Kids these days. We were playing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, with no flipping “edition” appended to the name, with only the Monster Manual and the Player’s Handbook for months while we anxiously awaited the Dungeon Master’s Guide.
Get outta my dungeon!
Characters starting off tough enough to not get one-shotted is always a good thing. In 3rd edition, I’d always suggest starting around level 3 or 4 for this reason.
I am somewhat persuaded by the perspective that what Ye Olde Schoole RPGs were about was pathos. You don’t start out bad-ass. You suck. Reading the article, I flashed back to the fate of Black Dougal, from the sample adventure that came with one of the old boxed sets. He misses one Find Traps roll, which went up very slowly in Basic D&D, and one poison save and he is dead. It used to be a hard struggle up to not sucking for everyone in the old days, but for thieves who were apparently expected to take one for the team every time they found a chest, I was shocked at how bad they had it. Oh, but, woo-hoo, you got a bonus to backstab damage in certain perfect circumstances in the unlikely event that you made your Move Silently check.
On the other hand, and I may have made this point on The Straight Dope before, I think this pathos explains these old gamer stories you hear in which even the paladin would push his mother off a cliff to get dibs on an evil artifact. People were way to hungry for power in the old days.
Many people now favor a flatter advancement curve. In the HackMaster game I’m playing, the party is 3rd level and we take every encounter with goblins seriously, and sometimes it nearly is somebody’s funeral. If that’s what they’re doing in 5e, that’s great, though I suspect you’re still getting told how awesome you are at 1st level.
I’ve been reading the threads at ENWorld. It looks like there will be a free set of Basic rules that will be available online, from which you could play either of the two first modules coming out. It’s being bandied about that these are about 15% of the full ruleset. They will not include a bard. Probably it will be just the most classic stuff - Fighter, Mage, Thief, Cleric. The starter set is mostly comprised of a module (64 pages) and a rule book (32 pages). Hopefully also a set of dice, for the n00bs who don’t already have masses of them.
Since the first module to come out a month later than the starter set is about 1/3 larger and is supposed to take characters up to 7th or 8th level, how many levels are we expecting from the adventure in the starter set? Are you going to blow away Horde of the Dragon Queen after you’ve beaten the module in the starter set?
Bear in mind I haven’t read line one of 4E, but how is that any different from 3.5e/Pathfinder… or most other high fantasy RPGs and campaigns out there ? It’s kind of the whole cliché. You start at level 1, the innkeeper sends you off on a grand quest to get back the well’s bucket that a limping kobold made off with, and go from there to sealing back the Ancient Evil following a long series of level-appropriate fiends, traps and lewtz neatly ordered by increasing challenge rating.
Evil has always featured a “coincidental” sorting algorithm. It’s a very, *very *rare thing (these days - I know the Tomb of Horrors 
) to find a module where even a single encounter is just flat-out outside of the characters’ expected ass-kicking range at that point (Pathfinder’s Rise of the Runelords campaign featuring one notable exception which, as with much of PF’s early material, was written and *specifically *meant to mess with the expectations of jaded AD&D players).
At the other end of the scale, sometimes you do find “unleash your nigh-godly hero powers on a bunch of mooks to blow off some steam” stuff… which is actually boring to play out, even in video game RPGs which are all about the showy action - they don’t even drop the phat lewtz !
Does 5th ed still have Attacks of Opportunity?
It makes sense, but it’s the most annoying game rule ever.
Me: I’d like to move over here.
GM: OK, but you’ll be hit with an Attack of Opportunity from this guy.
Me: Grrrr… OK, I wait here for him to enter my threatened square.
GM: You’ll only get an Attack of Opportunity of he *leaves *your threatened square.
Me: Why do THEY always get it and I DON’T?
I don’t think it does; There’s no grid, so it’s pretty much impossible to adjudicate that sort of thing.
That said, I am the opposite of excited for this game. I really don’t see what it has to offer at this point. Their purported goal was to make a version of D&D that would be fun for fans of all previous editions, which is not something I am convinced is possible, and sounds more like a designed-by-committee (“I know! Let’s ask the Internet what they think! That’s a good way to design a game!”) mess that’s going to be not much fun for fans of any edition.
