What do you guys think of 5e?
It's all right. Best 3.5 derivative. Books are presented and written nicely, but sometimes poorly organized. There could be some more guidance here and there. A glossary would have fixed a lot of its problems.
>>44483322
Got the books for Christmas and cant wait to start playing.
Backgrounds are cool. And it's funny how they snuck 4e stuff in.
>>44483372
I agree with this guy.
Coming from 3.PF, GURPS, and Apocalypse World, it's my favorite RPG.
It's good.
I still need to get more familiar with it and am having a hard time just putting in the effort to try and read the books cover to cover though.
I greatly enjoy it, but wish they had faster production. Content is good.
>>44483322
Not that great to run as DM.
Pretty easy to run but lacks the sense of progression for players.
A lot of nice mechanics refined and polished from other tabletops.
My final verdict is that it isn't that good in the end.
>>44483322
It's ok.
It's not godawful like 3.5 was, but there's just nothing about it that makes me want to play it over 4e.
Honestly, the fucking awful playtest was probably the worst thing about 5e.
It's the blandest edition of D&D since Basic. I would rather play any other edition of the game, even the last two abortions WotC put out.
New player, so the only one I've ever done. Enjoying it so far, though.
It's pretty good.
Probably the best edition so far.
>>44483322
It's better than 3.5, at least for now, which isn't really saying much.
Basically, it's 3.5 for people who hate 3.5, new players, and players who wish they were playing 3.5 but are playing with new players and people who hate 3.5.
It's not the best system mechanically, but you'll have a group together in no time.
I'm a terrible 4rry so this edition strikes me as painfully bland and boring. It's a pity, I had hope for it before the playtest got progressively worse. It's also overall leaning more towards a 3.5 style of game, and I really don't want to go back to that.
My favorite edition of D&D, it's quite good.
A bit disorganized between the PHB and DMG, but the Advantage mechanic is brilliant and a lot of the streamlining is excellent.
It's also the most true to the spirit of D&D since 2E.
>>44484020
>Streamlining
I will agree that streamlining happened, and I like some of it, but a bunch of stuff just makes me ask, "Is this it?"
dont know, cant play it
>try to find a 5e group
>find one
>get excited
>lol too many people maybe ill call you later
try to find another group
>find a place that host 5e
>its a game center AND cafe FUCK YES
>we closed our doors on October 8th 2014
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUU
why is it so hard to find people?
>>44484261
5e is the single biggest game on Roll20, anon. Although the current 5e listings are kind of... all over the place.
>>44484261
Look online.
TangledWeb posts new 5e games all the time, though they get a horde of applications.
I'm considering running one after I figure out my schedule for next year and picking through the pile of character sheets at my leisure.
>>44484277
>>44484325
i heard - about online but i really wanted an in person game
i get enough shit from everyone around me about being antisocial, i thought if i could just go out and meet people id make friends.
oh well i guess ill just live my social life through a keyboard
>>44484416
Online games are usually done with a mic and sometimes a webcam.
Welcome to the cyber future, anon, where social fucks like us can make virtufriends on the world wide web.
>>44484432
well today my family was going out to eat but i planned to meet some people for the 5e game and just an hour ago he told me there was no room
so now im gonna go to starbucks for 3 hours so no one can see me wallow in shame.
>>44483322
I like that the numbers stay small, and there's no completely broken set-up for characters. Most characters are viable, even without optimization.
>>44483621
>lacks the sense of progression for players.
How so?
>>44483698
Simplicity isn't the same thing as blandness. Some people don't need ridiculous amounts of convoluted nonsense to find something interesting.
>>44483322
best thing to happen to the franchise since Lorraine Williams left
>>44486529
And some people enjoy eating mayonnaise. A thing can be bland yet people will still like it. People just have shit taste.
>>44486655
yep 2e and Basic DnD fans are the worst.
With their incredible garbage ruleset.
Glad we agree on that.
a step back to the shithole 3.X was.
Can Asmodeus recognize himself in the mirror or escape from mundane chains yet?
Haven't kept up with 5th since the beta.
>>44486655
That's not actually a response to what I said, stupid. Simplicity is not blandness. You have provided no counter argument to that statement. Things aren't bland just because you don't like them. Words actually mean things.
>>44483322
It's the best D&D edition yet.
>>44483322
My group started with 4th ed, and we all prefer 5th for the most part it just sped turns up a great deal, and clarified what skill/ability needed to be rolled in some situations. slightly less HP bloat It's still present but not nearly as bad.
My biggest issue is that they should have let the editors take a longer look, a glossary, and a few clarifications are needed here and there. I am fairly certain some edits will be present in later prints, but I could be wrong.
