ZebioLizard2 wrote:
It seems like..Gameplay?

 pretre wrote:
Could you do that in pretty much any edition of D&D? Sure could.

 Manchu wrote:

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
It seems like..Gameplay?

 pretre wrote:
Could you do that in pretty much any edition of D&D? Sure could.

So would you guys say it seems like 4E players are not totally left in the cold?

 Manchu wrote:
Okay, to clarify --

given the rules we have

and the actual play described

do YOU (if you are a 4E player)

think this kind of game play sounds fun?

 Manchu wrote:
Okay, to clarify --

given the rules we have

and the actual play described

do YOU (if you are a 4E player)

think this kind of game play sounds fun?

 pretre wrote:
although the way you described it just sounds like any D&D game

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
1: Swinginess: From what I saw in the chart with some monsters, combat at level 1-3 still seems like 3.5 where a random dice will just kill you off without a care.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
2: Balance: Will it be a team effort, or will casters dominate the field.

 Manchu wrote:
Playing Basic/OSR D&D, there would be no Opportunity Attacks, Bonus Actions, Disengage, Dash, Combat Test mechanics, etc, etc. All of this would likely just be rulings made by the DM. In 3E/4E, we would have been gathered around the grid debating about the optimal strategy using all of those same mechanics.

In 5E, we used all of those 3E/4E mechanics without talking about them -- in effect, just like a Basic/OSR game. Indeed, the DM confirmed to me that he was not consciously using the rules, just making calls that seemed reasonable and fun. To me, this shows that 5E is pretty successful at unifying gameplay across editions.

Our resident 4E fan complained the next day that "the beautiful tactical combat is gone." I am wondering if the 4E fans of Dakka also see it that way, given my example.

Can you unpack what you mean by "casters dominate"?

 Manchu wrote:
Dunno yet Infinite_array but I will be looking because I really like them. Will let you know if I find anything.

Here's an "actual play" example of how 5E supports tactical combat:

Last evening, we were facing down a lone, cornered goblin. Three of five PCs were pretty well up in its ugly green face and that sucker still managed to survive ... for a bit longer. It dashed through the legs of the Dwarf Fighter, my (reasonably tough) Dwarf Wizard, and the Human Fighter.

Thinking about this earlier tonight, it suddenly struck me that 5E incorporates Opportunity Attacks from 3E/4E. I figured the DM must have forgotten about them or quietly houseruled them out (perhaps in deference to his beloved '77 Basic D&D?) because we did not get to swing at the goblin as it deftly fled. Then I realized the goblin did not attack before moving past our PCs. Ah hah! He took a Disengage action to avoid provoking Opportunity Attacks for the rest of his movement. Whether the DM had this in mind or not, the resulting play was entirely consonant with the rules as written.

Importantly, the DM did not simply allow the goblin to move through our ranks without any trouble at all. He ruled that each PC take an opposing DEX check against the goblin to block his escape. It's just that we all failed because the DM rolled well and the goblin, quite reasonably, had a good DEX modifier (including beating my 17). Wondering if this was a rule or a ruling, I looked through the PDF and found "Contests in Combat" sidebar that indeed covers it, even if it only explicitly mentions Grappling and Shoving. So again, whether he intended it or not, the DM's call was a ruling in harmony with the rules.

At this point, I interjected that the goblin would surely not have enough movement to totally escape. In some corner or my mind, I suppose I must have remembered that Dash is an action and not a Bonus Action. The DM ruled that the goblin was just at the edge of getting away and, given the Initiative order, we therefore each had another shot at taking him down. Fortunately, the Human Fighter (an able bowman) put an arrow between its ears.

In other words, the goblin seized the tactical opportunities open to it and very nearly got away to warn and rally its despicable tribemates. And so did we, the PCs, seize our opportunity. Interestingly, all this happened with basically no "stepping out of the scene" to discuss rules. For my part, this is because the rules strike me as intuitive and the DM's rulings seemed both fair and made the combat more interesting. Something more than crushing one measly goblin was at stake, so tactics became an issue even if we didn't need to evoke the language of rules to make it happen.


@Alpharius: you are our 1E fan, what do you think?

 Buzzsaw wrote:
What's happening is that our perspectives are so divergent that there are things that you find good and well done, that I find tedious and inept.

