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So went spent a few (about 10) hours playing yesterday. First thing I want to say is this: The playtest module is HUGE, and mostly a dungeon crawl. We spent all that time playing and we've not completed a fourth of it.

The system felt very incomplete. I know it's a playtest, but there were huge gaps in there that we just simply didn't know how we were supposed to handle them. Bull rushing, AoOs, when and how often you can perform "reactions", and then mysterious bonuses to attack rolls and damage rolls were scattered around. Maybe we shouldn't have been trying so hard to deconstruct the playtest and get hints about how the actual system worked, but there's seriously modifiers that I can't rationalize in at least the fighter's and one of the clerics' character sheets.

The fighter is basically a "basic attack, basic attack, basic attack" character, at least at level 1, which a lot of people dislike. I think it's good in a way that doesn't distill the system into a board game, but YMMV. On the topic of board games, movement is expressed in the form of 5 foot increments again, and you appear to be able to move, action, move like you effectively have spring attack. This is cool, and allows for dramatic situations where someone can step out from behind a corner, fire, and then duck back behind cover without having a massive feat chain.

Spellcasting as a whole is like a hybrid of Pathfinder and 4E. You have minor spells that can be cast repeatedly throughout the day, and then you have spells per day on top of those. Ritual magic is also in, which was one of the concepts from 4E I actually really liked, though they didn't actually appear to talk about any ritual spells in the playtest; instead merely mentioning that the system exists. The wizard felt underwhelming. None of the spells appear to scale in any way at this point, which is going to cause dead levels of spells even sooner than in 3.5, and the starting wizard spells suck, as they often do with premade characters. Ray of frost got cool, sleep is gimped. The healer type cleric is actually more of a blaster than the wizard is.

Speaking of healing, the game has a very high mortality rate, and I almost feel like there isn't enough healing. You take a d6 damage per turn after you go under 0 hit points, and you have to make several con tests in order to stabilize. It's very dramatic, but also nervewracking. We dealt with about 3 rooms (out of roughly 40), and had to run away to the woods because we were out of healing and still injured at that point. Things got a bit better after that point, as we started to pick up treasure and our DM let us go sell it off at 'town' for healing potion supplies. From what I understand of the way the 10 minute rests scale, this should get slightly less bad with higher levels, but we'll see. Healing potion brewing is now accelerated, which is handy. The priest could brew multiples in a single day, which made things run more smoothly.

All in all, I like it better than 4E. Probably even better than 3.5E. Not sure if it's something that could replace Pathfinder though. When the final product comes out, I'll probably be adapting my Ravenloft game to it to make use of the healing mechanisms and high feeling of mortality, but I still see Pathfinder being our default system of choice.

@Ahtman: Especially given that WotC has apparently forgotten nothing about how to make clerics and wizards powerful and fun.


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daedalus wrote:All in all, I like it better than 4E. Probably even better than 3.5E. Not sure if it's something that could replace Pathfinder though.

That honestly makes no sense to me. Pathfinder is 3.5 with some house ruling.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/28/dungeons-dragons-version-edition-wars?CMP=twt_gu

Manchu wrote:That honestly makes no sense to me. Pathfinder is 3.5 with some house ruling.

Calling it 'house ruling' is sort of marginalizing the changes they made. One of the big things for me was the combat maneuver system. Another was adding some more flair to base classes. I think there's enough differences between the two where I can you can like one more than the other.

daedalus wrote:the combat maneuver system.

From Tome of Battles, a 3.5 book.

daedalus wrote:Another was adding some more flair to base classes.

Which is just house-ruling classes to bring them up to snuff.

daedalus wrote:I think there's enough differences between the two where I can you can like one more than the other.

You can certainly like one more than the other, much like a person can like their home ruled version of Pathfinder more than Pathfinder, but they are all still the same game system. Being a refined version of 3.5 still makes it a version of 3.5, not a completely different system.

Ahtman wrote:

daedalus wrote:the combat maneuver system.

