If a halfling's height disqualifies it from being able effectively to defeat a human, how the heck do adventurers of any size fight dragons and giants???Honestly, I had ALREADY envisioned halflings as more 4th-grader-sized than toddler-sized, but that's just me.
Yeah, three feet is tiny. But when you're twelve feet tall, six feet is just as tiny, relatively. No one says that a human can't fight a twelve-foot-tall monster because of it. We're just anthropocentric. Do you think a titan or the tarrasque even notice the difference between a Medium and a Small creature? :)
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I wrote this on another forum, but I think this might interest you here as well.
I've been doing some research on the people who are known to be working on the 5th Edition, and there are some past works in their pasts that not everyone might have guessed:
Mike Mearls: Created Iron Heroes, which is a bit obscure but apparently quite well regarded by many people for its solutions to provide a lot more options to martial characters. Also worked on a couple of later 4th Edition books, but seems not to have been involved in the creation of the system.
Greg Bilsland: Worked on the 4th Edition Monster Manual 3 Monster Vault, Divine Power and Forgotten Realms Players Guide, which doesn't tell us much of the quality of his work. Also as an editor on a couple of others.
Monte Cook: Worked on the 3rd Edition Dungeon Master's Guide, created Arcana Unearthed/Evlved, and the Ptolus setting.
Bruce Cordell: Created the Expanded Psionic Handbook and Hyperconscious, which are both highly regarded psionic books, but also has to stand for Complete Psionic, which was a giant mess.
Robert J. Schwalb: Wrote on 3rd Edition Drow of the Underdark, Fiendish Codex II, Elder Evils, and Players Handbook 2, which all have their fair share of fans. Also worked on Tome of Magic which introduced the very good Binder, but also the poorly balanced Shadowcaster and the infamously terrible Truenamer, though the later two do get quite some praise for the concept and fluff. Also worked on the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay game.
Jeremy Crawford: Did some minor work for 4th Edition starting in 2011, but is also one of the creators of the Blue Rose d20 game.
Tom LaPille: Did work on Magic: The Gathering.
Rodney Thompson: Worked on 4th Edition Dark Sun Campaign Setting and Monster Vault, 3rd Edition Dragon Magic, and pretty much every Star Wars Saga book, including the basic rulebook.
This is quite an impressive lineup: Arcana Evolved, Blue Rose, Psionics, Tome of Magic, Iron Heroes, Star Wars Saga, and Magic. Whoever picked them for the team seems to have been intentionally seeking out people who have firsthand experience in successfully creating something new from the basic d20 rules.
That lots of them personally benefited greatly from the OGL should be an indication that the people in charge are well aware of the importance of opening the rules to the community and third party companies.
Actually, I didn't remember what the books said about halflings at all, as I noted, that was a made up quote just to provide a sense of what I was talking about. So I find it amusing that there is a quote about halflings that involves "we did this wrong in 3rd edition." It isn't bashing, no (and I didn't say it was, that was someone else's word), but it's an issue with negative comparison that got sensitive gamers' hackles up ("what do you mean 3rd edition is wrong?" NERDRAGE. It's not a rational reaction, but it's how many people reacted and it didn't do WotC any favors).
Of some additional concern was the idea that they were critical of their immediately preceding product (3x) while marketing the new one. That's something professional shills try to avoid doing because it shines a bit too much light on the sins of the past. And if you've got those deficiencies in your portfolio, why should we, the consumers, trust you now?
They'd have been much better off saying "We think we like this conception of halflings a bit better than the 3.0 version." or "We have worked on streamlining grappling rules and think they'll be easier and smoother to use at the table." In other words, you're making no value judgment about the previous offerings in any absolute sense. You're not saying they're cumbersome or confusing or unrealistic compared to the size of toddlers. You're saying that what you have now is even better than what you had then... which may have been fantastic, wonderful, curl your toes orgasmic, or may have completely sucked. It doesn't matter, we've improved it. That's what matters.
Really, I think the three things I don't want to see is variable BAB charts, instant death magic, and alignment restrictions for....well anything. If they can put together a system that doesn't involve these elements, I'm more inclined to really give it a go. I think it's these 3 factors that really just kill my desire to play in this sort of game. I think of them as 3 limiting factors just for the sake of limiting factors and no real advancement to the game as a whole.
