Dungeons And Dragons 5th Edition Announced!

Boo on getting rid of the d20. You can't huddle around a table praying for the last upright PC to roll three sixes to slay the dragon.

Plus, how is it going to speed up the game if you have to add up your dice on every single roll?

We're not just men of science, we're men of TROPE!

I hardly think adding a total of 3 digits is above and beyond the skills of the average role player.

hashtagsarestupid

It's not a question of whether it's above anyone's skill. It's no insult to anyone's intelligence to point out that the mental process of addition has a certain computational time involved. The time difference between a 3d6 roll of 2+3+5+modifiers and a d20 roll of 10+modifiers is fairly small, but it does exist, and it does add up over time, especially if you have to make more than one "d20" roll per turn. (In particular, it can screw up the DM if she's got an encounter with more than one monster with similar initiatives, which is pretty common - it's a lot easier to have four differently-colored d20s at hand than four sets of matching d6s. With a d20 roll, she scoops up four dice and throws them on the table; with a 3d6 system, she probably has to roll and sum the results for each monster individually.)

On a completely separate note, I also find a bell-curve system lacks drama when you want it. I mean, I guess there's some virtue in having more average results than results at either end of the distribution, but I've never told anyone a war story about how closely my dice played to the average. Meanwhile, I've had plenty of stories about how, at a critical moment, somebody rolled the nat 20 or the heartbreaker 1. Such stories become a lot rarer with a bell curve. (You can say that you prefer it that way, since that way they become that much more memorable due to their rarity. That's a valid stance, too, but I think the normal d20 distribution hits my "sweet spot" for critical successes and failures.)

edited 12th Jan '12 12:15:34 AM by Aldheim

My book, THE LIVES OF THE APOSTATES, is out now!

So where are we submitting these ideas they said they're taking? I have ideas. You guys have seens my ideas. I have ideas out the ass.

edited 12th Jan '12 12:46:29 AM by God_of_Awesome

I never really plan to switch over, I learned 3.5, burning wheel and magic I'm pretty much exhausted when it comes to brain power with those systems alone. I'm interesting in what they do but I doubt I'll switch over no matter what I do, everyone I know (how plays dnd) plays 3.5, only a handful of them play 4e, and even less other systems.

Rarely active, try DA/Tumblr Avatar by pippanaffie.deviantart.com

Go A: Go sign up for the playtest, basically.

My book, THE LIVES OF THE APOSTATES, is out now!

if you're are genuinely interested in submitting ideas Awesome wizards are doing sign ups asking for fan input[1].

As for whether they will actually listen to player input we have to see.

edited 12th Jan '12 1:40:39 AM by joeyjojo

hashtagsarestupid

You know, I'd like to put in my two cents on the whole '3d6 bell curve vs. d20 flat line'.

I wouldn't want to replace the d20 roll for attack rolls. Constantly adding up the dice results would take too much time over the course of an encounter, and I just happen to like how often critical hits happen as they are now. It also makes a certain degree of sense. There are so many factors involved in realistic combat, that you can't always rely on your skills alone.

Now, skill checks*

are a different matter. The way I see it, skill checks are used during moments where you manage to think outside the box for a minute, and will now attempt something beyond 'I hit it with my axe' to give the plot a little spin the way you want it. While these moments are very character defining and possibly quite awesome, they are usually also very risky (getting caught nicking the key of the guard will produce many angry guards you have no hope of beating due to sheer numbers, or if the DM has mercy, will damage your reputation forever). So unless the player really likes taking risks and isn't too attached to his character, it is unlikely he will ever actually attempt anything besides the railroad tracks laid out in front of him so the DM doesn't feel like the skills are a waste of space on the character sheet.

Eliminating that risk to a significant degree would get rid of this problem. Players would feel more confident in their skills, and so will use them more often to produce results other then 5 damage, or to give their own spin to the plot. In other words, it gives players more incentive to actually roleplay.

It also makes more sense. The performance of professional athletes is quite consistent. Try doing twenty long jumps yourself: Unless you get some expert pro-tips in the middle, your performance won't have many dramatic differences. Same for good singers, that can consistently reach high or low notes.

So yeah, I'm going to propose this as a house rule to my DM next session. My friend and I are about to escape from a secured prison where we got anti-magic bracelets, so I'd appreciate the boost in probability for actually succeeding in a skill check at which my character is supposed to be completely awesome.

In a matter completely unrelated: Getting rid of the Class and Level System from D&D would be heresy, and whoever dares suggest it again should be burned at a stake.

edited 12th Jan '12 3:56:37 AM by Kayeka

Glad I convince some one to pass the d20, good luck with the break out

This bloger[1] explains the flaw of the d20 system fairly well. Shameless copy paste:

edited 12th Jan '12 4:55:34 AM by joeyjojo

hashtagsarestupid

Uhm, rolling a 10.5 on a d20 is, in fact, the average. It just happens to be the mean/median, while that guy seems to be wanting it to be the mode. All three are legitimate uses of the word "average."

