Will 5e Suck Harder than 4e?

[ScottS]

This is a short "decent fantasy ideas" list just from the mods I was thinking of:

Return to ToH: the City of Moil backstory/setting; the Fortress of Conclusion as a bad-guy base to a lesser extent; in general the relatively seamless/consistent way it extended the Gygaxian-dickery concept of the original while adding new, occasionally good ideas (e.g. winterwights)

Return to WPM: the "immortality via spell-prep brain infection" concept and the wacky consequences of that backstory (e.g. giant slime mold archmage); again the reasonably deft way it added to/enhanced the original mod

Bastion of Broken Souls: the "unborn soul ecosystem in giant crystal snowflakes on the PosMat plane" idea (but yes most of this mod isn't good and kinda reads like a playtest for high-lvl chars)

If Thoughts Could Kill: not so much the "psionic planning council" idea but more so the "someone tries to shut down the whole process leading to clusterfuck" part (when I ran the mod I wound up changing the story so only one PC was getting 'the call' and everyone else who knew about the situation was trying to kill off/influence/mentally enslave that one guy)

Hyperconscious: the idea of "evil superbeing from a possible dystopian future going back in time via dreams and trying to fuck up the present in such a way that it makes itself more likely to occur"; also the particular and varied ways in which the oracles wind up mindfucking themselves (e.g. the city full of dire dreamselves)

[Username17]

You have, I noticed, mentioned zero mechanics. You could get that kind of high level design work out of Max from Where the Wild Things Are.

-Username17

[Antumbra]

Of course Fifth will be worse, after all:

"Fourth Edition solved every problem in 3.5, and people didn’t like it."


That guy was in a coffeeshop and GNS something something.

That's nearly twice as much veracitation as Mike Mearls right there.

It's so authorotatious that I can't... continue to smash words together, because the slight effort is almost a compliment.

[Username17]

Of course Fifth will be worse, after all:

"Fourth Edition solved every problem in 3.5, and people didn’t like it."

That hurt my brain. Anyone who can look at the skill challenge and wealth system train wrecks and tell me with a straight face that the game is perfect and has no major problems is a failure as a human being.

Skill challenges are supposed to be half the game. On release, they were uncompleteable. They have had serious errata issued dozens of times in the last couple years, including a major numbers overhaul before the game books had even arrived in all stores. And they still don't work.

-Username17

[Swordslinger]

That hurt my brain. Anyone who can look at the skill challenge and wealth system train wrecks and tell me with a straight face that the game is perfect and has no major problems is a failure as a human being.

Skill challenges are supposed to be half the game. On release, they were uncompleteable. They have had serious errata issued dozens of times in the last couple years, including a major numbers overhaul before the game books had even arrived in all stores. And they still don't work.

It hurts my brain how you keep repeating that crap about skill challenges are half the game. They are not. They aren't even close to half the page count, official modules have one or two per module at best, and most 4E groups don't even use them. Skill challenges are a minor specialized subsystem within 4E. They don't even cover the majority of the things you do with skills. Most of the time skills are handled via a skill check.

Skill challenges are busted but nobody even misses them.

[FatR]

Of course Fifth will be worse, after all:

"Fourth Edition solved every problem in 3.5, and people didn’t like it."

Arrgh! Stupidity! It burns, it burns!

Seriously, 4E made any of the inherent problems in 3.5, such as complexity overload, or game not being able to handle PCs at high levels, or wealth=power, even worse. (No, I don't consider balance that much of a problem, even if you don't eliminate classes at the extreme ends of of power rankings from the game entirely, which you totally can do, in my experience games die due to being bogged down in shopping lists, and deciding what spells to prepare, and counting various types of bonuses, and whatever before they die due to power disparities).

[Username17]

Skill challenges are supposed to be half the game. On release, they were uncompleteable. They have had serious errata issued dozens of times in the last couple years, including a major numbers overhaul before the game books had even arrived in all stores. And they still don't work.

