# 4e design in 5.5e ?



## Malmuria

@EzekielRaiden suggested I post this in its own thread, so blame them if this goes off the rails!

As 5.5 is announced, it is also clear that 4e is having a moment, due in no small part by Matt Colville's recent advocacy and streaming.  I never played 4e, but it seems there are a lot of fans of the edition here, and I'm curious as to your take on 4e design, and what 4e have or should be brought over into 5.5.  This discussion started by me asking what people thought of Justin Alexander's many criticisms of the system, some of which are here:









						Dissociated Mechanics – A Brief Primer
					

Four years ago, in an effort to understand why I found so many of the design decisions in the 4th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons antithetical to what I wanted from a roleplaying game, I wrote an es




					thealexandrian.net
				




So, very much not trying to start an edition war here!  So let's be nice to everyone! Rather, looking to gather thoughts on how mechanics from 4e played out at the table (e.g. did they feel "disassociated"), and what should be brought forward into 5.5.


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## NaturalZero

The big thing for me is monster and encounter design.

One of the features they're pimping is the removal of PHB spells from monsters which was the largest proud nail for me when they moved to 5e. I remember the 4e design process where they ostensibly solved all of the issues I had with 3.5, including the ridiculous lists of spells in monster stat blocks. It was perplexing that they threw out their own solution and went back to a paradigm where monsters had multiple spells that would never be used in play and required reference to multiple pages in a separate book to run. I look forward to tossing the 5e design ethic in favor of the cleaner 4e version.

In 4e, the encounter formula was one basic monster of a level was equivalent to a PC of that level for an easy/standard encounter and you could go up or down from there. You could slap together a somewhat appropriate fight within 20 seconds without having to consult a chart or budget, and the result was more balanced (if you're going for balance) than 3e or 5e. That would be something I'd like to see return, but I'm not holding my breath.


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## Mistwell

I would be happy if the updated version of 5e added more interesting monster abilities which harkens back to some of 4e monster design.

I also hope they take another crack at skill challenges. It never quite worked as written at most tables, but they were very close to nailing that concept down.


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## billd91

Looking back on it, there’s a lot about 4e that strikes me as a deconstructed fantasy RPG that gets experimented on, and that then doesn’t get fully put back together into a synthesized whole. 5e took the 4e experiment and synthesized it back with its roots making a much better D&D, as such, I wouldn‘t want too much to be pushed back in from the cutting room floor - at least not without similar care to wed it to the game’s roots.


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## Malmuria

My understanding of what 4e mostly comes from videos like this that...do not make it sound very appealing.  But even in 3.5 or 5e, there can be a lot to keep track of in combat that really slows things down.


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## EzekielRaiden

Malmuria said:


> @EzekielRaiden suggested I post this in its own thread, so blame them if this goes off the rails!
> 
> As 5.5 is announced, it is also clear that 4e is having a moment, due in no small part by Matt Colville's recent advocacy and streaming.  I never played 4e, but it seems there are a lot of fans of the edition here, and I'm curious as to your take on 4e design, and what 4e have or should be brought over into 5.5.  This discussion started by me asking what people thought of Justin Alexander's many criticisms of the system, some of which are here:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Dissociated Mechanics – A Brief Primer
> 
> 
> Four years ago, in an effort to understand why I found so many of the design decisions in the 4th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons antithetical to what I wanted from a roleplaying game, I wrote an es
> 
> 
> 
> 
> thealexandrian.net
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> So, very much not trying to start an edition war here!  So let's be nice to everyone! Rather, looking to gather thoughts on how mechanics from 4e played out at the table (e.g. did they feel "disassociated"), and what should be brought forward into 5.5.



Alright. I'm not sure if this essay is new _to me_ or not (it is, after all, nine years old), but I will approach it as though it were a new one and give my commentary. As I mentioned in that prior thread, I am pretty against both the theory itself and the Alexandrian's presentation thereof. I say this only to make it clear that I am a major skeptic.

To begin, we have a flawed premise, that you can _cleanly_ separate "things my character knows and is aware of" from "things my character _could not_ know and _is not_ aware of." My counter-example for this is FFXIV (yes, a video game!) FFXIV puts great emphasis on what TVTropes calls "gameplay and story integration": almost all mechanics are _directly_ related to the story, even for many things that wouldn't be in other games. Two main examples (among many, MANY others) are "area of effect" markers from enemy attacks, and groups "wiping" (TPK) on content. An in-game power called the Echo explains both narratively--and is critical to some plot points.

The Echo has many mysterious powers, and the PC (and many adventurers) possess it. Some powers are fluffy, like "you understand all languages" or "you see flashbacks about other people," but there's also _limited precognition_. AoE markers are the Echo forewarning you about your enemies' attacks, so that _to them_, you're nigh-invincible, dodging everything. This is even story-critical during the Stormblood expansion, where you must fight _enemies_ who have an artificial version, and need a workaround (one that, notably, _isn't explained to you_, because if _you_ knew how it worked, your enemies could dodge it). The Echo also explains TPKs/"wipes": they _don't happen_, they're Echo visions of what would happen to cause failure--meaning you can "learn" from mistakes in timelines that never happened.

That's the main, fundamental, fatal flaw with "dissociated" mechanics. _Literally any_ mechanic can be _made_ associated. It's not an inherent property; it arises from personal interpretation. IOW, it depends on what things each player desires an explanation for, and what things they feel have such an explanation. But there are also other issues I'll address later.

Second section, Metagamed and Abstracted, he basically admits that this is not actually a _category_ problem at all, but rather a disagreement over how much explanation is required:


> But this generalization can be misleading when taken too literally. All mechanics are both _metagamed_ and _abstracted_: They exist outside of the character’s world and they are only rough approximations of that world. For example, the destructive power of a _fireball_ is defined by the number of d6’s you roll for damage; and the number of d6’s you roll is determined by the caster level of the wizard casting the spell. If you asked a character about d6’s of damage or caster levels, they’d obviously have no idea what you were talking about. But the character _could_ tell you what a _fireball_ is and that casters of greater skill can create more intense flames during the casting of the spell.




In other words, _absolutely all_ mechanics are necessarily abstracted. And, in many cases, the relationship between those abstractions and the final product is tenuous at best. All we have for numerous spells, for example, is that we know what _mechanically_ happens, and we thus construct from that mechanical knowledge a fiction that works. Ideally, the mechanics conform in all cases to what we would naturally expect--but sometimes they don't. When they don't, we work around it one way or the other, tweaking mechanics to match natural expectations or accepting a break from those naturalist expectations so the mechanics keep going. This is true of literally all games that model anything where naturalistic expectations may apply. (And, as before, you can always _invent_ explanations of the form "characters can tell you what X is and that casters of greater skill create more intense flames"--those are _setting elements_, not _rules elements_.)

The subsequent "Explaining It All Away" section is where we get into the hardcore cherry-picking, or rather, willful blindness of long-established mechanics in order to critique new mechanics:


> On a similar note, there is a misconception that a mechanic isn’t dissociated as long as you can explain what happened in the game world as a result. The argument goes like this: “Although I’m using the One-Handed Catch ability, all the character knows is that they made a really great one-handed catch. The character isn’t confused by what happened, so it’s not dissociated.” What the argument misses is that the dissociation already happened in the first sentence. The explanation you provide after the fact doesn’t remove it.
> 
> To put it another way: The One-Handed Catch ability is a mechanical manipulation with no corresponding reality in the game world whatsoever. You might have a very good improv session that is vaguely based on the dissociated mechanics you’re using, but there has been a fundamental disconnect between the game and the world. You could just as easily be playing a game of _Chess_ while improvising a vaguely related story about a royal coup starring your character named Rook.




As others have noted above: What's the in-advance explanation for an attack that misses? There isn't one, because AC is so many wildly diverse things that all you know, prior to rolling, is _that_ an attack is being made. What's the in-advance explanation of hit points having no specific negative impact until the last one? There isn't one, because HP are so many narratively-distinct things that it's impossible to do anything more than describe vague "wounds" or "that really hurt" etc. (I have _zero interest_ in opening the "are HP meat-points or abstraction-points," so if anyone wishes to debate me on that topic, that wish will not be granted.) What's the in-advance explanation for things like Wizards only gaining new spells in discrete chunks, and in particular, doing so exactly two at a time? There isn't one, even though that's something _every_ Wizard should be intimately familiar with.

There are dozens of mechanics riddled throughout D&D that are naturally "dissociated" unless given a clear in-character explanation. Few, if any, settings provide such explanations. The Alexandrian never had a problem with any of those things. However, _when 4e comes along_, THEN it becomes a problem. That's blatant special pleading.

The next section, on re-associating mechanics, again conflates _setting interpretations_ with _rules elements_. Association _isn't a rule element_; it isn't even a _setting_ element. It is a player _interpretation_ of setting elements, on whether and how those setting elements correlate to the rules elements. Thus, it's incorrect to say that it is a "house rule" to provide _post hoc_ explanations, in setting terms, for so-called "dissociated" mechanics. Both his "this falls afoul of the Rule 0 fallacy" and his "this requires hundreds, perhaps thousands of house-rules" arguments thus completely fall apart. What he's actually opposing here is "reskinning": the idea that a single mechanic can have more than one narrative explanation, and that a single narrative explanation might come from two different sources. 4e radically embraced reskinning, and while 5e is substantially more restrained about it (as it is with almost everything 4e did*), it does engage in some--yet, again, the Alexandrian does not take 5e to task for doing that.

The section on realism is basically him addressing a non-sequitur. My only comment on it is that "realism" does have one thing in common with dissociation: they're both personal interpretation masquerading as objective characteristics of rules. It's why I've exclusively switched to talking about rules being "grounded" rather than "realistic." "Realistic" innately connotes objectivity, while "grounded" innately connotes subjectivity, and "grounded" is allowed to have different meanings in different contexts, while "realistic" is expected to conform, more or less, to the physical world you and I live in.

The penultimate section, which I won't even dignify with quoting, is Mr. Alexander stating his usual gatekeeping screed: some games _just are_ roleplaying games, and thus fit thus-and-such standard, and all the other games _just aren't_ roleplaying games, no matter how much evidence one might show to the contrary. As was mentioned by others above, this is not a _conclusion_ that Mr. Alexander came to after careful analysis of a variety of pieces of evidence. It is a prior _belief_ that he has carefully selected evidence to support. And his whole line about "the act of using associated mechanics IS roleplaying" is absolute hogwash--and, when paired with his foregoing statements about "dissociated" mechanics, it is quite literally telling ardent roleplayers playing 4e "You are having badwrongfun, please start having goodrightfun." Like...anyone who expressly states that "telling a good story" "has nothing to do with roleplaying," I just...I don't know what to say to that person, I lack the words to express  how incoherent that statement is.

His final statement is a hilariously-transparent "I'm not trying to hate on you, I'm just trying to hate on you!" band-aid over a bullet wound. Like, I honestly have no idea how he can end how he does when he talks about "Ultimately, this explains why so many people have had intensely negative reactions to dissociated mechanics: They’re antithetical to the defining characteristic of a roleplaying game and, thus, fundamentally incompatible with the primary reason many people play roleplaying games." That's (a) accusation of badwrongfun, (b) elevating "intensely negative reactions" from a subgroup of the community to _objective analysis of game design_, and (c) presenting his pet theory of what "roleplaying game" means as though it is the one, only, _and objective_ meaning of the term.

I know this is long, but I'm responding to a rather long essay to begin with; brevity was never an option. I hope this has been helpful in communicating exactly why I have so many problems with this specific essay and The Alexandrian in general.

Also, I encourage you, if you are interested in learning more about 4e that doesn't come from parody videos, to both check out the link I included above--it is definitely my "best" post in terms of likes etc. from other posters--and to check out any of Matt Colville's YouTube videos where he talks about 4e. Also, if you're interested, I can offer explanations of why 4e spoke so much to me, and why I was so deeply disappointed that 5e abandoned so much of 4e (or, as noted above, did its absolute best to conceal any 4e mechanics it actually used).


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## Willie the Duck

Malmuria said:


> [I never played 4e, but it seems there are a lot of fans of the edition here, and I'm curious as to your take on 4e design, and what 4e have or should be brought over into 5.5.



I think coming right off of the relative failure/rejection that 4e received from many D&D fans at the time (we can go back and forth to no end or purpose about the why or how much of it), the designers were really restarined in how much of 4e they put in 5e (at least obviously). I think now that the vitriol has died down quite a bit, it would be a good time to mine the thing for more of the good things it did.

For me, the biggest thing might be to build up the ritual spell mechanic, allowing the party fighter to (with some feats) be the party ressurector or planar-travel guide, or the like. Others might have other favorite 4e things to favor.


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## MichaelSomething

It's not there already?

Hit dice, short rest abilities, and at will cantrips don't count?


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## niklinna

It's funny, when I started reading the dissociated mechanics essay, I was like, yeah, I didn't like that about 4e either! But then I quickly saw how badly the author was grasping at straws in their arguments. Fact remains that, much as I liked many other things about 4e, I specifically didn't like the encounter/daily time-gating, but not for the reasons the Alexandrian struggled to articulate/justify. Of course, there are several other things I have specifically liked/disliked about every edition of D&D I've played—basic (Holmes) through 5e—not that I need to argue why I'm Right And You're Wrong about any of them.


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## EzekielRaiden

MichaelSomething said:


> It's not there already?
> 
> Hit dice, short rest abilities, and at will cantrips don't count?



I encourage you to check out the post I linked above. I wrote it, specifically breaking down all the points of design where I felt the two games diverge despite _appearing_ similar (and at least a few places where 5e _is_ more like 4e than 3e!)

The one thing I didn't specifically discuss there was short rest abilities. The fact that 5e changed the short rest to be an entire _hour_ pretty radically changed the nature of short-rest anything in 5e vs 4e. In 4e, short-rest abilities are reliable tools, something you can count on to have _basically_ all the time--with short rests being only five minutes, it's hard but not impossible to enter a combat without all of your short-rest abilities at the ready. Not so with 5e, both intentionally and unintentionally: they very much intended short-rest abilities to be stretched out over 2, or even sometimes 3 combats. They also _intended_ that players would get 2-3 short rests (average 2.5 or a little higher) per day, when in practice, most groups go for 1-2 per day (average 1.5 or a little lower). Short-rest classes were balanced for a playstyle that doesn't, generally speaking, actually happen. So, in both theory and practice, 5e short-rest abilities are a rare spice to be carefully rationed; 4e short-rest abilities are reliable tools meant to be deployed consistently. Again, a case of "vaguely similar, but shorn of critical parts."

That's part of what's going to change in 5.5e, by the by. Most classes that use short-rest things are going to be reworked so that they instead use some variation on the "proficiency bonus per long rest" system. I'm not sure how they intend to fix some of the bigger issue cases, like Battlemaster Fighters and Warlocks who are disproportionately punished by getting few short rests per day, but they'll almost certainly do _something_.


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## Malmuria

EzekielRaiden said:


> I encourage you to check out the post I linked above. I wrote it, specifically breaking down all the points of design where I felt the two games diverge despite _appearing_ similar (and at least a few places where 5e _is_ more like 4e than 3e!)
> 
> The one thing I didn't specifically discuss there was short rest abilities. The fact that 5e changed the short rest to be an entire _hour_ pretty radically changed the nature of short-rest anything in 5e vs 4e. In 4e, short-rest abilities are reliable tools, something you can count on to have _basically_ all the time--with short rests being only five minutes, it's hard but not impossible to enter a combat without all of your short-rest abilities at the ready. Not so with 5e, both intentionally and unintentionally: they very much intended short-rest abilities to be stretched out over 2, or even sometimes 3 combats. They also _intended_ that players would get 2-3 short rests (average 2.5 or a little higher) per day, when in practice, most groups go for 1-2 per day (average 1.5 or a little lower). Short-rest classes were balanced for a playstyle that doesn't, generally speaking, actually happen. So, in both theory and practice, 5e short-rest abilities are a rare spice to be carefully rationed; 4e short-rest abilities are reliable tools meant to be deployed consistently. Again, a case of "vaguely similar, but shorn of critical parts."
> 
> That's part of what's going to change in 5.5e, by the by. Most classes that use short-rest things are going to be reworked so that they instead use some variation on the "proficiency bonus per long rest" system. I'm not sure how they intend to fix some of the bigger issue cases, like Battlemaster Fighters and Warlocks who are disproportionately punished by getting few short rests per day, but they'll almost certainly do _something_.




Maybe what bothers me about some of what  Alexander calls disassociated mechanics is not just that they are abstracted but actually that it is somewhat difficult to reattach what happened in the game back to the fiction.  So a mechanic that says, you can trip someone 4 times per day feels disassociated for me (why only 4 times?), whereas saying they have a 20% of tripping an opponent if they try seems more consistent within the fiction.  Or, as I understand it, 13th age doesn't have rests; your abilities just reset after X number of encounters.  How does one attach that to the fiction, even after the fact?  So it kinda strikes me as the inverse of the OSR principle to not look at your character sheet, because in these instances the only way, it seems, that you would understand what's going on in the fiction is if you looked at your character sheet and saw, oh yes, this comes off cooldown now, or I've run out of uses for this ability.

Into the Odd is one game that made the equivalent of "short rests" make sense for me, because HP is "Hit Protection" and defined as your character's energy and ability to dodge and such, whereas the characters strength score can be damaged and that represents actual physical injury.


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## Charlaquin

I think if there’s one useful thing that can be derived from the dissociated mechanics essay, it’s that there are some mechanics that require the player to make decisions based on factors that don’t directly arise from the fiction. However, I think every conclusion he draws from this observation is faulty, almost certainly due to the fact that he started from a place of trying to rationalize why he didn’t like 4e.


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## billd91

Charlaquin said:


> I think if there’s one useful thing that can be derived from the dissociated mechanics essay, it’s that there are some mechanics that require the player to make decisions based on factors that don’t directly arise from the fiction. However, I think every conclusion he draws from this observation is faulty, almost certainly due to the fact that he started from a place of trying to rationalize why he didn’t like 4e.



Rationalize or put into words/a conceptual framework? 
Seems to me a lot of people‘s approach to Justin Alexander’s analysis are just as subject to rationalization depending on their feelings about 4e. The bottom line is either his approach makes sense to you or it doesn’t and whether or not that is true probably depends on whether you feel the same disconnect as he did with 4e.


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## Charlaquin

MichaelSomething said:


> It's not there already?
> 
> Hit dice, short rest abilities, and at will cantrips don't count?



Hit dice are not like healing surges in any of the ways that actually matter. They are superficially similar, but their design role and gameplay function are completely different. The same can pretty much be said of short rest abilities. At-will cantrips though are indeed an example of 4e design in 5e. It’s definitely present, but it’s largely kept very low-key.


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## Charlaquin

billd91 said:


> Rationalize or put into words/a conceptual framework?



Same thing. The point is, he started from “I don’t like 4e” and then worked his way backwards from there, which is a poor way to do analysis. To paraphrase Sherlock Holmes, it causes you to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts.


billd91 said:


> Seems to me a lot of people‘s approach to Justin Alexander’s analysis are just as subject to rationalization depending on their feelings about 4e. The bottom line is either his approach makes sense to you or it doesn’t and whether or not that is true probably depends on whether you feel the same disconnect as he did with 4e.



I understand the disconnect he had with 4e. I don’t experience it in the same way he did, but I recognize a meaningful difference in 4e’s gameplay feel from that of other editions of D&D, and I think it’s perfectly valid to not like 4e because of that difference. But in trying to form a conceptual framework that could explain his preference _objectively_, he ended up committing a number of logical fallacies and ended up forming an argument that just doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.


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## EzekielRaiden

Malmuria said:


> Maybe what bothers me about some of what  Alexander calls disassociated mechanics is not just that they are abstracted but actually that it is somewhat difficult to reattach what happened in the game back to the fiction.  So a mechanic that says, you can trip someone 4 times per day feels disassociated for me (why only 4 times?), whereas saying they have a 20% of tripping an opponent if they try seems more consistent within the fiction.  Or, as I understand it, 13th age doesn't have rests; your abilities just reset after X number of encounters.  How does one attach that to the fiction, even after the fact?  So it kinda strikes me as the inverse of the OSR principle to not look at your character sheet, because in these instances the only way, it seems, that you would understand what's going on in the fiction is if you looked at your character sheet and saw, oh yes, this comes off cooldown now, or I've run out of uses for this ability.
> 
> Into the Odd is one game that made the equivalent of "short rests" make sense for me, because HP is "Hit Protection" and defined as your character's energy and ability to dodge and such, whereas the characters strength score can be damaged and that represents actual physical injury.



Do you have any examples of specific 4e powers like this? Part of the reason many 4e fans are not keen on such responses is that one, and only one, _specific_ group of classes actually gets subjected to them: martial classes. No one has any problem with the idea that a magical effect can only be used once per combat, but as soon as something is martial, it (for whatever reason) _must_ be bound by what actual, literal human beings in our real, physical world can do. (Even though most people have a pretty bad understanding of the upper limits of human achievement, so it in practice ends up more like "what I, personally, think is possible for a human to do based solely on what I, personally, find difficult to do.")

When the complaint unduly affects the one group within D&D design that has been _consistently_ deprived of opportunities to play at the same level of power and engagement as other groups, it implies a concern about some abstract notion (such as "consistency," "verisimilitude," etc.) being more important than ensuring that most players' desired fantasy gets reasonable and effective representation within the game. Some would disparagingly summarize that as "I can't have fun unless casters are more powerful than non-casters." While that is obviously reductive, it _does_ point to a serious, ongoing issue with D&D design, where anything that tends to be kind to non-casters without also being kind to casters, people find a justification to dislike, and anything that tends to be unkind to casters without also being unkind to non-casters is treated as a horrible affront.


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## darjr

Charlaquin said:


> I think if there’s one useful thing that can be derived from the dissociated mechanics essay, it’s that there are some mechanics that require the player to make decisions based on factors that don’t directly arise from the fiction. However, I think every conclusion he draws from this observation is faulty, almost certainly due to the fact that he started from a place of trying to rationalize why he didn’t like 4e.



I dunno. His essay highlighted what was bugging me about 4e. About the fact that the fluff really meant nothing.

I came to the conclusion that in a game I like the fluff interacts with mechanics and should do so. In 4e it seemed the design strived for the opposite.

For instance I ran a 5e game where a player had to pick a trigger for his rage. He picked roses. Before that the presence of a rose was just fluff, now their presence were mechanics.

In 4e fluff never seemed to matter, one example was I had NPC's throwing magic shurikens in an adventure. They were refluffed magic missile. A player, a monk, really wanted to pick them up. All of a sudden I had to come up with a reason why, or just say, no the rules don't let you, which kinda sucks in the middle of a game. Normally that isn't a big deal, but something like that would happen A LOT A LOT in 4e games. Especially in Encounters and official content. I found myself mentally exausted from constantly having to justify fluff that didn't match what the rules were doing. And while it isn't an inherent thing in 4e, 4e by it's design with a hard seperation between fluff and rules all but enforced it.

though folks mileage may vary.


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## overgeeked

There’s a fair amount already in 5E.

This thread is helpful.

What should be brought forward...

4E skill challenges...though looser and better presented. 

4E monster design.

4E clarity of the math behind the game. 

4E monster types: minions, standard, elite, solo; monster roles: skirmisher, brute, soldier, etc; and the bloodied condition.

4E monster lore checks listed with the monsters.

4E encounter design. 

4E classes like the warlord and the swordmage.

4E bonuses and scaling. Your level and training mattered more than your d20 roll after a certain point. That was nice.

4E World Axis cosmology.

4E Dawn War.

4E Nentir Vale and Points of Light. 

4E split between rituals and combat magic.

4E residuum. 

I loved almost everything about 4E except how clunky it played, how long it took to resolve combats, and near pure focus on combat.


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## darjr

No on skill challenges. Please no. No. no no. Not again.


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## darjr

overgeeked said:


> There’s a fair amount already in 5E.
> 
> This thread is helpful.
> 
> What should be brought forward...
> 
> 4E skill challenges...though looser and better presented.
> 
> 4E monster design.
> 
> 4E clarity of the math behind the game.
> 
> 4E monster types: minions, standard, elite, solo; monster roles: skirmisher, brute, soldier, etc; and the bloodied condition.
> 
> 4E monster lore checks listed with the monsters.
> 
> 4E encounter design.
> 
> 4E classes like the warlord and the swordmage.
> 
> 4E bonuses and scaling. Your level and training mattered more than your d20 roll after a certain point. That was nice.
> 
> 4E World Axis cosmology.
> 
> 4E Dawn War.
> 
> 4E Nentir Vale and Points of Light.
> 
> 4E split between rituals and combat magic.
> 
> 4E residuum.
> 
> I loved almost everything about 4E except how clunky it played, how long it took to resolve combats, and near pure focus on combat.



Uh... 4e is still out there. Most of this I'd take a hard pass on, but there IS 4e. People are playing it.


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## niklinna

EzekielRaiden said:


> Do you have any examples of specific 4e powers like this? Part of the reason many 4e fans are not keen on such responses is that one, and only one, _specific_ group of classes actually gets subjected to them: martial classes. No one has any problem with the idea that a magical effect can only be used once per combat, but as soon as something is martial, it (for whatever reason) _must_ be bound by what actual, literal human beings in our real, physical world can do. (Even though most people have a pretty bad understanding of the upper limits of human achievement, so it in practice ends up more like "what I, personally, think is possible for a human to do based solely on what I, personally, find difficult to do.")
> 
> When the complaint unduly affects the one group within D&D design that has been _consistently_ deprived of opportunities to play at the same level of power and engagement as other groups, it implies a concern about some abstract notion (such as "consistency," "verisimilitude," etc.) being more important than ensuring that most players' desired fantasy gets reasonable and effective representation within the game. Some would disparagingly summarize that as "I can't have fun unless casters are more powerful than non-casters." While that is obviously reductive, it _does_ point to a serious, ongoing issue with D&D design, where anything that tends to be kind to non-casters without also being kind to casters, people find a justification to dislike, and anything that tends to be unkind to casters without also being unkind to non-casters is treated as a horrible affront.



While I recognize that many people do react that way, I felt the artifice of encounter/daily powers for all types of classes in 4e. I feel it for short/long rest abilities in 5e as well, including the spell slot system. But, I recognize the need for some kind of rationing, or everybody would use their biggest guns for everything all the time. Also, spell slots seem to be one of those Things Without Which D&D Would Not Be D&D.

What I'd rather see is some sort of point-based system where your basic stuff is cheap/free, and more powerful stuff costs more of whatever your internal resource is (stamina, magical energy, divine favor, what have you), and the serious nova powers lower your refresh rate as well. That is, however, obviously more complicated.


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## billd91

EzekielRaiden said:


> No one has any problem with the idea that a magical effect can only be used once per combat, but as soon as something is martial, it (for whatever reason) _must_ be bound by what actual, literal human beings in our real, physical world can do. (Even though most people have a pretty bad understanding of the upper limits of human achievement, so it in practice ends up more like "what I, personally, think is possible for a human to do based solely on what I, personally, find difficult to do.")



That’s not really true, though. Nobody ever had a problem with using a magical effect once in a combat *if it was the only instance of it you had prepared*. But nobody had a problem with using a magical effect *more* than once if you had prepared it multiple times as well. There wasn’t much of a concept of using *anything* just once a combat outside of a few edge cases. And that’s where we get to a lot of problems people had with the AEDU structure - it was too restrictive in its conception. A model that irritates less is one that gives you resources to spend, refreshed by rests (long/daily or short/encounter), but gives the player more free rein to spend those as they see fit.


----------



## overgeeked

darjr said:


> Uh... 4e is still out there. Most of this I'd take a hard pass on, but there IS 4e. People are playing it.



Not enough to keep games going with people I know or am willing to game with. Also note how I ended my post.


----------



## Filthy Lucre

NaturalZero said:


> One of the features they're pimping is the removal of PHB spells from 5e



Um... what? Is this true? They want to just do away with spell casting in the core PHB...?


----------



## billd91

darjr said:


> No on skill challenges. Please no. No. no no. Not again.



I certainly wouldn’t want to see them as they appeared in 4e. But, using a variant of the structure as a way to gauge levels of success, then I might be on board. First, get rid of the race to get x successes before y failures. The math there is really disadvantageous. Instead, set a number of checks and then lay out how much is achieved based on how many of those are successes.


----------



## Charlaquin

darjr said:


> I dunno. His essay highlighted what was bugging me about 4e.



Well, his essay is constructed specifically to give an objective-sounding justification for his own distaste for 4e, so of course to someone who also didn’t like 4e and was struggling to articulate why, it would come across as insightful. But, you’re falling for the same fallacious reasoning of starting from a place of “I don’t like thing” and looking for reasons to justify that preference.



darjr said:


> About the fact that the fluff really meant nothing.
> I came to the conclusion that in a game I like the fluff interacts with mechanics and should do so.



Except the fluff didn’t mean nothing in 4e, so the conclusion you came to is flawed.



darjr said:


> For instance I ran a 5e game where a player had to pick a trigger for his rage. He picked roses. Before that the presence of a rose was just fluff, now their presence were mechanics.



Nothing is stopping you from doing something like that in any edition of the game, including 4e.


darjr said:


> In 4e fluff never seemed to matter, one example was I had NPC's throwing magic shurikens in an adventure. They were refluffed magic missile. A player, a monk, really wanted to pick them up. All of a sudden I had to come up with a reason why, or just say, no the rules don't let you, which kinda sucks in the middle of a game.



I mean, that’s a pretty easy one. It’s magic missile. The missiles don’t persist after the spell is resolved, regardless of what you describe them looking like. Inasmuch as this is a problem at all, it’s one that could happen in any edition. What would you say to a player in a 5e game who asked if they could pick up the “darts of force” created by another PC’s magic missile? Obviously you’d say they disappear after hitting their target. If you answered differently than that about magic missiles “re-fluffed” as shuriken, you’ve gone beyond refluffing and have actually changed how the spell works. Which is fine to do, but then any issues that may arise from that change are completely your own making.


darjr said:


> Normally that isn't a big deal, but something like that would happen A LOT A LOT in 4e games. Especially in Encounters and official content. I found myself mentally exausted from constantly having to justify fluff that didn't match what the rules were doing. And while it isn't an inherent thing in 4e, 4e by it's design with a hard seperation between fluff and rules all but enforced it.



4e wasn’t designed with a hard separation between fluff and rules. What 4e did more of than most editions previously was let the narrative arise from the mechanics rather than vice versa. Now, every edition has done that to some extent, but 3e perhaps did the least of it, and 4e arguably did the most of it, which I think a lot of players understandably found jarring.


----------



## darjr

billd91 said:


> I certainly wouldn’t want to see them as they appeared in 4e. But, using a variant of the structure as a way to gauge levels of success, then I might be on board. First, get rid of the race to get x successes before y failures. The math there is really disadvantageous. Instead, set a number of checks and then lay out how much is achieved based on how many of those are successes.



I loved LOVED the IDEA of skill challenges and that XP was tied to them concretely. The problem is that "concrete" part. It would tie down a recipie for solving it, and killing player agency and be jaring by being a "mode" of play.

"Puzzles" in the 5e vernacular are a much better idea and should be extended to other types of encounters that are not traditionally thought of as puzzles. That way it's open ended and the players can do their own thing. And they are an obstacle like any other, not a different mode of play.


----------



## Composer99

Filthy Lucre said:


> Um... what? Is this true? They want to just do away with spell casting in the core PHB...?



I think they mean in monster statblocks. So, for instance, you don't have to flip through your PHB or other resource and find spell descriptions.

Personally, I'm fine with the Spellcasting and Innate Spellcasting traits as-is, but I don't think it would bother me to see them go. (If it does, I can just add them back in or use older statblocks.)


Apropos of the topic somewhat raised by the reference to _The Alexandrian_ in the original post:

"I don't care for playing games where the mechanics are, or at the very least come across as, divorced from the in-game fiction to too great an extent for my tastes" is a perfectly fine attitude to have. And it's perfectly fine to want WotC to make an effort to smooth over any friction in the interaction between game mechanics and in-game fiction.

The premise that "playing with dissociated mechanics ≠ playing a roleplaying game", on the other hand, is a preposterous absurdity, and the Alexandrian ought to be ashamed to have trotted it out. Not least, when it comes to arguing over D&D, because very nearly all D&D game mechanics - perhaps _actually_ all of them - are both arbitary and divorced from the in-game fiction to some lesser or greater extent.

The substitute for concrete mechanics in any D&D game is DM arbitration. By my reckoning, DM arbitration is also fundamentally "dissociated", no less an abstraction than such as, say, hit points.


----------



## Charlaquin

darjr said:


> No on skill challenges. Please no. No. no no. Not again.



Skill challenges took me a long time to learn to appreciate, and while I have come around on them _in the context of 4e_, I don’t think they would translate well to 5e. 5e demands a different DMing approach than 4e, and I don’t think skill challenges mesh well with that approach.


----------



## niklinna

darjr said:


> No on skill challenges. Please no. No. no no. Not again.



You should give Torg: Eternity a try! Instead of skill challenges they have Dramatic Skill Resolutions. Totally different thing.


----------



## darjr

Charlaquin said:


> Except the fluff didn’t mean nothing in 4e, so the conclusion you came to is flawed.



This was a very real problem in public games I ran. I had others looking up to me with the same problems. You can dismiss it all you wan't but it's still true.


----------



## darjr

niklinna said:


> You should give Torg: Eternity a try! Instead of skill challenges they have Dramatic Skill Resolutions. Totally different thing.



Eh I bounced off Torg hard. I super appreciate it however, the setting is amazing. I'm not entirely sure what it was about Torg that I didn't like though.


----------



## Filthy Lucre

Composer99 said:


> I think they mean in monster statblocks. So, for instance, you don't have to flip through your PHB or other resource and find spell descriptions.
> 
> Personally, I'm fine with the Spellcasting and Innate Spellcasting traits as-is, but I don't think it would bother me to see them go. (If it does, I can just add them back in or use older statblocks.)
> 
> 
> Apropos of the topic somewhat raised by the reference to _The Alexandrian_ in the original post:
> 
> "I don't care for playing games where the mechanics are, or at the very least come across as, divorced from the in-game fiction to too great an extent for my tastes" is a perfectly fine attitude to have. And it's perfectly fine to want WotC to make an effort to smooth over any friction in the interaction between game mechanics and in-game fiction.
> 
> The premise that "playing with dissociated mechanics ≠ playing a roleplaying game", on the other hand, is a preposterous absurdity, and the Alexandrian ought to be ashamed to have trotted it out. Not least, when it comes to arguing over D&D, because very nearly all D&D game mechanics - perhaps _actually_ all of them - are both arbitary and divorced from the in-game fiction to some lesser or greater extent.
> 
> The substitute for concrete mechanics in any D&D game is DM arbitration. By my reckoning, DM arbitration is also fundamentally "dissociated", no less than an abstraction such as, say, hit points.



Im gunna have to stick with the Alexandrian.


----------



## darjr

@Filthy Lucre @Composer99 I don't think they'll go entirely. I think it'll be more of a hybrid. And three years is a long time from now. I think the counter spell thing is something that might cause changes. Maybe.


----------



## Charlaquin

darjr said:


> This was a very real problem in public games I ran. I had others looking up to me with the same problems. You can dismiss it all you wan't but it's still true.



I don’t doubt for a moment that you experienced persistent problems stemming from a feeling of disconnectedness between the mechanics and the narrative. But that’s not the same thing as “the fluff meant nothing.”


----------



## darjr

Charlaquin said:


> Skill challenges took me a long time to learn to appreciate, and while I have come around on them _in the context of 4e_, I don’t think they would translate well to 5e. 5e demands a different DMing approach than 4e, and I don’t think skill challenges mesh well with that approach.



I tried so hard with Skill Challenges. I wanted them to work so very much. After a while the advice for the living campaign was to generally ignore them. I think they even stopped appearing in the mods.


----------



## darjr

Charlaquin said:


> I don’t doubt for a moment that you experienced persistent problems stemming from a feeling of disconnectedness between the mechanics and the narrative. But that’s not the same thing as “the fluff meant nothing.”



It is because it didn't. We'd have folks show up with familiars fluffed as Gold Dragons. It really meant nothing.


----------



## EzekielRaiden

niklinna said:


> What I'd rather see is some sort of point-based system where your basic stuff is cheap/free, and more powerful stuff costs more of whatever your internal resource is (stamina, magical energy, divine favor, what have you), and the serious nova powers lower your refresh rate as well. That is, however, obviously more complicated.



Believe it or not, 4e actually tried this, with its Psionic classes, other than Monk. Those classes used Power Points (PP). ALL of their abilities were at-will effects, which had a stronger, Encounter-like version if you spent a small number of PP ("augment 1" or the like), and a _much_ stronger, Daily-like version if you spent a larger amount of PP ("augment 3" or whatever).

They were generally pretty disliked because they almost always amounted to exactly what you said in the foregoing bit I cut out. That is, you pick your strongest ability and you use it repeatedly until you've solved the problem. And that's _exactly_ the issue with (to use the MMO term) "spammable" resource-based abilities: people will naturally drift to using the most optimal option (or two or three, rarely more than that) every single time, and ignore all other options. This would then _truly make_ most classes "samey," since everyone and their brother would be engaging in basically the same kind of behavior--it's going to be _very hard_ to design that many at-will abilities that can be augmented so.



billd91 said:


> That’s not really true, though. Nobody ever had a problem with using a magical effect once in a combat *if it was the only instance of it you had prepared*. But nobody had a problem with using a magical effect *more* than once if you had prepared it multiple times as well. There wasn’t much of a concept of using *anything* just once a combat outside of a few edge cases. And that’s where we get to a lot of problems people had with the AEDU structure - it was too restrictive in its conception. A model that irritates less is one that gives you resources to spend, refreshed by rests (long/daily or short/encounter), but gives the player more free rein to spend those as they see fit.



Interesting, I've never actually heard this particular complaint raised before. (Doesn't mean it never was, just that I didn't see it.)

Are people really so attached to "I have 4 fireballs prepared" that _not_ being able to do that is such an insane, onerous burden?


----------



## billd91

darjr said:


> Eh I bounced off Torg hard. I super appreciate it however, the setting is amazing. I'm not entirely sure what it was about Torg that I didn't like though.



The Drama deck is what bounced me, ultimately, after the campaign I played in. Don’t think I’ll accept another invitation to play one.


----------



## billd91

EzekielRaiden said:


> Are people really so attached to "I have 4 fireballs prepared" that _not_ being able to do that is such an insane, onerous burden?



Given 5e’s popularity compared to 4e’s, I’d say it is. But it’s not just fireballs.


----------



## Composer99

darjr said:


> I don't think they'll go entirely. I think it'll be more of a hybrid. And three years is a long time from now. I think the counter spell thing is something that might cause changes. Maybe.



I think the box set coming out in the new year is meant to include some monster statblocks that will incorporate the "don't refer to PHB spells" design? But yeah, it's entirely possible that some monsters will still have _MM_-style (innate) spellcasting, whether in the new year or three years hence.


----------



## darjr

EzekielRaiden said:


> They were generally pretty disliked because they almost always amounted to exactly what you said in the foregoing bit I cut out. That is, you pick your strongest ability and you use it repeatedly until you've solved the problem. And that's _exactly_ the issue with (to use the MMO term) "spammable" resource-based abilities: people will naturally drift to using the most optimal option (or two or three, rarely more than that) every single time, and ignore all other options. This would then _truly make_ most classes "samey," since everyone and their brother would be engaging in basically the same kind of behavior--it's going to be _very hard_ to design that many at-will abilities that can be augmented so.



And the more powers there were the worse it got. Which seems like it should have been backwards but in public play at least it wasn't.  The more powers the more the good ones were basically all the same.

Oh and it was worse after folks got tired of saying the fluff for powers. Especially for long games or higher level games. Fatigue would set in and folks would drop the fluff and just state the rules. That one REALLY bothered me. It was like chewing cardboard.


----------



## Filthy Lucre

darjr said:


> @Filthy Lucre @Composer99 I don't think they'll go entirely. I think it'll be more of a hybrid. And three years is a long time from now. I think the counter spell thing is something that might cause changes. Maybe.



I won't be back to D&D until it's more like 3.5. So, potentially never. My group switched to PF2e after being dissatisfied with 5e


----------



## darjr

Filthy Lucre said:


> I won't be back to D&D until it's more like 3.5. So, potentially never. My group switched to PF2e after being dissatisfied with 5e



And I'm super happy you have a game. I fret about a monoculture, even as I seem to be addicted to it myself. The good thing is that other games and other companies seem to be doing good.


----------



## MichaelSomething

EzekielRaiden said:


> I encourage you to check out the post I linked above. I wrote it, specifically breaking down all the points of design where I felt the two games diverge despite _appearing_ similar (and at least a few places where 5e _is_ more like 4e than 3e!)



My post is like a 4E power.  It abbreviates a complex thing to make it short and snappy.  While it glosses over many of the finer details, it gets the general point across in a few words.

Your post is like a 3E sub rule.  It goes through the entire process to make sure every part of the concept is included.  It does accurately show the complete point, but requires reading hundreds of words.


----------



## Charlaquin

darjr said:


> It is because it didn't. We'd have folks show up with familiars fluffed as Gold Dragons. It really meant nothing.



No, it did not mean nothing. Maybe you felt like it meant nothing. Maybe you even treated it like it meant nothing. But objectively, it did not mean nothing.


----------



## doctorbadwolf

billd91 said:


> I certainly wouldn’t want to see them as they appeared in 4e. But, using a variant of the structure as a way to gauge levels of success, then I might be on board. First, get rid of the race to get x successes before y failures. The math there is really disadvantageous. Instead, set a number of checks and then lay out how much is achieved based on how many of those are successes.



So, 5e actually does have that structure, tucked away in Xanathar’s guide, in the Crime Downtime writeup. (And others but Crime is the clearest one) 

Id love to see it expanded upon, and it is how I run haggling, crafting, a lot of negotiations, etc. establish number of checks, what skills can be used (negotiable), what the DCs are, and what the consequences are for 0 successes, all successes, and at least one point in between.


----------



## Charlaquin

darjr said:


> Oh and it was worse after folks got tired of saying the fluff for powers. Especially for long games or higher level games. Fatigue would set in and folks would drop the fluff and just state the rules. That one REALLY bothered me. It was like chewing cardboard.



I mean… Does that not happen to you in 5e? Players never get tired of describing in detail how they swing their axe and start just saying “I attack”? They never get tired of describing their magic words and gestures and particle effects, and start just saying “I cast Sacred Flame”?


----------



## darjr

Charlaquin said:


> I mean… Does that not happen to you in 5e? Players never get tired of describing in detail how they swing their axe and start just saying “I attack”? They never get tired of describing their magic words and gestures and particle effects, and start just saying “I cast Sacred Flame”?



some what yes. But never nearly as bad. They wouldn't even say the name of the power. Just "I spend my daily" or "I trigger an at will" and then either lay out a card and read the mechanics or state them. In 5e I don't think I've EVER had that happen. In 4e it would happen a lot a lot.


----------



## niklinna

EzekielRaiden said:


> Believe it or not, 4e actually tried this, with its Psionic classes, other than Monk. Those classes used Power Points (PP). ALL of their abilities were at-will effects, which had a stronger, Encounter-like version if you spent a small number of PP ("augment 1" or the like), and a _much_ stronger, Daily-like version if you spent a larger amount of PP ("augment 3" or whatever).
> 
> They were generally pretty disliked because they almost always amounted to exactly what you said in the foregoing bit I cut out. That is, you pick your strongest ability and you use it repeatedly until you've solved the problem. And that's _exactly_ the issue with (to use the MMO term) "spammable" resource-based abilities: people will naturally drift to using the most optimal option (or two or three, rarely more than that) every single time, and ignore all other options. This would then _truly make_ most classes "samey," since everyone and their brother would be engaging in basically the same kind of behavior--it's going to be _very hard_ to design that many at-will abilities that can be augmented so.



Yeah, that's why I mentioned the bit about strong powers affecting refresh rates—which is, again, when things start getting too complicated. Ah, well, looks like we're stuck with per-power cooldowns.


----------



## Charlaquin

darjr said:


> some what yes. But never nearly as bad. They wouldn't even say the name of the power. Just "I spend my daily" or "I trigger an at will" and then either lay out a card and read the mechanics or state them. In 5e I don't think I've EVER had that happen. In 4e it would happen a lot a lot.



Well, it would be pretty hard for that to happen in 5e, given that “at will” and “dailys” with cards explaining their mechanics aren’t a thing. But “I cast fireball.” _roll_ “23 damage on a fail, 11 on a success.” or “I attack.” _roll_ “14.” is the 5e equivalent. And I imagine if you had players doing that in 5e, and it bothered you, you wouldn’t blame 5e for it.


----------



## darjr

Charlaquin said:


> Well, it would be pretty hard for that to happen in 5e, given that “at will” and “dailys” with cards explaining their mechanics aren’t a thing. But “I cast fireball.” _roll_ “23 damage on a fail, 11 on a success.” or “I attack.” _roll_ “14.” is the 5e equivalent. And I imagine if you had players doing that in 5e, and it bothered you, you wouldn’t blame 5e for it.



I don't think I'm getting across the magnitude. There ARE cards for 5e. And even with them folks talk about what they are doing "in game" using the fluff to say what it is. In 4e, even without cards, people would just drop the fluff altogether. And they could do that because it really meant nothing when the rubber hit the road. The seperation in the rules between the fluff and the mechanics, just like magic cards, drove this. There isn't that kind of seperation in 5e. In 4e skipping the fluff was the least path of resistence to running your character. In 5e saying the name, at least, "Sacred Flame" is the least path. Because it means something in 5e, it means that's what your character is doing.

In 4e your character was executing a power with mechanics that just so happend to have some fluff attached and a name. But NONE of that was needed to run your character in the game. Which means it didn't matter, it didn't really mean anything because it wasn't what your character was doing, it wasn't important.


----------



## darjr

@Charlaquin I do realize peoples mileage will vary. I imagine the fluff usage could be enforced or encouraged with effort or with the right group. Maybe I was just unlucky.

But things would change in encounters and the living campaigns mods because of this kind of thing. And I would see it at convention and store events. 

And it just doesn't happen in 5e, not this much, not nearly this much or in this way. And many of the folks I play with in public are the same folks from back when.


----------



## Charlaquin

darjr said:


> I don't think I'm getting across the magnitude.



No, I understand the magnitude, I just don’t think this is either a serious problem, or unique to 4e.


darjr said:


> There ARE cards for 5e. And even with them folks talk about what they are doing "in game" using the fluff to say what it is.



Well, yes, because the mechanics are buried in fluff text - something my players consistently complain about because it makes it difficult to find the information they need about what the spell does.


darjr said:


> In 4e, even without cards, people would just drop the fluff altogether.



Right, which people also do in 5e, basically whenever they’re playing non-casters. I hear “I attack. 17.” _way_ more often than I hear any kind of description, and I know I’m not alone in that.


darjr said:


> And they could do that because it really meant nothing when the rubber hit the road.



It doesn’t mean any less than it means in 5e (or any other edition) You have always been able to divorce the fluff text from the mechanics of a spell or ability with no impact on the gameplay. That doesn’t mean the fluff text is meaningless, in 4e or in any other edition.


darjr said:


> The seperation in the rules between the fluff and the mechanics, just like magic cards, drove this.



Magic cards don’t separate between the fluff and rules, what are you talking about?


darjr said:


> There isn't that kind of seperation in 5e. In 4e skipping the fluff was the least path of resistence to running your character. In 5e saying the name, at least, "Sacred Flame" is the least path.



Right, 5e is designed to make identifying the mechanical effect of a spell less convenient than it was in 4e. I do agree with you on that.


darjr said:


> Because it means something in 5e, it means that's what your character is doing.



It means what your character is doing in 4e too. And in both editions, players are capable of ignoring the fluff and just stating the mechanics.


darjr said:


> In 4e your character was executing a power with mechanics that just so happend to have some fluff attached and a name. But NONE of that was needed to run your character in the game.



None of it is _needed_ in 5e either.


darjr said:


> Which means it didn't matter, it didn't really mean anything because it wasn't what your character was doing, it wasn't important.



It’s as important as you make it, which again, is true of every edition.


----------



## darjr

Those rules buried in fluff are a feature. You can't say I cast sacred flame without saying "I cast sacred flame" and have to deal with the fluff of it. The fluff means something so much your players have to deal with it running their characters. 

In 4e you can entirely ignore the fluff. A feature to some, at least I thought it was at first.

And while it is true about the "I attack" thing in 5e it isn't nearly as bad as in 4e, in 4e EVERYTHING was "I attack with a * power". At least in 5e you often HAVE to state what ability you're using or what spell is being cast because there is NO OTHER way to refer to it.

I can't find a quote at the moment, but 4e powers were designed like magic cards, precicely because the fluff and mechanics are seperate. It was a design goal. And at first I thought it was freaking brilliant. It helped them be clear about the rules and develop them, it was a desired asset. But its downside was that the fluff had no effect on the mechanics.

However, I think we'll have to just agree to disagree.


----------



## darjr

@Charlaquin Also thank you. I hope I didn't come across badly. I'm pretty passionate about RPG's as I think we all are here.


----------



## MichaelSomething

Charlaquin said:


> Well, it would be pretty hard for that to happen in 5e, given that “at will” and “dailys” with cards explaining their mechanics aren’t a thing. But “I cast fireball.” _roll_ “23 damage on a fail, 11 on a success.” or “I attack.” _roll_ “14.” is the 5e equivalent. And I imagine if you had players doing that in 5e, and it bothered you, you wouldn’t blame 5e for it.




Oh really??





__





						Spellbook Cards: Arcane (Dungeons & Dragons): Wizards RPG Team: 9780786966547: Books - Amazon
					

Spellbook Cards: Arcane (Dungeons & Dragons) [Wizards RPG Team] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Spellbook Cards: Arcane (Dungeons & Dragons)



					www.amazon.com


----------



## Charlaquin

darjr said:


> Those rules buried in fluff are a feature. You can't say I cast sacred flame without saying "I cast sacred flame" and have to deal with the fluff of it. The fluff means something so much your players have to deal with it running their characters.



But it doesn’t mean any more or any less than it does in 4e, it’s literally just less convenient to read around if you want to do that. That’s a valid thing to prefer of course (even if I think it’s a very strange preference to have), but it means exactly as much however you format the power/spell.


darjr said:


> In 4e you can entirely ignore the fluff. A feature to some, at least I thought it was at first.



You can entirely ignore the fluff in any edition.


darjr said:


> And while it is true about the "I attack" thing in 5e it isn't nearly as bad as in 4e, in 4e EVERYTHING was "I attack with a * power". At least in 5e you often HAVE to state what ability you're using or what spell is being cast because there is NO OTHER way to refer to it.



