I remember when 4E came out, we had an autistic /jp/ crossie that basically converted Gensokyo into 4E mechanics.
Did he return for 5E? Does anyone have any interest in converting Touhou into D&D 5E?
>>43839905
Touhoufag is dead, sorry
>>43839905
The 4e Touhous were for pre-MM3 math.
>>43840151
Did MM3 fuck everything up somehow?
>>43840198
MM3 made everything right.
>>43840348
Explain.
>>43839905
5e doesn't have enough shenanigans
Touhoufag was a highly functional munchkin doe
>>43840360
Not that anon, but Solo monsters pre-MM3 had too much HP and not enough damage, making combat long and really boring because there's not a big risk of death. By MM3 and the Monster Compendium they figured it out, though.
>>43840435
Every monster past level 10 had too much HP and not enough damage.
Even with MM3 combat is still slow. The usual way to fix it is 2x damage and half hp.
>>43840498
That fix doesn't honestly work. It makes everything way too rocket tag and makes leaders who work with positioning or healing much weaker.
>>43839905
/tg/'s rabid 3.PF population drove him out.
Fuck those guys.
>>43840419
How not?
There's nothing missing that you'd need to do it.
Gensokyoan magical combat is referred to as spell card *dueling* for a very good reason: it is geared towards one-on-one battles, save for the inexplicable two- or three-on-one scuffle. It does not work very well under the context of group battles in tabletop, unless you are willing to employ a contrivance of many-on-many spell card battles.
If you can work with the concept of group battles, you can hardly do worse than use a grid-based combat system for such a thing. D&D 4e works somewhat well for this, but nowadays, I find a 4e retroclone called "Strike!" to be more ideal for group danmaku.I am in the development credits but make no profit from it.
Strike! works splendidly for group danmaku for several reasons:
1. An emphasis on grid-based combat ensures that everyone will mind their positioning relative to their enemies and their enemies' attacks.
2. Grid-based combat also makes it easy to have AoE attacks of varying shapes and sizes, which certain powers can even make linger in the form of "zones."
3. Any individual PC or enemy can legitimately fly from level 1 with a certain ability *without* unbalancing the game. Alternatively, if everyone is to fly in combat, the default combat grid can assumed to be an aerial one, with terrain reflavored to match (e.g. difficult terrain could be columns of wind, blocking terrain could be tall trees or pillars).
4. Equipment is mostly flavor, save for special equipment handed out by the GM that grants special benefits. Thus, characters can operate perfectly well with nothing more than their frilly dresses, silly hats, and spell cards from levels 1 to 10.
(Continued.)
5. Strike! uses at-will powers and encounter powers (and the occasional power with more niche usage limitations) for all of its combat attacks, which translates well to spell cards.
>>43840890
4e had a lot higher level of power and let martials do MUCH weirder stuff which helped in many of his builds.
>>43840900
6. A mix-and-match subsystem of combat class (the method through which you fight) and combat role (what you are best at accomplishing during battle) ensure that you can piece together your personal vision of the character reasonably well. These classes and roles have default names for themselves and their powers, but their mechanics are flavor-agnostic; for instance, the "archer (sniper)" is explicitly stated to be compatible with any character whose specialty is long-distance ranged combat, and the "necromancer (death)" is said to make for an ideal telepathic mind-breaker.
6a. You can thus build some truly esoteric combat styles in Strike!, such as a Koishi who is a Necromancer (Death)/Blaster with the Stealthy feat, a long-distance attacker who employs psychic stealth to more effectively mind-blast large swaths of enemies, who can then fall under her mental influence.
7. Death is purely optional.
8. A character's noncombat side is composed of write-in "complications" (like aspects from Fate, except that they can only be compelled), write-in skills, write-in "tricks" (the skills you specialize in and can use points to automatically succeed with), and "kit advances" (special abilities picked from a wide list or written by yourself). Thus, you can write in whatever strange and recondite powers you would like for your youkai, such as "Psychic Imperceptibility" and "Subconscious Manipulation" for Koishi, or "Making Creatures Follow a Rhythm" and "Making Objects Follow a Rhythm" for Raiko.
I can try my hand at writing up Koishi Komeiji as a level 1 Strike! PC.
>>43840989
Koishi is too confusing for people that don't know Touhou. Why not Marisa or Reimu? Pretty straight forward.
>>43841017
1. Complications can help represent strange weaknesses such as "No Emotions but Boundless Hope" and "Acts Purely on Subconscious."
2. There is a kit specifically for telepathic characters, and another for unnoticeable characters.
3. Write-in skills and "tricks" can fill in for other rarefied abilities.
4. The way attack rolls works makes no distinction between physical attacks and psychic attacks (something that fits Koishi).
5. "I would like a character whose grid-based combat style seamlessly and synergistically incorporates stealth, area-attacking, and mind-breaking" is a difficult request that Strike! can actually.
6. Marisa and Reimu are basic characters who could be represented in many other systems without issue.
>>43840900
>>43840989
>>43841123
Is there a Strike PDF or anything?
>>43841123
>is a difficult request that Strike! can actually.
but who was actually
I have homebrewed none of the tricks, kit advances, and powers here; all of these are from the Strike! rulebook.
Koishi can fail at using her abilities due to the Mask of Hope rendering her noticeable at times.
Koishi cannot mind control people in "real" Gensokyoan spell card combat, but it is probably more thematic than most other effects available to her. If anyone in Gensokyo deserves to be able to exert such mental influence, it is Hartmann's youkai girl. Besides, it is strictly for combat mind control, and the two mind control abilities she does have here require a victim who already has a subconscious vendetta against the Koishi's opponent's, or or a victim who is already Taken Out (i.e. unconscious), and Koishi can very much manipulate the unconscious mind!
I have given Koishi here the Stealthy feat under the assumption that everyone flies in spell card combat. If that assumption is untrue, then she should have the Flyer feat instead.
All Strike! characters have three actions on their turn: an Attack Action, a Move Action, and a Role Action. As often as possible, Koishi tries to use her Stealthy feat *after* attacking on her turn, so that she can avoid attacks. I could have given Koishi the more complex and grid-manipulating Terrain power, but decided that that would be unfitting.
http://pastebin.com/Vzu7mCCb
>>43841513
I cannot quite share mine, but if you were to use the 4plebs.org archive, I am sure you could find a copy yourself.
>>43841888
... that Strike!, a 4e retroclone, can actually handle.
>>43839905
>an autistic /jp/ crossie
Minmaxing in D&D and Touhou went hand in hand on /tg/ before /jp/ existed.
>>43839905
Touhoufag was told by WotC to never play DnD ever again.
>>43845235
Yep. I remember seeing 3.5 statblocks for Cirno and Utsuho.
>>43840684
>/tg/'s rabid 3.PF population drove him out.
I'm pretty sure he got banned, and then rebanned.
>>43848402
Nazimod was a 3tard.
He also hated Wakfu and Elder Scrolls, in addition to Tohou and 4e.
>>43848361
>Yep. I remember seeing 3.5 statblocks for Cirno and Utsuho.
And they're fucking awful.
>>43848402
And now he posts nearly exclusively in PF threads. Irony?
>>43848562
Didn't he initially get banned for avatarfagging?
>>43848633
No, he got banned when a guy with a serious hateboner fot Touhoufag bothered a mod so incessantly and without pause over it that the mod banned Touhoufag to make the guy shut up and leave. Then Touhoufag ban evaded and got banned for ban evasion.
>>43848573
They were so fucking awful.
There was also a better one for Mokou, which was better, but still not great.
>using D&D for Touhou
>when proper Touhou RPGs exist
>>43848361
Indeed. Cirno is meant to be roughly as strong as a modern human soldier danger-wise, if not endurance-wise, not something that can solo an army of orcs.
>>43849950
orcs are punk ass bitches fampai
>>43840151
>>43840198
>>43840348
>>43840360
Monsters had their maximum hit points lowered and gained more damage. This was made in order to make combat shorter yet have higher risk.
Touhoufag did a number of other things as well. Like the Mage the Awakening build that binds an embodiment of sin into an arm cannon and dishes out quite frankly absurd quantities of damage.
Also, for the record,Gaphag a best
>>43850742
To be fair, 99% of it is just MtAw as intended -- the non-Touhoufag use of it is "just" to create an all powerful demon servant that obeys until you fall for the specific flaw, derangement, or vice that it embodies, which you probably won't violate, unless good RP necessitates you committing suicide with what is essentially a nuclear bomb.
Some Touhoufag ideas, like breaking the Statue of Liberty, or the planet Earth, and getting a free replacement are obviously beyond the pale (the power doesn't imply you break it by using the power, so much as that its activated after you break it). But goetic demons and ritual casting to get 20+ successes are what Mage the Awakening is all about.
>>43840498
>>43850714
Monsters did not have their hit points or defenses lowered in any way by Monster Manual 3 math, save for the revision of soldiers. The Monster Manual 2 already lowered defenses across the metaphorical board (especially for elites and solos, which had overinflated defenses) and lowered the HP multiplier of solos to four, rather than five.