It hurts my brain how you keep repeating that crap about skill challenges are half the game. They are not. They aren't even close to half the page count, official modules have one or two per module at best, and most 4E groups don't even use them. Skill challenges are a minor specialized subsystem within 4E. They don't even cover the majority of the things you do with skills. Most of the time skills are handled via a skill check.

Skill challenges are busted but nobody even misses them.

That is an awesomely selective memory you got there. You remember when 4e dropped and people were like "WTF is this shit!? There are no rules for like anything!" and the canned 4rrie response was "Use a Skill Challenge!"? People are supposed to start riding Griffins around level 7, but there are no rules to train, find, or buy griffins at that or any other level. The canned response was to use a skill challenge. Want to make a house? Skill challenge. Seduce the princess? Skill challenge. Spy on the duke? Skill challenge. Sail a boat? Skill challenge.

The game dropped with DCs to cast ritual spells, identify bears, and jump over pits. Interpersonal relations, investigation, scouting, crafting, exploring, spying, and research were all procrastinated to the Skill Challenge rules. And those rules didn't work. At all. And they still don't.

If Skill Challenges were never a really big part of the game, then every accusation that 4e is nothing but a series of repetitive combat engagements held together with some optional magical teaparty is true. The Skill Challenge was the big out that the designers used to justify every single thing that 4e did not include. And that was... just about everything. The entire game only has rules or writeups for four types of encounters:

• Combat
• Traps/Hazards (see skill challenges)
• Puzzles (see skill challenges)
• Skill Challenges

That's the whole game. If the Skill Challenges part doesn't fucking work and isn't used, the game is very small.

-Username17

[RobbyPants]

That hurt my brain. Anyone who can look at the skill challenge and wealth system train wrecks and tell me with a straight face that the game is perfect and has no major problems is a failure as a human being.

He got called out by a few people in the comments, but that was about it. I imagine the whole "the game is perfect" thing is a way to repetitively tell himself something to make it true in his mind.

It hurts my brain how you keep repeating that crap about skill challenges are half the game. They are not. They aren't even close to half the page count, official modules have one or two per module at best, and most 4E groups don't even use them. Skill challenges are a minor specialized subsystem within 4E. They don't even cover the majority of the things you do with skills. Most of the time skills are handled via a skill check.

Page count doesn't have much to do with it. In 3E and prior, spells were almost "half the game" in terms of page count, but it's not what everyone spent all their time doing. Really, 4E boils down to three things:

1) combat rules
2) non-combat rules (skill challenges)
3) MTP

And MTP isn't really part of the game; it's just filler that is used to fill up all the non-rules part. The parts that you don't pay for. So, for the two parts you pay for, it is one of two parts of the game. As for whether or not it's "half", it depends on how much time is spent in combat or doing puzzles/social interaction.


Edit:
This is what I get for opening half-a-dozen threads in multiple tabs: being ninjaed by 40 minutes!

[hogarth]

The entire game only has rules or writeups for four types of encounters:

• Combat
• Traps/Hazards (see skill challenges)
• Puzzles (see skill challenges)
• Skill Challenges

That's the whole game.

Well, there are skill uses that aren't Skill Challenges (tm). But I suppose you could count that as a degenerate case where you need one success before getting one failure.

[Username17]

The entire game only has rules or writeups for four types of encounters:

• Combat
• Traps/Hazards (see skill challenges)
• Puzzles (see skill challenges)
• Skill Challenges

That's the whole game.

Well, there are skill uses that aren't Skill Challenges (tm). But I suppose you could count that as a degenerate case where you need one success before getting one failure.

There are also "skill challenges" that involve non-skill actions such as using powers or even making attack rolls. These are seldom used, because the guidelines for this shit were even more incoherent than for using skills in skill challenges.

The Skill Challenge was sold as being the overarching framework for accomplishing "goals". They were even supposed to be combined with combat encounters to get goal advancement and fighting into the same encounter. This... didn't work at all.