I dunno, “I cast a cantrip” is about the 5e equivalent of “I use an at-will.” If people want to say the name of a feature they will. If they don’t, they won’t.


darjr said:


> I can't find a quote at the moment, but 4e powers were designed like magic cards, precicely because the fluff and mechanics are seperate. It was a design goal. And at first I thought it was freaking brilliant. It helped them be clear about the rules and develop them, it was a desired asset. But its downside was that the fluff had no effect on the mechanics.



Where you put the fluff doesn’t change the effect it has on the mechanics. It has exactly the same effect on the mechanics whether it’s written on a separate part of the card or interspersed throughout. Is it more inconvenient to ignore if it’s interspersed throughout? Yes. But that doesn’t make it mean any more, or any less.


----------



## Charlaquin

darjr said:


> @Charlaquin Also thank you. I hope I didn't come across badly. I'm pretty passionate about RPG's as I think we all are here.



For sure! Same to you.


----------



## Charlaquin

MichaelSomething said:


> Oh really??
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> __
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Spellbook Cards: Arcane (Dungeons & Dragons): Wizards RPG Team: 9780786966547: Books - Amazon
> 
> 
> Spellbook Cards: Arcane (Dungeons & Dragons) [Wizards RPG Team] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Spellbook Cards: Arcane (Dungeons & Dragons)
> 
> 
> 
> www.amazon.com



Those are not “at wills” and “daily’s,” they are just called spells. And those cards are not how the spells are formatted in the book. A player could, however, say “I cast a cantrip” or “I cast a spell” and read the effect, ignoring the fluff text. It would be a little more inconvenient for them to read around the fluff text, but it would have no more or less impact gameplay than it would to do the same in 4e. And again, if you had a player do this in 5e, and you found that to be a problem, you wouldn’t blame 5e for it.


----------



## Teemu

If they’re removing the short rest classes’ dependency on short rests and make all classes work off long rests, isn’t that kind of like (pre-Essentials) 4e where every class uses the same ability cooldown schedule? That’s a 4eism that could make it into 5.5!

Speaking of abilities and fluff, I honestly have never had players simply say “I use my at-will/encounter” in a 4e game. At least the name is referred to! Very similar to 5e and 3.5. Also, there are some martial classes in 4e that just “attack”.

Another thing with regards to martial abilities and uses per day or rest—I don’t think I’ve ever heard or read anyone mention that 5e battlemaster maneuvers or a fighter’s second wind are a problem even though their usage is rest dependent. There are others too, like the cavalier’s special attack that’s usable Str mod per day. No one complains about those!


----------



## overgeeked

So cantrips =/= at-will powers despite being able to use them...at will.

And standard caster spell slots =/= daily powers despite being able to use them...wait for it...once per day. 

That's certainly a take.


----------



## niklinna

overgeeked said:


> And standard caster spell slots =/= daily powers despite being able to use them...wait for it...once per day.



Well, you can cast any available spell (of appropriate level) with a standard caster spell slot. 4e daily powers (as I recall) were usable once per day, period.

Nevertheless, 5e does have at-will, short-rest (encounter-ish), and long-rest (daily-ish) abiliites; it's just that some of them are usable _n_ times before the requisite rest, instead of strictly once.


----------



## Malmuria

EzekielRaiden said:


> Do you have any examples of specific 4e powers like this? Part of the reason many 4e fans are not keen on such responses is that one, and only one, _specific_ group of classes actually gets subjected to them: martial classes. No one has any problem with the idea that a magical effect can only be used once per combat, but as soon as something is martial, it (for whatever reason) _must_ be bound by what actual, literal human beings in our real, physical world can do. (Even though most people have a pretty bad understanding of the upper limits of human achievement, so it in practice ends up more like "what I, personally, think is possible for a human to do based solely on what I, personally, find difficult to do.")
> 
> When the complaint unduly affects the one group within D&D design that has been _consistently_ deprived of opportunities to play at the same level of power and engagement as other groups, it implies a concern about some abstract notion (such as "consistency," "verisimilitude," etc.) being more important than ensuring that most players' desired fantasy gets reasonable and effective representation within the game. Some would disparagingly summarize that as "I can't have fun unless casters are more powerful than non-casters." While that is obviously reductive, it _does_ point to a serious, ongoing issue with D&D design, where anything that tends to be kind to non-casters without also being kind to casters, people find a justification to dislike, and anything that tends to be unkind to casters without also being unkind to non-casters is treated as a horrible affront.



I don't know anything about 4e more or less, was thinking of 5e examples (i.e. battlemaster).

If I were to invent a mechanic in b/x, I might say that if a trained fighter hits they can make a 1 in 6 chance to also trip (or 2 in 6, or a %, or whatever).  As you mention, that's also abstract for the purpose of it actually being a game, but somehow I find it easier to connect back to the fiction?

I would agree that strict vanican casting, where you have to memorize the same spell twice in a slot, is similarly "disassociated."


----------



## Malmuria

overgeeked said:


> 4E residuum.



I've read about this, but could never see the appeal.


----------



## overgeeked

Malmuria said:


> If I were to invent a mechanic in b/x, I might say that if a trained fighter hits they can make a 1 in 6 chance to also trip (or 2 in 6, or a %, or whatever).  As you mention, that's also abstract for the purpose of it actually being a game, but somehow I find it easier to connect back to the fiction?



What we did with B/X was crits let you perform a stunt. Trip, disarm, shove, whatever. But the monsters could do it, too.


Malmuria said:


> I would agree that strict vanican casting, where you have to memorize the same spell twice in a slot, is similarly "disassociated."



I wouldn't. It's purely associated. That "memorization" component lands it solidly in the fiction. The character memorizes the spell and after casting it, literally forgets the spell. That's an instance of the fiction matching the mechanics. Basically the opposite of disassociated mechanics. Disassociated mechanics is more like the battlemaster somehow being unable to trip someone (use a maneuver) once they've run out of superiority dice. There's no connection between the fiction and the mechanics. Hence it's disassociated. You could squint and argue that it's the fighter getting tired. But there's no fictional equivalent to superiority dice. There is a fictional equivalent to memorizing a spell and casting it.


Malmuria said:


> I've read about this, but could never see the appeal.



For me it was three things.

1. It made the characters sacrifice magic items to create residuum. I really, really dislike the buying and selling of magic items. To me, that makes them not magical in the wondrous sense. It makes them mundane tools to be bought, sold, and traded. Something you can order in the mail. "Yeah, I'd like that +1 shovel delivered on Tuesday please." That takes the magic out of it. I'm firmly in the camp that gives magic items names and histories. I also shy away from boring +X items. I give them powers, abilities, or spells. Magic items that level with you so you don't just trade up. Blech. How dull. So when the PCs decide to sacrifice a magic item to create residuum, it matters. No one cares if you turn the 30th +1 longsword you've found into a pile of dust. They do at least pause when you're talking about sacrificing Orcrist the Goblin-Cleaver, an Elven sword from Gondolin, the mate of Glamdring, which became the sword of Thorin II Oakenshield during The Quest of Erebor...it was feared and called Biter by the Goblins of the Misty Mountains.

2. It gave the characters a resource to spend on rituals and that could be traded / used as money. I really dislike the idea of characters carrying around tens or hundreds of thousands of gold with them everywhere they go. Again, it becomes ridiculous and unbelievable rather quickly. So trading up to gems, jewels, and residuum makes way more sense. A pound of residuum could fit in a pouch and is worth 50,000 gp. And it puts characters in a spot. They have to decide what's more important. The coin value of the residuum or casting that ritual and using the residuum as a component. 

3. It was also used in the creation of magic items (via a ritual). Again, it gives characters a choice. They can make this specific magic item they want or they can keep the really valuable component / trade good. But they also get to inject some cool bit of lore into the world. Like this sword is Andúril, also called the Flame of the West, which was reforged from the ashes of Narsil in Rivendell.


----------



## Mordhau

EzekielRaiden said:


> I encourage you to check out the post I linked above. I wrote it, specifically breaking down all the points of design where I felt the two games diverge despite _appearing_ similar (and at least a few places where 5e _is_ more like 4e than 3e!)
> 
> The one thing I didn't specifically discuss there was short rest abilities. The fact that 5e changed the short rest to be an entire _hour_ pretty radically changed the nature of short-rest anything in 5e vs 4e. In 4e, short-rest abilities are reliable tools, something you can count on to have _basically_ all the time--with short rests being only five minutes, it's hard but not impossible to enter a combat without all of your short-rest abilities at the ready. Not so with 5e, both intentionally and unintentionally: they very much intended short-rest abilities to be stretched out over 2, or even sometimes 3 combats. They also _intended_ that players would get 2-3 short rests (average 2.5 or a little higher) per day, when in practice, most groups go for 1-2 per day (average 1.5 or a little lower). Short-rest classes were balanced for a playstyle that doesn't, generally speaking, actually happen. So, in both theory and practice, 5e short-rest abilities are a rare spice to be carefully rationed; 4e short-rest abilities are reliable tools meant to be deployed consistently. Again, a case of "vaguely similar, but shorn of critical parts."
> 
> That's part of what's going to change in 5.5e, by the by. Most classes that use short-rest things are going to be reworked so that they instead use some variation on the "proficiency bonus per long rest" system. I'm not sure how they intend to fix some of the bigger issue cases, like Battlemaster Fighters and Warlocks who are disproportionately punished by getting few short rests per day, but they'll almost certainly do _something_.



Short rests did solve one particular problem in 4e though (although 13th Age's escalation die may be a better solution).

That was that the encounter powers often led to fights getting quite repetitive.  There was pretty much little good reason to hold back on using your best powers right away and then cycling through them in order every time.  Short rests in 5e basically stop the Fighter from opening every fight with an Action Surge.  It encourages the Fighter to hold back and consider whether it's worth using this fight or holding off for a later one.


----------



## Mordhau

darjr said:


> It is because it didn't. We'd have folks show up with familiars fluffed as Gold Dragons. It really meant nothing.



I got a bit jaded with reskinning when I realised that a lot of paragon paths both: a) did a poor job really connecting to their fluff and b) were just poor compared to the best ones that were available.  It made me wonder what was the point of releasing new volcano favour barbarian path was when one could just pick the best barbarian path and reskin it as volcano flavoured.

I tend to feel the same about 5e subclasses though.


----------



## niklinna

Some 5e subclasses are easier to reskin than others. That Wildfire Druid is always going to be doing fire stuff, for example, no matter what their wildfire spirit looks like. A Tasha's Beast Master Ranger can skin their beast however they like and pick from 3 different stat blocks, and change both with a long rest. (They are still all just beasts, though, doing physical damage as opposed to fire/cold/poison/etc.) And then the Genie Warlock gets to choose from 4 different sub-sub-classes, in a sense! Why the wildfire spirit wasn't done in similar fashion, I have no idea. Page count, maybe.


----------



## Lanefan

IMO the only - only! - 4e mechanic I've seen that's really worth porting forward into a new edition is "bloodied".

Port the bloodied mechanic forward - and then use it as a first step toward a proper wound-vitality or body-fatigue hit point system.


----------



## Raith5

I really enjoyed 4e and I like 5e. I would like a bit more complexity/tactical choices for PCs and monsters in any 5.5 but not too much as to make fights take as long as in 4e.

One thing I miss from 4e are customization options like paragon paths and epic destinies (or prestige classes in 3e). I think more customization options is something I would like to see - especially at mid and higher levels. I also prefer feats to be a core part of the game as per 3e and 4e and to have more of them than 5e.

I also think that high level play is something they can tweak to make 5e work better at higher level. While a much of this rests on the design of adventures (and advice given to DMs), I think slightly more complex monsters and more customizable PCs could help here.


----------



## EzekielRaiden

overgeeked said:


> So cantrips =/= at-will powers despite being able to use them...at will.
> 
> And standard caster spell slots =/= daily powers despite being able to use them...wait for it...once per day.
> 
> That's certainly a take.



I mean, I did literally go into the exact reasons for that, in a post that was generally well-received by most people, even those I often disagree with. Instead of just dismissing the argument out of hand, you _could_ dig deeper and ask how and why someone could come to that conclusion, given that there _are_ similarities between these mechanics.



Malmuria said:


> I don't know anything about 4e more or less, was thinking of 5e examples (i.e. battlemaster).
> 
> If I were to invent a mechanic in b/x, I might say that if a trained fighter hits they can make a 1 in 6 chance to also trip (or 2 in 6, or a %, or whatever).  As you mention, that's also abstract for the purpose of it actually being a game, but somehow I find it easier to connect back to the fiction?



That's fair, though a big part of the problem is simply the randomness. Being at the mercy of the dice as to whether you get your class fantasy is pretty disappointing in modern game design. In old-school games, "class fantasy" was handled dramatically differently (a mixture of behind-the-scenes elements and only having a small number of classes to begin with). Modern games with an old-school lean, such as Dungeon World, tend to do this by making strongly-thematic fundamental moves that are expected to show up a lot, e.g. the Fighter's _Bend Bars, Lift Gates_ move or the Paladin's _I Am The Law_ move. IOW: While your idea is sound in the context of proper old-school gaming (as in, not _inspired by_, but rather the real deal or emulating it as close as possible), in practice with today's games and gamers it probably wouldn't be received well.

To use a highly simplified analogy: Imagine if you had to roll a die just to find out if you were _allowed_ to make attack rolls this turn, or carry heavy equipment this adventure, or whatever else. Whether or not it feels connected back to the fiction, having your "special thing" be gated behind the whims of the dice does not, in general, feel super engaging for a lot of folks today.



Mordhau said:


> Short rests did solve one particular problem in 4e though (although 13th Age's escalation die may be a better solution).
> 
> That was that the encounter powers often led to fights getting quite repetitive.  There was pretty much little good reason to hold back on using your best powers right away and then cycling through them in order every time.  Short rests in 5e basically stop the Fighter from opening every fight with an Action Surge.  It encourages the Fighter to hold back and consider whether it's worth using this fight or holding off for a later one.



In theory, this was supposed to be alleviated by replacing your Encounter powers every few levels, but yes, I grant that. I _massively_ prefer the 13th Age solution though. It's significantly more user-friendly game design to _create incentive_ to hold onto your strong tools, rather than to _not let you have_ those tools. (Particularly when other and far less potent tools are also shackled to those limits, like Expertise Dice or Ki points.)


----------



## Horwath

MichaelSomething said:


> It's not there already?
> 
> Hit dice, short rest abilities, and at will cantrips don't count?



Yes,

But 5min short rest IS a short rest, 1hr short rest IS NOT short.

25% max HP healing surges were much cleaner to use than rolling HDs

so, I do not like 4E that much, but at-will cantrips, healing surges and 5min rests were all good things.


----------



## Aldarc

billd91 said:


> Rationalize or put into words/a conceptual framework?
> Seems to me a lot of people‘s approach to Justin Alexander’s analysis are just as subject to rationalization depending on their feelings about 4e. The bottom line is either his approach makes sense to you or it doesn’t and whether or not that is true probably depends on whether you feel the same disconnect as he did with 4e.



I don't mind if he likes 4e D&D or not. People are welcome to have their opinions. My issue is that he hides it behind faulty reasoning, objectivity, and the airs of careful analysis. I enjoy analyses, and the Alexandrian can provide good ones, but I think an emotional approach would have been more honest, showcase greater good faith, and resonated more clearly than his "analytical" one.



darjr said:


> It is because it didn't. We'd have folks show up with familiars fluffed as Gold Dragons. It really meant nothing.



"It isn't because it did. [recounts personal anecdotal evidence]" Is that sort of argumentation actually convincing for you because that is how you arguing your case.

Anyway, design things (§) from 4e that I would like to see return to 5e in some form: 

More interesting monster/encounter design and building tools
Monster types, including Minions.
The Bloodied condition, which can be used to trigger additional effects for PCs or NPCs
Proper Short Rests
Some possible rework of Skill Challenges that makes more sense in the context of 5e
Druid shape-shifting forms that scale with level and aren't just managing monster manual stat blocks
The Warlord (unrealistic, but I reserve my right to dream)
I would love Saves turned back to three Defenses (Fortitude, Reflex, Will)

(§) Otherwise I would be writing about the Nentir Vale, Dawn War, and Points of Light in a giant essay.


----------



## Lyxen

Horwath said:


> so, I do not like 4E that much, but at-will cantrips, healing surges and 5min rests were all good things.




There were a lot of brilliant design ideas in 4e, actually, unfortunately the philosophy of the game and its design intent were not the ones that I was looking for and, apparently not the ones that the potential players were looking for. Note that this is not specifically disparaging for 4e, because my views is that neither was it that of 3e (and despite the fact that that edition also brought a lot of good things). All this, of course, based on the way the game went in terms of sales and public appeal.

However, the design intent of 5e is actually completely opposite to that of 4e. 4e wanted to control everything by its very design, whereas 5e only aims at providing guidelines and being minimalistic so as to provide as open-ended a game as possible.

This is why introducing mechanics from 4e back into 3e is in itself problematic, 5e does not want more rules, and certainly does not want control through those rules.

Some examples:

Bloodied: At start, I regretted the absence of bloodied in 5e, but I don't not anymore. I don't want to have to deal with that status all the time, for all creatures and in all combats, but if I want to create a mythic monster (which basically creates monsters that can be fairly different depending on their phase) for a specific combat, I can. And I did not even have to wait for MOoT to do that, multipart monsters made sense and had been developed almost from 5e inception. And I had no unforgiving set of rules that prevented me from doing this, and therefore no annoying ruleslawyer to tell me that I was violating the rules of Monster Design.
Monster Design: Yes, having long list of spells can be annoying to manage IN COMBAT when you want to streamline them. But first, my NPCs are not designed to function only in combat, and having utility spells for other situations is useful. Moreover, if I want to create a monster with limited spell lists, including at will spells, this has been possible from the start of 5e. But I could have the whole range (complete lists, partial lists or simple powers) without, again having the system or a ruleslawyer tell me that I was designing my monster wrong.
Skill Challenge: Yes, some people like to have them as a structure for their activities in the game, and yes, they might be a help for more inexperienced DMs in managing complex situations. But I don't need them, and I don't like how thy format what could/should be a freeform game around seeking successes rather than failures over rollplaying skill checks. I don't need that kind of control structure and, inherently, the game does not need it, people played exploration/social pillars of the game extremely well for decades without them. Again, as an option or a suggestion, they might be mentioned in the DMG, but there is no need for them being in the core.
Monster/Encounter design: God, I hated 3e monster design that forced the DM to abide by player rules so that they could audit your monster, 4e simplified it because they made it around simpler concepts, but in the end, like most things in 4e, they did it by restricting the way you could design a monster. It was done with a good intention in mind, balancing the monsters and encounters. But it severely restricted the way monsters and encounters were designed in the name of balance. Again, this is fundamentally opposed to 5e design, where creative freedom is more important than rules. Yes, monster and encounter design is much more fluffy, and needs more experience, but I prefer a much more open game even if I make mistakes now and then.
So, for me, the good things to import are those who do not violate the design philosophy of 5e. And these are actually more additions than more control:

I would love a Warlord and Swordmage, two of my favourite classes, that I played to high levels in 4e and which gave me good times even though I felt strangled by the design of the game.
I would like to see the Nentir Vale again, perfect place to start a campaign and make it grow.
I would like many more rituals, for all classes and power types.


----------



## Shiroiken

darjr said:


> No on skill challenges. Please no. No. no no. Not again.



While not as detailed as the skill challenges of 4E, I've found using group skill checks to be a simpler method of achieving the same results in game (overcoming an obstacle). The gamest mentality required for skill challenges always threw me out of the moment, hampering gameplay. Even if you wanted to have a longer or more complicated challenge, you could simply add additional checks or allow the choice of multiple skills. For example, crossing a wilderness might require 2 group checks of wis/survival or str/athletics, with each failed group check costing a rank of exhaustion.


----------



## Olrox17

Aldarc said:


> I don't mind if he likes 4e D&D or not. People are welcome to have their opinions. My issue is that he hides it behind faulty reasoning, objectivity, and the airs of careful analysis. I enjoy analyses, and the Alexandrian can provide good ones, but I think an emotional approach would have been more honest, showcase greater good faith, and resonated more clearly than his "analytical" one.
> 
> 
> "It isn't because it did. [recounts personal anecdotal evidence]" Is that sort of argumentation actually convincing for you because that is how you arguing your case.
> 
> Anyway, design things (§) from 4e that I would like to see return to 5e in some form:
> 
> More interesting monster/encounter design and building tools
> Monster types, including Minions.
> The Bloodied condition, which can be used to trigger additional effects for PCs or NPCs
> Proper Short Rests
> Some possible rework of Skill Challenges that makes more sense in the context of 5e
> Druid shape-shifting forms that scale with level and aren't just managing monster manual stat blocks
> The Warlord (unrealistic, but I reserve my right to dream)
> I would love Saves turned back to three Defenses (Fortitude, Reflex, Will)
> 
> (§) Otherwise I would be writing about the Nentir Vale, Dawn War, and Points of Light in a giant essay.



If I could agree with this post more than once, I would.


----------



## clearstream

Malmuria said:


> @EzekielRaiden suggested I post this in its own thread, so blame them if this goes off the rails!
> 
> As 5.5 is announced, it is also clear that 4e is having a moment, due in no small part by Matt Colville's recent advocacy and streaming.  I never played 4e, but it seems there are a lot of fans of the edition here, and I'm curious as to your take on 4e design, and what 4e have or should be brought over into 5.5.  This discussion started by me asking what people thought of Justin Alexander's many criticisms of the system, some of which are here:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Dissociated Mechanics – A Brief Primer
> 
> 
> Four years ago, in an effort to understand why I found so many of the design decisions in the 4th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons antithetical to what I wanted from a roleplaying game, I wrote an es
> 
> 
> 
> 
> thealexandrian.net
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> So, very much not trying to start an edition war here!  So let's be nice to everyone! Rather, looking to gather thoughts on how mechanics from 4e played out at the table (e.g. did they feel "disassociated"), and what should be brought forward into 5.5.



As I have commented elsewhere, I'd encourage those interested in this question to look at the Book of Nine Swords (ToB) and then revisit their thoughts on associated versus dissociated.

Take Alexander's one-handed catch mechanic that he classifies as dissociated. Imagine that instead of the world we live in, we lived in a slightly different world - one in which it was normal to have one-use abilities like that. Perhaps the brains and muscles of creatures in this imaginary world are wired differently to ours: they highly potentiate around one astounding action, and then go into a fatigued state.

Such a world seems alien to us - maybe even improbable - because _we don't live in_ a world like that. The point here is that "dissociated" as Alexander (and others) use it, really means "alien". But aren't fantasy worlds - in ways that we value - _always _alien to our own? I've never cast a spell or met an elf. If we want to be strict in our dissociative classification, don't we need to include everything imaginary? Returning to his one-handed catch example, the reason he judges that it is associative for fireball to be limited use, and dissociative for catch, is that spell-slots have been normalized.

What the commentary amounts to is that we easily accept in our fiction things that have been normalized for us, and we find suspension of disbelief-breaking things that don't seem normal _to us_. ToB and the 4th edition rules that came after it, present a different take on the limits of character abilities. Nearer to Eastern fantasy than Western. Less spells, more innate force. Flow. That doesn't mean one has to enjoy that kind of fantasy - or even that it was the right choice for an edition of D&D - but I would argue that coming up with a classification for the '_wrong-kind-of-imaginary_' deserves challenging.


----------



## UngeheuerLich

4e had really cool things.
I already see a lot of 4e in 5e. In some parts the 4e rules were actually better. Now that 4e is 10 years away, you can restore the original rules in some parts (death saving throws in 4e were better, as they only restted after a short rest. Short rests were more paractical. Healing surges were great, especially with the second wind encounter power).

Edit: dissociation for us was due to at will powers and shifting. Combat could not be resolved in natural language. It was all technical. 
4e essentials did a good job of reducing dissociation when they went to base attacks mainly. But shifting remained. 
We didn't object martials getting some encounter powers or even dailies.


----------



## clearstream

UngeheuerLich said:


> Combat could not be resolved in natural language.



I think if Alexander had framed his discussion in terms of awkwardness in narrating imagined action that falls outside whatever normal language we have available to us, where that awkwardness can jar us out of suspension-of-disbelief, then I would feel sympathetic toward that view.

That is exactly the problem you describe - you could not narrate 4th-edition combat in language that came easily to you. You would have needed to be provided new language to do it. Fast-flowing, easy role-play happens when we can lean into tropes. Our tropes... those _normal _to us. Perhaps you once tried Barker's Empire of the Petal Throne (EPT). EPT is a very different place from what we might be used to. That was what was wonderful about it!

I suspect that when designers working into the mechanics concepts that are alien to their audience, they need to work doubly-hard to give their audience the tools they need for their fiction to work with and flow from those mechanics. IMO the 4th edition mechanics were a hugely valuable experiment in RPG design. Absolutely not the right experiment to conduct with a broad-audience, classic-fantasy RPG like D&D, but I appreciate that they tried it and expect that learning has and will continue to flow from that experiment for some time.


----------



## NaturalZero

Mordhau said:


> It made me wonder what was the point of releasing new volcano favour barbarian path was when one could just pick the best barbarian path and reskin it as volcano flavoured.
> 
> I tend to feel the same about 5e subclasses though.



Definitely feel this with 5e. I've never ever, ever, ever seen a hexblade use the fluff from the book. It's always an old one hexblade, or a celestial hexblade, or a mechanical hexblade, or a guy with an intelligent weapon. If I hadn't read the book, I never would have known that the default hexblade relates to the Shadowfell.


----------



## Krachek

There is already enough 4ed in the 5ed.
Advantage, portent of divination wizard, shield spell, lucky feat, all those mechanics feel 4Ed to me. and they are very popular!

One other thing that 4ed done right, is to refresh classes in 4ed essentials. they keep the core game, but redesign the gameplay with new and fresh classes design. That should be an inspiration for the 50th, and it’s what I expect for the 50th printout.


----------



## Aldarc

NaturalZero said:


> Definitely feel this with 5e. I've never ever, ever, ever seen a hexblade use the fluff from the book. It's always an old one hexblade, or a celestial hexblade, or a mechanical hexblade, or a guy with an intelligent weapon. If I hadn't read the book, I never would have known that the default hexblade relates to the Shadowfell.



No surprise considering that the Hexblade is clearly a patch for Pact of the Blade. So I think most people gloss the standard origin in favor of a Patron that they otherwise would have picked.


----------



## clearstream

NaturalZero said:


> Definitely feel this with 5e. I've never ever, ever, ever seen a hexblade use the fluff from the book. It's always an old one hexblade, or a celestial hexblade, or a mechanical hexblade, or a guy with an intelligent weapon. If I hadn't read the book, I never would have known that the default hexblade relates to the Shadowfell.



I feel like one might make sense of the notion of dissociation by thinking through the implications of your and @Mordhau's comments. You can see that it would most meaningfully matter to be volcano barbarian or hexblade warlock if there were mechanics that connected to the driving in-world fictions. That would be narratable, and not easily covered by refluffing.

For example, if volcano-barb gains Con when standing on a volcano, then crunch and fluff are chained together. (I'm not saying that would be a great subclass feature! It's just to illustrate the idea.) So 'dissociative' might be meaningfully redefined as lacking valency to the fiction that it's _intended_ to have valency to. In the case of 4th edition, the 'problem' is that for much of the audience, the intended fiction is taken to be centred on European-mythic-medieval-fantasy-light - bearskin-clad barbarians, bookish wizards, scaley dragons, and all that - as remolded through the cycles of D&D IP development. 4th edition mechanics were superficially, but not deeply chained to that expected genre. They were deeply chained to a quite different genre.

That produces jarring issues like that @UngeheuerLich encountered. A lack of language to narrate what the mechanics were doing. I think if you read back over some of the (quite lengthy) discourses on this subject, such as @Lyxen's, you can see this as the underlying problem. Many posters frame it as an objective problem, when it is principally a _subjective _problem: a problem of what has been normalised for them. The objective aspect is _limited _to the problem of what they might reasonably expect, based on what the game designers have said they intended (including via the game-as-product positioning).


----------



## Hussar

I always love watching people try to justify why they don't like 4e but do like 5e.  The whiff of irony is just too delicious.

Thing is, if they had written 4e like 5e is written virtually none of the problems 4e had would have happened.  5e has so much 4e DNA buried into it, but, people just gloss over that because of how it's presented.  

The issue with 4e was never substantive.  It was always based on presentation.


----------



## DEFCON 1

It's when reading threads like this that I really feel so much more relaxed about how I enjoy the game.  Because I am so over ANY concern about game mechanics that the idea of adding or not adding 4E-style ones to 5E doesn't matter to me one bit.  And I sympathize with all of you who actually really, really care if this rule is added or that rule isn't.  To be that tied to how the rules play out just seems exhausting (especially when your rule desires do not actually appear in the game.)

I played 4E when it was out... I enjoyed it when it started... eventually I grew bored with the specific mechanical representation... and then 5E came out and I moved on.  Now with 5E I also enjoyed it... and thus far am not getting to my boredom quotient as quickly because mechanically 5E is lighter and also designed to throw out the rules when unsatisfactory and make "rulings" instead... but I presume I am going to eventually want to move on from 5E too (and pick up 6E if/when it comes out.)  But in both cases... neither rule set matters so much to me that I am unwilling to play either one (nor would I be unwilling to play 3E, 2E, AD&D, Basic or whatever) if there was someone who really enjoyed it and ran it to the best of its functionality.  If I had someone who really loved 4E and was going to run a game?  Count me in!  Same with Pathfinder, same with 13th Age, same with BECMI.  Because for me, it's all about the story... and whatever funny dice I roll in whatever combinations the rulebook tells me to is such an unimportant part of it that I could rarely ever get upset about them.

And it's the same reason why I'm happy to play other RPGs, and have no need to see the 5E rules ported into other styles/genres of games when I could just use the rules for other games in those genres already.  The game mechanics just aren't that important to me, so why bend over backwards twisting 5E rules (or any systems for that matter) into pretzels in order for them to "work" for the genre / style I am going to be playing?


----------



## Vaalingrade

If I could only have one thing from 4e (because I'd really rather just jump back to 4e development pre-Essentials and refine from there, ignoring everything Essentials did), I'd like encounter-centric design back. I'm tired of the adventuring day being the parasite sapping the energy and fun out of the game. 4e still had daily abilities, but we were so close to being free!

Any now we're going back to daily everything.

Also a bit off topic, but I want to go back to 3e feats. 4 and 5e feats are too underwhelming and too rare respectively and shouldn't be connected to ASIs at all.


----------



## UngeheuerLich

Hussar said:


> snip (due to moderation)
> 
> The issue with 4e was never substantive.  It was always based on presentation.



Exactly. But presentation is important.


----------



## NaturalZero

clearstream said:


> A lack of language to narrate what the mechanics were doing. I think if you read back over some of the (quite lengthy) discourses on this subject, such as @Lyxen's, you can see this as the underlying problem. Many posters frame it as an objective problem, when it is principally a _subjective _problem: a problem of what has been normalised for them. The objective aspect is _limited _to the problem of what they might reasonably expect, based on what the game designers have said they intended (including via the game-as-product positioning).



Yeah. It's definitely a subjective aspect of how much you expect the game to provide as far as fluff.

Personally, I reflavor a bunch of stuff with every character, often renaming and refluffing class and race abilities to fit the narrative I've come up with. This is the whole reason I play tabletop games instead of just playing video games all of the time; I get to make up the fluff, aesthetic, and narrative of a character instead of have a developer tell me about the powers/appearance/race of my character. For me, there is zero difference regarding dissociative mechanics in 4e and 5e because I'm authoring every aspect of the character regardless of how much or how little the developers provide. Other people want to read the book and an engage in the narrative provided by default though, so having paragraphs of text instead of the mechanics are important to them.


----------



## Lyxen

Hussar said:


> The issue with 4e was never substantive.  It was always based on presentation.




No, it really was not. The design intent and philosophy are completely different, and you feel it in the way you play the game. It's all about balance (which is fine, but not necessary, at least to that extent) and control, which is fine except when it restricts what you can do. Some people like it, even want it in their game, and it's fine. But some people want more freedom in their game, 4e never gave it and 5e really opened the door back to before 3e.


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## Krachek

Another 4ed like concept that can used is to refuel of some ressources when you roll initiative. BM, monk, sorcerer get this at high level for ki point, superiority dice, …
Those features are simply encounter power recharge, and can be use more wisely to help resting problematic.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Lyxen said:


> No, it really was not. The design intent and philosophy are completely different, and you feel it in the way you play the game. It's all about balance (which is fine, but not necessary, at least to that extent) and control, which is fine except when it restricts what you can do. Some people like it, even want it in their game, and it's fine. But some people want more freedom in their game, 4e never gave it and 5e really opened the door back to before 3e.



I 100% agree with the first two sentences here, and then disagree on your analysis of how these games actually worked.  To elaborate, 5e's basic philosophy of play is different from 4e's (no matter how you choose to flex 4e) so any "borrowed" mechanics do not do the same things in each.  5e's re-embrace of "the GM decides" as it's core resolution mechanic means that the borrowed mechanics are no longer player-facing and player invoked but rather are now just more tools for the GM to ignore/modify/utilize as they see fit.  Individual GMs can redistribute these and give them back to the players, but that's a table choice and not how the system is designed.

However, I once again vehemently disagree with your very narrow views on how 4e works.  Not just in the idea that 4e can flex very easily with no needed changes to the rules to a more narrativist/story now approach, but in that you clearly view the game from a strong Trad approach and so devalue the freedoms inherit to 4e because they accrue to the player side rather than the GM side.  So those freedoms that help empower the player to have a say in the game reduce the GM's say in the game and are viewed as restrictive from the GM side.  This doesn't have to be the case, but it does require evaluating the game from a different standpoint than the one you seem to favor.


----------



## darjr

Hussar said:


> I always love watching people try to justify why they don't like 4e but do like 5e.  The whiff of irony is just too delicious.
> 
> Thing is, if they had written 4e like 5e is written virtually none of the problems 4e had would have happened.  5e has so much 4e DNA buried into it, but, people just gloss over that because of how it's presented.
> 
> The issue with 4e was never substantive.  It was always based on presentation.



I have other points of difference with your post But the big record scratch for me is that playing a game as presented matters. It’s literally the rules.


----------



## darjr

I would like some of the monster powers from 4e in 5e. I think that’s good or at least OK.

I’d love some kind of epic destinies. Some form of Quests would be cool, I think.

Also some things that would help synergies parties or players, both in the fly and in campaigns, but without such tight rigorous rules required.


----------



## Umbran

Hussar said:


> I always love watching people try to justify why they don't like 4e but do like 5e.  The whiff of irony is just too delicious.




*Mod Note:*
The condescension and dismissiveness issuing forth from you... is not delicious.  

If you aren't going to be respectful of others, you can leave the thread now.


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## Lyxen

Ovinomancer said:


> I 100% agree with the first two sentences here, and then disagree on your analysis of how these games actually worked.  To elaborate, 5e's basic philosophy of play is different from 4e's (no matter how you choose to flex 4e) so any "borrowed" mechanics do not do the same things in each.  5e's re-embrace of "the GM decides" as it's core resolution mechanic means that the borrowed mechanics are no longer player-facing and player invoked but rather are now just more tools for the GM to ignore/modify/utilize as they see fit.  Individual GMs can redistribute these and give them back to the players, but that's a table choice and not how the system is designed.
> 
> However, I once again vehemently disagree with your very narrow views on how 4e works.  Not just in the idea that 4e can flex very easily with no needed changes to the rules to a more narrativist/story now approach, but in that you clearly view the game from a strong Trad approach and so devalue the freedoms inherit to 4e because they accrue to the player side rather than the GM side.  So those freedoms that help empower the player to have a say in the game reduce the GM's say in the game and are viewed as restrictive from the GM side.  This doesn't have to be the case, but it does require evaluating the game from a different standpoint than the one you seem to favor.




OK, I think one of the reasons we do not see eye to eye is that you believe that I'm assigning an intrinsic level of quality to the editions, and promoting one over the other. I'm not really, not at all. It's just that the editions have different principles and therefore will suit better some types of games than others.

This does not mean that any type of game cannot be run with any edition, especially if you start adapting the rules, for example, only that it's easier to do with some editions than with some others. And although I believe that it takes more work to do narrative play with 4e than with 5e, it does not mean that it cannot be done and cannot be enjoyed. Again, not disparaging anything here. On the other hand, if you want tactical combat (and some of the players at our table really liked it), 4e is much more suitable because with the fuzziness of 5e, it's hard to be really precise.

As for freedom, you are focussing on the DM's freedom from controlling players, which is part of my argument, although I must point out that this is mostly an attitude that I saw with 3e rather than with 4e. In 4e, the rules and options were tightly controlled so there was less room for argument, and it was already a step forward in resolving the player-centricity of 3e.

But when I'm speaking about freedom, I'm speaking mostly of situational freedom, of the freedom to have fluid situations that go across the three pillars. In 4e, I was unable to run a situation that started social, had a little skirmish, degenerated into a chase then went back to social. Rigid combat structure combined with an attempt at rigid skill resolution hampered me, especially at high/high level with people teleporting across a city or across the back of dragons in the astral plane. And it was not only the rigidity of combat itself, but the rigidity of the powers, which were almost all linked to combat  and working in the rigid combat environment, and linked to encounters, as well as the relative poverty of the choices, compared for example to the wealth of possible magic that any spellcaster can have, even a half-one, in addition to the power of magic items, not limited by the 4e structure.

Again, it's not impossible to get that freedom, it's just that it was much harder to do it within the 4e structure than within the 5e structure. Is it a bit more clear this way ?

And, coming back to this thread, this is why most of the rules structure of 4e would be, for me, inappropriate to reimport back into 5e, not that they are bad structures in and of themselves, just that I don't think that 5e needs any more structures.


----------



## Campbell

My personal take is that 3e, 4e, and 5e share superficial mechanical similarities yet are phenomenally different games with phenomenally different design philosophies. In particular wherever 5e implements something mechanically similar to 4e it pretty much removes all the context and features of the 4e implementation that matters to gameplay. Hit dice are basically nothing like healing surges when it comes down to it. Concentration shares very little with sustaining a spell.  I like both games, but there is almost none of 4e's core DNA in 5e.


----------



## Lyxen

Campbell said:


> My personal take is that 3e, 4e, and 5e share superficial mechanical similarities yet are phenomenally different games with phenomenally different design philosophies. In particular wherever 5e implements something mechanically similar to 4e it pretty much removes all the context and features of the 4e implementation that matters to gameplay. Hit dice are basically nothing like healing surges when it comes down to it. Concentration shares very little with sustaining a spell.  I like both games, but there is almost none of 4e's core DNA in 5e.




I agree, the thing is that some of the mechanisms might look similar to some degree, and some of the concepts are shared, but conceptually, the games are really different. Again, the differences might seem a bit remote and "airy", but in 3e and 4e, the rules are the rules, and although they speak about house rules, it's clearly not the objective to change them too much, whereas 5e is more about guidelines, and rulings over rules. Same with the role of the DM, in 4e he is first and foremost a referee, whereas his role as a storyteller comes to the fore in 5e. Again, it does not mean that all the games of an edition should be played that way, but it's clear that when making design decisions along the process of designing an edition, all the smaller choices made were along the philosophy of the edition, and the concepts were interpreted within that light.


----------



## Aldarc

Hussar said:


> I always love watching people try to justify why they don't like 4e but do like 5e.  The whiff of irony is just too delicious.
> 
> Thing is, if they had written 4e like 5e is written virtually none of the problems 4e had would have happened.  5e has so much 4e DNA buried into it, but, people just gloss over that because of how it's presented.
> 
> The issue with 4e was never substantive.  It was always based on presentation.



As much of a fan of 4e as I am, I will not say that some issues were never substantive or only a matter of presentation, though this is not to say that the latter didn't have any effect. However, the challenge for me was finding the insightful critiques of 4e amidst the flaming, thread-crapping, emotion-laden, accusations, hyperbole, misinformation, etc. of the Edition Wars. I don't think I really felt like I found the better critiques until afterwards, mainly from fans of 4e who had a better grasp on the strengths and weaknesses of the system without the axe to grind. 

While 5e does have a lot of repackaged or recontextualized elements that are similar to design concepts from 4e, 5e does feel more similar to a cross-breed of 2e D&D with 3e D&D, with a greater focus on GM-curated stories and authority from the former. 

I think that, overall, we are in a better place to look back and review the game. It's far from perfect. It's no secret that 4e was rushed in playtest development and riddled with problems. 

It would be nice, IMHO, if we could get a polished version of the game. I suspect that we would need two different polished versions though: one based on 4e Core and and one on 4e Essentials. Depending on who you ask, Essentials either improved or broke 4e. I'm not sure if WotC would ever open 4e up to retro-clones or for polishing the way the OSR did for B/X and 1e D&D, but I think that it would actually do wonders for the community.


----------



## billd91

Campbell said:


> My personal take is that 3e, 4e, and 5e share superficial mechanical similarities yet are phenomenally different games with phenomenally different design philosophies. In particular wherever 5e implements something mechanically similar to 4e it pretty much removes all the context and features of the 4e implementation that matters to gameplay. Hit dice are basically nothing like healing surges when it comes down to it. Concentration shares very little with sustaining a spell.  I like both games, but there is almost none of 4e's core DNA in 5e.



I wouldn't go nearly as far as saying there's no 4e core DNA in 5e. There's quite a bit - but then humans share 99% of their DNA with chimpanzees and the resulting organisms are quite different. 
5e may have some design ideas that have been through the 4e process, but they express themselves very differently in 5e. And no, I don't just mean presentation, Hussar. I mean how they work and integrate together and produce a different game as played at the table.


----------



## DEFCON 1

Vaalingrade said:


> Also a bit off topic, but I want to go back to 3e feats. 4 and 5e feats are too underwhelming and too rare respectively and shouldn't be connected to ASIs at all.



Heh... you think 4E feats are underwhelming but 3E feats aren't?  A standard 3E feat like Dodge (+1 AC) was so blah that 5E just gave Fighters a way to get that exact same thing at 1st level for free with a Fighting Style.  And in 3E fighting with two weapons required what... three separate feats(?)... to remove the penalties for dual-wielding that 5E now just says "Go right ahead from the start!"  And in order to make attacks against an opponent without killing them required feats to do so rather than just making it part of the narrative that sending someone to 0 HP could kill them or just render them unconscious.

To me... that's my history of 3E feats-- the game says "Here's the stuff you can do standard, and anything you want to do beyond this standard we are going to penalize you for it.  And if you don't want the penalty, take a feat to remove it."  So most of them just end up being fixes to things that shouldn't have been considered broken or penalizable in the first place.


----------



## darjr

One thing I’d wish, is 4e be released under the OGL.


----------



## Stalker0

When people say that 4e's presentation is not the issue it its something "more", I think that is underselling the power and importance of presentation. The difference between a bad and a good game is not always the rigor of the mechanics....but how well those mechanics tie into a specific narrative, aka do the rules enhance a player's experience or detract?

I personally do think 4e got a lot mechanically right (certainly not all), but I do think the style and narrative is a good bit displaced from historic dnd and that displacement caused a lot of strife with certain groups. It is not the sole issue with 4e, but I think its an important one.

Anyway back to the topic at hand, what can still be mined from 4e that would be useful to include in a 5.5?


Bloodied Condition: Simple and beautiful. A great condition to let players track their progress in a narrative way. Was a great mechanic to "change the fight" midway through, either by some monsters becoming stronger, weaker, or just changing their behavior.


Saving Throw Duration Tracker: 4e's "saving throw" is actually a fine idea, its just a terrible name because it caused narrative dissonance from every edition of dnd prior to it (because its NOT a saving throw!). But the idea that specific effects have a duration that is maintained by a coin flip, rather than continuously making saves, is perfectly fine and good. 5e kept it with the death save rule, and no reason it can't be adapted for other purposes.


Action Point: Maintained a bit in the fighter's "action surge", there is a place here with the inspiration system. Call it "greater inspiration", the ability to take an extra action through the spending of said point. Its fun and meaty.


Minions: One of the best rules in 4e, the ability to just litter the board with throw away bad guys. This is a rule that completes an extremely common narrative in heroic fantasy, the hero's just kicking the crap out of 20 guys before fighting the boss.


Running: 4e had a very simple run rule. You gained 10 feet to your speed in a round in exchange for a -2 defense. As 5e doesn't have a full run this is one way to take it up one more notch. Perhaps a bonus action that gives you +10 speed and disadvantage on attacks (and perhaps requires dash in order to use). Combined with dash we get a little bit closer to the old 3e run speed but without all of the other rules baggage.


Monster Classifications: Soldier, Brute, Artillery, Controller. These were very gamey names but it didn't matter because they weren't for the PCs, they were names that immediately told the DM how certain monsters behaved and what purpose they serve in a combat.


Monster Design: This is a big umbrella, but in a nutshell 4e had an approach to monster design that I believe is superior to 5e's. We can look at a few sub-categories.
4e's understood that the best way to fight a party is with a party. It created classifications and tools to quickly put together a group of monsters as a party and use them against your PCs.
*Distinctive Monster abilities*. Many 4e monsters just had really cool abilities that were distinctly their own. One example is the lowly kobold, who had the ability to do an extra "5 foot step" in a round (for those who don't remember old 3e mechanics, this was a small move that let you avoid OAs). This ability made kobolds super slippery, they could dart in and out of combat and it was hard to actual finish one of them. Fighting kobolds was a distinctive, memorable encounter, not a "bag of hitpoints" that is the common critique of 5e. I bold this one because I think its the most important philosophy they can readapt from 4th.
Real Bosses. 5e adopted a philosophy that monsters don't scale up too quickly, allowing for lower level parties to still deal with higher level threats. I personally think they went too far in this direction, and now it can be quite challenging to balance a real "boss fight" that doesn't end with a whimper. Just look at the recent Epic Monster thread on this forum and you can see just how crazy high a CR it takes to "fully challenge a party". While 4e solo monsters took several iterations to get right (the MMI solos were a sloggy mess)....eventually they crafted some really fun and powerful solo creatures that truly created the notion of "boss fight". I want some of that back in 5e.
The Statblock is for combat. When people talk about 5e spellcasters, this is a part of what they are talking about. I don't care that my lich can cast identify. Heck I barely care what their 1st level spells are when I'm throwing 9th level ones. I want a statblock that is used for one purpose..... a fight. 4e focused its statblocks on the essentials, giving you what was necessary for the creature to fight.... and then put all of the other stuff into narrative text so you could see how the monster works off the clock. I think 4e was too light on the flavorful narrative elements, but that is an issue with the surrounding text, the statblock itself they got right.


To balance that, something I personally *do not *want to see come back.... Skill Challenges. Well....kind of.

I have invested a lot into skill challenges, more than most. I actually wrote the book on them.... hehe ok ok I wrote A book called the Obsidian Skill Challenge system, where I broke down the original broken math and rebuilt a new system. But suffice it to say I have invested a lot of time and energy into making skill challenges good.

What I found after all that experience was Skill Challenges can be great as a tailored experience, but are terrible as a general one. A standard skill challenge broke down into "DM describes an event, players try to rationalize why they get to use cool skill X, they roll a bunch of die and either win or lose". Its one of the worst cases of 4e mechanics getting in the way of the narrative, they feel EXTREMELY artificial when used this way.

However, I think you could build certain subsystems off of the chassis. For example, I think you could make a solid chase system using the skill challenge concept..... and chases are one of those things that happens so often in dnd tropes but often doesn't get a good rules treatment. I also think multiple checks to effect something works create in combat..... "combat skill challenges" I think are a lot of fun, and so a subsystem of that could be great.


----------



## Quickleaf

I got to run two campaigns in 4E and play in one short-lived campaign. I also did a fan conversion of the AD&D Dragon Mountain to a 4th edition reimagining, which was really interesting because "old school big dungeon crawl against Tucker's Kobolds" doesn't immediately scream "4E would be great at that", but my tweaks got it working pretty well.

There does seem to be a bit of a 4e renaissance. Just recently sold much of my 4E collection on Ebay surprisingly fast. Not because I'm disenchanted with the system, but because I internalized all the good things it had to offer.

For me, 4E's main strengths were/are:

Very adaptive rugged mechanics, not necessarily easy to homebrew at first, but once you "grokked" the system you could do a whole lot without breaking the underlying maths
Wonderfully creative & well-presented monster design
Moving toward succinctness and "adventure now" design
And I'd agree with that article, at least in part, as 4E's main drawbacks were/are:

Disassociated mechanics making it hard for my players to explain what they were doing narratively when they said "I use power XYZ"
Combat taking forever to the point of ridiculousness (in my opinion D&D is best as a game of, to quote DMDave, "three roughly equal pillars" and _not_ "one HUGE pillar, and two little pillars")
Instances of paper-thin monster lore & ecology


----------



## Stalker0

DEFCON 1 said:


> Heh... you think 4E feats are underwhelming but 3E feats aren't?  A standard 3E feat like Dodge (+1 AC) was so blah that 5E just gave Fighters a way to get that exact same thing at 1st level for free with a Fighting Style.  And in 3E fighting with two weapons required what... three separate feats(?)... to remove the penalties for dual-wielding that 5E now just says "Go right ahead from the start!"  And in order to make attacks against an opponent without killing them required feats to do so rather than just making it part of the narrative that sending someone to 0 HP could kill them or just render them unconscious.
> 
> To me... that's my history of 3E feats-- the game says "Here's the stuff you can do standard, and anything you want to do beyond this standard we are going to penalize you for it.  And if you don't want the penalty, take a feat to remove it."  So most of them just end up being fixes to things that shouldn't have been considered broken or penalizable in the first place.



And you think that's bad, check out Pathfinder 1e. I went online to pick a feat for a character, and after whifting through pages and pages and pages and PAGES of garbage feats I was like "my god this is true bloat". There are feats so bad in there if I had 4x the feats I get at base I still would never take them.

That said, I don't think 5e feats are underwhelming (at base, there are garbage feats of course but that's the exception not the norm). However, I can respect that people don't get them often enough. A typical character gets 1 feat at 4th and at 8th. 8th level..... for many groups this might be nearing the end of the game, meaning that they basically will have 1 feat for the nigh entirety of their adventuring career. There is a reason the variant human is such a popular race.

I get it.... 5e wanted to make feats more distinctive (well they technically wanted to make them optional but not sure how well that worked out). But I think they went against the grain here. People like feats, they WANT feats. At minimum I think 1st level characters should get a feat.


----------



## Malmuria

Campbell said:


> My personal take is that 3e, 4e, and 5e share superficial mechanical similarities yet are phenomenally different games with phenomenally different design philosophies. In particular wherever 5e implements something mechanically similar to 4e it pretty much removes all the context and features of the 4e implementation that matters to gameplay. Hit dice are basically nothing like healing surges when it comes down to it.



Sorry to be obtuse, but you can explain that a bit more?  How are hit dice and healing surges very different, or evince very different approaches to game design?


----------



## Krachek

Learning from 4ed one thing 5.5 should avoid is the multiplication of bonus action and reaction.
At the end of 4ed everybody was optimizing action economy, and that was giving endless table turn. Minor actions were giving not so minor effect, and reaction chaining were cutting the flow of action to an hilarious state.