What the Monster Manual 3's math *did* do was substantially increase the damage output of all monsters, and remove the accuracy bonuses and penalties of soldiers and brutes respectively. By doing this, it made all monster roles roughly equal with one another, and allowed combats to be faster and have less overall monster hit points, because the DM could then field less monsters and lower-leveled monsters (which added up to much less total hit points than before) and still meaningfully challenge characters. This was an indirect reduction in hit points and defenses, and it worked very well.
For faster combats, I would personally advise giving all characters their level as a combined enhancement/feat bonus to all weapon and implement damage rolls. However, this is halved for each damage roll beyond their first during their turn, and it is also halved for all off-turn encounter and daily damage rolls.
>>43850817
Certain powers even in GMC nWoD simply have very poor and ambiguous wording.
>>43839905
The funny part about it is that Reimu can technically do that literal thing with Fantasy Maiden.
>>43839905
5e has about 0 interesting/cool combat mechanics/rule interactions.
>>43852823
That's because 5e doesn't have the extreme combat focus 3.5 and 4e have. And 3.5 only has interesting thing because of borked design.
5e's strategy is based on resource management and that is about it.
>>43853322
>That's because 5e doesn't have the extreme combat focus 3.5 and 4e have
What focus DOES it have? Fighting is the most worked out subsystem by far. If it's not focused on that, then what?
>>43853490
5e is the PR edition
>>43852823
>>43853322
>>43853490
On-launch D&D 5e is almost certainly more playable, well-balanced (with respect to both inter-class balance, and character math versus monster math), and mechanically sound than pre-MM3, non-math-fixed 4e. If your benchmark is post-MM3 4e, then that is a different matter altogether.
Still, if what you seek is grid-based tactical combat with cool special attacks available to each player character, you probably want post-MM3, math-fixed 4e or its up-and-coming retroclone, Strike!
>>43853703
Core 5e has wish and simulacrum. I mean, even with screwed up monster math, making that claim about relative balance is quite bold.
>>43853703
>On-launch D&D 5e is almost certainly more playable, well-balanced (with respect to both inter-class balance, and character math versus monster math), and mechanically sound than pre-MM3, non-math-fixed 4e.
This is a pretty big opinion. On-launch 5e is a thing, on-launch 4e was a completely different thing with some superficial similarities that was played by a lot of people before the fixes came out.
>>43853747
>>43853798
I would, frankly, take the Simulacrum and Great Weapon Master/Sharpshooter edition at launch over D&D 4e at launch.
4e had a slew of issues at launch that had to be repaired via errata, including, but not limited to:
- The paladin class being dreadfully weak. Strength/Wisdom paladins had a feeble Divine Challenge, Strength/Charisma paladins had nil for Lay on Hands and power riders, and Charisma/Wisdom paladins had no viable melee basic attack.
- Star Pact warlocks being split between Constitution and Charisma (and not having chain proficiency by default) for no good reason.
- Wizards with the Orb of Imposition rendering key enemies wholly null and void.
- The human's extra at-will power being outright useless for many classes.
- A lack of Expertise feats and Iron Armbands of Power/Bracers of Archery/Staff of Ruin making all characters have inaccurate, weak attacks that cause battles to grow inordinately longer the higher characters go up in level.
- Elites having too high defenses, solos having *much* too high defenses and hit points, an uncomfortably large percentage of monsters imposing game-stalling conditions even at low heroic (e.g. ghouls), and monsters doling out far too little damage all exacerbating the sluggish and slow-paced combat.
- Skill DCs and skill challenges being more lopsided than ever before.
- Masterwork armor being a wreck that caused characters at a large chunk of the levels of the game to be cheated out of non-negligible amounts of AC.
- Lasting Frost, Wintertouched, and a Frost Weapon (granted, this has only been slightly downgraded by errata).
- Blade Cascade in its original form.
Post-MM3 4e is a marked improvement from on-launch 4e.
>>43854020
I consider the ongoing errata process of 4e a part of the game (see my "people played this comment). And while some glaring issues are undeniable (blade cascade) I think many of the math issues have been vastly exaggerated over the years. I know this argument sounds a lot like "my table didn't have caster supremacy", but the fact is that even before MM3 and the expertise feats the numbers were rarely off by more than 1 point or 2.
>>43854020
I'm pretty sure for every imbalance like that, you could point one out for 5e.
-Bladepact is MAD as shit, and not even good
-Monk is MAD as shit
-Also Wo4E monk and beastmaster ranger
-Monster math is only on point because there's basically no monster math.
-Hecatopeasant
-skeleton horde
-summoning is bullshit in general once again
-rogue is pointless
-bard stealing from half casters making them better at their own shit
-moon druid
>>43854055
The medley of issues on-launch 4e were, in quite, a major thorn in its side.
Consider a level 9 human Strength/Wisdom paladin in on-launch 4e. Their human extra at-will power is worthless (no Heroic Effort), their Divine Challenge damage is abysmal (no Mighty Challenge feat), they are missing +1 AC (no Adventurer's Vault masterwork armor), they are lacking a +2 bonus to melee damage rolls (no Iron Armbands of Power), they are also bereft of a +1 bonus to attack rolls (no Expertise feats), their level 9 daily attack power is literally useless (no Strength-based paladin daily attack powers at that level).
Meanwhile, elites and solos have bloated defenses (as per the guidelines in page 185 of the Dungeon Master's Guide 1), solos have quintuple hit points, and conditions like dazed, stunned, and dominated are being bandied around by monsters with discomforting frequency.
>>43854111
I consider class imbalances to be a minor issue in the face of more "system's mechanical chassis"-grounded issues like combats being inadvertently set up to be low-damage, high-whiff ordeals of tedium, and skill DCs being unfeasible.
I would much rather have no attempt at monster math than an attempt at monster math that creates obnoxiously long and uneventful battles.
>>43854215
>I would much rather have no attempt at monster math than an attempt at monster math that creates obnoxiously long and uneventful battles.
So making your own monster math for encounters is okay, but tinkering with pre-existing math (that actually is really easy to fix) is not?
>>43854215
> they are missing +1 AC (no Adventurer's Vault masterwork armor), they are lacking a +2 bonus to melee damage rolls (no Iron Armbands of Power), they are also bereft of a +1 bonus to attack rolls (no Expertise feats)
What I'm saying (and have been since launch, in 2008) is that these *are not issues*. 1 point of AC and attack amounts to very little in the grand scheme of things. Considering the scaling, the "missing" bonuses are going to add up over the 30 levels, right, but the mathematical assumption of hitting 55% of the time is respected.
Now,
>no Strength-based paladin daily attack powers at that level
this is an actual issue, not saying that there weren't any. But to say that 5e is better off on exit? Not really.
>>43854307
When all of the monsters in the Monster Manual cleave to the faulty design of on-launch D&D 4e, yes, that is an issue.
Post-MM3, math-fixed, free-tax-feat 4e is a decidedly more polished and mechanically sound game.
>>43854344
The missing AC goes up to 2 by levels 11-15 (then fluctuates down to 0 at levels 16-20, then back to 1 missing AC and 1 missing NAD at levels 21-25), the missing attack and damage increases to a missing +2 attack and +4 damage by levels 15-24 and a missing +3 attack and +6 damage by levels 25-30. These are *not* negligible missing numbers. Their absence creates considerably longer combats.
The core assumption for accuracy in D&D 4e has *never* been "characters with a +3 proficiency bonus weapon should hit on-level enemies 55% of the time."
It has always been "characters with a +3 proficiency bonus weapon should hit on-level enemies 65% of the time." You can see this in page 31 of the Dungeon Master's Guide 2, wherein a baseline companion character is supposed to have an attack bonus equal to 4 + their level before proficiency bonus.
A level 1 weapon-user with a +3 proficiency bonus weapon and an 18 for their attack-keyed ability score actually obeys this: +7 attack versus average AC 15, for 65% accuracy.
The +1/+2/+3 bonus from expertise feats exists to ensure that characters meet this expectation.
>>43854468
Why exactly is that Awoo running away from a Capra demon?
>>43840106
Then why does he constantly shit around in Pathfinder General?
>>43854468
>When all of the monsters in the Monster Manual cleave to the faulty design of on-launch D&D 4e, yes, that is an issue.
I'm not saying it's not an issue.
I'm saying adding +1 to hit, +1 to hit/tier, +2/tier to damage and +1-2AC is easier than building everything from the ground up.
>>43854468
Ah, but you discount that that gap is to be filled with power bonuses, combat advantage and the like.
And again, I'm not saying that the math was perfect, but that the impact of the math issues on actual play has been overblown from the beginning. I have been reading your posts over the years so I'm aware that I'm not going to move you from that position, but I think it's common sense that there is an abyss between "hit chance expectations are 5% off on average" and "the game is unplayable".
>>43854627
Come now, 5e is not unplayable.
You just are given no real instructions on how to play it, and are expected to eyeball it.