If we add 1+2+3+4....+20 = 210 / 20 = 10.5. The mean average.
If we look at 1, 2, 3, 4..., 20 as a number line, the center is between 10 and 11. 10.5, the median average.

It's a perfectly factual statement.

edited 12th Jan '12 11:59:31 AM by Aldheim

My book, THE LIVES OF THE APOSTATES, is out now!

Factual if misleading. I do think 'Mode' average is more accurate considering. Even more accurate is right off just looking at ever possible outcome and assigning a percentile chance of it being rolled, which we know is even across the board for d20.

For any given roll, yes, you're as likely to roll a 19 as you are an 11, but over time, those 19s are "cancelled out" by 2s, as the 20s are "cancelled out" by 1s, etc. Over time, the average result is still 10.5. I don't find that misleading.

My book, THE LIVES OF THE APOSTATES, is out now!

Clarification: It isn't misleading to anyone who understands high school mathematics.

edited 12th Jan '12 3:12:12 PM by Exelixi

Mura: -flips the bird to veterinary science with one hand and Euclidean geometry with the other-

Not all of us passed that. And it's possible to pass Algebra yet fail that one section of it.

[quoteblock]] As for whether they will actually listen to player input we have to see.[[/quoteblock]]

If Wot C has any sense, they wont.

edited 13th Jan '12 8:38:35 PM by PataHikari

Seems like the open playtest worked out pretty well for Pathfinder. While opening the lines up for people to throw all of their random ideas at them is probably not a great idea, nobody ever said "this game is bad because it was playtested too much."

My book, THE LIVES OF THE APOSTATES, is out now!

Playtesting is less "COME ON BRO GIVE ME YOUR IDEAS" and more "okay, so we're thinking of introducing elements X, Y, and Z; we'd like you to try a session and see how those mechanics affect your play experience."

Mura: -flips the bird to veterinary science with one hand and Euclidean geometry with the other-

Though I would assume that could lead to some ideas being generated, if you're like, "well, the way skill checks work blows, we think it would make more sense to do it like this."

My book, THE LIVES OF THE APOSTATES, is out now!

And by "open playtest" you mean "let a bunch of people download beta pdfs, ignore the balance issues people pointed out within a few minutes of looking over the rules, and relase D&D 3.75 with all the same terrible balance issues that plagued D&D 3.5" then I don't think it did.

By "worked out pretty well," I meant "Pathfinder apparently outsold 4th Edition." I'm speaking in a purely business sense here - it seems like the open playtest helped Paizo market a game that people wanted to play, whatever its balance issues may be.

My book, THE LIVES OF THE APOSTATES, is out now!

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha that's a good joke man.

Don't laugh so quickly. The rational wiki backs it up.

And those guys are like super rational.

hashtagsarestupid

See also the source for those claims, the ICV 2 hobby store survey: Q3 2011 and Q2 2011. Prior to that, it's D&D, of course, but that's sort of the point; except possibly for when TSR went bankrupt, no RPG has ever outsold Dungeons and Dragons. (I don't think market data exists for that time; if any game did beat D&D at that time, it was Vampire The Masquerade, but I've heard it said that the industry as a whole slumped without TSR.) The fact that Pathfinder has had the top spot for half a year now points to serious difficulties with 4E's marketing.

Although this is far more anecdotal, a quick look at Amazon's top Gaming books shows that 6 out of 10 of the top RPG books selling there are for Pathfinder, while only #9 and #10 are for D&D books (the Red Box and the Monster Vault, respectively.) (The other two books in the top 10 are cheat guides for Skyrim, which seem miscategorized.)

We don't have market data for the holiday season yet. It wouldn't surprise me if D&D is #1 again during the holidays, since the brand has a lot more penetration into the non-gamer market (and therefore it's more likely that Aunt Sue is going to get you a D&D book for Christmas than a Pathfinder book.) But still, Pathfinder is at the very least neck and neck with 4E, and appears to be on an upward growth trend (they have sold more core books in 2011 than 2010, and more in 2010 than they did in 2009) while 4E has stagnated and, as we have just heard, has been effectively cancelled altogether.

In short: that wasn't just something I pulled out of my ass.

My book, THE LIVES OF THE APOSTATES, is out now!

Aldheim tends to know his shit most of the time.

edited 14th Jan '12 1:46:34 AM by Exelixi

Mura: -flips the bird to veterinary science with one hand and Euclidean geometry with the other-

Features I would like in a new edition of Dungeons and Dragons? A reduction in the power difference between magic and non magic, without the homogenization that plagued 4th ed. Ideally the main 3 "Power Sources*

" would all play completely differently eg, Wizards use Mana Points, Clerics Spells per Day and the Fighter has a 4th ed like list of moves, or perhaps a deck of move cards which is drawn from.

for an unpopular opinion I would like to pear back the list of playable races and classes, keep the standard races and make the classes vague and broad enough to allow many archetypes in the one class (Fighter, Barbarian and Paladin all being rolled into one as a start).