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On 06/01/2017 at 3:28 AM, Matrim Fox Cauthon said:

Really? I found 3E's skill list to be needlessly long. Even Pathfinder attempts to remove some of the usual redundant suspects (e.g. Move Silently + Hide -> Stealth; Listen + Spot -> Perception; Decipher Script + Forgery + Speak Language -> Linguistics). 

Profession? Speak Language as a skill? It was pointless, especially given magic spells such as Comprehend Languages. In 5E? The designers don't bother and give you the potential option of simply learning languages in your down time. Craft skills? Assumed if you have proficiency in the proper tools. Opening a lock? Same. Though, they really should have also just dumped the Medicine skill in favor of proficiency in the Healer's Kit. All tool proficiencies can be learned and expanded in your down time. 

I don't think that 5E is perfect when it comes to its skill list/system - especially since the it effectively makes Intelligence the dump stat for everyone but wizards - but I do preferred the streamlined simplicity of 4E/5E to 3.X/PF. 

Personally i find the skill system, classes and combat to be way over simplified in 5E. Especially the combat; the monsters have too many hps, and it can too easily devolve into a repetitive roll fest.

We've had to convert a bunch of the 3E rules to our current campaign to spice it up. And sure you can do that, but I often find myself wishing we were still just playing 3.5E.

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Late last year a group of us got together and started a game day every other week.  We started by playing board games (Cattan, Stone Age, Last night on Earth and our favorite Legendary) at my house.  It was fantastic.  Then one of the members of our group (we played with my two brothers and a friend from work) who had never played D&D asked about playing that.  He had been watching Acquisitions INC on youtube and was wondering about it.

Well, since I used to DM for my brothers back in the day (2000 or so) I said why not.

Now eight months later we are still playing every other Saturday and loving it.  We are playing a homebrewed 5e campaign in which my players have progressed from slaves to heroes.  Only one death along the way (nasty failed save vs a Beholder they fought) and lots of treasure.  It has been great.

I have to say, as someone who played 2e, 3e and now 5e, I am really enjoying 5e.  It is fun and easy to just jump into for newer players and pretty easy to teach those new players.

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5 hours ago, Impmk2 said:

Personally i find the skill system, classes and combat to be way over simplified in 5E. Especially the combat; the monsters have too many hps, and it can too easily devolve into a repetitive roll fest.

We've had to convert a bunch of the 3E rules to our current campaign to spice it up. And sure you can do that, but I often find myself wishing we were still just playing 3.5E.

I agree that the monsters have way too much HP or not much else going for them. There's actually a good video on Youtube I watched recently from Matthew Colville that talks about using 4E monster mechanics to make 5e encounters more interesting and dynamic. (Not everything about 4E was bad or worthy of its overly dramatized scorn, and in a number of ways, it brought its own improvements over both 3E and 5E.) In terms of skills, I would ideally like something between 3E and 5E, because of some of the issues with skills I previously mentioned with 3E. 

The classes are meant to be more simplified and streamlined for 5E. That was intentional. It's meant to have a lower entry point for beginners to bring more people into the hobby, including people who played pre-3E D&D. (For the record, according to Mearls: 5E has already surpassed 3E in sales.) I'm not entirely satisfied with how they handled classes in 5E either, but I appreciate what they were attempting to achieve, particularly when it comes to curbing the linear fighter/quadratic wizard problem. 

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I agree that the monsters have way too much HP or not much else going for them. There's actually a good video on Youtube I watched recently from Matthew Colville that talks about using 4E monster mechanics to make 5e encounters more interesting and dynamic. (Not everything about 4E was bad or worthy of its overly dramatized scorn, and in a number of ways, it brought its own improvements over both 3E and 5E.) In terms of skills, I would ideally like something between 3E and 5E, because of some of the issues with skills I previously mentioned with 3E. 