I like it. I normally play 3.5/pf and I have to say I really like 5e. Its got good mechanics. But it needs more stuff, classes and the like. ive been spoiled by playing games that have been out for years and have plentiful splatbooks i guess. two thumbs up, 5e is great.
>>44489374
What are some non-psionic character concepts that aren't covered yet?
I did buy a few of the 3.5 splatbooks back in the day, but I'd rather be a 5E rogue who is a swashbuckler rather than a 3.5 swashbuckler.
Not bad. It has better out of the box balance than 3.PF, is easy enough to run/pay and actually feels like D&D, unlike 4E.
The major drawback I've found is that with the smaller number range, I tend to feel more constrained to stereotypical choices. I also dislike the way magic items are handled. That's a personal preference though, as I simply find abundant magic items to feel more fantastic than rare magic items (my complaint with magic items in 3.PF isn't the magic mart, it's the necessity of the big six over more interesting items for those slots).
Overall, I think that if you're going to play straight out of the book, it's a good system, but 3.PF has the potential to be better if your group embraces 3rd party products.
>>44490782
4E is a great game in its own right though. It's the Star Wars prequels of Dungeons & Dragons.
>>44491510
>Star wars prequels
>great
I thought 4e was ok but wtf?
>>44491668
if you look at them without nostalgia the original trilogy is not THAT different
>>44489374
See, I've always seen the huge number of classes scattered throughout the 3.PF splats as a weak point, not a strong point.
>>44490413
This, pretty much. When you have a class that is as incredibly specific as "swashbuckler", you make it seem like there's a gaping absence where the "buccaneer" class should be. This just leads to more and more classes which inevitably leads to bloat. The more features you add to the game, the more new features you have to come up with, and when you go as far as 3.PF has gone, you'll obviously either start retreading old ground and getting samey classes or start putting out overpowered, underpowered, pointlessly niche, or otherwise just bad material.
More directly on-topic, I would just like to say that I really love the archetype system in 5E. I sort of wish they had gone even further with it and turned classes into something more akin to TSR's class groups -- Paladin as an an archetype under Fighter, Wizard and Warlock as archetypes under Magic User, etc. The archetype system, in combination with the more specialized and optional feat system lets you build characters with a general thought in mind -- you think of the class you want, then when you reach level 3 you think of an archetype you want, and if you still don't have everything you want you can take a feat or two to round off your character to make them how they appear in your head. Multi-classing is handled with similar elegance, adding onto this flexibility without offering an overwhelming amount of freedom for
In 3.PF, you'd have to look through the feat list for what you want, and if you wanted to multiclass you would just complicate things further. And all this time you also have to worry about viability. 5E's archetypes take a lot of that weight off and let you make broad, sweeping decisions which you can then fine-tune to your taste instead of lots of little tweaky decisions to make sure everything is juuuust so.
>>44483322
Sucks.
>>44491688
>I don't know what I'm talking about but won't let that stop me
It's okay. Much less tedious to play then 3.5 or 4e, no need to rifle through endless books looking for specific feats or anything like that.
>>44491688
Phantom Menace is a terrible film however you slice it. I don't mind the other two, though.
My friends and I love it, all of us have played PF and 4e, and I've also played OD&D and 3.5, and we all consider 5e to be our favorite.
>>44483442
>it's funny how they snuck 4e stuff in
It is isn't it?
>add feature, explain feature
What is this bullshit feature!?
>add same feature, lightly obfuscate with words, words, words
What feature?
>>44483322
I know that most people either love 5e, or are sort of "meh, at-least it's better than 3e" but I passionately dislike 5e.
5e is good at one thing, getting combat over with fast, which is good, because combat is "streamlined" to the point that it's no longer fun at all, much less fun enough to drive a campaign.
Rules have been re-associated from their 4e disassociated state, but they're putting out practically no more material, making the number of playable character concepts lower than both 3e (which was high due to lots of splats) and 4e (which was high due to refluff.)
One of the few things that 3e objectively had going for it was an incredibly deep character creation process, that sometimes felt like more of a game than the game itself (albeit a logic optimization puzzle game.) 5e's is "streamlined" to the point of no longer being independently enjoyable.
Mechanics like bounded derived-statistic, flat-scaling damage, high lethality, and the like go out of their way to remind the players and DM over and over that the PC's are not exceptional heroes, but small parts of a great big scary sandbox that keeps turning around them. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I have no interest in running that kind of game, at-least not with D&D; I have CoC and WoD mortals for things like that.
>>44483322
>>44492790
Forgot to mention, because the balancing mechanics are intentionally swingy, in order to accidentally kill PC's, for the nostalgia value to hyper-deadly 2e, and save-or-die 3e, if you are the sort of DM who doesn't want to accidentally kill PC's frequently, Dming requires more prep-work than it ever has since 2e. There isn't the rapid-refluff XP budgets of 4e, or the thousands of printed pre-tested modules of 3e.