... variable BAB charts ...What is your objection to variable BAB? Just curious.
I'm in favor of double variable calculus BAB charts. They just make a lot more sense.
... variable BAB charts ...What is your objection to variable BAB? Just curious.
Specifically, it pigeonholes certain classes into how they act during combat. It's only driving mechanic is how this class relates to it's ability to attack. Rogues, for example, have quite a few uses in the game, yet in v3.5 Combat surely isn't one of them even though it really really want to due to Sneak Attacking. Pathfinder did the Rogue a great service (and disservice) by allowing them to Sneak Attack any creature and putting more emphasis on how to use their Sneak Attack but then killed it with an average BAB.
If you look at the "Suggestions" thread or ones that help with character optimization, Rogues just don't play (mechanically) very well. They're often considered one of the worse classes at doing what many (not all, mind you) believe their job at combat is to do lots of damage via SA-dice. It doesn't workout due to the disparity of their lack luster BAB and a target's growing AC. This same aspect is given to Monks and their "slowly growing, less sucky Flurry of Blow feature). There BAB should've been as good as the fighter because they're role is even less defined in the party, unlike the Rogue who has a host of social interactions and trap avoidance featuress.
If there MUST be a BAB-type system then I'd prefer either good or bad and no middle-ground. What is so wrong with making Rogues or Monks good fighers? Or clerics being good in battle but perhaps scaling down the level of strenght of their spells? These, I feel, are legitimate concerns for the new editions and should be looked at thoroughly.
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If there MUST be a BAB-type system then I'd prefer either good or bad and no middle-ground. What is so wrong with making Rogues or Monks good fighers? Or clerics being good in battle but perhaps scaling down the level of strenght of their spells? These, I feel, are legitimate concerns for the new editions and should be looked at thoroughly.
I think because with the current d20 system you can make a Fighter/Rogue by either (A) taking both classes, or (B) taking a Fighter giving him skill points in sneaky things and light armor.
I'm personally happy with the way you can't have your cake and eat it too. If I play a Rogue it's not because I want to win the DPR olympics - and I shouldn't, I have skill points galore. If I'm will to trade in some skills point for better combat abilities then I have a fighter.
By flattening the system (BAB or other level dependent thing) then making a 'no class' system where you pick and choose from a list (e.g. 2e DMG making your own class) would be the best approach I think. The system can be developed and play tested to make sure that 'most' of the combination end up on par. In fact that would be darn cool - no more asking people what 'class' they are, just what they do.
S.
I think that video certainly doesn't have any badmouthing in it, but I think a lot of D&D players took offense to it and other things like it that took the time to play up the flaws of earlier editions---even in jest---rather than simply talk about why 4e was good.
Except that when you release a thing to succeed another thing, you need to tell people what the differences are. People want to know that you heard the complaints they were offering, and they need to know that the problems they were accustomed to having to deal with are being addressed.
That's what made the "grapple" moment so poignant. Moments like that happened for pretty much everyone who ever played 3.5. "Oh my god, is he seriously going to try grappling something?"
I didn't need to be told Grapple was overcomplicated or THAC0 was confusing. I know these things.
Of course you do. The designers are letting you know that they realize these things too. They're letting you know that they're not deaf to the criticism they've received of their own game, and that that criticism will be addressed.
I needed to know why 4E is fun in its own right (something that commercial does not touch upon beyond showing a few shiny computer tools).
There was plenty of time for them to show off how fun 4e was. They did tons of that. People just sort of obsessively focused on the parts they chose to be offended by, though.
There's also a subtle "we're better than you" (without explaining why), with showing the vastly cooler animation for 4e and the weirder/sillier animations for the earlier editions. You hit 4e and suddenly there's more dramatic music and shiny party and animations and... it's manipulative on a subtle level.
You're really going to try and say that people have a right to be upset over a company trying to tell them that their new product is better than their old product?
Whether you agree with it or not, basically some gamers' feelings were hurt by ads like that, and made them feel defensive about the earlier editions they played.
Yes. Some gamers.