From Tome of Battles, a 3.5 book.

daedalus wrote:Another was adding some more flair to base classes.

Which is just house-ruling classes to bring them up to snuff.

daedalus wrote:I think there's enough differences between the two where I can you can like one more than the other.

You can certainly like one more than the other, much like a person can like their home ruled version of Pathfinder more than Pathfinder, but they are all still the same game system. Being a refined version of 3.5 still makes it a version of 3.5, not a completely different system.

Never read Tome of Battles; perhaps I should pick it up then. I guess by that same logic, we can call 3.5 a houseruled version of 3, which is just a heavily houseruled version of 2E, after all. I mean, THAC0 and an Attack Roll are basically two different ways of looking at the same thing, right? Same thing with saving throws.

If we're through calling me out, then I guess I could further elaborate by saying that I don't think there's one system that rules them all; indeed, each system has their own strengths and weaknesses. For me and my group, Pathfinder is the way to go as it fixed the things that made us cringe while keeping everything about a system we were used to and enjoyed. It also has no drawbacks (for us) for all that it

Really not trying to turn this into an edition war thread here. I was just stating my impressions. In all seriousness, if 5E fixes the handful of issues I have with the playtest, I could see my group going to it. If not, Pathfinder is our group's solution. It has promise, but I'm not getting my hopes up.

daedalus wrote:I guess by that same logic, we can call 3.5 a houseruled version of 3, which is just a heavily houseruled version of 2E, after all. I mean, THAC0 and an Attack Roll are basically two different ways of looking at the same thing, right? Same thing with saving throws.

Not really, as there were a great many structural and super-structural differences between AD&D/2nd and 3.0/3.5/PF. It isn't a secret, nor is it somehow a veiled insult, to know that Pathfinder is a slightly update version of 3.5; trying to pretend otherwise seems a bit obtuse. I think Pathfinder made a lot of good changes but it isn't a radical change. If you've played Pathfinder you can play 3.5 instantly, and vice versa. Going from 3.5 to the HEro system, or Storyteller, OTOH, is a huge difference as they are actually different systems. If I take a Mustang and improve the suspension, put new tires on it, give it a new paint job, and tint the windows it doesn't suddenly become a Chevy Venture.

I would put 3.0/3.5 every time I mention that edition, but it seems a bit redundant.

daedalus wrote:If we're through calling me out

No one is 'calling you out' and this isn't an edition war.

Ahtman wrote:

Not really, as there were a great many structural and super-structural differences between AD&D/2nd and 3.0/3.5/PF. It isn't a secret, nor is it somehow a veiled insult, to know that Pathfinder is a slightly update version of 3.5; trying to pretend otherwise seems a bit obtuse. I think Pathfinder made a lot of good changes but it isn't a radical change. If you've played Pathfinder you can play 3.5 instantly, and vice versa. Going from 3.5 to the HEro system, or Storyteller, OTOH, is a huge difference as they are actually different systems. If I take a Mustang and improve the suspension, put new tires on it, give it a new paint job, and tint the windows it doesn't suddenly become a Chevy Venture.

I would put 3.0/3.5 every time I mention that edition, but it seems a bit redundant.

Well, I could agree with all of that, but then why is it hard to understand that the threshold of the desire to use a given system cannot lie somewhere between two of the relatively minor revisions?

In all honesty, if I could find absolutely anyone willing to go back to playing straight 3.0, I probably would.

daedalus wrote:If we're through calling me out

No one is 'calling you out' and this isn't an edition war.

I interpreted it as nitpicking, and was feeling defensive. It was was in error, then I apologize. I also wasn't trying to accuse anyone else of edition warring; I just wanted to make sure that my intentions were known.

I got mine downloaded yesterday. My group should be trying it out this weekend.

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=38896

food for thought.

Pathfinder is a house-ruled version of 3.5 and I can't fathom why any fan of Pathfinder would take offense at that. That fact is the basis for Pathfinder's existence, after all. It's not been so long ago that you can't remember, has it? A refresher: as a response to losing their 3E footing when WotC reorganized around 4E, Paizo countered that it would actively resist by keeping 3.5 (or 3.75) in print thanks to the OGL. That was the Fort Sumter moment of the Edition Wars.