>>44490413
>What are some non-psionic character concepts that aren't covered yet?
I miss non-spellcasters with magical or near magical powers. Knights (no, Warrior/Bard or Paladin/Bard does not count anymore then Warrior/Druid counts for Ranger) and Dragon Shaman come to mind.
Also some of the more odd physically transformatiive prestige classes should come back as archtypes (Alienist, and Geomancer, for example).
Also, a better build for Necromancer then just building skeletons and equiping bows. Probably doable through better necromancy spells though, because the ones in the books thus far are usually much worse then other spells of their level for no good reason (Horrid Wilting).
>>44483322
I really like it. I do wish there were more splat books etc for it though. It just seems like there is very little for it out there.
I'm an older player/dm and for me it has been 2e all the way. I haven't liked 3.pf (I really wanted to) or 4e (I really thought I would). For me, 5e plays like I remember 2e playing at its best.
>>44492971
It is a bit swingy, I got to agree with that. I really don't like that. It makes things a bit more random in combat than I like, I'd rather have more player choice matter and dice just a bit less.
>>44492971
>intentionally swingy
I can't say I know much about any of this but average damage for monsters? Makes combat even more boring and even faster but could solve it on lower levels at least?
I like it. Since I didn't want to buy Pathfinder and 4e sucked, I just played 3.5 until this dropped. A lot of the errata books are absolute trash, as are the campaigns. The core is good, and the homebrew potential for custom creatures is god-tier.
That said, I have a few gripes.
1. Rangers are still 3.5 level of useless
2. Paladins are cheese incarnate when Munchkin'd
3. There is no reason to play Sorc over Wizard, especially with Bladesinger
4. They fixed the "trap" feats, but there are still overly useless ones
5. It still has obvious caster disparity, despite everyone in my group loving martials.
SCAG is a good supplement, and there are organization issues with the PHB especially. It's still a good edition and is slowly replacing 3.5 as my favorite edition.
>>44494483
>I didn't want to buy Pathfinder
>I just played 3.5 until this dropped.
They are literally identical games. Why would you refuse to play one, and only play the other? Hell, most OGLd20 DM's I know allow material from books from either publisher, assuming they approve it. They've never run into any noticeable hiccups; that's how similar they are.
>>44494572
Not buying new books when I already have the 3.5 ones. At least that was the point I was trying to make.
>>44494650
So are you one of those people who's morally opposed to torrenting PDF's, because you clearly have internet access?
if i like to play fighters, why should i play 5ed over 4ed?
It's certainly my favorite edition but the lack of supplements thus far really leaves an empty feeling. It's the grittiest "realistic" version to date.
I wish it had better encounter/monster building rules.
For all the flack 4e got, it had (eventually) the best rules for building monsters and fights.
My opinion might not be worth anything, but I wasn't interested in D&D at all as a kid. A few years ago, my friend showed me HeroQuest and we had a lot of fun playing it, so we all decided to try 4e.
It wasn't very exciting. HeroQuest was basically just a board game and we had a lot of fun, but when we tried to play 4e, doing the same thing wasn't as fun. I think we felt less attached to our 4e characters than our HeroQuest ones. Nothing gave us any incentive to roleplay and I thought all of the artwork was ugly as fuck. So many races, and every single one was hideous. I also felt like I HAD to play a specific class for party balance, but only one or two classes actually sounded cool to me. There was too much stuff, I guess. When there's 30 classes and races, and a billion abilities and so many options...it just feels like...who cares what you pick anymore, so I just picked the appropriate combination for my party and stopped caring after that point. I guess it sort of felt like playing a turn-based strategy game with a group of people, which is boring as shit.
When 5e came out, I didn't really have much hope, but for some reason everything clicked. The idea that it's a roleplaying game and not just a video game on your table was really present to me. I loved seeing that there was just a dozen classes and even fewer races, it all felt intentional and thought-out. Suddenly, I was actually reading through the spell list; I read over the classes and a part of me wanted to play each one. They all sounded fun. The races...I guess I just don't like Western fantasy...but the artwork to me was more appealing than 4e's (eg. half-orcs are more like actual orcs instead of middle-aged men with a snaggletooth like they are in 4e) and I suddenly actually started making characters in my head. It was the first time I ever felt a strong urge to actually play a tabletop RPG, learn the rules and roleplay.
So I love it, but I have little to compare it to.
>>44496103
4e did pretty much everything the best when it came to combat, including character generation. It just sucked at the adventure aspect and 3.5 are obsessive weirdos.
