The Gaming Den

ckafrica wrote:I've been having the same problem trying to find an interesting CRPG/MMO. Every time I try a new one I get bored before I actually get to the point i can do anything cool. While they don't have to be super powered, I want 4-6 distinctly different options a can go with out of the gate even if they will be quickly superceded by more powerful stuff.

Have you tried Divinity: Original Sin? The developers needed to impress players from the beginning, so they took the opposite approach of most CRPGs and gave the players some very cool abilities right from the start.

Here's my quick shot at fixing The D/D&D6e guidelines

The action economy is....
-You have a Move, Standard, and Swift action

Character creation is made up of choosing...
-Race (Human, Dorf, Lizardman, etc.): Race gives you some skill adjustments, small boosts to a FORT/REF/WILL defense, and some nifty encounter ability like elven accuracy, dorf stoutness, and orcish rage. The aim is to avoid "X race is the only way to play Y class" choices.

-Class (Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, Wizard, etc.): Class determines what power schedule you're using, this is the heart of your character's combat shtick. There is no level-by-level multiclassing. There's a classsplosion so your fighter/wizard is a Spellsword or Eldritch Knight, with "Fighter/Wizard" written in italics somewhere on the class description so oldschool fans know what to do.

-Theme: Themes are here so you can say "my wizard is a scurvy pirate" without needing to make a whole scurvy pirate wizard class or trade away combat abilities for out-of-combat abilities. Gameplay wise a theme gives you a solid noncombat shtick like info gathering (the noble knows people), macguyvering (tinkerers are good at building stuff), healing (apothecaries can fix what ails ye), and so on.

-Skill Proficiency: Expands on and complements the theme choice.
-Background: Like in After Sundown, basket weaving goes here.

-Feats that aren't fiddly modifiers: Stuff like Weapon Focus is gone. Anything that doesn't fit into class/theme/race/skill goes here. I figure class specific feats should be a part of class choice in the first place, what do you guys think?

The core combat system at level 1 covers...

-Hitting things with power attack/expertise/shock trooper esque adjustments
-Aid Another-esque actions to cover allies in need and open up tough foes
-Grapple/Bullrush/Trip/Disarm without needing feats to be OK at it
-Rules for interacting with the environment to get nifty and somewhat reliable results, like throwing sand in the orc's eyes being covered by Aid Another ("You took a move action to scoop up sand and a sandard to throw so your Aid Another bonus is now +X and vs REF instead of AC."). Basically the more actions you put into it the more dramatic the results. An action point system is also included so you can stunt out something big every encounter.

Tiers of play
-Level 1 to 5 is 'realistic' to Conan tier
-Every 5 levels you PrC into a higher tier

Monster first
-The monsters are written up before the PC classes are finished so there's context to what a PC is expected to do in combat by level
-Challenges like underwater ruins, sky castles, the plane of fire and so on are written up so there's a context to what a PC is expected to do with his skills by level.

Things like economy, crafting, wealthy by level I have little experience with so I'll copy whatever's in TOME.

@NightGoat: Ehh. Divinity has some good starting skills, but most are just fodder you pick to fill out your list. But you do get neat toys pretty quickly and continue to get more neat toys through the game, so it is pretty good about that. Plus you get enough skill points that each character can access three of the seven skillsets. I say seven instead of eight because witchcraft sucks. I am bitter about this, because my attempts to make a deathknight failed miserably. Who the fuck cares about mediocre debuffs when the game hands out stuns like candy?

OgreBattle wrote:Character creation is made up of choosing...
-Race (Human, Dorf, Lizardman, etc.): Race gives you some skill adjustments, small boosts to a FORT/REF/WILL defense, and some nifty encounter ability like elven accuracy, dorf stoutness, and orcish rage. The aim is to avoid "X race is the only way to play Y class" choices.