----------



## Charlaquin

overgeeked said:


> So cantrips =/= at-will powers despite being able to use them...at will.
> 
> And standard caster spell slots =/= daily powers despite being able to use them...wait for it...once per day.
> 
> That's certainly a take.



No, that just isn’t what the system calls them. I’ve never hear a player refer to their cantrip as “an at-will” or their spell as “a daily.”


----------



## Charlaquin

Aldarc said:


> As much of a fan of 4e as I am, I will not say that some issues were never substantive or only a matter of presentation, though this is not to say that the latter didn't have any effect. However, the challenge for me was finding the insightful critiques of 4e amidst the flaming, thread-crapping, emotion-laden, accusations, hyperbole, misinformation, etc. of the Edition Wars. I don't think I really felt like I found the better critiques until afterwards, mainly from fans of 4e who had a better grasp on the strengths and weaknesses of the system without the axe to grind.



Yep, the best critiques of 4e came from people who liked 4e but recognized it had room to improve.


----------



## DEFCON 1

Stalker0 said:


> And you think that's bad, check out Pathfinder 1e. I went online to pick a feat for a character, and after whifting through pages and pages and pages and PAGES of garbage feats I was like "my god this is true bloat". There are feats so bad in there if I had 4x the feats I get at base I still would never take them.



Oh believe you me... I'm currently playing in a Pathfinder game and using the *d20pfsrd* for the options to choose from, and those feat lists are ridiculous. I'd say 95% of them are things that denote something along the lines of "If you wish for your character to have this piece of flavor and fluff, spend this feat slot to say you are it and we'll throw in a small mechanical bonus."

Pretty much every feat of mine after character creation was just me filtering the lists down to the Pathfinder PHB and taking the basic "bonus number" ones because I just _didn't care_.  Raise my Fort save, get a +1 bonus to hit, get a +1 bonus to damage, get a +1 bonus to AC etc. etc. etc.  And yet some people consider this "customizing" their character.  LOL.


----------



## Aldarc

Malmuria said:


> Sorry to be obtuse, but you can explain that a bit more?  How are hit dice and healing surges very different, or evince very different approaches to game design?



@EzekielRaiden talks a bit about it in the thread that he links earlier. Not to steal his thunder, but he gets to the heart of it there: the big difference is that healing surges are a pacing mechanic in 4e. Healing surges capped healing abilities, and they were also used to power some magic items and rituals. 

So imagine if we were playing D&D 5e and the cleric casts Healing Word on you. What happens? The cleric player rolls 1d4 + their character's spellcasting modifier. If we were playing D&D 4e and the cleric casts Healing Word, the other player would (optionally) spend one of _their _healing surges and gain an additional 1d6 HP. Your healing surges were not based on how many HD your character had, but, rather, were determined by class: e.g., Cleric (7 + Con modifier per day), Fighter (9 + Con modifier per day), Wizard (6 + Con modifier per day), etc. So effectively, healing surges were both a pacing mechanic and a way for healing to be relative to the target's total HP value.


----------



## Stalker0

DEFCON 1 said:


> Oh believe you me... I'm currently playing in a Pathfinder game and using the *d20pfsrd* for the options to choose from, and those feat lists are ridiculous. I'd say 95% of them are things that denote something along the lines of "If you wish for your character to have this piece of flavor and fluff, spend this feat slot to say you are it and we'll throw in a small mechanical bonus."
> 
> ... get a +1 bonus to hit



Hey a +1 one to hit is downright amazing in context. There are feats like "get a +1 to hit...against goblins....on a tuesday....if your wearing slippers". Some of those feats are so niche its downright insane.


----------



## clearstream

DEFCON 1 said:


> Heh... you think 4E feats are underwhelming but 3E feats aren't?  A standard 3E feat like Dodge (+1 AC) was so blah that 5E just gave Fighters a way to get that exact same thing at 1st level for free with a Fighting Style.  And in 3E fighting with two weapons required what... three separate feats(?)... to remove the penalties for dual-wielding that 5E now just says "Go right ahead from the start!"  And in order to make attacks against an opponent without killing them required feats to do so rather than just making it part of the narrative that sending someone to 0 HP could kill them or just render them unconscious.
> 
> To me... that's my history of 3E feats-- the game says "Here's the stuff you can do standard, and anything you want to do beyond this standard we are going to penalize you for it.  And if you don't want the penalty, take a feat to remove it."  So most of them just end up being fixes to things that shouldn't have been considered broken or penalizable in the first place.



I like the sizing of 5e feats, and their association with ASIs. It creates a strong balancing tool for game designers (which somehow, they still misapplied in a few places!) Being able to have full-ASI and half-ASI feats creates a lot of design space. 

I'd like to see the trap feats brought up to mechanical viability. Possibly a couple of standout feats toned down slightly. More use of half-ASIs, and allow the ASI part to always apply to _any_ ability. Also fewer unnecessary prereqs. Essentially, let feats give players more ways to tailor their characters, rather than assuming that for e.g. martial feats only buff physical abilities.


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## Campbell

Healing surges (which are rather poorly named) represent your inner reserves and form a central part of narrative of combat in 4e. Combat in 4e is all about finding your inner strength and working together to overcome what should feel like incredible odds. Almost all hit point recovery is built around inspiration and rallying which is why it's limited by healing surges. You had the strength all along. Getting knocked down and getting back is a constant fixture of the combat model.

Hit dice are pretty far removed from that idea of pushing yourself to overcome the odds. That's fine though. The story of combat in 5e is just different.


----------



## UngeheuerLich

Stalker0 said:


> Saving Throw Duration Tracker: 4e's "saving throw" is actually a fine idea, its just a terrible name because it caused narrative dissonance from every edition of dnd prior to it (because its NOT a saving throw!). But the idea that specific effects have a duration that is maintained by a coin flip, rather than continuously making saves, is perfectly fine and good. 5e kept it with the death save rule, and no reason it can't be adapted for other purposes.




That is how 5e uses saving throws in most cases... Duration is fixed and you can escape depending on your ability to withstand. 
And actually this is how saving throws in 5.5 should be used. 
Effects that kill/disable with a single saving throw actually don't fit into 5e. They should all be changed to at least 2 or 3 saving throws. Death saves as you say is a good idea, as well as stone to flesh. 
1st saving throw: minor effect, second: major effect: third: potential kill. 

Dominate monster or polymorph could easily work that way. 

Dominate:
1st: charmed
2nd: confused
3rd: dominated

Polymorph:
First: incapacitated
Second: stunned
Third: polymorphed

And those spell should at least require concentration or even a bonus action to keep up until the full effect takes place.


----------



## lkj

I've argued since the Next playtests that 5e was built on a 4e chassis. There are definitely good elements that didn't get adopted-- likely for reasons associated with feedback during the Next playtest. But with the new audience being much broader, I think the window has opened to get in even more of the good stuff from 4e.

Incidentally, I liked 4e. But many of my players didn't. I always contended it was because the innards were too visible. That's a much longer discussion. And I can see it's already going on here!

Adrian


----------



## Stalker0

Campbell said:


> Healing surges (which are rather poorly named) represent your inner reserves and form a central part of narrative of combat in 4e. Combat in 4e is all about finding your inner strength and working together to overcome what should feel like incredible odds. Almost all hit point recovery is built around inspiration and rallying which is why it's limited by healing surges. You had the strength all along. Getting knocked down and getting back is a constant fixture of the combat model.
> 
> Hit dice are pretty far removed from that idea of pushing yourself to overcome the odds. That's fine though. The story of combat in 5e is just different.



And this is a great example of presentation vs mechanics.

Presentation wise, your right there are narrative differences between surge and hit dice.

But mechanically? They are extremely similar. Both represent "a finite reserve of recovery" that requires some measure of "rest" to utilize. They are of course not exactly the same, healing surges scaled based on hitpoints and were mainly based on class/con score. Hit Dice are mainly based on level with some adjustment based on class. Also most healing in 4e required surges, so it was possible to be "unable to heal". In 5e, magical healing does not require hitdice, so healing is "theoretically infinite" with the right resources.

But its quite clear that the hit die concept came out of healing surges, they mechanically serve a very similar purpose.


----------



## Dausuul

There's a lot I could say about the whole dissociated mechanics thing, but it mostly boils down to "The D&D ruleset has never mapped perfectly onto the fiction. 4E's mistake was that they stopped pretending it did."

(And I'm not being snarky, I mean it; it was a real failure of design. D&D is a game of illusions. The rules don't need to model reality, but they need to help you _pretend_ that they're modeling reality. @lkj's observation that "the innards are too visible" is spot on.)

Anyway, to the OP's question: What 4E truly excelled at was framing a great set-piece battle. There were other things it did well, but that was its supreme gift. Powers refreshing on a short rest meant you could count on the party entering combat with a decent but not overwhelming amount of firepower. Monsters were designed with specific jobs to do in combat, and their stats were tuned to let them do those jobs well. The precisely calibrated power curve ensured that you could reliably estimate encounter difficulty. And with this rock-solid mechanical foundation, I as DM could turn my full attention to spicing up the encounter with terrain hazards, secondary objectives, custom monsters, and the like.

5E carried forward some of this stuff, albeit in diluted form. The short rest was nerfed but not removed. Most of the monster design "technology" was discarded, but solo monsters survived as legendary creatures. And while 5E's power curve is a lot fuzzier than 4E's, it is still much better defined than in any previous edition.

Myself, I would like to see those elements strengthened in 50AE*. Bring back the old 5-minute short rest, maybe with a limited number per day to prevent abuse. Do a wholesale overhaul of the Monster Manual along 4E principles. Tighten up class balance where possible. (But keep classes mechanically distinct; I don't want to see a return of the one-size-fits-all AEDU framework. The two-sizes-fit-all Warrior/Caster framework is bad enough as it is. At least we have warlocks and rogues.)

*Stealing this from @Charlaquin: "50AE" = 50th Anniversary Edition.


----------



## Stalker0

UngeheuerLich said:


> That is how 5e uses saving throws in most cases... Duration is fixed and you can escape depending on your ability to withstand.
> And actually this is how saving throws in 5.5 should be used.
> Effects that kill/disable with a single saving throw actually don't fit into 5e. They should all be changed to at least 2 or 3 saving throws. Death saves as you say is a good idea, as well as stone to flesh.
> 1st saving throw: minor effect, second: major effect: third: potential kill.
> 
> Dominate monster or polymorph could easily work that way.
> 
> Dominate:
> 1st: charmed
> 2nd: confused
> 3rd: dominated
> 
> Polymorph:
> First: incapacitated
> Second: stunned
> Third: polymorphed
> 
> And those spell should at least require concentration or even a bonus action to keep up until the full effect takes place.



I've had a similar idea myself, though I think in such a model the first effect should "automatically work", which is more consistent with most fantasy narratives.

When the wizard casts a spell, its rare for a hero to be completely unaffected. Instead, they begin to fight the effect and break it off before they are taken over by it.

So with your concept, the idea would be that a Dominate Person for example might automatically charm on the first round, but then requires saves to escalate it or knock it away. On the one hand, the wizard has to wait longer to get the "meaty effect", but on the other, they are rewarded by always getting effects from their spell.


----------



## Vaalingrade

DEFCON 1 said:


> Heh... you think 4E feats are underwhelming but 3E feats aren't?  A standard 3E feat like Dodge (+1 AC) was so blah that 5E just gave Fighters a way to get that exact same thing at 1st level for free with a Fighting Style.  And in 3E fighting with two weapons required what... three separate feats(?)... to remove the penalties for dual-wielding that 5E now just says "Go right ahead from the start!"  And in order to make attacks against an opponent without killing them required feats to do so rather than just making it part of the narrative that sending someone to 0 HP could kill them or just render them unconscious.
> 
> To me... that's my history of 3E feats-- the game says "Here's the stuff you can do standard, and anything you want to do beyond this standard we are going to penalize you for it.  And if you don't want the penalty, take a feat to remove it."  So most of them just end up being fixes to things that shouldn't have been considered broken or penalizable in the first place.



I'm not saying the whole of 3e's feats system was good. The 'Don't suck feats' in particular were bad design, but 4e feats were like PF2 feats where they're super situational to the point they rarely come into play. Meanwhile 5e first makes them optional, then tradable for raw boring numbers, then less frequent.

My desire is for feats that are useful as 5e feats but without the desire to appeal to the people who hated 3e for having feats on multiple layers.

Also a reasonable number to choose from rather than the like, 20 there are now with some character builds that literally have no worthwhile feats to take  and have to be bored to death by bigger numbers.


----------



## Garthanos

Stalker0 said:


> And this is a great example of presentation vs mechanics.
> 
> Presentation wise, your right there are narrative differences between surge and hit dice.



They could have been heroic surges...   more generalized from the start ie the concept of spending one for an auto success when it really really counts (aka basically like the SC context) could have been introduced directly in skills.


----------



## Stalker0

I also would be interested to see a return to the 5 minute rest concept, though I think that is too big a change for what they are considering.

Dnd's current model is "steadily drain away resources until encounters are actually a threat". I would rather it be "characters are consistently strong....until the story says their not"

This is where things like fatigue and life drain etc come into play. Maybe there are conditions that prevent a short rest, maybe the current terrain prevents it, perhaps getting too close to a legendary monster creates an effect that hinders resting, etc. Aka make the narrative assumption that players always short rest after a fight....but gives the DM tools to thwart that mechanic when its narratively appropriate and you actually do want the players to "run out of gas".

I think this creates a much smoother curve than the current model.


----------



## Stalker0

Vaalingrade said:


> Also a reasonable number to choose from rather than the like, 20 there are now with some character builds that literally have no worthwhile feats to take  and have to be bored to death by bigger numbers.



I agree here. I had a long debate with one of my players about 5e vs 3e feats. They said 3e feats were better, and step by step I was able to break that notion, showing them mechanically how most 5e feats were stronger, often more flavorful, etc.

At that point I really got to the heart of their complaint....there simply were not enough feats, the core feats just didn't cover enough areas, and this is an area where the slow pace of splatbooks has been keenly felt.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Stalker0 said:


> And this is a great example of presentation vs mechanics.
> 
> Presentation wise, your right there are narrative differences between surge and hit dice.
> 
> But mechanically? They are extremely similar. Both represent "a finite reserve of recovery" that requires some measure of "rest" to utilize. They are of course not exactly the same, healing surges scaled based on hitpoints and were mainly based on class/con score. Hit Dice are mainly based on level with some adjustment based on class. Also most healing in 4e required surges, so it was possible to be "unable to heal". In 5e, magical healing does not require hitdice, so healing is "theoretically infinite" with the right resources.
> 
> But its quite clear that the hit die concept came out of healing surges, they mechanically serve a very similar purpose.



No, they only resemble each other in a very superficial sense -- you can spend them to recover hitpoints.  That's the extent of the comparison, though.  Healing surges were a pacing mechanism while hit dice are not.  Healing surges where used to power both self and other PC healing options, hit dice don't.  Healing surges individually represented significant healing reserves, hit dice do not (outside of very low levels).  Healing surges were used to power some magic items and non-healing class powers, hit dice are not.  Healing surges were used as a cost for failure (again, pacing), hit dice are not.

The only place they are similar is that when you take a rest, you can expend both healing surges and hit dice to regain hitpoints.  

The very big difference is how healing surges were THE pacing mechanism for 4e and how hit dice have very little to no impact on pacing in 5e.  Running low on hit dice isn't really much of a concern in 5e, whereas it was the signal to look for an extended rest in 4e.  Prior to this, you were fine in 4e to continue pressing.  This alone makes a huge difference between healing surges and hit dice -- they serve as a fundamental part of the structure of 4e throughout and in 5e they're there alright.


----------



## UngeheuerLich

Stalker0 said:


> I also would be interested to see a return to the 5 minute rest concept, though I think that is too big a change for what they are considering.
> 
> Dnd's current model is "steadily drain away resources until encounters are actually a threat". I would rather it be "characters are consistently strong....until the story says their not"
> 
> This is where things like fatigue and life drain etc come into play. Maybe there are conditions that prevent a short rest, maybe the current terrain prevents it, perhaps getting too close to a legendary monster creates an effect that hinders resting, etc. Aka make the narrative assumption that players always short rest after a fight....but gives the DM tools to thwart that mechanic when its narratively appropriate and you actually do want the players to "run out of gas".
> 
> I think this creates a much smoother curve than the current model.



In my ideal DnD, after thinking a while about it, I want powers recharging not on short rest or long rest, but on both.
Abilties and spells should be proficiency bonus per long rest, but limited to 1 or 2/short rest. 
That way, you can conserve power over the day, but you can't nova on a single encounter day. 

In this model, a 5 min short rest would be sufficient. Even a 1 minute short rest might usually do it or maybe even a single round of taking a breather.


----------



## TwoSix

Lyxen said:


> But when I'm speaking about freedom, I'm speaking mostly of situational freedom, of the freedom to have fluid situations that go across the three pillars. In 4e, I was unable to run a situation that started social, had a little skirmish, degenerated into a chase then went back to social.



Why not?  You lost me on this one.  I did that all the time in 4e.  I've had multiple sessions go without any combat in 4e, also.  4e doesn't include any explicit guidance as to how to transition between types of scenes, but neither does 5e.

I ran 4e just like I've run every edition of D&D I've played (going back to 2e); I make up a scene, the players tell me what they want to do, and we go from there.  The only major difference was 4e had saw less spell use outside of combat (rituals and skill checks filled in here instead), and 4e combat was less frequent but more compelling.


----------



## Stalker0

UngeheuerLich said:


> In my ideal DnD, after thinking a while about it, I want powers recharging not on short rest or long rest, but on both.
> Abilties and spells should be proficiency bonus per long rest, but limited to 1 or 2/short rest.
> That way, you can conserve power over the day, but you can't nova on a single encounter day.
> 
> In this model, a 5 min short rest would be sufficient. Even a 1 minute short rest might usually do it or maybe even a single round of taking a breather.



You wouldn't even need to go with a full rest restriction, we can look at the Fighter's action surge for your concept here.

When a fighter receives their second action surge, they cannot use more than one on the same turn (to prevent the nova you mentioned). You could extend that to say "no more than once per encounter". So in effect we are creating a super short breather. A character can use their ability in nigh every fight, but can only affect one fight with that ability....afterwards they at least need a minute or two to catch their breath and recover.

You can do that by a formal 5 minute rest, but you could still do it with the 1 hour short rest..... that rest is used for hitpoint recovery whereas characters still get most of their abilities back "after each encounter".


----------



## Malmuria

Stalker0 said:


> Also most healing in 4e required surges, so it was possible to be "unable to heal". In 5e, magical healing does not require hitdice, so healing is "theoretically infinite" with the right resources.



So, just looking this up now, it seems that healing potions required available healing surges to be useful?  What is that supposed to represent in the fiction?  Are healing potions just glasses of water?

To me, that seems too transparent as other people are saying, in that the game is very obviously telling you that you will have access to X amt of healing and no more, because it does not want encounters to become unbalanced.  Whereas in basic/AD&D, doing things to unbalance encounters (say, hoarding healing potions) was the objective.


----------



## Charlaquin

Dausuul said:


> There's a lot I could say about the whole dissociated mechanics thing, but it mostly boils down to "The D&D ruleset has never mapped perfectly onto the fiction. 4E's mistake was that they stopped pretending it did."
> 
> (And I'm not being snarky, I mean it; it was a real failure of design. D&D is a game of illusions. The rules don't need to model reality, but they need to help you _pretend_ that they're modeling reality. @lkj's observation that "the innards are too visible" is spot on.)



I don’t agree that D&D rules _need_ to help you pretend that you’re modeling reality, but I agree that the fact that 4e didn’t was a big cause of a lot of people’s distaste for it.


----------



## UngeheuerLich

Malmuria said:


> So, just looking this up now, it seems that healing potions required available healing surges to be useful?  What is that supposed to represent in the fiction?  Are healing potions just glasses of water?
> 
> To me, that seems too transparent as other people are saying, in that the game is very obviously telling you that you will have access to X amt of healing and no more, because it does not want encounters to become unbalanced.  Whereas in basic/AD&D, doing things to unbalance encounters (say, hoarding healing potions) was the objective.



Healing potions allowed to regain hp faster, but not much more than you could recover otherwise. 
The Odea was that you had about 3 times as many hp as your maximus as a reserve. That limits your power in each fight, but allows you to sustain yourself over a longer day. 
5e has a similar mechanic, but 4e was better in that regard.


----------



## Undrave

EzekielRaiden said:


> There are dozens of mechanics riddled throughout D&D that are naturally "dissociated" unless given a clear in-character explanation. Few, if any, settings provide such explanations. The Alexandrian never had a problem with any of those things. However, _when 4e comes along_, THEN it becomes a problem. That's blatant special pleading.



I'd bet anything Mr. Alexandrian is a Wizard player ...


MichaelSomething said:


> It's not there already?
> 
> Hit dice, short rest abilities, and at will cantrips don't count?



Hit dice come woefully short of Healing Surge in term of use and impact. They only LOOK similar.


Malmuria said:


> So a mechanic that says, you can trip someone 4 times per day feels disassociated for me (why only 4 times?), whereas saying they have a 20% of tripping an opponent if they try seems more consistent within the fiction.



Hmm... Now there's something interesting... What if every time a warrior hit, you also roll on a separate d100 table and depending on the result you can choose to apply an effect depending on the roll? Like if you roll above 30 you can push five feet, you roll past 40 you can slide them 5 feet, roll past 50, you can knock them prone, roll 95+? You can stun them!  And for all of those you can decide to use a lower effect if its more beneficial.


----------



## TwoSix

Charlaquin said:


> Yep, the best critiques of 4e came from people who liked 4e but recognized it had room to improve.



Yea, 4e definitely has some issues, even though I still really like it.

1)  Too many feats, too many magic items.  4e's main problem was that it had TOO many axes of customization.  You had race and racial powers, class, theme, paragon path, epic destinies, picking class powers, and then picking feats and magic items all to synergize with those powers.  Drop feats that gave numerical bonuses, only keep feats that allow for new power picks (like MC powers), and get rid of all incremental bonus magic items.  

2)  Too many powers at higher levels.  Personally, I would have dropped class powers past 11th level.  Theme and class powers for heroic tier (themes like Dark Sun or Neverwinter with actual powers should have been in the game from the outset), then only gain PP powers at Paragon, and only add ED powers at Epic.


----------



## niklinna

Undrave said:


> Hmm... Now there's something interesting... What if every time a warrior hit, you also roll on a separate d100 table and depending on the result you can choose to apply an effect depending on the roll? Like if you roll above 30 you can push five feet, you roll past 40 you can slide them 5 feet, roll past 50, you can knock them prone, roll 95+? You can stun them! And for all of those you can decide to use a lower effect if its more beneficial.



That's...actually kind of interesting. While gated behind a die roll, it represents chance opportunities in the chaos of combat. If it were in addition to abilities you can use when you want, it would be a fun addition!


----------



## Ovinomancer

Malmuria said:


> So, just looking this up now, it seems that healing potions required available healing surges to be useful?  What is that supposed to represent in the fiction?  Are healing potions just glasses of water?
> 
> To me, that seems too transparent as other people are saying, in that the game is very obviously telling you that you will have access to X amt of healing and no more, because it does not want encounters to become unbalanced.  Whereas in basic/AD&D, doing things to unbalance encounters (say, hoarding healing potions) was the objective.



No, because healing surges were not freely accessible -- you could tap one in an encounter with a second wind, but that was it.  Every other invocation was through a power or item.  Healing potions unlocked the ability to tap a healing surge, with more represented a pool of resolve and grit than a pool of healing.  This goes to what hitpoints even represent and so what replenishing them meant.  

I mean, coffee wakes you up, right, but if you drink a cup of coffee after 3 days awake, it's not going to have much effect because you don't have anything left in the tank.  Coffee is the catalyst, not the source.  So it goes with 4e healing potions.


----------



## Ovinomancer

niklinna said:


> That's...actually kind of interesting. While gated behind a die roll, it represents chance opportunities in the chaos of combat. If it were in addition to abilities you can use when you want, it would be a fun addition!



I'm not sure I see what the benefit is -- why can't I trip every attack?  Because I didn't roll high enough on this table?  How is that functionally different from you don't have any more uses of the trip ability until you rest?  Both are not things my character is doing, but rather reference to mechanics that gate what my character is allowed to do.  The only difference I see is that the table is random and the power use is volitional.


----------



## TwoSix

Malmuria said:


> So, just looking this up now, it seems that healing potions required available healing surges to be useful?  What is that supposed to represent in the fiction?  Are healing potions just glasses of water?



Healing magic draws upon the life essence of the recipient in order to massively accelerate the healing process, but that essence can be drained with enough magic use.  It's a fairly common trope in fantasy fiction.


----------



## Charlaquin

Stalker0 said:


> And this is a great example of presentation vs mechanics.
> 
> Presentation wise, your right there are narrative differences between surge and hit dice.
> 
> But mechanically? They are extremely similar. Both represent "a finite reserve of recovery" that requires some measure of "rest" to utilize. They are of course not exactly the same, healing surges scaled based on hitpoints and were mainly based on class/con score. Hit Dice are mainly based on level with some adjustment based on class. Also most healing in 4e required surges, so it was possible to be "unable to heal". In 5e, magical healing does not require hitdice, so healing is "theoretically infinite" with the right resources.
> 
> But its quite clear that the hit die concept came out of healing surges, they mechanically serve a very similar purpose.



No, they are _presented similarly_ but their _gameplay function_ is completely different. Hit dice provide a baseline amount of hit point recovery that you can use without access to magical healing. Their gameplay function is to allow you to heal without requiring a cleric or potions. Healing surges provided a limit on the amount of healing you could receive from magical sources. Their gameplay function was to control the total number of hit points characters could utilize in an adventuring day. You really can’t get more functionally different than “extra healing in case you don’t have a healer” and “a cap on your daily healing.”


----------



## Lanefan

Campbell said:


> Healing surges (which are rather poorly named) represent your inner reserves and form a central part of narrative of combat in 4e. Combat in 4e is all about finding your inner strength and working together to overcome what should feel like incredible odds. Almost all hit point recovery is built around inspiration and rallying which is why it's limited by healing surges. You had the strength all along. Getting knocked down and getting back is a constant fixture of the combat model.



This leans very hard into the idea of hit points as fluff rather than hit points as meat; the exact opposite of 1e where hit points (given the natural recovery times) are generally all seen as meat.

IMO the only way to functionally combine these two outlooks is a wound-vitality or body-fatigue h.p. system, where there's a clear designation between fluff h.p. and meat h.p. and in how they are ablated, cured, rested back, etc.  Bloodied from 4e is a small step in that direction.


----------



## niklinna

Ovinomancer said:


> I'm not sure I see what the benefit is -- why can't I trip every attack?  Because I didn't roll high enough on this table?  How is that functionally different from you don't have any more uses of the trip ability until you rest?  Both are not things my character is doing, but rather reference to mechanics that gate what my character is allowed to do.  The only difference I see is that the table is random and the power use is volitional.



That's why I said it would be an interesting addition to volitional powers, reflecting happenstance opportunities. I don't see this as tied to a class, but to an action—anybody doing a melee strike might get the opportunities given as examples. Anyhow, it was just a quick comment; in the end, this idea is more or less just a different kind of crit table, which 5e doesn't do.


----------



## TwoSix

Charlaquin said:


> No, they are _presented similarly_ but their _gameplay function_ is completely different. Hit dice provide a baseline amount of hit point recovery that you can use without access to magical healing. Their gameplay function is to allow you to heal without requiring a cleric or potions. Healing surges provided a limit on the amount of healing you could receive from magical sources. Their gameplay function was to control the total number of hit points characters could utilize in an adventuring day. You really can’t get more functionally different than “extra healing in case you don’t have a healer” and “a cap on your daily healing.”



Yep.

Full hit points and 0 Hit Die in 5e doesn't have any impact on the lethality of the next fight. 

Full hit points and 0 Hit Die in 4e is the screen flashing red and saying "Blue Warrior is about to die!"


----------



## Lanefan

UngeheuerLich said:


> That is how 5e uses saving throws in most cases... Duration is fixed and you can escape depending on your ability to withstand.
> And actually this is how saving throws in 5.5 should be used.
> Effects that kill/disable with a single saving throw actually don't fit into 5e. They should all be changed to at least 2 or 3 saving throws. Death saves as you say is a good idea, as well as stone to flesh.



I'm nastier as a DM and thus much prefer to get it over with.  Even a three-save system could be concatenated into rolling a single save with double-advantage (i.e. roll 3d20 and take the best).

Another factor is how difficult those saves are to make.  On a single-save system, if you only need to roll a 4 to succeed your odds are pretty good.  But on a 3-save system where you need to roll a 17 the odds aren't great even though you get three tries at it.


UngeheuerLich said:


> 1st saving throw: minor effect, second: major effect: third: potential kill.
> 
> Dominate monster or polymorph could easily work that way.
> 
> Dominate:
> 1st: charmed
> 2nd: confused
> 3rd: dominated
> 
> Polymorph:
> First: incapacitated
> Second: stunned
> Third: polymorphed
> 
> And those spell should at least require concentration or even a bonus action to keep up until the full effect takes place.



I like this except for the last line.  Spells like polymorph should all be fire-and-forget, such that after casting it on one foe I can cast it again on another foe next round, meanwhile my first victim is still making saves.

Dominate's a different beast; in that after dominating someone you then have to spend at least some effort in telling it what to do.  Here the three-round idea makes sense, even if not the three-saves.


----------



## Lanefan

Stalker0 said:


> I also would be interested to see a return to the 5 minute rest concept, though I think that is too big a change for what they are considering.
> 
> Dnd's current model is "steadily drain away resources until encounters are actually a threat". I would rather it be "characters are consistently strong....until the story says their not"



And here's another philosophical difference: I'd rather the resource-drain model be intensified, such that not only are resources drained but they're also hard to recover quickly.  This intentionally and frequently forces parties into choosing whether to press on while weakened or retreat and rest up - while giving the enemy time to do the same.


----------



## TwoSix

Lanefan said:


> I like this except for the last line.  Spells like polymorph should all be fire-and-forget, such that after casting it on one foe I can cast it again on another foe next round, meanwhile my first victim is still making saves.



I think it depends on the narrative you want the spell to present.  A 3 round polymorph suggests a longer transformation and a bit more of a body-horror element.  Instantaneous polymorph is more WoW flavor (Baaa!), and gives more of a spiritual or a trickster vibe.


----------



## DEFCON 1

Ovinomancer said:


> The very big difference is how healing surges were THE pacing mechanism for 4e and how hit dice have very little to no impact on pacing in 5e.  Running low on hit dice isn't really much of a concern in 5e, whereas it was the signal to look for an extended rest in 4e.  Prior to this, you were fine in 4e to continue pressing.  This alone makes a huge difference between healing surges and hit dice -- they serve as a fundamental part of the structure of 4e throughout and in 5e they're there alright.



One thing I'll say regarding this (and which may be why there seems to be a disparity between those who found use with healing surges and those who didn't) is that I know personally in the 4E games I ran that I don't believe there was ever a time when a party ran low (let alone out) of healing surges before taking extended rests.  So there was never any pacing to come out of them, and there was never a question of "pressing on" or not.  I know for our tables, the number of healing surges a character had never came up, because the party would take rests based on narrative concerns... and that usually meant after just one or two combats in a day.

Now obviously this entirely comes out of how any particular DM runs their game, which is why some probably found them great, and some never got the appeal.  If surges being a pacing mechanic never actually got used in that way (like they never were for me), of course that DM wouldn't see the use others do, and might very well just make the equivalency between the HS and the HD.  "You have a fight, you spend some HS/HD, you get back some hit points, you then continue with your day until it's time to sleep."

So at the end of the day, it's not anything that will be able to be shown to someone else who doesn't agree with you, because their experiences with them were different and no amount of explanation is going to make it clear.


----------



## Lanefan

Ovinomancer said:


> I'm not sure I see what the benefit is -- why can't I trip every attack?  Because I didn't roll high enough on this table?  How is that functionally different from you don't have any more uses of the trip ability until you rest?



The narration on this is trivially easy - because on this particular attack you couldn't reach your foe's foot or other point of balance.  Maybe on your next attack you'll be able to reach it, and thus try tripping again; or maybe not.

This is where a % chance each time rather than a hard limit per day makes loads of sense.


----------



## Charlaquin

Malmuria said:


> So, just looking this up now, it seems that healing potions required available healing surges to be useful?  What is that supposed to represent in the fiction?  Are healing potions just glasses of water?



So, first of all, 4e _fully_ embraced the abstract nature of hit points. Most hit point damage was assumed to be luck/morale/energy/divine favor/whatever rather than actual physical injury. The only thresholds that mattered were Bloodied (which meant showing visible but largely superficial signs of wear like cuts and bruises), and 0 HP which meant unconscious and possibly dying - technically this is how 5e says to narrate hit point loss as well, but in 4e, many mechanics actually relied on this narrative. Which incidentally is one of the reasons I say it is objectively not true that the fluff didn’t matter - it very much did matter, to the point that some fluff couldn’t be ignored… which was a problem for folks who prefer “HP as meat.”

Now, keeping in mind this model of narrating HP loss, this means healing magic doesn’t fuse broken bones and knit open wounds. It restores your stamina, energy, resolve, will to fight, etc. And once we accept that, it’s pretty trivial to accept that you have a limited reserve of such willpower, and that past a certain point, no amount of magic is going to help. You’re just plain tapped out for the day.


Malmuria said:


> To me, that seems too transparent as other people are saying, in that the game is very obviously telling you that you will have access to X amt of healing and no more, because it does not want encounters to become unbalanced.  Whereas in basic/AD&D, doing things to unbalance encounters (say, hoarding healing potions) was the objective.



It is definitely transparent. To me, that’s an unambiguously good thing.I want to understand what the rules are doing and why they’re doing it, and in 4e, that was always abundantly clear. And personally I think that’s the true source behind all this “dissociated mechanics” nonsense. 4e pulled back the curtain and showed the gameplay purpose the rules served, rather than pretending the rules existed primarily to model the fiction. A lot of folks didn’t like that (though for the life of me I’ll never understand why), and “dissociative mechanics” is what came out of their attempts to articulate that.


----------



## Lanefan

TwoSix said:


> I think it depends on the narrative you want the spell to present.  A 3 round polymorph suggests a longer transformation and a bit more of a body-horror element.  Instantaneous polymorph is more WoW flavor (Baaa!), and gives more of a spiritual or a trickster vibe.



I think you misread me - or, more likely, I wasn't clear.

I don't mind the polymorph taking three rounds for the transformation to happen, with the victim getting a chance each round to shrug it off.  I just don't think the caster should have to do anything more to keep it going once the spell has resolved.

Put another way, as caster I should be able to cast three polymorphs* in three rounds and, if I'm lucky, have three victims in various stages of transformation all at once; then walk away from the lot without another thought and let the spells run on their own.

* - assuming I have them prepped or memorized or whatever, of course.


----------



## Mustrum_Ridcully

niklinna said:


> That's...actually kind of interesting. While gated behind a die roll, it represents chance opportunities in the chaos of combat. If it were in addition to abilities you can use when you want, it would be a fun addition!



It is interesting. 13th Age did basically a hybrid approach. You had special abiltiies, but your dice roll determined which one you could use. We only briefly played it, IIRC, but the verdict for us was - it was too random what you could do in a given turn, and you didn't even know what it would be before you rolled. That makes tactical play... difficult. Not in the sense of "a nice challenge" but in the sense of "I am not really in control of what my character is attempting to do." 
You might be correct that having a mix of "regular" abilities and a mix of random abilities might be better. If you find (or make) a game that does it, I'd love to try, I think.


----------



## RangerWickett

Mistwell said:


> I would be happy if the updated version of 5e added more interesting monster abilities which harkens back to some of 4e monster design.
> 
> I also hope they take another crack at skill challenges. It never quite worked as written at most tables, but they were very close to nailing that concept down.



(Pardon the 6-page-too-late response.)

I devised a system to use 'skill challenge' style mechanics for "Secret Missions" in the upcoming Adventures in ZEITGEIST book (which I think will be coming out for Level Up near the end of this year or early next year). You'd use this mechanic for things like Mission: Impossible spycraft montages, especially in situations when the PCs would be split up. It speeds up the resolution of those scenes and lets you get to the parts where the whole party is together.

The basic gist is that there are three phases, one for the Narrator, two for the players:

*1. Design the Mission.*
The Narrator comes up with a list of *obstacles* (at least two, and no more than the number of PCs). Some obstacles may be known, others may be hidden. 

*2. Before the Mission.*
Each PC gets to provide one *effort*. The player narrates what they're doing and makes a check to try to either *surveil* or *prepare*. The Narrator sets the DC based on how good the match of plan and skill is for the particular situation. 

Surveilling can discover hidden obstacles and grant advantage to another character's check to actually overcome the obstacle. If you fail, you provide no benefit, and might miss something important.

Preparing attempts to overcome an obstacle before the mission even starts. You roll in secret, so you won't know whether you succeeded until in the middle of the mission.

*3. During the Mission.*
For each obstacle, the party chooses one PC to provide an effort to overcome it. Sometimes a situation might have multiple characters working simultaneously (like something out of Ocean's 11). Other times there might be only one person going point (like Mission Impossible).

The PC narrates what they're doing and makes a skill check. Previous surveillance might grant advantage. Previous preparation might overcome the obstacle without needing to make a check. If you succeed, great. If you fail, you can come up with a different plan and make a new check, increasing the DC by 5. If you fail that _second_ time, you suffer a complication, which might be a quick fight, a trap causing damage, you leaving a clue that'll let someone identify you later, or something else. If you cannot deal with the complication, the mission fails.

---

This framework could work with spycraft, but also with stuff like "fortifying a town for a siege" or "acquiring components for a curse-breaking ritual" or "arranging a peace treaty" or "throwing a really nice surprise party."

It's important to keep the DCs pretty low (usually 8 + proficiency bonus), and to not call for multiple rolls to deal with a given obstacle, so that the laws of probability don't make failure a near certainty.

There's more to it than that, but I think it gets the job done for 5e-style game complexity.


----------



## Charlaquin

DEFCON 1 said:


> One thing I'll say regarding this (and which may be why there seems to be a disparity between those who found use with healing surges and those who didn't) is that I know personally in the 4E games I ran that I don't believe there was ever a time when a party ran low (let alone out) of healing surges before taking extended rests.  So there was never any pacing to come out of them, and there was never a question of "pressing on" or not.  I know for our tables, the number of healing surges a character had never came up, because the party would take rests based on narrative concerns... and that usually meant after just one or two combats in a day.
> 
> Now obviously this entirely comes out of how any particular DM runs their game, which is why some probably found them great, and some never got the appeal.  If surges being a pacing mechanic never actually got used in that way (like they never were for me), of course that DM wouldn't see the use others do, and might very well just make the equivalency between the HS and the HD.  "You have a fight, you spend some HS/HD, you get back some hit points, you then continue with your day until it's time to sleep."
> 
> So at the end of the day, it's not anything that will be able to be shown to someone else who doesn't agree with you, because their experiences with them were different and no amount of explanation is going to make it clear.



I don’t know, it sounds to me like you at least understand their function as a pacing mechanic in theory, even if you never experienced it personally.


----------



## TwoSix

Lanefan said:


> Put another way, as caster I should be able to cast three polymorphs* in three rounds and, if I'm lucky, have three victims in various stages of transformation all at once; then walk away from the lot without another thought and let the spells run on their own.



Sure.  That's not the flavor of magic I would personally choose (I like casters to be fairly limited), but I can't argue with it as a valid preference of taste.


----------



## Charlaquin

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> It is interesting. 13th Age did basically a hybrid approach. You had special abiltiies, but your dice roll determined which one you could use. We only briefly played it, IIRC, but the verdict for us was - it was too random what you could do in a given turn, and you didn't even know what it would be before you rolled. That makes tactical play... difficult. Not in the sense of "a nice challenge" but in the sense of "I am not really in control of what my character is attempting to do."



This was my main problem with 13A too. I also didn’t really like the escalation die at the time, though I don’t think I would mind it so much now.


----------



## TwoSix

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> It is interesting. 13th Age did basically a hybrid approach. You had special abiltiies, but your dice roll determined which one you could use. We only briefly played it, IIRC, but the verdict for us was - it was too random what you could do in a given turn, and you didn't even know what it would be before you rolled. That makes tactical play... difficult. Not in the sense of "a nice challenge" but in the sense of "I am not really in control of what my character is attempting to do."
> You might be correct that having a mix of "regular" abilities and a mix of random abilities might be better. If you find (or make) a game that does it, I'd love to try, I think.



To be fair to 13th Age, only a few classes had powers like that (I think fighter was the main one).  

Really, preference for randomness or player-choice driven events is very much a matter of personal psychology.  Some people prefer games to be heavily skill-based, some people prefer larger doses of randomness.


----------



## Charlaquin

TwoSix said:


> To be fair to 13th Age, only a few classes had powers like that (I think fighter was the main one).



Rogue used it a lot too IIRC.


----------



## billd91

Malmuria said:


> So, just looking this up now, it seems that healing potions required available healing surges to be useful?  What is that supposed to represent in the fiction?  Are healing potions just glasses of water?
> 
> To me, that seems too transparent as other people are saying, in that the game is very obviously telling you that you will have access to X amt of healing and no more, because it does not want encounters to become unbalanced.  Whereas in basic/AD&D, doing things to unbalance encounters (say, hoarding healing potions) was the objective.



Yeah, this was an area of 4e that really ground my gears. The idea that you obtained an external resource and all it did was catalyze your own internal resource? Terrible.
I get that they wanted to control healing resources better than 3e did, but the source of the problem in 3e was the wand making rules that enabled players to obtain dirt cheap wands of cure light wounds and always heal fully up between combats, not the fact that an external resource could give you healing.


----------



## CleverNickName

Did I miss an announcement?  I can't find anything about a 5.5 Edition on WotC's website.  Are we talking about the 5E Rules Expansion set?

(Serious question, not trolling)


----------



## Stalker0

Charlaquin said:


> I also didn’t really like the escalation die at the time, though I don’t think I would mind it so much now.



I think the escalation die concept would actually be a great addition to the core game. Besides just the narrative fun of "growing stronger during a fight" it also gives you a mechanical "broom".

With such a mechanic, you can increase the duration of fights on average (lets say from 5e's general 3 rounds to more like 4 rounds). But the escalation die keeps things moving, preventing fights from getting too long, as the longer they go the stronger the players get and the easier they can finish the job.

It also gives you a fun way to tailor fights. You can do things like the players racing towards the big bad while he completes the ritual...and when they get there they are "already at escalation 3". This gives players a way to be stronger against the BBEG when its narratively cool and fun while not just having "moar power" all the time.


----------



## Stalker0

Lanefan said:


> And here's another philosophical difference: I'd rather the resource-drain model be intensified, such that not only are resources drained but they're also hard to recover quickly.  This intentionally and frequently forces parties into choosing whether to press on while weakened or retreat and rest up - while giving the enemy time to do the same.



So in a nutshell:

1) All Encounter Power returned with a very short rest.... ensures that the strength and tempo of fights stays consistent regardless of fights per day.

2) Heavy resource drain model.... ensures that the players are expected to use their abilities in each fight but then withdraw to recover. Aka the strength of the party is still consistent under the assumption that fights are rare and resting frequent.

I think both have their merits. It generally means that on average, the expected party's "power level" is roughly consistent regardless of encounter type. The first one allows the players to repeat that multiple times a day (unless the DM intervenes through some mechanical tool used on rest). In the second, players are assumed to fight and then rest....with the notion that continuing to push forward constitutes a strong reduction in overall party strength and would represent "special circumstances".


----------



## RangerWickett

The design I went with for my homebrew system to try to balance "cool magic" and "one-shotting a PC or BBEG sucks" was to implement *saves*.

A save was an ability that could be used once per encounter to downgrade a crit to a hit, a hit to a miss, or a miss to a mishap. I was using a PF2-style four-level success system, where people had passive defense scores, and the attacker rolled, even for spells and traps and such.

There were a variety of saves, each of which would both give you defense _and_ provide some boost on your next round, so that you had an incentive to wait to use them at the opportune moment. For instance, the Basic Reflex save would downgrade an attack, then let you make a combat maneuver against your attacker (grab, trip, shove, disarm, etc). The Basic Will save would downgrade an attack and then grant you a round of immunity from mind-affecting effects, giving you a moment of lucidity.

Each PC would get saves from their class or feats or magic items or whatever, but you could only have a limited number primed at a time. Whenever you finished a short rest, you'd choose which saves you had ready going forward.

The bonus effect was that higher-level martial saves created nice cinematic moments where the hero parried a perilous attack and turned the tide. There was lots of "downgrade an attack and force your attacker to move 10 feet, with you following" which was the first time I got that lovely Princess Bride "chatty duelists"-style movement across a battlefield.


----------



## darjr

CleverNickName said:


> Did I miss an announcement?  I can't find anything about a 5.5 Edition on WotC's website.  Are we talking about the 5E Rules Expansion set?
> 
> (Serious question, not trolling)



They are revising the core rulebooks. Calling it a revision of this editions core books. But ya know, 5.5 and 6e and what not. It probably doesn’t matter what they call it but how backwards compatible it really is. And to some that doesn’t matter either, a new core set IS a new edition to them. Which I get too.


----------



## Mustrum_Ridcully

Things I love from D&D 4 that I want to see again:

1. Warlord. It was a fun class, and I think it has an important role in fiction that seems underserved in D&D 4 Core.

2. Monsters combat abilties should all be within the stat block. If they can cast as 15th level Sorceror, too, that's fine, but list the relevant powers in the stat block. No page-flipping between MM and PHB! Ideally also some monster abilities that make them feel unique. A Gnoll Sorceror and a Kobold Sorceror should definitely feel different from each other, but I should also see some shared features between the Gnoll Sorceror and the Gnoll Fighter.

3. All Classes balanced about the same across the adventuring day, regardless of how many fights there are each day.
That does not have to mean that everyone needs to have At-Will/Encounter/Daily. 
What I wouldn't mind instead: 
After a short rest (be it 5 minutes or an hour or a day), a character can recover all important abilities. There might be some things that don't recover that fast, but then, everyone should have access to some then. D&D 4 healing surges for example.

The reason I really want that is because I am running a campaign with sessions that don't go beyond 2.5 hours per week (minus cancellations), and you can't really pack that many fights in an adventure. We're not going to run through 12 fights to clear one dungeon and gain one level. So I really prefer if every class and character can be balanced around one fight per day or 12 fights a day equally. 

Under this scenario, I did a homebrew Star Wars game that was mostly based on 4E ADEU framework, and I realized that having 4 encounter and 4 daily powers just became too much, too. I need lots of high level NPCs to even provide challenging encounters - and it's a homebrew, so I don't have play-tested monsters reasonably well tuned for encounter level/challenge rating determination.

What I kinda want to experiment with is taking some ideas from Iron Heroes. Classes earn tokens over the course of the combat to power more powerful abilities. I am not sure that would really fly with D&D, though. At least not directly. But maybe at least for spells one could convince people to accept longer casting times, to represent a spellcaster casting a really powerful spell. Maybe a Fighter can stock up his superiority dice each turn he doesn't use them,  and has some options that are only available with a high number of superiority dice. A Rogue might be able to sneak around and study his foe for a nasty backstab attack. Ah, well, that isn't really D&D 4 anymore, of course.


----------



## EzekielRaiden

Malmuria said:


> So, just looking this up now, it seems that healing potions required available healing surges to be useful?  What is that supposed to represent in the fiction?  Are healing potions just glasses of water?



While in the heat of battle, Healing Surges are difficult to access. Normally, characters can only make use of one, and doing so costs them a standard action (which is a pretty steep cost in 4e terms). This is actually _more_ similar to how real-world response to trauma works: the body actually has quite a lot of resources at its disposal, but a sudden, intense traumatic event can so badly disrupt your internal homeostatic equilibrium that you're unable to _use_ those resources. They take time to draw out, more than the less-than-a-minute that most combats are supposed to be.

Healing potions directly allow the user's body to draw on those reserves. They usually aren't very efficient at it either--they give fixed HP instead of being based on your surge value, so most characters would prefer "proper" healing. But that doesn't mean healing potions are worthless, they're just _emergency_ healing rather than _main baseline_ healing. Drinking one is also a minor action rather than a standard action though, so there may be cases where the weaker potion is worth being able to take some other action too.



Malmuria said:


> To me, that seems too transparent as other people are saying, in that the game is very obviously telling you that you will have access to X amt of healing and no more, because it does not want encounters to become unbalanced.  Whereas in basic/AD&D, doing things to unbalance encounters (say, hoarding healing potions) was the objective.



If you choose to view it that way, that is your prerogative, but there are perfectly cromulent ways of viewing this, ones used in many other games. That is, the HP-vs-surges system is loosely analogous to a "vitality and wounds" system. You can only take X many wounds per day before you're tapped out--anything further could genuinely kill you. And even if you haven't taken that many wounds, if you lose too much vitality all at once, you can die from the sudden, intense trauma. Both of these behaviors model real human beings better than HP do. Humans must maintain homeostasis and have only so much energy they can expend in a given day before fatigue sets in, requiring rest. HP and surges correspond quite closely, in a narrative sense, to (what I would call) "fatigue" vs "exhaustion." Once you're truly _exhausted_, you have nothing left to give--time to pack it in. Before that point, though, a bit of rest can eliminate temporary fatigue....but only up to a limit.

Worth noting: different classes have different numbers of Healing Surges. Fighters, Paladins, and other classes that are, narratively and mechanically, geared for taking hits tend to have high numbers of surges. (Barbarians, for example, are not "Defenders" but have relatively more Surges because they're beefy front-line attackers expecting to take hits.) Wizards have few baseline Healing Surges, because they're bookish nerds. Anyone can get more surges by raising their Constitution (you add your Con mod to your total number of surges), or by taking the Durable feat (gives you two more healing surges).

There are also some extremely thematic powers tied into the Healing Surge system, my favorite being the Paladin's Lay on Hands power. It's a daily power, though you can use it a number of times each day equal to your Wisdom modifier (min 1). When you use it, you expend one of your healing surges, and an ally you can touch (or yourself) heals _as though they had spent a surge._ It is, quite literally, "I give of myself, to replenish you." That's WAY more thematic and flavorful than the incredibly boring "you have a pool of HP to share" mechanic that has been used in other editions. I value examples of gameplay and story integration like this.


----------



## billd91

EzekielRaiden said:


> There are also some extremely thematic powers tied into the Healing Surge system, my favorite being the Paladin's Lay on Hands power. It's a daily power, though you can use it a number of times each day equal to your Wisdom modifier (min 1). When you use it, you expend one of your healing surges, and an ally you can touch (or yourself) heals _as though they had spent a surge._ It is, quite literally, "I give of myself, to replenish you." That's WAY more thematic and flavorful than the incredibly boring "you have a pool of HP to share" mechanic that has been used in other editions. I value examples of gameplay and story integration like this.