>>44483322
its not very good and they arent making enough books for it
we need a fucking manual of the planes and dieties and demigods damit.
>>44497249
>it's not very good but I want more of it
Been running for a year now, and the lack of content is really aggravating at this point.
It's still good, though. Probably the easiest system I've ever run.
>>44494572
there in no way the same thing pathfinder is a step back from 3e in every way.
except in level 20 class features pathfinder characters get awesome stuff at level 20.
also unlike wizards paizo knows how to write a setting book.
>>44497270
oh i just want the manual and deities to steal stuff for a better system.
>>44493016
>Knights
They had a purple dragon knight fighter variant in the SCAG book. They even gave it a non-FR exclusive alternate name; they call it a "Banneret."
By in large 5e fixed some of the more glaring issues in 3.5, mainly in the whole 'casters vs. martials' department. Casters are still the strongest due to utility spells (in particular, Bards are really fucking strong) but martials generally get tankier and can deal decent single target damage if they know how to maximize their damage. And if you have/are a creative DM you can probably update any 3.5, PF, or 4e class to 5th with a bit of work for a player, with the agreement that this is liable to be changed on the fly during the campaign.
The biggest issue with 5e right now is just an overall lack of content/support. Outside of the core books, all we've had printed is a little booklet for stuff related to the Elemental Planes and the Sword Coast's Adventure Guide, which contains a bit of extra class archetype options but is mostly just fluff and lore for updating FR to 5e from the 4e timeline.
Also, their Unearthed Arcana articles leave much to be desired, in that they are either shit or just not playtested in the slightest.
It is good, but unfinished
Needs a lot more content and it will be great
>>44496103
Really, this is my biggest complaint with 5e.
Homebrewing an archetype or whatnot is piss easy in 5e, since all the archetypes within a class will follow a similar pattern. Thus, lack of content is only so much of a problem.
Encounter building is a bitch, though. CR still means nothing.Large single monster encounters are far too easy.
Ranger needs fixes, badly. Specifically it needs new archetypes with both strong mechanics and distinct flavor, since the core class and options are sorely lacking.
>>44483322
Whoever made the erata about monks and made water-whip and the other monk features suck needs to get castrated.
Otherwise 5e is pretty decent.
The UA stuff is also pretty great with undying light being a source of power that doesn't trade away your soul.
alright.
I went with what the book said for starter bard spells. im not sure whats good here.
the features and traits box was just my notepad for most of this.
>>44483322
Good, but suffers from the same problem as all DnD "editions" in that they aren't improvements on what came before they are completely new games.
>>44498204
Please remove common from languages known (with 4 int no less) and make your character comunicate with ugabunga sounds and perform.
>>44498257
swap int and wis then
fucked if i know what to do with a 4.
>>44498265
Why did you even go with stats this bad?
Also Str this high for no purpose!
Did you roll these stats or were you using point buy?
Also please don't swap Int and Wis.
Having low Int makes you into a caveman but having low Wis makes you blinder than a chicken with its head cut of.
>>44498312
rolled; 15, 14, 14, 11, 9, 4
yes this is my first game ever.
>>44483621
I agree with this.
I run most of the playtests and a six-month campaign for my group. We moved on because in the end we all found it unenganging.
5e did some things right. It's very easy to explain to new players (I had a mixed group, half veterans half newbs), and the background stuff is a good aid for those approaching an RPG for the first time. Beyond that, the game progresses so slowly that from level 1 to 8 there's barely any sense of progression unless you are a caster. I also have some pretty big gripes with the concept of bounded accuracy, it's just not what I like in a game.
It can be enjoyable but I found that it doesn't do it for me.
>>44486818
>2E
>Bland
>not the edition with the most content after 3e (and possibly even more)
>>44491510
>>44492790
>Rules have been re-associated from their 4e disassociated state
You're a moron.
>>44498265
>>44498344
What rolling system have you used?
Ask the DM to allow you a 70 point buy instead if you are new (you spend 70 points on your stats with no single stat exceeding 16 with racial bonuses).
Your main stats should be Cha and Dex since those are your saving throws and Dex gives your higher AC.
Str doesn't help you much if you don't go for melee focused valor bard and you didn't pick any skills relevant to it.
Your base race score (you spend 60 points on this) assuming all base 10s is:
12 Str
10Dex
10Con
10Int
10Wis
11Cha
Now if you are using 70 point buy then it's best to split the last 10 points between your main stats.
So your Cha gets boosted to 16 and dex to 15.
Also i recommend switching to red dragon origin since fire resistance is always more useful than lightning.
>>44498387
only thing i see is 'standard array for stats" so that means?
>>44498457
In order not to suck it's best to have no negative mods.