I’ve also heard some discouraging reports re: how the mechanics work. My biggest problem with the d20 system family is the large, flat probability range (Colloquially known as “the d20”) which means that the number you roll on the die is usually more important than how “good” your character is at something. By all reports, 5E/Next/Whatever exacerbates this problem by reducing the overall total bonus you can expect to have as a result of being “good” at something. Excellent. Take the biggest mechanical issue I have with your game and make it worse. Well played, Internet, well played.
Also, I rather disagree that D&D needs to be “zero to hero”; In fact, I’d argue it hasn’t been since 3rd ed. Because you know what? While stories need beginnings, stories also need fewer “Ooops, you fell in a ten foot pit and broke your neck, roll another character.” endings.
In that instance, you could ready an action to say “When he gets to this space, I hit him.” Or just hit the dude who would be hitting you 
I really like 4th Edition, primarily because it’s easy to DM, and the balancing of the classes means that the game isn’t “Protect the Wizard until 5th Level then get out of the way because he’s now better than you at everything”. I roll with a crew of novices, and they have embraced the freeform nature of pen and paper while also being able to use cool powers in combat whatever their character.
Edit: should probably put thoughts on D&D Next in as well: The last playtest I read just seemed to restrictive regarding healing, especially. I get that adventuring is dangerous, but another cool thing 4th did was give everybody more choice regarding healing, as opposed to one character having to specialise or spend loads of money on wands and scrolls. It meant that you could keep the momentum up and not have to head back to town every five minutes because your Wizard and Cleric were out of spells and your Fighter was at 2HP.
I guess at the end of the day, no one has made a compelling case for what 5E would/will do better than the very large number of very good fantasy games on the market.
Seriously. If there is a generic fantasy game that can’t be done with one of Dungeon World, 4E, Pathfinder, or Burning Wheel, I don’t know what it is.
Yes, there are attacks of opportunity. You provoke them when you try to move out of the melee range of an enemy.
The raw dice numbers you need to roll to be successful won’t be much different than in other editions of D&D. In previous editions there were runaway DCs needed to keep up with ever-increasing bonuses. An increased bonus on level-up is meaningless when the DCs are also based on level (this is how it was in 4th edition). In 5th a cheap lock is a cheap lock and will always have the same DC to overcome regardless of what level you are - the same goes for that 10ft chasm, that swiftly-flowing river, and that ornery horse who refuses to cooperate.
As for the argument about feeling like a hero right off the bat versus having to work for it - I think it’s pointless. I enjoyed both 3rd and 4th Editions and evoking either feeling in either edition would be easy.
I think 5th is shaping up to be the most elegant of the D&D editions, meaning just that right balance of streamlining and depth. We’ll just have to see, and of course some people are going to be determined to dislike it, but I loved the (admittedly limited) access I’ve had to the skeleton of the system and I’m optimistic about the future of the game.
I certainly hope there will be grid combat. The great thing about 3rd edition is that it was the first edition to fully codify combat using maps and miniatures, unless you count that Battlesystem. As far as adjudicating free attacks, there were arguments back in the day when we didn’t have an actual map to show for certain where everyone was about who gets a free attack on a fleeing opponent. But we muddled through. So I’d say it’s not impossible, per se. More like “what is in the DM’s head is what’s actually happening” which was unsatisfactory, in many ways. That’s why God made grid combat.
I see your point, and I’ve always admired how GURPS’ resolution actually depended on the bell curve distribution of 3d6. The d20 averages to 10.5, so in that sense your actual skill is 10 + skill level, but every increment between 1 and 20 is equally likely to come up. Now and then I hear someone argue that we should do D&D on a 3d6 instead of d20. But the d20 scale has continued to prove playable, and a less linear curve would mean re-thinking difficulty target numbers and more difficulty converting previous edition material.
Also, there’s hours worth of footage of the designers of D&D playing the 5th Edition playtest on Twitch and Youtube, for those interested. :]
My favorite is the playthrough of the Lich Queen’s Beloved adventure (there are five or six parts for that one).
