Dungeons & Dragons - New & Old

kaid

kaid

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Arbitrary_sl said:
Cleave isn't a spell!
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It shouldn't be but at least with the basic books all abilities pretty much were handled in the same way so it made everybody feel like a wizard casting spells which felt really weird and wrong for the melees.
 
Arbitrary

Arbitrary

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Normally the way I see that complaint manifest is a comparison to MMOs. The way abilities are set up has this definite action bar/video gamey thing going on. And it kinda does. Career Wizard players also typically complained a whole lot about 4th.

I'm just really sad about the whole thing because it's the first edition I ran a campaign for and I had a whole ton of fun playing with my friends on and off over four years and now everyone moved away and I'm stuck being the guy that really likes the leper edition of a game I'll never get anyone to play again. It's possible the whole thing sucks dick and it was the table of buddies that made it awesome but my brain can't tell the difference. I think 4th is just great and I would like to run another campaign. NO REALLY GUYS IT'S GOOD SEE

I hope 5th turns out to really be great. My main fear right now is that at the end of the day it'll just be worse than Pathfinder and people have already played a whole fucking ton of Pathfinder. I don't think tabletop RPGs are in all that great of shape right now to survive another underwhelming Dungeons and Dragons.
 
Mist

Mist

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The ability for sorcs to cast a bunch of flight spells all the time was really really annoying for me for years as a DM, as very few adventures of mine happened in actual 'dungeons.' I haven't really played at all since 3E.
 
Lendarios

Lendarios

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Gavinrad_sl said:
The versatility of a wizard being able to learn every single spell trumps the hell out of the extra spellcasts per day a sorcerer gets. Having played both, I can confidently say that being able to prep spells for anticipated scenarios trumps the hell out of being confined to a tiny list of known spells that you have to make as general and non-specialized as possible. Also, metamagic feats all became full round actions for sorcerers, or some such prohibitive crap.

The one and only time in all the games of DnD that I played where a sorcerer trumped a wizard was the time our entire party got dumped in the ocean. I was able to spam all my upper level spell slots into dimension door to save half the party from drowning by popping them to the beach.
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My flying sorcerer with permanent stoneskin, hasted disagrees with the statement of wiz better than sorcerer.
Our dm, had to prepare ahead on how to counter me, not the wizard of the group. Yes they are glass cannon, but what if the cannon flew? It was basically a b52 dropping fireballs non stop out of reach.
 
OneofOne

OneofOne

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While I'm 100% pro-Sorcerer, how is dealing with a flying player an issue? Ranged attacks, spells, and/or flying creatures take care of that quite well. And this is someone who used the Dimension Door + ring of Feather Fall gimmick to do roughly the same thing.
 
Lendarios

Lendarios

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fireball range is long, good luck getting close to hasted flying character. Also 3.0 haste rules = 2 spells a turn.
 
Arbitrary

Arbitrary

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The problem with all of those buff-oriented builds is that you can frustrate the DM to the point where you start getting hit with targeted dispels. There's no saving throw and no spell resistance and a targeted dispel, even the level 3 one, gets a roll versus every spell you've got active. If your plan is to hang back 800 feet and lob fireballs from space you are just asking to get murdered. No one at that distance can ever hope to help you. Then of course you can always run into enemy casters doing the same shit you are (all kinds of fun for the fighters and rogues in the party).

That kind of thing is something I was glad to see go with 4th. With the d20 systems casters are capable of and often do overshadow everyone else and force the DM to take special measures to keep encounters interesting. I've seen entire adventures where every fucking monster had a pile of immunities and high spell resistance and I've seen entire campaigns built around casters not going nuclear. I've also seen casters in other campaigns render the rest of the party irrelevant and that sucks too.

I'm hoping 5th doesn't bring back the horseshit parts of casters while also keeping things interesting for the melee types.
 
Arbitrary

Arbitrary

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So? This isn't a video game or a card game where you've found some amazing strategy that no one can counter. If you are just always several hundred feet on your own all the time you are just asking to get murdered. That doesn't even take anything fancy. Being alone is death. Sure, you may get to cheese some generic outdoor encounters but eventually you are going to run across villains aware of your tendencies and tactics that are going to just as intelligent and capable as you are or more so. If the DM is just letting you hotdog that's on him. I've definitely seen it happen and every time it does I usually end up regretting not tier whoring but that doesn't mean it isn't a shitty situation for anyone to be in. Casters are absolutely absurd in d20 and basically dictate how the entire campaign flows.
 