>>43854518
I GM Strike! and other games multiple times per week. (From last May to last October, I was GMing four times a week for six hours on average each time, but I have slowed down my pace since then.) This means that I am very frequently a GM, but infrequently a player.
I cannot use Roll20 due to my ISP having a certain bandwidth issue with that website's client. I cannot use voice chat. I do not enjoy play-by-post games. Therefore, my options for finding a game online are highly limited.
The vast majority of online games I *do* find that can accommodate me are Pathfinder games. Pathfinder is a system that one would be foolish to enter blindly and without mechanical expertise. Therefore, it is imperative that I learn the workings of the system. I have only really begun to earnestly do so roughly a month or two ago.
>>43854545
That is true. I will not argue against that. It is not, however, on-launch 4e, which is what I am speaking of.
We already know that post-MM3, math-fixed, free-feat-taxed 4e is a reasonably well-refined game.
>>43854627
Many of those power bonuses require characters to land hits in the first place. They are not actually supposed to be taken into account for the purpose of accuracy; more potent PC power riders at higher levels are supposed to be "canceled out" by more fearsome monster power riders.
We are not just looking at a missing 5% accuracy and +2 damage here; it steadily climbs, which is why Expertise feats confer a scaling +1/+2/+3 attack bonus, and why Iron Armbands of Power/Bracers of Archery/Staff of Ruin grant +2/+4/+6 (more granular for the staff) damage.
These bonuses are legitimately, objectively missing from on-launch 4e.
On-launch 4e is definitely playable, but I do not think it is as mechanically sound as on-launch 5e, even taking into account 5e's own issues. Of course, I would take post-MM3, math-fixed, free-feat-tax 4e over current-day 5e without a second thought, unless I had to run a game without a grid.
>>43854772
>That is true. I will not argue against that. It is not, however, on-launch 4e, which is what I am speaking of.
Neither is 5e with working math on-launch 5e; you necessarily have to tinker with it for it to make sense. You have to do work for both, and the work for 4e is less than 5e.
>>43854814
Could you perhaps expound?
>>43839905
>Did he return for 5E? Does anyone have any interest in converting Touhou into D&D 5E?
No, for two reasons
1: 4e is basically the perfect system for conversion to that sort of genre
2: 5e is a hyper-specialized system for a very specific and narrow band of games (granted it's the perfect system for that narrow band of games.)
>>43840890
>There's nothing missing (from 5e) that you'd need to do it.
There is actually: in 4e, the system was geared to specifically make your PC's FEEL like the protagonists of a fantasy novel that was being written. in 5e ,the mechanics are specifically geared to make your PC's FEEL like a very small, statistically expectable, part if a much larger larger and scarier world in which someone put treasure filled deathtraps as the only avenue of social mobility. 4e is about HEROES and 5e is about ADVENTURERS. That is not to either game's discredit; both are valid modes for a game, but if you're trying to imitate anime (Attack on Titan notwithstanding, as it intentionally subverts heroic memes) then the one that focuses on larger-than-life heroes is going to do you better.
The right tool for the right job.
>>43854814
>>43854814
>>43854814
The only math fix I had to do for 5e was reducing how quick monster hp scales and increasing the scaling on their damage. It seemed like a very minor tweak really.
>>43840900
>>43840989
I must add that another reason to use Strike! for a Touhou game is that the noncombat mechanics are reasonably divorced from the combat mechanics (freeform write-in skills plus a list of noncombat perks vs. 4e-style grid combat and discrete powers) that one could declare the former to be Gensokyo as normal, and the latter to be what happens when someone initiates a spell card battle.
You could even say that the combat grid exists in-universe as a spatial measure during group spell card battles.
>>43855568
I have spoken against bounded accuracy numerous times in the past. It is very much the crux of 5e being a much lower-powered game about relatively low-powered adventurers rather than fantasy superheroes.
"Relatively" is the key word here, since spells such as Plane Shift and Meteor Swarm still very much exist in 5e.
Big parts of why 5e doesn't focus on coherent monster math or why it has bounded accuracy is that it's designed for 2e style sandbox games.
5e is very hyper specialized. The hectopeasant is a feature. It makes it possible to get a large amount of hirelings and go after high level monsters. The lack of magic item economy frees up players to focus on buying businesses, managing hirelings, etc. Lack of monster math isn't as big of a problem if the players have multiple dungeons of varying difficulties they can choose from.
I'd say it's an extremely well designed game but that it does something very different from 3.x or 5e.
>>43854660
I'm not saying 5e is unplayable. I mean that the slight math differences in 4e do not make it unplayable.
>>43854772
As I said you are not moving an inch from your position, so I don't know if it's worth to argue with you, but still.
In DMG1 the average AC for monsters is 14+level (higher for some categories, lower for others).
At level 1, assuming an 18 in the attack stat (16 from the array + racial modifier) and a +2 prof. weapon, a character has a +6 attack bonus against an average AC of 16, meaning an hit on a roll of 9+.
By level 30, the character looks at an attack bonus of +31 (+8 stat +15 level +6 magic weapon +2 prof.) against an average AC of 44, meaning an hit on 13+.
But those 4 points of gap over the course of 30 levels can be filled, even staying in PHB1. You can get 1 more point by gettin a +3 prof. weapon, another 1 by choosing demigod as the epic destiny. Fighter, ranger and rogue have conditional +1 attack bonuses built in. There isn't a lot of feat choice, admittedly, but we got down to a 2-point difference, and I have left out other conditional bonuses (powers and CAdv) as you said.
Now, the math is not perfect and the Expertise feats were a welcome addition to the game. But the point is that the math *wasn't that far off in the first place*, yet it's often brought up as if the game was an unplayable mess.
>>43856052
This is an a posteriori justification.
I have run the game for 6 months. It's neither hyper specialized nor extremely well designed. "Bounded accuracy" is devspeak for "we couldn't be bothered to re-do the monster math, so we are going to keep numbers low in the hope that everything goes well". There's too much nonsesical variance in numbers between the various monsters to assume that it is part of some sort of bigger design scheme.
>>43856222
All of the sources of attack bonuses you cite can raise a character's accuracy, but they are "supposed" to stack with the missing +1/+2/+3, which is why the Expertise feats were released to begin with.
>>43856267
The two largest issues with 5e's math, as far as I can tell, are:
1. There is no rhyme or reason to monster ability scores and saving throws. None. Nil. This results in targeting weak saving throws being one of the most surefire way to take out monsters, such as using a Charisma-targeting Banishment against a very low-Charisma golem.
2. The writers believed that it would be feasible for some monsters to deliberately have wide gaps between offense and defense in their raw, base numbers, with some being very offense-oriented and others being highly defensive. This sounds plausible at first glance, but it simply *does not work*, and 4e and Strike! both recognize this and avoid it.
2a. Defense-oriented monsters are nothing but a monotonous, non-threatening slog.
2b. Offense-oriented monsters create a "rocket tag" effect.
2c. Group battles that mix defense-oriented and offense-oriented monsters will simply result in the players focusing on the latter, while the former monsters stand around and feebly brush against the party, since 5e has very little in the way of 4e-style defending for PCs, and virtually nothing for monsters. (Compare this to 4e, which has the "soldier" role for monsters that defend other monsters, and Strike!, which has monster customizations that allow 4e-style defending.)
>>43856267
>>43856052
I think there's a difference between ELEGANCE in game design, and success in achieving you stated goal in game design.
5e, does indeed achieve its goal, despite lacking elegance. Granted, its goal is something that I have no interest in playing or running, but if the internet tough-guy rantings about "real D&D" are any indication, it's what a lot of people DO want.
>>43857103
It's not even a brutal hardcore "real d&d" play experience. PC's aren't going to be one shotted by low level monsters at 2nd level like they would in basic d&d. PC's heal a decent amount and the action economy handles improv better than "real hardcore d&d" did.
I find bounded accuracy+not a whole lot of magic items makes it very different from "real d&d". The CR system and judging monster difficulty is a gambit at best. But bounded accuracy makes it handle a sandbox better. Since you don't have to think about player level at all or design encounters to the players in that style, I'm pretty certain the devs played that way when designing monster math. Running old modules with wildly varying monster power levels works well in 5e.
I'm pretty certain the devs used mainly sandbox based exploration play during playtesting since the rules support that play style better than any other way of running a campaign. The lack of complexity in the monsters becomes less of a bug when the players have 10 hirelings and are facing 30 monsters. Combat doesn't start breaking down until about 40 combatants.
>>43857437
>I'm pretty certain the devs used mainly sandbox based exploration play during playtesting since the rules support that play style better than any other way
This is a good theory. It would explain the absurd notion of several classes (e.g. fighter, warlock) being balanced around the absurd notion of one-hour-long short rests, and the classic contrivance of "some classes are based on short rests or no rests at all, some are based on recharging spells on sleeping."
Such a mechanic would not hold up anywhere as well with more plot-based games.
>>43857437
>It's not even a brutal hardcore "real d&d" play experience.
and yet...
>The lack of complexity in the monsters becomes less of a bug when the players have 10 hirelings and are facing 30 monsters. Combat doesn't start breaking down until about 40 combatants.