The key is in understanding what about those gamers made them react in that way, while other gamers simply laughed and went on to try out 4e.
And the fact that WotC forced other companies to disallow future downloadings of purchased digital materials (forever) when the presumption (and sometimes statement of sale) from those companies is that they can be redownloaded at later dates
That was a promise made by the retailer, not by WotC. WotC's contract with the retailers allowed them to remove those items from the storefront at any point. It was irresponsible of those retailers to give customers the impression that the items they purchased would always be available for redownloading. That's not something that they had the power to guarantee, and they should not have done that. It put WotC in a very difficult position of wanting to exercise their right to pull items from sale, but risking damaging customer relations in the process because of the actions of an irresponsible retailer.
And the fact that 4E was going to fix all the various problems of older editions (fixes = 0, they just avoided the problems at every single turn), which so bad.
They fixed almost every major problem with 3.5.
Caster domination? Fixed - all classes received abilities that gave them cool things to do that weren't simply hitting something with a stick.
Overly complex combat maneuvers? Fixed - grabbing was made easy to adjudicate, and martial classes were given cool maneuvers as part of their class (also easy to adjudicate).
Monsters with pages-long statblocks with five times more abilities than they could ever use? Fixed - monsters now had easy-to-read statblocks with interesting, unique abilities that made them dynamic in combat without being a pain in the butt for the DM to keep track of.
I could probably list twenty more things here, but I'm sure you get the picture.
I hated 4E after a month or 4 of playing. It. I felt that WotC had basically lied and mislead with their build up, and basically made it a childish game
Tone it back, hot shot.
All I can say is that the 5E team numbers are very small compared to 4E. Though, it is quite possible that "additional" gals and guys will be revealed at later stage.
I thought the same, which is why I was convinced we wouldn't be seeing a new edition announcement. I think this may be because they announced it much earlier in the development process than they normally do in order to allow for the open playtesting process they've discussed. We'll probably see the typical ramping up of staff as the development process continues.
I was very excited when it was first announced. I was unhappy with the game play when it came out and severely annoyed that all the online support that was promised was constantly being delayed. WoTC made a lot of promises they didn't keep.
For the sake of perspective, a huge part of the reason the digital stuff for D&D was delayed for such a long time post-release was due to this. Reportedly, it's something that the development team never really recovered from.
They made 4th Ed into a game for kids and/or people who had never played before and it seemed as if they didn't care about their older players.
As someone who has probably been playing as long or longer than you have, I never felt like they didn't care about me or the sort of game I was looking for.
I think you probably just didn't like the game, and decided that must be because they don't care about older gamers rather than the reality - that they just weren't interested in making the sort of game you were looking for.
An attack roll has always been a stand-in for a series of feints and failed attacks, with possibly one or more successful attacks. It's always been abstract. In other words, this was more a problem with how to interpret it.
The issue is not with how the attacks are "flavored". The issue is with two things:
First, fighters are, by and large (and played optimally), uninteresting in combat (ironic, given their name). Their best option is typically to swing their stick as many times as they can. Meanwhile, spellcasters are mechanically varied, with a wide array of spells at their disposal.
Second, the effect that fighters have on the outcome of the fight is trivial, assuming a party with a halfway-decent spellcaster or two. Fighters can deal some damage, assuming they can reach the target and assuming they have the requisite tools to damage it. Meanwhile, spellcasters are invincible killing machines until they run out of spells/scrolls/wands/staves, at which point the entire party has to rest anyway because things get much much more difficult without a spellcaster to back you up.
The interpretation is fine, but only goes so far when your awesome description of how the fighter hacks through an enemy's defenses is completely overwhelmed by the party Wizard saying, "Oh, yeah, I cast fireball. They're all dead, I think."
3.X and previous editions (and Pathfinder) have a strong tie to reality. The things that break reality are well defined- spells, supernatural, and sometimes extraordinary abilities. But at the end of the day, two peasants fighting in France is actually modelled not so bad, given the die rolls.
That doesn't strike me as particularly helpful to a roleplaying game, unless I'm planning on roleplaying a pair of peasants fighting in France.
