsettling.

Fail. Writers like this guy give critics of 3E a bad name.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Tue Mar 10, 2009 9:34 pm

I think there's a difference between 'we can win' and 'we can't lose'.

-Crissa

TarkisFlux · Post by **TarkisFlux** » Tue Mar 10, 2009 9:35 pm

I'm sad that a dwarf named Carlos didn't make the transition

Starmaker · Post by **Starmaker** » Tue Mar 10, 2009 9:59 pm

It's just one roll to see if you succeed immediately, and if you fail, then another roll to see how long it takes you to succeed.

That actually makes sense for some rolls.

MartinHarper · Post by **MartinHarper** » Tue Mar 10, 2009 10:12 pm

I wasn't impressed with the piece as a satire - it didn't seem to have any consistency and I wasn't sure what the writer was trying to convey. I gather the general idea is that 5e will continue the changes made from 4e to 3e. So:
* 3e is pen and paper.
* 4e has a character builder.
* 5e will be computer-based.
* This is bad.

However, many passages don't seem to match that theme. For example:

> "The best part about the scenario is that every encounter is totally unique. You won't have to fight ten rooms of goblins; you'll only meet them once."

* In 3e all encounters were identical.
* In 4e there was variety in encounters.
* In 5e all encounters will be unique.
* This is bad.
But... 3e encounters, if anything, had slightly more variety. Also, isn't variety a good thing? I'm left feeling like I've missed the point.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Tue Mar 10, 2009 11:34 pm

Satire doesn't always have to be biting on every line, Martin. Sometimes it just talks about something which can't be.

All encounters in 3e were unique. Hence, all encounters in 5e are not really unique.

-Crissa

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Tue Mar 10, 2009 11:46 pm

All encounters in 3e were unique. Hence, all encounters in 5e are not really unique.

They were?

I don't rememer, controlling just for the monsters, 3E encounters being exciting or tactically different unless you were regularly fighting wizards or OMG overpowered monsters like lantern archons or giant crabs until around level 5.

I thought low-level non-caster 3E combat was even more boring than in 4E. Only slightly more, though.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Wed Mar 11, 2009 12:14 am

I guess you never charged or overran or grappled.

-Crissa

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Wed Mar 11, 2009 12:16 am

I guess you never charged or overran or grappled.

-Crissa

I did do these things, yes, but charging, overrunning, and grappling are options available to 4E characters, too.

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Wed Mar 11, 2009 12:29 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote: I thought low-level non-caster 3E combat was even more boring than in 4E. Only slightly more, though.

Yeah, it really was. Any noncaster monster in 3E tended to be pretty boring for the most part.

Rarely did you even find a monster that fought like a rogue even. There were just too many straight up basher monsters with no special abilities you cared about.

NineInchNall · Post by **NineInchNall** » Wed Mar 11, 2009 12:43 am

In fact, there's no messy character generation process at all. Pick a package, and your starting stats are all precalculated. Gone are the bad rolls when generating a character: 13 Strength, gone! Now you're a fighter, you get a 20 Strength automatically. Everything is balanced like it should be. Armor is picked with the best option chosen for your character (Paladins get their Plate, Rangers get their Scale, etc). Weapon specializations are picked, and weapons distributed, and now all weapons do a d10 damage so everything is balanced. No unfairness!

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay! Yay!

Ganbare Gincun · Post by **Ganbare Gincun** » Wed Mar 11, 2009 5:31 am

It sounds like Progress Quest - but with less options.

sake · Post by **sake** » Wed Mar 11, 2009 6:57 pm

MartinHarper wrote: * 3e is pen and paper.
* 4e has a character builder.
* 5e will be computer-based.
* This is bad.

I can actually see 5e becoming some sort of pay to access communal mmog gateway. GMs (who in this model are people who pay a bit more per month than people who just pay for a 'player' account) create their own instanced zones that the giant pool of players can choose to enter from the central hub city.

So D&D online and NWN merged together into one sloughing hell beast.

And of course for legacy's sake they'll claim they will eventually make book rules (via drm loaded pdf type files) but that will have about as much actual effort put into it as 4e's shitty insider tools have had.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Wed Mar 11, 2009 7:09 pm

I don't mind the fact that books will probably eventually be phased out of the whole tabletop P&P experience in favor of five or six nerds with laptops loaded with D&D software sitting around a table.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Wed Mar 11, 2009 7:14 pm

I can actually see 5e becoming some sort of pay to access communal mmog gateway. GMs (who in this model are people who pay a bit more per month than people who just pay for a 'player' account) create their own instanced zones that the giant pool of players can choose to enter from the central hub city.

So D&D online and NWN merged together into one sloughing hell beast.

If it weren't D&D, that'd be sort of neat.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Thu Mar 12, 2009 4:35 am

sake wrote:I can actually see 5e becoming some sort of pay to access communal mmog gateway. GMs (who in this model are people who pay a bit more per month than people who just pay for a 'player' account) create their own instanced zones that the giant pool of players can choose to enter from the central hub city.

You can actually do that in Second Life. There's a couple games that do it in other virtual worlds, as well, but I'm less familiar with them as I don't commonly use a PC.

-Crissa

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Fri Apr 03, 2009 6:52 pm

I know bumping this thread seems kind of superfluous, but I have to say that I really enjoy the character builder that WotC put out. It makes it really easy to put the character together, see what direction your character is going in, and even precalculates your attack rolls and damage. I prefer doing it myself, it's part of the fun, but a lot of people who aren't into the accounting side of P&P RPGs as I am find the software a massive convenience.

If 3rd Edition had something like this it would be awesome. Sadly their character builder for that edition was clunky and kind of slow to use. I'm actually looking rather forward to seeing 4E's character visualizer and online tabletop program--now if only they'll put this on a system that FIXES 3E and 4E's problems.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Fri Apr 03, 2009 11:54 pm

http://pcgen.sourceforge.net/01_overview.php