... is the main justification I've heard for why B/X workd
But yeah, basically, exploration of a sandbox world that's much larger than the, definitely exceptional, but well within the expected bell-curve adventurers. That's a valid playstyle... not one I care for, but lots of people see it as the only true D&D.
>>43857579
B/X was much more tightly designed when it came to dungeon crawling though. It's a playstyle I like so 5e is essentially what I wanted out of 3.x when I played it. If you're running a shorter campaign or something more plot heavy, 5e is not the game for it. It has a pretty narrow play style but nails it well.
>>43857560
True. I've noticed a lot of the poor reviews of 5e, are when folks play it with a more plot heavy style while the good reviews of it, the gm has a hexgrid and tells players to explore.
>>43857437
Not him, but it's true that 5E handles persistent wounds badly. My 5E game makes it so that getting knocked to 0 hit points doesn't incapacitate you, but you start getting levels of Exhaustion every time you get hit while at or reduced to 0 hit points. That way it takes a few days to walk off a serious beating and puts you at serious risk when you're at low hit points.
>>43857560
>I'm pretty certain the devs used mainly sandbox based exploration play during playtesting since the rules support that play style better than any other way
Not a bad theory. Whatever they were doing, they certainly weren't listening to the playtesters. We were begging for martials to have interesting options and we were completely shut down and ignored.
>absurd notion of one-hour-long short rests
Yeah, I think those are bullshit as well. Short Rests are 5 minutes in my game, Long Rests take 1 hour but can only be taken once per 24 hours. Sleeping for six hours gives the benefits of a Long Rest and gives you back your ability to take another Long Rest later. Using something like Action Surge shouldn't require a full hour of lying down to use again. A few minutes to catch your breath, calm your nerves, and maybe take a few gulps of water is more than enough.
>>43857779
I replaced the three saves with a sort of death spiral when players are at 0 or below. That way it feels actually threatening to go down. And yeah, 5 minute rests help the game a ton. I found endless cleave helps martials handle mobs better, facing adds a bit more depth to skirmish level battles and marking makes defenders a little less useless.
It's a shame martials don't have as many interesting options, but a lot of the options are sort of hidden and not spelled out clearly though they're not paywalled behind feats anymore. Low level martials have far more viable actions than they did in 3.x at least.
One thing that helps a ton and seems to go with the spirit of the system is to be extremely generous with what skill checks can do in combat as well as what "interact with environment" action can be used for.
>>43857877
It's an improv heavy and gm fiat heavy system. So a system like that requires a gm who says yes to crazy bullshit and says "roll for it" rather than "you can't do that" As well as realizing what the lower numbers means for DC. Rarely should a DC get over 25 for anything.
>>43857560
It seems I had typed "absurd notion" twice.
>>43857704
Two interesting tidbits I have noticed about 5e and that seemingly nobody else on the internet have noticed are:
1. The majority of the art assets are reused from 4e, but they were clever about where to pluck them from: 2010-2012 4e books and the 2010-2012 issues of Dragon and Dungeon magazine. Only the most dedicated 4e fans would notice this. (Even those art assets that seem new, such as the tapestry from the fighter class entry, are actually from late-issue Dragon or Dungeon.)
2. A non-negligible percentage of the "GM advice" sections of the 5e Dungeon Master's Guide are copy and pasted verbatim from various articles from 2010-2012 Dragon and Dungeon articles.
It is interesting to see just how much they borrowed from late-cycle 4e... but of course, none of this is mechanics-related.
>>43857779
The one thing you should watch for when using 5-minute short rests is the upgrade to warlocks. Granted, warlocks *are* simply weaker and less versatile than conventional spellcasters (save for their privilege of using the very effective Rod of the Pact Keeper), but their spellcasting could get out of hand with 5-minute short rests.
>>43857704
>If you're running a shorter campaign or something more plot heavy, 5e is not the game for it. It has a pretty narrow play style but nails it well.
>>43857704
>True. I've noticed a lot of the poor reviews of 5e, are when folks play it with a more plot heavy style while the good reviews of it, the gm has a hexgrid and tells players to explore.
Basically yeah. Esentially, it's like a restaurant that specializes in one dish... let's say cream of mushroom soup.
>I don't much care for this restaurant, because I don't like mushrooms
>But if you stop looking at it as a burger joint, and look at as the cream-of-mushroom-soupery, it is the best in town
>Yeah.... but I don't like mushrooms
I guess the problem in this metaphor is that two very different restaurants share the same name, which is offputting to some.
To those of you who enjoy your cream-of-mushroom-soup 5e.... have fun. I trust your reviews in that it is indeed the best at what it does. I still don't like mushrooms.
>>43857928
Interesting. The art in 4e that a lot of folks didn't like was very much late 3.5 "belt and zipper" mode. In fact, early 4e borrowed a ton of ideas and concepts from late 3.5 supplements and third party books.
It's part of why I didn't play d&d for a long time. I was growing disillusioned with 3.5, then when announcing the edition WoTC started shitting on peoples playstyle and I was introduced to 4e with a GM who ignored the gm advice while running keep on the shadowfell. It felt very much like the things I didn't like about 3.5 amped to 11.
>>43849285
Have you ever played one? They're fucking garbage. Nips can't make tabletop to save their lives.
>>43856052
>I'd say it's an extremely well designed game but that it does something very different from 3.x or 5e.
Um... have people already forgotten the two year long community playtest? Not that it wasn't a stunt, but that alone dispels any notions of "extremely good design".
5e stated goal was to evoke a feeling of D&D-ness, whatever that means. A lot of people went in and out the design process (such as Monte "passive perception" Cook) and the game was designed piecemeal.
It does what it does well (or at least well enough) not because of an underliyng design principle but because the sources of inspiration did the same thing.
>all dat indexing
Nigga be an AI
>>43858179
Who?
>>43858102
I think a lot of the poor reviews are yeah, folks trying to run 5e the same way they'd run a 4e adventure.
And something that I think turned me off of 4e when it was new was the gm running it like 3.5 The criticism of "you can't do something if it's not on your character sheet" is more true of 3.5 than 4e I think. GM's though new to 4e were used to "good fucking luck trying something cool without a feat or 20 skill points invested in it" so they would run 4e as more restrictive than it is.
Why does this thread hate 5e when /tg/ loves 5e in 5e general?
>>43858289
Because lots of 4e fans and 5e has a near opposite design philosophy from 4e.
>>43855568
The Problem with Touhou is that it has an erratic powerlevel scale: stuff like the fairies, Rika*, the rabbit soldiers, and Rinnosuke who wouldn't be at all out of place in a low-powered game versus titanically powered characters like Suika, Reimu and Yukari who absolutely dwarf the opposition. The Spellcard system is required if you're going to emulate 2hu on any level like the games to keep one character from turning the other character into paste, and that's not even getting into the fact that 2hu is technically a modern setting and modern/futuristic weapons and tools are infrequently found within it.
*Though, in D&D, tanks of the literal kind actually do a scary amount of damage if their main gun manages to make contact with their target: your average tonk can 2-shot a dragon assuming it rolls averagely.
>>43858289
It doesn't seem to me like anyone in this thread hates 5E; they're just saying "5E is good for specifically this task, which we do not enjoy".
And if you enjoy flying magical girls throwing fireworks at each other, that's a valid point.
>>43858376
This is, again, why I push for the 4e retroclone that is Strike! for a Touhou game, as I explain in >>43840900, >>43840989, >>43841123, >>43842152, and >>43855931.
Strike! is very loose with its noncombat abilities (though its kits comprise a very interesting list of miscellaneous noncombat perks), in a way that would be ideal for Touhou's nebulous powers outside of spell card battles.
>>43858289
5e general is a thread for people who WANT to talk about 5e, which is going to be by and large people who enjoy 5e
So it's going to have more people who enjoy 5e.
For what it's worth I'm a Fantasy Craft fag, but Spellbound's Half Life 3-esque release schedule has pretty well killed the discussion in fcg for now.
I use 5E for Touhou and basically treat everyone like a Warlock. Encounter/daily based at wills ala Spellcards. I don't super give a fuck about Touhou lore though, so it probably is more like >>43858497 says, literally flying girls throwing fireworks at each other.
>>43858686
I do not see the need to use the warlock specifically. 5e already has a vague facsimile of at-will, encounter (recharges on a short rest), daily (recharges on a long rest).
How do you handle concentration spells? It is not particularly Touhou-like for characters' spells to be broken in a single hit.
Does positioning matter that much in your Touhou 5e games?
>>43858808
I treat them more like Fire and Forget, that the spells have duration rather than concentration checks, since all the 2hu games I played, once you fired a spellcard off, you couldn't really be stopped. You could still take damage, but the bullets kept coming even if you shot them.
For the positioning, I'm a no grid guy. But I've been gaming with the same guys for nearly ten years and we all use "feet" as a term of measurement as well as time-based direction (4 o clock, 6 o clock etc), so they're more like aerial dogfights, I guess.
