Blackwarder's page

So, now that 5E has been out for some time and we've all probably had a reasonable opportunity to test out the classes, it's time for our favorite TTRPG past-time:

NIT PICKING!

OK, seriously though, I'm curious to get people's opinions on the individual classes and see how 5E's class list compares to the PF class list. Obviously, in PF, the generally agreed upon order (core) is something like:

Wizard >>>>>>>> Cleric/Druid > Sorcerer > Barbarian/Bard/Paladin/Ranger > Fighter/Monk/Rogue (Slashed out classes that are comparable in strength, although the lists might vary a bit. One person might says Barbarian above Bard and another not, for instance.)

So looking at 5E, here's how I've pegged it:

TIER 1 (Godlike):

** spoiler omitted **

TIER 2 (Powerful):

** spoiler omitted **...

On what exactly do you base this (rediculuse) list? The only thing I might agree with is the beast master ranger and I'm not sold. On that either, we are still checking it around the table.

Warder

I hope it has something to deliver class ability for martial characters, similar to spells, where each class may create a toolbox of abilities to help define the character and/or specialization. Then feats can be added as an additional layer to add more specialization, or ability any class may use.

Woot? Have you looked at the PHBS.

Warder

David Bowles wrote:

Wrath wrote:

I'm DMing a game that's gone from first to sixth level so far. Just some points to counter things brought up here.

This version is dangerous for everyone, caster or martial. In other words, it's balanced that way.

Casters can cast a spell in combat and not provoke. That saves their bacon more than needing to run away. Or they can cast any of the numerous hold, slow, web etc spells that prevents the enemy pursuing them, then run away without fear.

Divine casters don't need channel, because there are other healing mechanics like second wind and short rests that does that for them. It's rare I see the situation where clerics are heal bots in 5e at all.

The entire game is designed to work well with its own mechanics. It's beautifully balanced so far. And sooooooo simple to DM it isn't funny.

Players use tactics as a group more than in Pathfinder. I also see more roleplay and more attempts at unusual ways to deal with situations because unlike pathfinder, a players imagination has more impact on what he can do in a game than the character sheet itself. Players aren't limited in things they can try because they don't have the feats for it.

It really is a different game to pathfinder completely, in how it plays at least.

Interesting. You think maybe it would be less dangerous if the clerics were adopting the heal stick role? Because maybe it's dangerous because cleric players aren't sucking it up and doing the right thing for the group.

No. I don't think that at all. The game plays completely differently to pathfinder and requires a whole new approach because of it.

Heal bot cleric means the enemy has already taken one member out of the fight. Plus he's just painted a big target on his back for ranges enemies.

Really, if you play it for a few weeks, you'll get what I mean. My experiences are meaningless to you. It's something you need to experience yourself, for more than one session.

Either way, as long as you have a game...

A life cleric is a very potent addition to a party, heavy armor, extra healing, channel divinity AOE healing, good melee attack, good selection of spells *OMG bless*.

Personaly, I find all the cleric domains realy interesting and inspiring, and they lend themselves to a lot of playstyles.

Warder

I am sure the AD&D players are probably playing AD&D (1st or 2nd editions) or one of the OSR clones. I am sad that I didn't see mention of the ability to insert THAC0 into 5th edition like I heard they were going to.

I will wait until I can see the book with my own eyes before I trust the word of someone over the internet (sorry internet people). I also really hope that they do have that website column they said they might do in place of Legends and Lore. So long as they are available for free and not behind a paywall, because then I would rather have that in a book (physical preferred, but pdf is fine).

They never said you will be able to play with THAC0, they said that folks who play different editions could sit around the same table and feel that they are playing D&D again and IMXP they succeeded, different players say that 5e feels to them like different editions, from OD&D to 4e.

Warder

I can't wait to drop PF, when my group decided to switch to PF learning to play it was the equivalent of getting an engineering degree, been there got the t-shirt, doing it again nearly made me cry, thanks god I wasn't the DM.

Luckily for me my group love 5e and can't wait for us to switch to it, couple that with the fact that we find PF adventures not to our taste (to put it likely) we have no incentive to stick around.