Base 10 stats across the board, racial bump your str to 12 and cha to 11 and with point buy you get:
12 Str
15 Dex
10 Con
10 Int
10 Wis
16 Cha
>>44498515
>>44498387
so you always go point buy rather than rolling if the GM hasnt said anything?
>>44498457
Look an int of 4 means your character is dumber than an ogre.
>>44498362
>and possibly even more
Rough count, AD&D 1e and 2e together (they're essentially interchangeable) is ~740 products, and there's another 160 Basic and OD&D products that are largely compatible with AD&D.
Barring all the OGL shit, because I've only been counting first-party content, 3.X has ~175 products.
>>44498525
Most of the time.
It lets you have characters that don't gimp the game to much.
I recommend you make backup character sheets since 5e is high lethality at low levels.
As for a rolling system that you could use go with this:
Base 5 across the board and 12d6 withe every two dices representing one stat.
Also for bards it's better to make an archer and always stick to dex builds even for melee (since dex boosts your Armour Class) if you aren't going for some weird grappler.
>>44498549
>dices
Stop.
>>44498515
>>44498549
well i dont really know what the gm meant by "base array" so fuck it, im going with
>>44498515
and calling it done.
im not GM'ing and its my first time so all these alternative methods of generating stats goes right over my head.
Thanks for the help though.
I think its simplicity and subsequent lack of content can be off putting
however it allows a greater deal of flexibility and far more house rule friendly
>>44498604
as a newbie 4e's abundance of special rules always used to put me off.
if you hadnt read 60 books along with the core book it wasnt worth playing because everyone would be running either super optimal builds or builds with an assload of special rules and lore.
>>44498549
>using point buy, ever
Fucking disgusting.
>>44498665
>hating on point buy
Sometimes you already know what you want to play.
>>44498604
Whenever someone complains that a race or class isn't in 5e, I don't understand why they don't just homebrew one themselves. None of the classes/races have super awesome crazy abilities or miles of differences between them. Just follow the pattern.
>>44498562
By base array, he probably meant standard array, which is 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8 before racial bonuses. This is good for players who don't want to waste time figuring out stats or test fate by rolling dice.
But rolling dice is the true man's way of determining stats. Point buy is for powergaming twinks.
>>44498699
>But rolling dice is the true man's way of determining stats. Point buy is for powergaming twinks.
>3d6 straight down forever
LotFP is that way.
Having played 5e, it's garbage. It does nothing unique at all; if I wanted another edition where non-casters are shat on at every turn I'd just skip playing RPGs altogether, or try something else where my favorite archetype of characters aren't completely and utterly worthless, because 5e is Mike Mearls' nostalgic dumping grounds for his desperate attempt to relive his childhood and apparently no one in the team knows how to design anything other than "well, gee, just let magic do everything."
>>44498687
How does rolling dice change this? I guess if your character is MAD and you're a wimp about it...
>>44498719
5e is 4d6, drop the lowest and you choose which value goes to which stat.
Not sure what you're doing in a thread about 5e when you haven't read like the first page of the PHB.
>>44498742
>not knowing that the sort of people who advocate rolling and only rolling tend to go for 3d6 straight down
>>44498728
It's not about MAD, it's about fulfilling my concept.
>>44498699
>true man's
>>44498728
>wimp about it
Further proof that people who advocate for rolling for stats are assholes.
>>44498748
This post is meaningless.
>>44498748
I mean, that's true, I did not know that. I guess we both learned something, then.
>>44498773
I guess you're right. But having all 10s is not a character concept.
>>44498781
I'm okay with you thinking that I'm an asshole. My characters at least have flaws and aren't perfect, tailor made Mary Sues of a theorycrafting thread on 4chan.
>>44499008
>My characters [...] aren't perfect, tailor made Mary Sues of a theorycrafting thread on 4chan.
But rolling is the system that gives you the chance of having a character whose stats are much later than his fellow party members. In point-buy (disregarding systems like Wild Talents, or Mutants and Masterminds) you don't have that chance. At all.
I legitimately don't understand what the fuck you're talking about; you're trolling, a retard, or have a weird mental image of point-buy being "you can have literally whatever you want," which, frankly, is absurd.
>>44499008
>I'm okay with you thinking that I'm an asshole, because I can be smug about a strawman.
>>44499008
>But having all 10s is not a character concept.
But a 7, a 12, a 15, a 10, a 17, and a 13 is, though I'm not sure what PB that would be.
>>44499040
>point-buy being "you can have literally whatever you want,"
Well, there is at least one system where that's true, as long as whatever you want is less that the point limit that was set.
>>44492790
>waaaaahhhh I can't have my character with 26 in all stats waaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh
>>44494650
>buying new books
>Pathfinder
>available online everywhere
>not even a morality issue
are you retarded
>>44498719
I was going to say "don't talk shit about retroclones" but honestly the guy who designed LotFP is exactly that kind of shitty edgelord.