The paladin's use of his own surges to lay on hands was probably the best thing about the healing surge system because it was very thematic. The paladin sacrificed to help his companions.
But then he got spotted at least 1 more healing surge over any other class to make it less of a sacrifice. So, I guess, what one good idea giveth, a poor idea undermineth.


----------



## Malmuria

CleverNickName said:


> Did I miss an announcement?  I can't find anything about a 5.5 Edition on WotC's website.  Are we talking about the 5E Rules Expansion set?
> 
> (Serious question, not trolling)



Yeah I was talking about the 2024 edition, whatever you want to call it.

I can't find it now, but I read a review of Tasha's when it came out that pointed out aspects of the design that were moving 'back' to 4e type design.  In addition, it seems there's been a resurgence of interest in those mechanics, so I was sort of curious to see what aspects could/should be brought over (or should not be brought over).


----------



## EzekielRaiden

billd91 said:


> The paladin's use of his own surges to lay on hands was probably the best thing about the healing surge system because it was very thematic. The paladin sacrificed to help his companions.
> But then he got spotted at least 1 more healing surge over any other class to make it less of a sacrifice. So, I guess, what one good idea giveth, a poor idea undermineth.



I mean, I think of that as also narrative: the people who become Paladins have trained to be more durable. They've been making those sacrifices a lot, and that leads to more durability.

But let's turn that around: Would it be acceptable if they had received the Durable feat for free, with the caveat that they could subsequently take that feat a second time? (I don't recall if 4e allowed you to take that one more than once.) Keep in mind, not all Paladins had Lay on Hands, but all Paladins got extra surges.


----------



## Teemu

Malmuria said:


> So, just looking this up now, it seems that healing potions required available healing surges to be useful?  What is that supposed to represent in the fiction?  Are healing potions just glasses of water?
> 
> To me, that seems too transparent as other people are saying, in that the game is very obviously telling you that you will have access to X amt of healing and no more, because it does not want encounters to become unbalanced.  Whereas in basic/AD&D, doing things to unbalance encounters (say, hoarding healing potions) was the objective.



Common healing potions always require a surge, but 4e also has uncommon potions (cure wounds potions) that let you heal even if you don’t have any surges left. If any of that causes an issue in the fiction, it shouldn’t be any more of an issue than a high level character in 5e or 3.5 quaffing 10 potions of weak healing potions, yet still only be at half hp total—who then proceeds to run a marathon, followed by a jump from a tower that doesn’t kill them. And a commoner at death’s door drinks the same weak potion and is at full health.

One of the perks of healing surges is that the large majority of healing scales with character level. The weird issue with large hp totals and weaker healing effects largely disappears.


----------



## billd91

EzekielRaiden said:


> I mean, I think of that as also narrative: the people who become Paladins have trained to be more durable. They've been making those sacrifices a lot, and that leads to more durability.
> 
> But let's turn that around: Would it be acceptable if they had received the Durable feat for free, with the caveat that they could subsequently take that feat a second time? (I don't recall if 4e allowed you to take that one more than once.) Keep in mind, not all Paladins had Lay on Hands, but all Paladins got extra surges.



If you're compensated for making the sacrifice, it's not a sacrifice - it's a transaction. If the paladin player wanted to choose the feat, that's their option. But receiving Durable for free? Why are you undermining the sacrificial theme again?


----------



## Undrave

DEFCON 1 said:


> One thing I'll say regarding this (and which may be why there seems to be a disparity between those who found use with healing surges and those who didn't) is that I know personally in the 4E games I ran that I don't believe there was ever a time when a party ran low (let alone out) of healing surges before taking extended rests.  So there was never any pacing to come out of them, and there was never a question of "pressing on" or not.  I know for our tables, the number of healing surges a character had never came up, because the party would take rests based on narrative concerns... and that usually meant after just one or two combats in a day.
> 
> Now obviously this entirely comes out of how any particular DM runs their game, which is why some probably found them great, and some never got the appeal.  If surges being a pacing mechanic never actually got used in that way (like they never were for me), of course that DM wouldn't see the use others do, and might very well just make the equivalency between the HS and the HD.  "You have a fight, you spend some HS/HD, you get back some hit points, you then continue with your day until it's time to sleep."
> 
> So at the end of the day, it's not anything that will be able to be shown to someone else who doesn't agree with you, because their experiences with them were different and no amount of explanation is going to make it clear.




You're missing another aspect of Healing Surges: they were used for more than just healing damage taken in combat. 

Traps, for exemple, wouldn't inflict HP damage, they would generally drain a healing surge (basically, it was assumed you would rest and spend your HS to recover HP anyway so it cut the middle man), environmental effects like a snow storm or extreme heat would ALSO drain surges if you failed an Endurance check. Certain rituals would require you to spend Healing Surges, the entire Martial Practice concept used Surges to fuel them, some Magical Item used them, I think the Warden had a power to spend a Healing Surge to grant Temp HP to everybody and that some monsters would drain them. You also had diseases and curses that could reduce your healing surge total or prevent you from recovering them!


----------



## Ovinomancer

DEFCON 1 said:


> One thing I'll say regarding this (and which may be why there seems to be a disparity between those who found use with healing surges and those who didn't) is that I know personally in the 4E games I ran that I don't believe there was ever a time when a party ran low (let alone out) of healing surges before taking extended rests.  So there was never any pacing to come out of them, and there was never a question of "pressing on" or not.  I know for our tables, the number of healing surges a character had never came up, because the party would take rests based on narrative concerns... and that usually meant after just one or two combats in a day.
> 
> Now obviously this entirely comes out of how any particular DM runs their game, which is why some probably found them great, and some never got the appeal.  If surges being a pacing mechanic never actually got used in that way (like they never were for me), of course that DM wouldn't see the use others do, and might very well just make the equivalency between the HS and the HD.  "You have a fight, you spend some HS/HD, you get back some hit points, you then continue with your day until it's time to sleep."
> 
> So at the end of the day, it's not anything that will be able to be shown to someone else who doesn't agree with you, because their experiences with them were different and no amount of explanation is going to make it clear.



I'm aware of that.  I've encountered it.  It's very frustrating, because what it's saying is that people played the game in a way that was different from how the game told you to play it (and 4e is exceedingly clear on encounter design and pacing) and then say that it's the game and the mechanics that are the problem. I recognize that I'm probably not going to get much traction with this, but there it is -- it's saying the mechanics don't work as intended based on not using them as intended.


----------



## Mordhau

WotC overdesigning games for a particular intended game pacing that tables don't actually want (or can't) adhere to is a recurring problem with their design.

Yes you can then frame it as working as designed, but it remains an issue that the goals of design are inflexible and misplaced.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Mordhau said:


> WotC overdesigning games for a particular intended game pacing that tables don't actually want (or can't) adhere to is a recurring problem with their design.
> 
> Yes you can then frame it as working as designed, but it remains an issue that the goals of design are inflexible and misplaced.



No, they're not aligned with your goals.  This doesn't mean they are misplaced.  Part of the problem with D&D editions is that people don't bother to try to learn how the new edition works and is intended to play because they already know how to play D&D.  This leads to dissatisfaction, both because there's a misalignment between design and table goals, but also because there's an incomplete understanding of what the problem is and so changes to address it are often poor patches and don't work as well as they could.  I see lots of this on these boards, especially involving adventure pacing.  5e does a very poor job even pointing out that the game is built on an expected pacing and an even worse job at explaining that pacing, which leads to a host of attempts to fix it by addressing rests, which are a downstream issue from the problem and seem to only partially work (or require toggling on and off).  On the other hand, 4e is extremely clear about all of this, and you can easily understand how a change can affect things.  Only play on pacing 1-2 combats a day?  Halve or reduce to 1/3 available healing surges and you'll see the pacing results, because you've halved/thirded the expected encounters a day.


----------



## Mordhau

Ovinomancer said:


> No, they're not aligned with your goals.  This doesn't mean they are misplaced.  Part of the problem with D&D editions is that people don't bother to try to learn how the new edition works and is intended to play because they already know how to play D&D.



Exactly.  And these are the customers WotC are writing the game for.  Therefore, their goals are misplaced.

They need to design the game the way that people want to play.  Not try and get people to play the game they want to design.


----------



## Dausuul

...I feel like I'm missing something here. I have heard many many criticisms lobbed at 4E--some justified, some not--but I can't recall ever before hearing that there was a pacing issue with the adventuring day. In fact, I have always regarded that as a great strength of 4E, that you are _not_ shackled to a daily attrition model. You can have one day with a single encounter, and another day with six in a row, and they both work fine. Maybe you don't burn through all your healing surges in the 1-encounter day, but so what?

(I do remember a lot of talk about "grind" _within a single encounter_, but that's an entirely different issue, with two main causes. First, people did not understand that they had to adjust encounter difficulty for player skill--a skilled well-optimized party will demolish an encounter that would TPK a bunch of newbies, and there is no way the books can tell you how skilled your players are. You have to figure that out yourself and dial in your challenge levels accordingly. Second, Wizards gave monsters too much defense and not enough offense in the early monster books. Once they got the stats properly calibrated, combat went much quicker.)


----------



## Mordhau

Dausuul said:


> ...I feel like I'm missing something here. I have heard many many criticisms lobbed at 4E--some justified, some not--but I can't recall ever before hearing that there was a pacing issue with the adventuring day. In fact, I have always regarded that as a great strength of 4E, that you are _not_ shackled to a daily attrition model. You can have one day with a single encounter, and another day with six in a row, and they both work fine. Maybe you don't burn through all your healing surges in the 1-encounter day, but so what?
> 
> (I do remember a lot of talk about "grind" _within a single encounter_, but that's an entirely different issue, with two main causes. First, people did not understand that they had to adjust encounter difficulty for player skill--a skilled well-optimized party will demolish an encounter that would TPK a bunch of newbies, and there is no way the books can tell you how skilled your players are. You have to figure that out yourself and dial in your challenge levels accordingly. Second, Wizards gave monsters too much defense and not enough offense in the early monster books. Once they got the stats properly calibrated, combat went much quicker.)



It has the same issues there always are.  A single encouter doesn't really feel particularly dangerous unless it's truly epic, loss of healing surges doesn't raise any tension if it feels like you never use them up, an encounter with bandits while travelling through the wilderness is more epic than the final boss fight at the end of the dungeon because it's the only combat the DM has planned for the today and once the players twig to that they'll blow all their dailies in the one fight.

It's why 13th Age moves the pacing away from the day and puts it squarely in the GMs hands after four fights and give the GM narrative control.  This is a solution, but in my experience it's somewhat disempowering to players who no longer really have strategic control about when to rest or retreat.

Changes to the number of healing surges characters get, like changes to the rest schedule in 5e change that pacing somewhat but they don't remove the degree of inflexibility they just cahnge where exactly it lies.

In both editions you also get the issue that the less numbe of combats you have the longer it takes.  There's the paradox where the best way to speed up combat to make time for other activities is to increase the number of combats  (so players need to conserve resources, so that opponents don't need to be as dangerous etc).

Mind you, it may be that this is an issue that D&D cannot ever really solve in a satisfactory manner without people complaining it's no longer D&D.  A big part of the issue here is that people want to play D&D as a game that does a whole gamut of different types of fantasy stories, but at the same time regard as sacred cows game elements that tie it inextricably to a certain intended play style.

They could probably do better than they have though.


----------



## Jaeger

darjr said:


> They are revising the core rulebooks. Calling it a revision of this editions core books. But ya know, 5.5 and 6e and what not. It probably doesn’t matter what they call it but how backwards compatible it really is. And to some that doesn’t matter either, a new core set IS a new edition to them. Which I get too.




I fall into the camp that believes that "50AE D&D" will be a solid 5.5+ 'not-edition' of the game.

There are just too many small things that they want to change, and too many rules from splat books that they want to incorporate back into the core rules that they will have to go through and re-balance to make them work with all the other changes.

The accumulation of all these small changes will have a cascade effect that _will push them_ into doing a full on 5.5+ ‘not-edition’.

When talking about the "50th Anniversary release of D&D" Ray Winninger's own words were: _"A living game that continues to grow and evolve."_ and _"The next evolution of the game."..._

And that is completely leaving aside the fact that in the announcement video WotC has openly said they will also do a new round of survey’s asking their ‘players’ how they can make the "Evolved" D&D Revision even better... I don't need a magic 8 ball to see where this is going.

I would also take the claims of "Fully Compatible" to mean the same thing they claimed in the 3.0 to 3.5 era.

IMHO by never using the word 'edition' when describing it, they are relying on the hubbub of it being the “50th anniversary release of D&D" to give them the cover to do all this with minimal pushback from the player base. 

And it seems to be working...


----------



## darjr

Jaeger said:


> I would also take the claims of "Fully Compatible" to mean the same thing they claimed in the 3.0 to 3.5 era.



I think there was a distinct change in WotC with 3.5, at one point it was supposed to be backwards compatible, but then somewhere they decided it wasn't going to be. I hope they know of the lesson it taught.


----------



## Mordhau

When you think about it, even a fairly backwards compatible thing like rewriting the Ranger class is going to make lots of subclasses incompatible.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Mordhau said:


> Exactly.  And these are the customers WotC are writing the game for.  Therefore, their goals are misplaced.
> 
> They need to design the game the way that people want to play.  Not try and get people to play the game they want to design.



It's a mistake to think that you're the target demographic.  4e was a commercial success.  I know that's not the preferred story told.


----------



## CleverNickName

darjr said:


> They are revising the core rulebooks. Calling it a revision of this editions core books. But ya know, 5.5 and 6e and what not. It probably doesn’t matter what they call it but how backwards compatible it really is. And to some that doesn’t matter either, a new core set IS a new edition to them. Which I get too.






Malmuria said:


> Yeah I was talking about the 2024 edition, whatever you want to call it.
> 
> I can't find it now, but I read a review of Tasha's when it came out that pointed out aspects of the design that were moving 'back' to 4e type design.  In addition, it seems there's been a resurgence of interest in those mechanics, so I was sort of curious to see what aspects could/should be brought over (or should not be brought over).



I just wanted to check...I've been out of town for work, and only been able to check in for a few minutes at a time.  From the way folks were talking in this thread (and others), I thought something exciting had been officially announced.  Alas, it wasn't so.

That said: the *Rules Expansion* is just a re-release of _Tasha's_, _Xanathar's_, and _Monsters of the Multiverse_, in a gift set.  Not really as exciting as I first thought.


----------



## darjr

CleverNickName said:


> I just wanted to check...I've been out of town for work, and only been able to check in for a few minutes at a time.  From the way folks were talking in this thread (and others), I thought something exciting had been officially announced.  Alas, it wasn't so.
> 
> That said: the *Rules Expansion* is just a re-release of _Tasha's_, _Xanathar's_, and _Monsters of the Multiverse_, in a gift set.  Not really as exciting as I first thought.



But that's not the revision of the core books. ??? But I think your response is probably the healthy one.


----------



## Dausuul

Mordhau said:


> It has the same issues there always are.  A single encouter doesn't really feel particularly dangerous unless it's truly epic, loss of healing surges doesn't raise any tension if it feels like you never use them up, an encounter with bandits while travelling through the wilderness is more epic than the final boss fight at the end of the dungeon because it's the only combat the DM has planned for the today and once the players twig to that they'll blow all their dailies in the one fight.



Well... I mean... yeah, I suppose all that is true, but how could it be otherwise in a game with daily attrition mechanics? These seem like criticisms of D&D generally rather than 4E specifically. All these problems are way worse in every other edition, 5E included.

Not that the criticisms aren't valid, but it seems strange to level them at the edition that did the most to address them.


----------



## billd91

Ovinomancer said:


> It's a mistake to think that you're the target demographic.  4e was a commercial success.  I know that's not the preferred story told.



Depends on how you measure success. For a typical RPG, it was extremely successful. For D&D, not so much. For Hasbro's benchmarks, definitely not.


----------



## Jaeger

Mordhau said:


> Exactly.  And these are the customers WotC are writing the game for.  Therefore, their goals are misplaced.
> 
> They need to _*design the game the way that people want to play.*_  Not try and get people to play the game they want to design.




But we also have examples of design changes effecting the way people play the game, because _players will adapt their play to the rules_.  

The designers then interpret that change in player behavior to be the way players _wanted_ to play the game, and then compounding that effect by continuing to change the game in a direction that _was just a player reaction to a rules change_...

There can be lots of unintended consequences with rule changes that many do not pause to consider.

Leading to Self-Perpetuating Development Loops:








						How D&D Was Engineered Away from Old-School Play.
					

How the development loop in Dungeons & Dragons moved it away from its original play experience via a distorted feedback loop of surveys & rule changes




					deathtrap-games.blogspot.com
				



_"This self-perpetuating loop, where developers created a change in the game's structure that changed how it was played, then heard that the game was being played differently, and so then reinforced that structural change, believing they were following a trend, has appeared in a number of ways as the game advanced. It is reminiscent of the Andria Paradox on a number of levels."_




darjr said:


> I think there was a distinct change in WotC with 3.5, at one point it was supposed to be backwards compatible, but then somewhere they decided it wasn't going to be. I hope they know of the lesson it taught.




It's not really about learning from the past. 

It is the inevitable direction balancing the integration of 7 years of different errata and 'improved' rules back into the core books will demand.

This guy gets it:


Mordhau said:


> When you think about it, even a fairly backwards compatible thing like rewriting the Ranger class is going to make lots of subclasses incompatible.




Which means that those subclasses then need to be looked at, etc...

The exponential effect of making many small changes is inevitable. Visually it will look pretty much like the same game. But the devil will be in the details.

Just think of the words: "Fully Compatible" as more of a guideline...




Dausuul said:


> Well... I mean... yeah, I suppose all that is true, but how could it be otherwise in a game with daily attrition mechanics? These seem like criticisms of D&D generally rather than 4E specifically. All these problems are way worse in every other edition, 5E included.
> 
> Not that the criticisms aren't valid, but it seems strange to level them at *the edition that did the most to address them.*




If you meant: "Post 3e edition", then yes: Bounded accuracy was a solid step in the right direction.

But 5e defiantly has its share of HP bloat, which counteracts the effects of much of that good work.


----------



## Hussar

darjr said:


> I think there was a distinct change in WotC with 3.5, at one point it was supposed to be backwards compatible, but then somewhere they decided it wasn't going to be. I hope they know of the lesson it taught.



I don't recall them ever actually stating it was supposed to be backwards compatible.  But, it is entirely possible I missed that part.  The fact that they not only rereleased all the core books, largely rewritten, plus then rereleased all the splats as well, pretty much put paid to the notion of compatibility.  The intent was certainly that everyone was supposed to rebuy all the material.

Essentials was backward compatible with 4e.  You could have an Essentials fighter and a vanilla 4e fighter in the same group without any problems.  I do think that 5e's much more standardized class design will make compatibility easier to maintain.  One of the strengths of 5e design is that, despite years of play, there aren't really any stand out examples of class imbalance.  Yeah, yeah, there is some talk about caster/non-caster, but, largely, the classes are pretty darn close in play.  

To me, that means they got the underlying math pretty good in 5e.  So, building on that chassis becomes a lot easier.


----------



## Lanefan

TwoSix said:


> Sure.  That's not the flavor of magic I would personally choose (I like casters to be fairly limited),



I do too, but I prefer those limitations come via different means; mostly that they be much easier to interrupt while casting (and there be no such thing as "combat casting") and that being interrupted can sometimes have consequences e.g. a wild magic effect.


TwoSix said:


> but I can't argue with it as a valid preference of taste.



Fair enough.


----------



## Lanefan

Stalker0 said:


> So in a nutshell:
> 
> 1) All Encounter Power returned with a very short rest.... ensures that the strength and tempo of fights stays consistent regardless of fights per day.
> 
> 2) Heavy resource drain model.... ensures that the players are expected to use their abilities in each fight but then withdraw to recover. Aka the strength of the party is still consistent under the assumption that fights are rare and resting frequent.
> 
> I think both have their merits. It generally means that on average, the expected party's "power level" is roughly consistent regardless of encounter type. The first one allows the players to repeat that multiple times a day (unless the DM intervenes through some mechanical tool used on rest). In the second, players are assumed to fight and then rest....with the notion that continuing to push forward constitutes a strong reduction in overall party strength and would represent "special circumstances".



Yeah, that's about it; with the main differences being:
--- with 2) the DM now has encounter frequency as a tool in the box with which to raise or lower the drain on resources
--- with 2) the players/PCs can choose to press on while weakened if they so desire and-or the situation demands it; a choice that 1) doesn't really offer.


----------



## Lanefan

Ovinomancer said:


> No, they're not aligned with your goals.  This doesn't mean they are misplaced.  Part of the problem with D&D editions is that people don't bother to try to learn how the new edition works and is intended to play because they already know how to play D&D.



Ideally the design is such that it aligns with the goals of as many players/DMs as possible, under the big-tent theory.


----------



## Ovinomancer

billd91 said:


> Depends on how you measure success. For a typical RPG, it was extremely successful. For D&D, not so much. For Hasbro's benchmarks, definitely not.



That's very interesting news, who's your source?


----------



## Mordhau

Ovinomancer said:


> It's a mistake to think that you're the target demographic.



I'm not.  You're making unjustified inferences.

I've said nothing about my own preferences.


----------



## Nefermandias

Charlaquin said:


> So, first of all, 4e _fully_ embraced the abstract nature of hit points. Most hit point damage was assumed to be luck/morale/energy/divine favor/whatever rather than actual physical injury. The only thresholds that mattered were Bloodied (which meant showing visible but largely superficial signs of wear like cuts and bruises), and 0 HP which meant unconscious and possibly dying - technically this is how 5e says to narrate hit point loss as well, but in 4e, many mechanics actually relied on this narrative. Which incidentally is one of the reasons I say it is objectively not true that the fluff didn’t matter - it very much did matter, to the point that some fluff couldn’t be ignored… which was a problem for folks who prefer “HP as meat.”
> 
> Now, keeping in mind this model of narrating HP loss, this means healing magic doesn’t fuse broken bones and knit open wounds. It restores your stamina, energy, resolve, will to fight, etc. And once we accept that, it’s pretty trivial to accept that you have a limited reserve of such willpower, and that past a certain point, no amount of magic is going to help. You’re just plain tapped out for the day.
> 
> It is definitely transparent. To me, that’s an unambiguously good thing.I want to understand what the rules are doing and why they’re doing it, and in 4e, that was always abundantly clear. And personally I think that’s the true source behind all this “dissociated mechanics” nonsense. 4e pulled back the curtain and showed the gameplay purpose the rules served, rather than pretending the rules existed primarily to model the fiction. A lot of folks didn’t like that (though for the life of me I’ll never understand why), and “dissociative mechanics” is what came out of their attempts to articulate that.



I would just like to add that in general, magical healing in 4e was strangely "weaker" from a narrative perspective. For example, removing curses and diseases were not guaranteed and the ritual could actually kill the victim if the ritualist rolled low enough with their Religion/Nature/Arcana check.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Mordhau said:


> I'm not.  You're making unjustified inferences.
> 
> I've said nothing about my own preferences.



Ah, my bad.  I didn't realize you were invoking a hypothetical other to be the stand in for the argument.  I postulate a hypothetical other that is the perfect customer for the game.  Where does this go from here?


----------



## Mordhau

Ovinomancer said:


> Ah, my bad.  I didn't realize you were invoking a hypothetical other to be the stand in for the argument.  I postulate a hypothetical other that is the perfect customer for the game.  Where does this go from here?



Nowhere.  You have successfully demonstrated the pointlessness of attempting further interaction.

Have a nice life!


----------



## Nefermandias

Teemu said:


> Common healing potions always require a surge, but 4e also has uncommon potions (cure wounds potions) that let you heal even if you don’t have any surges left. If any of that causes an issue in the fiction, it shouldn’t be any more of an issue than a high level character in 5e or 3.5 quaffing 10 potions of weak healing potions, yet still only be at half hp total—who then proceeds to run a marathon, followed by a jump from a tower that doesn’t kill them. And a commoner at death’s door drinks the same weak potion and is at full health.
> 
> One of the perks of healing surges is that the large majority of healing scales with character level. The weird issue with large hp totals and weaker healing effects largely disappears.



These potions your are taking about only came with Mordenkainen's Magnificent Emporium, and that was already the beginning of WoTC efforts to win back 3.5e people. Doesn't really count since they are not in the original spirit of the edition.


----------



## MichaelSomething

Lanefan said:


> Ideally the design is such that it aligns with the goals of as many players/DMs as possible, under the big-tent theory.




What are people's goals though?  I can't parse that out??  Do people want a return to the 5 minute workday???


----------



## overgeeked

Since we’re doing skill challenges, here’s this from another thread. I’d love for something like this to be in 5.5.

I really, really loved skill challenges in 4E. They had their flaws but it was a great idea. We found it really hard to come up with interesting consequences to failure that weren't forced combat, death, or lose a healing surge. To us that was boring. So we loosened up the already loose framework, but made it more concrete instead of abstract. Though it could still easily handle abstract and montage scenes well. The DM would set up some montage or action scene and would include obstacles to overcome. There was generally either a separate timer (be done in X rounds or bad thing Y will happen, survive the night, etc) or some consequential fail state, NPC dies, lose some resource, lose favor with NPC, etc.

You rolled as normal, a regular success counted as one and a crit counted as two. A failure counted as one but fumbles weren't used. A failure would either add a new obstacle (usually one success' worth) or would add one to a given obstacle. So you need to climb a wall that takes two successes. Get one success and you're halfway up the wall. Fail and you slide back down and now you need two successes to climb the wall. But it had to make narrative sense. If you're halfway up a wall and you fail the wall doesn't get taller. You slide down. And you populate a skill challenge with a few obstacles that take different skills to overcome and that require differing numbers of successes. You can see an official 4E skill challenge that basically works like this in Dungeon 173. The Colossus of Laarn. Because we'd already converted to doing it this way, switching over to 5E didn't mean abandoning skill challenges.

Two of my favorites were the giant obstacle course and the zombie horde.

We were captured by giants and forced to go through an obstacle course while the giants were cheering, jeering, and throwing boulders. A failure could mean either you fell, slid down a wall, or a giant threw a boulder at you. A PC was halfway up a wall, failed and fell down, failed again so a giant threw a boulder. DEX save or take damage. The player then used the boulder to climb up the wall. There was more to it, of course, but that was the most memorable part.

We were in a town attacked by a zombie horde and had to survive the night. Checks to sneak from building to building without being caught. Checks to scrounge for supplies. Checks to barricade the building we were in. Failures meant time wasted or attracting zombies. The zombie horde would degrade the barricades by one every few hours depending on how many were there. If we were loud more would show up and degrade the barricade faster. Each success made the barricade stronger so it would last longer, but we only had so many resources to work with. We went to the inn and broke up the tables and chairs for wood to barricade the door. One PC was a guild artisan carpenter and handled that while the barbarian pulled larger bits of furniture, barrels, etc in front of the barricade.

It's a loosey-goosey system but it was a lot more fun, dynamic, and interesting than the nailed down skill challenges as written.


----------



## overgeeked

Undrave said:


> I'd bet anything Mr. Alexandrian is a Wizard player ...
> 
> Hit dice come woefully short of Healing Surge in term of use and impact. They only LOOK similar.
> 
> Hmm... Now there's something interesting... What if every time a warrior hit, you also roll on a separate d100 table and depending on the result you can choose to apply an effect depending on the roll? Like if you roll above 30 you can push five feet, you roll past 40 you can slide them 5 feet, roll past 50, you can knock them prone, roll 95+? You can stun them!  And for all of those you can decide to use a lower effect if its more beneficial.



On a crit you can perform a stunt. Stunts are chosen from a list or free form based on context and DM approval. You could even have a fighting style or feat that expanded your stunt range. Stunt on 19-20, for example.


----------



## billd91

Ovinomancer said:


> That's very interesting news, who's your source?



Posts by Scott Rouse, Ryan Dancey, Greg Tito while still writing for The Escapist, ICv2. There's quite a bit out there.


----------



## Lanefan

MichaelSomething said:


> What are people's goals though?  I can't parse that out??  Do people want a return to the 5 minute workday???



Maybe.

I've never seen the 5-minute workday as being the massive issue some others seem to have with it, as in reality it's what the adventurers would do if they could.


----------



## overgeeked

Mordhau said:


> Exactly.  And these are the customers WotC are writing the game for.  Therefore, their goals are misplaced.
> 
> They need to design the game the way that people want to play.  Not try and get people to play the game they want to design.



Up to a point, yes. I think one of the major problems with 5E is the amount of player input taken on board. In my experience, most modern players don’t want a challenge they just want endless easy wins. So we got an open playtest, however many thousands of players pushing for cool toys and no challenge and 1/10th as many DMs pushing for more challenging game play. So we ended up with a game that uses terrible assumptions about party size and quantity of combats in a day and balances the game around that. Which means it’s hard to challenge PCs unless you go way beyond the suggested limits of encounters. Which makes players happy because the game is easy mode and DMs are frustrated because they can’t challenge the party without going way out of spec. D&D should stop trying to be all things to all people.


----------



## Lanefan

overgeeked said:


> On a crit you can perform a stunt. Stunts are chosen from a list or free form based on context and DM approval. You could even have a fighting style or feat that expanded your stunt range. Stunt on 19-20, for example.



Or, to tie stunting more closely to fighting proficiency, you can stunt if you roll a nat 20 or if your adjusted to-hit roll beats the target AC by at least 10. (where 10 is replaceable by any other number depending how often you want these stunts to come up in play)


----------



## Mordhau

MichaelSomething said:


> What are people's goals though?  I can't parse that out??  Do people want a return to the 5 minute workday???



There was thread here not long ago when it was revealed that the vast majority of tables on here don't run traditional dungeon crawls, yet WotC with every edition seem to go "back to the dungeon".

As far as I can tell from what has been described (correct me if I'm wrong I'm not a viewer) Critical Role also doesn't run these types of games.

I think the general preference seems to be that the game should work in situations where the amount of combat is determined by the needs of the story or what the players decide to do and not by the needs of pacing.

But also just the general point that people play D&D in a range of different ways and the game really needs to be flexible enough to cater to that range.

I mean if there's one thing that seemed to put off huge amounts of people from 4e it was that it was just too finely tuned for a particular way of approaching the game that lots of people just didn't want to do.


----------



## Teemu

Nefermandias said:


> These potions your are taking about only came with Mordenkainen's Magnificent Emporium, and that was already the beginning of WoTC efforts to win back 3.5e people. Doesn't really count since they are not in the original spirit of the edition.



Uh, what? They came out just 3 years into 4e. They’ve existed for over a decade. Lol. They don’t count now? Does Xanathar’s content “count” for 5e since it came out even later into the edition’s lifecycle?


----------



## MichaelSomething

Lanefan said:


> Maybe.
> 
> I've never seen the 5-minute workday as being the massive issue some others seem to have with it, as in reality it's what the adventurers would do if they could.



I agree!  Didn't the Dungeons of old have built in deterrents to constantly resting??  I also remember reading that in the games of old, the session was over as soon as you rested??

Isn't the DM suppose to provide time pressure?  Like an approaching army, an evil wizard plotting, or your milk spoiling??


----------



## overgeeked

Hussar said:


> One of the strengths of 5e design is that, despite years of play, there aren't really any stand out examples of class imbalance.  Yeah, yeah, there is some talk about caster/non-caster, but, *largely, the classes are pretty darn close in play*.
> 
> To me, that means they got the underlying math pretty good in 5e.  So, building on that chassis becomes a lot easier.



LOL. Wow. Sure. If you ignore that the paladin is explicitly more powerful than the ranger and the monk. Artificer is subpar at best. Twilight and Peace clerics are broken. People screamed for years about how bad the ranger was and it was finally fixed with Tasha’s. The echo knight is busted cheese. The hexblade is so good it dominated power gamer builds for years, still does, but to a lesser extent. “Pretty darn close.” What a joke.


----------



## Hussar

overgeeked said:


> most modern players don’t want a challenge they just want endless easy wins



And you are basing this on what?

You do realize just how dismissive this sounds right?


----------



## NaturalZero

overgeeked said:


> LOL. Wow. Sure. If you ignore that the paladin is explicitly more powerful than the ranger and the monk. Artificer is subpar at best. Twilight and Peace clerics are broken. People screamed for years about how bad the ranger was and it was finally fixed with Tasha’s. The echo knight is busted cheese. The hexblade is so good it dominated power gamer builds for years, still does, but to a lesser extent. “Pretty darn close.” What a joke.



Don't you touch my hexblade3/echoknight17!


----------



## Mordhau

MichaelSomething said:


> I agree!  Didn't the Dungeons of old have built in deterrents to constantly resting??  I also remember reading that in the games of old, the session was over as soon as you rested??




The dungeons of old had their own counterbalances.

The games didn't necessarily stop becoming more dangerous because you were rested (you might still be killed easily)
Travelling through the dungeon took time and risked wandering monsters so going out and resting and coming back (when you didn't really need to) didn't necessarily put you in a better position.



MichaelSomething said:


> Isn't the DM suppose to provide time pressure?  Like an approaching army, an evil wizard plotting, or your milk spoiling??



I've never understood this.  Doesn't this get old really fast?


----------



## overgeeked

MichaelSomething said:


> What are people's goals though?  I can't parse that out??  Do people want a return to the 5 minute workday???



As generalizations, most players will do whatever they can to minimize any challenge the game presents while it’s the DM‘s job to make the game as challenging as possible without dooming the group.

So if the mechanics of the game permit a 5-minute work day, they players will inevitably push for it. In my experience, the players would rather drop the quest than risk going into even the easiest fight with anything less than 100% of their resources. Which is likely why 4E shifted the majority of limited resources to encounter-based. To minimize the 5MWD. 5E really doesn't do anything to discourage the practice. Casters are back to mostly daily resources so going nova on one fight then long rest then nova on a second fight, etc is a dumb and cheesy thing to do, put absolutely what some players push for.

This is one reason why I think D&D should stop trying to appeal to everyone. Design the game and those who like it will play it. Those who don’t, won’t. As it stands, 5E is trying to appeal to everyone who ever played and not doing a great job delivering any particular style of play. Just look at all the holes 3PP have had to fill.


----------



## overgeeked

Hussar said:


> And you are basing this on what?



About 37 years of playing and running RPGs. There is a clear and distinct shift in play expectations between AD&D2E and 3E. 


Hussar said:


> You do realize just how dismissive this sounds right?



It’s not meant to be. It’s merely my experience playing and running RPGs.


----------



## niklinna

overgeeked said:


> Which makes players happy because the game is easy mode and DMs are frustrated because they can’t challenge the party without going way out of spec. D&D should stop trying to be all things to all people.



Well, that's a problem when both players & DMs are necessary for the game to happen at all!


----------



## Lanefan

MichaelSomething said:


> I agree!  Didn't the Dungeons of old have built in deterrents to constantly resting??  I also remember reading that in the games of old, the session was over as soon as you rested??



That last would be news to me.

I know the 1e DMG seems to base itself on a weekend-warrior style of play, where the party always returns to base at session's end and in-game time then passes one-for-one with the real world between sessions; but I've never seen or heard of any table that actually played this way.

But yes, wandering monsters were deterrents to resting; as were time pressures (in some modules) and resource management (a problem in all cases if you rested too often).


MichaelSomething said:


> Isn't the DM suppose to provide time pressure?  Like an approaching army, an evil wizard plotting, or your milk spoiling??



Simple resource management - food, water, light sources, etc. - can adequately provide this pressure at low levels in an old-school game.  External time pressures are something the DM can save for later in the campaign.


----------



## pming

Hiya!



MichaelSomething said:


> I agree!  Didn't the Dungeons of old have built in deterrents to constantly resting??  I also remember reading that in the games of old, the session was over as soon as you rested??



Yup. It was called "Random Encounters" and "Monsters acting intelligently as they can to try and KILL THE PC'S INVADING THEIR HOME".


Back in ye olden days, I remember many occasions where the PC's had to turn tail and GTFOD because they started a fight in an area near other monsters who could hear the fight, so they joined in and sent one or to 'runners' to nearby rooms to get more reinforcements, tell the leaders, sneak back around behind them to attack from two areas, block the PC's escape, etc. You know...stuff any at least semi-average Int/Wis creatures would do.

Oh, and random encounters. Rolling 1d6 for every 10 minutes of rest is a pretty big deterrent. Obviously, 'leave the dungeon' is the right course of action. But, again, "Dungeon full of monsters", so killing off 4 rooms of orcs and their pet owlbear, then leaving the dungeon to camp a few hours away was...er... "gambling". Coming back into the dungeon... expect new guards, higher alert, traps, tricks or even a night time assault by a hunting party and their 6 worgs!

Unless you had one of those "inferior" DM's who never did any of that and just assumed monsters were static, like in todays typical MMORPG.



MichaelSomething said:


> Isn't the DM suppose to provide time pressure?  Like an approaching army, an evil wizard plotting, or your milk spoiling??



Well, he's not _supposed_ to do it all the time. He should simply be "running the world" and having the monsters react in a believable manner for their intelligence and attitude/goals. If the PC's take out a few guards and a single monster or two... chances are the rest of the orcs/goblins/whatever will chalk it up to "Oh, adventurers. Hope they don't come back". But the more disruptive the PC's are, the more likely for a mounted defense or even offense.

Personally, the "5-minute work day" never happened in "older games" (B/X/BECMI, 1e, etc). Like...ever, and I've been DM'ing since 1981. The only time we actually saw the fabled "5 MWD" was with the introduction of 3e...and only then it was occasional (our play style was pretty ingrained into our psyches I guess...).

With how I read 4e to play...yeah, "Nova...rest...Nova...rest...Nova...rest..." seems to be the order of the day. Why? From my understanding, the PC's were always expected to be at "full strength" for big battles; and if they had used up most/all of their Daily abilities...they were screwed. Of course, I could be TOTALLY wrong and 4e can play completely different than how it reads... we never played it; read it, made PC's...er... actually, we never got past making PC's. Everyone's PC was more or less exactly the same in every way except "flavoured text", so we cut our losses right there and went back to 1e/Hackmaster.

^_^

Paul L. Ming


----------



## Lanefan

Hussar said:


> And you are basing this on what?
> 
> You do realize just how dismissive this sounds right?



Dismissive or not, @overgeeked has it pretty much right: it's in the players' interest to reduce the challenge, and it's only natural that players are going to complain about elements of the game that make it more challenging.

The problem is not that they complain, however.  It's that the designers listen to them.


----------



## Mordhau

I don't get it.  If players don't want to be challenged why are DMs trying to challenge them?

Is it all about the DM's fun?  Or should we believe that there are masses of DMs out there who mistakenly think they need to challenge their players in order to ensure they have fun when what their players actually want is to be allowed to win all the time?


----------



## overgeeked

Lanefan said:


> Dismissive or not, @overgeeked has it pretty much right: it's in the players' interest to reduce the challenge, and it's only natural that players are going to complain about elements of the game that make it more challenging.
> 
> The problem is not that they complain, however.  It's that the designers listen to them.



As an example. I’m running a 5E West Marches game. I conducted a little experiment. I rounded up some players and told them the plan. They made characters. And then I doled out the small list of house rules, which included the optional encumbrance rules. And then half the group changed their characters to either higher STR characters or races with powerful build, which doubles your encumbrance limits. I mentioned that I also wanted to restrict the use of bags of holding...and a player switched to an artificer so they could make their own bag of holding at 2nd level.


----------



## niklinna

overgeeked said:


> As an example. I’m running a 5E West Marches game. I conducted a little experiment. I rounded up some players and told them the plan. They made characters. And then I doled out the small list of house rules, which included the optional encumbrance rules. And then half the group changed their characters to either higher STR characters or races with powerful build, which doubles your encumbrance limits. I mentioned that I also wanted to restrict the use of bags of holding...and a player switched to an artificer so they could make their own bag of holding at 2nd level.



At least their priorities are clear?


----------



## overgeeked

Mordhau said:


> I don't get it.  If players don't want to be challenged why are DMs trying to challenge them?
> 
> Is it all about the DM's fun?



I don’t get it. If the DM wants to challenge the PCs why are players trying to avoid being challenged.

Is it all about the players’ fun?


Mordhau said:


> Or should we believe that there are masses of DMs out there who mistakenly think they need to challenge their players in order to ensure they have fun when what their players actually want is to be allowed to win all the time?



The DM isn’t an organ grinder or a trained monkey. They get to have fun, too. If the type of game that is fun for each person doesn’t match up as a group, they shouldn’t play together.


----------



## overgeeked

niklinna said:


> At least their priorities are clear?



Yippee.


----------



## Hussar

overgeeked said:


> LOL. Wow. Sure. If you ignore that the paladin is explicitly more powerful than the ranger and the monk. Artificer is subpar at best. Twilight and Peace clerics are broken. People screamed for years about how bad the ranger was and it was finally fixed with Tasha’s. The echo knight is busted cheese. The hexblade is so good it dominated power gamer builds for years, still does, but to a lesser extent. “Pretty darn close.” What a joke.



Yes, ivory tower theory crafting doesn't really impress me all that much.

In play, the classes are fine.  And, to prove that, I'd point to the fact that the difference between top and bottom of classes played is pretty much just a rounding error.  Rangers are getting played.  Druids are getting played.  Fighters are getting played.  If there really was this huge mechanical issue, it would be an issue.


----------



## Hussar

overgeeked said:


> In my experience, the players would rather drop the quest than risk going into even the easiest fight with anything less than 100% of their resources.



Now, do you really think that your experiences are indicative of anything other than your experiences?


----------



## Hussar

Lanefan said:


> Dismissive or not, @overgeeked has it pretty much right: it's in the players' interest to reduce the challenge, and it's only natural that players are going to complain about elements of the game that make it more challenging.
> 
> The problem is not that they complain, however.  It's that the designers listen to them.



LOL

Again, very much not my experience.  1e and especially 2e, were the easiest editions in the game.  Good grief, after about 4th or 5th level, the PC's could mop the floor with pretty much anything in the game.  The only dangerous elements were save or die.  Combat certainly wasn't.  

Remember how a 1st level party could take on about 20 kobolds at the same time and win 9 out of 10 times?  THAT'S what D&D used to be.  

Sorry, but we are not going to agree on this.  I found 1e and particularly 2e to be incredibly generous and easy mode games.  3e?  3e was very lethal.  That got dialed back in 4e but, 5e?  I have zero problems whacking PC's in 5e.  I'm actually a little shocked how easy it is.


----------



## Mordhau

overgeeked said:


> I don’t get it. If the DM wants to challenge the PCs why are players trying to avoid being challenged.
> 
> Is it all about the players’ fun?
> 
> The DM isn’t an organ grinder or a trained monkey. They get to have fun, too. If the type of game that is fun for each person doesn’t match up as a group, they shouldn’t play together.



That's why I asked if it was only about the DMs fun.

Sure that's legitimate.  But it does suggest that if the DM is challenging the players because they think they ought to, or because they think it's their job to do so then they are, in fact, wrong.

I  suspect most people DMing want their players to have lots of fun.  That, in fact, they derive most of their enjoyment from faciliating that.  Therefore, if what you are saying is correct, these people should stop challenging their players.  Right?

I think, in fact, you are on the right track in that the open playtest (which was never really a playtest, however) is part of the explanation for what has happened.  I just  think the way you have tried to articulate it fundamentally doesn't work.

Edit: I suspect the issue is more that players want contradictory things. They want to be challenged, but they also want to be free of restrictions and limitations.  When you put these things together, and you don't really playtest, but you offer lots of surveys that aren't necessarily based on actual play (and given timeframes often couldn't possibly be to any great extent) then you get issues.  I think it's related to what computer game designers mean when they talk about gamers optimising the fun out of games.  (But note the loss of fun - it's not about players vs DMs, it's about players vs themselves;  they make things less fun for themselves.).


----------



## Aldarc

Stalker0 said:


> I also would be interested to see a return to the 5 minute rest concept, though I think that is too big a change for what they are considering.
> 
> Dnd's current model is "steadily drain away resources until encounters are actually a threat". I would rather it be "characters are consistently strong....until the story says their not"
> 
> This is where things like fatigue and life drain etc come into play. Maybe there are conditions that prevent a short rest, maybe the current terrain prevents it, perhaps getting too close to a legendary monster creates an effect that hinders resting, etc. Aka make the narrative assumption that players always short rest after a fight....but gives the DM tools to thwart that mechanic when its narratively appropriate and you actually do want the players to "run out of gas".
> 
> I think this creates a much smoother curve than the current model.



Monte Cook's Cypher System essentially has short rests (i.e., Recovery Roll), but the amount of time required for each Short Rest gets longer each successive time until finally a Long Rest is required. I wonder if something like this would work for D&D 5e. It would mean that Short Rest based classes/subclasses could get them more regularly but there would be more of attrition after subsequent encounters. 



Charlaquin said:


> So, first of all, 4e _fully_ embraced the abstract nature of hit points. Most hit point damage was assumed to be luck/morale/energy/divine favor/whatever rather than actual physical injury. The only thresholds that mattered were Bloodied (which meant showing visible but largely superficial signs of wear like cuts and bruises), and 0 HP which meant unconscious and possibly dying - technically this is how 5e says to narrate hit point loss as well, but in 4e, many mechanics actually relied on this narrative. Which incidentally is one of the reasons I say it is objectively not true that the fluff didn’t matter - it very much did matter, to the point that some fluff couldn’t be ignored… which was a problem for folks who prefer “HP as meat.”
> 
> Now, keeping in mind this model of narrating HP loss, this means healing magic doesn’t fuse broken bones and knit open wounds. It restores your stamina, energy, resolve, will to fight, etc. And once we accept that, it’s pretty trivial to accept that you have a limited reserve of such willpower, and that past a certain point, no amount of magic is going to help. You’re just plain tapped out for the day.
> 
> It is definitely transparent. To me, that’s an unambiguously good thing.I want to understand what the rules are doing and why they’re doing it, and in 4e, that was always abundantly clear. And personally I think that’s the true source behind all this “dissociated mechanics” nonsense. 4e pulled back the curtain and showed the gameplay purpose the rules served, rather than pretending the rules existed primarily to model the fiction. A lot of folks didn’t like that (though for the life of me I’ll never understand why), and “dissociative mechanics” is what came out of their attempts to articulate that.



That is the odd thing about it though: healing surges are far more diagetic (i.e., "associated") as a conceptual mechanic and more simulationist of various fantasy fiction than simply spending HD to heal between combat or the whole taking no sides on the fluff of HP as abstract vs. meat that we find in 5e. I agree that Healing Surges were poorly named for what amounted to a character's Vital Reserves.



Undrave said:


> You're missing another aspect of Healing Surges: they were used for more than just healing damage taken in combat.
> 
> Traps, for exemple, wouldn't inflict HP damage, they would generally drain a healing surge (basically, it was assumed you would rest and spend your HS to recover HP anyway so it cut the middle man), environmental effects like a snow storm or extreme heat would ALSO drain surges if you failed an Endurance check. Certain rituals would require you to spend Healing Surges, the entire Martial Practice concept used Surges to fuel them, some Magical Item used them, I think the Warden had a power to spend a Healing Surge to grant Temp HP to everybody and that some monsters would drain them. You also had diseases and curses that could reduce your healing surge total or prevent you from recovering them!



Yeah, healing surges were part of the resource attrition game for player characters, and I don't think knowing or not knowing their healing surges is any more disassociated than a character knowing their HP totals. In some respects, it's mainly something in-fiction that the character can feel but is represented more concretely to the player in terms that they can understand. 



Mordhau said:


> Exactly.  And these are the customers WotC are writing the game for.  Therefore, their goals are misplaced.
> 
> They need to design the game the way that people want to play.  Not try and get people to play the game they want to design.



The problem here is that this proposition assumes that these people aren't just playing D&D differently from how WotC assumes, but also playing D&D the same way as each other; however, even reading through discussion on 5e alone makes it abundantly clear that this is not the case. I'm skeptical that WotC could design "the game that people want to play" in the manner that is being suggested here. So "the game that people want to play" seems to exist in the same rhetorical space as "the State of Nature" does for political philosophers of the Enlightenment: i.e., the fictive place to load-up and guise one's assumptions, biases, and agendas while giving it the airs of empirical objectivity.


----------



## Stalker0

Aldarc said:


> Monte Cook's Cypher System essentially has short rests (i.e., Recovery Roll), but the amount of time required for each Short Rest gets longer each successive time until finally a Long Rest is required. I wonder if something like this would work for D&D 5e. It would mean that Short Rest based classes/subclasses could get them more regularly but there would be more of attrition after subsequent encounters.



I've played Cypher and I think as a healing concept it works quite well. But as an ability recovery mechanic....that's a bit trickier.


----------



## Mordhau

Aldarc said:


> The problem here is that this proposition assumes that these people aren't just playing D&D differently from how WotC assumes, but also playing D&D the same way as each other; however, even reading through discussion on 5e alone makes it abundantly clear that this is not the case. I'm skeptical that WotC could design "the game that people want to play" in the manner that is being suggested here. So "the game that people want to play" seems to exist in the same rhetorical space as "the State of Nature" does for political philosophers of the Enlightenment: i.e., the fictive place to load-up and guise one's assumptions, biases, and agendas while giving it the airs of empirical objectivity.



No it doesn't.  It assumes that there is such a wide variety of ways that people play that there needs to be flexibility.

My point wasn't that WotC design their rest schedules _wrong_.  The point was they design them inflexibly.


----------



## Aldarc

Stalker0 said:


> I've played Cypher and I think as a healing concept it works quite well. But as an ability recovery mechanic....that's a bit trickier.



I agree, but if people are not taking the number of Short Rests that WotC assumes they would and balanced around, then that obviously poses some issue for the Short Rest-based character options. WotC's solution seems to be abandoning Short Rests in favor of putting everyone on the same Per Day cycle.



Mordhau said:


> No it doesn't.  It assumes that there is such a wide variety of ways that people play that there needs to be flexibility.
> 
> My point wasn't that WotC design their rest schedules _wrong_.  The point was they design them inflexibly.



IMHO, 4e was the most flexible that WotC ever designed them as it was primarily framed around encounters and healing surges rather than assumptions about "X number of Y in an adventuring day." This left players and GMs free to focus on pacing from their respective sides.


----------



## mcmillan

CleverNickName said:


> I just wanted to check...I've been out of town for work, and only been able to check in for a few minutes at a time.  From the way folks were talking in this thread (and others), I thought something exciting had been officially announced.  Alas, it wasn't so.
> 
> That said: the *Rules Expansion* is just a re-release of _Tasha's_, _Xanathar's_, and _Monsters of the Multiverse_, in a gift set.  Not really as exciting as I first thought.



Since people didn’t seem to explain, last weekend at the ”future of D&D” panel they announced that they were working on core rule revisions to be released in 2024 for the 50th anniversary of D&D. Since it’s still 3 years away we don’t have much to go on - mainly just that the intention is to be backwards compatible so material released pre-revision will still be useable and that we can expect previews and surveys about it to be coming


----------



## DEFCON 1

Charlaquin said:


> I don’t know, it sounds to me like you at least understand their function as a pacing mechanic in theory, even if you never experienced it personally.