The classes are meant to be more simplified and streamlined for 5E. That was intentional. It's meant to have a lower entry point for beginners to bring more people into the hobby, including people who played pre-3E D&D. (For the record, according to Mearls: 5E has already surpassed 3E in sales.) I'm not entirely satisfied with how they handled classes in 5E either, but I appreciate what they were attempting to achieve, particularly when it comes to curbing the linear fighter/quadratic wizard problem.

 

 

 

I did find that oozes are still a pain in the ass. (I think it was some graz oozes we fought) I lost my plate mail!

What is the linear fighter/quadratic wizard problem?

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I used to play Robotech a lot which uses the Palladium rules. Fun but very old-skool.

 

We had a Robotech campaign going for about a year. It was great fun. I think it worked because one, we all loved Robotech. And two, everyone in it is on the MDC damage system. (Veritechs, pods, etc.)

Rifts is another game in that system. And while it could be fun at times, I loved Crazies and Juicers, it had a lot of problems. Lots power imbalances and even worse things in supplements. (f'ing Atlantis tats and Rahoomen)

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7 hours ago, Matrim Fox Cauthon said:

I agree that the monsters have way too much HP or not much else going for them. There's actually a good video on Youtube I watched recently from Matthew Colville that talks about using 4E monster mechanics to make 5e encounters more interesting and dynamic. (Not everything about 4E was bad or worthy of its overly dramatized scorn, and in a number of ways, it brought its own improvements over both 3E and 5E.) In terms of skills, I would ideally like something between 3E and 5E, because of some of the issues with skills I previously mentioned with 3E. 

The classes are meant to be more simplified and streamlined for 5E. That was intentional. It's meant to have a lower entry point for beginners to bring more people into the hobby, including people who played pre-3E D&D. (For the record, according to Mearls: 5E has already surpassed 3E in sales.) I'm not entirely satisfied with how they handled classes in 5E either, but I appreciate what they were attempting to achieve, particularly when it comes to curbing the linear fighter/quadratic wizard problem. 

I love Matthew Colville's videos.

One of the biggest reasons, IMO, that 5e has sold so much is the abundance of D&D on the internet.  After listening to Acquisitions INC at work, I went on a hunt to see if there was more like that because it was fun to listen to and I was blown away by the sheer amount of people doing youtube/podcasts of playing D&D.  Critical Role is huge (absolutely love it), but there is so many more shows that since April I have listened to nothing buy D&D stuff at work, lol.  Makes the day go by so fast.

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1 hour ago, Martell Spy said:

 

 

What is the linear fighter/quadratic wizard problem?

It's a power-progression issue that affects class balance. In short, it's the idea that the fighter's power expands linearly, while the wizard's expands quadratically. The fighter is "stronger" in early levels (higher HP, weapon/armor, etc.), and the wizard is "weaker" (low HP, little spells, etc.) at the comparable levels but the wizard quickly surpasses the fighter in the mid to late game: i.e., fabric-of-the-universe-altering-magic.

One of the biggest problems in this regard, particularly when it came to 3E (and elsewhere) was niche protection. In 3E and Pathfinder, the wizard can potentially out-rogue the rogue because their magic makes the rogue's stealth, skills, sneak attack, etc. obsolete. Linear Fighter/Quadratic Wizard can also be seen in Mitchell and Webb's sketches: Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit. In terms of ranking, if you were playing a Tier 1 class in 3E/PF (e.g. wizard, cleric, druid), then you were essentially on the path to godhood and everyone else could go home and play something else. I do say this as someone who played Tier 1 classes: it could be a huge problem of imbalance. In 5E, it's still there, but the power of spellcasting has been curbed, in part, due to the new concentration rules and new spell scaling rules, which prohibits a character from having all the buffs or using a high-damaging spell with a low-level spell slot. 