Once you understand/accept that, you can begin to see that 5E does not address the Edition Wars as they are most widely (mis)understood, i.e., the competition between Paizo and WotC. The major conflict at stake goes back further. Here is a simplified timeline:



D&D Next is not aimed at closing the gap between people who miss 3.5 (i.e., play Pathfinder) on the one hand and people who like 4E on the other hand (as if it were impossible to like both). Instead, it's supposed to address a much older issue about roleplaying games: should rules be more interpretive (guidelines to be used or not) or determiniative (laws that must be applied)? The key development is not (only or most importantly) Paizo doing well with Pathfinder but rather the so-called "Old School Renaissance" (OSRIC, Labyrinth Lord, Dark Dungeons, Swords & Wizardry, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, etc, etc).

I think 'house rule' has negative connotations as a lot of house rules are either minor patches (We don't like Dwarves, so forget they exist; bows are cool, so they get +1 damage) or hasty workarounds to perceived problems, usually with some rube goldberg-ish contortions to fit in the existing rules. A lot fo times house rules were implemented to deal with a very specific problem that is not common across the game's community.

While there's a lot of good house rules out there, there's also a whole lot of added-on overly-complex systems, unbalanced magic items and classes, and other weirdness.

Pathfinder, to my understanding, was created by reviewing and revising nearly every base class and such to fit the designer's desires.

The difference is PF is more like a 3rd party that took over maintenance of an abandoned software application and revised from the source code, whereas a lot of house rules are more like hasty patches and hacks applied to fix one problem that that have little or no quality control, coding standards, UI standards, etc.

(For the record, I like 4e, never played PF, cautiously optimistic about Next.)

I don't know anything about programming but "revising from the source code" sounds more fundamental than the changes Paizo actually made to 3.5.

Anyway, it shouldn't matter whether the term "house rules" might carry a negative connotation or not. The denotive meaning of "house rules" is what is at issue, as Ahtman has concisely shown above. I'm sick to the back teeth of people taking offense over their interpretation of what I say.

Manchu wrote:I don't know anything about programming but "revising from the source code" sounds more fundamental than the changes Paizo actually made to 3.5.

Anyway, it shouldn't matter whether the term "house rules" might carry a negative connotation or not. The denotive meaning of "house rules" is what is at issue, as Ahtman has concisely shown above. I'm sick to the back teeth of people taking offense over their interpretation of what I say.

I was not necessarily offended by anything you said; simply trying to clarify my position. I do not agree with your denotative use of "house rules". "House rules" is generally some unofficial rule set. It also implies illegitimacy, at least, in my mind, because it's "unofficial". It's a hack. Like them or hate them, Paizo is now the primary developer of what was the 3.0/3.5 ruleset. That makes it a little more than "house rules" at this point. If you disagree, then I would be interested to hear your full definition of what exactly house rules are, because I believe we may be going off of differing definitions.

My actual annoyance didn't come until my every word was being nitpicked.

As far as 'house rules' being a pejorative, one need not look further than at the 40k Proposed Rules section of this forum to see evidence on why that would be the general attitude.

A "house rule" is a change to one aspect of a system of rules that does not itself change the system. I think Ahtman already explained that, but now you have it from both of us.

Paizo's game is "unofficial" as a development of D&D. If you doubt this, please look carefully at your copy for the words "Dungeons & Dragons." In order to deal with this issue of illegitimacy, and thanks for using exactly the right word there, Paizo played up the idea that d20 was something beyond D&D 3E. Now, that is certainly true but Pathfinder is not the relevant example. Please see, e.g., Mutants & Masterminds for d20 that is not 3.5. Unlike that game, Pathfinder is very simply 3.5 with some house rules. And the house in question is Paizo. This is the contradiction at the heart of Paizo's venture: they must simultaneously say that Pathfinder is the "true heir" of D&D and that Pathfinder is not merely third edition D&D.

