The Gaming Den

crasskris wrote:
(Assuming Monte is the woman in this intellectual parenthood - he surely seems to be the one who was hit over the head, dragged into a cave and then messily fertilized).

Rape is hilarious!

FrankTrollman wrote:The very fact that they put in the idea that healing surges could appear in a module means that they are fucking with us or grossly incompetent. Healing surges are a limit to daily healing, you can't put them in as an optional module. If they aren't an overall limit, they don't exist. It would be like choosing to not have hit points or something.

-Username17

Well, they could go the "you're in an alternate plane, and healing magic works very differently here" route.

Orion wrote:

crasskris wrote:(Assuming Monte is the woman in this intellectual parenthood - he surely seems to be the one who was hit over the head, dragged into a cave and then messily fertilized).

Rape is hilarious!

As George Carlin states, "It all depends on how you construct the joke."

ishy wrote:Do you think the option: "critical fumbles" is still just so they can ignore every vote of people who voted for that one?

I'm not so optimist. I have two competing ideas of what's actually happening at WotC right now, none of them nice:

1) They have no idea of how to actually implement their marketing talk, and are looking for ideas.

2) By making the V edition (V being 5 or "Vapor") "crowd-sourced" they'll generate interest from the community, who'll think their ideas are being heard.

FrankTrollman wrote:The very fact that they put in the idea that healing surges could appear in a module means that they are fucking with us or grossly incompetent. Healing surges are a limit to daily healing, you can't put them in as an optional module. If they aren't an overall limit, they don't exist. It would be like choosing to not have hit points or something.

Huh? You could easily add healing surges (or something like them) to a 3.5 game as an optional module. It might change the balance of the game somewhat, but to say it's impossible is stupid.

hogarth wrote:

FrankTrollman wrote:The very fact that they put in the idea that healing surges could appear in a module means that they are fucking with us or grossly incompetent. Healing surges are a limit to daily healing, you can't put them in as an optional module. If they aren't an overall limit, they don't exist. It would be like choosing to not have hit points or something.

Huh? You could easily add healing surges (or something like them) to a 3.5 game as an optional module. It might change the balance of the game somewhat, but to say it's impossible is stupid.

Healing surges aren't "you get a certain amount of extra healing per day". If you hand those out to people who buy them with complexity points, you're not playing with healing surges. Healing Surges are a universe-wide resource that has to be husbanded and managed.

When you use healing effects or get drained wall climbing or some shit, your healing surges go down. It has to be built into the core mechanics or not at all. Because if you have surgeless healing or people who don't have surges or non-surge based adventure limiting resources, you're not using surges.

I was dead serious when I said it would be like making Hit Points optional. If even one player isn't playing a game with hit points in it, then what the fuck are your hit points defending you from? What are your hit point dealing weapons supposed to do? Healing surges is a way of structuring the entire game. You can't shove it in sideways and piecemeal, because that doesn't make any fucking sense.

-Username17

Do the people allowing for surges to be voted on necessarily make a distinction between healing surges the resource as you state vs healing surges the "extra healing per day"?

virgil wrote:Do the people allowing for surges to be voted on necessarily make a distinction between healing surges the resource as you state vs healing surges the "extra healing per day"?

I find it hilarious that by Frank's definition, even 4E doesn't use healing surges!

Frank Trollman wrote:Because if you have surgeless healing or people who don't have surges or non-surge based adventure limiting resources, you're not using surges.

Hint: Astral Seal is surgeless healing.

hogarth wrote:

virgil wrote:Do the people allowing for surges to be voted on necessarily make a distinction between healing surges the resource as you state vs healing surges the "extra healing per day"?

I find it hilarious that by Frank's definition, even 4E doesn't use healing surges!

Frank Trollman wrote:Because if you have surgeless healing or people who don't have surges or non-surge based adventure limiting resources, you're not using surges.

Hint: Astral Seal is surgeless healing.

And look at all the whining that Astral Seal causes. Justifiable whining, I might add. Despite the fact that the damage healed is frankly bullshit. It has mechanics that simply don't fit into 4e at all, which is why 4rries whine, bitch, moan and complain about it. If 3e players get Fast Healing they don't even really care, because 3e isn't based around a limited daily healing model and it doesn't make much difference.

Healing Surges aren't about extra healing, they are about limited healing. Limitations can't be optional or they aren't limitations.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote: And look at all the whining that Astral Seal causes. Justifiable whining, I might add.