The number of things that you can actually do in the game without skill challenges or magical teaparty are extremely small. The sum total of the Diplomacy skill used outside the context of skill challenges is literally this line of text:

Diplomacy is usually used in a skill challenge that requires a number of successes, but the DM might call for a Diplomacy check in other situations.

Yeah, you got that right. A Diplomacy check might be called for by the DM "in other situations". That is the entire non-skill challenge diplomacy rules in 4e. To be fair, there are a few things that have actual Skill DCs for actual effects. Jumping over pits, making Bear Lore checks, Stabilizing the dying, and forcing an enemy to surrender all get actual DCs. But those are also combat actions, so there you go.

-Username17

[Swordslinger]

That is an awesomely selective memory you got there. You remember when 4e dropped and people were like "WTF is this shit!? There are no rules for like anything!" and the canned 4rrie response was "Use a Skill Challenge!"? People are supposed to start riding Griffins around level 7, but there are no rules to train, find, or buy griffins at that or any other level. The canned response was to use a skill challenge. Want to make a house? Skill challenge. Seduce the princess? Skill challenge. Spy on the duke? Skill challenge. Sail a boat? Skill challenge.

There are still skill checks and there's still interaction with NPCs. Anything skill based that you could do in 3E, you could do in 4E with the same skill check mechanic.

The fact that skill challenges don't work might as well be considered a positive for the game if anything, because replacing an interesting scene like spying on the duke with just a series of boring rolls with intermediate flavor text is less interesting than doing it how you would in previous versions of D&D.

And the thing with skill challenges is that you don't need to use them. There's no scene that automatically demands a skill challenge. Ever. Skill challenges happen whenever the DM wants them to and that's it. That pretty much makes it the most optional system introduced in an RPG. Skill challenges not working in 4E is less detrimental than diplomacy not working in 3E.

[Username17]

There are still skill checks and there's still interaction with NPCs. Anything skill based that you could do in 3E, you could do in 4E with the same skill check mechanic.

Except you know... without skill check guidelines and with the rulebook explicitly telling you to use the nonfunctional skill challenges instead.

-Username17

[MGuy]

The fact that skill challenges don't work might as well be considered a positive for the game if anything

I do not understand your reasoning. If you "can" replace semi functional rules with rules that absolutely don't work how is that a positive? Moreover, if your suggestion is "don't use mentioned rules" then wouldn't that be you admitting that the rules, as they are, are a negative thing?

[nockermensch]

But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Bruce Cordell wrote the one and only Class Acts article that WotC has ever apologized for and redacted. Yes, he fucked up his "read the rules" check so hard when writing a fucking puff piece on line that it actually caused people to be incensed enough that they wrote enough nasty grams that Andy Collins was forced to apologize for it personally and have it rewritten.

Any further info about this?

Also, isn't Cordell the responsible for the Expanded Psionics Handbook? That book has a couple of real stinkers (Soulknife and Wilder) but isn't the basic power point system and the psion/psi-warrior classes considered "good"?

[Lago PARANOIA]

And the thing with skill challenges is that you don't need to use them. There's no scene that automatically demands a skill challenge. Ever. Skill challenges happen whenever the DM wants them to and that's it. That pretty much makes it the most optional system introduced in an RPG. Skill challenges not working in 4E is less detrimental than diplomacy not working in 3E.

Look, if skill challenges weren't going to work right, instead of cluttering my book with that intentionally nonfunctional bullshit, how about an extra class or two?

I'm annoyed by someone putting in rules that they expected to work right but didn't, but I'm downright furious at the idea that someone would intentionally put something into the fucking game with the intention of most people never using it. That's not just making the game worse, that's downright ripping your audience off.

[Username17]

Any further info about this?