I don't know whether WotC is doing them a favor with 5E. On the one hand, WotC isn't even competing over the 3.5 space anymore (4E at least was a natural and logical progression from 3.5). On the other hand, that competition is the only thing that made Pathfinder relevant in the first place. And please remember that Pathfinder was not at all relevant to the Old Schoolers, who saw it (correctly) as just more of the same third edition complexity. As the inevitable consequence of it's raison d'etre, Paizo is stuck in the past. Even now, they only have two places to go: the splat route (already some of the way there) or the Pathfinder 2nd Edition route. Given their harsh rhetoric about both, when WotC was doing it, it's going to be hard for them to move ahead.

reds8n wrote:http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=38896

food for thought.

That was mighty interesting. Thanks for that.

It does seem that the bulk of internet responses/blog posts/etc. are either love it or hate it with very little median ground.

I have seen the opposite: basically people not quite knowing what to make of it (because they think it's an attempt to resolve the "war" between 3E and 4E fans, which it is not) and therefore being guardedly optimistic.

Manchu wrote:I have seen the opposite: basically people not quite knowing what to make of it (because they think it's an attempt to resolve the "war" between 3E and 4E fans, which it is not) and therefore being guardedly optimistic.

The only place I've really seen that response is within my group, which had been playing Pathfinder almost exclusively since its release, has been playing WFRP 2E with a little bit of the tabletop game mixed in, and feels it's a bit odd going back to a system that is much more in line with high fantasy settings. Even with the increased mortality rate.

The bulk of responses I've read are from blogs and the WotC forums, which I'm probably going to stay away from for a while, as they're ripe to exploding.

I like 4th and I like 3.5 and I like Pathfinder. I mostly like gaming! 4th has some good points but I haven't had as much fun running it as 3.5 I'd say, but a lot of that has to do with my situation. Uni was a golden age of awesome roleplaying that I will likely never have again.

All of the above rulesets are better than anything Fantasy Flight has put out, I gotta say. Fantasy Flight suck at rules, especially the editing and layout side of things.

I'm mildly curious about D'n'D next, but I don't feel like I NEED it. I might pick up the core stuff when it comes out, to have a read through. 4th didn't live up to it's promise for me entirely, and I still think a lot of that is not down to mechanics but presentation and "flavour". Pathfinder has a more mature and polished flavour than 4th. The art is nicer, the flavour text pieces are better written, and the powers and spells have less of a whacky lightshow effect. I thought my players would be okay at re-interpreting things to a more toned down feel, but they've mostly gotten caught up in the sometimes pretty ridiculous power descriptions, resulting in combats that to me are stylistically disjointed and that break up the drama with bursts of weirdness.

But for all that, it runs well, it's easy to plan, and it's easy to ad hoc even without experience. The Player's Handbook has what players need, the DM's guide has what DM's need and the monster manual is well laid out.

Anyway. A bit of a ramble, and most of it stuff I've said before. Let's simmer down gentlemen, we're all in the same boat.

No, I don't think we are in the same boat. That's the line WotC has been pushing: that a "fractured hobby" is a bad thing and it's time we all went back to playing the "same game." This should remind people of GW's idea of "The Hobby." Can anyone legitimately say that WarmaHordes, Infinity, Malifaux, etc, etc, have been bad for tabeltop wargaming? Only GW. Similarly, the Edition Wars have not been bad for anyone other than WotC.

By contrast, the Edition Wars are the lifeblood of Pathfinder and 5E may well see Pathfinder diehards in the position that "Old Schoolers" have been in since Third Edition came out. WotC is in the unique position of being able to "legitimize" (as daedalus mentioned) playstyles because it owns the brand "Dungeons & Dragons" (although the OGL had a big part to play in this regarding 3E). For nearly a decade, the Old Schoolers found themselves marginalized and basically in need of inventing their own press. Pathfinder is a bit different in that it was invented to serve as a press for the devotees of 3.5, no doubt with an eye to the passionate work of Old Schoolers. But Paizo has yet to demonstrate that Pathfinder has an inherently greater "shelf life" (in terms of being a continuous line) than its deterministic predecessors -- because so far we have seen a multitude of adventures (a la AD&D and late 3E) and some splat (a la 3E).

