D&D Next: Final Playtest Discussion

[Ziegander]

Kind of think this is the BASELINE they should be working from though, not the end of the line.

And in many ways it is. Mearls is on record stating that after this test they will again rework things with respect to the final feedback and moreover add a lot of additional content, such as more subclasses and a few optional modules, before rolling out the published core rulesbook (at least as far as I could tell).

[Person_Man]

I don't like it either. Instead of getting cool and flashy abilities, characters get tiny numerical bonuses as they level up, even as their capstone, and have to pretend that this is a big deal. Primary casters are the exception, of course.

This is my biggest complaint with 4E and 5E. Boring, repetitive, "small" abilities. There are cool and interesting things, but they're buried amidst a mass of garbage, and you often have to take multiple levels of "meh" to get 1 cool thing.

You could just take the 3.5 PHB, Tome of Battle, Tome of Magic, Magic of Incarnum, and Spell Compendium, and put together a set of core rules with a ton of "big" options. With literally hundreds of thousands of pages of work from previous editions to draw from, there is absolutely no excuse for any class to get a filler or boring ability.

Why shouldn't some things be impossible to the non-proficient?

Seriously, I could probably try for hours and I couldn't pick a modern lock, even if I knew what tools to use. Similarly, even if I try twenty times, I can't write a symphony or swim across the English channel.

D&D is a game, not a life simulator. Games are generally designed to be fun. It's generally more fun to have some reasonable chance of success and some meaningful chance of failure for every action that a hero could reasonably take.

This is particularly important for new players, who just want to "do stuff" without worrying about systems mastery.

[Kurald Galain]

It's generally more fun to have some reasonable chance of success and some meaningful chance of failure for every action that a hero could reasonably take.

I don't see how this is "generally" true or "particularly important for new players". In fact, in most popular RPGs it is explicitly not the case that any character can succeed at anything, so evidently this is not a prerequisite for the game being "fun".

Rather, this is a chocolate-vs-strawberry issue. WOTC has made a clear choice to allow only one of the flavors, and predictably this causes dissatisfaction among the fans of the other flavor.

[Scow2]

I don't see how this is "generally" true or "particularly important for new players". In fact, in most popular RPGs it is explicitly not the case that any character can succeed at anything, so evidently this is not a prerequisite for the game being "fun".

Rather, this is a chocolate-vs-strawberry issue. WOTC has made a clear choice to allow only one of the flavors, and predictably this causes dissatisfaction among the fans of the other flavor.

Do you pay any attention to the Player Shenanigan threads on this board? Having that kind of craziness be codified as possible keeps D&D as D&D. Right now, my biggest complaint with 3.X is the sheer number of times the system says "No, you can't do X/Y without a feat/+Arbitrarily Large Skill point optimization."

[Envyus]

I don't see how this is "generally" true or "particularly important for new players". In fact, in most popular RPGs it is explicitly not the case that any character can succeed at anything, so evidently this is not a prerequisite for the game being "fun".

Rather, this is a chocolate-vs-strawberry issue. WOTC has made a clear choice to allow only one of the flavors, and predictably this causes dissatisfaction among the fans of the other flavor.

I don't even understand your complaint about this anymore. You don't like that a n Orc has a chance of hurting a level 20 character or something like that I think.

But now you're just talking about nothing.

[Kurald Galain]

I don't even understand your complaint about this anymore.

Just read the last three or four posts of the thread. Person_man claims that for a game to be fun, every character has to have a reasonable chance of success at everything. I claim that this is not the case, and point to the (many) games on the marketplace that do not use this approach.

[Sith_Happens]

Just read the last three or four posts of the thread. Person_man claims that for a game to be fun, every character has to have a reasonable chance of success at everything. I claim that this is not the case, and point to the (many) games on the marketplace that do not use this approach.

I suspect part of the issue is that your definitions of "reasonable" are different.

[Kurald Galain]

I suspect part of the issue is that your definitions of "reasonable" are different.

No, not really. Some people believe there are tasks that a character should automatically fail at if he's not trained (because this makes training more relevant and meaningful) and other people believe that this should never happen (because it's not fair). That's why it's a chocolocate-vs-strawberry issue.

[tommhans]

I like next waay better than 4e, played next since december and i feel it is going in the right direction with the latest package, lots of cool class feats that really helps, alteast as a ranger i get to use these a lot.

The main feats can be cool, but i agree seems like 3e has more powerful feats, but combine those with class feats it can easily be similar.

The way the system works its a hell of a lot easier to start than 4e,easier to keep track on the throws(dont have to check skill list for like every damn new check)

it also feel like the encounters goes a lot faster, allthough wiz in next is more complicated than wiz in 4e(so many more spells to keep track of)