>>43858242
>I think a lot of the poor reviews are yeah, folks trying to run 5e the same way they'd run a 4e adventure.
I would more call it "GM's and players realizing that 5e is specialized for a type of game they don't like" than "trying to run it like 4e." For example, I respect 5e for what it does, but I highly doubt I'll play it, because what it does is of no value to me.
>>43859840
I agree with you. I've ran roughly half of the playtests and a 6-months game with the actual book and it was pretty clear that the rules do not lend themselves to the kind of games I want.
>>43857877
Death spirals work, in my opinion, if characters have a decent reserve of hit points or resilience before the negatives start to kick in. Nobody likes getting punched once and having penalties for the rest of the fight. Thanks for the advice on skill checks, going to add that into my game.
>>43857928
Gotcha. We don't have warlocks but I'll keep it in mind.
>>43855568
>4e is about HEROES and 5e is about ADVENTURERS.
100% bullshit meaningless labels. Nothing in 5e prevents characters from being heroes (is HEROES supposed to mean something?) and same with 4e and adventurers.
>>43865270
You CAN twist a system into the sort of story it's not mechanically good at doing. My friends and I did exactly that with 2e in school when that was all we had, but we wanted to play stories that resembled the fantasy novels that had attracted us to the game in the first place: however 2e took about a year's worth of tweaking to get the house-rules just right, 4e did it out of the box, and DESU, I don't know how much work 5e would take to run that kind of story, because it didn't do it OOTB, and didn't present an immediately intuitively elegant method of house-ruling to run the sort of game we wanted, so we deleted our 5e PFD's and went right back to 4e.
5e is a specialized game, designed to run the genre of "classic D&D" as defined by people who's first D&D experience was colored by 3e and an early internet filled with 2e grognards. That's not a bad thing. That genre has had over a decade to develop a life of its own, and it's a product that people want.... just not everyone.
WoD Vampire fans don't get defensive when it's pointed out that their system doesn't do Magical Girl games well
MaidRPG fans don't get butthurt if someone points out that their favorite game is about anime maid-girls, and not cyberpunk professional criminals.
Hell, even the most defensive 4e fans have accepted that our favorite system just-plain can't run gritty low-magic survival.
Only GURPS fans get this defensive when someone points out what their system can and can't do. Protip: D&D is NOT GURPS. The one time they TRIED to make it GURPS, we got the monstrosity that is OGL [insert genre]d20 (pic very unfortunately related.)
Every edition of D&D, other than 3.PF was a game specialized to run a specific genre, or at-least specialized to deliver on a number of specific genre-tropes. It stands to reason that 4e and 5e are geared towards two different genres within the umbrella of "fantasy."
>>43839905
>Remove Oni.webm
>Remove best girl
>>43857928
>The majority of the art assets are reused from 4e, but they were clever about where to pluck them from: 2010-2012 4e books and the 2010-2012 issues of Dragon and Dungeon magazine.
Finally someone else noticed. I thought I was going crazy being told "5e has so much new art" by people who didn't play 4e
>>43866005
To me, the most disappointing aspect of 5e's power level *aside* from bounded accuracy is the monsters.
In a game where monsters are superpowered, the PCs look like fantasy superheroes for successfully taking them down. In a game where monsters are decidedly less powerful and fearsome, PCs do not look anywhere as impressive for accomplishing the same feat.
A prime example of this would be the balor. We all know how superpowered a balor is in 3.X and in 4e, but even in AD&D 2e, a balor was far beyond the ken of mortal man:
http://www.lomion.de/cmm/tanatbal.php
>Special Defenses: +3 or better weapons to hit
That AC -8 makes the balor practically untouchable by lesser warriors, and its immunity to +2 and below weapons seals all low-level foes' fate. The balor absolutely needs to be felled by powerful adventurers.
In 5e, that is not the case. The balor merely has resistance to nonmagical weapons and AC 19, so enough peasant crossbowmen can and will take down a foremost general of the Abyss.
That might be appropriate for a lower-powered, less heroic, still-quite-fantasy game, but not so much for the kind of "fantasy superheroes facing fantasy supervillains" vibe that both 3.X and 4e had going for them.
>>43866933
>enough peasant crossbowmen can and will take down a [Insert literally anything]
That pretty much sums up 5e, why I dislike it, and why lots of others like it.
Is it "realistic" for warriors to never stop seeing a group of peasant conscripts as a serious threat? Yeah probably. Is it fun, heroic, or escapist? No, not really, not for me anyway.
>>43867030
5e is for the new GoT gritty fantasy crowd.
>>43867030
>>43867092
Another part of 5e that sends across a message that "this is for low-powered adventurers rather than fantasy superheroes" is the suggested starting wealth in page 38 of the Dungeon Master's Guide. Yes, the table is one of suggestions and guidelines, but that still means that the writers assume that in a "standard campaign," a level 5-10 character will start off with nothing more than their standard equipment plus 525-750 (average 637.5) gp.
Plate armor costs 1,500 gp.
This means that the writers assume that in a "standard campaign," a fighter or a paladin should be coming in at 10th level equipped with neither plate armor nor a magic weapon with which to effectively damage the many, many monsters with resistance to mundane weapon damage.
This has no mechanical bearing on how individual GMs run the game, but it does give a look at the writers' thought process of how the game is supposed to be run in a "standard campaign."
>>43867030
The thing is, while it's realistic for mighty warriors to never be able to disregard a horde of crossbowmen, it's an entirely different question as to whether a terrifying monster from hell should be able to.
>>43867986
On the other hand, those mighty warriors can stand toe to toe with the terrifying monsters from hell, so why not chuck realism out of the window regarding them as well.
>>43839905
2hu lends itself well to once-per-encounter powers, though I have no idea how reaction / die-and-restart-and-memorisation bullet hell gameplay translates to 4e, given that 4e is turnbased (so reactions aren't important) and tends not to use save/loads, so memorisation isn't that important.
>>43868245
D&D 4e is probably the one D&D edition that most strongly emphasizes acting outside of your turns, with a bevy of off-turn powers for *every* class, as well as an entire combat role (defender) whose entire raison d'être is threatening enemies with off-turn abilities.
>>43854772
I-is this the real touhoufag? From ye olde days?
>>43870887
Who else could it be?
>>43871799
I need him to tell me to please wait warmly.
>>43867030
Another thing that irks me about the bounded accuracy of 5e is that most of a characters' saving throw bonuses simply *do not increase* as a character rises in level, short of investing in the Resilient Feat or specific magic items (and remember, the GM is the one in control of magic items).
A barbarian or a sorcerer has no use for Wisdom and has no Wisdom saving throw proficiency, and thus will be as weak-willed at 1st-level as they are at 20th-level, short of the Resilient feat or specific magic items.
The barbarian and the sorcerer will, regardless of level, succumb just as easily to a CR 1 dryad's all-day-long charm or a CR 4 succubus/incubus's all-day-long charm.
Perhaps this is appropriate for lower-powered, grittier fantasy, but it is not ideal for fantasy superheroes.
>>43871979
Please wait warmly.
>>43866057
Indeed.
Oni a Beast.
Reimu a shit.
>>43855568
>: in 4e, the system was geared to specifically make your PC's FEEL like the protagonists of a fantasy novel
Unless you were a caster, in which case you were useless support.
>>43874602
This is the edition wherein nearly every support spell comes with direct damage against enemies.
4e experimented at one point and presented the "pacifist cleric" build in Divine Power, but it was *so* effective at keeping the party invincible and immortal that it had to be downgraded by errata. (Unfortunately, they had gone overboard and downgraded it into uselessness, as is often the case with reactionary errata.)
>>43858289
/tg/ isn't one person.
>>43874602
>boohoo I'm a casterfag and I can't get an erection unless I'm objectively stronger than non-casters
>>43875036
Nobody ever said anything like that. Anon claimed that 4e made you feel like the protagonist. Well, that's not the case for casters. They feel like support bitches.
If you want my opinion on 'caster vs martial', I think both of them should be equally viable and fit a 'main character' role potential. Some of the classes at any rate.
>>43874932
The thing about your cleric is that it's a support character. I don't enjoy playing those so I don't like that system, but in direct relevance to your post, a support character doesn't feel like the main character as that post I responded to claimed.
>>43874602
I don't know about other Casters, but Level 1 Wizards were capable of SEMI-DIVINE, BEARLY COSMIC POWER.
I was freezing and flaming everyone who so muched as looked at me funny. Acid on everything like I was just pulled out of Left4Dead. If I felt really spiteful, Unlimited Blade Works at Level 1.
Where is the weakness in that?
>>43875362
So you had spells. Compared to the damage output of your peers, they weren't much. Your role was to provide AOE and support, you softened up targets but you didn't eliminate them. That is not the role that the main character plays.
>>43875083
If you would like to downplay battlefield control, combat utility, buffing, debuffing, forced movement, movement-granting, and force multiplication, you are perfectly free to play one of D&D 4e's many striker (pure damage) classes.