Apparently, Bruce Cordell made a Class Acts puff piece for the Ranger. He violated most of the design guidelines for 4e powers. Which is a feat, because that shit isn't complicated or interesting. There were Utilities that did damage, attacks that did the wrong number of Ws, powers that did not interact with the timing of the game properly, interrupts that did not list triggers, and some other stuff I don't even remember.

Andy Collins had the piece rewritten and admitted it was not up to WotC's standards in order to mollify the angry 4rries.

Also, isn't Cordell the responsible for the Expanded Psionics Handbook? That book has a couple of real stinkers (Soulknife and Wilder) but isn't the basic power point system and the psion/psi-warrior classes considered "good"?

Spell Point systems are nothing new. Fuck, there's a spell point proposal in Unearthed Arcana. The Psionics version is one of the worst I've seen. Because in addition to the normal problems that spell point systems have (encouraging ability spam, setting an exchange rate between higher and lower tier abilities that will almost invariably serve to render one or the other obsolete, etc.) it also has the entirely unique system wherein some abilities have to be "augmented" to stay level appropriate (thereby causing them to cost more and more mana as you level), while others don't (causing them to get relatively cheaper as you level. Even within the context of augmenting to scale damage, the damage trade-offs are linear, meaning that there is no purpose served in using something smaller than you could have. It's a clusterfuck of epic failure. Even if you're the kind of person who likes Spell Points.

If you were going to make a spell point system, you'd have Thundaga do more damage than Thunda, but less damage per spell point. That's so fucking obvious that even the shitty Final Fantasies figured it out. But Bruce Cordell thought it was a good idea to have the cost of a damage die be the same whether you were casting it through Thunda or Thundaga, which means that there is never any point in using Thunda at all, and its presence on the list is just a waste of space on your character sheet and in your mind.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx ... s/20090717

That was the website it was originally on. Unfortunately Wizards.com scrubbed it from their news and web.archive.org doesn't cough up anything.

Fortunately, I still have the original .pdf and you can look up 'Revision to Class Acts: Ranger' on Google if you doubt the existence of such a document.

[Swordslinger]

I do not understand your reasoning. If you "can" replace semi functional rules with rules that absolutely don't work how is that a positive? Moreover, if your suggestion is "don't use mentioned rules" then wouldn't that be you admitting that the rules, as they are, are a negative thing?

In the case of skill challenges, yes. They're bad. It's not so much they're bad because they're nonfunctional, so much as that they're boring. It's just a bunch of boring die rolls in sequence that's supposed to abstract out all sorts of scenes with very little in common.

They don't add anything to the game, and so yeah, I'm actually glad people don't use them, because it would be a boring subsystem even if they could get it to work right.

Look, if skill challenges weren't going to work right, instead of cluttering my book with that intentionally nonfunctional bullshit, how about an extra class or two?

I'm annoyed by someone putting in rules that they expected to work right but didn't, but I'm downright furious at the idea that someone would intentionally put something into the fucking game with the intention of most people never using it. That's not just making the game worse, that's downright ripping your audience off.

True, but every book has parts that people don't wish were in there. There are plenty of rules in the 3E DMG that are nonfunctional and equivalent to ripping people off. Like the stock NPC rules that produce NPCs that don't live up to their CRs or the ridiculously high priced Cost of traps table and system they have in the 3.5 DMG. What NPC actually buys traps anyway? The DM just places them... and no PC in his right mind is going to use that shit.

Now I can guarantee you most groups haven't even bothered with that crap.

The idea that rulebooks include some stuff that you're probably not going to use is kinda of annoying, but I don't consider it damning by any means. I can find a section in almost every game that I don't intend to use in my games at all.

[nockermensch]

Re: Redated class acts:

This was... quite something, in fact. I couldn't find any info about this article on the Web, so it seems they swept it under the rug.


Re: Psionics power points

I see... I'm bad at analysing why exactly stuff sucks, but I already had noticed the wonkiness you mentioned, but by the inverse side: There's no much point on learning the higher level damage dealing powers, once you already have energy missile and energy stun, for example.