_Shrug_ I mean... I understand the language you all are using when you say it's a pacing mechanic, but I don't see (and never did see) why that supposed pacing gained from them was necessarily a useful thing.  I mean, hit points and spell slots are a pacing mechanic too (you run low on both, you better rest) so why healing surges are better (if indeed those of you in favor of them feel they are) just doesn't resonate with me.  Which isn't surprising, because like I said.. we don't know what we don't know.


----------



## DEFCON 1

Undrave said:


> You're missing another aspect of Healing Surges: they were used for more than just healing damage taken in combat.
> 
> Traps, for exemple, wouldn't inflict HP damage, they would generally drain a healing surge (basically, it was assumed you would rest and spend your HS to recover HP anyway so it cut the middle man), environmental effects like a snow storm or extreme heat would ALSO drain surges if you failed an Endurance check. Certain rituals would require you to spend Healing Surges, the entire Martial Practice concept used Surges to fuel them, some Magical Item used them, I think the Warden had a power to spend a Healing Surge to grant Temp HP to everybody and that some monsters would drain them. You also had diseases and curses that could reduce your healing surge total or prevent you from recovering them!



Sure, but there's nothing special about that-- it's just another pool of something that gets drained.  That's essentially no different than the Exhaustion table.  You start full, things happen, and you starting losing parts of it until you're dead.

Now the fact that healing surges kind of combine hit points and the exhaustion table together into one grouping might have its merits, I would never deny that (since obviously many people found that to be true.)  But at least in my case personally... I still never saw healing surge loss to occur so much prior to extended resting that it ever was going to be an issue or cause player concern.

I'll be honest... I think part of that might very well have been just how many hit points PCs had total when you took into account healing surges.  I mean, a 1st level PC with 25 HP and 6 healing surges (just throwing out random numbers here) had essentially 150 total HP available to them in a day.  So at least the way I ran my games, I was _never_ going to blow through all that to make running out of HS a thing to worry about.  If others could pull it off, I could definitely see why it would appeal... but if we couldn't, it's no wonder the system just never resonated.


----------



## Nefermandias

Hussar said:


> LOL
> 
> Again, very much not my experience.  1e and especially 2e, were the easiest editions in the game.  Good grief, after about 4th or 5th level, the PC's could mop the floor with pretty much anything in the game.  The only dangerous elements were save or die.  Combat certainly wasn't.
> 
> Remember how a 1st level party could take on about 20 kobolds at the same time and win 9 out of 10 times?  THAT'S what D&D used to be.
> 
> Sorry, but we are not going to agree on this.  I found 1e and particularly 2e to be incredibly generous and easy mode games.  3e?  3e was very lethal.  That got dialed back in 4e but, 5e?  I have zero problems whacking PC's in 5e.  I'm actually a little shocked how easy it is.



Let's just put it this way: back in AD&D, your character would die upon reaching 0 HP. No appeal (no, the -10 thing wasn't in the base rules and was actually based on a misunderstanding of a particularly obscure option discussed in the DMG). 

Now in 5e though? You cannot die unless you somehow get one shot to a negative HP equal to your maximum. Death by bleeding out is virtually impossible if you are in a party of four and the DM doesn't go out of his way to stab you on the ground.

So yea, I would disagree with your assessment that 1e and 2e were easier.


----------



## UngeheuerLich

Aldarc said:


> I agree, but if people are not taking the number of Short Rests that WotC assumes they would and balanced around, then that obviously poses some issue for the Short Rest-based character options. WotC's solution seems to be abandoning Short Rests in favor of putting everyone on the same Per Day cycle.
> 
> 
> IMHO, 4e was the most flexible that WotC ever designed them as it was primarily framed around encounters and healing surges rather than assumptions about "X number of Y in an adventuring day." This left players and GMs free to focus on pacing from their respective sides.



But at the same time, it made combats meaningless as PCs were always at the peak of their power (a bit hyperbole of course). 

I do like the game of attrition in DnD. But I do agree, that in 5e the balance between short rests and long rests is off by default. 
8 encounters per day means 1 level per two or three days or level 20 in two months... 
That does in no way reflect anyone's game I guess. Only maybe in a dungeon there might be a few days on that schedule. This is why I use custom picked healing options...


----------



## UngeheuerLich

Nefermandias said:


> Let's just put it this way: back in AD&D, your character would die upon reaching 0 HP. No appeal (no, the -10 thing wasn't in the base rules and was actually based on a misunderstanding of a particularly obscure option discussed in the DMG).
> 
> Now in 5e though? You cannot die unless you somehow get one shot to a negative HP equal to your maximum. Death by bleeding out is virtually impossible if you are in a party of four and the DM doesn't go out of his way to stab you on the ground.
> 
> So yea, I would disagree with your assessment that 1e and 2e were easier.



Speaking about easy or hard in a game where the DM can chose any enemy they like is pointless.


----------



## Ovinomancer

DEFCON 1 said:


> _Shrug_ I mean... I understand the language you all are using when you say it's a pacing mechanic, but I don't see (and never did see) why that supposed pacing gained from them was necessarily a useful thing.  I mean, hit points and spell slots are a pacing mechanic too (you run low on both, you better rest) so why healing surges are better (if indeed those of you in favor of them feel they are) just doesn't resonate with me.  Which isn't surprising, because like I said.. what we don't know, we don't know.



Because spell slots (not so much hitpoints) are the pacing mechanism in pretty much every other edition of D&D.  When the casters can't cast, you stop.  When the cleric can no longer cast spells to heal you, you stop.  It's not so much hitpoints (unless you're playing with no casters, which is uncommon) as slots.  This is absolutely the pacing mechanism in 5e, and it trades on whether or not the casters can continue to contribute at all.

4e, though, with the power structure, didn't have slots, so these were never going to be a pacing mechanism.  Instead, it invented and then used healing surges, as these represented the ability to continue for *all *classes not just the casters.  It was part of the rebalancing of play so that the wizard/cleric wasn't the pacing mechanism for the whole party.  It was a response to the 5-minute workday that was strongly prevalent in 3.x (and even 2e before it).

If you didn't play 4e the way the rules said to (again, it was very clear about the expectations the game had for encounter pacing), then, sure, you're not going to notice this pacing mechanism.  Just like you don't notice the pacing mechanism in 5e when you only have an encounter or two a day, either.  The difference here is that in 5e the nominal pacing mechanism (slots and other x/day) can be overloaded on smaller encounters to make them very trivial.  This was reduced in 4e, as only the daily power slot(s) represented any ability to nova, so you came into the 5th encounter with roughly the same arsenal you entered the 1st with.

And this isn't to say one way is better than the other.  It's discussing the differences.


----------



## Ovinomancer

UngeheuerLich said:


> But at the same time, it made combats meaningless as PCs were always at the peak of their power (a bit hyperbole of course).
> 
> I do like the game of attrition in DnD. But I do agree, that in 5e the balance between short rests and long rests is off by default.
> 8 encounters per day means 1 level per two or three days or level 20 in two months...
> That does in no way reflect anyone's game I guess. Only maybe in a dungeon there might be a few days on that schedule. This is why I use custom picked healing options...



This very  much depends on how you're structuring the combats, though.  If you're just using combats as a vehicle for attrition and the system doesn't do attrition like that, then, yes, you're going to set yourself up for boring combats.  If, however, you set up encounters so they aren't primarily based on the attrition model but on different goals, then the fact that you're not limited by an attrition model can be quite liberating in design.

There are similar argument for 5e about hp bloat and how it leads to boring combats of hp-bags beating on each other and similar solutions are often presented -- don't make the combats about attrition of hp.


----------



## Ovinomancer

overgeeked said:


> As an example. I’m running a 5E West Marches game. I conducted a little experiment. I rounded up some players and told them the plan. They made characters. And then I doled out the small list of house rules, which included the optional encumbrance rules. And then half the group changed their characters to either higher STR characters or races with powerful build, which doubles your encumbrance limits. I mentioned that I also wanted to restrict the use of bags of holding...and a player switched to an artificer so they could make their own bag of holding at 2nd level.



I don't blame them at all!  The encumbrance system for 5e is the same terrible, fiddly, stop-and-count-beans system inherited from previous editions.  It's not a fun system to deal with, even if you want to deal with scarcity of resources.  There are other games that do this waaaaay better than D&D does -- get to scarce resources and having to plan loadouts without the tedious accounting and detailed lists.  

And then, well, there's the part where you're indicating to them that you're going to make encumbrance a pain-point, so mitigating that in some way means that they're going to be more successful at what they want from the game.  "This is a problem I intend to be a common one" is usually going to be followed by strategies to deal with that problem, no matter what the game is.  What you've discovered are rational actors, not players not wanting a challenge.


----------



## DEFCON 1

Ovinomancer said:


> I'm aware of that.  I've encountered it.  It's very frustrating, because what it's saying is that people played the game in a way that was different from how the game told you to play it (and 4e is exceedingly clear on encounter design and pacing) and then say that it's the game and the mechanics that are the problem. I recognize that I'm probably not going to get much traction with this, but there it is -- it's saying the mechanics don't work as intended based on not using them as intended.



Yeah, but this is D&D... to think every single person is going to run the game exactly the same is silly, regardless of what the rules say.  D&D is a game that has _always_ been one that was never played the same way at every single table.  Not even at the beginning.  So while I do not doubt you are frustrated that people are decrying a system you think is great (mainly because you think people aren't playing the system as it was meant to be run)... considering that's not how Dungeons & Dragons as a game has ever been it's probably hard for anybody else to sympathize with your frustration.  And thus it shouldn't be surprising when the idea of bringing parts of it forward into 5E gets blowback.


----------



## Ovinomancer

DEFCON 1 said:


> Yeah, but this is D&D... to think every single person is going to run the game exactly the same is silly, regardless of what the rules say.  D&D is a game that has _always_ been one that was never played the same way at every single table.  Not even at the beginning.  So while I do not doubt you are frustrated that people are decrying a system you think is great (mainly because you think people aren't playing the system as it was meant to be run)... considering that's not how Dungeons & Dragons as a game has ever been it's probably hard for anybody else to sympathize with your frustration.  And thus it shouldn't be surprising when the idea of bringing parts of it forward into 5E gets blowback.



Let's agree with your opening point and say, sure, people are going to play the game however they want.  It's when they do this and then blame the game for their poor experiences that's the issue.  This isn't a 4e thing for me -- I've been making this same point about 5e.  If you deviate from the way the game is designed, and tells you it's designed, and play it some other way, then this is on you, not the game.  Yet, it's often attributed and complained about as the game's problem, to the point that there's a sub-thread here that games should be designed for everyone to play however they want when that's just not even close to feasible.

In other words, it's like blaming Monopoly because it's rules sucked when you tried to play it like Risk.  I mean, that's clearly exaggeration, but it's the same point.


----------



## clearstream

UngeheuerLich said:


> Speaking about easy or hard in a game where the DM can chose any enemy they like is pointless.



It refers to the baseline balance implied by game guidelines and systems, right? So in 5e, guidelines around encounter sizes in terms of CR if followed create low challenge. More subtly, the value of XP connected with creatures relative to XP costs to advance levels, establishes an implicit difficulty curve.

An RPG is 'easy' if the guideline and systemic balance will offer players encounters that their characters will easily defeat. A DM can override the built-in difficulty. That doesn't change that there is a built-in difficulty.


----------



## DEFCON 1

Ovinomancer said:


> Let's agree with your opening point and say, sure, people are going to play the game however they want.  It's when they do this and then blame the game for their poor experiences that's the issue.  This isn't a 4e thing for me -- I've been making this same point about 5e.  If you deviate from the way the game is designed, and tells you it's designed, and play it some other way, then this is on you, not the game.  Yet, it's often attributed and complained about as the game's problem, to the point that there's a sub-thread here that games should be designed for everyone to play however they want when that's just not even close to feasible.
> 
> In other words, it's like blaming Monopoly because it's rules sucked when you tried to play it like Risk.  I mean, that's clearly exaggeration, but it's the same point.



You mean I shouldn't have been putting $500 under Australia?


----------



## Nefermandias

UngeheuerLich said:


> Speaking about easy or hard in a game where the DM can chose any enemy they like is pointless.



I don't think it's pointless. System matters a great deal when it comes to lethality.


----------



## Ovinomancer

DEFCON 1 said:


> You mean I shouldn't have been putting $500 under Australia?



Heh, you can play Monopoly any way you want!


----------



## Hussar

Nefermandias said:


> Let's just put it this way: back in AD&D, your character would die upon reaching 0 HP. No appeal (no, the -10 thing wasn't in the base rules and was actually based on a misunderstanding of a particularly obscure option discussed in the DMG).
> 
> Now in 5e though? You cannot die unless you somehow get one shot to a negative HP equal to your maximum. Death by bleeding out is virtually impossible if you are in a party of four and the DM doesn't go out of his way to stab you on the ground.
> 
> So yea, I would disagree with your assessment that 1e and 2e were easier.



Ah, now that's true.  In 5e, it's really, really clear when the DM is whacking your character .  Now, I'm up front about that with my players that in many situations, I absolutely will kill downed characters to stop them from getting up.  Which has completely put paid to the whole whack a mole thing that people talk about.  It doesn't happen in my game, because, if you go down, there's a very good chance that you won't get back up.


----------



## Hussar

clearstream said:


> It refers to the baseline balance implied by game guidelines and systems, right? So in 5e, guidelines around encounter sizes in terms of CR if followed create low challenge. More subtly, the value of XP connected with creatures relative to XP costs to advance levels, establishes an implicit difficulty curve.
> 
> An RPG is 'easy' if the guideline and systemic balance will offer players encounters that their characters will easily defeat. A DM can override the built-in difficulty. That doesn't change that there is a built-in difficulty.



But, that's not what the CR system tells us.  The CR system isn't telling you how to design your adventure.  It's telling you that if you use X, then the result should be Y.   If you want a more difficult encounter, use a higher CR. 

CR is a predictive system so that DM's can better gauge how to design their adventures without having to know exactly how the game works.  But, where does it say that your adventure should have X CR encounters?


----------



## clearstream

Hussar said:


> But, that's not what the CR system tells us.  The CR system isn't telling you how to design your adventure.  It's telling you that if you use X, then the result should be Y.   If you want a more difficult encounter, use a higher CR.
> 
> CR is a predictive system so that DM's can better gauge how to design their adventures without having to know exactly how the game works.  But, where does it say that your adventure should have X CR encounters?



We can quibble over whether the advice about on DMG82-85 amount to '_telling you_'? A group can do as they like, I am addressing only what they are advised to do by the game designers, and what the system encourages. I am thinking of guidelines such as 'Building Encounters on a Budget'. Elements that factor strongly in that, if followed, include the scaling for groups of creatures. That scaling leans into a low difficulty challenge.

That question aside,

The pricing of creatures in XP establishes a relevance to them as interesting foes for a party of a given level, if for no other reason than the relation with XP cost to advance.
Echoing @Nefermandias' excellent point, 5th edition is inherently less lethal due to the combination of its mechanics for dying and healing. I see 'whack-a-mole' healing often-referenced in these and other forums.
Like many here I have played all editions of D&D extensively. 5e has the lowest baseline difficulty of any edition. It happens due to spells like _healing word_ and _guidance_, choices like the simplification to druid HP on reverting, the death saves system, the low likelihood of instant death under PHB RAW, the relaxed recovery rules, the generous HP at start and on levelling rules, and so on.

You are right about a DM ignoring the game as written to use higher CR creatures. That will increase difficulty. That doesn't mean the game _as written_ has a high baseline difficulty. And such a DM will find themselves swimming far from shore: lacking solid support from the game designers.


----------



## Undrave

DEFCON 1 said:


> Sure, but there's nothing special about that-- it's just another pool of something that gets drained.  That's essentially no different than the Exhaustion table.  You start full, things happen, and you starting losing parts of it until you're dead.
> 
> Now the fact that healing surges kind of combine hit points and the exhaustion table together into one grouping might have its merits, I would never deny that (since obviously many people found that to be true.)  But at least in my case personally... I still never saw healing surge loss to occur so much prior to extended resting that it ever was going to be an issue or cause player concern.
> 
> I'll be honest... I think part of that might very well have been just how many hit points PCs had total when you took into account healing surges.  I mean, a 1st level PC with 25 HP and 6 healing surges (just throwing out random numbers here) had essentially 150 total HP available to them in a day.  So at least the way I ran my games, I was _never_ going to blow through all that to make running out of HS a thing to worry about.  If others could pull it off, I could definitely see why it would appeal... but if we couldn't, it's no wonder the system just never resonated.




I can see that. However, it's just a matter of calibration, not a flaw intrinsic to the system.

Personally I love the concept of HS being your TRUE daily vitality total and your max HP just being an encounter ressource. By tweaking the numbers you can make each individual combat more dangerous, without making so the players always have to go on long rests to avoid dying. HP become more luck and skill, while HS become vitality. Personally I would have also added that each death saving throw you make costs a healing surge, just to add consequences to that clock a little. And you can have HP scale more slowly but healing surges more rapidly so that experienced adventurers would be able to do more fights in a day but still be 2-3 good hits away from being downed by lower level enemies.

Basically, I think they gave up on a good system with a flawed execution instead of giving it tweaks and went for the inferior Hit Dice we have.


----------



## Stalker0

UngeheuerLich said:


> Speaking about easy or hard in a game where the DM can chose any enemy they like is pointless.



That’s not exactly true, for we have to remember the narrative of combat.

for example, sake of argument let’s say a 1st level party could “easily” kill an adult red dragon. Mechanically that’s no problem, we could always add a second dragon.

but it changes the narrative of the game. No longer are dragons considered major threats in the world, they are merely speed bumps. Only a horde of dragons could be considered “a real kingdom threat”.

again, we could adjust our narrative to fit that mold….but do we want to? I think this is where we can say there are true mechanical issues with difficulty, when the ease or difficulty of something no longer fits the standard narrative.


----------



## overgeeked

UngeheuerLich said:


> Speaking about easy or hard in a game where the DM can chose any enemy they like is pointless.



Not really. That’s why there are guidelines for what’s appropriate to put in front of the party in modern games and why older games had things like surprise, encounter distance, and reaction tables. To give the players a chance to get the drop on whatever monster they faced, to have plenty of distance between them (to hide or run), and/or have a neutral or friendly encounter with any monster in the game. So they could choose to engage or not and had the chance to engage in non-violent ways. Your comments are telling. The mindset is everything is a fight. The rest are not options. The rules support for talking with monsters didn’t even enter 5E until Tasha’s...6 years into the lifecycle of 5E.


----------



## UngeheuerLich

Nefermandias said:


> I don't think it's pointless. System matters a great deal when it comes to lethality.



I can tell you. My encounters are lethal, even if I just stick to CR guidelines, if I want.


----------



## UngeheuerLich

Stalker0 said:


> That’s not exactly true, for we have to remember the narrative of combat.
> 
> for example, sake of argument let’s say a 1st level party could “easily” kill an adult red dragon. Mechanically that’s no problem, we could always add a second dragon.
> 
> but it changes the narrative of the game. No longer are dragons considered major threats in the world, they are merely speed bumps. Only a horde of dragons could be considered “a real kingdom threat”.
> 
> again, we could adjust our narrative to fit that mold….but do we want to? I think this is where we can say there are true mechanical issues with difficulty, when the ease or difficulty of something no longer fits the standard narrative.



Ok... that is a hypebole... I think this example is a bit off the mark.


----------



## UngeheuerLich

overgeeked said:


> Your comments are telling. The mindset is everything is a fight. The rest are not options. The rules support for talking with monsters didn’t even enter 5E until Tasha’s...6 years into the lifecycle of 5E.



I think it is interesting how you read minds... and inappropriate, as I have never seen you at my table...

Also it is interesting, that you need rules to talk to monsters...


----------



## Stalker0

UngeheuerLich said:


> Ok... that is a hypebole... I think this example is a bit off the mark.



I am obviously exaggerating to make the point, but the point remains. If the difficulty (or lack thereof) begins to warp the standard narrative, that’s a reasonable point where we can argue the difficulty is a true issue


----------



## UngeheuerLich

Ovinomancer said:


> Because spell slots (not so much hitpoints) are the pacing mechanism in pretty much every other edition of D&D.  When the casters can't cast, you stop.  When the cleric can no longer cast spells to heal you, you stop.  It's not so much hitpoints (unless you're playing with no casters, which is uncommon) as slots.



Maybe at your table. You stop if you can. If you can't, you go on.
As I said, I like the game of attrition in my game. Resetting at will is no fun for me.
It is like having your cake and eat it. Conserving your power and optimizing the usage of spells is fun in itself.


----------



## overgeeked

UngeheuerLich said:


> Also it is interesting, that you need rules to talk to monsters...
> 
> I think it is interesting how you read minds... and inappropriate, as I have never seen you at my table...



Pot, kettle.


----------



## UngeheuerLich

overgeeked said:


> Pot, kettle.



Whatever...


----------



## UngeheuerLich

Stalker0 said:


> I am obviously exaggerating to make the point, but the point remains. If the difficulty (or lack thereof) begins to warp the standard narrative, that’s a reasonable point where we can argue the difficulty is a true issue



I have never had problems with 5e difficulty... only with the default rest mechanics.


----------



## overgeeked

UngeheuerLich said:


> Whatever...



You attempted to read my mind and were wrong. You somehow concluded that I "needed" rules to talk to monsters. That wasn't my point. My point was that the default assumptions of 5E is kill everything, as evidenced by the fact that the rules didn't include parleying with monsters until 6 years into the game. Whereas the possibility of a non-combat encounter with monsters was core in earlier editions.


----------



## UngeheuerLich

overgeeked said:


> You attempted to read my mind and were wrong. You somehow concluded that I "needed" rules to talk to monsters. That wasn't my point. My point was that the default assumptions of 5E is kill everything, as evidenced by the fact that the rules didn't include parleying with monsters until 6 years into the game. Whereas the possibility of a non-combat encounter with monsters was core in earlier editions.



Ah. 
And how did you conclude that MY mindset is only set on fighting against monsters?


----------



## overgeeked

UngeheuerLich said:


> And how did you conclude that MY mindset is only set on fighting against monsters?



Because your comment was: "Speaking about easy or hard in a game where the DM can chose any enemy they like is pointless."

The game isn't only about fighting monsters. How easy or hard the game is isn't only about the DM being able to pick enemies. That you think it is suggests that you define the game as "killing monsters".


----------



## UngeheuerLich

overgeeked said:


> Because your comment was: "Speaking about easy or hard in a game where the DM can chose any enemy they like is pointless."
> 
> The game isn't only about fighting monsters. How easy or hard the game is isn't only about the DM being able to pick enemies. That you think it is suggests that you define the game as "killing monsters".



Ok... then you misunderstood me...
that was what I was thinking of you, because you speak about a "too easy game"... 
so please explain to me, what do you mean with "too easy" if you don't talk about fighting monsters?


----------



## Ovinomancer

UngeheuerLich said:


> Maybe at your table. You stop if you can. If you can't, you go on.
> As I said, I like the game of attrition in my game. Resetting at will is no fun for me.
> It is like having your cake and eat it. Conserving your power and optimizing the usage of spells is fun in itself.



You're, of course, free to ignore the pacing mechanisms in the game, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.  What you do at your table is entirely up to you, but that's the choice you're making. You can't then back your choice up into the system and complain that it doesn't work how you do it because you're doing it differently.  I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm not at all telling you that how you're playing is in any way wrong -- if you're having fun it's right for you.


----------



## UngeheuerLich

Ovinomancer said:


> You're, of course, free to ignore the pacing mechanisms in the game, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.  What you do at your table is entirely up to you, but that's the choice you're making. You can't then back your choice up into the system and complain that it doesn't work how you do it because you're doing it differently.  I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm not at all telling you that how you're playing is in any way wrong -- if you're having fun it's right for you.



I did not complain.
I just stopped playing 4e, because I did not like it anymore.
I am hapoy with 5e, because I use the DM option of a slightly longer long rest and now I am happy as I can be...

Edit: I just spoke up, because I don't want the 50th aniversary edition go back to a pacing as it was in 4e, and I want the different rest options right there in the PHB, to chose which one fits your game best.

Edit2:
So if you like encounter based resetting: long rest is 1 hour. 
If you like daily reset: long rest is a night's sleep. 
If you like even slower reset: you need a safe haven to rest, or something between a day and a week.


----------



## overgeeked

UngeheuerLich said:


> Ok... then you misunderstood me...
> that was what I was thinking of you, because you speak about a "too easy game"...
> so please explain to me, what do you mean with "too easy" if you don't talk about fighting monsters?



The listed DCs are too low for the easy access players get to skills and expertise. Resting is more like superhero regeneration, where practically everything is perfect after an 8 hour rest. The exploration pillar is basically non-existent, and what is there is laughably easy to skip with cantrips, class features, background features, etc. 

The common refrain is "just make it harder" or "infinite dragons"...yeah, duh. The problem isn't whether DMs can make it harder, the problem is that the default easy mode that is 5E engenders a mindset in the players where they expect the game to be easy mode, so when they encounter DMs who want the game to be harder...not even hard, but even slightly harder than the default...the players freak out. Players swap characters to access the easy mode of things the DM wanted to be challenging or rage quit because the game isn't a cake walk. The default of the game should be in the middle somewhere, challenging but neither easy mode or hardcore mode. So that DMs can adjust easier without backlash from players. The baseline shouldn't be at LOL faceroll I win.


----------



## Mustrum_Ridcully

Healing Surges were not just about the "daily pacing". There was a second, important part of it, which was related to ehaling surges and healing triggers and was about creating tension during a combat.

Someone pointed out that the effective hit points characters had during the day was not just the pure hit points, but the hit points +plus all the healing surges they had. During an individual encounter, the character's effective hitpoints where his hitpoints, plus all the healing surges he could potentially utilize during an encounter. And that was limited. WIthout any Leader or healing powers in the party, everyone just had Second Wind. WIth a Leader, you had at least two extra uses in the party.

The dynamic this creates is that you can get lowered to 0 hit pints and are close to dying, potentially in real trouble. If the leader or anyone else with a healing power can't make it in time, you're losing an action and get a step closer to death. Once the leader intervenes, you're back in the fight, though. During this time you're out (or even just close to out), there is rising tension followed by relief during combat even way before everyone is really out of hit points. "Will the next attack drop me to 0?" Will the healer get to me in time?" "Will I make this death saving throw?" 
I think that was a pretty clever design, and I certainly prefer it over save or die spells which accomplished something similar in other editions of D&D (particularly D&D 3rd Edition). You're not just at the mercy of your dice, the party can do something about it, and it doesn't require special monsters and NPCs to be part of the game.


----------



## UngeheuerLich

overgeeked said:


> The listed DCs are too low for the easy access players get to skills and expertise. Resting is more like superhero regeneration, where practically everything is perfect after an 8 hour rest. The exploration pillar is basically non-existent, and what is there is laughably easy to skip with cantrips, class features, background features, etc.
> 
> The common refrain is "just make it harder" or "infinite dragons"...yeah, duh. The problem isn't whether DMs can make it harder, the problem is that the default easy mode that is 5E engenders a mindset in the players where they expect the game to be easy mode, so when they encounter DMs who want the game to be harder...not even hard, but even slightly harder than the default...the players freak out. Players swap characters to access the easy mode of things the DM wanted to be challenging or rage quit because the game isn't a cake walk. The default of the game should be in the middle somewhere, challenging but neither easy mode or hardcore mode. So that DMs can adjust easier without backlash from players. The baseline shouldn't be at LOL faceroll I win.



I feel sorry for you, that you had such experiences.
Our games work well* and we did not experience anything you described here. But maybe our expectations are just different.
At least now I know, why you took my comment the wrong way.

Edit: *we switched to a one day long rest after noticing, that the default pacing did not work for us. But changing the times for long rests is right there in the DMG as an option. So we use one that is appropriate for our game.


----------



## overgeeked

Mordhau said:


> Edit: I suspect the issue is more that players want contradictory things. They want to be challenged, but they also want to be free of restrictions and limitations.  When you put these things together, and you don't really playtest, but you offer lots of surveys that aren't necessarily based on actual play (and given timeframes often couldn't possibly be to any great extent) then you get issues.  I think it's related to what computer game designers mean when they talk about gamers optimising the fun out of games.  (But note the loss of fun - it's not about players vs DMs, it's about players vs themselves;  they make things less fun for themselves.).



That's fantastic. Thanks for sharing those links.


----------



## Lanefan

Hussar said:


> LOL
> 
> Again, very much not my experience.  1e and especially 2e, were the easiest editions in the game.  Good grief, after about 4th or 5th level, the PC's could mop the floor with pretty much anything in the game.  The only dangerous elements were save or die.  Combat certainly wasn't.



The legions of mid-to-high level characters killed by combat in our games raise their now-skeletal hands to disagree. 


Hussar said:


> Remember how a 1st level party could take on about 20 kobolds at the same time and win 9 out of 10 times?  THAT'S what D&D used to be.



In your experience, maybe.  Round here, if those PCs didn't have _Sleep_ they'd be hosed*. 

* - in fact I ran just this early this past summer: 1st-level party decided to take on a small village of about 20 Kobolds.  Result: three characters dead and the other three fleeing for their lives, able to get away only because of their longer legs (a.k.a. higher move speed in game terms).  I can't say this would turn out the same way every time, but the party's odds of winning were hella worse than 90%! 


Hussar said:


> Sorry, but we are not going to agree on this.  I found 1e and particularly 2e to be incredibly generous and easy mode games.



Generous in terms of treasure and item acquisition, yes.  Also, however, much harder on said treasure and items when it came to keeping it in one piece; very much more an easy come easy go system than 3e-4e-5e are.

Easy mode?  You must have had (or been) a softie DM. 


Hussar said:


> 3e?  3e was very lethal.  That got dialed back in 4e but, 5e?  I have zero problems whacking PC's in 5e.  I'm actually a little shocked how easy it is.



We found 3e to be at roughly the same level of lethality as 1e, the way we played.


----------



## Lanefan

Ovinomancer said:


> Let's agree with your opening point and say, sure, people are going to play the game however they want.  It's when they do this and then blame the game for their poor experiences that's the issue.  This isn't a 4e thing for me -- I've been making this same point about 5e.  If you deviate from the way the game is designed, and tells you it's designed, and play it some other way, then this is on you, not the game.  Yet, it's often attributed and complained about as the game's problem, to the point that there's a sub-thread here that games should be designed for everyone to play however they want when that's just not even close to feasible.
> 
> In other words, it's like blaming Monopoly because it's rules sucked when you tried to play it like Risk.  I mean, that's clearly exaggeration, but it's the same point.



Thing is, unlike Monopoly, players and (particularly) DMs expect D&D to be robust enough in its design to handle some deviation from said design and remain playable.

The designers of Monopoly don't have to take kitbashers and homebrewers into account as, with a very few exceptions, those things aren't really prevalent in that game.  But the designers of D&D have to respect and account for the kitbash tradition that's existed in D&D since day 1, and design with that firmly in mind.

This IMO is where both 3e and 4e failed (and maybe 5e also?); they tried to hard-code too much detail into the system, rather than simply designing a framework and stopping there, and failed to leave enough flexibility for kitbashers.  Result: changing those systems to suit your table and have it still work well isn't easy at all; yet in the tradition of D&D it's something that should be.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Lanefan said:


> Thing is, unlike Monopoly, players and (particularly) DMs expect D&D to be robust enough in its design to handle some deviation from said design and remain playable.



Yes, this is unwarranted and a problem.  You've hit the nail on the head.


Lanefan said:


> The designers of Monopoly don't have to take kitbashers and homebrewers into account as, with a very few exceptions, those things aren't really prevalent in that game.  But the designers of D&D have to respect and account for the kitbash tradition that's existed in D&D since day 1, and design with that firmly in mind.
> 
> This IMO is where both 3e and 4e failed (and maybe 5e also?); they tried to hard-code too much detail into the system, rather than simply designing a framework and stopping there, and failed to leave enough flexibility for kitbashers.  Result: changing those systems to suit your table and have it still work well isn't easy at all; yet in the tradition of D&D it's something that should be.



Or, you expected something that the systems weren't offering, and instead of figuring it's you, you're blaming the system for not anticipating what you wanted.  Start from the point that you don't own D&D, just what you do at your table.  That way, a given edition isn't something that fails because it doesn't anticipate you, it just doesn't align with what you want at your table and you shouldn't be a customer.

ETA:  to make it clear this isn't a personal dig, I would absolutely not be a customer for an edition of D&D that goes back to 2 or 3e.  I wasn't a customer for Pathfinder for this reason.


----------



## Jaeger

overgeeked said:


> The common refrain is "just make it harder" or "infinite dragons"...yeah, duh. The problem isn't whether DMs can make it harder, the problem is that the default easy mode that is 5E engenders a mindset in the players where they expect the game to be easy mode, so when they encounter DMs who want the game to be harder...not even hard, but even slightly harder than the default...the players freak out. *Players swap characters to access the easy mode of things the DM wanted to be challenging or rage quit because the game isn't a cake walk.* The default of the game should be in the middle somewhere, challenging but neither easy mode or hardcore mode. So that DMs can adjust easier without backlash from players. The baseline shouldn't be at LOL faceroll I win.




The easiest way to solve this is to remove the skip buttons from the game.

The problem current 5e GMs have is that most of the skip buttons are in the core rules set!

And as they are core, most players expect them to be there when they are told that they are playing in a new 5e campaign.

In quite a few ways 5e designers have actually greatly restricted GM campaign styles by handing the players: "I skip that." apps of various kinds in almost every character class.




Lanefan said:


> Thing is, unlike Monopoly, players and (particularly) DMs expect D&D to be robust enough in its design to handle some deviation from said design and remain playable.




I'm not so sure a lot of players are as high on 'deviation' as GMs are.

Unlike a board game, where you are limited to what the rules allow, a Tabletop RPG allows for user interpretation and changes. The _Tabletop RPG_ is built on this capacity, which means that _the Game Master's skill at running the game_ ,and the body of knowledge available to inform his rulings, has the consequence of_ significant variability of experience from table to table._

For some players that variability really bothers them, and they get very frustrated...

Which is why we see a lot of "what is RAW" talk on D&D forums.


----------



## Henadic Theologian

Willie the Duck said:


> I think coming right off of the relative failure/rejection that 4e received from many D&D fans at the time (we can go back and forth to no end or purpose about the why or how much of it), the designers were really restarined in how much of 4e they put in 5e (at least obviously). I think now that the vitriol has died down quite a bit, it would be a good time to mine the thing for more of the good things it did.
> 
> For me, the biggest thing might be to build up the ritual spell mechanic, allowing the party fighter to (with some feats) be the party ressurector or planar-travel guide, or the like. Others might have other favorite 4e things to favor.




 I'll add that some of the loudest anti 4e voices early in 5e's development have since moved on to the OSR while a ton of folks who have no opinion of 4e either way have come in and the folks who were big fans of 4e largely stayed in 5e. For the rest time gives perspective once emotions die down.


----------



## Henadic Theologian

overgeeked said:


> There’s a fair amount already in 5E.
> 
> This thread is helpful.
> 
> What should be brought forward...
> 
> 4E skill challenges...though looser and better presented.
> 
> 4E monster design.
> 
> 4E clarity of the math behind the game.
> 
> 4E monster types: minions, standard, elite, solo; monster roles: skirmisher, brute, soldier, etc; and the bloodied condition.
> 
> 4E monster lore checks listed with the monsters.
> 
> 4E encounter design.
> 
> 4E classes like the warlord and the swordmage.
> 
> 4E bonuses and scaling. Your level and training mattered more than your d20 roll after a certain point. That was nice.
> 
> 4E World Axis cosmology.
> 
> 4E Dawn War.
> 
> 4E Nentir Vale and Points of Light.
> 
> 4E split between rituals and combat magic.
> 
> 4E residuum.
> 
> I loved almost everything about 4E except how clunky it played, how long it took to resolve combats, and near pure focus on combat.




 The Dawn War I believe gets mentioned in the SCAG and DMG, but maybe it will come up more.

 While Rituals are in the game, they didn't apply it to nearly enough spells, hence why a ton of utility spells never see use so more spells getting ritual caster is something I 100% support.


----------



## Lanefan

Ovinomancer said:


> Yes, this is unwarranted and a problem.  You've hit the nail on the head.



Except I don't see it as a problem.  My expectation is that D&D's design be kitbashable by intent, and designed to be flexible and robust enough to handle some changes or tweaks.


Ovinomancer said:


> Or, you expected something that the systems weren't offering, and instead of figuring it's you, you're blaming the system for not anticipating what you wanted.  Start from the point that you don't own D&D, just what you do at your table.  That way, a given edition isn't something that fails because it doesn't anticipate you, it just doesn't align with what you want at your table and you shouldn't be a customer.



I'm not sure it's in a business' best interests to tell people not to be its customers. 

That said, I haven't adopted 5e (or 4e, or 3e) largely because there would be so much kitbashing required to make them play how I want that it's just not worth the effort.


----------



## Campbell

At the end of the day designers have to make actual design decisions. How much to weigh attrition, what resource recovery looks like, roughly how long it takes to reach an attrition threshold where players feel the pressure and are making life and death decisions. In any game there are going to be choke points. Game design is about making tradeoffs.


----------



## Aldarc

Lanefan said:


> Except I don't see it as a problem.  My expectation is that D&D's design be kitbashable by intent, and designed to be flexible and robust enough to handle some changes or tweaks.



A lot of games can handle changes here and there, but (1) you need to know where the game can handle said changes without breaking it, and (2) the game may still not be designed for your gaming preferences or style. Dungeon World, for example, is kitbashable and flexible enough to handle changes and tweaks. There is a ton of fan content designed for it and tweaks made to it, but PbtA is definitely not a system for you to turn into his next version of your heavily houseruled 1e game.



Lanefan said:


> I'm not sure it's in a business' best interests to tell people not to be its customers.



You may want to read that again. Nowhere does Ovinomancer say that businesses should tell people not to be its customers. He's saying that customers should sometimes realize that a product is not designed specfically with them in mind and adjust their expectations accordingly. Lamborgini may want me to buy their sports car, but that doesn't mean that they are to blame if my self-created failed expectations are that I can drive it like an off-road vehicle.



Spoiler











The same could be said for TTRPGs.



Lanefan said:


> That said, I haven't adopted 5e (or 4e, or 3e) largely because there would be so much kitbashing required to make them play how I want that it's just not worth the effort.



Then why spend your time complaining about WotC era D&D when you have a houseruled version of an edition that you enjoy, very likely aren't going to move on from, and doesn't affect your table in any way?


----------



## CubicsRube

Lanefan said:


> I'm nastier as a DM and thus much prefer to get it over with.  Even a three-save system could be concatenated into rolling a single save with double-advantage (i.e. roll 3d20 and take the best).



You just made me realise how interesting doing death saves like this could be.

1st death save you roll 3d20 and if any is over 10 you live.

2nd death save you roll 2d20.

After that 1d20.

Hmm... i think i like it!


----------



## CubicsRube

I never played 4e, but everything I read about monster design (except hit point bloat) sounds like much more how I like to run my games (and play in them).

Especially for a game that is as combat focused as D&D, it seems a shame to me that monsters don't have more distinctive abilities to help give individual fights a more unique feel.


----------



## Henadic Theologian

Thinking about it, I wouldn't mind more updates of the spells, prayers  and other powers from 4e, most of 5e spells came 3.5e or earlier, with some new ones, only a small handful came from 4e. Having more unique class spells for Sorcerer, Druid, Cleric, Paladin, etc, borrow from 4e and updated for 5.5e would
 be great.


----------



## Aldarc

CubicsRube said:


> I never played 4e, but everything I read about monster design (except hit point bloat) sounds like much more how I like to run my games (and play in them).
> 
> Especially for a game that is as combat focused as D&D, it seems a shame to me that monsters don't have more distinctive abilities to help give individual fights a more unique feel.



The development for 4e was rushed with a lot of problems (even aside from the horrendous marketing strategy). A lot of the math, subsystems, and mechanical interactions were incredibly unpolished. By the time that WotC got the math and such right, and once they finally began learning how to write good adventures for their own system, instead of going back to improve their prior line, they moved on to Essentials as a gamble to win people back. This alienated some people who liked the prior class set-up, and too little too late for those who moved on to other games (e.g., Pathfinder, OSR, etc.). So Essentials further divided the fanbase. 

There were a lot of incredible things about 4e that made it an incredibly easy game to GM and engaging game to play (IMHO), but we lost a lot of its more amazing innovations (e.g., monster design, defenses, healing surges, etc.) in the knee-jerk reaction to all the negative reactions for what WotC bungled. 

This is one reason why - and I don't really care how many times I repeat myself - I would love to see 4e opened to OGL so 4e fans could make a polished retroclone version of the games (i.e., both Core and Essentials) the same way that the OSR has done with their retroclones of B/X, BECMI, and 1e.


----------



## Lyxen

Lanefan said:


> This IMO is where both 3e and 4e failed (and maybe 5e also?); they tried to hard-code too much detail into the system, rather than simply designing a framework and stopping there, and failed to leave enough flexibility for kitbashers.  Result: changing those systems to suit your table and have it still work well isn't easy at all; yet in the tradition of D&D it's something that should be.




I can't agree enough about this, I'm just pointing out that for me, 5e did not fail because it's indeed just a framework / guidelines, and this was exactly the intent of the designers, for the reasons that you point out. Of course, there are always people who want more than this, and most of the complaints about 5e are from people who want a more rigid system but, again as pointed out by the 5e designers, doing this results in tons of rules. Lots of rules plus rigidity is I think really the reasons for 3e and 4e failing to be as successful as 5e with a much wider audience, they were and remain mostly geeks/technical gamers products.

This is why, from the beginning of 5e, the designers have strongly resisted the demand to make additional rules about specific cases, just providing their opinion as to how they handle it in their game. They have added very few hard coded rules, mostly some intent and clarifications, and I don't think that you will see many more rules in the upcoming revision, it would betray the spirit of what they've done very successfully so far.


----------



## UngeheuerLich

Aldarc said:


> The development for 4e was rushed with a lot of problems (even aside from the horrendous marketing strategy). A lot of the math, subsystems, and mechanical interactions were incredibly unpolished. By the time that WotC got the math and such right, and once they finally began learning how to write good adventures for their own system, instead of going back to improve their prior line, they moved on to Essentials as a gamble to win people back. This alienated some people who liked the prior class set-up, and too little too late for those who moved on to other games (e.g., Pathfinder, OSR, etc.). So Essentials further divided the fanbase.
> 
> There were a lot of incredible things about 4e that made it an incredibly easy game to GM and engaging game to play (IMHO), but we lost a lot of its more amazing innovations (e.g., monster design, defenses, healing surges, etc.) in the knee-jerk reaction to all the negative reactions for what WotC bungled.
> 
> This is one reason why - and I don't really care how many times I repeat myself - I would love to see 4e opened to OGL so 4e fans could make a polished retroclone version of the games (i.e., both Core and Essentials) the same way that the OSR has done with their retroclones of B/X, BECMI, and 1e.



If essentials came before standard 4e, a lot less people would have been alienated. Essentials was a lot closer in feel to what came before than standard and also there would have never been any claims that wizards and fighters are too samey (which they have never been in actual play in original 4e). 

Another problem with 4e was, that the books before essentials were not worth the paper they were printed on, as the rules were constantly updated and the first printings had so many glaring errors (I think there was a monster showcase were chris perkins himself was baffled by the fact that the ogre (brute) did more damage in ranged combat than in melee... which was later updated.


----------



## Snarf Zagyg

Malmuria said:


> Rather, looking to gather thoughts on how mechanics from 4e played out at the table (e.g. did they feel "disassociated"), and what should be brought forward into 5.5.




A not-very-brief history, prior to getting to the answer (as I tend to do):

A. At GenCon in August 2007, WoTC botched the rollout of 4e, causing many in the audience to (incorrectly) believe that a computer was required to play the game. This was the start of misconceptions about this edition that the powers that be never really addressed.

B. June 6, 2008- the release of 4e.  Do you know what else happened between the announcement of the product and the release? The Great Recession. Not the best time to release a new product (especially when you were hoping for sweet recurring subscriber revenue). 

C. It was hoped that 4e would have a MMO licensing, computer game, and more. But the timeframe was not favorable. Moreover, we can forget how ambitious this was for the time; the idea of "always on" internet was still novel, and services such as ROll20, twitch, and so on weren't around yet. Heck, the original (very slow!) iPhone had just been released. Yes, the D&D audience was more tech-savvy than regular consumers, but the rosy projections did not match the reality. 

D. Building on (C), there exist players who view D&D as a mostly tech-free time. A respite from screens and technology. Sure, they might be luddites, and they might be a very small part of the market now, but they exist. Which also goes back to B, and there botched rollout- computers weren't required, but they chose to emphasize it.

E. Other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln? Yeah, sure, the announcement was botched, and the timing was horrible, but they also had terrible, terrible luck! The 4e designers acknowledged that the final push was rushed by directives from the top, which caused them to make the classes too "samey" and left further differentiation on the cutting-room floor. So many parts that could go wrong, did go wrong- key parts of the computer component that was supposed to be rolled out were entrusted to a developer, and that person was unstable and it ended in a horrific tragedy (and also meant no product). The projections for the product, which were too optimistic, combined with the lack of immediate success, resulted in Hasbro immediately slashing funding.  But the time Essentials was rolled out in 2010, 4e was already dead internally and they were debating what to do.

F. Within the 4e community, there has been some debate about whether Essentials was a necessary correction that would have appealed to the mass market, or a betrayal of the essential ethos of 4e. 

G. Going back to (B), the concept of subscription services and "Everything is Core" (repeated releases of core books each year) is an idea that was, at best, ahead of its time- we are all about subscriptions now, but it wasn't that common then. At that time, it came off as more of a cash grab, especially given the economy.

H. The design team was too insular and wasn't aware that the reception wouldn't be great, and therefore didn't do enough to "sell" the product.  When they had 3PP come and playtest 4e, Jason Buhlman of Paizo saw what was going on and that provided them the confidence to continue on with Pathfinder.

I. One more thing- while the internet wasn't "always on" enough for the ambitions of some aspects of 4e, this was the first edition launch that had the majority of D&D players (I assume, I don't have stats for this) have easy access to some form of the internet, which enabled extreme and intense opinions to both form, spread, and become much more noticeable and toxic. 

J. Finally, this history has to be measured in terms of what is a "flagship" product; when D&D sneezes, every other product in the TTRPG field gets a cold. It's not enough for a D&D product to be "good" or "better" than other editions, it's not sufficient that it has great design. It has to be broadly and widely popular. That is the raison d'être for D&D. People can, and do, argue endlessly about what makes D&D better or worse or good or not, but in terms of a product, D&D must always be #1. Starbucks coffee might not taste the best, but they have to careful changing it ... if you know what I mean. 


Now, why write this history? Certainly not to rubbish 4e. I think it's an interesting, but essentially unanswerable, question as to whether or not it would have succeeded if the stars had not been aligned against it. But the key factor when looking at what aspects from 4e should go into 5.5e is this-

_What is broadly popular?_

Not what do you think is good. Not what do you think is fun. Not even what you might think is good design. But what is broadly popular. WoTC does regular surveys now - it's not for their health. And it can be frustrating given that it often seems like the most interesting options they are thinking about (various Mystic, for example) end up in the dustbin because some significant minority of people don't like them. But ... that's what they do. That's how they want to keep the game broadly popular. 

I think that most of the 4e innovations in terms of gameplay that are not already in the game will not be put in. Why? For the same reason that people who want the game harder (you know, deadly traps, level drain, more death) won't get their way either. We will just see continued refinement of the concepts that are already there. D&D will continue to be a broadly popular game that isn't fully satisfying to many "hardcore" TTRPGers, who will instead get their fix from games that can afford to appeal to more niche audiences. 

The one evolution I do see occurring over time is (and this might borrow from 4e, or from other sources) is more allowance, in the core rules or optional rules, as we are already seeing, for more of a non-violent game and/or for a game that provides more .... support for the type of game that is appealing to stream. 

Again, IMO, etc.


----------



## doctorbadwolf

darjr said:


> In 4e your character was executing a power with mechanics that just so happend to have some fluff attached and a name.



But they’re still describing what their character does, because the mechanics are what the character does. I can’t imagine a scenario where “I use my daily” is the whole of the statement, because the game can’t move forward from that. The actual mechanics of the power have to be described.  

The name of the power is irrelevant except as a shorthand for frequently used powers. “I attack with my sword using an encounter power. If I hit, he takes xyz damage and falls prone, and one of my allies, let’s say Dorn, can move 2 squares.” Describes what happens in the fiction just as much as “Sacred Flame on the bigger orc, XYZ damage on a failed save.”


----------



## doctorbadwolf

Charlaquin said:


> Those are not “at wills” and “daily’s,” they are just called spells. And those cards are not how the spells are formatted in the book. A player could, however, say “I cast a cantrip” or “I cast a spell” and read the effect, ignoring the fluff text. It would be a little more inconvenient for them to read around the fluff text, but it would have no more or less impact gameplay than it would to do the same in 4e. And again, if you had a player do this in 5e, and you found that to be a problem, you wouldn’t blame 5e for it.



Yeah I never read the fluff text of spells in 5e. I explain what the spell does, and then describe what my character is doing and what their magic looks like.


----------



## darjr

doctorbadwolf said:


> The name of the power is irrelevant except as a shorthand for frequently used powers. “I attack with my sword using an encounter power. If I hit, he takes xyz damage and falls prone, and one of my allies, let’s say Dorn, can move 2 squares.” Describes what happens in the fiction just as much as “Sacred Flame on the bigger orc, XYZ damage on a failed save.”



This is what would happen. Like chewing cardboard over and over and over and over. Chew chew chew chew. Zero flavor. Because in 4e the fluff really means nothing.

In 5e you at least say the name of the spell. And like others have stated the fluff is entwined with the rules because the fluff matters and is part of the rules.


----------



## Aldarc

darjr said:


> This is what would happen. Like chewing cardboard over and over and over and over. Chew chew chew chew. Zero flavor. Because in 4e the fluff really means nothing.



You keep asserting this as if you have in any meaningful way established this as true. Several people in this thread have even demonstrated how your assertion is false. 



darjr said:


> In 5e you at least say the name of the spell. And like others have stated the fluff is entwined with the rules because the fluff matters and is part of the rules.



The names of abilities were always used in my 4e games.


----------



## darjr

Edit:

See my next post instead.


----------



## darjr

How about what from 4e is there in 5e that you really like and appreciate? In that way I hope to highlight how things from 4e have successfully been in 5e as a guide to future things. maybe this deserves it's own thread?

some of mine are.

Advantage. Something that was a bit player in 4e as a central design of 5e has been great in my book.