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It's a power-progression issue that affects class balance. In short, it's the idea that the fighter's power expands linearly, while the wizard's expands quadratically. The fighter is "stronger" in early levels (higher HP, weapon/armor, etc.), and the wizard is "weaker" (low HP, little spells, etc.) at the comparable levels but the wizard quickly surpasses the fighter in the mid to late game: i.e., fabric-of-the-universe-altering-magic.

Ah, gotcha. I kind of know what you mean, although I've never played above mid level in 3rd. Yeah, it was even worse in 3.0. One of the things they fixed in 3.5 was mages being able to use haste and spell cast.

2nd has it's own version of this problem. Mages suck at 1st and second, still are pretty suck at 3 and 4, then surpass almost anyone at 5. And the problem is further compounded by priests not getting spells as much at higher levels as mages do. I'm in a long running 2nd ed. campaign, and my mid level wizard often dominates the gameplay, except in special situations such as when we were fighting a bunch of iron golems.

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  • 10 months later...

My younger brother and older brother will both be here in a couple of weeks and for the first time in years we're going to play Dungeons and Dragons. In preparation I've finished my map of Vaeya (an island slightly smaller than Great Britain with multiple nations on it. Think of Great Britain with Northumbria, Wessex, Mercia. That but fantasy) and am putting the finishing touches on a brand new quest. We will be playing with 4th edition rules.

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8 hours ago, A True Kaniggit said:

My younger brother and older brother will both be here in a couple of weeks and for the first time in years we're going to play Dungeons and Dragons. In preparation I've finished my map of Vaeya (an island slightly smaller than Great Britain with multiple nations on it. Think of Great Britain with Northumbria, Wessex, Mercia. That but fantasy) and am putting the finishing touches on a brand new quest. We will be playing with 4th edition rules.

Very nice.

I missed out on 4th edition, didn't play for 16 years or so, but I have listened to some podcasts that used it for a while.  I think it gets more hate then it should.

Hope you all have a great time!

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  • 3 months later...

Kinda surprised no one is talking about it, but Paizo announced several weeks ago that they are developing a 2nd edition of Pathfinder. 

Paizo essentially created Pathfinder as an OGL alternative for many 3rd party publishers who were unable to enjoy the same benefits they had with the new policies under WotC during 4E. After 10 years, Paizo has decided to update the rules. Or in their words, they are no longer the gamers they were ten years ago. 

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I'm pretty sure they'd said, many times, there would never be a Pathfinder 2E. I guess they saw what was going on with D&D 5E and realised they needed to respond to say relevant.

Still, controversial, especially immediately announcing it after releasing Starfinder which is supposed to have cross-compatibility.

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15 hours ago, Werthead said:

I'm pretty sure they'd said, many times, there would never be a Pathfinder 2E. I guess they saw what was going on with D&D 5E and realised they needed to respond to say relevant.

Still, controversial, especially immediately announcing it after releasing Starfinder which is supposed to have cross-compatibility.

Well PF1 had a number of players simply because 4E was the primary alternative. But a lot of players have migrated to 5E, for better or worse, because it's a better alternative for many than 4E was, while others have migrated simply because there is a larger playerbase present. But I think there were some signs the past few years that Pathfinder was showing both its age and desire to transition to a new stage of the game. In this case, I think Paizo wants an opportunity to take some of its innovations (e.g., Unchained action economy, archetypes, alt racial features, etc.) and bake them into a stronger, more streamlined core rules set. Though any new edition will be controversial, this one seems ready and kinda needed. In particular, while I think that 5E is one of the easiest to pick up systems of D&D, PF2 looks poised to target people dissatisfied with the player customization options of 5E. 

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  • 7 months later...

Walked into a very old-skool RPG shop in Norwich and picked up copies of Kara-Tur: The Eastern Realms and The Horde (Forgotten Realms expansions, the former for AD&D 1st Edition and the latter for 2nd). I've been looking for boxed copies of these for about 25 years, so just finding them both in near-mint condition (remarkable for Kara-Tur, it came out over 30 years ago) in a random shop was ridiculous.

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