So the "many interesting buttons" approach that WoW and other MMOs inspired in 9swords and later 4ed is something I'm hoping to NOT see in 5th. Meanwhile, it is obvious to me that many of you guys seem to like that sort of thing. It's pretty clear that they have a hard job ahead of them if they want both to somehow be pleased.
That's certainly true.
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And the fact that WotC forced other companies to disallow future downloadings of purchased digital materials (forever) when the presumption (and sometimes statement of sale) from those companies is that they can be redownloaded at later datesThat was a promise made by the retailer, not by WotC. WotC's contract with the retailers allowed them to remove those items from the storefront at any point. It was irresponsible of those retailers to give customers the impression that the items they purchased would always be available for redownloading. That's not something that they had the power to guarantee, and they should not have done that. It put WotC in a very difficult position of wanting to exercise their right to pull items from sale, but risking damaging customer relations in the process because of the actions of an irresponsible retailer.
I imagine that "remove those items from the storefront" could easily have been taken to mean "no new purchases", particularly given that the /standard/ is to allow people to redownload the PDFs they had paid for.
If there had been anything saying I might lose the ability to redownload the PDFs, or that I could only download them so many times in total, or whatever, I would never have bought them, and WotC wouldn't have made any money off of all the 2e books I bought on DrivethruRPG, because I would have continued doing what I did before that: Buying them used on ebay.
Yes, it's not good that the retailer portrayed the deal with WotC as being reasonable when it in fact wasnt. Perhaps they didnt realize that fact though. Maybe they just thought it would never happen, I'm not sure.
Either way, I think pulling the *already purchased products* out from other people is a d**k move, and I was a little peeved off about the idea of having my purchased goods stolen back from me by the publisher.
By my account what WotC did is in no significant way different than breaking into my house and stealing my out of print books off my book shelf, because my FLGS failed to relay the information to me that WotC had this ability before I bought the book.
Unfortunately, if the WotC refuses to play nice with 3rd party supporters again, I cannot really be optimistic about game in the long run.
Completely agree with this -- I hope they've learned this lesson.
And the fact that 4E was going to fix all the various problems of older editions (fixes = 0, they just avoided the problems at every single turn), which so bad.They fixed almost every major problem with 3.5.
In your opinion, Scott. In the opinion of others, they either didn't, or they threw the baby out with the bathwater and ended up with new problems which were more detrimental. In my opinion, some of those new "solutions" (or new probelms) essentially killed verisimilitude, which is why I don't care for 4e.
And before you try to tell me I'm wrong about that, allow me to remind you: De gustibus non est disputandum.
(Arrgh, I've been trying not to do this, because I keep hoping a real conversation about what a new system might look like would be.. but it seems that's doomed to not happen.)
I imagine that "remove those items from the storefront" could easily have been taken to mean "no new purchases", particularly given that the /standard/ is to allow people to redownload the PDFs they had paid for.
If there had been anything saying I might lose the ability to redownload the PDFs, or that I could only download them so many times in total, or whatever, I would never have bought them, and WotC wouldn't have made any money off of all the 2e books I bought on DrivethruRPG, because I would have continued doing what I did before that: Buying them used on ebay.
To be fair, when One Book Shelf got the notice that they no longer could sell Wizard's PDFs, they immediately deleted all the files and put up a notice saying they were no longer available.
Paizo got the same notice and asked Wizards: "Can we let our existing purchasers have a grace period to download the files they purchased?" Wizards said, "Of course you can do that."
DriveThruRPGs handling of the transition is at least as much at fault as Wizards.
What is of real interest to me now, is how Paizo is going to respond. I would predict that they have about 6 months to decide upon appropriate strategy - I assume that it will take about 6 months for the Wizards to reveal their product in sufficient detail to gauge its attractiveness.
I don't see how Paizo would change their strategy in any way.
If Wizards puts out 5E under the OGL, then Paizo might consider switching. But there's little risk in simply maintaining their current business strategy. They have their own game now. They make excellent adventures and support products for that game. There's room for more than one excellent RPG in the world. Turns out, there are already several good RPGs that currently receive continued support.
I don't see how Paizo would change their strategy in any way.
If Wizards puts out 5E under the OGL, then Paizo might consider switching. But there's little risk in simply maintaining their current business strategy. They have their own game now. They make excellent adventures and support products for that game. There's room for more than one excellent RPG in the world. Turns out, there are already several good RPGs that currently receive continued support.
