Dungeons And Dragons 5th Edition Announced!

The outcry against 4th is probably because 3.5th was incredibly successful and brought many new gamers to D&D. Added to that were outcries of dumbing it down and pandering to the MMOG crowd. So yeah, that was pretty outrageous when the game came out, and at least for a year after, while 3.0 caught pretty early if I recall correctly.

In the end? Heh, 4th is okay, I prefer 3.5th but it's a matter of choice. 5th isn't even out yet, so... Let's give it a little time before we burn all the books.

Well, some of us are involved in the playtest. And their design is horrible. I mean, they're clearly trying to appeal to the oldschool crowd and basically saying "!@#$ you!" to the 4E crowd, though I concede they at least introduced at-will spell options.

Considering that 4th was way, WAY less successful than 3.0 and 3.5, it makes sense, on a marketing point of view. We'll see if the nostalgic audience will follow that idea or not. (I think the latter would be more plausible, because the nostalgic crew has, well, aged, and those who really liked 3.5 over 4th probably went to Pathfinder in the meantime. But I'm no marketing guru.)

I'm having trouble finding the hard data on that.

My understanding is 4E sold fairly well, but they put a lot of effort into it and didn't see the kind of returns they wanted, so Wot C is just "Fuggit, we're focusing on Magic the Gathering."

I dunno, I think that the maneuvers system is a welcome step away from 3.5 and towards 4, and signature spells are basically turning specific spells into 4E encounter powers.

I'm bad, and that's good. I will never be good, and that's not bad. There's no one I'd rather be than me.

I think trying to go back old-school is a bad decision overall, because they won't be able to beat Pathfinder. I'd like to see a 5th Edition that takes the good parts of 4E and improves upon the shitty parts. Or, you know, something completely different.

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

They did that. It was called Essentials :P

Everyone said it sucked. Which it did, if your only means of measuring whether something sucks or not is by comparing it power wise to earlier stuff.

Well, that, and there were a lot of questionable design choice issues....

Correction: They tried that, and it was called Essentials. Didn't work out as well as they had liked. I personally think they should have done it right to begin with.

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

Dn D is full of good game design that was never quite followed through properly, this isn't is a unique failing of 4th edition the original 3rd edition was barely playableedit

. Chalk it up to being designed by committee.

edited 15th Nov '12 4:54:17 PM by joeyjojo

hashtagsarestupid

is Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards back in full force or is the balance like 4e?

edited 15th Nov '12 5:28:35 AM by CobraPrime

I haven't had a chance to play it, but I have looked through the materials. I can't speak for the power balance as characters level, but the fighters get an "expertise" mechanic that allows them to stay interesting.

However, since 5E is moving back to having spells with broadly applicable effects, wizards are guaranteed to be at least as broken as the players are creative.

In other news, the monk has arrived. Happy penguin.

edited 15th Nov '12 6:21:33 AM by darnpenguin

Add me on Skype: Al Cook (darnpenguin)

Everything I've heard about the monk has been attrocious. That they're downright worse than fighters. Again.

Monks should be the martial version of a wizard, IMO-with techniques and shit. But apparently, people complain about "weeaboo anime-ism."

...

THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS CATHOLIC MARTIAL ARTISTS IN THE 7th CENTURY PEOPLE! Of course the monks are gonna be weeaboo wuxia crap, that's the entire point!

Seriously. I was playing Wizardy7 with a friend back in junior high. We kept fighting the RNG to get a monk. I didn't know why we wanted some Friar Tuck-style priest in the party.

I had no idea that "monk" meant "martial artist".

My question to those people: if you don't want chi/ki powers, acrobatics, and flying kicks in your monk, then what do you want from him? The fighter who does 1d8 with a punch and nothing more?

edited 17th Nov '12 2:08:12 PM by Rotpar

"But don't give up hope. Everyone is cured sooner or later. In the end we shall shoot you." - O'Brien, 1984

That, incidentally, is what I hear the 5E Monk is.

Heck the fact Monk is just a weaker fighter is a ''selling point'

'D&D Next: all the fun of 4th Edition but with characters that suck.

hashtagsarestupid

That just really disgusts me. In Essentials, at the very least they could sell the Slayer as "the guys who will wanna play a simplistic fighter will like the design." But the 5E monk is "The guys who want to play a monk will hate it-we're making it to reassure the other people that the monk won't be a weeaboo class."

The 5e monk can do acrobatics (eventually). The only thing missing is a ki attack (all you can do is use ki to stun an enemy you attack and eventually heal yourself). In the campaign I'm running though, I'm allowing the monk to run on walls and stuff from level 1.

Clerics, on the other hand, make "short breaks" unnecessary; depending on your deity, you can cast certain cure spells at will. I don't get why they'd put in a mechanic when a standard class makes it unnecessary. All well, it's a playtest.

