Easygoing Eyebeast Dintiradan Posted January 9, 2012 Share Posted January 9, 2012 Wizards of the Coast has announced that they are developing the fifth edition of Dungeons and Dragons. Thoughts? (I know a lot of people were predicting this move a few months back when Monte Cook was rehired. Why hire someone who openly dislikes 4E and give him a weekly column -- where he spends his time discussing new concepts and demonstrating his lack of 4E knowledge.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Randomizer Posted January 9, 2012 Share Posted January 9, 2012 It's just a scam to boost sales by forcing players to buy a new edition and all the supporting books. Go back to first edition. I haven't really played since second edition. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Alorael at Large Posted January 9, 2012 Share Posted January 9, 2012 4th Edition had some great ideas put together in a package that some people love and that is, on the whole, not for me. I'm unabashed about my appreciation for a lot of Monte Cook's work and I'm excited to see what Wizards puts together with what I hope will be a melding of the best of 3rd and 4th. Of course, reality will never live up to hype, and I'm still unclear on who's actually at the helm. But I'm at least optimistic. —Alorael, who hasn't actually played D&D in years. He's moved on to greener roleplaying pastures. That said, he both has fondness for the fun he had with D&D and interest in the game that's quite often the public face of tabletop roleplaying to the public and the gateway game that brings new fans into the hobby. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Unflappable Drayk Ceiling Durkheim Posted January 9, 2012 Share Posted January 9, 2012 I've encountered a surprising amount of hate for 4E among my circle of friends. I think both 3E and 4E have merits: the latter is a much better game, and sorts out most of the really egregious balance issues in 3E. The former allows for a lot more creativity and has a lot of neat elements that 4E lacks, in part precisely because it's so broken. There are a lot of cool things (especially spells, but some items and monsters as well) that just don't and can't work in a well-balanced game. Polymorph spells are the classic example: they're a cool thing for casters to do, and a staple of fairy tales and fantasy novels, but they're a rampaging, never-balanced nightmare from a rules perspective. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Well-Actually War Trall Actaeon Posted January 9, 2012 Share Posted January 9, 2012 After years as a die hard 3E fan, I'm starting to gather how much is out there outside of Wizards of the Coast. I have no intention of ever buying an RPG system again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Unflappable Drayk Death Knight Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 Im not the biggest fan of the new ones but 2nd edition for me was anyone who isnt a mage or fighter gets the shaft. Thats basically my classes-The rogue, the bard. Fighters and grand mastery were imo overpowered in that edition. Now in 3rd edition, rogues are a lot better than they were with feats, bards are still good, clerics are cool and were a lot more fun for me than mages. The only time i played d and d outside a video game was 3rd edition and i found it to be a lot of fun. Besides that unless there are some major differences between the 2nd edition i played in bg1 and 2 and the real 2nd edition, I would say it still is my least favorite. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Lilith Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 Even as someone who likes 4th edition, I'm interested to see how this turns out. 4E is basically as mature a product as it's going to get at this point: if 5E turns out badly, 4E still has enough content to keep players busy for a very long time. At worst, 5E is at least likely to have one or two interesting new ideas to borrow, even if its apparent all-things-to-all-people design philosophy doesn't pan out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Unflappable Drayk Ceiling Durkheim Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 Quote: Im not the biggest fan of the new ones but 2nd edition for me was anyone who isnt a mage or fighter gets the shaft. Clerics also tend to be pretty overpowered in...well, everything. They're only marginally worse at tanking than fighters, and have spellcasting abilities only marginally worse than magi. I've suspected for a while that clerics are deliberately overpowered to get people to play them, since most would rather play the He-Man hero on the front lines or the person who nukes all the enemies than the medic. As someone who actually likes playing support characters in pen and paper games, I have no problem with the present state of things. Rogues do tend to be consistently underpowered, though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Lilith Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 Originally Posted By: Othar Trygvassen: Gentleman Rogues do tend to be consistently underpowered, though. back in basic d&d the thief was the class you picked when you rolled terrible stats in everything, so that you either died fast and got to make a new character or got lucky and levelled up fast and got to actually be useful actually since you mention clerics, the origin story for clerics in d&d is pretty funny. they go back to when the game was still being played as a semi-competitive wargame. some dude had a vampire character called Sir Fang (yes, really) and he was kind of dominating the game so a class was created specifically to help deal with him, as kind of a cross between Van Helsing and Archbishop Turpin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Alorael at Large Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 Bards have also gotten the short end of the stick in editions between, what, first and fourth? Third wasn't exactly a shining moment for them. —Alorael, who hopes 4th edition was an aberration and a learning experience. He thinks there are very good ideas about games that can and should be used without sucking quite so much of the D&D flavor out of the game. But he's unlikely to plop down money for the game; as Actaeon says, he can spend far less on getting, if not more, then very different things. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Lilith Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 Originally Posted By: broken bits under all furniture Bards have also gotten the short end of the stick in editions between, what, first and fourth? Third wasn't exactly a shining moment for them. 3rd edition bards are really only weak by comparison to wizards, and everything is weak by comparison to 3E wizards. If you find a GM who actually uses the Diplomacy rules as written, an optimised bard can do ridiculous things. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Randomizer Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 Bards got better in 2nd edition since you didn't have to go through all the previous classes to start with bard skills and spells. However they were always kept weaker than wizards since they could go up faster starting with 2nd edition. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Well-Actually War Trall Cairo Jim Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 Originally Posted By: broken bits under all furniture Bards have also gotten the short end of the stick in editions between, what, first and fourth? Third wasn't exactly a shining moment for them. Why does this give me the hilarious image of someone wreaking havoc on a battle filed with a guitar? What do they do, make everyone headbang until their heads fall off? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rotghroth Rhapsody waterplant Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 Jimi Hendrix 'Machine Gun'. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Well-Actually War Trall Rowen Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 All this talk of music and its use makes me think of Erfworld dancing and more dancing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Alorael at Large Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 In 3rd edition the diplomacy rules were fairly broken, and other classes could also do credible jobs of making fanatical enemies into steadfast friends with a wink and an impassioned speech. In all other ways, bards were not just poor cousins to wizards, they were poor cousins to most classes. Not terribly, unplayably poor, but poor. —Alorael, who does consider it a strike against the class that they were usually bad even if they could be built fairly effectively. You should not have to master a game in order to not suck. Not sucking should come standard. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Lilith Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 Originally Posted By: broken bits under all furniture —Alorael, who does consider it a strike against the class that they were usually bad even if they could be built fairly effectively. You should not have to master a game in order to not suck. Not sucking should come standard. Hey, I'm with you on that, but at the time 3E was made, Monte Cook wasn't. System-mastery traps are baked deeply into the rules. And let's not overstate the 3E bard's badness. As a spellcasting class in 3rd edition, they're still going to be more effective than a non-optimised build of just about any non-spellcasting class. I mean, we're talking about a system where the Adept, an NPC class that gets up to 5th-level cleric spells and not much else, is generally recognised as being on par with a standard Fighter if not better. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Unflappable Drayk Ceiling Durkheim Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 Quote: Bards have also gotten the short end of the stick in editions between, what, first and fourth? Third wasn't exactly a shining moment for them. 1E bards were also bad, but for a different reason: the rules surrounding them were intensely bizarre and arcane, even for 1E. Bards needed 15+ in four attributes, and lesser requirements for the other two. They also required five levels of fighter and five levels of thief, then they multiclassed to druid, only druid magically became bard. They were like a really complicated, inane prestige class. I'm not sure what Gygax et al were on when they created the 1E bard class, but I want some. Quote: As a spellcasting class in 3rd edition, they're still going to be more effective than a non-optimised build of just about any non-spellcasting class. Granted, but there really weren't many non-spellcasting classes in 3E. If memory serves: fighter, rogue, monk, and barbarian, vs. paladin, bard, ranger, sorcerer, cleric, mage, and druid. Under the rubric you mention, primary spellcasters are better than partial spellcasters are better than non-spellcasters. So yes, bards are on a higher tier than the four non-casters, but they're also on a lower tier than the pure casters (cleric, druid, mage, sorcerer). They're a mid-tier class, but as I've heard they're considered worse than the other two hybrid classes (paladin and ranger). So, mediocre overall. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Lilith Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 Originally Posted By: Othar Trygvassen: Gentleman So yes, bards are on a higher tier than the four non-casters, but they're also on a lower tier than the pure casters (cleric, druid, mage, sorcerer). They're a mid-tier class, but as I've heard they're considered worse than the other two hybrid classes (paladin and ranger). So, mediocre overall. The tier chart that 3.5 charop theorists generally use puts bards a tier above rangers, which in turn are a tier above paladins. It does depend on who you ask, how well the character is optimised and what kinds of challenge are encountered during the campaign, of course. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ineffable Wingbolt Erebus the Black Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 However, in "complete arcane" the bard did get a prestige class which finally made it more in likeness to it's true form in Bard's Tale, The Seeker of the Song. I had to crack open my D&D library for this, thank goodness I archived the crystal keep indices before WoC forced CK to remove them. Also there were more base classes added later: archivist (a mage capable of gaining spells like a cleric), beguiler, duskblade, dragon shaman, dread necromancer, favored soul (sourcerer parallel for priests), hexblade, knight, marshal, ninja, samurai, scout, spellthief, spirit shaman, swashbuckler, warlock, warmage. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Randomizer Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 You do notice it's so players can get those neat mage spells later on when they don't need to worry about staying alive. Fighters and clerics classes have a better chance of survival, but research at Kenzer and Company showed that 98.74% of players want to be mages. I may be off on the percentage since I don't have the mage's handbook out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Curious Artila daShadowalker Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 ehh as far as PnP Rpgs go, I always found the world of darkness (old) better than DnD(2nd edition only, maybe the others are better?). Still play DnD with friends when I go home though. That ended with gehenna, then White Wolf relaly messed up with new world of darkness and now CCP has taken over White Wolf and they are making an MMORPG out of it *facepalm* Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Unflappable Drayk Death Knight Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 Originally Posted By: Lilith Originally Posted By: Othar Trygvassen: Gentleman Rogues do tend to be consistently underpowered, though. back in basic d&d the thief was the class you picked when you rolled terrible stats in everything, so that you either died fast and got to make a new character or got lucky and levelled up fast and got to actually be useful actually since you mention clerics, the origin story for clerics in d&d is pretty funny. they go back to when the game was still being played as a semi-competitive wargame. some dude had a vampire character called Sir Fang (yes, really) and he was kind of dominating the game so a class was created specifically to help deal with him, as kind of a cross between Van Helsing and Archbishop Turpin Thats pretty funny and kind of a cool story. I remember in icewind dale 2, clerics were by far the best class to play for well..almost everything. I think they've only gotten better. I havent tried this but there are some people that play the d and d based game-Knights of the Chalice with 3 clerics and 1 mage. 1 cleric for spellcaster, mage is still aoe, another 2 clerics that can buff up and act as warriors with spellcasting. The only person that is armor restricted with spells is the mage, all others are essentially fighter/mages. Can you say munchkin? One of the characters ive always hoped would get put in a d and d pc video game was the Spellthief. This type of rogue is probably my favorite variant of it. Backstab a mage, steal his spells, use the spells to destroy someone else. How cool is that? The only problem is that unless im wrong, these characters are only moderately useful when a mage isnt around. But still an awesome concept. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Alorael at Large Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 Call me crazy, but I think the new World of Darkness line has some very good stuff in it. Some of it's bad, but some of oWoD was bad too. —Alorael, who can at least reassure you that someone at White Wolf agrees. They're revisiting the original Vampire at least, and possibly other lines too if it does well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Unflappable Drayk Death Knight Posted January 11, 2012 Share Posted January 11, 2012 Wod is really imo some really good stuff too. I for one would pay top dollar for an isometric rpg game like that to be made. Oh well, at least there are 2 vampire the masquerade games. They may not be like the original rules but they still are pretty cool. Maybe someday jeff will don the fangs and howl like a wolf Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Garrulous Glaahk Yuna Corne Posted January 11, 2012 Share Posted January 11, 2012 Doubtful; I seem to recall him being fairly against the typical elf/dwarf/human layout for most RPGs, so I can easily imagine that extending to lycanthropy, too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Unflappable Drayk Death Knight Posted January 11, 2012 Share Posted January 11, 2012 I still think though that if jeff was to make a fallout/type arcanum rpg, it would be better than any of the other games out there. If bioware goes against avadon, red beard won't tolerate it. Basically, bioware will fall to the might of avadon! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ineffable Wingbolt Erebus the Black Posted January 11, 2012 Share Posted January 11, 2012 Originally Posted By: Death Knight Basically, bioware will fall to the might of avadon! Stop talking like that, you'll Doom us all (just kidding, pun intended). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Easygoing Eyebeast Dintiradan Posted January 11, 2012 Author Share Posted January 11, 2012 Tycho sums it up: Quote: The truth of the matter is that some combination of TSR and Wizards of the Coast actually did please all the people, it’s just that they’re each pleased with their own iteration of the system. They’ve already pleased them; they’re pleased. It’s only a problem if you’re trying to sell them something else. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Lilith Posted January 12, 2012 Share Posted January 12, 2012 yeah, there's a pretty big grain of truth in that: people who are entirely satisfied with some previous edition are not going to be an easy target market to go after. on the other hand, there are plenty of people who don't fit that description Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Randomizer Posted January 12, 2012 Share Posted January 12, 2012 Another view on the fifth edition. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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