 Buzzsaw wrote:
A phrase is going around, attributed to the 5e lead Mike Mearls; "rulings, not rules."

 Buzzsaw wrote:
didn't think about this and so will never let you do the same

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
the LFQW issue, where fighters gain only X certain things while Spell-casters become versatile masters able to perform the roles of [non-casters]

 Manchu wrote:
@Ahtman: No more BBQs for you until you back up this regression claim.

 Manchu wrote:
Okay, to clarify --

given the rules we have

and the actual play described

do YOU (if you are a 4E player)

think this kind of game play sounds fun?

 Manchu wrote:

 Buzzsaw wrote:
What's happening is that our perspectives are so divergent that there are things that you find good and well done, that I find tedious and inept.

Yep, I've been explaining that ITT for something like a month or more.

 Manchu wrote:
...So would you guys say it seems like 4E players are not totally left in the cold?

 Ahtman wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
@Ahtman: No more BBQs for you until you back up this regression claim.

You could start by comparing the number of pages devoted to combat maneuvers for martial characters to the number of pages to spells. To beat it the spells would need to take up just 1 page, but it has far more than that. Sure there are class features, but wizards and clerics also get class features. Much of the Book of Nine Sword and 4E martial options seemed to have just up and disappeared.

First, I think LFQW is about damage output. But yes, 3E definitely had the problem that higher level casters had spells that mimicked or mooted non-caster class abilities. I have not seen this problem in the Basic PDF yet.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards

5th edition is trying to do this in an interesting way. While Vancian magic with at-wills is coming back for the Wizard, Fighters are getting a new mechanic called "Combat Expertise" where they gain extra damage dice as they level up, but can exchange those dice for adding extra effects to their attacks, such as stunning or pushing enemies, making them more versatile with a sort of build-your-own-maneuver system. In addition, the designers have stated that they intend to make martial abilities equivalent to magical ones, and that they work better in synergy, I.E. a rogue's stealth works as well as an invisibility spell, but when they are combined the rogue becomes essentially a stealth god for a while.

 pretre wrote:
Interesting quote from that page:

5th edition is trying to do this in an interesting way. While Vancian magic with at-wills is coming back for the Wizard, Fighters are getting a new mechanic called "Combat Expertise" where they gain extra damage dice as they level up, but can exchange those dice for adding extra effects to their attacks, such as stunning or pushing enemies, making them more versatile with a sort of build-your-own-maneuver system. In addition, the designers have stated that they intend to make martial abilities equivalent to magical ones, and that they work better in synergy, I.E. a rogue's stealth works as well as an invisibility spell, but when they are combined the rogue becomes essentially a stealth god for a while.

The rest of it as a wall of text

Spoiler:

Dungeons & Dragons:

The actual point at which wizards overtake fighters is somewhere between level one (when they get color spray) and level five (when they get flight, fireball and haste), depending on who you ask. Either way, at low levels attack spells are both too weak and too few, the main advantages are in buff, incapacitation, area denial or utility magic. It also depends on the type of encounter — one strong opponent or many weaklings.
Another problem is that as primary casters gain levels, they gain access to spells that allow them to do pretty much anything. A Wizard, Cleric, or Druid with access to the huge list of spells published for them can fill almost any party role — often better than the classes designed for that role — while a fighter gains variations and slight improvements on "hit enemy with stick". At level 17, they can pull some god-like stunts, with the ability to shapechange at will for limited periods, stop time, and even create entirely new planes of existence. Meanwhile, Fighters can hit things harder and faster and take more punishment.
Additionally, a major issue is that at low levels, wizards have weaker spells (mostly) and can cast them fewer times before needing to rest. As they level up, they both get more uses of lower-level spells and access to higher-level spells with their own usage slots, meaning that a high level wizard is unlikely to ever run out of basic utility magic, while also having access to outrageously powerful effects that can resolve encounters on their own. On top of this, the better low-level spells scale in power as you go up in level, meaning that wizards gain more usages of more powerful magic as they go up in level — their power literally increasing quadratically.
Originally, the intent of D&D was that the common man was a Fighter and he would be more powerful at low level, but someone who performed magic (a Cleric or Magic-User) would make sacrifices at low level to become more powerful at high level. But this was further balanced by Fighters getting the best followers at high level (and at the time, henchmen were quite valuable even if they were low-level), and because Fighters were the only ones who could use magic swords. The majority (60%+) of magic swords were intelligent and carried special spell-like powers. Since a Fighter was the only one who could wield one, those found in treasure would usually end up in his hands. This limited spell-like ability made up for the Fighter having no spells of his own.
Fighting Men progressed at a faster rate than Magic Users. The difference in XP progression was later (3.0+) deemed ineffective, largely due to when game designers learned basic math and common sense. They realized that given the same amount of EXP the wizard was at best one level behind the fighter, and later actually progressed faster. Getting rid of this also fixed broken multiclasses.
It is notable that throughout AD&D all the way to D&D 3.5, a solid majority of non-player characters higher than 20th level were wizards. Indeed, careful scrutiny of various game books reveals that they outnumber similarly high-level NPC's from all other classes combined.
AD&D has rules about followers, so a high-level warrior can easily attract a small army. Sadly, it was often ignored, especially since it required the character to own a keep. Warriors also got Hit Points from high Constitution while wizards didn't. AD&D2 class XP awards, quite sensibly, altered class balance depending on the game style: in relatively peaceful ones, utility spellcasting allows wizards and priests a little XP all the time, in war/dungeon warriors get XP bonus for each defeated opponent.
Dark Sun setting specifics eased it in that high-level warriors' followers are easier to use in an adventure, while wizards are feared and hated by just about everybody thanks to the fact that arcane magic in Dark Sun sucks the life out of everything around the spellcaster. Widespread psionics doesn't quite replace wizardry, as it's more useful against one tough opponent rather than many weaker ones. Most area effects are taxing, unreliable, centered on psionicist and indiscriminate: either plunge into crowd of foes alone for 3 rounds and risk fainting there or knock out your bodyguard(s) with Ultrablast just like everyone else in 50’.
Special powerful creatures could then resist the new unresistable spells. Of course a spell to temporarily reduce a creature's Magic Resistance soon developed...
Yes, another way that earlier editions of D&D dealt with this problem was giving a lot of the more powerful monsters (the kind high-level adventurers would be facing) magic resistance (called anti-magic in some of the early editions). Even relatively low magic resistance could really ruin a caster's day, because, first, magic resistance was a flat percentage, meaning that it didn't matter how powerful a caster you were, your spells still had the same chance of failing completely, and, second, because there were no spells that could directly penetrate resistance. Third edition radically nerfed magic resistance into spell resistance by changing those two things: powerful casters are more likely to penetrate spell resistance, and there were a number of spells that could simply ignore it (the orb spells were incredibly broken, partly for this reason)
The new problem with wizards introduced by D&D3+ is that instead of having spellcasting interrupted by any hit, passing a Concentration skill check can fix this. This would be less of a big deal if skills weren't so easy to boost in 3.5ed.
In 3rd Edition and 3.5, this applies to spellcasting classes in general with a sufficiently large and varied spell list. Clerics and Druids in particular led to the coining of the phrase "CoDzilla" (Cleric-or-Druid-zilla), as if a powergamer looks at the class the right way, they see class features more powerful than entire other classes.
The Druid's Animal Companion is equivalent if not better than an entire Fighter in combat at level 1, making them superior even at low levels. The companion doesn't scale as fast as a Fighter, but given the exponential scaling of spells which a Druid also gets full access to, it doesn't really matter.