The situation usually comes up when I’m trying to get at the caster in the back. It’s an ever-changing maze when bodies start piling up, creating difficult terrain, and pikemen with 10’ reach enter the fray. And yes, I do plan to get Dodge & Mobility when we get to a point where I can respec my feats, which we haven’t been able to do in the past 6 months.
By that time, some new development will come up that I have no way of contending with.
For instance, my aquatic druid just turned 8th level. I can wild shape into a large animal! Yay! We’re fighting underwater. I’ll be a Giant Blowfish! I’ll have a 1D8 damage shield, my quills are poisonous, and I’ll have a 10’ reach! Yay!
No yay. The gate guardians are automatons that have DR 10, so the damage shield is useless. They have 15’ reach. Since they’re big bruisers, they have high Fort saves so my poison is ineffective. No yay.
But how do you tell? Unless it’s only “Well, he melee attacked you last round, so yeah, you’re in melee with him.”
This is COMPLETELY beside the point. Look, here.
In 4th Ed, the difference between someone who “sucks” at a skill (no training, worst ability score they have) and someone who is DAMN GOOD at it (Trained, based on their highest ability score) is about 10 points. (-1 skill vs +8 or +9.) This means that if the ‘good person’ rolls a 5 and the ‘bad’ person rolls a 15, they come out even. This isn’t TOO bad - the unskilled person will sometimes beat the skilled out, and more often than I’d like, but it’s not TOO often.
In 5E, it seems like the difference between someone who ‘sucks’ at a skill and someone who is ‘good’ at it is going to be more like +4. That’s F-ing ridiculous, even if the person who is ‘good’ at it is rolling twice and keeping the best die, it still represents the completely inept person beating the competent one more often than in 4E, which already happened more often than I would like. Compare this to what happens if you use 3d6, or some sort of ‘dice pool’ mechanic and you will find characters who are “the best they could be” at something losing to bumbling incompetents far less often.
It has NOTHING to do with what the target numbers are and everything to do with how much impact the random spread has on the outcome of your roll compared to the fixed part.
You seem to be arguing with yourself here.
That’s all well and good; I’m basing my experience on a playtest from over a year ago and it was bland and lacked any defining virtue. It was not especially elegant, because it’s still just a “roll and add stuff” system and at this point, those are just standard unless you bog them down with a lot of junk.
Wow. Lots of responses since mine.
I’m not down on anyone having a fun time playing a RPG however they want. On the GNS spectrum, which can be controversial but it gives a starting point to talk about, I’m firmly in the Narrativist camp. Certainly I have parts of G and S but I learn toward N.
Therefore, for me, and my group in general, having a character die due to a series of bad rolls, is not fun. However, to fully explain that, people would need to know FATE/Dresden Files RPG and how it handles consequences. To me, having something bad happen up to but not death and they have to keep going because no one else will is more interesting.
I’m not saying that smart playing shouldn’t happen, at all levels. But what levels mean in DND varies so much! The idea that a group can, and does, get to the point of thinking that hundreds of X type of monster is not a challenge should be a big deal but it is handwaved because DND/PF does a great job of having that power level creep up on you. This just happened in the campaign that finished up last night. We really had to step back and realize what their high level characters looked like to the average peasant and it shocked us all what we got used to!
Wow. Too much to say and it’s off topic but I keep going.
I’m now learning, decades too late, that 1E did allow for the possibility of low powered creatures taking out something more powerful with well thought out tactics. However, that same mentality also set up the possibility for a lot of rules arguments about what could be done. For me, 3E/PF is the best version of DND in the mechanics and role playing and how they work, or can work together in telling a story. It allows us to start out as vanilla people who do become heroes after several adventures. Starting heroes still can die too easily, imo, which is what I liked about 4E with starting characters having more hit points. Again, increasing hit points sets up the mentality of standing and fighting when only two levels ago the character would have fled.
Again, if someone wants to play the gritty side or a more simulationist style game where the players have to take out a horde of something and should expect to die and have the next character ready, that’s great! It’s just not my or my group’s preferred play style. We like the long term stories about this group of characters.
btw, with regards to d20 versus 3d6, I would have to hunt to find it, but someone “proved” that at lower levels, the roll matters more, especially for skills and other static DCs, but at higher levels the bonus is more important.