So maybe it's a poor idea to mix them. But your blanket statements above (that they cannot exist in the same system whatsoever) just make you look like a moron.

nockermensch wrote:

ishy wrote:Do you think the option: "critical fumbles" is still just so they can ignore every vote of people who voted for that one?

I'm not so optimist. I have two competing ideas of what's actually happening at WotC right now, none of them nice:

1) They have no idea of how to actually implement their marketing talk, and are looking for ideas.

2) By making the V edition (V being 5 or "Vapor") "crowd-sourced" they'll generate interest from the community, who'll think their ideas are being heard.

Basic marketing strategies are not nice?

Marketing talk is inherently bullshit, so finding out what to focus on keeps the product from becoming an undefined mess. If you poll the crowd, it makes them feel like they matter, which generates more goodwill to piss away later.

hogarth wrote:

FrankTrollman wrote: And look at all the whining that Astral Seal causes. Justifiable whining, I might add.

So maybe it's a poor idea to mix them. But your blanket statements above (that they cannot exist in the same system whatsoever) just make you look like a moron.

Really? So how would healing surges work if half the group uses them, and the next encounter nobody uses them and the next the entire group uses them?

Mask_De_H wrote:

nockermensch wrote:

ishy wrote:Do you think the option: "critical fumbles" is still just so they can ignore every vote of people who voted for that one?

I'm not so optimist. I have two competing ideas of what's actually happening at WotC right now, none of them nice:

1) They have no idea of how to actually implement their marketing talk, and are looking for ideas.

2) By making the V edition (V being 5 or "Vapor") "crowd-sourced" they'll generate interest from the community, who'll think their ideas are being heard.

Basic marketing strategies are not nice?

Marketing talk is inherently bullshit, so finding out what to focus on keeps the product from becoming an undefined mess. If you poll the crowd, it makes them feel like they matter, which generates more goodwill to piss away later.

Look, these strategies are nice. For them. I'm a potential consumer here.

There are over 1300 votes for critical fumbles.


For comparison, the highest votes ANYTHING else got was Critical hits, with 2900.


That's roughly 40% of people voting who want critical fumbles.

Prestige classes currently have about 30 more votes than Critical Fumbles. Paragon Paths have about 100 fewer.

nockermensch wrote: Look, these strategies are nice. For them. I'm a potential consumer here.

And as a consumer being marketed to, you control the product in this form of marketing. If they wanted to, they could sell you a product by making up arbitrary assumptions that they then convince you that you want (like the leadup to 4e or the stuff leading up to the playtest). The polls and the presentation of the general design philosophy is heavily crowdsourced focus grouping. They are relying on you and people like you to give them ideas and do their work for them so they can then sell the bullshit John Q. Consumer said he wanted back to him.

This is pretty much the form of marketing that gives you the most power as a consumer without an actual product you pay for with actual money, since it isn't on the surface "you will buy what we tell you to buy".

Mask_De_H wrote:

nockermensch wrote: Look, these strategies are nice. For them. I'm a potential consumer here.

And as a consumer being marketed to, you control the product in this form of marketing. If they wanted to, they could sell you a product by making up arbitrary assumptions that they then convince you that you want (like the leadup to 4e or the stuff leading up to the playtest). The polls and the presentation of the general design philosophy is heavily crowdsourced focus grouping. They are relying on you and people like you to give them ideas and do their work for them so they can then sell the bullshit John Q. Consumer said he wanted back to him.

This is pretty much the form of marketing that gives you the most power as a consumer without an actual product you pay for with actual money, since it isn't on the surface "you will buy what we tell you to buy".

Oh well, here we go:
1) This at very assumes their good faith with the requests for feedback and massive playtest. Alright, I'll grant them that for the purposes of this reply. Even then:

2) "the consumer controls the product" is only true in the same vague sense of "the voter controls the election in a democracy". In pratice, what happens is pretty much different. I mean, the two biggest player bases today are playing the train wreck that's 4e or the train wreck that's Pathfinder. And ENJOYING it. The feedback they'll receive will be bound to reflect their preferences.

3) Tying this into the thread's theme, if they were asking for help for playtesting only, it'd be a more acceptable thing. But they're asking for directions on what to implement. At this point, it's very hard to keep believing on the product, because from their request it follows that the product doesn't even exist as a complete thing on their heads.

4) That Penny Arcade comic about the sex fuelled adventures, or whatever. Remove a bit of exageration for comic effect and what they said there is pretty much true.