A friend of mine summed up the situation pretty nicely by describing Pathfinder as a retroclone of 3.5 -- and if you've ever examined something like Labyrinth Lord against B/X, you'll see that is basically the same thing as publishing a house-ruled version of the "cloned" system. This shows us that we are not in the same boat: we don't have the same tastes as gamers. There is no "definitive edition" of D&D that we can look forward to, when everyone will be completely satisfied.


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epy346 wrote:The bulk of responses I've read are from blogs and the WotC forums, which I'm probably going to stay away from for a while, as they're ripe to exploding.

I think you can disregard both blogs and the WotC forums and not lose anything (they're pretty much the same -- the WotC forums is where those bloggers go to "do battle.")

Hmmm, well, I can see where you're coming from. I suppose I meant "we're all tabletop roleplayers, so we know that tastes will vary" or something, but I was a bit dozy after my afternoon of manual labour (for a change) so I expressed myself poorly.

I think having pathfinder/4th/next is good for me as a consumer- moar choice please! But I can understand WOTC trying to get it's fanbase back on side. The problem is that a significant amount of what they put out relies on the creativity of older settings and so on. I was disappointed that 4th didn't add anything like Eberron to my collection of settings (I'm a settings buff). I thought they did some interesting stuff with the primordial/Gods conflict mythology, just a shame it wasn't fleshed out a little more, perhaps.

You come across as pretty passionate about this stuff Manchu. Do you have a preference in terms of ruleset?

Da Boss wrote:You come across as pretty passionate about this stuff Manchu. Do you have a preference in terms of ruleset?

Manchu only plays Amber because he thinks dice can't be trusted.

Ahtman wrote:

Da Boss wrote:You come across as pretty passionate about this stuff Manchu. Do you have a preference in terms of ruleset?

Manchu only plays Amber because he thinks dice can't be trusted.

I lol'd.


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Manchu wrote:No, I don't think we are in the same boat. That's the line WotC has been pushing: that a "fractured hobby" is a bad thing and it's time we all went back to playing the "same game." This should remind people of GW's idea of "The Hobby." Can anyone legitimately say that WarmaHordes, Infinity, Malifaux, etc, etc, have been bad for tabeltop wargaming? Only GW. Similarly, the Edition Wars have not been bad for anyone other than WotC.

5E really should have been them rebranding 4E and 3.5E into two separate games (heck throw 1E and 2E in there) and then making all the old books available as well. Then they could have had 4 parallel products running with different designs, etc and satisfied everyone.

My fear is that 5E will be a giant compromise and a mix of everything so that no one likes it.

I don't have a "passion off" switch, unfortunately, which is flawesome. On the one hand, I enjoy getting "in deep" with the things that interest me. On the other hand, I can't seem to be simultaneously interested in and dismissive of a topic. I mention all of this as a backdrop for answering your specific question: insofar as each of the rulesets interests me, I don't have a blanket preference for any of them. BECMI D&D, 3.5, and 4E all do different things and none of them seem to be able to do what the others do quite as well. "Old School" D&D lets me put story over rules; 3.5 lets me flex my game mastery muscles; 4E is incredibly easy to run and promotes party teamwork.

From what I've seen of 5E, it wants to do all of this and doesn't do any of it well. I don't know that simply because there's not enough rules in the playtest for anyone to know it. But the playtest rules don't communicate any other goal so I am forced to assume that WotC is trying to achieve its stated intention: the "Master Edition" of D&D. And this feels like a jack of all trades but a master of none.