If races give a mechanical benefit, there is a best race to play. For example eleven accuracy sounds worthless to a summoner.
Tough that is not necessarily bad, but you should only focus on racials people really care about, that set races apart. Not minor shit like small bonus to defence.

So has anyone outside of this thread found a review of 5e that has anything broadly critical to say about it? Because even people I generally trust to review other products are getting starry-eyed about it, and I'd like some faith in humanity again.

I'd be interested in this as well. 100% of the reviews I've read sound like WotC paying for advertising.

Pedantic wrote:So has anyone outside of this thread found a review of 5e that has anything broadly critical to say about it? Because even people I generally trust to review other products are getting starry-eyed about it, and I'd like some faith in humanity again.

I haven't seen anything strictly critical, but I'd give it a bit. The novelty effect is probably going to alter peoples' perception for a while. Plus, I'm sure a reasonable amount of people aren't saying much because we don't have all the books released yet.

Ravengm wrote: Plus, I'm sure a reasonable amount of people aren't saying much because we don't have all the books released yet.

Definitely. Interparty imbalances tend to get blamed on power gamers and munchkins, so I'd expect a lot of wonky shit to go largely unaddressed by the masses at least until the full munster manuscript is available. Lots of people just won't get the message until their teeth get kicked in by some supposedly puny critters.

Who knows if the mind caulk will hold even after the MM is out?

People still claim that stabbing a dragon to death with a mundane sword is a matter of finding it, a super-humanly intelligent spellcaster, asleep in its lair.

ishy wrote:If races give a mechanical benefit, there is a best race to play. For example eleven accuracy sounds worthless to a summoner. Tough that is not necessarily bad, but you should only focus on racials people really care about, that set races apart. Not minor shit like small bonus to defence.

Then there's a rule like "Summoners have a blood pact with their Eidolons so they can use their summoner's racial ability". As for dwarves, their defining combat-useful trait has always been being sturdy and people are happy with that, I'm sure my non-existant D&D6e will have a way of making that a useful ability.

If I were to take it a further distance from D&D though, 'Race' would be in the feats section, so everyone is a human-kinda race with heritages that make them slender and sparkly or stout and bearded or grow horns and scales and so on.

OgreBattle wrote: If I were to take it a further distance from D&D though, 'Race' would be in the feats section, so everyone is a human-kinda race with heritages that make them slender and sparkly or stout and bearded or grow horns and scales and so on.

Didn't Unearthed Arcana give every standard race an optional 3-level racial package? Was it any good?

Lago PARANOIA wrote:The prestige classes also aren't segregated by origin to avoid the whole 15th level gladiator bullshit.

I'm not familiar with this problem. Is the notion that the class is locked out of other classes at that point, or what?

A lot of prestige classes are lame DMF/VAH bullshit like Swift Blade or Dwarven Defender or Duelist. And oftentimes even prestige classes meant for full casters are lame concepts that stunt conceptual advancement. An Archmage or a Blood Magus or a Stormlord could conceptually be a mid or high-level prestige class in a way that a Hospitaler or a Mage of the Arcane Order or a Loremaster is not.

If you get rid of the idea that prestige classes are designed to be extensions of a specific class, the possibilities widen immensely. Because there's no reason why a fighter, rogue, bard, or wizard couldn't become a Skull Knight or a Dragon Disciple or an X-Equip Armormaster, people are less tempted to have the class fill up on bullshit like 'this advances your sneak attack abilities!' or 'this powers up your familiar!'. This does unfortunately neem out the possibility of class-specific focuses that are nonetheless suitable for higher levels such as the Hokuto Shinken master, but it's an acceptable tradeoff.

OgreBattle wrote:If I were to take it a further distance from D&D though, 'Race' would be in the feats section, so everyone is a human-kinda race with heritages that make them slender and sparkly or stout and bearded or grow horns and scales and so on.

Whaaat?

If you can't play a talking book or a sentient swarm of bees, what's the point of having races at all?