Back on topic, I’m curious but whereas before, I bought new editions of DND unseen, I will now read reviews and wait a bit before I jump into 5E. I’m finding that playing such an early “alpha” build was not a good idea because it really turned me off the game, such that I’m not interested. And that’s too bad.
I will have to find the playtest videos but it’s tough to get past “a group of friends having a fun time” to be able to understand and evaluate the rule mechanics and if my group will like it. Again, I will have to wait and see after it’s out. Besides, we are finishing off this year with PF.
I do like the idea that “low” level monsters are still a threat and can’t be ignored at later levels because I don’t like the QWLF problems, which also extends to saves, BAB and ACs. But I can deal with that “bad” aspect of 3E/PF for the rest of the parts that I feel are good.
Thanks!
Airk: Well said on the skill stuff. I agree that while a ten point spread is pretty good, it’s still means they can fail against a less skilled character just a bit too often. (It’s the Gamers movie and opening a door.)
For me, 4E and 5E seemed to flatten the experience out but they did it too much. It had good ideas but bad execution for me.
I also agree with whoever said that I have yet to read anything published in module form or any advice that said that players should encounter things where they have to run away. In my experience, and from what I have read, players expect to be able to take anything put in front of them, barring any talking of expectations/metagaming it but that’s me.
Good points! Thanks!
This is less about the system, IMHO, and more about the GAME at the table. Just because 4E has a system for what an “on level” encounter is doesn’t mean you need to use it. If you want to play a deadly sandbox or whatever, you can.
The big differences between the editions in my opinion, leaving aside most of the crap that got published in splatbooks and stuff is thus:
[ul]
[li]Early editions, there were fewer specific case rules (though wow does this depend on what ‘early edition’ you are talking about) so players were ‘encouraged’ (for certain values of ‘encouragement’) to just try to do stuff and hope the GM is prepared to adjudicate it in an interesting fashion. You could argue that early editions were more ‘simulationist’ if you like the GNS stuff.[/li][li]3rd Ed was the dawn of serious crunch (though late 2nd ed with all the splatbooks certainly was headed in this direction.). The game becomes much more gamist, and at the same time, much more restricted. While you suddenly have a million choices in character creation, those choices act to -restrict- what you can do in actual play (if there’s a feat that says “Now you can do this thing” then obviously you CAN’T do that if you DON’T have the feat). This represents the game drifting in a more ‘gamist’ direction, but there hasn’t been a serious decision made to push that way yet, so the game has a bunch of simulationist trappings that are enough for a lot of people because they don’t ACTUALLY care that much.[/li][li]4th Edition is an unapologetically gamist game, and it does that very well. It’s the natural next step from 3rd edition on the trajectory the game was on. It continues the trend of concentrating choices into character building more than ‘in play’, deals with a lot of imbalances, and sheds most of 3E’s remaining simulationist trappings. I’d argue that 4E actually does what it does better than 3E does what IT does, because 3E honestly, is a weird compromise game to me - it pretends to be simulationist, but has a bunch of somewhat inconsistently chosen gamist choices. The reason a lot of people don’t like 4E is because they want it to be something it’s not. (Namely: At all simulationist.)[/li][/ul]
All comments about “3E” also include 3.5 and Pathfinder, because they’re all basically the same game with the furnishings rearranged.
I would suggest that anyone who actually feels they prefer the “N” part of GNS to drop D&D editions entirely and go check out Dungeon World instead. There’s a free SRD available online.
The reason I like PF, even though I’m more of an N, is because I like the options that the rules can allow, even if I don’t choose to use them. It’s easier to ignore a rule, and make a willful choice about doing so, then have a system with less rules and try to be consistent between games with what can be done. In other words, if the group decides we don’t like AoOs except in certain conditions, it’s easier to change a rules heavy system to reflect that, imo, than it is to add that into a system that doesn’t have them in the first place.
So, I agree that because X feat says you can do this, you must need it to do that. What I prefer to do is have players come up with a concept and then we go toward that. Further, I would prefer to restrict feats/spells to Core Rules and then allow their character concept to help with “extra” feats outside of the normally allowed to get to that concept, rather than feel that they can’t try something.