Furthermore, the conflict between determinative and interpretive cannot be resolved. Even the playtest rules make it clear that the interpretive side will win out in 5E, with all this talk of the game going back into the hands of the DM. But if that's what you want, there's already a market full of games like that -- I mean, you don't have to hunt down a copy of Holmes Basic from 1977 off of eBay. (Although the John Blanche cover might be worth having.) You have a wide range of products that do that already in print. So why buy 5E? 'Cause you also want feats? Well, then, I'd bet money that either 3E or 4E would be more to your liking.

These games are organic systems -- their parts are all there to achieve something at a holistic level. The 5E playtest materials feels Frankensteinish -- sew this piece onto that piece with this other piece inside ... So they're taking the parts without paying attention to what they actually contributed to their respective games. You can't cut the wings off a bat, sew them onto a lizard, and expect to have a dragon. What you actually get is two dead animals.

To summarize, if 5E's only reason to exist is to be the edition of D&D that everyone will love ... well, then it doesn't deserve to exist.


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Ahtman wrote:Manchu only plays Amber because he thinks dice can't be trusted.

I actually never played Amber itself. But Amber is what a lot of D&D actually comes down to in practice, around the table. And the only reason anyone uses dice is because they don't trust other people (or themselves).


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pretre wrote:Then they could have had 4 parallel products running with different designs, etc and satisfied everyone.

Well, this is what actually is occurring except that (1) the OGL means WotC isn't earning off of it and (2) there's no OGL for 4E/Essentials players so they're the ones truly screwed out of new content by 5E. In other words, the only people who "have to" play 5E will be 4E players, who probably won't like 5E anyway since they were already playing 4E instead of Labyrinth Lord.

Manchu wrote:

pretre wrote:Then they could have had 4 parallel products running with different designs, etc and satisfied everyone.

Well, this is what actually is occurring except that (1) the OGL means WotC isn't earning off of it and (2) there's no OGL for 4E/Essentials players so they're the ones truly screwed out of new content by 5E. In other words, the only people who "have to" play 5E will be 4E players, who probably won't like 5E anyway since they were already playing 4E instead of Labyrinth Lord.

Yeah, I would have capitalized off the Edition Wars rather than try to bring piece. But I'm a war profiteer.

pretre wrote:Yeah, I would have capitalized off the Edition Wars rather than try to bring piece. But I'm a war profiteer.

Call Paizo immediately. If you're a good war profiteer, you might be able to give them a long-term plan ... you know, besides "do everything that WotC did between 2000 and 2008 over again but (and here's the super secret strategy) pretend it's different."

Well, whether you have a passion off switch or not, I enjoy reading your arguments because they are always extremely articulate and often different to my own perspective.

I can see where you're coming from with what you're saying though, definitely. I suppose my hope is that there's something cool that comes out of it, some creativity. If that happens, instead of endless rehashing, I'll be happy.

TBH, I think 5E success will depend upon something you mentioned, DaBoss -- namely, settings. (Although you didn't give 4E enough credit, for resurrecting Dark Sun.) If 5E can do something like what 3E did with Forgotten Realms or ... dare I even say it? ... if 5E sees the viable return of Ravenloft, I doubt the "quality" of the rules will even matter.

Manchu wrote:

pretre wrote:Yeah, I would have capitalized off the Edition Wars rather than try to bring piece. But I'm a war profiteer.

Call Paizo immediately. If you're a good war profiteer, you might be able to give them a long-term plan ... you know, besides "do everything that WotC did between 2000 and 2008 over again but (and here's the super secret strategy) pretend it's different."

Paizo should just buy the rights to 1st through 4th from D&D when they go to 5th and run with it. Never happen, but it would be cool.

OGL means that Paizo doesn't need to buy anything from WotC except the name D&D, which WotC would never sell/license to them anyway. As for the older stuff, Paizo could easily throw its hat into that ring but the ring is already pretty crowded. We don't know whether anyone will do anything similar with 4E but the GSL doesn't make it likely (and certainly doesn't encourage it). Paizo especially would lose a substantial amount of credibility from its most devoted fans if it suddenly started publishing 4E stuff.