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 warboss wrote:
I suspect neither of us will convince the other and in any case it's not the point of this thread.

Sure it is. The question is, what's 5E shaping up like? And the answer is, modular 3.5.

I really expected 4E to be much closer to Saga so I was also somewhat shocked by 4E. There was a lot to learn when the 4E books first came out. But that's not my point here. I am saying that what I had to learn in order to play Labyrinth Lord and Swords & Wizardry after years of 3.5 was much, much more significant because it entailed a completely different mindset.

WotC has stated, often explicitly referencing Basic, that they intend 5E to bring all D&D under one tent. But their admirable transparency indicates that said tent is really just Third Edition. And Third Edition is already the tent that contains all of WotC's significant work (Everway aside, for example) on RPGs -- including 4E. I agree with Ahtman's point that 4E is not errata of 3.5, a la Pathfinder, but it's the exact same mindset when it comes to answering the question "how do you play a RPG?"

Older editions of D&D, especially Basic but even the concurrent AD&D line, offer a very different answer to that question. The further we get from Paizo's declaration of the Edition Wars, the more I understand that they (the so-called wars, I mean) were driven by financial rather than design considerations. Meanwhile, the real mechanical issues were not being discussed. Again, the big divergence is between a style that is now being emulated under the title "OSR" on one hand and 3.5/PF/4E on the other. Everything about 5E makes me think of the latter category; nothing about it makes me think of the former.

For me, 5E development so far has been an excellent lesson in how similar 3.5 and 4E really are -- all marketing aside. Saying 5E is more like 4E than 3.5 or more like 3.5 than 4E, those end up being kind of meaningless sentiments.

As someone that collected D&D for decades, only to find after playing that I really loved the refinements of 4e, the playtest has been... distressing.

Manchu seems fairly close to my thoughts that 4e is not so foreign to design elements of 3.5; unfortunately, since Next is aggressively designed to appeal to the same crowd that has a vicious dislike of 4e, it means that Next has thus far over-corrected (IMO) away from the truly great innovations of 4e.

Elements as trivial as the increased HP at the start, or that even at level 1 everyone is already a hero (and no more LFQW!), healing surges and encounter powers... all of these are things that I find great, but there seem to be no small number of people on the playtest forums who look at these like a Baptist Preacher looks at the Folsom Street Fair.

Frankly, while the much promised modular system is still... well, promised (a year or so in and it doesn't seem to have really managed to poke it's head out of its burrow). Even if it is, as they claim it will be, possible to recreate 4e with 5e modules, I'm left pondering why I would want to go thought the process of buying an entire new set of rules to play the game using rules I bought a year ago.

All that said, at the moment the playtest forums seem to be mostly characterized by ambivalence and disinterest. Certainly all my group's interest has evaporated, and the forums tend to be ... iffy.

Meh.

Are the current D&D Encounters compatible with D&D Next?

Yes, WotC offers conversion notes for Next.

Well, my FLGS was going to finally start doing D&D Encounters next week with the new campaign, but, we missed the sanction by a month.

We can either get WotC do search there warehouses for an extra copy or wait until August for the next one....

In the way in which it has been as hotly contested with no give from the "Designers", I gave up on it before it even came out of the gate. From the discussion on their forum, I'm not the only one.

 Grot 6 wrote:
In the way in which it has been as hotly contested with no give from the "Designers", I gave up on it before it even came out of the gate. From the discussion on their forum, I'm not the only one.

You are going to have to elaborate on that, as I am not sure what you mean. Are you saying they aren't kowtowing to the whims of a capricious and fickle fan base or that they are ignoring any input at all?

 Ahtman wrote:

 Grot 6 wrote:
In the way in which it has been as hotly contested with no give from the "Designers", I gave up on it before it even came out of the gate. From the discussion on their forum, I'm not the only one.

You are going to have to elaborate on that, as I am not sure what you mean. Are you saying they aren't kowtowing to the whims of a capricious and fickle fan base or that they are ignoring any input at all?