My group tried Dresden Files and it was almost too free form, or maybe it was just that different from what we were used to doing, such that it didn’t work for us. (And I liked the game and Dresden!)
I disagree that 4E does skills better than 3E because of what you said about the difference in skills. 4E gave everyone half level bonus to skills, and skill in it was only a +5 difference, without attribute bonus! I get what they were trying to do, and in their Star Wars Saga that’s a great idea because it fit Star Wars very well, imo. But for fantasy or especially modern, that doesn’t work for me. Basically, 4E nearly made skills irrelevant and focused on class abilities, which felt too similar to me.
Again, I’m not saying PF is perfect but I can use it as a base and be happy with it much easier than I can with 4E or what I have seen of 5E. And if you are telling me that a skilled vs non skilled in 5E is only a +4 difference? It may read well but I bet my group would not like that long term.
Again; All this feat and attack of opportunity crunch is basically superfluous if you’re looking to play a more freeform game. What you need is a system with a clear adjudication process so that rulings come out consistent, and then you run with it.
Again, I suggest you give Dungeon World a read.
Dresden Files is based on Fate, which is a game a LOT of people have problems wrapping their brains around. I haven’t read the DF rules specifically, but Fate has a lot of differing assumptions about what a game is supposed to be about, and if you don’t recalibrate with regard to what the game is supposed to BE, you’ll just be confused and annoyed.
I’m…pretty sure I didn’t actually SAY 4E did skills better than 3E. However, I don’t really agree with your assessment. Skills make a big difference in 4E. The spread isn’t as wide, which I think is deliberate (though I think the primary reason they changed skill training to just be ‘you get +5’ is for simplicity.) but -most- of the time the spread is big enough, and there are plenty of situations in which most skills are useful. If you are playing a ‘heroic’ fantasy game, everyone having some basic level of competence is an implied assumption, IMHO.
I believe that in 5E, the only differences in “competency” for skills, most of the time, are:
Ability Score
Training that gives you “advantage” (roll the die twice and take the best one)
Note that this may have changed, but general word on the street is that they are trying to cut down on bonuses, hard.
While I agree with all of that, I think D&D lacks a system for the toll combat takes on people and heroes.
I don’t think it’s cool to kill characters off via random mook, when it doesn’t *mean *anything. I confess to fudging the dice when something particularly random and terrible happens to my PCs that I’m not OK with (even if it’s sometimes funny - I lost my first *Runelords *character, a rogue, by trap. He was one-shot from full hitpoints by a scythe trap. Which critted. And then the DM rolled something absurd for damage. I wanted to change characters anyway so we went along with it, and still talk about him and his absurd fate).
But at the same time, in that paradigm what’s the point of fighting mooks at all, other than “the scenario says they’re in your way” ? They’ll take down your hitpoints, maybe force you to use spells and consumables… then you heal back to full and on you go. And you’ll barely remember those guys 10 minutes later.
I wish there was a way, within the rules, to get some lasting, character-building effects even from fights with stuff that you can dispatch easily. Lost eyes, limps, scars, temporary penalties, even phobias and PTSD (why not ?), that sort of thing. As it stands, D&D characters suffer from the critical hitpoint failure problem : at 1HP you’re absolutely fine. At 0 HP you go unconscious, like a light bulb somebody switched off. It’s kind of jarring.
I’m not sure D&D characters “suffer” from that, as it is certainly the result of a clear cut design decision. Actually, I think you’ll find that few game systems actually incorporate what you are asking for, because most people don’t seem to find it entertaining.
Actually, I find it a little odd that you can, in the same breath, say “I fudge things when they don’t produce the results I want” and essentially, “I want my characters to be able to randomly lose an eye at any time.” These two concepts seem fairly fundamentally opposed.
All that said, if you ARE looking for a fantasy game that covers how brutal and grindy adventuring is, may I recommend Torchbearer? (Sorry, I forgot that one in my earlier list of ‘here are all the fantasy games you will ever need.’) It’s a game all about the -cost- of being an adventurer, and how much you are willing to risk to go “one more room” in the hopes of some more silver pieces.