>>44499067
5e pointbuy has a minimum of 8 and a maximum of 15 before racials.
Standard array is 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8. which when combined with racial boosts lets you do pretty much any class you want.
>>44492790
>Rules have been re-associated from their 4e disassociated state
I keep seeing this fucking comnplaint about 4e and I ahve never understood it.
What the fuck does "disassociated rules" mean?
The most explanation I've ever gotten out of you fuckers is "they aren't associated." Which still doesn't mean jack shit.
>>44499091
There are several systems that meet such a description GURPS is not special .
I like it well enough. I would still take Basic Fantasy over it however.
>>44502785
The idea is that the rules don't represent anything but mechanics, rather than simulating a world element. It is not a sentiment I agree with.
>>44502861
So it's basically a bunch of words to complain about nothing.
Expected as much.
>>44502785
You know how, in 4e, combat was combat, and you couldn't use a fireball to light a fireplace?
That shit has stopped.
Wait, you... you can't light flammable material with the fireball spell in 4e, right?
>>44483322
I've lost interest in generic tolkien fantasy so 5E would have to come out with a campaign that is not that. System wise it's fine and it's not the abomination of 3.5 or the miniatures-required 4E. 13th Age is better and of course for fantasy RPG playing Runequest will always be far better system wise than any D20 derivative as it has been since the late 70's.
>>44502888
More or less. D&D has never been an icon of believable simulation. I would argue only that 4th edition took it to its logical conclusion. While I am not a fan of 4th, I do not think it was any less a simulation or "proper" game than any other edition.
>>44498719
You roll down, but remember you can swap 2 of them so it's not pure straight down in LotFP.
>>44498699
>true man'a
Lord knows there is nothing more traditionally in line with masculine virtue than being smug about how you play pretend. I think Aristotle wrote something about that.
>>44498773
>>44499067
One reason why i don't like point-buy is that unless you have a character concept that requires very specific stat spread, like wanting to play a highly intelligent barbarian or a muscle wizard, every character will end up being pretty much the same. Every wizard will put as much points as possible to int because that's their most important stats. Every barbarian gets loads of str and con. There's no reason to put points in str for wizard or int for barbarian because the class doesn't benefit from those attributes at all.
With random stats you end up with each character of even the same class having slightly different attributes, and you get to think about what kind of person the character with such attributes would be (like why would this barbarian have very high intelligence, or why is that wizard stronger than average).
That being said, rolling poorly on your most important stats will screw you over, so the way I've always done it as that after rolling all your stats you can swap two of them around. Unless you rolled absolutely horribly you should have at least one stat with at least average roll.
>>44502910
Of course you could, it's a giant ball of fire that explodes.
It's a terrible thing to light a fireplace with in any edition though because it blows up the fireplace.
Scorching Ray would be much better.
Or you know, the 4e wizard class feature that explicitly says start/extinguish small fires at will.
>>44503019
Find the Aristotle quote then you faggot. Otherwise I think he's saying he prefers the non-autist twink method of roll and go rather than mulling over a fucking build for weeks before actually playing.
>>44502910
>Wait, you... you can't light flammable material with the fireball spell in 4e, right?
Yes you could. It was fire damage.
If you wanted to set something flammable on fire with a fire spell you could. The game just didn't have rules for 'Stuff being on fire outside combat' as it didn't expect you to need to know exactly how much damage every turn the house suffers from being on fire.
>>44503101
I was being facetious, there'a just about nothing less mansculine than being smug about games ofor pretend
>>44502910
>You know how, in 4e, combat was combat, and you couldn't use a fireball to light a fireplace?
Not even worth posting a bait image
>>44502785
Dissociated mechanics was a buzzword invented on The Alexandrian, an RPG blog with some good stuff on old-school games and some pretty bad stuff on 4e. The meme caught on in the edition wars.
It means nothing except "I don't like 4e".
>>44502910
>You know how, in 4e, combat was combat, and you couldn't use a fireball to light a fireplace?
Putting aside the fact that you totally fucking could...
Why the fuck would I light a fireplace with Fireball? I want the fireplace to be intact. There's better fire spells I could use.
>>44502910
>You can't light things on fire with fire unless there's a rule that explicitly tells you it's ok
3.5 gives people legit brain damage
>>44503586
The fun thing is that when 5e does it, it's "streamlined" and the best thing since sliced bread. When 4e did it, it was a MMO simulator.
>>44503054
>One reason why i don't like point-buy is that unless you have a character concept that requires very specific stat spread, like wanting to play a highly intelligent barbarian or a muscle wizard, every character will end up being pretty much the same.