Diffan wrote:

I believe these two are one and the same. Except there will be no "standard". You can download the Basics and play and you can also buy the Starter Set, which comes with pre-gen characters and an adventure plus dice and stuff. If you want to delve further into the game, you pick up the PHB, Monster Manual, and DMG for an Advanced experience.

As for different game-styles, I'm not sure I follow. A group using "Advanced rules" (ie. Options from the Player's Handbook) isn't going to be any different than someone coming to the table with a Pre-Gen or a Basic Character. The game is designed to be as streamlined as possible, allowing for a no-feats character to work and play alongside a character with multiple feats, multiclass, and maneuvers.

I think he's expecting Basic, probably without the feats and options. Standard being essentially Core (PHB and most of the DMG) and then Advanced being optional rules from the Core books and more from later expansions.

As for the last point, they will have pulled off a minor miracle if Basic Characters can really function alongside Advanced ones. Options are power. That's even assuming the Basic version contains all the subsystems necessary. It's possible, but I didn't really see any sign of it in the playtest so I'll believe it when I see it.

You can build any basic character using the regular character creation rules in the PHB, for example, the basic fighter is the simple fighter subclass who took only ability bonuses instead of feats and probably got the soldier background.

And I got the thing about not having feats in the Basic game from comments like "Feats are optional" on twitter.

Warder

I'm very gratified to see Basic as a free pdf. I still plan on buying the 3 core books, but now I'm curious as to whether Advanced material will be compatible with the Basic pdf without the core (sorry, Standard) set.

Well it depends in the module, a module that expand feats won't work in a featless game (and probably won't be needed :) ) but addon modules should work fine, things like magic item creation, followers, domain game and such expand the game sideways instead of adding more and more complexity.

Warder

For those how aren't sure.

5e D&D will be split into 3 artificial tiers, I say artificial because there aren't realy any firm lines between them.

Basic D&D - This is going to be the most basic version of the game, the simplest character creation rule, only fighter, cleric, wizard and rogue and only humans, elves, dwarves and halfings. No feats, each class will have predetermined subclasses (all rogues will be thieves etc) and probably predetermined backgrounds. On the DM side you will have the most basic rules for exploration, combat and interaction with some magic items and some iconic monsters (orcs, a giant, a huge dragon etc).
All of this will be available for FREE on WotC site.

Standard D&D - This is going to grow directly from the basic game, it will basicaly allow you to add to the basic game as much as you would like, it will include 11 classes and 7 races, with full subclass, feat support and background support on the character sides, on the DM side it will include the entire section of Combat, Exploration and Interaction rules plus the full gamut of monsters for the game. It will come out in stages with the PHB, MM and DMG coming out two months apart in order to give enough time to make sure editing is done right.
Once the MM is out the free Basic D&D PDF will be updated with a Beastiary and once the DMG is out it will be updated with a DM section. (I think that we will end up with 3 different PDF and not one big file).

Advance D&D - This is the D&D bonanza, it's for the DM and groups that want to change their games in a serious way, while the standard game will have dials for lots of stuff, the advance game will be about complete rules modules that either expand or replace existing systems, some of this modules will be in the DMG (we know that the DMG have a section for point based magic system and a section on henchmen and followers) I'd imagine that the DMG will include things like aerial combat and downtime mechanics and we will probably see other things down the road.

The time line for the release of Basic D&D is the PHB parts in July for use with the starter set (the starter set got everything the DM need to know and do to run it, the PHB stuff is for players who want to use their own characters instead of the pregens).
Rest of the stuff will be out when the next books will be out.

This approach got several great things going for it:
A. First it gives a potential consumer several entry points: free, $20 starter set, $29 adventures, $50 PHB, and so on.
B. It clearly allow different groups AND different players to play the same game only with different level of complexity (between players) and gamestyles (between tables) while essentially playing the same game.
C. I might be wrong here but it seems like they are moving the focus from lots of splat books to adventures and maybe module books, this approach will promote a horizontal growth instead of a vertical one.

That's my take on this thing.

Warder

http://wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20140527

Basicaly, they are going to put basic D&D as a free PDF on their site, it will include Human, Elves, Dwarves and Halfings, and Fighters, Clerics, Wizards and Rogues from levels 1-20.