I'm saying that it is outright not popular as a discussion. I'm not going to go on out and entertain your last... remark. The conversation on their board is not very civil, and from that point alone, not the mention the reaction and almost cult like defense of the "new" game, It outright turned me off to even giving it a second look. " capricious and fickle" aren't words I would use to describe the bile flow on the "Official" forum, more like bile filled fanatics with a mean streak. Then there were the defenders and the outright hostility that they are almost proud of.... " Yes, we listen, but THIS is the new game. Like it or lump it."attitude.

All around, they all suck. I have my first edition stuff, it was fine then, its fine now for light playing and some easy pick up fun.

I hate what that crowd has become. Then they wonder why pathfinder took off like a shot.

 Grot 6 wrote:
I'm saying that it is outright not popular as a discussion.

I'm not sure that because something is contentious means it shouldn't be discussed, or that it is wrong. Some things will be contentious by their nature. If you mean rude, then yeah, that is annoying, but seems an odd stumbling block as it would seem it would mean you wouldn't be able to partake in almost any forum anywhere on the net.

 Grot 6 wrote:
I'm not going to go on out and entertain your last... remark.

The only way not to entertain it would be to not acknowledge it, so thank you. It also was more playfully silly than malicious.

 Grot 6 wrote:
The conversation on their board is not very civil

I've seen some of your posts here before, so that seems tainted by cognitive dissonance.

 Grot 6 wrote:
the reaction and almost cult like defense of the "new" game

That is odd, my experience on the forums has been about the opposite. The cult like devotion tends more toward older systems, not beta tests, though obliviously it will have it's defenders.

 Grot 6 wrote:
Then they wonder why pathfinder took off like a shot.

No one wonders that, we know why, and it is a combination of reasons, not any one specific one, and it certainly wasn't because people can be rude online.

 Grot 6 wrote:

 Ahtman wrote:

 Grot 6 wrote:
In the way in which it has been as hotly contested with no give from the "Designers", I gave up on it before it even came out of the gate. From the discussion on their forum, I'm not the only one.

You are going to have to elaborate on that, as I am not sure what you mean. Are you saying they aren't kowtowing to the whims of a capricious and fickle fan base or that they are ignoring any input at all?

I'm saying that it is outright not popular as a discussion. I'm not going to go on out and entertain your last... remark. The conversation on their board is not very civil, and from that point alone, not the mention the reaction and almost cult like defense of the "new" game, It outright turned me off to even giving it a second look. " capricious and fickle" aren't words I would use to describe the bile flow on the "Official" forum, more like bile filled fanatics with a mean streak. Then there were the defenders and the outright hostility that they are almost proud of.... " Yes, we listen, but THIS is the new game. Like it or lump it."attitude.

All around, they all suck. I have my first edition stuff, it was fine then, its fine now for light playing and some easy pick up fun.

I hate what that crowd has become. Then they wonder why pathfinder took off like a shot.

This is my post, chief.

Don't cut and paste it into something it clearly is not.

You said elaborate, I put it to post.

That D and D forum put me off. Period. Between the like it and suck it attitude and the nerdrage, I gave it a rest. It was hostile and the hostility went both ways to the point where I stopped going in there. I'm a sweetheart compared to some of the hate that was shown there on both sides of the discussion. Because of this, I don't want to entertain "Next".

It wasn't contentious, it went to the point of personal attacks, doublespeak, and genuine stupidity.
Because of it, it put me off to the game.

I'm not the only one, either. D and D next is not popular. They are trying too hard to jam it to the masses and not hearing what people are saying, because they are "Experts", and "Know what people Want"...

If it was so great they wouldn't go into automatic defense mode at every turn.

Well, our group tried it back when they first started the open testing and after four session we went back to Gamma World 4e.

We all agreed that what they had given us very little to be excited about any future open testings and unless the final product is simply amazing we probably won't make the jump. Hell, we are thinking of just dropping WOTC, except Gamma World, all together.

 ProtoClone wrote:
Well, our group tried it back when they first started the open testing and after four session we went back to Gamma World 4e.