So you're saying that if two characters have generally the same order of importance for stats, then they'll be indistinguishable from each other?
It's almost like you have absolutely no imagination and instead substitute creativity with rolling for stats.
>>44483322
It's a shittier AD&D with a skill system that's nearly as bad as 3E's and with a fucked up idea of how long it should take to kill something.
Fuck you, a good fighter is supposed to slaughter anything that's not a fucking dragon within 2 rounds of it being in his reach.
>>44498362
2e is bland, though. The core rules are trying desperately to tell the buyer, "You never need to buy another RPG, D&D can do everything, please ignore the competition!!!" That lead pretty directly to making everything really generic and flavorless.
I mean, sure, it gets some flavor back with its mountain of campaign settings, but none of them are really geared towards 2e. Indeed, some of them are much better suited toward other rules sets, like Forgotten Realms (the most 3e place ever), or Ravenloft (probably wants to be run using BRP).
>>44506913
This is what you say after years of Third Edition, and has no basis on reality. I would suggest to spend more time reading the books.
>>44506965
Ad hominem is a fallacy, but at any rate it's what I said after years of First Edition (with the exception of the crack about FR).
Also
> I would suggest to spend more time reading the books.
Is that suggestion because 2E isn't worth playing?
>>44495990
>if i like to play fighters, why should i play 5ed over 4ed?
You shouldn't, if you want to play a fighter. Battle master does NOT scratch the 4e fighter itch. With a return to caster superiority, I'm playing a cleric :-(
It is pretty sickly made, but in the end it suffers from the same problems that all versions of D&D have, and some others. If they opted to make it easier to DM, used point buy for a better sense of progression, and maybe split armor and dexterity from each other, it could be really great.
That said what it really benefits from is good production values. Hardly anything but maybe Shadowrun has a nicer book than it.
>>44507159
*slickly
>>44507146
It doesn't even scratch the Warblade itch.
>>44507041
Nothing >>44506965 said is ad hominem.
>>44509206
It's definitely ad hominem. The poster is aiming at the credibility of the person they're addressing and seeks to dismiss their position, rather than addressing the point and seeking to refute it.
To give some supporting evidence for blandness, here's a couple of excerpts from the 2E PHB:
>There are many famous fighter from legend: Hercules, Perseus, Hiawatha, Beowulf, Siegfried, Cuchulain, Little John, Tristan, and Sinbad. History is crowded with great generals and warriors: El Cid, Hannibal, Alexander the Great, Charlemagne, Spartacus, Richard the Lionheart, and Belisarius. Your fighter could be modeled after any of these, or he could be unique. A visit to your local library can uncover many heroic fighters.
Implicitly, this is saying that you can use the fighter just as well for the bronze age as the crusades or even the 16th century. It's a far cry from 1E's focus on Pulp Medieval Europe.
>Historically, druids lived among the Germanic tribes of Western Europe and Britain during the days of the Roman Empire. They acted as advisors to chieftains and held great influence over the tribesmen. Central to their thinking was the belief that the earth was the mother and source of all life. They revered many natural things -- the sun, moon, and certain trees -- as deities. Druids in the AD&D game, however, are only loosely patterned after these historical figures. They are not required to behave like or follow the beliefs of historical druids.
This is a particularly telling example. One of the historical influences for the 1E class is stated and clearly still affects the 2E rules, but the designer is trying to say that the druid is just a general nature-priest class to do with as thou wilt - even though the Rex Nemorensis clause is still there!
>>44509620
You are grasping at straws now.
Really wish it had more content.
Things seem to be rolling out at an absolute snails pace.
And with the tiny size of the dev team that doesn't look to be changing.
>>44502785
Associated rules means that certain mechanical choices ENFORCE certain role-play choices. In general, it's a bad thing.
Disassociated rules would be the opposite, where your mechanical choices and your role play choices are entirely different. Some complain that this makes mechanical choices less meaningful, or that it makes role-play choices less meaningful. Personally I think those people don't know how to role play.
>>44509620
>the bronze age
HR3, 5, and 6
>the crusades
HR7
>the 16th century
HR4
> 1E's focus on Pulp Medieval Europe.
What settings are available for 1E? Let's see: Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Oriental Adventures/Kara-Tur, Ravenloft (I6 and I10 are 1e modules), Lankhmar, Greyhawk, and all of the Outer and Inner planes.
>>44501538
>waaaaahhhh I can't have my character with 26 in all stats waaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh
>>44492790
>This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I have no interest in running that kind of game
>running that kind of game
>running
I'm forever DM M8, and I was speaking from that perspective. It's boring as fuck trying to improv together an interesting collaborative story when the protagonists are incompetent and the cast rapidly changes, removing much of the personal investment and reducing opportunities for character development.