[CapnTthePirateG]

http://www.enworld.org/forum/news/31731 ... tions.html

So what have we learned from this? Based on that comment about "the basic orc will remain relevant", I can see leveling up not mattering. At all. The Oblivion-style level scaling begins!

[nockermensch]

http://www.enworld.org/forum/news/31731 ... tions.html

So what have we learned from this? Based on that comment about "the basic orc will remain relevant", I can see leveling up not mattering. At all. The Oblivion-style level scaling begins!

What I learned from reading the transcript is: They're talking high-level points that I doubt are even possible to be implemented. It really sounds like a bunch of marketeers selling a product idea without having any idea of how their engineers will actually produce it.

[Lago PARANOIA]

The idea that rulebooks include some stuff that you're probably not going to use is kinda of annoying, but I don't consider it damning by any means. I can find a section in almost every game that I don't intend to use in my games at all.

I consider it damning if people don't use it and it was intended for people not to use. I fucking hate book filler more than I hate rules that tried to produce something usable but came up short. The latter sucks but at least the author was acting in good faith. For the first you're being ripped off.

Even though Adventurer's Vault was a lot more unbalanced than Mordenkainen's Magical Item Compendium, I dislike it a lot less than the latter because the second book was intentionally made to fill up space with useless shit. People who do that have no respect for the game nor the people who buy their product and it's harmful to the game in the long run.

I know you're trying to rescue the utter fail of 4E with some 'I meant to do that ha ha' mealy-mouthed bullshit, but seriously, if true that's the kind of shit that would make me completely swear off a product line. Fortunately it's not true, because WotC went into headless chicken mode trying to fix skill challenges before they gave up on it.

[Lago PARANOIA]

The thing is that there's various levels of non-functioning.

They didn't have enough room to make their vision fully pan out but wanted to get their foot in the door for it. They may or may not expand on it later.

They thought that a mechanic was going to be more popular than it really was, but for whatever reason it doesn't pan out and it gets abandoned.

The mechanic gets obsoleted by newer material. This can be because of errata or because unrelated material works so much better than no one uses it anymore.

The mechanic is nonfunctional because of power creep.

Crappy later material completely shits on what was more-or-less okay at the outset, such as Savage Species or Psionics.

The mechanic is nonfunctional because of initial fucked-up rules design, like getting the math wrong.

The mechanic is nonfunctional because it was never meant to be functional. Like filler feats.

And so on. The level of forgiveness you can give someone for a mechanic failing depends on the particulars. While it's always bad, my response can be anywhere from 'I'll be waiting for the expansion book with baited breath' to 'fuck you, I am never buying another product from this line ever again'.

[ModelCitizen]

Q: What are you doing to make sure that each character/player feels useful in each part of the game?
Mike: It goes back to the three pillars and supporting the different kinds of play - we definitely are working on having DM and player tools and options in place so that characters are engaged. Example - you can have that master climber, but you want others to feel included and involved in whatever thing when that master climber gets to show off.

for so many reasons.

[hogarth]

Q: What are you doing to make sure that each character/player feels useful in each part of the game?
Mike: It goes back to the three pillars and supporting the different kinds of play - we definitely are working on having DM and player tools and options in place so that characters are engaged. Example - you can have that master climber, but you want others to feel included and involved in whatever thing when that master climber gets to show off.

for so many reasons.

Master climber...that's awesome. I liked the comments along the lines of:

"I met one guy who hasn't played since 1E and he wanted a simple character. That sample size of one convinced me there's a real appetite out there for simple characters!"

"We'll allow you to swap your simple ability for one of a bunch of complex abilities, and somehow that won't be an advantage at all!"

"4E did a really great job in showing how you can go from one style of play to another: a low tier character will fight an orc guarding a pie, a mid tier character will fight a mega-orc guarding a mega-pie, and an epic tier character will fighter a super-mega-orc guarding a super-mega-pie!"