The history here is a bit muddled. Clerics (or Priests in earlier editions) always had access to good armors, but no good offensive abilities, magical or martial. The common complaint is that they couldn't do anything well except heal and maybe tank a little, so they were given huge upgrades in both their magical abilities and their martial abilities (generally requiring magical augmentation) in 3rd edition. At first glance this didn't appear unbalanced, especially since most players would tend to either heal all the time anyways or make reasonably effective (but not to the point of replacing Fighters) melee fighters. The real brokenness comes in two flavors. First, creative uses of certain spells and feats (such as the aforementioned Divine Metamagic: Persist Spell) allowed spellcasters in general to break the game wide open. Second, even if you restrained these ridiculous abuses Clerics (and Druids) ended up by far the most versatile class, easily switching from tank, to healer, to controller etc. thanks to the incredible versatility and power of spells in third edition. In general, Wizards and Sorcerors get access to more powerful spells, but Clerics and Druids automatically know every single class spell ever printed for free. CoDZilla's built in melee ability is the reason they are largely regarded as stronger than Wizards and Sorcerers. If you allow all the insanity arcane spellcasters are stronger, especially with the Prestige Classes like Incantatrix, a class ludicrously powerful even by optimized Wizard standards, which basically lets you pull all the tricks Clerics can do with Divine Metamagic except better, more often, and in several different ways, and Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil — aka You Don't Get Hit Ever: The Class. However, even if your DM restricts those abuses CoDZilla is very strong. This was fixed in 4th edition, but at the cost of removing most of the abilities spellcasters previously had.
Notably, Evil-aligned Clerics tend to make better Necromancers than Necromancers themselves. A specialized Wizard must surrender the ability to cast spells from two other schools of Arcane magic in order to receive said specialization, which confers only one extra spell from their specialized school per day and a +2 bonus to Spellcraft checks. Evil clerics, solely so that the mechanic that the ability of a Good-aligned (or, rather, Positive Energy-channeling) Cleric to turn or destroy undead has its Evil Counterpart, to rebuke or COMMAND undead. Most incorporeal undead also have a standard touch attack that afflicts ability drain, which can be a Game Breaker even at higher levels. What's worse? Some undead create spawn... and control it. Like Wraith .
Druids are another example, able to combine the devastating Natural Spell feat with their animal forms, allowing them a melee presence on par with the strongest warriors while losing none of their casting power. Worse, at higher levels they can change form several times a day; morph into an eagle, rain lightning and fire on the enemy from safely out of reach, land, morph into a dire bear, wade into melee—and all while their animal companion is busy doing the fighter's job. Heck, druids are even ridiculous at level one. Produce flame + Animal Companion with multiple attacks = Ouch.
The supplement Tome of Battle: Book of Nine Swords caters to those who prefer their warrior-types more superhuman. The Tome of Battle classes have received a mixed reception. It's either a step in the right direction, or growing existing Animesque trend into "anime fan Fightan Magic", or melee combatants' rebalance simply doesn't change much in comparison to CoDzilla or Wizards in the first place.
Averted in 4th edition, which defines "martial powers" alongside "arcane powers" and "divine powers" — the warrior-types get more powerful abilities as they go up in level, too, and balance was a key goal. A lot of complaints that the game is no longer D&D or has turned into a video game on paper. You may have noticed above that Tome of Battle way of circumventing this problem was far from unanimously accepted even without extra radical changes. As shown in one of their cartoons, Wizards doesn't think much of the people who make complaints like this. As is routine, min/maxers did what they do best and found the Game Breakers.
The balance was achieved by making wizards and fighters not just equivalent in power but mechanically very similar. Both classes essentially had lists of powers that did a damage effect to an area, a target or multiple targets and there might be a movement effect or a buff/debuff attached, with little thought given to how any of it made sense from a narrative perspective (how does hitting enemy A with your sword move ally B 3 squares? It doesn't matter, its balanced.) While someone starting 4th edition would see the differences between the classes as being sufficiently, previous editions gave the two classes such different mechanical flavors that many fans looking at the initial 4th edition line up found the differences meaningless. This is where the complaints come in. It doesn't help that they made the Wizard the least powerful class in 4th ed starting out (before later supplements balanced it back out.) This was supposed to be balanced out by ritual magic which was where most of the utility spells went but the early ritual spell options were so costly for so little effect it was hardly ever worth casting them.
One key part of this is that 4E provides a basic standard power progression through the levels for all classes and that all classes advance at the same rate (the last point already held true in 3rd edition, but it's worth re-emphasizing). Specific added class or racial feature powers aside, every fifth-level character for example will have two first-level at-will, a first- and a third-level per-encounter, a first- and a fifth-level daily, and a second-level utility power at its core, period. Moreover, the effects of most individual powers remain largely fixed now instead of growing automatically more powerful with increasing character level, as often used to be the case with spells in earlier editions; the exceptions are mainly some class abilities that can't be swapped out for other powers in the course of the character's career as "standard" powers can, and the fact that the basic damage output of at-will attacks — which unlike encounter and daily powers don't come in levels higher than first — finally doubles upon reaching 21st (!) level in order to keep them competitive. Unfortunately, this started breaking with Player's Handbook 3, which started to shear away from the standard level progression, and shattered with the "essentials" line, which returned to the older model of having unique progressions for every class and making martial classes "simpler" to play...which obviated one of the major points of 4th Edition to begin with.
5th edition is trying to do this in an interesting way. While Vancian magic with at-wills is coming back for the Wizard, Fighters are getting a new mechanic called "Combat Expertise" where they gain extra damage dice as they level up, but can exchange those dice for adding extra effects to their attacks, such as stunning or pushing enemies, making them more versatile with a sort of build-your-own-maneuver system. In addition, the designers have stated that they intend to make martial abilities equivalent to magical ones, and that they work better in synergy, I.E. a rogue's stealth works as well as an invisibility spell, but when they are combined the rogue becomes essentially a stealth god for a while.