OneofOne

OneofOne

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Arbitrary_sl said:
If you are just always several hundred feet on your own all the time you are just asking to get murdered. That doesn't even take anything fancy. Being alone is death. Sure, you may get to cheese some generic outdoor encounters but eventually you are going to run across villains aware of your tendencies and tactics that are going to just as intelligent and capable as you are or more so. If the DM is just letting you hotdog that's on him.
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Agree with this. A smart GM makes all the difference in the world, and I think I was spoiled by having a very intelligent one, who made things fun, but never *ever* handed anything to us. Was nice being able to play in a world where there where never any rails. We could do anything we wanted (with the consequences of such) and he'd always be quick on his feet to deal with it (even if it might've been frustrating at times as we plowed right past his story hooks that he'd spent time preparing for haha). Anyways, if you become known for dealing with situations in a predictable way, you WILL meet someone prepared for you. Just the way it is.
 
Gavinmad

Gavinmad

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The simple answer for me was the more the party powergames their characters, the more I powergame the badguys. The enemy spellcasters are just as capable of flying at max range raining down fireballs.
 
Kuriin

Kuriin

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Gavinrad is right. The players in my game, notably a ranger, is very, very powerful. I did give him a strong weapon at the start, but, did not expect a ranger to be able to hit as many times as he does. Because of how fast they roflstomp the NPCs, the stronger the monsters they encounter.
 
Chanur

Chanur

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With no sense of danger the game quickly becomes tedious. Need to challenge a group of power gamers.
 
Arbitrary

Arbitrary

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You need to have been maintaining some semblance of control as DMbeforeyou don't find yourself in a situation where employing your own NPC flying invisible extended range Fireball death squads is starting to look like a good idea. That shit isn't fun for you to deal with as a DM and it isn't any fun for the players to deal with either. You don't want to be creating encounters where a big chunk of the table just has nothing useful to do. It further highlights the disconnect between casters and non-casters in that system.
 
Mist

Mist

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OneofOne_sl said:
While I'm 100% pro-Sorcerer, how is dealing with a flying player an issue? Ranged attacks, spells, and/or flying creatures take care of that quite well. And this is someone who used the Dimension Door + ring of Feather Fall gimmick to do roughly the same thing.
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Encounter design, adventure design, world design, etc all get pretty complicated when your party is invisible and flying most of the time. Wouldn't have been as much of a problem but the party was frequently only 3 players and the durations of those spells were really long, so easy to keep the party buffed. Try designing a relatively open-ended urban fantasy campaign where your characters have unlimited mobility and stealth.
 
OneofOne

OneofOne

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It's like the designers of D&D never stuck in high levels of Spot or Listen, or abilities such as tremor-sense, scent, spells such as Truesight or Faeriefire, feats such as Blind Fight, etc. Additionally, neither Fly nor Invisibility is a long lasting spell (min/level), and you lose it when you attack. Of course I'm talking 3.0/3.5 - I have no knowledge nor interest in 4.0.

Not trying to sound like a dick, but again, I think this comes down to how good your GM is.
 
Chanur

Chanur

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Arbitrary_sl said:
You need to have been maintaining some semblance of control as DMbeforeyou don't find yourself in a situation where employing your own NPC flying invisible extended range Fireball death squads is starting to look like a good idea. That shit isn't fun for you to deal with as a DM and it isn't any fun for the players to deal with either. You don't want to be creating encounters where a big chunk of the table just has nothing useful to do. It further highlights the disconnect between casters and non-casters in that system.
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I completely agree. I have had GM's say we do not allow this particular thing because it ruins the game and in my experience everyone has been okay with that.
 
Grimsark

Grimsark

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I recently got confirmation on my preordered Players Handbook and I am finding myself experiencing an irrational amount of excitement.

Now, I'm not giddy or stupid, but I can't help but feel that receiving this book is somehowfinelymaking this iteration of D&D 'REAL'. Like all the hopes and hype of the last few years, is about to either fulfill or destroy my fantasy for the future of a franchise that I have been intimately invested in since grade school.

Because lets face it. If all the shenanigans behind 5e can't produce a viable community, then I doubt anything can.
At least while Hasbro owns it.
 
Chanur

Chanur

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I just wish Dark Sun would get popular again or I would EVER get to play a Dark Sun campaign.
 
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