Really, I think the best scenario is that they actually already have a good idea of what to do and are doing this pooling/request for feedback as a marketing stunt only. Pathfinder playtest 2.0.

But they've already said they know the Gnome rule, where if only 10% of people want gnomes you can't cut them out because that's probably 50% of groups who either just lost a player or the group didn't convert (half of 3e players stuck with Pathfinder, eh).

Hell, when they said they'd played all previous versions of D&D, they included Pathfinder in the list. That's a big shoutout, makes me think Paizo's on board.

Anyhoo, 10% of everyone just voted for every single bullshit option on their list. So they're fucked now. That many people were voting for the sex-based stat caps, so they had to fix the poll because that offends so much of their market, but everything else on that list has to be a module now. Hah!

This poll was just "vote up your favorite edition." The difference between a Kit and a Theme is that one is a 2e mechanic and the other is 4e. In pretend 5e I have no idea what the difference is but the poll lists them separately.

A lot of the choices I can't tell if I'm voting for what the mechanic lets you do or voting for its restrictions. Does Rituals mean I want to cast spells outside of combat or does it mean I want the 4e balance gods to punish me for it? Does Healing Surges mean per-target daily limits or Second Wind or both? Who fucking knows.

Also, Monte needs to stop saying Simulationist. Maybe he hasn't drank too much of Mearls' koolaid because he doesn't use the term the way Forge-tards like Mearls do, but that just means it's hard to figure out what he's even talking about. He seems to think it means grognardy complexity in pursuit of "realism" - Weapon Type vs Armor, thrown weapons you don't use because they don't even go as far as you can charge, shit like that. I guess that's worth discussing but call it something else.

This is interesting. Some guy spilled the beans on a bunch of playtest mechanics. here.

I'm not liking the "everyone autosaves" thing...why have charm and sleep spells if they never work?

Looks like they took the tome jester ability for the thief too.

Guessing from the haste spell, you will still be spending actions to command summons. While I can see why they implemented that mechanic, I still fucking hate it with the burning passion of a thousand suns.

+2 bullshit items are back. Cometh the Christmas tree.

Yeah D&D5ePlayer, that "NDA violation" totally can't be traced back to you. They'll never figure out who played the elf wizard in the party with the human wizard, the halfling thief, and the warlord. I smell a deliberate leak. Which is fine, but funny.

CapnTthePirateG wrote:I'm not liking the "everyone autosaves" thing...why have charm and sleep spells if they never work?

I'm guessing because they have both an attack roll and a save, Stunning Fist style. You know how 90% of the world doesn't get iterated probability? Even simple shit like how you're less likely to pass two successive rolls than one individual roll? Yeah, that.

It wouldn't be the first time they deliberately leaked an edition.

The modifiers being described in that were way smaller than the modifiers described elsewhere, and he was at least acting like you still had to roll on a saving throw even if it was below your stat.

The description of the accumulated piddling bonuses really makes me think that they learned absolutely nothing. +1 from Bless, +1 from Haste? Fucking hell.

Although actually the worst part of that is this:

I hasted the party (+1 to weapon attacks, +1 AC, +5ft move, and I can give up my standard action any turn to grant a move or standard to anyone else effected), and then I used Invisibility. I spent the whole fight just giving the hafling more attacks.

That "makes sense" from a tactical standpoint. Obviously, if Haste allows you to convert actions of yoruself to actions of another character you would trade your actions out to whoever had the most relevant attack. But that's... terrible. That is the most boring fucking thing I could imagine. It's the Skill Challenge problem (the best option is to not take actions and let the diplomancer roll more dice), but generalized to combat.

-Username17

I guess they figure if 3rd edition did it, then it's all kosher? As it seems most will assume it's a mix of 3rd edition presentation, with a hand of 4th edition weakening it.

Frank, may I ask what kind of combat would make you more satisfied in a Fantasy RPG, even if specific to D&D?

Otherwise, doesn't seem learned much in way of anything, hell even spell DC's are apparently done as a roll on the D20 plus an attribute modifier, so have fun with that wacky Range, on top of an extra roll.

CapnTthePirateG wrote: Guessing from the haste spell, you will still be spending actions to command summons. While I can see why they implemented that mechanic, I still fucking hate it with the burning passion of a thousand suns.

It would be a perfectly fine mechanic if they'd have the common sense to make the summon's actions actually be better than a pc's normal at-will powers... it's just they've failed to do that at almost every point.