Many of them, such as the sorcerer (AoE striking) and the warlock (mobile striking and single-target debuffing) are magical implement-users.
>>43875451
>Downplay
I think you're losing focus here. You just described a support character. My entire point is that casters are support only in 4e, that they can't fit the role of the main character. Which is all I'm saying. I don't like to play support characters and that's part of why I don't like 4e, but it's not really the main matter of discussion.
>>43875427
>AoE
>Stuns
>Holds
>Rituals
>Support
I'm doing everything! Not only am I able to summon dang near everything to make trace and life easier, I'm able to take the Commander role and delegate tasks to the meat people.
If I am not there, people die.
If I am not there, they can't progress.
What of all that doesn't give you the option of being a Main Character that other games do?
>>43875489
Define "main character."
Is the "main character" the one who draws the attention of enemies and stands proud as a stalwart wall for their friends?
Is the "main character" the one who fells the greatest foes with brutal efficiency?
Is the "main character" the one who calls the metaphorical shots of the party by placing a buff here, shoving an ally there, and granting a free action to that other ally?
Is the "main character" the one who reshapes the battlefield by forcing enemies' hands with debuffs and forced movement and by clearing out swarms of mooks?
All of these can be "main characters," and they all come in martial and non-martial form.
>>43874602
Exactly what "caster" were you talking about?
>Wizard: King of the controllers
>Swordmage: Defender capable of picking a single enemy and making them useless for the rest of the fihgt
>Warlock: By far the controller-ey-est of the strikers
>Sorcerer: Full striker damage. No restrictions on target. 100% sniper bitch.
>Bard: The coolest guy in town, who beats bitches senseless with his power of cool, and breaks their defenses for allies.
>Artificer: Top tier healing leader
>>43875427
>>43875064
Ah, I see your problem, you're measuring effectiveness solely based off of damage-per-turn and monsters finished off. I've noticed a lot of people do that, especially the charop community, though that's just because it's the easiest to PROVE you've optimized. Every role can FEEL protagonist-ey
Striker: finishing off the enemies
Defender: KAMEN RIDER TAKES BLOWS FOR ALLIES AND FOR JUSTICE
Controller: Let's just plain RUIN somebody's day
Leader: Cornerstone of the party, who inspires everyone around him to greatness... sounds like a lot of protagonists
>>43875562
Yeah, that's a support character. You aren't the person killing targets, you're supporting the ones that do. That doesn't make you weak, but that's not a main character role.
>>43875568
Main characters in media are the 'doers', anon. They're the ones that actually finish off the big bad. The guy who claims the kills and glory.
Controllers and buffers/debuffers don't fit this archetype. Nor to tanks.
>>43875569
>effectiveness
No, this is the core issue with all of these replies. You think I'm saying that a support character has no role. That's not the case. My entire argument is that in 4e, casters cannot feel like the main character. I said this in counter to an anon that said that all classes could in 4e.
>>43875660
On the contrary, the main character is typically the lynchpin that secures victory for their side and holds together the team.
The only exceptions are fiction bits in which it isn't remotely party oriented.
>>43875489
>You just described a support character. My entire point is that casters are support only in 4e
>>43874602
>Unless you were a caster, in which case you were useless support.
To which "caster" are you referring?
>Wizard: King of all controllers, hands down
>Swordmage: Highest defender AC without using weird charop-board notRAI tricks, also capable of picking a single monster and wasting ALL OF HIS TURNS with his immediate action powers
>Warlock: Controllerey-est of all the strikers
>Sorcerer: Striker with absolutely no target requirements
>Bard: Throwin' out debuffs and deciding who the entire party is going to attack each turn... literally leading the party
>Artificer: Absolute top-tier healer. You can be a large party's ONLY healer, and you keep everyone alive.
I think you're focusing on Damage Per Turn too much as the only way to be "protagonist." Charop communities also focused too much on Damage Per Turn. EAch role can be "the protagonist"
>Leader: You literally lead the party, deciding who will strike what with debuffs, and target-specific buffs, while keeping everyone alive, and rallying your friends back to FULL FIGHTING SPIRIT!!!
>Controller: You RUIN the day of the bad guys, not by killing them, but by making it SUCK to be them, and making their plans never work
>Defender: "Stand back, this foe is mine today, he shall not pass beyond this line." "KAMEN RIDER WILL TAKE THE BLOWS FOR HIS ALLIES AND FOR JUSTICE!!!"
>Striker: You kill the things... honestly the most boring way to be the protagonist in my opinion.
>>43875569
>>43875757
OOps, double post. Thought the first one got deleted by mods (for what reason I could not say.) so I made a second one and tried to tone any accusatory tone down a notch.
>>43875731
The main character does that while being the doer. They're not the party cheerleader. At least in nothing I've seen, I'm sure some media breaks the mold in that direction.
>>43875757
All of them. All of the roles you described are support roles (except the sorcerer, but the sorcerer doesn't really get the kill either, they soften up targets).
I'm only laying out what a protagonist does in a party role in media. You're trying to argue that anyone can be the 'most important', which is a different matter. This is about who can be the protagonist in the party, the one that fits into the protagonist archetype and role common in media, not who can be the 'most important character in the party'.
And another issue is one I hinted at above, protagonists being the leader AND the killer are common.
>>43875660
Optimus Prime is without a doubt the main character of any given Transformers show
He's rarely the most effective fighter (hell, the dude's a librarian in some continuities)
What he does is keep the team functional and able to overcome obstacles.
Likewise Cyclops (although nobody actually likes Cyclops but me, so)
>>43874602
Bards can be twin striker do everythings, warlocks have crazy damage, invokers have powers that simply win the battle no save (use the wall of hestavar and a damage zone, and its automatic victory unless the enemy can teleport to locales he can't see), avengers are super protagonisty, as are paladins... what's not protagonitsy about casters?
>>43875660
>The guy who claims the kills and glory.
You're thinking of counterstrike and CoD, not fantasy media.
>>43875840
No, this is very much fantasy media.
>>43875837
And Optimus Prime is usually the one to finish of Megatron, no?
>>43875803
>The main character does that while being the doer.
Glad we agree 100% as you're literally correct, though by "doer" you probably mean "who got the last hit."
>They're not the party cheerleader
Neither are 4e support chars, the most cheerleader type char, the warlord, is typically an armed and armored warrior who leads the party.
>At least in nothing I've seen, I'm sure some media breaks the mold in that direction.
As far as the inspiration for D&D goes, S&S, off the top of my head:
Elric, the iconic elemental/infernal hexblade: Is the main character, and the main damage dealer wherever he goes. Is also definitely an arcane, caster type. He minors in (shitty) leadership, and leans heavily on his followers until the very end.
Corwin: He fights quite well, but 99% of the kills go to his followers, and most of his exploits are about the great armies he leads.
Armitage, the iconic fantasy blast caster (even though he's HPL): Damage dealer, but, guess what? He's a caster.
Aragorn: 99% of his significance is in terms of leadership and having the healing hands of the king.
Seems martial types in S&S are more leader oriented typically (warlord), arcane types are more damage oriented. The main exceptions seem to be the ones that find themselves alone the most.
>>43875978
This post doesn't seem to be a direct counter to my core point here.
>>43875881
Depends on the show
Looking at the movie, Optimus tried that and died, and was ultimately succeeded by Rodimus.
In fact, Optimus tends to get played more as a martyr than a conqueror in any adaptation outside of Bayformers.
>>43875881
>>43875803
>>43875660
>>43875489
>>43875427
>Can't think of any protagonists who don't do the killing themselves
>Clearly, Hercules and not Amadeus Cho was the protagonist of The Incredible Hercules comic
>Clearly Dr Manhattan was the protagonist of Watchmen
>>43876016
I did say usually.
>>43876028
I thought we were talking about fantasy here.
>>43876005
The convo seemed to be about casters not being able to be good direct damage types in 4e, and that the main character is generally the damager guy, not the charismatic leadership lynchpin guy. As noted, the main team focused S&S inspiration chars I can think of were all arcane damage dealers and martial leaders.
>>43876028
As long as you don't think Ozy was the good guy.
>>43876005
IT seems like your core point is that in order to be the protagonist, you need to be doing the killing in fantasy media. In 4e, arcane casters don't have the fight-ending DPT that some other classes have, and therefore are never "the protagonist." This is simply not true at all.
Hell, when I first saw the "Warlord" class in 2008, my first thought was "fucking hell yes, a class for 'generic farm-boy with a sword and a destiny, who's still green behind the ears, but inspires everyone around him to greatness' protagonist archetype.
>>43876053
I actually noted that the protag is usually both charismatic and the damage dealer.
>>43876102
My core point is that in most media that's what the protagonist does, so to feel like that kind of protagonist, you need to be able to too. The direction here is important, in what you said it's the protagonist role because 'only damage dealers matter', in what I said, it's the protagonist role because that's how it's portrayed in media.
>>43876045
>I thought we were talking about fantasy here.