Resting, long and short and the recovery. I didn't like long rests at first, and still think short rests need tinkering. However I have come to embrace both of them as fairly amazing. I do think they are immersion breaking, or can be, but in a game with rules there are times where it just has to happen. And in 5e's case I think these work with minimal immersion breaking.

The idea of lowering monster HP and increasing their damage as a tactic to liven up play. This isn't an actual rule in 4e but a lesson learned and implemented by MM3. And I think in 5e it's still VERY useful in both designing encounters and on the fly during running them. I'm not sure I would have ever had it codefied so explicitly if it weren't for 4e's adoption of the idea by MM3.

Monster powers. I've missed those. I have my issues with them and love spells in monsters, but are they a great tool. edit: I guess this one isn't fully baked in yet. Ope.

Monster mobility. Move your monsters around. Take those OP's. 4e tought me that you should move your monsters. In 5e many DM's do not for fear of the OP's from players. I say commit to taking OP's on your monsters. Move them around.

I'll enter more as I think of them.


----------



## Aldarc

darjr said:


> *My own experiences don't count?* The actual comment about how powers would be used doesn't count? The actual comment from those folks about how they'd have to "filter out" the fluff in 5e doesn't count?



Your experiences count when your are talking about your own experiences with the game. They don't when you are trying to assert those experiences as a universal truth about the game in a way that invalidates the experiences of others with the game. If you claim that the fluff doesn't matter in 4e based on your experiences, and I tell you that my own experiences with the game fluff in 4e runs contrary to yours, then what message are you sending about my experiences versus yours? It says that only your experience matters and that mine doesn't.



darjr said:


> That fluff being mixed in 5e rules is a feature. A result of the response to the seperation of the two in 4e powers. A dawning that the weaving together of fluff and hard rules were a desired aspect of the rules.



I don't deny that it's a feature in 5e, but whether fluff is mixed in with mechanics or separate doesn't somehow magically negate the existence of the fluff.



darjr said:


> You claim they refuted me, I disagree.



The basis and mode of your argumentation predominately amounted to making falsifiable assertions based on anecdotal evidence and saying "no it didn't" when people disagreed with your assertions. I can respect that you didn't find 4e to your liking, but not how you have argued that in this thread or the assertions you have made about the game. 



darjr said:


> Names were used in my games too. But less and less as combats dragged on. Also less and less as more and more powers came out and more of the good ones were similar. Also more as people would pick powers more and more merely for the mechanics and less and less for the fluff.



This definitely seems like special pleading when comparing 4e to 5e. 



darjr said:


> How about what from 4e is there in 5e that you really like and appreciate? In that way I hope to highlight how things from 4e have successfully been in 5e as a guide to future things. maybe this deserves it's own thread?



I don't know. There were a fair number of fantastic 4e innovations (e.g., attack rolls vs. Fort/Ref/Will defenses, healing surges, encounter building, monster design, power sources) that WotC threw out with the bath water in 4e without so much as thinking about whether or not it was actually problematic. It's difficult for me to be excited about how lazily and half-heartedly WotC adopted some things for 5e from 4e while seeing either what was abandoned or how much better they were executed in 4e.


----------



## billd91

Aldarc said:


> I don't know. There were a fair number of fantastic 4e innovations (e.g., attack rolls vs. Fort/Ref/Will defenses, healing surges, encounter building, monster design, power sources) that WotC threw out with the bath water in 4e without so much as thinking about whether or not it was actually problematic. It's difficult for me to be excited about how lazily and half-heartedly WotC adopted some things for 5e from 4e while seeing either what was abandoned or how much better they were executed in 4e.



OR, they decided that some of those innovations *were* problematic, yet here you are accusing them of being lazy.


----------



## Malmuria

neither here nor there, but I personally do not like the word "surge."  It sounds corny to me.


----------



## Aldarc

Malmuria said:


> neither here nor there, but I personally do not like the word "surge."  It sounds corny to me.



Several fans of 4e have stated in this thread that the name "healing surge" failed to convey the fiction they represented well, so I doubt you'll get much counter-argument on your point here.


----------



## darjr

billd91 said:


> OR, they decided that some of those innovations *were* problematic, yet here you are accusing them of being lazy.



Yea, seems counter productive in a thread about 4e design making into the 5e core revision. ugh.


----------



## Malmuria

Aldarc said:


> Several fans of 4e have stated in this thread that the name "healing surge" failed to convey the fiction they represented well, so I doubt you'll get much counter-argument on your point here.



I liked the coffee analogy for what a healing surge does the best.  Very relatable.  If I ever pull a 4e element into an osr game that I run I'm going to make all healing coffee-based.

edit: or maybe tea-based, for what is a potion but a specific kind of tea?


----------



## Aldarc

darjr said:


> Yea, seems counter productive in a thread about 4e design making into the 5e core revision. ugh.



I don't necessarily think that some things 5e did away with were all that problematic (e.g., attack rolls vs. defense).* It was a smooth and intuitive mechanic that streamlined the game and made it overall easier and quicker to run. From what I have seen here, attack rolls vs. defense rarely, if ever, seem to come up in the complaints that people have against 4e. However, the architecture of the two games diverge in some pretty key ways, so it's not as if they could be added to the game. As such, there's not too much, if any at all, that I would want from 4e that I can realistically expect will make its way into the 5e core revision without it becoming a new edition entirely. 

* I have seen several people in the OSR community, for example, advocate for magic attack rolls against static saves, only for them to be shocked to realize that this is how 4e did it.


----------



## Malmuria

Aldarc said:


> I don't necessarily think that some things 5e did away with were all that problematic (e.g., attack rolls vs. defense).* It was a smooth and intuitive mechanic that streamlined the game and made it overall easier and quicker to run. From what I have seen here, attack rolls vs. defense rarely, if ever, seem to come up in the complaints that people have against 4e. However, the architecture of the two games diverge in some pretty key ways, so it's not as if they could be added to the game. As such, there's not too much, if any at all, that I would want from 4e that I can realistically expect will make its way into the 5e core revision without it becoming a new edition entirely.
> 
> * I have seen several people in the OSR community, for example, advocate for magic attack rolls against static saves, only for them to be shocked to realize that this is how 4e did it.



Save DC (along with some aspects of resting and death saves) is my least favorite core mechanic of 5e.


----------



## niklinna

Malmuria said:


> I liked the coffee analogy for what a healing surge does the best.  Very relatable.  If I ever pull a 4e element into an osr game that I run I'm going to make all healing coffee-based.
> 
> edit: or maybe tea-based, for what is a potion but a specific kind of tea?



Perhaps you've heard of Javacrucianism?

*The Litany Against Decaf* [or *The Bene Cafferit Mantra*]
I will not brew Decaf 
Decaf is the mindkiller 
Decaf brings the little sleep 
That leads to total oblivion 
I will embrace my caffeine 
I will brew my beverages 
And let them flow through me 
And when they are gone 
I will remain...alert

*The Mentat Caffeine Mantra*
It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion. 
It is by the beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed, 
the hands acquire shaking, the shaking becomes a warning. 
It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion....


----------



## doctorbadwolf

darjr said:


> This is what would happen. Like chewing cardboard over and over and over and over. Chew chew chew chew. Zero flavor. Because in 4e the fluff really means nothing.



There is some very fundamental disconnect happening here, because…what I described doesn’t lack flavor. 


darjr said:


> In 5e you at least say the name of the spell. And like others have stated the fluff is entwined with the rules because the fluff matters and is part of the rules.



How does the name of the spell grant any flavor whatsoever? “Sacred Flame, 6 damage if they fail.” Is…utterly lacking in any sort of flavor of any kind.


----------



## doctorbadwolf

Possibly hot take?  

4e short rests make more sens than 5e short rests, and it makes sense for martials to not be able to do special moves over and over, but regain the ability to do them with a 5 minute breather, drink some water, get going again.


----------



## Charlaquin

doctorbadwolf said:


> Possibly hot take?
> 
> 4e short rests make more sens than 5e short rests, and it makes sense for martials to not be able to do special moves over and over, but regain the ability to do them with a 5 minute breather, drink some water, get going again.



I agree. But I think people took more issue with martial daylies than martial encounter powers.


----------



## darjr

I do think 5 minute short rests in 4e were better than an hour.  It worked well in the fiction where, for me, an hour often clashes.


----------



## Garthanos

Malmuria said:


> I liked the coffee analogy for what a healing surge does the best.  Very relatable.  If I ever pull a 4e element into an osr game that I run I'm going to make all healing coffee-based.
> 
> edit: or maybe tea-based, for what is a potion but a specific kind of tea?



Potions are Energy Drinks much less efficient than being inspired though.


----------



## Garthanos

Charlaquin said:


> I agree. But I think people took more issue with martial daylies than martial encounter powers.



Encounter powers real ones are very good at representing a trick with the "fool me once" limit.  Rest is not really the limit.


----------



## Malmuria

Garthanos said:


> Potions are Energy Drinks much less efficient than being inspired though.


----------



## Garthanos

Malmuria said:


>



Hell he is both inspired and using his personal special potion LOL

Has buffing abilities that trigger on spending a healing surge.


----------



## Aldarc

darjr said:


> I do think 5 minute short rests in 4e were better than an hour.  It worked well in the fiction where, for me, an hour often clashes.



There was a lot of space between 5 minutes and 1 hour that WotC could have explored. I'm not sure why they settled on 1 hour. I do wonder whether it will change in the revision, but I see WotC more likely abandoning short rests entirely in favor of putting everyone on the same full rest schedule.


----------



## Lanefan

Aldarc said:


> Then why spend your time complaining about WotC era D&D when you have a houseruled version of an edition that you enjoy, very likely aren't going to move on from, and doesn't affect your table in any way?



Because it is, obviously, in my interests to do my little tiny part to shift the mainstream toward my point of view; same as the story-now crew do their bit to shift the mainstream toward theirs, and so forth.

I mean, if WotC came out with a version of the game that could be made into something I'd play/run without having to kitbash it into unrecognizability, I'd very likely adopt it in a flash.  During the 5e playtest I was all set to switch over to 5e, given their promises of modularity within the rules and how it could as-written be made to play like any prior edition...but once 5e was released in finished form it became immediately clear those promises had been completely abandoned and to make it play anything like 0e or 1e would require a from-the-ground-up rebuild.


----------



## Garthanos

Popeye then piles on his action points to really exploit the buff of course.


----------



## Lanefan

CubicsRube said:


> You just made me realise how interesting doing death saves like this could be.
> 
> 1st death save you roll 3d20 and if any is over 10 you live.
> 
> 2nd death save you roll 2d20.
> 
> After that 1d20.
> 
> Hmm... i think i like it!



I'd stop at the 3d20.  You get one shot.  Three dice.

Otherwise you're giving them in effect 6 chances to make the save rather than 3.


----------



## Garthanos

Lanefan said:


> but once 5e was released in finished form it became immediately clear those promises had been completely abandoned and to make it play anything like 0e or 1e would require a from-the-ground-up rebuild.



Yeh I will agree with you on that point, that kind flexibility really wasn't there for any of us


----------



## Charlaquin

Aldarc said:


> There was a lot of space between 5 minutes and 1 hour that WotC could have explored. I'm not sure why they settled on 1 hour.



For much of the playtest the optional Healer’s Kit Dependency rule in the DMG was the standard. That 1 hour was assumed to be taken up mostly with cleaning and binding wounds, rather than just taking a breather.


Aldarc said:


> I do wonder whether it will change in the revision, but I see WotC more likely abandoning short rests entirely in favor of putting everyone on the same full rest schedule.


----------



## Lanefan

Malmuria said:


>



I've often had it that Potions of Giant Strength are partly made of spinach.....


----------



## darjr

I don't see short rest going away. In fact I'd ask that a claim like that come with some kind of citation.


----------



## darjr

Lanefan said:


> I've often had it that Potions of Giant Strength are partly made of spinach.....



And giant toenail clippings.


----------



## Charlaquin

darjr said:


> I don't see short rest going away. In fact I'd ask that a claim like that come with some kind of citation.



Abilities that recover on a short rest have been gradually getting replaced with the same ability, usable a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus between long rests. See the change to the Bladesinger between SCAG and Tasha’s, or  from the PHB dragonborn to the previewed Fizban’s dragonborn. If this trend continues, it wouldn’t be surprising to see all such abilities receive similar changes in the 2024 revised core books. That doesn’t necessarily mean short rests themselves will go away - I expect you’ll still have them for spending hit dice, and I dearly hope at least Warlocks willl still recover their pact magic spell slots on a short rest. But I don’t think it’s a crazy assumption to think most if not all once per short rest based abilities will get changed to prof bonus per long rest abilities.


----------



## EzekielRaiden

Aldarc said:


> There was a lot of space between 5 minutes and 1 hour that WotC could have explored. I'm not sure why they settled on 1 hour. I do wonder whether it will change in the revision, but I see WotC more likely abandoning short rests entirely in favor of putting everyone on the same full rest schedule.



This is possible, but I think it somewhat unlikely. For a lot of extant things, they can fix it, but what could they possibly do with the Warlock class that would break free of its short-rest dependence? Fighter will probably be easier (tie Action Surge etc. to _half_ your proficiency bonus, rounded down), but Battle Master would be very awkward as it stands. You currently get _more_ than your proficiency bonus' worth of Superiority Dice for _each_ short rest (at least until very high level, where it balances out). That would require getting PB _squared_ per long rest, which...well, that's gonna make for huge early novas and then a really really boring remainder of the day.

So I'm not sure if they can divorce things from the short rest absolutely 100%--not while keeping backwards compatibility with prior content. I strongly suspect that the "50th anniversary" update will heavily _reduce_ dependence on short rests, but I dunno if they've got the  gumption to totally ditch them.

Perhaps I'm wrong though! Maybe there will be some kind of new recharge mechanic that won't give Warlocks/Battle Masters/etc. infinite resources, but will give them the resources they need to keep up. E.g. maybe once a day they can just regain all Warlock slots/Superiority Dice, and instead of being a _crappy_ capstone, getting extra slots/dice due to rolling initiative will be a baseline feature. At this point, it's all speculative--but if you've watched the new subclasses as they come out, they definitely are moving further and further away from using short-rest abilities and into using PB-per-long-rest abilities.


----------



## darjr

Hmmmm.... maybe it'd be the thing that might get short rest reduced to 5 minutes. That I would like.


----------



## Stalker0

UngeheuerLich said:


> I have never had problems with 5e difficulty... only with the default rest mechanics.



Right but this was not my point.

The original statement made was that the discussion of difficulty is ultimately irrelevant because the DM can always add more monsters.

My counterpoint is that such an addition does have a cost to the overall narrative. Things like:

Why are there so many monsters in this area all of a sudden?
Why are dragons such a big deal of if 4 low level people can take one on?
Now a small narrative cost a good DM can (and does) deal with. The question becomes when does that narrative cost require DM tweaks that remove some of the immersiveness and enjoyment from the game?

Ultimately all of this is to say.... *difficulty does matter*. Its not a rigid line, and that line can move table to table....but there is a general range where difficulty is "appropriate" and a range where it is not. The ability to add additional monsters does not change this fact. Therefore, a discussion of an edition's difficulty is a very relevant topic, and cannot be dismissed off hand.


----------



## darjr

Garthanos said:


> Yeh I will agree with you on that point, that kind flexibility really wasn't there for any of us



I don't agree. I've run old style games. Dropping full healing at long rest with and limit hit dice use at short rests goes a long way. The other is the use of the idea of "Skills like saving throws". Skills as saving throws helps with 3rd and 4th (if you dump skill challenges in 4th).

but a full rebuild required for all of us? naw.


----------



## Stalker0

Aldarc said:


> Several fans of 4e have stated in this thread that the name "healing surge" failed to convey the fiction they represented well, so I doubt you'll get much counter-argument on your point here.



I always liked the name "reserves" myself.


----------



## Garthanos

darjr said:


> I don't agree. I've run old style games. Dropping full healing at long rest with and limit hit dice use at short rests goes a long way. The other is the use of the idea of "Skills like saving throws". Skills as saving throws helps with 3rd and 4th (if you dump skill challenges in 4th).
> 
> but a full rebuild required for all of us? naw.



I said they did not provide flexibility for any of us, that you do not care about that flexibility does not mean they gave it to you or me.


----------



## darjr

Garthanos said:


> I said they did not provide flexibility for any of us, that you do not care about that flexibility does not mean they gave it to you or me.



But not all of us. I got lots of flexibility from them and 5e.


----------



## doctorbadwolf

Charlaquin said:


> I agree. But I think people took more issue with martial daylies than martial encounter powers.



Sure, and I do think it would have made sense to make dailies optional. 


darjr said:


> I do think 5 minute short rests in 4e were better than an hour.  It worked well in the fiction where, for me, an hour often clashes.



Absolutely.


----------



## UngeheuerLich

Stalker0 said:


> Right but this was not my point.
> 
> The original statement made was that the discussion of difficulty is ultimately irrelevant because the DM can always add more monsters.
> 
> My counterpoint is that such an addition does have a cost to the overall narrative. Things like:
> 
> Why are there so many monsters in this area all of a sudden?
> Why are dragons such a big deal of if 4 low level people can take one on?
> Now a small narrative cost a good DM can (and does) deal with. The question becomes when does that narrative cost require DM tweaks that remove some of the immersiveness and enjoyment from the game?
> 
> Ultimately all of this is to say.... *difficulty does matter*. Its not a rigid line, and that line can move table to table....but there is a general range where difficulty is "appropriate" and a range where it is not. The ability to add additional monsters does not change this fact. Therefore, a discussion of an edition's difficulty is a very relevant topic, and cannot be dismissed off hand.



I cannot follow that reasoning. My assumption was that we still use common sense.
My comment never has been about dragons that can be one hitted.
Next time I know better and define the bounds I am speaking of.

So just assume I have said in my first comment:
Speaking about difficulty in a game, where you as a DM can use higher or lower level monsters to adapt the challenge, makes not a lot of sense as long as monster strength is within reasonable bounds.
Actually it is not possible to have monsters perfectly balanced, because players have the freedom to make stronger or less strong characters.

And to be clear: 2e, 3e, 4e and 5e all fell within those bounds.


----------



## Charlaquin

Stalker0 said:


> I always liked the name "reserves" myself.



What would you call a unit of reserves though? “Spend one reserve” sounds awkward.


----------



## Charlaquin

doctorbadwolf said:


> Sure, and I do think it would have made sense to make dailies optional.



And they kinda did with Essentials - martial classes in Essentials had at-will and encounter powers but no dailies.


----------



## Stalker0

Charlaquin said:


> What would you call a unit of reserves though? “Spend one reserve” sounds awkward.



"Use a reserve and heal X". I don't think you have to get any fancier than that.


----------



## Charlaquin

Stalker0 said:


> "Use a reserve and heal X". I don't think you have to get any fancier than that.



Sounds bad to me, but  what do I know?


----------



## Mordhau

In 13th Age  Healing Surges are called "Recoveries".

You also roll them, although the rules say you can choose to take the average of the roll if you prefer.  (And of course, if you examine what the average of the recovery roll is, it always turns out to be approximately one quarter of total hit poits.)


----------



## Stalker0

UngeheuerLich said:


> So just assume I have said in my first comment:
> Speaking about difficulty in a game, where you as a DM can use higher or lower level monsters to adapt the challenge, makes not a lot of sense as long as monster strength is within reasonable bounds.
> Actually it is not possible to have monsters perfectly balanced, because players have the freedom to make stronger or less strong characters.



I agree this is a much more reasonable statement. The argument here would be on "what is reasonable bounds", but I think this statement focuses on the understanding that balance is not "rigid" or "perfect", that it is a range.....and a game that is falling within that range must be considered balanced.

Now as to whether 5e falls within that "reasonable bound", we all of course have our table experiences to draw from. For example, I will use one of mine. Probably the closest I ever got to "truly pushing my party" was when they faced:

Party: Six 9th level PCs + one 11th level NPC cleric vs 100 githyanki archers, 10 githyanki knights, 3 githyanki battle skiffs, 1 battle barge, 1 githyanki general + 1 githyanki battle commander. Ballpark CR was 30 all said and done (and my numbers are probably a bit off I ran this about a year ago, especially the archer numbers I just remember it was quite a lot of them).

Ultimately my party triumphed in an absolute epic battle, was a lot of fun. It was also a narratively changing moment in my game. It dealt a massive blow to the githyanki people, and made them a sworn enemy of the city my party came from. Had major consequences down the road, all perfectly fine, I as the DM had no issue with that...... as a one off.

That's what it took to challenge my party in a single fight, and if you look at the epic CRs listed on the forum....that's not really outside the bounds, that's actually pretty reasonable for what my party had.

So as a one time was great....but if I was doing that all the time no that would not work at all. So either I challenged my party through large numbers of encounters (which my group doesn't particularly enjoy except on occasion), or I would throw "big fights" that at the end of the day I knew weren't really all that challenging.....to keep the narrative intact. I choose the occasional big day of fights with the majority just being larger fights that my party ultimately would win....and I used the plot to keep things interesting.


So I use comments such as "I think 5e is generally too easy"....this is the experience that I draw from. In my next game after that one I used a few houserules. For example I went back to the old PF 1e dying system (aka you die at -your con score). Had a major impact, fights that had been straightforward to my last group were much deadlier looking to my new group....simply due to the notion that one good crit could in fact take them out. They also considered in combat healing a lot more important in that game.


----------



## doctorbadwolf

Charlaquin said:


> And they kinda did with Essentials - martial classes in Essentials had at-will and encounter powers but no dailies.



For sure. If I could do a 4e clone or a 4.5e, though, every class except maybe Wizard would have passive class features they could choose instead of gaining a daily “slot” and a new power to use it with.  

That, and you’d be able to use any power you know, and have X encounter powers per encounter, like 5e Spellcasting.


----------



## CubicsRube

Malmuria said:


> I liked the coffee analogy for what a healing surge does the best.  Very relatable.  If I ever pull a 4e element into an osr game that I run I'm going to make all healing coffee-based.
> 
> edit: or maybe tea-based, for what is a potion but a specific kind of tea?



It's true! I always need a cup of caffeine surge after a fight.


----------



## CubicsRube

Lanefan said:


> I'd stop at the 3d20.  You get one shot.  Three dice.
> 
> Otherwise you're giving them in effect 6 chances to make the save rather than 3.



Yes effectively. But I'm also giving them three rounds/sequential saves. A one save or die feels a little too harsh for me.

Guess I'm a softie.


----------



## billd91

darjr said:


> I do think 5 minute short rests in 4e were better than an hour.  It worked well in the fiction where, for me, an hour often clashes.



Whereas for me, they work much better. They're a *significant* rest, worthy of actually regaining hit points and other short rest powers, while 5 minutes is hardly anything after life and death exertion. That was always a disconnect for me with the 5 minute/encounter rest of 4e.


----------



## UngeheuerLich

Stalker0 said:


> I agree this is a much more reasonable statement. The argument here would be on "what is reasonable bounds", but I think this statement focuses on the understanding that balance is not "rigid" or "perfect", that it is a range.....and a game that is falling within that range must be considered balanced.
> 
> Now as to whether 5e falls within that "reasonable bound", we all of course have our table experiences to draw from. For example, I will use one of mine. Probably the closest I ever got to "truly pushing my party" was when they faced:
> 
> Party: Six 9th level PCs + one 11th level NPC cleric vs 100 githyanki archers, 10 githyanki knights, 3 githyanki battle skiffs, 1 battle barge, 1 githyanki general + 1 githyanki battle commander. Ballpark CR was 30 all said and done (and my numbers are probably a bit off I ran this about a year ago, especially the archer numbers I just remember it was quite a lot of them).



I think in 2e we would have also wiped the floor with them at that level... 

So even if it is "too easy" for your tastes, it is well within the bounds of a reasonable encounter with a DnD story. 
9th level PCs were top notch back then. The last level where a fighter got full hp per level, 5th level spells. 

Also I am not sure if 100 Archers are really a problem because in a normal setup, not all can fire at your characters, so probably those were many smaller encounters at once. (I was not at your table, but I might be wrong here. 
Also, if all fired at your group, I wonder how generously defended your characters were. Full plate? Shield spell? 
How many are damage spells did you have and how many wall spells? 
Even a wall of force used to divide the battlefield? 
So I need to ask you:

were powerful magic items in use?
were your PCs "optimized" or built with a generous build method?
did your characters rely on a few, over the top spells that won their day?

If one of your answers is yes, then the problem might lie in the fact, that the baseline suggestions are rather made with average PCs in mind...


----------



## MichaelSomething

Think PCs are too powerful? Having them roll 3d6 in order for their stats will fix that!


----------



## darjr

MichaelSomething said:


> Think PCs are too powerful? Having them roll 3d6 in order for their stats will fix that!



Unless you're like that one person, rolled up hundreds of characters.


----------



## overgeeked

darjr said:


> Unless you're like that one person, rolled up hundreds of characters.



They either roll in front of me or use a dice roller that tracks their rolls. Anything else doesn't count.


----------



## darjr

overgeeked said:


> They either roll in front of me or use a dice roller that tracks their rolls. Anything else doesn't count.



Ha! I guess you haven't read the story? They took the weekend and hung out at a game shoppe with their DM. But yea, outlier story.

I have seen someone collect d6's and find the ones that rolled well..... but I call that cheating.


----------



## overgeeked

darjr said:


> Ha! I guess you haven't read the story? They took the weekend and hung out at a game shoppe with their DM. But yea, outlier story.
> 
> I have seen someone collect d6's and find the ones that rolled well..... but I call that cheating.



Ah. So the DM's a pushover. Got it. You roll six times. That's it. Can't handle those scores for your character? Then you're really not going to be able to handle playing in one of my games. Bye.


----------



## darjr

overgeeked said:


> Ah. So the DM's a pushover. Got it. You roll six times. That's it. Can't handle those scores for your character? Then you're really not going to be able to handle playing in one of my games. Bye.



Ugh, relax, I’m just posting I’m not challenging you or anything.


----------



## overgeeked

darjr said:


> Ugh, relax, I’m just posting I’m not challenging you or anything.



I am relaxed and I didn't take your post as challenging me. I think you're reading something that isn't there into my post.


----------



## Xetheral

overgeeked said:


> Ah. So the DM's a pushover. Got it. You roll six times. That's it. Can't handle those scores for your character? Then you're really not going to be able to handle playing in one of my games. Bye.



My very first DM told me to roll 3d6 six times, and that, _no matter what_, he wouldn't let me reroll. I proceeded to roll all six stats under 10. He watched the rolls, looked at me in horror, and told me to reroll.


----------



## overgeeked

Xetheral said:


> My very first DM told me to roll 3d6 six times, and that, _no matter what_, he wouldn't let me reroll. I proceeded to roll all six stats under 10. He watched the rolls, looked at me in horror, and told me to reroll.



We use those characters as mine sweepers. It's best not to get too attached. But, to be fair, we roll 4d6, drop the lowest.


----------



## Lanefan

darjr said:


> But not all of us. I got lots of flexibility from them and 5e.



Yes, 5e has some flexibility; but nowhere near to the degree that was promised during the playtest period.

Put another way: we were promised a 10 and ended up with a 3.


----------



## Henadic Theologian

Another thing is 4e put alot of thought into epic level play with epic destinies and such, 5e doesn't even do Tier 4   very well and doesn't give much guidance on how to do it well or cool T4 adventures and even less for levels 21+. No wonder so few folks play T4 and beyond, WotC could do better exploring DM advise for it, and better rules and adventure support.


----------



## EzekielRaiden

Xetheral said:


> My very first DM told me to roll 3d6 six times, and that, _no matter what_, he wouldn't let me reroll. I proceeded to roll all six stats under 10. He watched the rolls, looked at me in horror, and told me to reroll.





overgeeked said:


> We use those characters as mine sweepers. It's best not to get too attached. But, to be fair, we roll 4d6, drop the lowest.




Which shows the two breakdown cases quite clearly: either (1) you aren't actually strict about it, so the (arbitrary) bottom of the bell curve is cut off and _usually_ power creep slowly raises what "the bottom of the bell curve" looks like, or (2) you keep these horrible numbers and almost always die, except in the rare cases where you get lucky. The former means abandoning true randomness (consider the rather complicated, and no longer all _that_ random, default rolling method of 3e), while the latter means forcing players through repeated failure states before a success state appears. Neither is all that good today.

OSR games with modern design have found solutions, but even those have issues. DCC, frex, has the "character funnel": you skip over the process of waiting to get a character that survives by running a large number simultaneously through a meatgrinder. Any that survive thus _already_ either have reasonably good stats, or have gotten lucky, and either option is generally acceptable. However, such things risk showing their gamist edge (after all, such a funnel is _inherently_ dissociated, for anyone who cares about that sort of thing), and ultimately still devalue randomness by ensuring selective pressure that favors characters with actual bonuses.

Ultimately....I don't really know if there is a true _solution_ to this problem. It very much seems like the two desired things--effective characters _and_ easily-generated, truly _random_ characters--are truly at odds. Being effective generally means falling in a certain range of power. Being truly random requires _not_ falling in any particular range of power. Trimming the randomness to guarantee _some_ competence either sacrifices simplicity and ease of use, or breaks the feeling of randomness, or (often) both.

I think, in the end, they either need to be just marked as distinct approaches with a warning label on the random-gen option, or D&D needs to decide which matters more. Because forcing the _appearance_ of randomness while actually, in the end, forcing pretty non-random results is not really tenable long-term.


----------



## Mordhau

In most of the old school games I remember when people made truly bad characters they played them as recklessly as possible so they would get killed and they could roll again.  It's the kind of solution that's fine for people with time on their hands, but most people have no use for.  Yet, if people aren't playing the truly bad characters, why exactly are you rolling? 

I added a rule when running B/X that every time you roll a D20 against each ability score, and if you roll higher it goes up by 1.  This does a lot to mitigate the biggest issues of random ability scores as it tends to even things out in the end.  

In any case,  if you want random character creation wouldn't it be better to randomly generate race and class rather than ability scores?  These are the things that would have the most impact*.  This means you get people playing things they otherwise might not play rather than the same characters but at different levels of effectiveness.  (You sort of get this I guess if you assign ability scores in the order they're rolled, but the standard method seems to be assign as you like which is truly pointless!)


----------



## Campbell

Most OSR games use more B/X style modifiers which generally make ability scores a far smaller piece of the puzzle. 3d6 in order matters a lot less with the following sort of table (taken from Worlds Without Number):


3 /-2
4-7/-1                                                           
8-13/0
14-17/+1
18/+2

Ability Scores generally matter a good deal more in the modern game than they ever have, especially in 5e with bounded accuracy.


----------



## overgeeked

EzekielRaiden said:


> However, such things risk showing their gamist edge (after all, such a funnel is _inherently_ dissociated, for anyone who cares about that sort of thing), and ultimately still devalue randomness by ensuring selective pressure that favors characters with actual bonuses.



Or, you know, simply accept that it actually is a game and as such accept that the game will feature “gamist” elements. I never really understood the need to pretend we’re not playing a game whilst actually playing a game.


----------



## overgeeked

Campbell said:


> Most OSR games use more B/X style modifiers which generally make ability scores a far smaller piece of the puzzle. 3d6 in order matters a lot less with the following sort of table (taken from Worlds Without Number):
> 
> 
> 3 /-2
> 4-7/-1
> 8-13/0
> 14-17/+1
> 18/+2
> 
> Ability Scores generally matter a good deal more in the modern game than they ever have, especially in 5e with bounded accuracy.



B/X is slightly different, but your point is still correct.

In B/X it’s: 
3, -3. 
4-5, -2. 
6-8, -1. 
9-12, 0. 
13-15, +1. 
16-17, +2. 
18, +3.


----------



## theCourier

Yep. The point of the funnel is not only to pick up the pieces that remain and have them be Level 1's, but to have fun watching unlucky peasants get destroyed in all sorts of ways!


----------



## overgeeked

theCourier said:


> Yep. The point of the funnel is not only to pick up the pieces that remain and have them be Level 1's, but to have fun watching unlucky peasants get destroyed in all sorts of ways!



Exactly. And it’s not a story-less meat grinder. It’s used to build story. In games like those whatever story there is is what happens during play. So you start with not only a background, but a story to tell about how you survived and leveled up.


----------



## Xetheral

overgeeked said:


> Or, you know, simply accept that it actually is a game and as such accept that the game will feature ”gamist“ elements. I never really understood the need to pretend we’re not playing a game whilst actually playing a game.



Personally speaking, it's because I have more fun when I'm less consciously focused on the game mechanics than I am focused on trying to imagine the fiction from my character's perspective. The more the mechanics feel like an abstraction of a self-consistent game world, the easier I find it to not focus on them consciously, even though I never completely forget that they're there. By contrast, jarring mechanics tend to demand my conscious attention, like a pebble in my shoe.


----------



## overgeeked

Xetheral said:


> Personally speaking, it's because I have more fun when I'm less consciously focused on the game mechanics than I am focused on trying to imagine the fiction from my character's perspective. The more the mechanics feel like an abstraction of a self-consistent game world, the easier I find it to not focus on them consciously, even though I never completely forget that they're there. By contrast, jarring mechanics tend to demand my conscious attention, like a pebble in my shoe.



Sure. I’m basically the same. I prefer the mechanics to get out of the way or fade into the background as much as possible. But any time there’s a roll, I’m keenly aware that I’m sitting at a table playing a game. Any time the mechanics defy common sense, I’m keenly aware that I’m sitting at a table playing a game. So rather than fight it or try to pretend otherwise, simply accept it for what it is and move on.


----------



## Mordhau

Campbell said:


> Most OSR games use more B/X style modifiers which generally make ability scores a far smaller piece of the puzzle. 3d6 in order matters a lot less with the following sort of table (taken from Worlds Without Number):
> 
> 
> 3 /-2
> 4-7/-1
> 8-13/0
> 14-17/+1
> 18/+2
> 
> Ability Scores generally matter a good deal more in the modern game than they ever have, especially in 5e with bounded accuracy.



That's not the B/X modifier scale.  Kevin Crawford uses a slightly different scale which minimues ability scores even more.  B/X modifiers are somewhere between that and modern D&D.  They go up to +3 at 18.

Edit: Ninja'd


----------



## Mordhau

I've seen people insist on rolling 3d6 in order for AD&D 1e, even though that's not even one of the many suggested methods for character creation in the DMG.

It gets really rather absurd when the random method being used generates characters that don't actually qualify for any character class (which I've seen multiple times).


----------



## FireLance

EzekielRaiden said:


> Ultimately....I don't really know if there is a true _solution_ to this problem. It very much seems like the two desired things--effective characters _and_ easily-generated, truly _random_ characters--are truly at odds. Being effective generally means falling in a certain range of power. Being truly random requires _not_ falling in any particular range of power. Trimming the randomness to guarantee _some_ competence either sacrifices simplicity and ease of use, or breaks the feeling of randomness, or (often) both.



One possibility that I've been toying with, although I admit I've never actually used in any of the campaigns I've run, is to start with the standard array (15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8), assign as desired to the various ability scores, and then roll 3d6 in order. If the number rolled for an ability score is higher than the assigned number, use the rolled number instead.

The standard array guarantees the baseline level of competence that the game expects, and the 3d6 rolled in order gives a chance that one or more ability scores may be improved - and not necessarily the ability scores that the player would have chosen.

Of course, the downside to this approach is that the PCs will have better ability scores, on average, than the game expects and the standard challenges will be that much easier for them.


----------



## Campbell

Getting back to the main topic I do not think Wizards should look back at previous versions either with an eye to avoid or bring back particular sorts of mechanics. There is such a vast number of new players who have no experience with previous versions of the game. They should listen to what those players want, come up with designs, and test them. Us old heads are not particularly relevant (whether we like 4e or not).


----------



## overgeeked

Campbell said:


> Getting back to the main topic I do not think Wizards should look back at previous versions either with an eye to avoid or bring back particular sorts of mechanics. There is such a vast number of new players who have no experience with previous versions of the game. They should listen to what those players want, come up with designs, and test them. Us old heads are not particularly relevant (whether we like 4e or not).



My money spends just as well as some new fan. WotC clearly recognizes that otherwise they wouldn’t be catering to us olds as they have been. The long haul fans will still be here when this recent wave of fad players have left. If WotC caters only to the fad, then the game/edition will die when they leave. And WotC will have to go back to catering to long haul fans and revise/make a new edition. Easier to just not throw the baby out with the bathwater.


----------



## Aldarc

overgeeked said:


> My money spends just as well as some new fan. WotC clearly recognizes that otherwise they wouldn’t be catering to us olds as they have been. The long haul fans will still be here when this recent wave of fad players have left.



I don't think that WotC has been catering to old fans at all: not since the D&D Next Playtest when they were courting the Pathfinder and OSR crowds. Since then though? It seems mostly oriented towards the Critical Role crowd and the newcomers.


----------



## Garthanos

Henadic Theologian said:


> Another thing is 4e put alot of thought into epic level play with epic destinies and such, 5e doesn't even do Tier 4   very well and doesn't give much guidance on how to do it well or cool T4 adventures and even less for levels 21+. No wonder so few folks play T4 and beyond, WotC could do better exploring DM advise for it, and better rules and adventure support.



I think epic could use some work in 4e too but yes in comparison to 5e they had some kick ideas about how to enable players to invest in their own story with selectable paragon paths and epic destinies,  which the DM ideally weaves into the story.  Note the idea of PPs and echoed in ED are pretty much an expansion of "Name Level" from AD&D though in 1e there was kind of no player choice presented.

I think Epic Destinies could also bring on a sort of expected adversaries too.  For example in a custom ED I am creating; By choosing the Akashic Blade (Carver of History), you bring to the story enemies  tailored to you Paradoxi or Fates Defenders or whatever and open the stage for adventures in time travel.


----------



## clearstream

EzekielRaiden said:


> Ultimately....I don't really know if there is a true _solution_ to this problem. It very much seems like the two desired things--effective characters _and_ easily-generated, truly _random_ characters--are truly at odds. Being effective generally means falling in a certain range of power. Being truly random requires _not_ falling in any particular range of power. Trimming the randomness to guarantee _some_ competence either sacrifices simplicity and ease of use, or breaks the feeling of randomness, or (often) both.



I believe the problem is properly defining the spectrum a group want characters to fall in, and the features they value in selection. For example, I decided I wanted ability scores to net to +2, with nothing worse than -3 and nothing better than +3 at 1st-level. Additionally, I wanted to avoid overshadowing by having the ability scores for all characters sum to the same total. It was fairly straightforward to design a 12-card deck to draw from without replacement, drawing and summing two cards for each ability in the order drawn. I could instead have listed the complete set of arrays and have players roll for one at random for their character. Both give effective, easily generated, truly-random characters. (I suspect what you mean by truly-random isn't to do with random, but to do with yielding both arrays the group enjoys playing, and arrays they don't. That's a choice about the spectrum arrays will fall in, not really the generation methods.)

If one defines the problem as - can I have characters, some of which have far lower modifiers than we want to play and some of which will be mechanically ideal - then any 'solution' is going to produce that. If one instead defines the problem as - can I have characters falling fairly across the power spectrum that we want to use - then good random solutions are available.

The problem is having a clear enough definition for what = good in this context.



EzekielRaiden said:


> I think, in the end, they either need to be just marked as distinct approaches with a warning label on the random-gen option, or D&D needs to decide which matters more. Because forcing the _appearance_ of randomness while actually, in the end, forcing pretty non-random results is not really tenable long-term.



Again, I don't believe it is the '_randomness_' that is the heart of the problem you describe. The PHB methods have two shortfalls. Foremost the PHB doesn't tell groups _why _they should choose one method over another. It should start with motives, not methods. Second it offers only a very limited set of methods, when the 'tech' is available to offer more.


----------



## clearstream

Xetheral said:


> My very first DM told me to roll 3d6 six times, and that, _no matter what_, he wouldn't let me reroll. I proceeded to roll all six stats under 10. He watched the rolls, looked at me in horror, and told me to reroll.



The problem you describe is your DM choosing a method without sufficiently thinking through the features they wanted in character generation. The problem is lack of guidance as to motives for choosing a method in the PHB or DMG.


----------



## Garthanos

Campbell said:


> Getting back to the main topic I do not think Wizards should look back at previous versions either with an eye to avoid or bring back particular sorts of mechanics.



I agree and disagree. D&D has always had a strong traditional element sometimes this can bring good things to the table sometimes not when looking at mechanics I agree It can mire the game in its tradition so growth is slow. On the other hand fantasy "story" itself is heavily about nostalgic connections so sometimes you can see story in the past mechanics. For instance 1e had a flavor of one man army for the fighter where he could cut down multitudes of minions he was also intended to be a defender of his squishier allies. 4e gave me that defender story and made it work well. 1e had fighters with followers and a castle. Level up added that to its Warlord just as I rather did in 4e when I added the Martial Practice called Marshal Troops. There are clues within the mechanics of the past.... and when 4e made the Warlord finally core its spark came from earlier editions like Alexander the great and Bellesarius mentioned in the 2e PHB and tadah in TBo9S some of its mechanics. Not ignoring the past and capitalizing on it is good, making it into a limit not so much.


----------



## EzekielRaiden

Campbell said:


> Getting back to the main topic I do not think Wizards should look back at previous versions either with an eye to avoid or bring back particular sorts of mechanics. There is such a vast number of new players who have no experience with previous versions of the game. They should listen to what those players want, come up with designs, and test them. Us old heads are not particularly relevant (whether we like 4e or not).



I mean...this reads a bit like saying we must, without exception, totally abandon *all* ideas from the past 20 years of car engineering and design in order to make cars that appeal to the young, hip car buyer. Just because something is old does not mean it has no value. Trying to make an absolute clean break would be as bad as trying to change nothing at all--worse, most likely, since it is old hands who predominantly fill the most important role, as Dungeon Masters.

There's stuff to learn from asking tough questions and getting good data about 0e. The same may be said if literally every edition. From the answers and data, you then establish clear design goals, and critically examine how to accomplish those goals. Once you have your system, actually bloody TEST it--not just by saying how it feels, but by collecting data and seeing if it does, on average and in general, do what it's supposed to do.

And if it just so happens that the data leads you toward a solution that resembles a prior edition, _so be it_.



Aldarc said:


> I don't think that WotC has been catering to old fans at all: not since the D&D Next Playtest when they were courting the Pathfinder and OSR crowds. Since then though? It seems mostly oriented towards the Critical Role crowd and the newcomers.



The Banneret seemed pretty transparently an attempt to reach out to both 4e and OSR fans...but only _maybe_ successful with the latter. The focus on popular classic adventures of yesteryear also looks rather a lot like still putting pre-WOTC fans at least reasonably high on the priority list. What things would you say they've done to OSR fans that look anything like the snubbing 4e fans got?



clearstream said:


> I believe the problem is properly defining the spectrum a group want characters to fall in, and the features they value in selection. For example, I decided I wanted ability scores to net to +2, with nothing worse than -3 and nothing better than +3 at 1st-level. Additionally, I wanted to avoid overshadowing by having the ability scores for all characters sum to the same total. It was fairly straightforward to design a 12-card deck to draw from without replacement, drawing and summing two cards for each ability in the order drawn. I could instead have listed the complete set of arrays and have players roll for one at random for their character. Both give effective, easily generated, truly-random characters. (I suspect what you mean by truly-random isn't to do with random, but to do with yielding both arrays the group enjoys playing, and arrays they don't. That's a choice about the spectrum arrays will fall in, not really the generation methods.)



When others (this isn't my view, I VASTLY prefer point-buy) tell me what they want, many of them make it very explicit that they want true, genuine, uncurated randomness. They want a distribution which favors neither good nor bad, and which they have no way to know in advance whether it will produce excellent, mediocre, poor, or uneven results. That they must be able to be genuinely _surprised_ by these results, and cannot, even in principle, meaningfully predict how things will end up, even with partial data. That is a pretty reasonable gloss of "true randomness," e.g., the values generated must be wholly independent from one another, each randomly generated without bias, and drawn from identical populations of possibilities. IOW, no "if you have X bad stat, you automatically get (N-X) as a good stat," and no "drawing cards without replacement," as in your example, since that means you can with high accuracy predict future values solely on the basis of the first few current values. Such fans expressly want it to be the case that the game itself is designed to support BOTH "I rolled 9, 7, 5, 8, 9, 8" AND "I rolled 18, 15, 12, 14, 17, 14," at the same time and table, no wrinkles, no hard feelings, no wildly divergent experiences. And that may be an impossible request, particularly given that many _other_ players (such as myself) want a well-balanced experience where everyone gets an equal opportunity to excel and big numbers correspond to sizable benefits (such that one must generally focus and think about how best to use the benefits one has, rather than simply being more or less equally effective at all tasks.)



clearstream said:


> If one defines the problem as - can I have characters, some of which have far lower modifiers than we want to play and some of which will be mechanically ideal - then any 'solution' is going to produce that. If one instead defines the problem as - can I have characters falling fairly across the power spectrum that we want to use - then good random solutions are available.



Okay. How do we then square the fact that there are (quite a few, apparently) people who want the spread to be "I literally have no idea whether the result will suck or be amazing but overall it will average low to weak benefits" with the fact that there are people who don't want it to vary _at all_ because such variance is unfair? That is, there seem to be dramatic disagreements about whether there should be allowance for variation _at all_, or whether variation should be hard-required and dramatic.



clearstream said:


> The problem is having a clear enough definition for what = good in this context.



Unless we have a literal actual split in the fanbase as to whether characters should even BE expected to be "good" at character creation. Which, well, people tell me is the case. People claim to want to not know for sure whether their character will be good at _anything_ at all.



clearstream said:


> Again, I don't believe it is the '_randomness_' that is the heart of the problem you describe. The PHB methods have two shortfalls. Foremost the PHB doesn't tell groups _why _they should choose one method over another. It should start with motives, not methods. Second it offers only a very limited set of methods, when the 'tech' is available to offer more.



I can only go by what people explicitly say, and people have told me many, many times that methods like yours are insufficiently random--that they just look/feel like (effectively) drawing an array out of a hat, not truly making a character that is unexpected. The high, even extreme emphasis is not just simplicity, though simplicity is in there, but rather that being fed an _expected_ character, even one that is not absolutely foreknown, ruins the experience. I believe the phrase used in a thread either this year or last year was that such characters are "born lucky" in such players' eyes, and playing someone "born lucky" just feels like a foregone conclusion of success.

Whereas to again to compare to me, someone who deeply values balance and equal opportunity, I consider essentially all forms of rolled stats to be "ability roulette" and rather hate them a lot, ESPECIALLY when they theoretically produce better average stats. I feel I am going to he punished no matter what, either I accept "weak" PB stats or I accept that my awful luck will give me _technically, theoretically_ viable but crappy results, worse than if I'd just settled for PB. Or, if you prefer, rolling stats _at all_ makes me feel "born unlucky." And even if I get great stats (which does, rarely, happen) I'll feel terribly guilty if even one person has demonstrably worse stats than I do.


----------



## Lanefan

EzekielRaiden said:


> Unless we have a literal actual split in the fanbase as to whether characters should even BE expected to be "good" at character creation. Which, well, people tell me is the case. People claim to want to not know for sure whether their character will be good at _anything_ at all.



I suspect it's more that some - and I'll count myself as one - prefer that the "character build" side of the game that took off with 3e and hasn't gone away since, largely go away or at least be minimized in its importance.

Randomizing does this.  It's not always the best solution - I'd far rather use 4d6k3 rearranged than 3d6 in order, for example - but it's a start.  A nice side effect is that if the character build aspect is downplayed, char-gen becomes much faster and smoother as there aren't so many fussy choices to make. You roll the dice and then play what they give you; you choose your class and play the features is has built in, and so on.


----------



## Krachek

Monster manual, having both CR and monster level and sample flavor encounter.


----------



## overgeeked

Krachek said:


> Monster manual, having both CR and monster level and sample flavor encounter.



The CR really is the monster's level. Everything CR1 and above are all just solos, i.e. one monster per four PCs. 

But having more flavor, ecology, and sample encounters would be nice. Along with bringing back things like morale, number appearing, monster roles, etc.


----------



## Krachek

overgeeked said:


> The CR really is the monster's level. Everything CR1 and above are all just solos, i.e. one monster per four PCs.
> 
> But having more flavor, ecology, and sample encounters would be nice. Along with bringing back things like morale, number appearing, monster roles, etc.



some quick Monster behavior tag could help too.


----------



## overgeeked

Krachek said:


> some quick Monster behavior tag could help too.



Something that's actually useful, yes. Not alignment.


----------



## Garthanos

Lanefan said:


> I suspect it's more that some - and I'll count myself as one - prefer that the "character build" side of the game that took off with 3e and hasn't gone away since, largely go away or at least be minimized in its importance.



I do not think that is as common as you would have it.

The gamblers urge seems to be the core of most who I have heard argue for it. They want the thrill from a chance to "fail" going out the gate because it pays for the chance to massively "win" gaining significantly more power purely by a one time act that is nothing even vaguely like skill.

You can call the opposite for the 3x power build fan seems to want to show off his optimizing chops and is fine with removing the fun of the game play when he does. (4e has very few routes to that but still has a complex character creation you do not like)

 And you are right with the potency of 5e feats and the imbalance of them and the complexity and dangers of 5e multiclassing the character creation game has definitely not gone away.

Arguably in spite of 4e character creation having more choice points in I would say they are all less prone to oops.


----------



## Hussar

Aldarc said:


> I don't think that WotC has been catering to old fans at all: not since the D&D Next Playtest when they were courting the Pathfinder and OSR crowds. Since then though? It seems mostly oriented towards the Critical Role crowd and the newcomers.



Wait.. what?

We've had retooled Ghosts of Saltmarsh, Ravenloft (twice), Dungeon of the Mad Mage, Tales of the Yawning Portal, Eberron.   We're getting two revamped older settings next year, I believe.  How in the world do you think that they aren't catering to old fans at all?

Good grief, how much more catering do you think they can do?


----------



## Hussar

overgeeked said:


> My money spends just as well as some new fan. WotC clearly recognizes that otherwise they wouldn’t be catering to us olds as they have been. The long haul fans will still be here when this recent wave of fad players have left. If WotC caters only to the fad, then the game/edition will die when they leave. And WotC will have to go back to catering to long haul fans and revise/make a new edition. Easier to just not throw the baby out with the bathwater.



Just to point something out here though, the "new wave of fad players" have now been playing for nearly a decade, some of them.  By the time the revamped core books come out, 5e will be more than ten years old.  These "fad players" aren't fad players at all.  They are the fanbase.  Those of us who started before 5e are outnumbered about ten or fifteen to one now.  And, since the playerbase continues to grow year on year, there's very little chance that that's going to change.

To put it another way, someone who started with 5e is no more a "fad" player than any of us.  By the time most of us had played ten years, we'd been through two, possibly three editions of the game.  I know I had.  In my first ten years of gaming, I played B/E, 1e and 2e.  Someone who started in 2015 will have only played one edition.  This is totally unprecedented.