We all agreed that what they had given us very little to be excited about any future open testings and unless the final product is simply amazing we probably won't make the jump. Hell, we are thinking of just dropping WOTC, except Gamma World, all together.

I have a question, is 4th edition/Gamma World your first foray into RPGs/DnD? I've tried to "convert" people that have only ever known 4th edition to come over to Pathfinder/3.5 and most of them refuse to try it preferring the game that they started with over the games that are different from the edition they know and love.

I think most of edition loyalty doesn't stem from the quality of the edition, but from which one people started with and what they have the most time invested in. I only seriously started Dnd with the ripe beginning of 4th. Throughout my childhood i played AD&D with my dad, but 4th was where i actually got serious. Now i have near $800 worth of books in my collection. Even if 5th is a groundbreaking, fantastic system, i won't move on, simply because 4th is what i know and have decent system mastery in, and i have sunk so much money into it. Even if it is the perfect system, I still have to learn it and spend money on it and lose value of what i have already invested in. I own damn near all the fourth ed. books besides the adventures, and i'm happy using that.

Personally, I cut my teeth with AD&D a good two decades ago, and while I enjoyed myself, it didn't really stick long term. After getting into Rifts a few years later in High School, it became my crew's go-to game for a good half a decade, before we finally tired of dealing with the balance issues and massive gaping holes in the mechanics of the system.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, if I ever meet Kevin Siembieda I'm going to shake his hand and then rant for a good five minutes about how half of this ... stuff should've been caught in testing and editing.

Eventually we moved to 3E D&D, and loved it, as the balance, while not perfect, is easily head and shoulders better than Rifts and other Palladium games (though that's not exactly a bar that's set very high). Spent a couple years on that and ended up skipping 3.5, but we all got back in with 4E, and it's my favourite edition so far.

The combat is indeed more similar to a wargame than many, but we played 3E with maps and minis at times, so that wasn't a surprise to us. Each class having a role and the mechanics being designed such that it was pretty straightforward and intuitive to build a character that was decent at what it did was nice, as opposed to the outright traps found in 3E (some appreciate 'system mastery', I consider it less acceptable in an RPG than, say, M:tG).

I know the mechanical changes put a lot of people off, but that was something I simply loved. Instead of it often boiling down to some variation on "I swing my sword/stab with my dagger really hard" for a few levels and then the casters went bonkers rending space and time, ALL of the classes can do awesome stuff. Not everyone contributes perfectly equally, but all classes are at least capable of contributing (barring extenuating circumstances, player issues or the dice simply hating a given player that day). Encounter building and stat blocks were pretty straightforward, and overall we had a blast with the system.

My biggest complaint of that era was how they touted the virtual table top, the people they hired completely and utterly failed, and it wasn't until the final nails were being driven into the coffin that an actual VTT (WOTC and otherwise) really materialized. Sure, there was maptools, but my group found that to be a bit of a mess to get everyone sync'd up to play.

Now, granted, this is with mostly Heroic and Paragon tier experience. I'm told that the Epic tier had some serious issues, some of which were resolved with math tweaks to the game, others (particularly a lack of material/support for that level of play) never materialized.

I don't hate earlier editions, and it can exasperate me the ends to which some people will go to shout about how their way of playing fantasy elves is best (or the way(s) I play fantasy elves suck). 4E is my favourite, and I miss playing my Dragonborn Cleric/Paladin who was built to take a beating, but that doesn't make me occasionally wish I could get a game going and play the Halfling Paladin with a celestial wardog (so I could justify taking all the mounted feats and using them inside a dungeon). Not sure I'd go much further back than that outside of a really awesome group, but it doesn't have to be a "Console Wars" style binary of "I like X so Y sucks and you suck for liking Y!!"

Don't get me started on those filthy heathens who enjoy Z!!

Edit: as for the playtest itself, I haven't participated in a Next playstest personally, but I have read through a couple of Play By Post playtests of the system. They... do not inspire confidence.