The classes in the Basic game are going to be the simplest version of them, and it probably won't include feats and will include fixed subclasses.

Later on (in August) they are going to release DM rules and some basic monsters.

All in all, great news, people won't have to buy any of the books to start playing D&D, so that's a good thing IMO.

Warder

Will there be support for Mac users? I'm and early enrollee (slated for the first month) and I hate the idea of having to boot up windows to play the game.

Warder

So, just to get this straight, if I pledged 1000$ at some point during the game ill be able to play a monster like a beholder or a dragon?

Warder

Sior Mochin- Hebrew for (actually based on ancient Aramic) for collaborative brain storming.

Hakam - Hebrew for the early stages of construction.

Warder

Genesis

Could also be PFO:Genesis

Here is my reasons for calling this period Genesis.
First of all, most folks know what the book of Genesis is all about so you got a sublime understanding of the concept, secondly, the book of Genesis (at least it's first part) is about the primeval history of the world up to the great flood, all the changes in the world are a consequence of ancient men doing.

My 2 cents.

Warder

I'm not very keen on the idea of armor and weapons being indestructible, I was really looking forward to being the greatest armor crafting magnet in the world... :(

On a side note, would loot make could make a character encumbered and slow her down?

Warder

Ok, since we are the content. Would not it be awesome if we could create our own dungeons or encounters. Not sure how it worked, but something like:

1 - cave entrance in game - You tie your entrance to it, the cave can have more than 1 player made dungeon. Player selects which one they want to go in.

2 - player uses an ingame dungeon maker, CoH had something like this. You get a certain amount of gold or something that you can use to make your dungeon. Based on the dungeon level you select and amount of gold, you get a choice of monsters to put in it.

I do not know, just kinda thinking out loud :)

I would like to be a lich and haunt my own mega dungeon, I could have an app that sends an alarm when I need to log in and kill the adventuring pests... I'm just saying.

Warder

Blackwarder wrote:

I just want to point out that the OP is mixing strategy and tactics in his analysis.

You're almost right--I'm mixing strategy, operations and tactics in my analysis, because in the Marine Corps doctrinal understanding of war, they're connected and mediate each other. If you think the Corps' conceptual approach to warfare is wrong, ok. There are certainly people who contest the generational warfare model*. Marines find it useful because it has explanatory (and even more importantly) predictive power, but if you don't, cool.

My focus in this forum is on how abstracting war will affect gameplay in PFO. An abstraction of 4th gen. war, where a relatively miniscule non-national or transnational group can engage in war with nation states--can credibly threaten to impose their will in a violent struggle--wouldn't be fun.

Ryan's phrasing isn't hard to understand: "The organized group with a physical territory has to be more effective at making war than a non-state group or the game design will fail."

* I've presented a pretty abbreviated version of our current model, which is more fully about asymmetrical, hybrid war in a 4 block environment.

I'm not going to start a discussion about your analysis, as fun as that might be :), and I totally agree about the fact that what you call 4th gen warfare won't be fun as a main theme in the game.

As I've said in my earlier post, I'm very intrested in learning all there is to know about how the logistic of things, the kingdom building phase will work and how it will effect the way wars are fought in PFO.

Simple things, like crossbows being comparatively expensive to bows but being able to train crossbow man much quicker, or how one train and get mounts can transform the game.

In another thread Ryan talked about being able to have a dragon on your side is awesome.

I'm also intrested to learn how we can effect the other side effectiveness by targeting his resource gathering and manufacturing nodes.

Anyway, we will just gona have to wait and see.

Warder

I just want to point out that the OP is mixing strategy and tactics in his analysis.

Orgenized warfare is more a matter of economy than tactics, an orgenized group's, lets call it a state but it doesn't have to be one, ability to arm, train and feed a military force is it ultimate way of winning wars and in order to win wars you need to be able to distrupt it's ability to do so.

The modern view that non state actors can give state actors a run for their money when it comes to war is false, it drawn from the perception that one side is a state and the other is not while in truth they both are states only one side is vastly superior to the other in terms of technology and economy that the other is perceived to be a non state actor.