----------



## Hussar

Lanefan said:


> I suspect it's more that some - and I'll count myself as one - prefer that the "character build" side of the game that took off with 3e and hasn't gone away since, largely go away or at least be minimized in its importance.
> 
> Randomizing does this.  It's not always the best solution - I'd far rather use 4d6k3 rearranged than 3d6 in order, for example - but it's a start.  A nice side effect is that if the character build aspect is downplayed, char-gen becomes much faster and smoother as there aren't so many fussy choices to make. You roll the dice and then play what they give you; you choose your class and play the features is has built in, and so on.



I agree that this is a benefit.

But, to me, the downside is just too large.  When the baseline is die rolled, that means everyone's character is SO much higher than the baseline assumptions of the game.  Virtually no one (yes, yes, you in the back, sit down, I don't mean EVERY SINGLE PERSON, just most of them), ever plays a character who's die rolled stats are lower than the baseline.  At worst, they are equal, and, nearly every time, they will be better.  

So, if the characters are simply going to be better than the baseline, why are we bothering to randomize at all?  Just go with a higher point buy and be done with it.  

To me, the costs just far outweigh any potential benefits.


----------



## Garthanos

Hussar said:


> Virtually no one (yes, yes, you in the back, sit down, I don't mean EVERY SINGLE PERSON, just most of them), ever plays a character who's die rolled stats are lower than the baseline.



The classic I do that then play them so dangerously I am just rolling another one real soon it was truly pointless.


----------



## overgeeked

Hussar said:


> Just to point something out here though, the "new wave of fad players" have now been playing for nearly a decade, some of them.



Some, sure. But not all. And not all of them will stick around. That's what I'm talking about. The people who stick around aren't the "fad fans". They're fans. Just like the rest of us. The ones I'm referring to are the ones who will tire of the hobby and leave when it's not in the middle of the big pop culture moment it's having right now. They're fans of the fad, not the game. I'm guessing, just like the last big mainstream pop culture surge of interest in D&D, that the majority will simply stop playing. They're the ones I'm talking about.


Hussar said:


> By the time the revamped core books come out, 5e will be more than ten years old.  These "fad players" aren't fad players at all.  They are the fanbase.



For a time, sure. And again, I'm not saying they'll all split. But assuming they'll all stay is a mistake. Just like assuming they'll all leave is a mistake. We don't know how many will stick around. So designing the game to their preferences seems like a complete mistake.


Hussar said:


> Those of us who started before 5e are outnumbered about ten or fifteen to one now.  And, since the playerbase continues to grow year on year, there's very little chance that that's going to change.



Until the bubble bursts and the fad fans scatter to the wind.


Hussar said:


> To put it another way, someone who started with 5e is no more a "fad" player than any of us.



Again, that's not what I'm saying.


Hussar said:


> By the time most of us had played ten years, we'd been through two, possibly three editions of the game.  I know I had.  In my first ten years of gaming, I played B/E, 1e and 2e.



Not really unprecedented at all. Some people started with one edition and just kept on playing it. Simply because a new edition is published doesn't mean that the old books spontaneously combust and the fan base is legally required to buy and play the new game. So the publication of new editions is basically irrelevant. I started with B/X in 84 because that's all my older brother would let me touch, me being 8 years younger and all. The old "it's Basic so it's kids' stuff...we're teenagers and we played Advanced D&D". But we soon were all playing AD&D...and we kept on playing AD&D until 2009ish. We skipped three-ish editions of the game. Mine is not a unique experience.


Hussar said:


> Someone who started in 2015 will have only played one edition.



Only if they stuck with 5E. There's no reason to make that assumption.


Hussar said:


> This is totally unprecedented.



LOL. Not really. AD&D lasted 12 years. AD&D2E lasted 11 years. Depending on when you start counting, either with B/X or BECMI, That version of Basic lasted either 17 or 19 years. Then there's players who didn't instantly adopt the newest edition, like us. We played AD&D for 25 years...despite newer editions.


----------



## clearstream

EzekielRaiden said:


> When others (this isn't my view, I VASTLY prefer point-buy) tell me what they want, many of them make it very explicit that they want true, genuine, uncurated randomness. They want a distribution which favors neither good nor bad, and which they have no way to know in advance whether it will produce excellent, mediocre, poor, or uneven results. That they must be able to be genuinely _surprised_ by these results, and cannot, even in principle, meaningfully predict how things will end up, even with partial data.



You've somewhat misunderstood my post. I am arguing for PHB to present a number of methods, with the motives a group might have for using each method _explained_ either there - in the PHB - or in the DMG.



EzekielRaiden said:


> That is a pretty reasonable gloss of "true randomness," e.g., the values generated must be wholly independent from one another, each randomly generated without bias, and drawn from identical populations of possibilities.



If that is an accurate gloss, then "true randomness" is just as correctly applied to the methods I've discussed, as to 3d6 down the line. Randomly select an array would be even more accurately true random, by that definition, because the distribution is linear. However, I don't think what you are labeling "true randomness" is primarily about the randomness.



EzekielRaiden said:


> IOW, no "if you have X bad stat, you automatically get (N-X) as a good stat," and no "drawing cards without replacement," as in your example, since that means you can with high accuracy predict future values solely on the basis of the first few current values. Such fans expressly want it to be the case that the game itself is designed to support BOTH "I rolled 9, 7, 5, 8, 9, 8" AND "I rolled 18, 15, 12, 14, 17, 14," at the same time and table, no wrinkles, no hard feelings, no wildly divergent experiences. And that may be an impossible request, particularly given that many _other_ players (such as myself) want a well-balanced experience where everyone gets an equal opportunity to excel and big numbers correspond to sizable benefits (such that one must generally focus and think about how best to use the benefits one has, rather than simply being more or less equally effective at all tasks.)



A group might like to allow low and high ranges. I'm mindful of @Xetheral's example, where the DM thought they wanted to do that, but when it came down to it, didn't want characters with nothing better than 10. I have never met a player who genuinely wanted to be overshadowed. I have met many who wanted to be surprised. It is easily possible to have the latter without the former. We can consider features such as -

volatility or swinginess (distribution, e.g. does the method produce spiky arrays?)
overshadowing (range from highest array to lowest array)
control versus surprise (decks resist analysis quite well until you're down to the last few cards*, but not as well as independent rolls, standard array is an open book, assign in order is more surprising than allocate as desired)
relationship with system baselines (i.e. the impact the expected modifiers will have during play)
Deck-generated characters can be volatile and surprising, while avoiding overshadowing. What you have described seems to include overshadowing as a _necessary _quality of surprise: I don't think it is.



EzekielRaiden said:


> Okay. How do we then square the fact that there are (quite a few, apparently) people who want the spread to be "I literally have no idea whether the result will suck or be amazing but overall it will average low to weak benefits" with the fact that there are people who don't want it to vary _at all_ because such variance is unfair? That is, there seem to be dramatic disagreements about whether there should be allowance for variation _at all_, or whether variation should be hard-required and dramatic.



Why not continue to offer more than one method? In the current PHB, the standard array is 16, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10 (76pts), the probable array for 4d6k3 is 16, 14, 13, 12, 10, 9 (74pts) , a middle-ground point buy array might be 14, 13, 13, 12, 12, 10 (74pts). I believe adding a deck-generation method, and slightly down-tuning  the other three methods, would give four extremely solid methods that would serve almost any group. But why use one over another? Groups would benefit from better explanations.



EzekielRaiden said:


> Unless we have a literal actual split in the fanbase as to whether characters should even BE expected to be "good" at character creation. Which, well, people tell me is the case. People claim to want to not know for sure whether their character will be good at _anything_ at all.



I've _never_ heard that, but mileages vary. What I most frequently hear from players is a desire to have flaws as well as strengths. I'd say they have been about split on control. Perhaps two thirds in my experience would be happiest if they can allocate at least three of their scores as desired. Less than a third prefer to let the scores fall where they may. That said, almost all have been happy to go with DM preference.



EzekielRaiden said:


> I can only go by what people explicitly say, and people have told me many, many times that methods like yours are insufficiently random--that they just look/feel like (effectively) drawing an array out of a hat, not truly making a character that is unexpected. The high, even extreme emphasis is not just simplicity, though simplicity is in there, but rather that being fed an _expected_ character, even one that is not absolutely foreknown, ruins the experience. I believe the phrase used in a thread either this year or last year was that such characters are "born lucky" in such players' eyes, and playing someone "born lucky" just feels like a foregone conclusion of success.



Our experiences diverge, in that regard. However, I am not advocating for all groups to use the same method. What I'm advocating is the addition of a method, and proper explanation in the books of the motives for choosing each. Generally, the argument is over the distributions rather than the ranges. Meaning that the methods can be tuned to distribute in different ways within the same range.



EzekielRaiden said:


> Whereas to again to compare to me, someone who deeply values balance and equal opportunity, I consider essentially all forms of rolled stats to be "ability roulette" and rather hate them a lot, ESPECIALLY when they theoretically produce better average stats. I feel I am going to he punished no matter what, either I accept "weak" PB stats or I accept that my awful luck will give me _technically, theoretically_ viable but crappy results, worse than if I'd just settled for PB. Or, if you prefer, rolling stats _at all_ makes me feel "born unlucky." And even if I get great stats (which does, rarely, happen) I'll feel terribly guilty if even one person has demonstrably worse stats than I do.



It's worse than that, even, in that the baseline system does not tolerate well some of the extremes possible with 4d6k3. Point-buy gives strong arrays that also work well with the baseline system. I believe both methods are over-tuned by a few points, especially considering it is now the norm to give players 3pts to distribute. From an average of 10.5 we now have averages of 13!


*The array is still surprising, even if the last draw is not: one can differentiate between surprise per roll, and surprise about the array. And design for either.


----------



## clearstream

Hussar said:


> Virtually no one (yes, yes, you in the back, sit down, I don't mean EVERY SINGLE PERSON, just most of them), ever plays a character who's die rolled stats are lower than the baseline.  At worst, they are equal, and, nearly every time, they will be better.
> 
> So, if the characters are simply going to be better than the baseline, why are we bothering to randomize at all?  Just go with a higher point buy and be done with it.



That's my experience, also. People talk about wanting to let the dice fall as they may... until they fall _against_ them. However, I don't believe those people are at fault for not having a good handle on chance. The question you raise is an important one, and all too often is inadequately examined.

Why bother with random? @EzekielRaiden defines it as "_they have no way to know in advance whether it will produce excellent, mediocre, poor, or uneven results. That they must be able to be genuinely _surprised _by these results..._" I find that an interesting definition. Foremost, I don't think it describes what most players at heart genuinely want - once you observe them over a decent number of outcomes. I do think it captures some of the language players sometimes use to get at what they want.

Take genuine surprise. I think for @EzekielRaiden it means surprised not just at the array, but each score. However, I don't think he was arguing that surprise is lessened for all those players he was thinking of, if they then allocate as desired. As it would obviously be even more surprising if, as a warlock, charisma was their _lowest_ score. Wrong kind of surprise, clearly. Once we are talking about right and wrong kinds of surprise, we know something else is going on.

Knowing in advance is also interesting. I've often heard players desire to not know in advance where their strengths will be, or how even their distribution will be, but very rarely do players like a poor-across-the-board result. I think the features they look for are really centered on contrast. Sometimes they'll get some exciting scores, and occasionally they'll have a painful flaw. No one wants 3's across the board, but they might not mind having a 3 on one score if in pay-off they have a chance at an 18.

Because different players want different things, I believe a good solution is offer say four methods, producing arrays with different distributions and mildly diverging total values, while falling within the same spectrum. The standard array should be just a default points-buy, rather than a boosted points buy. Points buy should be tuned down a couple of points. 4d6k3 likewise. Add a deck-generation method. And give players a means for each method to choose between allocate as desired and allocate as they fall.


----------



## EzekielRaiden

So, if I'm understanding correctly @clearstream, your proposed method uses cards without replacement. Meaning, if you drew a bad set of cards for the first two stats, you are guaranteed to get better stats for the later parts. This is what I refer to when I say that it's not "true random"--it forces certain results _because_ other results have happened.

There was a _very_ long, drawn-out thread some months ago where I engaged with some user (whose name escapes me now) that wouldn't accept this. Anything, anything _whatsoever_, that _causes_ good stats in order to compensate for bad ones is unacceptable to them (and several others besides), because it makes them feel like every character is "born lucky" and thus uninteresting. It doesn't matter that all the various possible draws are equally likely at the outset; the fact that the first five draws (for example) automatically determine what the sixth draw will be is too much certainty, and the fact that (say) if you get good stats in the first three draws, you _will_ get mediocre or bad, is way, WAY too much information. Hence why I phrased it as I did; if your first two draws give you _any information whatsoever_ about what the later draws are likely to be, then the process is insufficiently random.

These players did, at least, have the consistency to also demand no reassignment of stats, as you noted. They want stats rolled in order, and what you got was what you got. If you ended up with only Wisdom as a semi-okay stat, maybe you played a Cleric. If you got nothing good at all, you played a thief (IIRC? I can't remember which class could get away with bad stats). Etc.

And, as noted by others above (frex, @Lanefan ), in some ways these requests are very specifically to _remove_ parts of the design space. E.g. the goal of removing or at least reducing the whole idea of "builds," or to "make" players stop "playing their character sheet" or whatever. They don't want one method for them and another method for other people; they want one method for everyone, that will eliminate or curtail the parts of the game they find undesirable. And I will absolutely cop to the same thing: I genuinely think PB is superior because I genuinely believe everyone should get a fair shot at participation, and being shortchanged or supercharged at character generation inherently prevents that possibility.


----------



## clearstream

EzekielRaiden said:


> So, if I'm understanding correctly @clearstream, your proposed method uses cards without replacement. Meaning, if you drew a bad set of cards for the first two stats, you are guaranteed to get better stats for the later parts. This is what I refer to when I say that it's not "true random"--it forces certain results _because_ other results have happened.



It's probably just that the term is a bit misleading. In terms of probabilities, I think you mean that each score is *independent*. It's like flipping two coins. The result of the first coin doesn't tell us anything about the result of the second. With a deck, the same outcome can occur like this:

Say we use an 18-card deck with values 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 4, 4, 4, 4, 3, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2
We are going to determine each score by drawing three cards at random, no replacement, so that scores will range from 6-15 and average 10.5.
We will draw cards _without looking at them_ to make six face-down piles of three cards
If we want to allocate as drawn, we'll make the leftmost pile strength and the rightmost pile charisma; or we will assign later
We turn up all piles simultaneously
In this case, we have no information on any score in advance: they are all equally a surprise. Do you see what I am saying. I believe what you are chasing is at heart something more specific. It's not to do with the randomness, or per score surprise. Most likely you want the sum of scores to vary. How much by?

Is it okay to have one player have scores summing to 18 while another's sum to 108? Or is that too much variance? I suspect you'd be tempted here to say - that won't happen - but then, like @Xetheral's DM, what happens if it does happen? I had one campaign where our bear-barian just had far better stats than everyone else. They overshadowed everyone: adding nothing to the campaign.  In my experience, players enjoy variance, but much less variance than the dice allow.



EzekielRaiden said:


> And, as noted by others above (frex, @Lanefan ), in some ways these requests are very specifically to _remove_ parts of the design space. E.g. the goal of removing or at least reducing the whole idea of "builds," or to "make" players stop "playing their character sheet" or whatever. They don't want one method for them and another method for other people; they want one method for everyone, that will eliminate or curtail the parts of the game they find undesirable. And I will absolutely cop to the same thing: I genuinely think PB is superior because I genuinely believe everyone should get a fair shot at participation, and being shortchanged or supercharged at character generation inherently prevents that possibility.



There are always niches of players a design cannot serve. The goal is to satisfy as well as possible your chosen main audience. Points-buy won't serve those players (it has zero surprise). I believe deck-generations offer the most scope for future-design. For example, we could use fewer than all the cards. Taking the deck above, we could add one 6 and one 1. Players still draw only 18 cards, no replacement. There will be surprise, because until the last card drawn they do not know what cards will be left in the deck.

6, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 4, 4, 4, 4, 3, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2 ,1 draw 18 cards without replacement, allocating three to each score. Either allocating as drawn, or as desired. Two cards will be left in the deck.


----------



## UngeheuerLich

overgeeked said:


> We use those characters as mine sweepers. It's best not to get too attached. But, to be fair, we roll 4d6, drop the lowest.



I had a special player in 3.0, who rolled 4d6 drop lowest and it took him 6 or 7 rolls to make a legal character (sum of bonuses > 0 and at least one 14 or higher). 
He came up with 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14...


----------



## CubicsRube

Why has this turned into another ability score generation thread?

Up to this point I've been learning some interesting things about 4e.


----------



## Stalker0

Hussar said:


> Wait.. what?
> 
> We've had retooled Ghosts of Saltmarsh, Ravenloft (twice), Dungeon of the Mad Mage, Tales of the Yawning Portal, Eberron.   We're getting two revamped older settings next year, I believe.  How in the world do you think that they aren't catering to old fans at all?
> 
> Good grief, how much more catering do you think they can do?



They also rereleased all of 1e for free


----------



## Garthanos

Malmuria said:


> My understanding of what 4e mostly comes from videos like this that...do not make it sound very appealing.  But even in 3.5 or 5e, there can be a lot to keep track of in combat that really slows things down.




The above is pertinent to the discussion because he is bringing 4e elements into 5e.

MC is currently/recently also running actually 4e with videos online he is rather enthusiastic and his players are charismatic too. And while he is rusty at it, still very interesting.


----------



## HammerMan

billd91 said:


> Depends on how you measure success. For a typical RPG, it was extremely successful. For D&D, not so much. For Hasbro's benchmarks, definitely not.



it out sold 3e. 3e out sold 2e, as such the only edition that outsould 4e was 5e... going by this information I assume 6e will outsell 2,3,4,&5e... that will not make 5e less of a success. it doesn't make 4e less of a success. It doesn't make ANY edition less.


----------



## doctorbadwolf

billd91 said:


> Whereas for me, they work much better. They're a *significant* rest, worthy of actually regaining hit points and other short rest powers, while 5 minutes is hardly anything after life and death exertion. That was always a disconnect for me with the 5 minute/encounter rest of 4e.



But it is realistic. It only takes a few minutes to catch your breath and be ready to go again. Like I’ve been in a fight where a guy was trying to stab me, and literally a couple minutes and some water, and I was ready to party.  

My young adulthood was weird, don’t ask.  

I also know that the adrenaline and tunnel vision and exertion in intense recreation heavy combat is the same as a real life or death fight, both from experience and from the word of combat vets in the SCA, and I can tell ya that most people only need several minutes at most, to be ready to go again.


----------



## doctorbadwolf

HammerMan said:


> it out sold 3e. 3e out sold 2e, as such the only edition that outsould 4e was 5e... going by this information I assume 6e will outsell 2,3,4,&5e... that will not make 5e less of a success. it doesn't make 4e less of a success. It doesn't make ANY edition less.



Yep. A profitable product that splits the fan base indicates that a new product that doesn’t split the fan base with be much more profitable. That’s it. That’s the whole story.


----------



## Lyxen

doctorbadwolf said:


> Yep. A profitable product that splits the fan base indicates that a new product that doesn’t split the fan base with be much more profitable. That’s it. That’s the whole story.




Hum, a better product will also be in general much more profitable than a lesser one. And a product that appeals to a much wider audience will be much more successful that one restricted to a limited audience.

If you listen only to forums, honestly, you could get the impression than 5e splits the fanbase, but it really depends which fan base you are speaking of, the previous one or the current one ?


----------



## doctorbadwolf

Lyxen said:


> Hum, a better product will also be in general much more profitable than a lesser one. And a product that appeals to a much wider audience will be much more successful that one restricted to a limited audience.



Sure?


Lyxen said:


> If you listen only to forums, honestly, you could get the impression than 5e splits the fanbase, but it really depends which fan base you are speaking of, the previous one or the current one ?



I’m not really sure where you’re goin here.


----------



## Malmuria

Garthanos said:


> The above is pertinent to the discussion because he is bringing 4e elements into 5e.
> 
> MC is currently/recently also running actually 4e with videos online he is rather enthusiastic and his players are charismatic too. And while he is rusty at it, still very interesting.



I tried watching the latest video of the 4e game.  Caveat is that I find a lot of actual plays to be boring, and so I didn't watch the whole thing and skipped around it a bit.  Pros would be is that gameplay still 'felt' basically like dnd?  Overall it still feels too much like a video of Colvile playing around with software, especially as he uses the grid for social encounters as well it seems.  And the players don't have their cameras on, so really the main thing to focus on is the fantasy grounds software, which is not compelling to me.


----------



## Lyxen

doctorbadwolf said:


> Sure?




Yes, I'm reasonably sure... 



doctorbadwolf said:


> I’m not really sure where you’re goin here.




Just pointing out that the splitting of the fan base is, to me, not necessarily the reason for success or failure of an edition, that's all.


----------



## Stalker0

UngeheuerLich said:


> I think in 2e we would have also wiped the floor with them at that level...
> 
> So even if it is "too easy" for your tastes, it is well within the bounds of a reasonable encounter with a DnD story.
> 9th level PCs were top notch back then. The last level where a fighter got full hp per level, 5th level spells.
> 
> Also I am not sure if 100 Archers are really a problem because in a normal setup, not all can fire at your characters, so probably those were many smaller encounters at once. (I was not at your table, but I might be wrong here.
> Also, if all fired at your group, I wonder how generously defended your characters were. Full plate? Shield spell?
> How many are damage spells did you have and how many wall spells?
> Even a wall of force used to divide the battlefield?
> So I need to ask you:
> 
> were powerful magic items in use?
> were your PCs "optimized" or built with a generous build method?
> did your characters rely on a few, over the top spells that won their day?
> 
> If one of your answers is yes, then the problem might lie in the fact, that the baseline suggestions are rather made with average PCs in mind...



I'll put this in spoilers since its Off-topic but some people might be interested to see how a group of 9th level characters beat a CR30.



Spoiler




The party had teleported into a "trap" that they had fallen into through various other plot pieces. The githyanki forces were mainly on their barges in a wide open area, save for one tower in the area (aka the archers could target and kill anyone). I had designed this to be an absolute kill trap, as I told the players when the fight started "the gloves were off". However, the party did have a special one use item that gave them all the effects of a long rest....aka they were at 100% power when things went down.
The party 9th level:
Wizard
Sorc
Fighter
Paladin
Rogue
Barb
11th level Cleric (had a cursed shield of arrow attraction, an "important magic item" for this.)
Most players had 1-2 magic items, like a +1 sword or a ring of fire resistance or something. The only really impactful items were the shield previously mentioned, the one use item that gave every a long rest to start the fight, and each player could get bardic inspiration 1/day through a plot based effect.
Party all had the standard point buy from the PHB, max hp at first level, half round up for future levels (aka d8 = 5 hp)

Wizard won initiative, cast a wall of force (dome version) to prevent an insta death to most of the party from the archers.
Knights started teleporting through the wall, and then porting out when hurt. Main front line forced to engage.
Sorc cast a fog cloud to prevent the teleportations, and they took out the remaining knights in the dome.
The wizard's familiar was a bit away from the group and had not been attacked yet. The wizard had his familiar race towards the barge. The familiar was sniped but it allowed the wizard a glance at one of the gun ports through the familiars eyes, and so now the wizard had a direct location and distance inside the ship.
While the others made the loudest sounds they could as distraction, the wizard and sorc began d dooring people into the gun port. Leaving the barb, rogue, and cleric on the ground.
Alpha team (in the ship) managed stealth checks and were able to move through key parts of the ship. At the end, they faced the commander (aka the second in command of the entire expedition). Instead of fighting him, the Paladin actually used diplomacy to try and talk the commander down (this was a very intense moment, several of the other players were actually heated about this....they thought it was an insane waste of action at a time when a TPK was still very much a concern). And yet....the paladin got a 30! Moreso, I had actually written into the plot that the commander was fed up with the general on the entire strategic course of the Githyanki campaign (completely in plot before this fight, I was even surprised it came up). And so, the commander took a dive off the ship (with feather fall esque power of course). He didn't surrender, but he didn't intervene. The wizard got to the control wheel (aka a ship looking spin wheel). He placed a resilient sphere around himself and the wheel....he took himself out of the fight directly, but guaranteed he would keep control of the ship. This dropped the wall of force, leading to....
Beta Team prepared for the wall of force drop. The cleric casts as many protective spells as he could, and went into dodge. The Rogue and Barb prepared to run. As the wall of force dropped and the fog dissipated, the archers opened fire. The shield of arrow attraction gives the user resistance against arrows but also attracts all areas in the area to them. And so the cleric took the full force....but through the power of dodge, a massive buffed AC to begin with, and resistance to arrows.....managed to survive and get a heal spell off. The barb and rogue raced for the tower while the arrows were raining down into the shield.
The main barg (now under Alphas Control) began raining fire on the smaller platforms holding the archers (basically fireballs). And so the archers who had been in cramped conditions on the platforms, began to get devastated. The main barge lifted up to ensure the knights on the ground couldn't get back to them, and so the main barge started focusing on the archers....and the small barges were no match for the main one.
Beta Team got into the tower where the main githyanki general was at, and started the fight there.
This led into the meat of the combat. Alpha Team dealt with githyanki on the main barge while the wizard used the barge to fight the archers....even ramming them to knock more archers off to their deaths. Beta Team fought the general, and the cleric dealt with the knights.
It remained a big scramble through the rest of the fight. A fireball from the barg helped the cleric with the knights. Eventually the sorc was able to get down to the tower and help Beta team, who was no match for the General 2 on 1. A lot of epic combat, but your more standard tactics at that point, not the "special actions" we have seen up onto this point.
At the end of it all, the party was now drained. Everyone was seriously hurt, spells and abilities were all massively drained. But....at the end of it all, the party defeated the entire force with no casualties, and managed to secure a githyanki battle barge for their home city.


----------



## overgeeked

UngeheuerLich said:


> I had a special player in 3.0, who rolled 4d6 drop lowest and it took him 6 or 7 rolls to make a legal character (sum of bonuses > 0 and at least one 14 or higher).
> He came up with 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14...



Yeah. Sometimes characters suck. C’est la vie.


----------



## HammerMan

doctorbadwolf said:


> Yep. A profitable product that splits the fan base indicates that a new product that doesn’t split the fan base with be much more profitable. That’s it. That’s the whole story.



this reminds me of people that keep telling me that the billion dollar one of the top grossing of all time new star wars movies failed... because fans complained.   I hope to someday reach the failure of these products... I am also sure you would love to have 1% of that failure...


----------



## doctorbadwolf

Lyxen said:


> Yes, I'm reasonably sure...
> 
> 
> 
> Just pointing out that the splitting of the fan base is, to me, not necessarily the reason for success or failure of an edition, that's all.



Okay. I didn't say that 4e failed, so I don't really know what this is about.


HammerMan said:


> this reminds me of people that keep telling me that the billion dollar one of the top grossing of all time new star wars movies failed... because fans complained.



See above. 


HammerMan said:


> I hope to someday reach the failure of these products... I am also sure you would love to have 1% of that failure...



lol okay bud. 


Maybe you guys weren't paying attention to the transition from 4e to 5e, idk, but the word from wizards was pretty simply that 4e's publication ended, and they designed 5e with the feedback they did, because in spite of DnD rising in mainstream popularity, and things like Aquisitions Inc being "huge" from the perspective of that time, the DnD fanbase was still quite split, to the point where Pathfinder spent the whole print run of 4e head to head with dnd in sales. 

So, like I said, a profitable product, set aside in favor of a new product designed to not split the fanbase so that it can be even more profitable. Which worked. 

This has nothing to do with any idea of any given product being a "failure". I literally referred to it as being profitable in the post you both quoted.


----------



## Garthanos

Malmuria said:


> I tried watching the latest video of the 4e game.  Caveat is that I find a lot of actual plays to be boring, and so I didn't watch the whole thing and skipped around it a bit.  Pros would be is that gameplay still 'felt' basically like dnd?  Overall it still feels too much like a video of Colvile playing around with software,



The non-face to face environment seems to bring a lot of software into the picture and it takes time for players/dm and maybe even viewer I think to integrate it. Over time I suspect it works its way into being a background element. Also I can see about any DM in doing fewer scenery descriptions in an environment with pretty maps, mine classically are usually quick sketches for instance. 


Malmuria said:


> And the players don't have their cameras on, so really the main thing to focus on is the fantasy grounds software, which is not compelling to me.



They did have them on when i watched* and were also running their own other streams in the three live cases you probably watched a saved edited version. 

*(I think only one player didnt)


----------



## Nefermandias

Charlaquin said:


> I agree. But I think people took more issue with martial daylies than martial encounter powers.



We have to consider the fact that "Martial" in the 4e context was a Power Source as much as Divine, Arcane, Primal, Psionic or Shadow. It goes beyond what regular people could ever hope to achieve and it's more like some kind of magic that special people can achieve by means of intense physical training and ancient practices. 
Keep in mind that things that everyone could do like Melee Basic Attack, Bull Rush and Grab were not true "Martial" powers.


----------



## UngeheuerLich

Thanks for the roundup,


Stalker0 said:


> I'll put this in spoilers since its Off-topic but some people might be interested to see how a group of 9th level characters beat a CR30.
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The party had teleported into a "trap" that they had fallen into through various other plot pieces. The githyanki forces were mainly on their barges in a wide open area, save for one tower in the area (aka the archers could target and kill anyone). I had designed this to be an absolute kill trap, as I told the players when the fight started "the gloves were off". However, the party did have a special one use item that gave them all the effects of a long rest....aka they were at 100% power when things went down.
> The party 9th level:
> Wizard
> Sorc
> Fighter
> Paladin
> Rogue
> Barb
> 11th level Cleric (had a cursed shield of arrow attraction, an "important magic item" for this.)
> Most players had 1-2 magic items, like a +1 sword or a ring of fire resistance or something. The only really impactful items were the shield previously mentioned, the one use item that gave every a long rest to start the fight, and each player could get bardic inspiration 1/day through a plot based effect.
> Party all had the standard point buy from the PHB, max hp at first level, half round up for future levels (aka d8 = 5 hp)
> 
> Wizard won initiative, cast a wall of force (dome version) to prevent an insta death to most of the party from the archers.
> Knights started teleporting through the wall, and then porting out when hurt. Main front line forced to engage.
> Sorc cast a fog cloud to prevent the teleportations, and they took out the remaining knights in the dome.
> The wizard's familiar was a bit away from the group and had not been attacked yet. The wizard had his familiar race towards the barge. The familiar was sniped but it allowed the wizard a glance at one of the gun ports through the familiars eyes, and so now the wizard had a direct location and distance inside the ship.
> While the others made the loudest sounds they could as distraction, the wizard and sorc began d dooring people into the gun port. Leaving the barb, rogue, and cleric on the ground.
> Alpha team (in the ship) managed stealth checks and were able to move through key parts of the ship. At the end, they faced the commander (aka the second in command of the entire expedition). Instead of fighting him, the Paladin actually used diplomacy to try and talk the commander down (this was a very intense moment, several of the other players were actually heated about this....they thought it was an insane waste of action at a time when a TPK was still very much a concern). And yet....the paladin got a 30! Moreso, I had actually written into the plot that the commander was fed up with the general on the entire strategic course of the Githyanki campaign (completely in plot before this fight, I was even surprised it came up). And so, the commander took a dive off the ship (with feather fall esque power of course). He didn't surrender, but he didn't intervene. The wizard got to the control wheel (aka a ship looking spin wheel). He placed a resilient sphere around himself and the wheel....he took himself out of the fight directly, but guaranteed he would keep control of the ship. This dropped the wall of force, leading to....
> Beta Team prepared for the wall of force drop. The cleric casts as many protective spells as he could, and went into dodge. The Rogue and Barb prepared to run. As the wall of force dropped and the fog dissipated, the archers opened fire. The shield of arrow attraction gives the user resistance against arrows but also attracts all areas in the area to them. And so the cleric took the full force....but through the power of dodge, a massive buffed AC to begin with, and resistance to arrows.....managed to survive and get a heal spell off. The barb and rogue raced for the tower while the arrows were raining down into the shield.
> The main barg (now under Alphas Control) began raining fire on the smaller platforms holding the archers (basically fireballs). And so the archers who had been in cramped conditions on the platforms, began to get devastated. The main barge lifted up to ensure the knights on the ground couldn't get back to them, and so the main barge started focusing on the archers....and the small barges were no match for the main one.
> Beta Team got into the tower where the main githyanki general was at, and started the fight there.
> This led into the meat of the combat. Alpha Team dealt with githyanki on the main barge while the wizard used the barge to fight the archers....even ramming them to knock more archers off to their deaths. Beta Team fought the general, and the cleric dealt with the knights.
> It remained a big scramble through the rest of the fight. A fireball from the barg helped the cleric with the knights. Eventually the sorc was able to get down to the tower and help Beta team, who was no match for the General 2 on 1. A lot of epic combat, but your more standard tactics at that point, not the "special actions" we have seen up onto this point.
> At the end of it all, the party was now drained. Everyone was seriously hurt, spells and abilities were all massively drained. But....at the end of it all, the party defeated the entire force with no casualties, and managed to secure a githyanki battle barge for their home city.



Thanks for the roundup. An epic fight, exactly as I imagined it.

In the spoiler tag, my reply to you  



Spoiler



And exactly what I thought:

one of the "broken" spells
the perfect magic items
perfect enemies
a very good and creative plan.
combat was broken up in several smaller ones.

So this is definitely NOT a "too easy" scenario but an epic battle.

We had similar scenarios in 2e and 3e with a certain underground adventure where you have to raid a whole city.
I don't imagine how we won in 2e as players, but as a DM I remember the scenario well when I converted it to 3.5.

Key points:

rary's telepathic bond
flying Team A armed with fireballs
stationary hidden and greater invisible team B with ice storm and flame strikes (you don't see the origin contrary to fireball)
dimension door ranger and bladesinger who went into the commanding buildings and called for "air strikes" whenever needed.

The enemy, a lich, level 18 or so cleric CR 23 or 4 was through luck the first target and did just survive the surprise assault with 3 hp and then just died nex time because it foolishly tried to stun the assailants instead of phase shifting away

Everything taken together it was at least a CR 30 scenario vs 5 or 6 lvl 11 characters I think.

So by that definition 3e was way too easy


----------



## Charlaquin

Nefermandias said:


> We have to consider the fact that "Martial" in the 4e context was a Power Source as much as Divine, Arcane, Primal, Psionic or Shadow. It goes beyond what regular people could ever hope to achieve and it's more like some kind of magic that special people can achieve by means of intense physical training and ancient practices.
> Keep in mind that things that everyone could do like Melee Basic Attack, Bull Rush and Grab were not true "Martial" powers.



I mean, _I_ get it. Just saying, I don’t think the critics were as bothered by encounter powers as daily.


----------



## Mustrum_Ridcully

I guess when it comes to stats, I think it's kinda boring if you know that your highest stat will be the most important one for your character class/build, the second-highest the second-most important and so on.

What if instead you had a rule like: Okay, your primary ability score starts with 16 or 15 or whatever kids these days like as minimum-to-be-viable. So everyone can ensure his Wizard has enough Int to be good, and your Fighter has enough Strenght to be good. Kinda boring up to point, but potentially unavoidable because otherwise there is too much grief, and everyone starts on the same playing field, too.

But now we add some randomness. Then, order the rest of your stats in order of priority.
Roll 1d6 twice, reroll if both dice come up the same, or pick option 7.
1: Your 1st unassigned score becomes 14
2: Your 2nd Priority is determined by rolling 4d6, drop lowest.
3. Your 3rd Priority is determined by rolling 3d6.
4. After assigning all scores, your 4th Priority will have the same value as your 2nd Priority.
5. After assigning all scores, your 3rd priority will exchange value with your 1st Priority.
6. Your least prioritized stat becomes 18.
7. The player picks two items on this list as he prefers and assigns the remaining scores. Then, he reduces his highest score by 2, and adds 1d4 to his lowest stat. If he wants, he can instead add 1d4 to another player's character lowest stat (if multiple players are creating their characters.)

Then, assign the following 5 stats in order of priority to the ability scores that have not yet assigned a score: 15, 13, 10, 8, 6.


----------



## Nefermandias

EzekielRaiden said:


> Which shows the two breakdown cases quite clearly: either (1) you aren't actually strict about it, so the (arbitrary) bottom of the bell curve is cut off and _usually_ power creep slowly raises what "the bottom of the bell curve" looks like, or (2) you keep these horrible numbers and almost always die, except in the rare cases where you get lucky. The former means abandoning true randomness (consider the rather complicated, and no longer all _that_ random, default rolling method of 3e), while the latter means forcing players through repeated failure states before a success state appears. Neither is all that good today.
> 
> OSR games with modern design have found solutions, but even those have issues. DCC, frex, has the "character funnel": you skip over the process of waiting to get a character that survives by running a large number simultaneously through a meatgrinder. Any that survive thus _already_ either have reasonably good stats, or have gotten lucky, and either option is generally acceptable. However, such things risk showing their gamist edge (after all, such a funnel is _inherently_ dissociated, for anyone who cares about that sort of thing), and ultimately still devalue randomness by ensuring selective pressure that favors characters with actual bonuses.
> 
> Ultimately....I don't really know if there is a true _solution_ to this problem. It very much seems like the two desired things--effective characters _and_ easily-generated, truly _random_ characters--are truly at odds. Being effective generally means falling in a certain range of power. Being truly random requires _not_ falling in any particular range of power. Trimming the randomness to guarantee _some_ competence either sacrifices simplicity and ease of use, or breaks the feeling of randomness, or (often) both.
> 
> I think, in the end, they either need to be just marked as distinct approaches with a warning label on the random-gen option, or D&D needs to decide which matters more. Because forcing the _appearance_ of randomness while actually, in the end, forcing pretty non-random results is not really tenable long-term.



That's why 4e only had point buy.


----------



## Garthanos

Nefermandias said:


> That's why 4e only had point buy.



and standard array


----------



## Krachek

Honestly just make point buy not a Variant in 5.5


----------



## Lanefan

Krachek said:


> Honestly just make point buy not a Variant in 5.5



Indeed.  Get rid of it entirely.


----------



## EzekielRaiden

clearstream said:


> It's probably just that the term is a bit misleading. In terms of probabilities, I think you mean that each score is *independent*. It's like flipping two coins. The result of the first coin doesn't tell us anything about the result of the second. With a deck, the same outcome can occur like this:



I did, in fact, use the phrase "completely independent" in my post you quoted above, so...yes, I very much meant "independent."



clearstream said:


> In this case, we have no information on any score in advance: they are all equally a surprise. Do you see what I am saying. I believe what you are chasing is at heart something more specific. It's not to do with the randomness, or per score surprise. Most likely you want the sum of scores to vary. How much by?



Well, again, we're not talking about _my_ interests, but my understanding of others' interests. But I can tell you, right now, explicitly, that I have been told that if there is literally ANY effect--anything WHATSOEVER, no matter how small, no matter how unpredictable--_causes_ later stats to be better if earlier stats were worse, no matter how probabilistic that effect is, it is unacceptable. There needs to be truly, absolutely ZERO impact on probabilities.

Drawing cards without  replacement, by definition, generates dependent probabilities. The odds of drawing (say) 4 for your second stat are definitely always changed _because_ of what you drew for your first stat. That's literally what drawing without replacement does, it makes each draw's probabilities depend on which cards have already been removed.



clearstream said:


> Is it okay to have one player have scores summing to 18 while another's sum to 108? Or is that too much variance? I suspect you'd be tempted here to say - that won't happen - but then, like @Xetheral's DM, what happens if it does happen? I had one campaign where our bear-barian just had far better stats than everyone else. They overshadowed everyone: adding nothing to the campaign.  In my experience, players enjoy variance, but much less variance than the dice allow.



If we are actually talking about _*my*_ tastes, yes, that much variation is unacceptable. I'm fine with some amount of variation, e.g. with 4e PB, counting racial stats, you have a theoretical total sum spread between 73 and 83 (with 73 requiring a hyperfocused human and the 83 being a very suboptimal option and requiring a non-human).

If we're talking about the tastes I've been _told_ by others, then yes, to the best of my knowledge, it is not only _okay_ to have such variance, it is mandatory that such variance be at least _possible_. Otherwise, again, people feel their characters are "born lucky," and thus uninteresting.



clearstream said:


> There are always niches of players a design cannot serve. The goal is to satisfy as well as possible your chosen main audience. Points-buy won't serve those players (it has zero surprise). I believe deck-generations offer the most scope for future-design. For example, we could use fewer than all the cards. Taking the deck above, we could add one 6 and one 1. Players still draw only 18 cards, no replacement. There will be surprise, because until the last card drawn they do not know what cards will be left in the deck.
> 
> 6, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 4, 4, 4, 4, 3, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2 ,1 draw 18 cards without replacement, allocating three to each score. Either allocating as drawn, or as desired. Two cards will be left in the deck.



Again, for many, this spoils the "surprise" because the probability of drawing (say) 15 goes up if you previously drew a total of 6 for Strength and a total of 7 for Dex (or whatever order one prefers to draw stats in). You haven't actually made the events independent, by definition.


----------



## Garthanos

Lanefan said:


> Indeed.  Get rid of it entirely.



obviously anything that empowers player choice is bad  /pointed sarcasm.


----------



## EzekielRaiden

Lanefan said:


> Indeed.  Get rid of it entirely.



While I appreciate that this is said with humor...yeah. Good luck with that. As I said before, there's a lot to learn from the design of early editions. It's unfortunate that, due to the opaque presentation and abysmal organization, those things are harder to learn than they should be. But there are absolutely very good design elements in early D&D, ones that deserve to be reviewed and tested for use in modern games.

Absolute rejection of point buy is not one of them. Even the character funnel, which saves a ton of time and is IMO a very smart piece of design, is not gonna be particularly popular with the gaming community at large. While I have been speaking out for a group of people whose interests differ a lot from mine--those who see PB or 4d6-drop-lowest or whatever as "born lucky" etc.--I am under no illusions that that group is anywhere near the bulk of players. Most players want to get their class fantasy sooner rather than later; they generally decide what to play _first_ and then figure out how to make that happen; and they generally want to have useful numbers that benefit them in the areas they're interested in pursuing. That's been very clearly the more popular approach basically ever since D&D escaped from the Lake Geneva area, being played by people who weren't acculturated to the perspective of Gygax, Arneson, and the wargaming founders of the genre.



Garthanos said:


> obviously anything that empowers player choice is bad  /pointed sarcasm.



I mean, I'd rather not get too deep into the weeds of sarcasm (nor of "empower[ing] player choice"). That way madness lies.

But, yeah, players generally want to be able to bring a fantasy to life, not wait for an indeterminate amount of sessions before racking up enough stories and events that they feel like they've _grown_ a fantasy into life. There are, of course, plenty of players who do only want to step back and let grow whatever seeds happen to blow in. But they aren't the majority, and haven't been for a very long time. Changing the underlying system so that it only permits the latter method rather than the former isn't going to make the latter method more overall popular. It's just going to do as it did in the past, and make more people deviate from those rules because, by and large, they aren't as popular as the "I wanna play an elf bard who <backstory>" or "I wanna play a tiefling paladin pursuing a beauty contest victory in order to help protect threatened animals!" or whatever.


----------



## clearstream

EzekielRaiden said:


> Drawing cards without  replacement, by definition, generates dependent probabilities. The odds of drawing (say) 4 for your second stat are definitely always changed _because_ of what you drew for your first stat. That's literally what drawing without replacement does, it makes each draw's probabilities depend on which cards have already been removed.



Given the information-hiding I described, I believe that this describes a desire for variation in the point total rather than 'surprise'. Right? They don't want to know that they will haves 66 points in ability scores: they want that to vary. From other evidence, I believe even those who want variation, want it to be constrained (e.g. posts about player X feeling bad because their scores come to a much higher total than player Y.)



EzekielRaiden said:


> If we're talking about the tastes I've been _told_ by others, then yes, to the best of my knowledge, it is not only _okay_ to have such variance, it is mandatory that such variance be at least _possible_. Otherwise, again, people feel their characters are "born lucky," and thus uninteresting.



The deck-generation variant I described (two extra cards in the deck) achieves that. Upon reflection I think it works best if the added cards fall in the middle of the range, e.g. 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 4, 4, 4, 4, *4*, *3*, 3, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2 so that if you draw the 4 and 3 instead of two 2s, you gain 3 points, and if you draw them instead of 5s, you lose 3 points. I'm interested to hear your intuitions on that?



EzekielRaiden said:


> Again, for many, this spoils the "surprise" because the probability of drawing (say) 15 goes up if you previously drew a total of 6 for Strength and a total of 7 for Dex (or whatever order one prefers to draw stats in). You haven't actually made the events independent, by definition.



Agreed about independence. As noted, I believe the "surprise" under discussion must be as to the total across scores, seeing as information hiding and simultaneous reveal made it impossible to know in advance any given score. That said, people are subject to psychological and tactile effects and perhaps there is a desire for some sort of show or entertainment in the generation process. A few times I have heard others describe enjoying one or other method for the sake of the rituals involved in it. One thread mentions a baroque method using a Pathfinder Harrow deck!


----------



## Krachek

Lanefan said:


> Indeed.  Get rid of it entirely.



Nice try! But I am not a fan of the cancel process! 
Put back boing buy as a legitimate method, 
add more sample of popular point buy results, like 4ed did, 
Keep rolled stats as an method for experimented players.
Still people like to « beat the game », so it would be nice to add a softer way to improve a score without too much risk.


----------



## Lanefan

EzekielRaiden said:


> While I appreciate that this is said with humor...yeah. Good luck with that.



Thing is, I mean it.  Personally I'd be quite happy if point-buy and standard array went away and never came back.


EzekielRaiden said:


> As I said before, there's a lot to learn from the design of early editions. It's unfortunate that, due to the opaque presentation and abysmal organization, those things are harder to learn than they should be. But there are absolutely very good design elements in early D&D, ones that deserve to be reviewed and tested for use in modern games.
> 
> Absolute rejection of point buy is not one of them. Even the character funnel, which saves a ton of time and is IMO a very smart piece of design, is not gonna be particularly popular with the gaming community at large. While I have been speaking out for a group of people whose interests differ a lot from mine--those who see PB or 4d6-drop-lowest or whatever as "born lucky" etc.--I am under no illusions that that group is anywhere near the bulk of players.



Yet at one time that group was the bulk of players.  Something happened to change that view; I don't know what, but I do wonder how it can be reversed.


EzekielRaiden said:


> Most players want to get their class fantasy sooner rather than later; they generally decide what to play _first_ and then figure out how to make that happen; and they generally want to have useful numbers that benefit them in the areas they're interested in pursuing. That's been very clearly the more popular approach basically ever since D&D escaped from the Lake Geneva area, being played by people who weren't acculturated to the perspective of Gygax, Arneson, and the wargaming founders of the genre.



I'm not sure it came quite that early.  Even in 2e days there was still very much a sense of "play what the dice will give you"; though I suspect all the options in later 2e - and then, of course, 3e - tended to promote the "character build" side of the game, which got players thinking ahead of time as to what that build might look like and forced more focus onto mechanical character development.

Another aspect - and this might begin way further back, in the DragonLance era in 1e - is that players got a bit more precious about their characters; and thus wanted - and, later, came to expect - them to survive longer and further, to be in play more of the time.  This expectation has been reflected in the design of 4e and even more so in 5e, where as written* it's more difficult to kill characters and there's far fewer opportunities to otherwise take a character out of the play for any more than a round or two.

* - yes, obviously a DM can ratchet up the difficulty if she likes; I'm just looking at the RAW.


EzekielRaiden said:


> But, yeah, players generally want to be able to bring a fantasy to life, not wait for an indeterminate amount of sessions before racking up enough stories and events that they feel like they've _grown_ a fantasy into life.



And this points out another change in outlook over time.  At one time the fantasy being brought to life *was* those stories and events, and the growth and (mechanical) development of individual characters - while welcome, of course - was more seen as a pleasant side effect rather than the main reason for play.  

More recently there seems to be far more focus on the player's own character, with whatever stories or events that might happen relegated more to stage-setting and a reason for the individual character to shine.

Player entitlement is probably too harsh a term to put to all this, and player selfishness is definitely too harsh; but there's no denying the general shift of player-side focus from "party and what it does" to "own PC and what it does" over the decades.


----------



## Mordhau

I'm perplexed how people think getting rid of point buy prevents builds.

It's like people do this weird switch in their head where they because 4d6k3 is rolled and 3d6 in order see what you get are also rolled, they think they have the same effect.  On a continuum from planned and built to completely random it's more like this:


Point Buy/4d6k3 - - - - - - - - - - -  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  - -3d6 in order.

In any case, even with 3d6 you'd still get builds.   You prevent builds by having no build options (for better or  worse).


----------



## Hussar

overgeeked said:


> The old "it's Basic so it's kids' stuff...we're teenagers and we played Advanced D&D". But we soon were all playing AD&D...and we kept on playing AD&D until 2009ish. We skipped three-ish editions of the game. Mine is not a unique experience.



I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the fact that you played AD&D for nearly thirty years is a close enough to a unique experience that it's pretty out there.  As in, the overwhelming majority of gamers do not share your experience.

The point I'm making is that after ten years, it's not a "fad".  If you started playing AD&D after 1985, you never saw the fad years.  The fad years ended a couple of years before that.  By 1985, we were picking up the pieces of nearly all the people abandoning the hobby.  And, even at the height of the fad years, we weren't even remotely hitting numbers like we are now.  

IOW, after seven consecutive years of record growth, "fad" is the wrong way of thinking.  This isn't a fad.  Hell, even if half the new players abandoned the game tomorrow, the gaming population still dwarfs any other point in gaming history.  We'd have to lose about 90% of gamers just to get back to where things were pre-5e.  I'm certainly not seeing any indication that that's happening.


----------



## EzekielRaiden

Lanefan said:


> Player entitlement is probably too harsh a term to put to all this, and player selfishness is definitely too harsh; but there's no denying the general shift of player-side focus from "party and what it does" to "own PC and what it does" over the decades.



It is somewhat ironic, then, that you don't care for the recent edition that _most_ prioritized the party and what it does--that is, 4e. Because 4e, much more than _either_ 3e or 5e (and, IMO, more than even 2e!), critically depended on teamwork. Yes, you could optimize yourself. But the _best_ optimization, by far the most _effective_ thing you could do, was optimize how you fit in with your team collectively.

If you want people to care about the team and what the team does, _reward them for thinking about the team_. That's why I was so flabbergasted in a previous conversation when someone said (paraphrased) "Lay on Hands isn't an _actual_ sacrifice, because you have extra resources." Like...if you want your players to do something, you HAVE to either equip them to do it, or reward them for doing it. That's probably the single, most fundamental principle of game design. If you want to see behavior X, reward it.

Forcing people into 3d6-strict (or 4d6k3-and-assign) doesn't reward the behavior you want to see. It just redirects the behavior you don't like to other parts of the system.