 Buzzsaw wrote:
With due respect, then why do you persist in asking questions for which you already know the answer?

 Buzzsaw wrote:
Since my point is that moving through an occupied square is very different form simple movement, which is what the rules cover, my point is the DM decided he wanted to do something and simply did it.

 MWHistorian wrote:
My best character ever was a Medusa archer. That's what I'm looking for.

 Ahtman wrote:
You could start by comparing the number of pages devoted to combat maneuvers for martial characters to the number of pages to spells.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
all the Save or Die spells, the utility spells, the overall general use spells, along with said spells that made other classes useless

 Manchu wrote:
3E definitely had the problem that higher level casters had spells that mimicked or mooted non-caster class abilities.

If you want to use spells, play a caster. People have a pretty good idea of what a warrior can do thanks to action movies. And that is a lot of stuff, at least if you are an imaginative person. But you don't need a list of permissions because you are already familiar with the laws of nature, which are also assumed in the game's setting. Magic, however, requires a long list of permissions (the spell text) because it breaks the laws of nature.

 Manchu wrote:
4E did not provide the options. The options were always there. By categorizing, labeling, and distributing the options, 4E actually radically limited them.

Also a spell is not equivalent to a melee attack. I mean, sure that is true if you are just talking about the computer program running the simulation. But not in the world of the setting.

As I mentioned above, 4E reduced magic to the superpowers or pro-wrestling moves. It did the same to melee combat. That is how 4E made magic and melee functionally equivalent for the sake of balance.

 Manchu wrote:
Magic in super chess, however, is truly mundane. But only mundane in a world where everything is X-TREEEEM!!!.

 Manchu wrote:
In Basic, what can a fighter do?

Let's find out -- you tell me what you want to try and I will tell you what to roll.

In 4E, what can a fighter do?

Pages and pages of very specific things and just those things.

 Manchu wrote:

Spoiler:

 Buzzsaw wrote:
With due respect, then why do you persist in asking questions for which you already know the answer?

That's a good question. There is nothing wrong with playing D&D as if it were super chess. Hell, I like it, too, even though it specifically excludes the thing RPGs bring to the table that other games mostly cannot; i.e., the extraordinary freedom. But yes, sometimes I really want to play something crunchy and sharply defined. But I find cooperative board games more effective in scratching the itch -- yes, they are so much less complex but they also take so much less time than 4E.

 Buzzsaw wrote:
Since my point is that moving through an occupied square is very different form simple movement, which is what the rules cover, my point is the DM decided he wanted to do something and simply did it.

First, yes the DM decided what he wanted to do and did it. Second, what he did was completely in line with the rules.

Third, there are no such things as "occupied squares" in our game. We aren't playing super chess so there are no squares at all. Our characters are not pawns on a board. They are people experiencing a story in a setting. That experience arises from known quantities (mechanics) smashing into unknown ones (randomness). That's pretty standard for table top games but what makes our game different is the setting is too complex to be perfectly described in every aspect at every level of granularity by a predetermined rule set. And even if it was that simple (some people might reasonably judge it so), we prefer that the setting entail a certain bias toward what we find interesting and fun. So we have rules, yes, but they are best understood as guidelines from which we can reason, via ruling, about specific instances of anything.

So what happened in our game is:

A cornered goblin in mortal fear took the only escape route available -- through the enemy. Its enemies tried to stop it but it was too slippery and quick.

What I find so cool about 5E is that during play we talked about what was going on like that. Provoking OAs, the Disengage action, Combat Tests as Reactions ... all those mechanics were active. The motor was running silently under the hood. If anybody at the table had wanted to, and I say this as something of a RPG "gearhead," they could have popped the hood and seen all the parts whirling right along. But nobody did because we were into the scene, the setting, the action.