Foxwarrior wrote: If you can't play a talking book or a sentient swarm of bees, what's the point of having races at all?

Yeah, that's why I figure the current array of [Tolkien-inspired Standard Races] are fine being represented by picking a feat or two, an Elf Wizard is defined far more by being a Wizard than having pointy ears. Being a sentient book filled with bees is the kind of thing that takes more than a feat to represent, requiring the upcoming expansion book "Races of Wut" to get the Racial Class/Theme/Feats to put together.

Harshax wrote:Didn't Unearthed Arcana give every standard race an optional 3-level racial package? Was it any good?

It was unmitigated shit. I think sometimes people use a single level of one of them in a theoretical build because it adds to the caster level of a casting class they don't yet have, or because they want the bonus feat or whatever.

Lord Mistborn wrote:I'd say that making level one more interesting is dependent on making engaging mechanics that are "character agnostic" ones you get access to by being a small to medium sized humanoid. People go on rants here alot about how having thumbs levers, and pulleys doesn't matter at high levels, but at low levels it's totally ok for that shit to take center stage.

This is right, and it reveals the immense challenge of making another 3.x: every few levels is a whole new game. You have to define those tiers, and then you have to re-evaluate everything that makes up a creature and determine if it still has a place in each new tier. What does combat look like at level 16? Can we still use 5' squares to play that game? What does travel look like at level 16?

Do you strip characters down to what remains relevant through all tiers and shift everything else into class, or do you have certain attributes and a skill list in one tier, and then different attributes and no skill list in the next? Or whatever the specifics end up being. Can you make the tiers organic, flowing from level 10 to 11 just like 9 to 10, or do you need to say "OK, at level 11 everything from your level 1-5 class just goes away"?

That's a serious undertaking, with a lot of design work that might not cover very much play space. But the finished product would work. In theory, at least.

OgreBattle wrote:

Foxwarrior wrote: If you can't play a talking book or a sentient swarm of bees, what's the point of having races at all?

Yeah, that's why I figure the current array of [Tolkien-inspired Standard Races] are fine being represented by picking a feat or two, an Elf Wizard is defined far more by being a Wizard than having pointy ears. Being a sentient book filled with bees is the kind of thing that takes more than a feat to represent, requiring the upcoming expansion book "Races of Wut" to get the Racial Class/Theme/Feats to put together.

Would preferred class then be determined by your species--flavor? Secondly, would not taking one give you the human default, 'no preferred class?'

To get the most out of featureless races, you probably also need to step away from racial-feats. Which works well for all medium hominids, but not so well for small, large or dwarvish-medium, because these sizes have mechanical features.

In other words, being stout (+1 con, preferred class fighter or whatever) could just as easily be applied to half-orcs, wild elves, dwarves, or clay golems. It's not really a racial feat, it's more like a personalized background option specific to your character build. This route neatly separates racial fluff from mechanics matching race to class. If that's really what your after.

Might also help with multi-dimension spanning campaigns that might feature hundreds of sapient species.

Night Goat wrote:

ckafrica wrote:I've been having the same problem trying to find an interesting CRPG/MMO. Every time I try a new one I get bored before I actually get to the point i can do anything cool. While they don't have to be super powered, I want 4-6 distinctly different options a can go with out of the gate even if they will be quickly superceded by more powerful stuff.

Have you tried Divinity: Original Sin? The developers needed to impress players from the beginning, so they took the opposite approach of most CRPGs and gave the players some very cool abilities right from the start.

Divinity is not bad. I'm about have way through. My biggest complaint would be having to make the choice between combat and non-combat skills. I did solve the problem by getting the character editor and just giving myself enough non-combat skills

OgreBattle wrote: The action economy is....
-You have a Move, Standard, and Swift action

Make things as simple as they need to be ... this is too simple (or rather it would be a lie, you'd have lots of other actions even if you didn't name them). I'd say 4e got it almost right for a non-simultaneous turn flavour of D&D, I'd just remove the needless "immediate" term from reactions and interrupts.