----------



## Lanefan

Mordhau said:


> I'm perplexed how people think getting rid of point buy prevents builds.



It doesn't get rid of them; but it serves to change the mentality, or approach, away from "I have xxx already in mind and I'm going to build it" toward "let's see what the dice give me to work with before I decide what I'll build".


Mordhau said:


> In any case, even with 3d6 you'd still get builds.   You prevent builds by having no build options (for better or  worse).



Yes, that's the next step.


----------



## Herschel

darjr said:


> Those rules buried in fluff are a feature. You can't say I cast sacred flame without saying "I cast sacred flame" and have to deal with the fluff of it. The fluff means something so much your players have to deal with it running their characters.
> 
> In 4e you can entirely ignore the fluff. A feature to some, at least I thought it was at first.
> 
> And while it is true about the "I attack" thing in 5e it isn't nearly as bad as in 4e, in 4e EVERYTHING was "I attack with a * power". At least in 5e you often HAVE to state what ability you're using or what spell is being cast because there is NO OTHER way to refer to it.
> 
> I can't find a quote at the moment, but 4e powers were designed like magic cards, precicely because the fluff and mechanics are seperate. It was a design goal. And at first I thought it was freaking brilliant. It helped them be clear about the rules and develop them, it was a desired asset. But its downside was that the fluff had no effect on the mechanics.
> 
> However, I think we'll have to just agree to disagree.



The fluff was no more or less part of the mechanics than any other edition, the main difference being it wasn't just casters that got to do cool things. Melee guys and archers got to be vibrant and dynamic, not support putzes. Defender classes got abilities to actually help them do their job rather than being sword-swinging speed bumps. Dual Lightning Strike is at least as evocative as yet another fireball, and YAF devolves in to "I hit these guys with 36 fire, DC 16 save" even more often that Dual Lightning Strike ever did.


----------



## Henadic Theologian

Aldarc said:


> I don't think that WotC has been catering to old fans at all: not since the D&D Next Playtest when they were courting the Pathfinder and OSR crowds. Since then though? It seems mostly oriented towards the Critical Role crowd and the newcomers.




 Primarily yes, but stuff like Warduke and Tasha shows they also want to appeal to old school fans as long as it's not alienating new fans, for as big a market as they can get.


----------



## Garthanos

EzekielRaiden said:


> Because 4e, much more than _either_ 3e or 5e (and, IMO, more than even 2e!), critically depended on teamwork. Yes, you could optimize yourself. But the _best_ optimization, by far the most _effective_ thing you could do, was optimize how you fit in with your team collectively.



Definitely can be and the Warlord epitomizes that.


----------



## Hussar

Lanefan said:


> It doesn't get rid of them; but it serves to change the mentality, or approach, away from "I have xxx already in mind and I'm going to build it" toward "let's see what the dice give me to work with before I decide what I'll build".
> 
> Yes, that's the next step.



See, the problem is @Lanefan, unless you do some form of "in order" roll up, then you always start with "I have xxx in mind".  Because, well, you know that any character that's rolled is going to have a pretty predictable set of stats (and, let's be honest here, if it's under point buy, the DM will almost universally let you roll it again).  

The notion that you roll first and then decide what to play hasn't really been part of the game for a very, very long time.  Like, as in 2e at the latest, and actually, with the 1e Unearthed Arcana rolling system, you chose your class first.  WotC didn't start this at all.  This was part of the game since the release of the 1e AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide.  3d6 in order was never part of AD&D.  

The notion that I'm going to have to play this randomly determined character for the next hundred hours or more is something I most certainly don't want to ever see back into the game.

It absolutely baffles me why DM's have such an issue with a player building to a concept.  It's their character.  How is it in any way, shape or form bothering you how I choose what to play?


----------



## theCourier

It's not a bother, it's just a different mindset. One that is more interested in seeing what the dice give you, and making the best out of those results. And as a player, not having to worry about builds is pretty nice instead I can focus on "building" my character through the items, knowledge, and adventures they experience.


----------



## Lanefan

Hussar said:


> See, the problem is @Lanefan, unless you do some form of "in order" roll up, then you always start with "I have xxx in mind".



Only to a point; and I should also mention here that I'm coming from a background where classes are gated behind stat requirements* (which is something I very much endorse) and some of those requirements are pretty tough.

So sure, I might have a Ranger in mind (which here needs 14-14-13-13-x-x) but if the dice give me just one really good stat and the rest are bland and boring 9-to-12s then it's no Ranger for me today; I have to go to (or come up with) Plan B.

* - under the standard array (15-14-13-12-10-8, isn't it?) five classes in my game would be impossible to achieve: Ranger, Paladin, Illusionist, Bard and Monk.  Paladin and Bard aren't even achievable under point-buy, unless there's an awful lot of points to spend. 


Hussar said:


> Because, well, you know that any character that's rolled is going to have a pretty predictable set of stats (and, let's be honest here, if it's under point buy, the DM will almost universally let you roll it again).



Depends.  My own cutoff, if it matters, is if the average of the 6 stats is less than 10 *or* you've nothing higher than a 12 then you have the option to reroll. That said, I've seen characters start with something like 15-12-11-10-9-6 and still do really well; at the same time I've also seen characters start with something like 18-18-17-17-15-14 and die at the first opportunity.


Hussar said:


> The notion that you roll first and then decide what to play hasn't really been part of the game for a very, very long time.  Like, as in 2e at the latest, and actually, with the 1e Unearthed Arcana rolling system, you chose your class first.



A rolling system that I've never known of anyone using, other than maybe one person on ENWorld who might have mentioned it.


Hussar said:


> WotC didn't start this at all.  This was part of the game since the release of the 1e AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide.  3d6 in order was never part of AD&D.



I'm not advocating for 3d6 in order and probably never would other than for one-offs or gonzo games.  But 4d6k3 rearranged?  All day long.


Hussar said:


> The notion that I'm going to have to play this randomly determined character for the next hundred hours or more is something I most certainly don't want to ever see back into the game.



Ah - you're assuming it'll survive for that hundred hours. 


Hussar said:


> It absolutely baffles me why DM's have such an issue with a player building to a concept.  It's their character.  How is it in any way, shape or form bothering you how I choose what to play?



My take on such things is that a player can always choose the basics*, but anything non-basic can only be achieved by random roll; this is specifically to keep the non-basic as unusual.

* - for example, in my game even if you hit the cutoff bang-on (which would be something like 13-x-x-x-x-7 where the 4 x'es add to 40) you can choose any of the basic classes - F, T, MU, or C.  But for a non-basic class you need to roll higher, in some cases only very little higher and in other cases quite a lot higher.


----------



## Hussar

Lanefan said:


> A rolling system that I've never known of anyone using, other than maybe one person on ENWorld who might have mentioned it.



Whereas I've never known an AD&D group that didn't use it.

Funny how the plural of anecdote isn't data.


----------



## Hussar

theCourier said:


> It's not a bother, it's just a different mindset. One that is more interested in seeing what the dice give you, and making the best out of those results. And as a player, not having to worry about builds is pretty nice instead I can focus on "building" my character through the items, knowledge, and adventures they experience.



I totally get that.  That's fine.

But why do you care when I do it?  If you don't want to, that's fine.  But, @Lanefan is arguing that no one should be allowed to build their character.  That everyone should be forced to play the way he wants to play.

If someone in my group wanted to die roll their character, I certainly wouldn't stop them.  More power to them.  And, frankly, I adore those people who think point buy means three stats of 8.  Their nickname is always some variation of "victim" because they're going to really, really suck at a lot of things.  Watching players take 8 Str so they can make those Dex monkeys just makes my heart sing because you can guarantee that there's going to be lots of athletic checks in their future.  

Makes it really, really easy to challenge the party when players make one trick ponies.


----------



## Hussar

Lanefan said:


> Ah - you're assuming it'll survive for that hundred hours.



Put it another way then.  Why are you forcing me to play a character I don't want to play?  What's in it for you?  As you said, if I roll the minimum, I have to play one of the basic characters.  Which means I'm going to spend several hours, at least until I can fall on my sword, playing something I don't want to play.

Who is this benefiting?


----------



## Mordhau

Hussar said:


> Put it another way then.  Why are you forcing me to play a character I don't want to play?  What's in it for you?  As you said, if I roll the minimum, I have to play one of the basic characters.  Which means I'm going to spend several hours, at least until I can fall on my sword, playing something I don't want to play.
> 
> Who is this benefiting?



The player who rolled well and gets to play something special.

I've always felt that early D&D is really premised on the idea that you play the game an awful lot.  (By all accounts Gygax did).  So it all evens out in the wash.  (In theory anyway).


----------



## Hussar

Mordhau said:


> The player who rolled well and gets to play something special.
> 
> I've always felt that early D&D is really premised on the idea that you play the game an awful lot.  (By all accounts Gygax did).  So it all evens out in the wash.  (In theory anyway).



Yeah, I've never really been a big believer in the "over time" approach to balance.  It's false.  What "over time" actually means is that you have basically imbalanced points all the way along.

It's like no one in the world actually has 2.4 children and 1.2 dogs.  Yes, that's the average, but, you never actually see it in the real world.  Same with die rolled.  I'm being forced to play characters I don't want to play just so I can, potentially, play a character I do want to play?  On what planet is that good game design?


----------



## Tallifer

(To add my two cents as if anyone cared, I also much prefer Point Buy both as a dungeon master and as a player.)

What I loved about 4E was the clear and concise presentation of the rules, most especially spells (whether Powers, Rituals, Martial Practices, magic item Properties ). I hate wading through the paragraphs of purple prose to find the actual effect of some of the 5E spells.


----------



## Nefermandias

Krachek said:


> Nice try! But I am not a fan of the cancel process!
> Put back boing buy as a legitimate method,
> add more sample of popular point buy results, like 4ed did,
> Keep rolled stats as an method for experimented players.
> Still people like to « beat the game », so it would be nice to add a softer way to improve a score without too much risk.



I thought the "c" word was banned from the forum?


----------



## Lanefan

Hussar said:


> I totally get that.  That's fine.
> 
> But why do you care when I do it?  If you don't want to, that's fine.  But, @Lanefan is arguing that no one should be allowed to build their character.  That everyone should be forced to play the way he wants to play.



Not quite.

I'm more arguing that the game shouldn't force an elaborate character-build phase; that char-gen should by default be quick and easy to allow the table to get it done and get on with the campaign.


Hussar said:


> If someone in my group wanted to die roll their character, I certainly wouldn't stop them.  More power to them.  And, frankly, I adore those people who think point buy means three stats of 8.  Their nickname is always some variation of "victim" because they're going to really, really suck at a lot of things.  Watching players take 8 Str so they can make those Dex monkeys just makes my heart sing because you can guarantee that there's going to be lots of athletic checks in their future.
> 
> Makes it really, really easy to challenge the party when players make one trick ponies.



Another different philosophy: your last sentence implies you're tailoring your challenges to suit (or hose) the PCs being played.  Me, no matter what PCs the players bring along I try to run the adventure the same as I would with any other mix of PCs.


			
				Hussar said:
			
		

> Put it another way then.  Why are you forcing me to play a character I don't want to play?  What's in it for you?  As you said, if I roll the minimum, I have to play one of the basic characters.  Which means I'm going to spend several hours, at least until I can fall on my sword, playing something I don't want to play.



Flip this question around and ask why are you so hung up on playing _this character, right now_?  What's wrong with some flexibility of thought/plan when arriving at roll-up night?  And don't you (as many do) decide what character to roll up and-or play based in some part on what other people are playing, which you all might not even learn until roll-up night?

And yes, rolling the minimum does force your hand somewhat; no sugar-coating that.  Good thing it doesn't happen very often, eh?  (I can't think of an occasion when a player's had a character with a highest starting stat of 13; I can recall one that started with a high of 14, and it did OK)


----------



## Aldarc

Lanefan said:


> I'm more arguing that the game shouldn't force an elaborate character-build phase; that char-gen should by default be quick and easy to allow the table to get it done and get on with the campaign.



So standard array it is then.


----------



## Lanefan

Hussar said:


> Yeah, I've never really been a big believer in the "over time" approach to balance.  It's false.  What "over time" actually means is that you have basically imbalanced points all the way along.



Depends how much one cares about those individual points, I guess.

Personally, I'm all about long-term balance and don't really care much about balance in any given moment, as long as the in-the-moment imbalances tend to cancel out in the long run or at least have clear opportunity to do so.

My usual example: Illusionists are historically* rather hopeless against low-grade undead, constructs, and other non-intelligent (or extremely intelligent) foes.  Flip side is they can be absolute superstars against low-intelligence foes, and that's the long-term balance: you-as-Illusionist can be the star of the show in this adventure but in the next adventure you might be playing second fiddle.  For this and other reasons I intentionally try to run a mix of adventure types such that each class gets a chance to shine now and then (though whether that class is in fact present in the party at the time is up to chance).

* - as in, pre-4e.  Illusionists since then are hopeless, period, due to all the nerfing of illusion effects.


----------



## Lanefan

Aldarc said:


> So standard array it is then.



Nah, roll the dice but have most if not all other features baked into the classes such that the choice of class makes many other choices for you.

And I'm guilty as well: char-gen in our system used to be much simpler and faster than it is now, but a long slow process of bloat has made it considerably more tedious.  This is something I want to fix one of these days, if real life would ever get out of the way.


----------



## Vaalingrade

I already have few enough choices for my character unless I play a caster or caster subclass, thank you.


----------



## Hussar

Lanefan said:


> Another different philosophy: your last sentence implies you're tailoring your challenges to suit (or hose) the PCs being played. Me, no matter what PCs the players bring along I try to run the adventure the same as I would with any other mix of PCs.



Nope.  I just design with the idea that everything can be a challenge.  So, my dungeons frequently feature water hazards and climbing hazards, for example.  I'm not doing it to "gotcha" anyone.  I'm simply presenting balanced challenges which means that one trick pony characters do really, really well in some challenges and are pretty much dead weight in others.  Whereas the players who don't dive down the optimization hole do well in every situation.



Lanefan said:


> Flip this question around and ask why are you so hung up on playing _this character, right now_? What's wrong with some flexibility of thought/plan when arriving at roll-up night? And don't you (as many do) decide what character to roll up and-or play based in some part on what other people are playing, which you all might not even learn until roll-up night?
> 
> And yes, rolling the minimum does force your hand somewhat; no sugar-coating that. Good thing it doesn't happen very often, eh?  (I can't think of an occasion when a player's had a character with a highest starting stat of 13; I can recall one that started with a high of 14, and it did OK)



It's not about playing this character right now.  It's about not being forced to play a character I'm not interested in.  Again, what's the upside?  But, it's funny that out of all the characters you've seen, only one with a highest stat of 14?  That means other character is 15+ right?  

So, basically, every other character, other than that one, is a higher point buy value than standard array.  Which rolls right back to my point that the only reason people die roll their characters is because they want higher value characters.


----------



## Hussar

Aldarc said:


> So standard array it is then.



I mean seriously.  How much faster is it to make a character with standard array and choose one of the packages right there in the PHB.  You are getting exactly the same amount of choice points that you would get in 1e.  It can't possibly take more than 5 minutes to bang out a 5e character if you follow the suggestions.


----------



## Garthanos

Hussar said:


> I mean seriously.  How much faster is it to make a character with standard array and choose one of the packages right there in the PHB.  You are getting exactly the same amount of choice points that you would get in 1e.  It can't possibly take more than 5 minutes to bang out a 5e character if you follow the suggestions.



And for me it is like putting on super serious concept restraints... and I do not trust the balance of the things that relax those (both multiclassing and feats)


----------



## Mordhau

I think rolling dice in D&D is disappointing because it doesn't result in a character I wouldn't have thought to play.  It just results in playing a class I wouldn't have chosen to play.

In Warhammer I can roll the dice and get "Agitator" and that's fun, I have a collection of political pamphlets.  Who is this frustrated firebrand?  What is his cause?

In D&D I roll the dice and get 18 Int and less than 10 in everything else.  Guess I'm a wizard.  There's nothing particularly interesting about that.  It doesn't tell me anything about what kind of wizard I am, or give me any kind of hook.


----------



## Lanefan

Hussar said:


> Nope.  I just design with the idea that everything can be a challenge.  So, my dungeons frequently feature water hazards and climbing hazards, for example.  I'm not doing it to "gotcha" anyone.  I'm simply presenting balanced challenges which means that one trick pony characters do really, really well in some challenges and are pretty much dead weight in others.  Whereas the players who don't dive down the optimization hole do well in every situation.



Nice!  Sounds great. 


Hussar said:


> It's not about playing this character right now.  It's about not being forced to play a character I'm not interested in.  Again, what's the upside?  But, it's funny that out of all the characters you've seen, only one with a highest stat of 14?  That means other character is 15+ right?
> 
> So, basically, every other character, other than that one, is a higher point buy value than standard array.  Which rolls right back to my point that the only reason people die roll their characters is because they want higher value characters.



You seem to be forgetting the 1e recommendation that a character start with at least 2 scores of 15+; never mind that 1e had a class where even two 15s wasn't enough (Illusionist needed Int 15 and Dex 16, if memory serves).

Point buy and standard array are low by our standards, yes; but given the difference in how bonuses work it sorta makes sense in context.  In 1e bonuses didn't kick in until 15 or 16, depending on what bonus and-or what stat.  In 3e-4e-5e they kick in at 12 across the board; meaning that a lower average still gives some bonuses.  (the flip side, of course, is that penalties also kick in sooner, starting at 9 in the newer versions where they once didn't start until 6 or 7, again depending on stat and-or specific penalty)

The other big difference is that stats go up a lot more, and a lot more reliably, under the ASI system than in the pre-3e editions; which means that a lower starting point will eventually be erased anyway.


----------



## Lanefan

Mordhau said:


> In D&D I roll the dice and get 18 Int and less than 10 in everything else.  Guess I'm a wizard.  There's nothing particularly interesting about that.  It doesn't tell me anything about what kind of wizard I am, or give me any kind of hook.



Wizard is still a starting point; and there's nothing saying you can't also randomize said wizard's background, species, etc. and conceptualize from there.  Or, and I've done this more than a few times, just give it one schtick or catchphrase or whatever and see how the character naturally develops from there as play goes on.

The one thing a stat set like 18-10-10-9-9-9 does very strongly suggest is that you're almost certainly going to be single-class, which kind of reflects the reality of this person who has one really good aspect but not that much else going for it.


----------



## Hussar

Lanefan said:


> Wizard is still a starting point; and there's nothing saying you can't also randomize said wizard's background, species, etc. and conceptualize from there.  Or, and I've done this more than a few times, just give it one schtick or catchphrase or whatever and see how the character naturally develops from there as play goes on.
> 
> The one thing a stat set like 18-10-10-9-9-9 does very strongly suggest is that you're almost certainly going to be single-class, which kind of reflects the reality of this person who has one really good aspect but not that much else going for it.



You're still ignoring the bigger issue though.

Why am I being forced to play that character?  I don't want to play a character like this.  How is this possibly good game design to force a player to play something they don't want to play just because of random chance?

And, not only that, but, if I simply jump on my sword and kill my character, I'm now a bad player.  Not only am I being forced to play a character that I don't want to play, but, even doing anything about it is off the table as well.

Like I said, if someone wants to play a randomly rolled character, more power to them.  But, the notion that this is somehow good game design rather than an artifact of very bad game design that has been consigned to the dustbin of history in pretty much any other game that isn't AD&D says volumes.  Think about it, virtually no game out there forces randomly generated stats on the player.  There's a very good reason for that.


----------



## Aldarc

Hussar said:


> You're still ignoring the bigger issue though.
> 
> Why am I being forced to play that character?  I don't want to play a character like this.  How is this possibly good game design to force a player to play something they don't want to play just because of random chance?
> 
> And, not only that, but, if I simply jump on my sword and kill my character, I'm now a bad player.  Not only am I being forced to play a character that I don't want to play, but, even doing anything about it is off the table as well.
> 
> Like I said, if someone wants to play a randomly rolled character, more power to them.  But, the notion that this is somehow good game design rather than an artifact of very bad game design that has been consigned to the dustbin of history in pretty much any other game that isn't AD&D says volumes.  Think about it, virtually no game out there forces randomly generated stats on the player.  There's a very good reason for that.



I'm honestly flummoxed by this as well. As you asked earlier: whose interests does this serve? 



CubicsRube said:


> Why has this turned into another ability score generation thread?
> 
> Up to this point I've been learning some interesting things about 4e.



Is there something in particular that interests you that we could discuss in further detail?


----------



## Vaalingrade

I think --and I can't say I know because I don't really share the mindset -- that the appeal of forced random characters is the same as it is with certain Rogue-likes: it's forcing you to make do with what you have. Some people feel a sense of accomplishment from building themselves up from nothing.

Trouble is, much like in the larger gaming community where there is often such a hew and cry about difficulty levels, that there doesn't seem to be much of a consideration that some people... don't want that, especially as the default. The attitude seems to be that players who don't want to do this stuff should 'take the medicine' and will eventually grow to love it.


----------



## Lanefan

Vaalingrade said:


> I think --and I can't say I know because I don't really share the mindset -- that the appeal of forced random characters is the same as it is with certain Rogue-likes: it's forcing you to make do with what you have. Some people feel a sense of accomplishment from building themselves up from nothing.



Exactly; and in some ways I see D&D as a Rogue-like writ large.


----------



## Mordhau

Vaalingrade said:


> I think --and I can't say I know because I don't really share the mindset -- that the appeal of forced random characters is the same as it is with certain Rogue-likes: it's forcing you to make do with what you have. Some people feel a sense of accomplishment from building themselves up from nothing.
> 
> Trouble is, much like in the larger gaming community where there is often such a hew and cry about difficulty levels, that there doesn't seem to be much of a consideration that some people... don't want that, especially as the default. The attitude seems to be that players who don't want to do this stuff should 'take the medicine' and will eventually grow to love it.



As always the problem is that everyone insists on being able to play the same game.

I continue to find it bizarre.  New computer games aren't constrained to be built on the old Wizardry character engine.

God.  I wish D&D would fracture and the fanbase become something less deeply conformist.


----------



## Aldarc

Lanefan said:


> Exactly; and in some ways I see D&D as a Rogue-like writ large.



It can’t be a Rogue-like plus everything else people want D&D to be. Attitudes and approaches about the game have mostly changed. Something has to give.


----------



## CubicsRube

Aldarc said:


> Is there something in particular that interests you that we could discuss in further detail?



well I don't know what i don't know really.

I get that some monsters had new changes that came about when they were bloodied. What's some examples of those that people liked? Did any have ones that would activate on death?

Apart from notation was there any big changes to some spells?

And I've heard a bit on ritual magic in 4e, but i don't get how it works.


----------



## Campbell

@Lanefan

That's not all congruent with my experience of 5e. Thanks to bounded accuracy your ability scores matter more than in pretty much any other version of the game. Having a 14 when someone else has an 18 or 20 is a pretty damn big deal in 5e. Closing that gap requires like 7-11 levels by which point most games will be finished. Having that high score also lets a player invest in feats or ability scores while you are busy trying to make up that gap.

Our group started out rolling stats and quickly moved to the standard array because there was such a large difference in effectiveness based on initial rolls. When running/playing B/X I'm 3d6 down the middle kind of guy. I also rolling in AD&D. Modern D&D is a different story. The bonuses are just too powerful.


----------



## Vaalingrade

Mordhau said:


> God.  I wish D&D would fracture and the fanbase become something less deeply conformist.



I honestly do to, but 'DnD' as an IP and a identity is a totem no one is willing to let go of.

Maybe we go back to D&D and AD&D.


----------



## Uni-the-Unicorn!

billd91 said:


> That’s not really true, though. Nobody ever had a problem with using a magical effect once in a combat *if it was the only instance of it you had prepared*. But nobody had a problem with using a magical effect *more* than once if you had prepared it multiple times as well. There wasn’t much of a concept of using *anything* just once a combat outside of a few edge cases. And that’s where we get to a lot of problems people had with the AEDU structure - it was too restrictive in its conception. A model that irritates less is one that gives you resources to spend, refreshed by rests (long/daily or short/encounter), but gives the player more free rein to spend those as they see fit.



And that was very easy to implement in 4e.


----------



## Garthanos

Vaalingrade said:


> The attitude seems to be that players who don't want to do this stuff should 'take the medicine' and will eventually grow to love it.



Gygaxian thinking is where that came from.... you will appreciate your mage out classing everyone because they used to be incompetent... What do you mean starting at a higher level!!!!  You skipped over the punishment how can you appreciate the awesome.


----------



## Hussar

Lanefan said:


> Exactly; and in some ways I see D&D as a Rogue-like writ large.



This might explain a lot. I've never played a Rogue game.  I vaguely remember seeing one once?  It just never entered my gaming at all.  

So, approaching the game from that mindset would never occur to me.


----------



## vagabundo

Dear jebus, I feel like I've timeportalled back a decade. The same disccussions, so weird.

If 5.5 turned into a 4.5 it could make me buy it. 5e has unerwelmed me in so many ways I've just ran other things or 4e.

EDIT: Just to be clear that there are things I've wanted fixed in 4e, like power/feat bloat and some streamlining of certain elements. 4e was a monster of content in someways, but it needed a good 4.5 edit. Essentials was more like an experiment; I like a lot of essentials, it wasnt a 4.5.




darjr said:


> In 4e fluff never seemed to matter, one example was I had NPC's throwing magic shurikens in an adventure. They were refluffed magic missile. A player, a monk, really wanted to pick them up. All of a sudden I had to come up with a reason why, or just say, no the rules don't let you, which kinda sucks in the middle of a game. Normally that isn't a big deal, but something like that would happen A LOT A LOT in 4e games. Especially in Encounters and official content. I found myself mentally exausted from constantly having to justify fluff that didn't match what the rules were doing. And while it isn't an inherent thing in 4e, 4e by it's design with a hard seperation between fluff and rules all but enforced it.




Why didn't you let him have the Shurikens? I don't understand why its connected to 4e. If you have refluffed something and a player interacts with the element why not let them? 4e is very flexibable, transparent. Its fairly easy to rule on the fly without breaking anything.

I would have let him collect them as a consumable maybe if I was uncomfortable with them being in the game long term. They're made of funky material, they break on a hit, collect the missed ones after the fight if you like etc.

I've done these ruling in every edition since BCEMi, 4e is no different in that regard. 4e excells at transparency and, not published enough, but a core system that is so easy to run on the fly.



CubicsRube said:


> well I don't know what i don't know really.
> 
> I get that some monsters had new changes that came about when they were bloodied. What's some examples of those that people liked? Did any have ones that would activate on death?
> 
> Apart from notation was there any big changes to some spells?
> 
> And I've heard a bit on ritual magic in 4e, but i don't get how it works.




You'll probably get some great examples of monsters that do this, but do your self a favour and get something like the Monsters Vault or MMIII. The 4e Monster books for mechanics where so good.

Rituals were free form spells that took time to cast(1 minute, 10 minutes, 1 hour,) usually had a monetary component and maybe something else. They could be cast by anyone who had the Ritual Caster feat. They had to be mastered. effectively it meant that anyone could do cool magic. 

Sometimes there were Arcana, Religon or Nature skill checks. They were devided up by function not magic school (Exploration). All the big teleport spells, etc were rituals. They were cool, had a few poblems mechanically and probably underused, but cool none-the-less.


----------



## Aldarc

CubicsRube said:


> well I don't know what i don't know really.
> 
> I get that some monsters had new changes that came about when they were bloodied. What's some examples of those that people liked? Did any have ones that would activate on death?



Some of the monster design expanded the triggers as well. So for example, the cool monster ability may be triggered once the PCs score a critical hit or the monster become bloodied. Some cool abilities would recharge once bloodied, so GMs were encouraged to use the ability before the monster is bloodied so they can use it later again in the encounter. 

Matt Colville talks about a fun one where gnolls got a free bite attack when the PC they are fighting becomes bloodied. 

And the ferocity of monsters could also increase, even if passively. For example, one dragon from the later Threats to the Nentir Vale book would get an improved critical range for their attacks once they became bloodied: 17-20. 

In some cases the bloodied condition would trigger the monster's temporary disappearance from play. 

So there were a lot of mechanics you could tie to whether the monster was bloodied, became bloodied, or wasn't bloodied or even the bloodied state of PCs. 



CubicsRube said:


> Apart from notation was there any big changes to some spells?



Yes, but that's a doozy to explain. Maybe later for this one. But you can probably get a big sense for one of the biggest changes to a number of familiar spells via the ritual magic below. 



CubicsRube said:


> And I've heard a bit on ritual magic in 4e, but i don't get how it works.



In 5e, Rituals can be cast as spells if they are known/prepared or cast without using a spell slot out of combat with the time and material costs. Rituals in 4e were detached completely from spells, and you presumably weren't performing them in combat. 

Potentially anyone could do Rituals in 4e. It required a bit of work though. You needed either a Ritual Book or a Ritual Scroll. A Ritual Book could be used multiple times while a Ritual Scroll would crumble to dust upon performing the ritual. You needed 8 uinterrupted hours to study the ritual in order to master it. You also needed the Ritual Caster feat, which the Cleric and Wizard got as class features, and your level had to equal or exceed that of the ritual's level. 

Time to cast a ritual. The standard cost of the components to perform the ritual as well as the market price for buying the book or copying the ritual into your book were provided. Up to four allies could assist you with performing the ritual. They had to be close by and essentially there the whole time, but your willing allies could spending their own healing surges or other resources to help power the ritual in your stead. The PHB also alludes to dark rituals to malevolent gods or demons involving unwilling participants paying those costs. This was fantastic because there are rules for interrupting a ritual and victims' healing surges provide a potential countdown clock for an encounter. 

Your allies could also help assist you with the skill check needed to succeed at the ritual. That's because each ritual required a skill check to perform. Low results didn't necessarily result in failure, but producing a higher check could scale the results. (Not every ritual had scalable results that varied with skill checks though.) 

*Animal Messenger *(for example)
Level: 1 
Time: 10 minutes 
Component Cost: 10 gp 
Market Price: 50 gp 
Key Skill: Nature 

19 or lower: 6 hours
20-29: 12 hours
30-39: 18 hours
49 or above: 24 hours

*Remove Affliction* (for example) 
Level: 8 
Time: 1 hour 
Component Cost: 250 gp 
Market Price: 680 gp 
Key Skill: Heal 

0 or lower: Death (of the target)
1-9: Damage equal to the target's maximum number of hit points
10-19: Damage equal to one-half the target's maximum number of hit points
20-29: Damage equal to one-quarter the target's maximum number of hit points
30 or higher: No damage

I loved how 4e moved a lot of utility spells and some magical crafting (e.g., Brew Potion) to Rituals. It meant that the casters couldn't so easily bypass encounters with a quick spell or sleep on the problem and simply churn out the right spell the next morning. (A number of caster players used to earlier editions, didn't like this change though.) Here is the list of rituals from PHB 1 alone: 


Spoiler




Animal Messenger
Arcane Lock
Brew Potion
Commune with Nature
Comprehend Language
Consult Mystic Sages
Consult Oracle
Cure Disease
Detect Object
Detect Secret Doors
Discern Lies
Discenchant Magic Item
Drawmij's Instant Summons
Enchant Magic Items
Endure Elements
Eye of Alarm
Eye of Warning
Forbiddance
Gentle Repose
Hallucinatory Creature
Hallucinatory Item
Hand of Fate
Knock
Leomund's Secret Chest
Linked Portal
Loremaster's Bargain
Magic Circle
Magic Mouth
Make Whole
Observe Creature
Passwall
Phantom Steed
Planar Portal
Raise Dead
Remove Affliction
Secret Page
Sending
Shadow Walk
Silence
Speak with Dead
Tenser's Floating Disk
Traveller's Feast
True Portal
View Location
View Object
Voice of Fate
Water Breathing
Water Walk
Wizard's Sight



And this list grew with time. 

Almost needless to say, there were a number of caster players (i.e., Wizards) who weren't happy that many of their instant cast utility spells were suddenly rituals or even available to non-casting people with the right feat and skill. (And somehow they were angry in 4e about the latter, but okay with it in 5e.) 

In my experience, Rituals in 5e often get handwaved and glossed over: e.g., "Okay, you have the time and components. Your ritual succeeds." However, this was not generally my experience with rituals in 4e. Again, there were incentive structures to not gloss over performing the ritual: e.g., having allies aid the ritual, the skill check affecting the results, etc. So rituals in 4e, again IME (and I can't speak to anyone else's) had more depth to them, and it felt more like simulating rituals in fiction. Removing a Curse in fiction sometimes feels like a big ordeal in fiction. In 5e, it involves finding a Cleric to cast a 3rd level spell. Big whoop. 

It also becomes easier to imagine a world in which these rituals are provided as a service. Let's say you take your ally suffering from a curse to a friendly temple. You are not simply asking the clergy there to cast _Remove Curse_ so you can be on your merry way. As seen above with Remove Affliction, there is a risk of harming or killing your ally further too! You are also asking both time and money from them. And as it's 4e, these clergy may not even be clerics. They could simply be ordained ritualists! Raise Dead (level 8), for example, will cost the clergy at the temple 8 hours of their time to perform, and that price increases with the target's character tier! (Unlike 5e there is no _Revivify_ either.)


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## Hussar

Heh, one of my favorite examples of this was the 4e Bullywug - a creature so loathesome that you actually healed HP if you killed them with a critical hit.


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## vagabundo

I love bullywugs in 4e. They're so corrupt the change their enviroment and the primal spirits hate them. 4e did such a good job of setting up conflicts.

Theres a side quest in Reavers of Harkenwold involving Bullywugs, in fact that whole adventure was probably my best run 4e module. Its great, its a pity the 4e Adventure format got in the way of some of the good stories. 

4e doesnt do filler combats well. They should be handled by structured skill challenges, narratively or just throw some minions so PCs can blow through them. I use morale rules as well for 4e. It makes no sense that all intelligent foes fight to the last man. So a saving throw with some triggers and circumstance bonses helped me tell when a rout happens. 

But the big bad, climax, tentpole combats are amazing in 4e. No D&D edition I've run has given me the tools to plan and execute as exciting, fun and interesting combats as easily.

4e PC really are Action Hero's from level 1. I know that grinds some people gears, but its like the difference between pulp and purist Call of Cthulhu, just two ways to play the game.


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## HammerMan

CubicsRube said:


> well I don't know what i don't know really.
> 
> I get that some monsters had new changes that came about when they were bloodied. What's some examples of those that people liked? Did any have ones that would activate on death?
> 
> Apart from notation was there any big changes to some spells?
> 
> And I've heard a bit on ritual magic in 4e, but i don't get how it works.



bloodied: i remember some creatures (and some PC builds) had regeneration kick in at bloodied...so basically if after a fight you were below half you wait a minute or two and you are back to half or slightly over before healing... Some monster got bonus to hit when they were bloodied and/or bonus to hit or damage against a bloodied foe.  my favorite where ones like dragons, auto free use of breath weapon even if they had already used it (I always imagine that they were so pissed at mere mortals hurting them they burst out a BW)

as for rituals, first all (or at least most) of the long casting time spells became rituals (Identify, legend lore, planar binding,ext) then they had a min character level instead of a spell level, and they cost components.  ANyone could (like 5e) take a feat, but most of the big spells (legend lore looking at you) don't have the ritual tag...

I like to think of rituals the way the dresden files handle them "Magic is will power knowledge and control focused on changing the world, rituals are more like a vending machine, you drop in the coins, you know the button to push the effect comes out"


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## Garthanos

CubicsRube said:


> And I've heard a bit on ritual magic in 4e, but i don't get how it works.






vagabundo said:


> Rituals were free form spells that took time to cast(1 minute, 10 minutes, 1 hour,) usually had a monetary component and maybe something else. They could be cast by anyone who had the Ritual Caster feat. They had to be mastered. effectively it meant that anyone could do cool magic.



And a 4e feat was a much smaller investment like 1/2 of a typical 5e feat 


vagabundo said:


> Sometimes there were Arcana, Religon or Nature skill checks. They were devided up by function not magic school (Exploration). All the big teleport spells, etc were rituals. They were cool, had a few poblems mechanically and probably underused, but cool none-the-less.




In some ways rituals are actually not that big of deal they are just easier to implement when you have an expected PC economy.

More Info I was going to mention as well.

There were large numbers of rituals.
Rituals are unrestricted use frequency but take time from 1 minute to many hours, 
Rituals require specific expended components (the form of which was based on type of ritual).
Rituals were very open ended but almost entirely non-combat oriented effects (some improved your preparation for combat) and might even be modified using skill checks (arcana generally).
Ritual Components in a generic form could be gathered from a disenchanted item. I allowed scavenging for components. Components generally speaking could be purchased but that might be setting adjusted too.


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## Campbell

I like the Pathfinder Second Edition iteration of Rituals the best. Anyone who is trained in the relevant skill and knows the ritual can perform it. Rituals are largely gated by time to cast and often require secondary casters to perform. Some have component costs and all carry a risk they might not work with consequences for critical failures. It really makes them feel like plot device magic.


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## Garthanos

Campbell said:


> and all carry a risk they might not work with consequences for critical failures. It really makes them feel like plot device magic.



And that is an interesting element readily incorporated more broadly, though some rituals like remove affliction in 4e had death as a potential failure consequence


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## CubicsRube

Thanks to everyone who replied!

There's things in 4e that don't sound appealing to me such as several hour long fights at the like, but monster and ritual design sounds like it's my thing.

Would a 4e monster book be worth getting for 5e? How easy is conversion between the two additions?


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## Mort

Since we are talking 4e design in 5.5e.

The new UA just snuck in healing surges (much more so than just in the current short rest mechanic):

The Autognome PC race (a construct that looks like a gnome) gets this:

If the mending spell is cast on you, you can expend a Hit Die, roll it, and regain a number of hit points equal to the roll plus your Constitution modifier (minimum of 1 hit point).

That's closer to true 4e healing surges than anything I've seen in 5e.


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## Campbell

I would be a big fan of optional mechanics/feats/subclasses that utilized Hit Dice as a more meaningful resource. I mean feats are optional anyway right?


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## Garthanos

CubicsRube said:


> Thanks to everyone who replied!
> 
> There's things in 4e that don't sound appealing to me such as several hour long fights at the like,



Not as common as some present it (never seen it at a table myself but I have fewer players
than many and similar things), I think a 3 round fight is pointless instead of exciting. 4e normal
fights I would say are twice that


CubicsRube said:


> but monster and ritual design sounds like it's my thing.
> 
> Would a 4e monster book be worth getting for 5e? How easy is



 I have definitely seen recommendations of stealing elements directly from it Matt Coleville does for 5e

a cool third party book with rituals 




__





						Azagar’s Book of Rituals – PDF|Goodman Games Store
					






					goodman-games.com


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## Stalker0

CubicsRube said:


> Would a 4e monster book be worth getting for 5e? How easy is conversion between the two additions?



Pure mechanical conversion would be quite difficult, the two systems use fundamentally different math systems.

Now if you want inspiration for cool monster abilities that you have to "5eafy", there I think 4e could help you.


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## Herschel

CubicsRube said:


> There's things in 4e that don't sound appealing to me such as several hour long fights at the like, but monster and ritual design sounds like it's my thing.



Fights are/were much more dynamic, though and only took a long time when they were many rounds and people weren't paying attention, just like when spellcasters don't know which spells they're going to cast before their turn in any edition.


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## vagabundo

CubicsRube said:


> There's things in 4e that don't sound appealing to me such as several hour long fights at the like, but monster and ritual design sounds like it's my thing.



That can be an issue, but its been internet inflated. Mostly it boils down to players himming and hawing on their turn. There is a bit to choose from. However its not unlike mid-level 3e. My players are just damn slow at every game. Were playing Trail of Cthulhu right now and they are still sooo slow.

You can have huge intregated exciting center piece battles or you can build quick little minion speedbumps. 4e has an amazingly transparent toolbox. It needed cleaning up by the end and some rough edges shaved off it.


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## Garthanos

Mort said:


> Since we are talking 4e design in 5.5e.
> 
> The new UA just snuck in healing surges (much more so than just in the current short rest mechanic):
> 
> The Autognome PC race (a construct that looks like a gnome) gets this:
> 
> If the mending spell is cast on you, you can expend a Hit Die, roll it, and regain a number of hit points equal to the roll plus your Constitution modifier (minimum of 1 hit point).



I have suggested an overarching healing surge rule where any time someone gains hit points, they may spend HD to enhance it, probably with some limit but more than 1, and no more than half.


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## vagabundo

Garthanos said:


> Not as common as some present it (never seen it at a table myself but I have fewer players
> than many and similar things), I think a 3 round fight is pointless instead of exciting. 4e normal
> fights I would say are twice that
> 
> I have definitely seen recommendations of stealing elements directly from it Matt Coleville does for 5e
> 
> a cool third party book with rituals
> 
> 
> 
> 
> __
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Azagar’s Book of Rituals – PDF|Goodman Games Store
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> goodman-games.com




I got one ritual published in that book and got $6 for it. My only writing credit ever I'm afraid.


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## Garthanos

vagabundo said:


> I got one ritual published in that book



How cool, congrats dude.


vagabundo said:


> and got $6 for it. My only writing credit ever I'm afraid.



I would make many of them lower level in that book, but conversely I consider raise the dead
a paragon level ritual too, I am not shy about adjustments like that.   One value of rituals and practices are their ability to help flavor and define the game world based on what ones you include.


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## vagabundo

From what I know of HD from 5e I think Healing surges are more straight forward.



Garthanos said:


> How cool, congrats dude.
> 
> I would make many of them lower level in that book, but conversely I consider raise the dead
> a paragon level ritual too, I am not shy about adjustments like that.   One value of rituals and practices are their ability to help flavor and define the game world based on what ones you include.




Thanks. It was fun writing them I literially wrote and submitted them the day before. 

I do think rituals need a lower bar to entry and really need to be incorporated into the exploration phase by DMs. Its easy for the players to gloss over them and focus on a combat, especially in 4e because it can be so much fun.


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## Hussar

vagabundo said:


> That can be an issue, but its been internet inflated. Mostly it boils down to players himming and hawing on their turn. There is a bit to choose from. However its not unlike mid-level 3e. My players are just damn slow at every game. Were playing Trail of Cthulhu right now and they are still sooo slow.
> 
> You can have huge intregated exciting center piece battles or you can build quick little minion speedbumps. 4e has an amazingly transparent toolbox. It needed cleaning up by the end and some rough edges shaved off it.



To be fair though, latter era 4e got ridiculous for the number of interrupt actions chaining together.  It just made the game grind to a crawl.  Far too many times of the DM trying to move on to keep pacing up, and some player chiming in with, "Wait, I can do this...." resolve that... try to move on.... "Hey, if I do This, you can do that..." cue five minute debate over the merits of doing this.... decide not to do it... try to move on....

One thing I will absolutely credit 5e for is speeding up both player's turns and the rounds as well.


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## Garthanos

Hussar said:


> One thing I will absolutely credit 5e for is speeding up both player's turns and the rounds as well.



In 4e I would say you are describing teamwork  taking some time and for me some of the coolest fun.

In 5e though, I have seen some extremely complex builds like a Bladesinger (with a dip in several others) which even at moderate levels has spells you want to use or swap for depending on the enemies armor class or vulnerabilities and adding up lots of bonuses from many different quasi overlapping abilities including damage resistances or armor of agathys and similar things and it had competing situationally better uses for concentration or bonus actions and I think also reactions for shield or other things. And spells further scale based on what they do based on the slot you use them *(another decision and adjustment to your ability even if you are using the same spell as last round). The internal decision making all by its lonesome somehow did not seem like in play it would be quick.


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## Mordhau

Garthanos said:


> In 4e I would say you are describing teamwork  taking some time and for me some of the coolest fun.
> 
> In 5e though, I have seen some extremely complex builds like a Bladesinger (with a dip in several others) which even at moderate levels has spells you want to use or swap for depending on the enemies armor class or vulnerabilities and adding up lots of bonuses from many different quasi overlapping abilities including damage resistances or armor of agathys and similar things and it had competing situationally better uses for concentration or bonus actions and I think also reactions for shield or other things. And spells further scale based on what they do based on the slot you use them *(another decision and adjustment to your ability even if you are using the same spell as last round). The internal decision making all by its lonesome somehow did not seem like in play it would be quick.



No I don't find that turns are appreciably faster in 5e.  The main thing that makes 5e faster is that there are less rounds to combat generally.

(Of course some classes can resolve their turn pretty fast.  It usually goes like this.  *Cleric:* what spell do I want to cast?  Ok what about this one?  Ok I target four of them.  GM make saves how many did I hit?  Ok, I'll roll damage.  Ok now for my bonus action, I'm still concentrating on Spiritual hammer so I'll make that attack again.  *Sorcerer*: pretty much the same, actions, bonus actions, mult-targetting.  *Fighter*: 18 to hit and if that's enough 7 damgage.  

So it does depend on what people actually play.)


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## Hussar

Garthanos said:


> In 4e I would say you are describing teamwork taking some time and for me some of the coolest fun.



In measured doses. 

I agree, the teamwork thing was great.  And 4e's breaking of the initiative system was inspired and a fantastic idea that has been ported forward into 5e, although in a more restricted manner.

The trick though was in 4e, it got to ridiculous levels.  Not only did you have have different players triggering effects in each other, the monsters could also trigger effects and those triggered effects could trigger effects.  And, add to that a bit of analysis paralysis and turns could take bloody forever.

5e might get complicated from time to time, but, nowhere near to that degree.  Yes, you might have a cleric casting a spell, taking a bonus action and then moving, sure, and a summoning druid can really slow things down, sure.  What you don't have is four different players chaining reactions together after a single action from the monster, resolving those five or six different actions, moving on to the next monster and then having five MORE chained reactions going off.  

Yes, I'm exagerating, but, there were times in 4e where it really, REALLY did get old fast.  It's a fantastic idea and I love it.  It just really did get out of hand towards the end.


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## Garthanos

Hussar said:


> Yes, I'm exagerating, but, there were times in 4e where it really, REALLY did get old fast.  It's a fantastic idea and I love it.  It just really did get out of hand towards the end.



I have enough issues with anti-fans exaggerating.  

Encounter powers in 4e have a 1 encounter window you rarely get the hemming and hawing about resource cost or tracking, and generally even less over should I use it unlike a short rest ability in 5e they took away its benefits and made it basically like a lower time daily. (might as well give everyone a daily use/long rest counter)


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## Garthanos

Mordhau said:


> No I don't find that turns are appreciably faster in 5e.  The main thing that makes 5e faster is that there are less rounds to combat generally.



this...  basically you only have 1/2 combats


Mordhau said:


> (Of course some classes can resolve their turn pretty fast.  It usually goes like this.  *Cleric:* what spell do I want to cast?  Ok what about this one?  Ok I target four of them.  GM make saves how many did I hit?  Ok, I'll roll damage.  Ok now for my bonus action, I'm still concentrating on Spiritual hammer so I'll make that attack again.  *Sorcerer*: pretty much the same, actions, bonus actions, mult-targetting.  *Fighter*: 18 to hit and if that's enough 7 damgage.
> 
> So it does depend on what people actually play.)



Sure and End-game in 5e it does seem, unless one has single class characters who are I hit it with my sword types  and only one use for reactions, and one use for bonus actions and only one spell for concentration with easy choice on spells in general and only cast spells without scaling them seems to have its own layer of time consumers beconning.

Mileage may vary but I think other than variable complexity it has not gone down.


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## Campbell

My personal experience is that it (turn speed) depends on the types of players you have at your table. 4e turns tend to be slow if players spend time during their turn weighing different options. 5e turn speed is primarily about execution. On a turn with Action Surge my Psychic Warrior can make as much as 7 attacks with a possible knockback effect. That takes a lot of execution time, but not a lot of time considering what I will do.

At our 5e table my psychic warrior, the other fighter and the warlock take longer turns than our full casters, but we are generally really on the ball about what our characters can do.


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## vagabundo

Read through the thread mentioned earlier:









						D&D 4E - Pemertonian Scene-Framing; A Good Approach to D&D 4e
					

From http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?333362-Fixing-the-Fighter/page45&p=6073774#post6073774  This is an approach to GMing which I got from Pemerton's discussion of how he runs his games. I've used it in my last two 4e campaigns (one ongoing), albeit initially without full awareness...




					www.enworld.org
				




One I'd missed at the time. I'm half way through and its got some densely packed language but really good advice on a playstyle that 4e excels at. Apart from a thread derail or two from the usual bugbear, or thinly veiled 4e-isnt-real-dndisms, its a keeper!

I realised I'd been kinda running 4e that way, but will lean into it more for my next planned 4e campaign; a conversion of Temple of Elemental Evil (1e).


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## Lanefan

vagabundo said:


> I realised I'd been kinda running 4e that way, but will lean into it more for my next planned 4e campaign; a conversion of Temple of Elemental Evil (1e).



Interesting choice.

There's some big set-piece encounters in ToEE which I'd think would play well to 4e's strength in such things, but if memory serves there's also quite a lot of little minor battles designed to slowly weaken the party (while boosting their treasury!) which might become a slog.  Curious to know how it goes.


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## Seule

I was mostly a fan of 4e flawed as it was, and am now getting my 4e-alike fix from Pathfinder 2. Most of the things that I did like in 4e that were discarded for 5e were incorporated in some way in PF2e. I recommend anyone who like me misses the good bits of 4e to check it out... and the SRD is completely free and open so that's even easy to do. 
Incorporating what I want in gaming back into 5.5e would in my opinion be a bad move. I like crunchy decisions when building characters and tactically complex combats. 5e is optimised for new players and for streaming, and it's been amazing for the hobby. I don't want it to change a lot, I just don't really want to play it myself.


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## Campbell

Yeah. The parts of 4e I was fond of ended up in PF2 (tight math, unique monster design, rituals, cool stuff for martials, modular character design, skills that matter). The parts I was less fond of ended up in 5e.

I like 5e as it's own thing often despite the 4e like elements it included (hit dice, short and long rest, martial abilities that refresh on a short rest).


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## Garthanos

Campbell said:


> Yeah. The parts of 4e I was fond of ended up in PF2 (tight math, unique monster design, rituals, cool stuff for martials, modular character design, skills that matter). The parts I was less fond of ended up in 5e.




I am certain things I like are missed by both . For instance for me, one thing I call the sense of empowered skills where you know that skill can "match" the utility of magic. Between Skill Challenges, Skill Powers(explicitly a match for utility spells) and Martial Practices (explicitly intended to be a match for rituals), and even basic things in the skill description show this Acrobatics lets you do something like feather fall, and  Arcana let's you detect magic and so on.

I know you are a big fan of PF2 so you can use this as an opportunity to refute my take..

PF2 has a bit of it but It (their skills have a certain measure of potence) but it really does look like spells are just as potent or more so and more reliable and have less random hijinks than skills.

 (In 5e there is an unsettling ease in determining which class or character will likely be more effective == "how much magic do they have", heck the best melee build designed to defend is 85 or so percent caster - yes a wizard)


----------