Then look at the plethora of fantasy protagonists who did more facilitating and inspiring to greatness than literal killing themselves in this post>>43875978
>Ugh, Odysseus clearly isn't a protagonist. All he does is come up with plans that his followers and armies enact. Lame. The guy building the horse isn't the protagonist guys, you have to be the one popping out of the horse.
>>43876162
Odysseus is not the singular protagonist of the Iliad.
>>43876146
>that's how it's portrayed in media
As we've established, it really isn't. The main character being the automatic killiest is almost entirely restricted to stuff other than the fantasy genre and stuff that isn't particularly team oriented.
>>43876146
>t's the protagonist role because that's how it's portrayed in media.
No it's not. It's not at ALL. Hell, the protagonist is just as often as not a plucky out-of-his-element underdog who is outdone by the actual trained warriors around him, but inspires his allies to greatness with his lateral thinking, pluck, and just-plain destiny.
Hell, usually the "totally badass killer man who kills all the things" is the obligatory "totally not an ork-worf" grizzled veteran archetype, who serves to "tough-love" the protagonist into manhood.
>>43876211
You haven't established much in this discussion other than to cherry pick a variety of examples of different roles.
Nevermind that the caster not being able to be the 'killiest' has never been addressed.
>>43876224
Not really. The protagonist starts out weak and grows to be more powerful over the course of the story. There are no protagonists that stay in the role of 'mascot' that you described. Did Luke not fight Vader? Didn't end up killing the guy, but he did defeat him.
>>43876279
>Did Luke not fight Vader?
And lost. He actually lost every lightsaber duel he was in, and only won because he inspired his father to noble self sacrifice.
Luke is the PERFECT example of a protagonist who's clearly not the "kills the things" striker, but still wins the day with his protagonist card in hand.
>>43876360
Pretty sure Luke was doing pretty well when he was wailing on Vader. He only 'lost' because he told Paply to fuck off and that he wasn't going to give into the Dark Side and kill his dad.
>>43876279
>You haven't established much in this discussion other than to cherry pick a variety of examples of different roles.
Nobody's cherry picking, you're straining for examples and have furnished next to none. When the main protagonist is the most killy party member, its generally because its not team oriented, ie Iron Man being almost by definition the most fightingest guy in Iron Man.
>Nevermind that the caster not being able to be the 'killiest' has never been addressed.
We already covered that casters can easily be the killingest member of the party, both in 4e and in S&S.
>Luke
Guy doesn't so much as swing a laser sword at a single stormtrooper. I suppose you could argue that he lucked out as far as having the highest body count of any good guy in the original trilogy, though.
>>43875757
>Striker: You kill the things.
DESU the protag should at least have some sort of adeptness at killing the things. Although even Conan The Barbarian was more of a rogue with a few levels in Barbarian, than an actual barbarian as people tend to see it.
>>43876279
>Sorcerer: Striker with absolutely no target requirements
And secondly, Luke's killy power was actually a weakness. Going full murder-force user is a quick and easy way to the dark side. Did you even watch Empire Strikes Back? That's the whole point of the cave scene.
Honestly, you feel too much like a CoD or MOAB 13-years old. Even blatant wish fulfillment Katniss wasn't the best at 1v1.
>>43876407
>We already covered that casters can easily be the killingest member of the party, both in 4e and in S&S.
In S&S sure, but about the only example I've been given as far as 4e was Sorcerer, who softens up targets for other people to kill instead of doing that themselves.
>>43876402
He, quite fittingly with regards to the spirit of jedi (wars don't make you great), won by social victory and only had a 33% win rate vs sith in combat.
>>43876457
My point with that was to counter the idea that he SUCKED in combat. He didn't, guy just decided to go with his morals instead.
>>43876440
As someone who actually plays/played 4e, Sorcerers kill lots of shit.
>>43876440
And the warlock, of course.
>>43876428
>the protag should at least have some sort of adeptness at killing the things
Yes. I agree. We were, however, talking about 4e's ability to make the PC's feel like protagonists, and it's basically impossible to make a 4e character who doesn't have SOME skill at killing things, unless you dump-stat your main attack stat or something. Every 4e character is putting out damage every turn. It's not a difference between "I can't attack and can only support" and "I can kill the things" in 4e, it's a difference between "I support while I attack" and "I just attack, but harder."
>>43876476
Oh yeah. Yeah, there's this one guy putting the emphasis that if a character isn't pure damage, he's just a mascot, cheerleader, etc.
>>43875451
Momiji a best.
>>43876574
In that case, I don't really even see the Striker as being a very defensible role in itself. Just slamming down all the dice, and saying "You're dead" isn't actually very fun. I'd rather it was just support, beefy, and puppet master myself.
>>43876602
I think part of the problem is that you think 'is the guy who finishes off enemies' means that this is also all a character can do. Ideally that would never be the case and everyone would have other roles.
>>43876614
Well anon, not everyone enjoys buffing or minion control style gameplay.
>>43866057
Is she actually dead?
>>43876641
It's not like it has to be 4e-ish padded sumo combat. Some classes would be better at dealing damage than others, and would have some aspects of buffing and beatstick for the archetypical fighter. While a more tricky fighter would rather disable enemies. They would still be prime for dealing damage, but they would have other things to do in the field.
>>43876674
Again, a lot of people hate being a buffer/debuffer.
>>43876621
Naw, the "I'm rubber and you're glue" tactic doesn't apply here. Never said anything of the sort.
>>43876683
I'm saying that "Doing damage" shouldn't be the sole focus of a class dumbass.
>>43876699
Nobody ever claimed that a character should only be able to kill, though.
>>43876703
There should be stuff other than minions and debuffs to do then.
>>43876709
Correct, that's a strawman.
>>43876728
Naturally. The reason why 4e is rather crap, is that there isn't really any sort of out of combat magic that would generally be useful to have. All it is padded sudo.
>>43876735
So >>43876602 is a strawman?
>>43876703
But even Strikers don't just do damage. They have sub-roles.
>>43876752
Nope, that's verbatim what the dude disparagingly refers to anyone whose damage isn't -primary- role.
>>43876279
>>43875803
>>43876817
I don't see that in any of the posts you quoted? Not unless you think support is a slur somehow.
>>43876614
>In that case, I don't really even see the Striker as being a very defensible role in itself. Just slamming down all the dice, and saying "You're dead" isn't actually very fun. I'd rather it was just support, beefy, and puppet master myself.
The majority of the 4e community outside of the old WOTC forum charop community agrees with you.
>>43876847
Huh? Where? I don't play 4e at all tho.
>>43876847
So nobody wants to do anything but buff/debuff and control minions?
>>43876788
Unless you're a ranger.
>>43876865
You're just strawmanning at this point. Drown yourself in bleech fuccboi.
>>43876835
>I don't see that in any of the posts you quoted?
Ctrl F mascot and cheerleader if you need help.
>>43876889
Anon, you literally quoted a post that said it wanted the only roles to be support, beefy (I guess tank?) and minion control.
>>43876865
1: There are lots of things to do other than "just more damage"
2: What's with this obsession with thinking that the control role is all about the minions (making the role much less useful when minions don't show up.) That's patently not true. Controller does more than "just deal with minions."
>>43876878
Hello 2008. Rangers have great control, or can in any rate.
>>43876907
That was in direct reply to an example of the hero inspiring their allies instead of doing things themselves.
>>43876930
>What's with this obsession with thinking that the control role is all about the minions
Probably because the quote was 'puppet master'.
>>43876939
Inspiring their allies and doing things, you mean.
>>43877026
No the example was
>underdog who is outdone by the actual trained warriors around him, but inspires his allies to greatness with his lateral thinking, pluck, and just-plain destiny
Meaning an individual that inspires others into doing things instead of doing them himself.
>>43877053
Again, you mean "an individual that inspires others while doing things." There is no "instead" there and this garbage about making everyone who isn't damage primary out to be a mascot has got to stop.
Either someone is the best in the party at X task or he isn't, and either he's damage primary or he isn't. Quit it with this binary strawman shit.
The formula of protagonists in any remotely team oriented action fiction is very rarely "he's the best at killing, period" but usually "you've got a lot of spark and potential kid, I like that" (see Luke or Harry Potter) or frequently a character like Batman or Iron Man who isn't the master asskicker of the world, but an outrageously smart inventor or investigator type.
>>43877141
I'm just talking about that post, anon. If anything attack his wording.
>>43877157
Okay. I'm pointing out the "instead of" bit is garbage and just an addition jimmied in there to try to equate not the best killer-> mascot.
Here is a sample "Charisma-based elemental blasting machine" under completely non-house ruled 4e, without a single free feat tax. This is a level 2 character in a 30-level game.