I'll say this much, I have the PHB for AD&D, 3E, 3.5E (I'm not even sure where that came from) and 4E, making 5E/Next the first D&D edition created since the 80's that I won't have any books for. Which is cool, if it's not for me, then fine, whatever, I do hope it's successful and gives people what they want. If I really get a dungeon crawling itch, I could always get a game going with what I have. But it is unfortunate and a bit frustrating to watch the Next dev diaries do everything they can (at times) to seem to distance themselves from what I felt were some of the best updates to the system in years.

The new playtest packet is out, for those keeping up on this sort of thing. So far I have discovered that Monks only gain Hit Points at level 1.*



*It is a copy/paste error saying that monks get d8+CON per level of Druid instead of per monk level.

And apparently from the discussion over on enworld, skills as a named thing are out and replaced with a differently named ability check?

 warboss wrote:
And apparently from the discussion over on enworld, skills as a named thing are out and replaced with a differently named ability check?

I imagine they are referring to "Fields of Lore", which replaces skills I think. Still just reading bits and pieces here and there as I do other things.

Intelligence measures your character's mental acuity and the ability to reason, but intelligent creatures are more then just naked intellect. Your character has a few specialized areas of knowledge as well. Each of these is referred to as a field of lore.

Cultural Lore
Forbidden Lore
Hobbyist Lore
Magical Lore
Military Lore
Natural Lore
Planar Lore
Political Lore
Religious Lore
Subterranean Lore
Trade Lore

Some are general, others you pick something that falls under the category and gain bonuses to it, there aren't ranks like 3/3.5. Military Lore you know about ancient battles, important figures, famous units, ect, but Cultural Lore you would select a specific culture. At least at this point this is how I understand it.

When you would gain an attribute point from leveling you can choose to trade that in for a Feat. Feats come slower, but are more encompassing. For instance Great-Weapon fighting gives you proficiency in all Martial Great Weapons, an extra free attack if you crit or drop an enemy to 0 HP, and Power Attack in one feat.

Humans get +1 to all attributes, but that is all they get. Half-Orcs get +2 Str, +1 Con, Advantage on Intimidate, and Dark Vision. Dwarves get a +1 to CON, but a list as long as my arm for racial benefits.

 Ahtman wrote:
The new playtest packet is out, for those keeping up on this sort of thing. So far I have discovered that Monks only gain Hit Points at level 1.*



*It is a copy/paste error saying that monks get d8+CON per level of Druid instead of per monk level.

Obviously this was intentional because no one likes monks. So you take level 1 as a monk, multiclass into a druid and gain double the HP

So far the Hawk Totem Barbarian is fairly popular as they take no damage from falling while raging.

"The battlefield below rages in chaos. From your perch on the command airship you can see the frost giant commander routing the capitol city troops. What do you do?" "I jump from the ship onto the frost giant."

Drop barbarian is best barbarian.

 Ahtman wrote:
So far the Hawk Totem Barbarian is fairly popular as they take no damage from falling while raging.

"The battlefield below rages in chaos. From your perch on the command airship you can see the frost giant commander routing the capitol city troops. What do you do?" "I jump from the ship onto the frost giant."

Drop barbarian is best barbarian.

This sounds incredibly awesome.

except for the Airship part.

Just referring to the discussion on the previous page, I agree that if you want to run "desert apocalypse" 4e might not be the best setting to do it in, although I am convinced it can be done. And now I'm actually getting around to reading through Dune I'm finding I want to run said desert apocalypse more and more.

Also, just to stick it to everybody who reflexively bans psionics (and the fact that Pathfinder doesn't even include any native psionic support) I am strongly considering playing a one off game where I ban magic, just because I can.

 dementedwombat wrote:
Just referring to the discussion on the previous page, I agree that if you want to run "desert apocalypse" 4e might not be the best setting to do it in, although I am convinced it can be done. And now I'm actually getting around to reading through Dune I'm finding I want to run said desert apocalypse more and more.

Also, just to stick it to everybody who reflexively bans psionics (and the fact that Pathfinder doesn't even include any native psionic support) I am strongly considering playing a one off game where I ban magic, just because I can.