If I were to take a guess, I'd say they wanted the cleric to be the only designated healer class (as opposed to the large number of "leader" classes in 4e), without making him mandatory for each and every party. It's something I can get behind.

How does healing without clerics and potions work in this edition, anyway?

Each character gets one "hit dice" per level which they can roll once per day outside of combat for a chance to regain some loss Hit Points, the size of the dice is decide by the character's class (so a fighter will get a d10 hit dice while a wizard will get a d4 of d6 if he is lucky)

Basically think a more limited and random version of healing surges.

edited 18th Nov '12 11:39:57 PM by joeyjojo

hashtagsarestupid

Wow... Early levels must be a pain.

Sort of. Numbers in the game have been scale back in general so it mainly equals out, monsters can dish out and take and a lot less damage then they could in 4th ed. but there's now is a real risk of being taking out by a few bad saving throws so it leans towards more cautious 'look before you leap' game play. As per it's 'old school' game design.

hashtagsarestupid

Yess.... The early levels were always the most fun, for that very reason :p

My question to those people: if you don't want chi/ki powers, acrobatics, and flying kicks in your monk, then what do you want from him? The fighter who does 1d8 with a punch and nothing more?

Martial artists. People who can kick people to death. If I want to shoot lazers out of my hands I'll play a wizard.

I'd make a monk class specialize in disarms, grapples, nonlethal takedowns, etc. while being slightly inferior to a fighter in a straight-up brawl. Some acrobatics (added mobility, chance to ignore AOO's and their equivalents, bonus to acrobatics-related checks) but not flying or ki-blasting. (although those might be allowed as optional feats or prestige classes)

Basically, by default it should be a "non-magic" class that specializes in unarmed combat. With PRC/Adavanced C Lasses/Kits/whatever to allow for some flavourful specialization if that's what you want.

RE: 2nd. Ed. The nostalgia for 2nd. ed. seems to be less for the rules themselves (who were pretty crappy) but for the settings: 2nd. ed. had some awesome ones Planescape, Spelljammer etc. etcc.

"No, the Singularity will not happen. Computation is hard." -Happy Ent

To be honest, my ideal for Dn D is as follows:

At "heroic" tier-that is, 1 through 10-"martial" characters are pretty much just mundane fighters. Monks can punch and grapple and shit, fighters wear heavy armor, rangers have marksmanship. Okay, we're all good.

Once you get beyond 11th level though, all the martial characters get just a little more badass. They have to be "as powerful as" the guy who can nuke cities, after all. So that's when the crazy Wuxia crap comes in. Fighters inexplicably have the resilient of steel, monks gain their first few ki attacks and ninja techniques, and rangers can shoot arrows that fly at the speed of bullets.

There doesn't *have* to be a contradiction here; you just have to define it at different levels. If people don't want "that weeaboo shit" then they shouldn't play above 10th level. Because if you're the martial character that has to compete with the guy who can instantly obliterate a 1000 cubic foot block of solid steel (see: Disintegrate), you'd damned well be more than just some olympic athlete with a sword.

I disagree.

Essentially, wizarding takes time and concentration. The more powerful the spell, the easier it is to fuck up. A trained fencer can throw a zornhau in less than half a second, and it does in fact only take one strike to kill you, whether you have enough magical power to flatten Hiroshima or not. A high-level warrior doesn't need magic in any capacity. He just needs to be smart enough to stay two steps ahead of a wizard. He doesn't need to turn into Ichigo, he just needs to turn into Batman. I'm not saying that overtly supernatural sword-dudes shouldn't exist, I'm just saying that people should have the option of taking another route.

Likewise, the Monk shouldn't have to be Goku. There should also be an option for hand-to-hand fighters who combine a mastery of their own body with knowledge of the enemy's weaknesses.

A lot of times, spellcaster duels seem to boil down to "I know something you don't." I don't think that concept should be limited to wizards only.

edited 21st Nov '12 1:58:31 PM by Exelixi

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

If you go by that logic, you have to abandon the notion of a combat round as being a distinct amount of time.

The Wizard doesn't merely disintegrate a 10x10x10 block of steel, he does it in a 6 second interval.

Look, you can't tell me that a realistically powerful guy with a sword is going to be able to use that toothpick to take down the 100 foot dragon. It just doesn't work that way. I mean, it does in video game/RPG logic, but from a narrative standpoint, that makes no sense.

Fighters with "boring" and mundane abilities make sense at heroic tier, and I guess to some extent at paragon. But when you're tangling with gods and demon lords, it's really hard to justify your presence when the guy next to you can wipe out armies with the toss of his hand, and you're still just some guy with a sword.