If you want to spend your play pretend time pretending to be a dirt-farmer with a plowshare turned to a sword, with a stack of six backup sheets and a random name generator, be my guest, but don't expect me to waste my time running such a boring campaign.
>>44491711
>The more features you add to the game, the more new features you have to come up with, and when you go as far as 3.PF has gone, you'll obviously either start retreading old ground and getting samey classes or start putting out overpowered, underpowered, pointlessly niche, or otherwise just bad material.
This is really untrue in 3.5's case.
3.5 started out the weakest it would ever be, the classes in core were almost uniformly either out of control powerhouses (Druid, Cleric, Wizard) or bottom of the garbage can shit (Fighter, Monk)
What all the splat content did for 3.5 was fill out the much needed middle ground. It is also clear, reading through the splat content from one end to another, that the later splat content was written by people who had a much MUCH better understanding of what the strengths and weaknesses of 3.5 were and how the system actually fucking worked.
>>44509881
>waaaaahhhh I can't have my character with 26 in all stats waaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh
>>44510070
>playing an edition where you can get 26s
>>44510070
>Waaaaaahhh, other people spend their escapist group storytelling play-pretend telling stories about interesting characters, intead of uninteresting nobodies in medieval noteurope, and for some reason that makes me mad
>>44510070
Where are you getting 26 in all stats from. I don't know of any edition other than 3e where that's possible (and even that's only because of retarded stat-boost equipment)
Will someone PLEASE fucking explain to me why they decided to use the exact same formatting for the spell list as 3.5, but then remove the information of what classes can use the spell from the actual descriptions?
It's not like it's THAT big a deal, but it's a problem that has literally no reason to exist, flicking back and forth between the list and the description is fucking annoying.
I also kinda wish they'd retained the way spells were templated in 3.5, with subtypes to magic schools and what not, things that meant that you could have creatures that were immune to certain types of spells without needing to either make them entirely immune to a school or use vague terms.
>>44510382
Didn't you know? frustratingly flipping back and forth from one the back of the book to the front of the book to double check things, and then having to reference a second book to understand the status effect mentioned, then a third to understand the monster summoned is nostalgic.
>>44510499
>a third to understand the monster summoned
Has this ever not been the case?
>>44510499
I'm one of those people who loved 3.5 having a billion options and I don't understand this shit.
There's just no excuse for it.
One of 3.5 problems was how badly laid out it was, like how you needed to flip to 3 separate spots in the Player's Handbook to know how grappling works.
If there was any part of 3.5 I wouldn't have expected to survive the transition to 5e it's this shit.
>>44510070
Good job utterly failing at reading comprehension, I guess.
>>44483322
It's okay I guess.
It's like a bland version of 3.5, but with better balanced math.
Opportunities for character customization are not frequent enough for my tastes, and the number of options available are not either.
Went back to Pathfinder, despite its problems, and have been playing it instead, lately.
>>44510586
>Has this ever not been the case?
4e wasn't for everybody, but it included all combat relevant stats for summons/conjurations in the same box as the summoning/conjuration spell.
>>44503054
There's something that always drives me nuts in trying to understand this reasoning:
If there's no benefit in putting strength for a wizard, what does it change? Having a 1 or a 30 won't change abolutely anything, so, by your reasoning, they should be exactly the same.
You need difference? Ask for a few lines of background from the character. Wether they have the same stats or not, the characters will be different... and if they aren't, i think we can all agree that means that the player lacks imagination, not that point buy is the problem.
You want strength to matter for the wizard? Make him roll strength. You want intelligence to matter for the barbarian? Make him use it. If they'll never using that stat, you can force them to put there their highest score there. It wont change a thing.
>>44509667
I'm already dissatisfied with the content we already have. More content isn't going to improve the game much, in the same way that giving someone comfy socks or a nice jacket won't help much if you're forcing them to wear the world's itchiest pair of underpants. If the core of your game sucks, more content won't save it.
Granted, not everything about 5E sucks, but enough does to exasperate me.
>>44510382
You're right, it's extremely frustrating and a really poor design decision.
>>44509831
Not sure what you're saying here. The point in dispute is at >>44506913 (that 2e's core is bland because they wanted to present it as a generic adventure game, seemingly fit for anything and so versatile that NO OTHER GAME IS NECESSARY IGNORE THE COMPETITION PLEASE).
The HR series is pretty interesting - but its existence reinforces that point.
>>44512111
>2e's core is bland
1e's core is bland too.
>>44483567
>That image
And when i thought he couldn't get even more fucking cringe worthy he went ahead and proved me wrong.
>>44516010
Wow, you're a really sad and pathetic person for still hating on that comic. Grow up a little.