Level: 2
Race: Dragonborn, bozak draconian (Dragon #421), potentially reflavored into something like "half-human, half-dragon" or "half-elf, half-dragon" as desired
Class: Sorcerer, elementalist, fire (Heroes of the Elemental Chaos)
Ability Scores: Strength 8, Constitution 16+2, Dexterity 10, Intelligence 12, Wisdom 12, Charisma 16+2
Background: Detective or Missing Master (both from Dragon #366)
Theme: Noble Adept (Dark Sun Campaign Setting), 1/encounter free action to grant self or an ally a +1d4+1 bonus to virtually any d20 roll
Feats: Unarmored Agility (Player's Handbook 3), Staff Expertise
Trained Skills: Arcana +7 plus three from Athletics, Bluff, Diplomacy, Dungeoneering, Endurance, History, Insight, Intimidate, Nature, and Perception; background bonuses are +1 Insight and +1 Perception, while racial bonuses are +2 History and +2 Intimidate
Racial Daily Power: Concussive Vengeance
At-Will Attack Powers: Elemental Bolt (single-target fire with +1d6 damage), Blazing Cloud (close burst 1), Ignition (area burst 1)
Encounter Attack Power: Elemental Escalation (Fire)
Encounter Utility Power: Dragonflame Mantle, note that this can cause an attack to miss and that the Constitution modifier to arcane damage rolls applies to the 1d6 fire damage
Equipment: Staff of Ruin +1 (level 3), Khyber Shard of the Fiery Depth +1 (level 2), Amulet of Protection +1 (level 1), Magic Cloth Armor +1 (level 1), whatever mundane gear is reasonable
HP 35, healing surges 10/day, AC 18, Fortitude 16, Reflex 13, Will 18, ranged and area attacks with staff do not provoke opportunity attacks due to Staff Expertise, speed 6 and fly speed 6 (altitude limit 1); all in all, barely decent survivability and incredible mobility due to the way altitude limits truly work
(Continued.)
>>43877291
How much ability would be lost by using any race other than gross dragon furry?
>>43877291
Attack and damage bonus with all class powers:
Attack: 4 Charisma modifier + 1 half level + 1 feat + 1 enhancement = +7
Damage: 4 Charisma modifier + 4 Constitution modifier + 1 racial + 1 enhancement + 1 item + 1 untyped from Khyber Shard of the Fiery Depth = +12
This character has good social skills, the ability to inspire their allies both in and out of combat using their Noble Adept theme, respectable durability (especially with the nasty backlash from Dragonflame Mantle), incredible mobility, and very good damage output in single-target, close burst 1, and area burst 1 forms, in addition to a 1/encounter Elemental Escalation.
Why, their Elemental Bolt at-will alone deals 1d12+1d6+12 (average 22) damage on a hit, or 1d10+30 (average 35.5) damage on a crit. 22 damage is enough to one-shot a level 1 standard lurker or artillery monster with Constitution 10 (e.g. a xivort darter from the Monster Manual 3, or a stirge from the Monster Vault).
All of this is without house rules and without free feat taxes.
Is there anything about such an arcane hero that is still lacking in your eyes?
>>43877319
Probably not that much, as for whatever utterly freakish reason he DIDN'T pick the race/subclass option that lets you spew bajillions of super deadly breath attacks.
Most people probably use dragonborn as more attractive half dragon types anyway.
>>43877319
You could try not being a colossal faggot about anything "not muh Tolkien."
>>43877371
Actually, this is pretty good.
>>43877353
I retract my heckling.
But off hand what is the reason fire elementalist is preferred over dragon sorcerer?
>>43877371
Some people just don't like them because of how they look or because of their lore. I'm in the camp of both. Don't like animal people.
>>43877375
I don't like animal people races. Is that supposed to be a big deal now?
>>43877396
Elementalist is more generic mage-bait trap.
'Heroic Mages' are almost always pyromancers.
>>43877404
Humans are optimal for plenty of classes. Basically, anything with at wills at a premium, especially if it needs int + con.
>>43877431
Well, you can do that fine with a dragon sorcerer, is my point. So I was wondering if fire elementalist sorcs had anything specifically outstanding by comparison.
>>43877469
Nope, just less muscle wizard.
>>43877375
What bug crawled into your butt?
>>43877319
A fair bit, actually, since late-cycle 4e pushed out three of the most powerful races in the edition: pixie, dragonborn (bozak draconian), and dragonborn (kapak draconian). These three races have fly speeds and an altitude limit of 1, but whoever wrote them had completely neglected the fact that altitude limits apply only at the end of one's turn and cause a safe descent.
This is what gives these three races immense mobility.
Dragonborn (bozak draconian) is ideal for Charisma/Constitution and Charisma/Strength sorcerers due to the perfect ability score bonuses, the scaling bonus to arcane attack powers' damage rolls, and the flight. Failing that, another good race for an elementalist of fire in particular would be tiefling for +2 Con/Cha and access to the Hellfire Blood feat, and failing *that*, a half-elf can have +2 Con/Cha and a racial encounter power useful both in and out of combat.
>>43877371
Dragonborn (bozak draconian) do not actually have a breath weapon. Instead, they gain a highly situational quasi-suicide bomb attack.
>>43877396
Constitution is a better ability score than Strength all in all, and a sorcerer (elementalist) has far more synergy with a basic attack-granter like a warlord or a shaman than a conventional sorcerer ever will.
The sorcerer (elementalist) is also more straightforward in its blasting and requires far less elaborate setups than the regular sorcerer.
The one issue with the elementalist of fire is that its extra 1d6 damage for Elemental Bolt does not scale at all. That should be house ruled.
>>43877446
For the sake of survivability, however, you probably want to avoid human for any class whose secondary ability score drives their AC, or that otherwise has an unusually important secondary ability score. The warlord (tactical presence) is a good example of this, as is virtually every warden build.
>>43877591
I'd definitely go for Tielfing WAY before Dragonborn as long as it could still be acceptably effective. At the end of the day my intense dislike for furry races overpowers mechanical concerns, and the suggested reflavoring requires special DM permission (because it's outside of the mechanics as written) and so is not always reliably obtainable.
>>43877685
WotC deciding they want a single look for dragon people and demon people isn't related to mechanics.
>>43877722
I'm not sure what you're talking about.
I don't like furry races, so I won't choose a furry race even if it's the absolutely optimal race for a build as long as there is another available race that can fit acceptably. Understand?
>>43877685
>character aesthetic
>mechanics as written
>>43877756
Oh I see. No, my point is that the reflavoring is a change from how things are written in the book. They're not like asking the DM if I can use this class or this feat, it's asking if I can do something that the book doesn't detail. Get what I mean? Permission for that is a lot less reliable in my experience.
>>43877815
>They're not like asking the DM if I can use this class or this feat, it's asking if I can do something that the book doesn't detail
Actually, from PHB1, page 55
>A power’s flavor text helps you understand what happens when you use a power and how you might describe it when you use it. You can alter this descrip- tion as you like, to fit your own idea of what your power looks like. Your wizard’s magic missile spell, for example, might create phantasmal skulls that howl through the air to strike your opponent, rather than simple bolts of magical energy.
>When you need to know the exact effect, look at the rules text that follows.
Reflavoring has been "official" since first printing of the first book.
>>43877755
New Dragonborn Subrace: Half-Dragon of Enthralling Pulchritude
Some dragonborn are patterned after dragons in humanoid form, distinguished by a few subtle cues such as scales along the arms, feline eyes, or the scents of precious metals. These dragonborn lack the breath weapons of their more inhuman-looking cousins, but can manifest majestic wings from their backs for short bursts of flight.
This new subrace uses the statistics of either the bozak draconian subrace or the kapak draconian subrace, whichever the player prefers.
>>43877815
The 4e GMs who are actually competent will *have* to house rule the game anyway to integrate various math fixes and tax feats endemic to 4e.
"Pretty and pulchritudinous dragonborn" is far less mechanically weighty than actual system alterations like "everyone receives a +1/+2/+3 feat bonus to implement and weapon attack rolls at levels 5/15/25 (expertise feats do not exist), a free +1 bonus to implement attack rolls (superior implements do not exist), a +1/+2/+3 feat bonus to implement and weapon damage rolls at levels 1/11/21, free pre-errata Melee Training, and either free Backstabber or free Weapon Proficiency in any weapon other than a defensive weapon or a spiked shield."
>>43877815
You're full of fucked up neurosis about games.
>No! NO Furries.
>No no refluffing
>No I need to be an arcane hero, that means I need max Deeps
>No leadership isn't heroic DEEPS
>>43878230
I agree with you on everything except
>a +1/+2/+3 feat bonus to implement and weapon damage rolls at levels 1/11/21
Honestly, focus feats are one of the things that set strikers apart. I can understand (and always implement) normalized expertise and pre-mearls melee-training, but why weapon focus? It seems like overkill to me. +1/Tier of damage is only necessary for strikers and sort of fun to have dependent on a signature weapon/implement, etc... Non-strikers barely feel the bonus.
holy shit I remember the days of touhoufag
man I feel old. that was like before people used the word "kek"
>>43878349
It helps battles go by faster without resorting to the metaphorical nuclear option of reducing monster hit points, and lets even strikers take interesting feats rather than reserve a feat slot for a generic +damage feat.
This also assists anyone whose class uses both implement attacks and weapon attacks.
>>43877404
>Not liking Arkhosia lore
Why do you hate nice things anon