As time goes, and the ways of waging war becomes more and more sophisticated the reliance on state actors to build, support and maintain any kind of military force expend, not diminish.

The way I see it, in order to visualize how warfare might work in PFO we need to make a distinction between tactics and strategy, micro and macro if you will.

I'm not going to speculate about tactics, we already have a rough idea of what Ryan is thinking and its more a matter of combat mechanics which should be more related to the middleware choice than anything else.

So that's leave the overall strategy, the macro of making war in PFO. Before we are able to visualize that we need to know how robust the economy is. For example, do you need to periodically change equipment due to tear and wear? And if so how often?how many steps does it takes to fashion an item? And how many men hours each step takes?

How big can a settlement gets? And what does it takes to support it? Does it require everyday things like clothes and food? And if so what does it takes to procure those?

What about training? How long does it takes to train a competent military force? Both character and player?

Those are the kind of questions that in my mind, will shape the face of war in PFO, from the top of my head I can think of two historical examples about this, one from our real world and the other from EVE world.

A. By the late medieval times, the common missile weapon in Europe was the crossbow, it replaced the bow not because it was a vastly better weapon, a skilled bowman could fire faster than a crossbow man, it replaced the bow because it was much easier and quicker to train a man to shot a crossbow than a bow, otoh a crossbow was more expansive to manufacture so it was limited only to the more prosperous countries.

B. I think Ryan talked about this before, but back in the days before the dinosaurs, I used to play EVE. And a s a wet behind the ears pilot I joined a corporation and witnessed a paradigm shift from up close.
When I joined EVE, the status que was that the crop with the best and biggest ships would win, even smaller ships like tacklers had to be pimped out and flown by experienced pilots due to the fact that a new pilot can't use t2 stuff. I was a member of a low sec mining corp, when I joined we had around 50 members and the corp was very orgenized and lead by a couple of guys who played from day one, we had orgenized mining events that netted us personally tons of money and the corp much more. Shortly before I joined the corp was soundly defeated and forced to pay "protection money" to another corp, we just didn't had enough experience combat pilots like the other guys had.
And then came the goons. You see the goons had lots of noob players, most of them couldn't even fly a cruiser, let alone battleships, so they didn't, instead they related on Zerg tactics utilizing their superb organization they cranked out cheap t1 ships by the dozens and stockpiled them near their fronts for quick and easy rearment, sacrificing dozens of ships for an enemy ship.
My corp. witnessing that (from far far away) decided to copy the goons tactics, we went on a recruitment frenzy doubling our numbers and adding some good manufacturers and started stockpiling cheap t1 ships and having mandatory training sessions for all members, when we next were attacked we managed to sworn the opposition and prevail.

The thing is that EVE warfare experience a paradigm shift due to how the game economies worked, the game has reached the point that an orgenized group could manufacture enough cheap and easy to use weapons to pose a credible threat to the older way of doing things. That what's I'd like to see in PFO.

Warder

P.s OMG! Wall of text cries you for gazillion points of damage

Any modern non state actor who started some sort of a guerrilla warfare against a state had a base of operation. Be it a semi state (Gaza for Hamas, south Lebanon for Hizzbula) or a safe bases in a neighboring country (north Vietnam. For the viet cong and Pakistan for the Taliban).

If you want to successfully start a rebellion, your first course of action should be to either grab land of have a sponsor nearby and have a support structure in place.

What folks wrongfully call breaking the state monopoly on warfare is, as I said right now, no such thing. Every non state actor is actualy either a. a very weak state actor or b. sponsored by a state actor.

If we take Afghanistan as a case study, the Taliban is a weak state actor who also got another state as a sponsor (Pakistan). If you take away the Taliban links to its sponsors, there is no way in hell that they can actually win against a modern state.

Warder

Hello.

I've been thinking about how settlements will manifest in PFO.

In my D&D games, Dwarven towns are different than elven ones or human ones and I am wondering if we will have such distinction in PFO, I would love to be able to crave my own Dwarven fort out of rock or visit elven hamlet grown on top of massive trees.

Any info on that?

Warder

IMO, GW2 is currently the best MMO out there.