Pedantic wrote:So has anyone outside of this thread found a review of 5e that has anything broadly critical to say about it? Because even people I generally trust to review other products are getting starry-eyed about it, and I'd like some faith in humanity again.

My larger gaming group, which could be considered a small community by now, has pitched in a few comments about liking it.

Mostly by older players who started with Basic or 2e.

Virtually all of them hated 4e and I have the distinct feeling that many of them like it because it "doesn't have 4e in it". Several have made comments of that nature.

These opinions all seem to stem from how they "feel" about playing/running the rule set. There's little-to-no rule system break down from them. Just things that feel right or wrong, what is fun, what feels wrong, etc.

They seem to be a pretty thick slice of the non-charOps/Dennizen larger-community that makes up our niche industry. (I probably have an example of just about every stereotype in our culture within driving distance.) Therefore it's my opinion that 5e actually stands a chance at surviving longer, or being more successful, than 4e if mearls plays his slimy cards right.

This does not mean it's a good game; just more palatable to older/generic gamers.

Stubbazubba wrote:That's a serious undertaking, with a lot of design work that might not cover very much play space. But the finished product would work. In theory, at least.

I think you're overestimating things. You need a robust set of rules for what small to medium sized humanoids can do anyway since that's the PCs are going to be. Once you have that down as a foundation layering on abilities even super game changing ones isn't that hard. You just have to make sure that PCs and monsters don't unlock major abilities too far ahead or behind schedule, but that's even easier than keeping the numbers on track.

In terms of creating an improved successor of 3.X...

Balancing wizards with fighters tends to occupy too much thought space. I dare to say, 4E's and 5E's dwelling on this point is one of the reasons why they suck. By TTRPG standards 3.X was fairly balanced anyway - power discrepancies were not really obvious until pretty far into the level range, and even after the game told fighting men to fuck off there still were several different viable classes. And it took several years of forum wars to come to the consensus that fighters suck.

I'd expect the following from the game that can surpass 3.X (and my slowly accumulated body of houserules) in quality:

- An abstract positioning system that does not amount to fights happening in a featureless vacuum or "lel, make some shit up, GM". See, 3.X tactical positioning system was great... for low fantasy and low levels. But once you got to mid-high levels - which were and are the main thing that set DnD apart from a thousand of low fantasy games on market - it fell apart, because every second combatant was flying really fast or tepeporting or burrowing or throwing massive magical attacks or some shit.

- A wealth system that manages to find some middle ground between gold being essentially worthless and the need to convert every single gold piece you find into personal equipment unless you want to nerf yourself.

- A skill system that does not amount to binary pass/fail rolls. 3.X' skill system was better than most by at least assigning some definite DCs to example tasks, so you could eyeball your chance of succeeding or failing at tasks. But the fact still is, the whole party being unable to advance the plot or maybe even dying because one member botched a single pass/fail Search or Survival check really sucks. They lead to either shitty games, or, more probably, GMs simply fudging with DCs in secret until the probability of unwanted outcome of that pass/fail check is minimal. Ironically 3.X in large part mitigated this problem because magic made many skills irrelevant very quickly. Which is hardly a good feature either, considering how much filddling the 3.X skill system demanded - unimportant systems should not be this complex.

- A setting that at least tries to take into account the crazy shit that high-level characters can do. Without an immediate kneejerk reaction to ban everything that might wreck your stereotypical fantasy pastiche. Though of course some shit like True Resurrection just needs to go if you want to tell meaningful stories. It might fail and be terrible, because of author's inability to properly draw the line between the genuinely disruptive things and abilities that simply empower characters beyond low-fantasy norms, but I'd appreciate the attempt itself.

It's not impossible to use tactical positioning even when things are going above Mach 1 you know.

In five foot squares it is.