I mostly agree -- no way Paizo moves to 5E at this point. There might be some marketing opportunities here, but probably not without getting nasty.
Though I definitely see a SWOT-style "threat" here. :)
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To be fair, when One Book Shelf got the notice that they no longer could sell Wizard's PDFs, they immediately deleted all the files and put up a notice saying they were no longer available.
Paizo got the same notice and asked Wizards: "Can we let our existing purchasers have a grace period to download the files they purchased?" Wizards said, "Of course you can do that."
DriveThruRPGs handling of the transition is at least as much at fault as Wizards.
Okay, DriveThruRPG Didn't make the situation any better, but the fact that it happened at all is what I'm taking issue with. I actually thought DriveThruRPG gave a 3 day grace period; but I wasn't sure.
I don't have a problem with them stopping new purchases, but existing purchases shouldn't have been affected at all.
If WotC had a problem with the redownloading policy of DTRPG or Paizo, they should have made it clear that WotC books weren't being sold with a guarantee to be able to redownloaded after purchase before people spent money on them.
Then they should have delayed the releases with a full explanation. It would have been much better than them selling an unfinished product.
You misunderstand me. This was post-release. They originally figured they were going to have the digital suite finished maybe a half year after the game was released, but then the event I linked to happened. In response, they pared back the price to something commensurate with the stuff they already had available (digital magazines, character builder, compendium, bonus tools) and then went to work on finding a new team to handle the continued development.
They made a game very different from the previous game using very little input from people who played there games.
That's also not true.
That's not caring about their player base.
Except that it's not true.
When they aren't interested in making the sort of game a large percentage of their player base would like, that's not caring about their player base.
No, it's accepting that your player base is not homogenous, and deciding to try something new and bold.
By my account what WotC did is in no significant way different than breaking into my house and stealing my out of print books off my book shelf, because my FLGS failed to relay the information to me that WotC had this ability before I bought the book.
That is in no way the same thing, and it's actually a little worrisome that you think it is.
In your opinion, Scott. In the opinion of others, they either didn't, or they threw the baby out with the bathwater and ended up with new problems which were more detrimental. In my opinion, some of those new "solutions" (or new probelms) essentially killed verisimilitude, which is why I don't care for 4e.And the fact that 4E was going to fix all the various problems of older editions (fixes = 0, they just avoided the problems at every single turn), which so bad.They fixed almost every major problem with 3.5.
I think it's simply ridiculous hyperbole to make the claim that they fixed none of the commonly-cited problems with 3.5 in 4e. That's simply unsupportable, and it says a lot about the person making the claim.
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Meanwhile, spellcasters are invincible killing machines until they run out of spells/scrolls/wands/staves, at which point the entire party has to rest anyway because things get much much more difficult without a spellcaster to back you up.
This was done to us by 3e and then perfected in 3.5e. Spellcasters were not the be all to end all in 1e/2e.
I think it's simply ridiculous hyperbole to make the claim that they fixed none of the commonly-cited problems with 3.5 in 4e. That's simply unsupportable, and it says a lot about the person making the claim.In your opinion, Scott. In the opinion of others, they either didn't, or they threw the baby out with the bathwater and ended up with new problems which were more detrimental. In my opinion, some of those new "solutions" (or new probelms) essentially killed verisimilitude, which is why I don't care for 4e.And the fact that 4E was going to fix all the various problems of older editions (fixes = 0, they just avoided the problems at every single turn), which so bad.They fixed almost every major problem with 3.5.
Which is, of course, something I never claimed.
I did, however, make a statement regarding your claim they were very nearly all fixed however... and further argued that some people found that it was better to live with the 3.x-edition problems than to deal with the new ones (or pay the price in verisimilitude).
Many of these rules, especially grapple, could have been addressed many other ways (see: Paizo). What did 4th edition replace grappling with?
They replaced it with grabbing. I think you might want to look up how grabbing works before continuing, here. I think you're probably under the impression that there's no way to grapple/grab in 4e, and that's not the case. Before you stumble off that cliff, I'll let you reorient yourself.