If you want to do something like that I would recommend reading the Dark Sun 4E book. Lots of good ideas in there, including how to handle scarce food, desert weather, and such.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sasori wrote:
except for the Airship part.

Riding in on air elementals?

Honestly we gave up after the first play test of D&D5e. We were not impressed with it because what we could gleam from it felt underwhelming.

While those of us in the group are not all in agrement of what editions are the best, we all agree that Gamma World 4e was the best thing WotC has done in a while.

I will be interested in it because it is D&D but honestly, I have moved on to other RPGs.

Strangely, there have been a lot of changes since the first play test packet was released over a year ago (May 2012).

 loota boy wrote:
I think most of edition loyalty doesn't stem from the quality of the edition, but from which one people started with and what they have the most time invested in.

I agree with this 100%.

When I started running 2E, players whined about it. They were used to playing AD&D.
When I started running 3E, players whined about it. They had to learn about feats, and clerics would edged weapons, etc....
When I started running 4E, players whined about the changes, because they couldn't immediately jump in to playing, and magic items were nerfed.

When I started running Pathfinder, one of the players whined soo much, he insisted on running 2E. After making characters for 2E, he reread the rules to refamiliarize himself with them, and we remade the characters for 3.5 because after rereading the 2E rules the rosey nostalgia he had for it disappeared. A month later, after people read the pathfinder rules, we converted all the 3.5 characters to Pathfinder.

Yep, spot on there. The only time I haven't seen a lot of whinging about a new edition was with Pathfinder but it was hardly a new edition and my friends were too busy whinging about 4E.

With my groups, it was the opposite. I started in AD&D, enjoyed it. Moved to 3E, and my group loved the improved balance between the classes. Moved to 4E and my group loved the improved balance between the classes and the tightened up game mechanics.

"The Internet" hates edition changes, but individuals and groups obviously make the move just fine, otherwise we'd all still be playing Chainmail.

 Forar wrote:
With my groups, it was the opposite. I started in AD&D, enjoyed it. Moved to 3E, and my group loved the improved balance between the classes. Moved to 4E and my group loved the improved balance between the classes and the tightened up game mechanics.

"The Internet" hates edition changes, but individuals and groups obviously make the move just fine, otherwise we'd all still be playing Chainmail.

That's kind of a broad and incorrect statement. My entire group disliked 4th and we didn't come to that conclusion by reading about it on the internet but rather by playing it. A sizable portion of the player base split into each camp and plenty are probably rather ambivalent to both . Alot of people switch to the new edition regardless of their feelings about the rules because its the supported edition that is easy to find new players to the hobby with. Its only with the last edition that players had the choice to continue as is with full quality support of a company associated so strongly with the D&D brand... and it showed in the sales numbers published by ICV2.

 warboss wrote:

 Forar wrote:
With my groups, it was the opposite. I started in AD&D, enjoyed it. Moved to 3E, and my group loved the improved balance between the classes. Moved to 4E and my group loved the improved balance between the classes and the tightened up game mechanics.

"The Internet" hates edition changes, but individuals and groups obviously make the move just fine, otherwise we'd all still be playing Chainmail.

That's kind of a broad and incorrect statement. My entire group disliked 4th and we didn't come to that conclusion by reading about it on the internet but rather by playing it. A sizable portion of the player base split into each camp.

You seem to be misinterpreting me.

I'm not saying "only people on the internet hate 4E".

I'm saying that the internet is where people go to have thousand page vitriol filled monologues at each other about what way to play fantasy elves and dwarves is most fun/correct.

 Forar wrote:
I'm saying that the internet is where people go to have thousand page vitriol filled monologues at each other about what way to play fantasy elves and dwarves is most fun/correct.

T shirt worthy message.

Found this 8 video review of D&D Next Playtest material on youtube http://youtu.be/CuyiVWANGi0

He's pretty good about pointing out differences in Next from previous editions, but possibly a bit fan boi in his enthusiam.