One thing I would like to see in PFO from GW2 is the fact that world events change the place where you are and they aren't one dimensional but evolve into several chains with forks along the way. I have no idea how Goblin Works can do it but I hope they will.

The crafting system is also very nice (for a theme park game) and the graphics are awesome.

I hate to keep bring up Warhammer but it was the last good fantasy game for PvP that I played. I played on the most populated server up until the decline of the game due to 3 or so gigantic zerg guilds flooding the server happened. Even at that point our guild of 20-40 people still held our own due to the fact that the zerg only relied on the zerg tactic. what we did was use other smaller sized guilds to strategic advantage for flanking and so on. I would say that those guilds had far more casual players than a guild like mine did and our superiority with a lack of numbers only reinforced that. GW2 is trying to stress the skill over numbers aspect of PvP which I hope they pull off and that it is anywhere close to how Warhammer was for the visceral feeling that real mass PvP brings.

As much as I loved Warhammer I have to point that it's not what GW are aiming to, in it's core it's also a theme park kind of MMO, sure it had a good idea for PvP combat but in its core it still had the same ideas and notions that every theme park game had...

I played EVE on and off for a period of about a year, I participated in corp and alliance wars both as a casual player and noob and as a non casual player, my experience with EVE is that once you got a good group of people to play with you can do everything you want to do in the game no matter your skill level from null sec mining ops to alliance wars to pirating, in that sense EVE is much more casual friendly than WAR ever was, in WAR we still had to level up our character.

Warder

Snip...

Mate, I was referring to your point about real world armies, MMOs are a different thing altogether.

Your pharagraph about your exploits in WAR (excellent game played it for two years) is irrelevant to what I said.

As for PFO, I would like if instead of having superficial different mechanics for mass combat the game will have some logical ones.

For example, let's take magic, one of the main problems with magic on the fantasy battlefield is the fact that it makes close formations a death trap, one good blast from any number of spells (fireball, lighting bolt, etc etc) will kill a lot of troops and disrupt unit cohesion, but what if instead of saying that being in a unit will grant you medical resistance (which is irrational) it will be much easier for spell casters to ward big units from magical effects than individuals.

There could be a circle of protection spell that could be cast in specialy made standard or flags so you will only have to cast that spell once, it would act like a shield against medical attacks with recharge rates and max HP etc.

My point is that mass combat shouldn't be divorced from the lore and roots of PF and DnD. I would love it if a wizard could learn and train more soldiery spells and skills and having a squad of wizards being able to form a circle and act as an artillery and have magical duels with the other side magic users.

Warder

Blackwarder wrote:

Nukruh wrote:

There is a reason that all those old military formations stopped being used in practical combat and have just become the thing of parade grounds and training exercises.

That reason is called rifles and machinguns, and even than its not like they abandond formation it just changed...

If you think that modern armies done use formations you are sadly mistaken, every one from infantry to tanks use formations they just aren't that rigid any more.

Warder

I know they still use movement formations but the practicality of it breaks down once you get into actual combat situations that the game is probably going to end up having. The rigid part is what this system seems to be going for which is what doesn't work out.

Listen to a veteran, we still use formations, it's not a Rambo film on a modern battlefield you still got your suppression and menuveres elements plus flankers and reserve and each of those position got a specific formation for each terrain and contingency.

Warder

There is a reason that all those old military formations stopped being used in practical combat and have just become the thing of parade grounds and training exercises.

That reason is called rifles and machinguns, and even than its not like they abandond formation it just changed...

If you think that modern armies done use formations you are sadly mistaken, every one from infantry to tanks use formations they just aren't that rigid any more.

Warder

It seems interesting and I would love to have that in a game, that being said I wonder what sort of role would non soldier types will have in a combat, noobs in eve could be tacklers what would noobs in PFO will have?

Warder

Teleport should be the equivalent of EVE system jumping with capital ships, only on a grand scale and it should cost a lot so it won't become the standard way of traveling.

Warder

I pick frostbite 2 engine!

I too would love to play this game on my Mac.

Warder

Hello.

Is there any option for those of us who pledge 15$ to upgrade to the army? I didn't had the money at the time but next month I will I would love to become part of the goblin army.

Warder