DND 5.0 remake

[Chris Brady]

Because they need skill points and a good skill list to get skills. PF helped by greatly homogenizing skill ranks, but most non-caster classes are given an abysmal 2+Int, points per level, and only the Fighter has any incentive (Combat Expertise feat chain) to boost his Intelligence with his creation points. Due to how D&D's scaling skill DCs work, the only skills that matter are the ones you have maxed out, and most mundanes don't have the skill points necessary to max more than two or three skills.

Personally, for D&D, I think that skills should have been thrown out.  Tossed.  If you want your Dwarven Fighter/Rogue to have been a 'Brewer', then he was.  Make an appropriate stat check.  Kinda like Castles and Crusades does.  But with better balancing in mind.

Or maybe packages of skills, like they did in 2e with the optional Secondary Skills, but able to pick more than one.  Like Mercenary would give you knowledge and skills for like knowing how to get jobs, what's the expected pay scale, how to maintain your gear, who to talk to about your line of work.  That sort of stuff.

[Chris Brady]

What got me was the powers. Daily, encounter, ct. They are COOLDOWNS. Gone were any utility spells for mages.  And enchanting required 'magic dust' you got from disenchantment things. And you were (initially) stuck on a very tight set of choices and tiers that set you on a specified career path.

And multiclassing was majorly broken.

Multiclassing has ALWAYS sucked.

But for ME, whenever someone wants to 'multiclass' I keep hearing that warning bell about players who want to be good at everything.  At once.  And that's just not fair for anyone who want to be a single class.  Nor is it really plausible to me.

As for utility spells...  Those are what the 4e Rituals were for.

Also, most of those types of spells were utterly, utterly broken.  From broken pointless to broken powerful.  A good school was Divination.  Where it ran the gamut from players "why bother" to GMs "why bother with this adventure?  A simple Scry just broke it.  Again."

Rituals was WoTC's attempt to fix that.  Which they admit they didn't really.  Also, the Essentials line of books has brought several of them back.

As for the Powers, they make sense for certain classes.  Like Wizards and Clerics.  After all, they've ALWAYS had cooldowns and durations.  When it came to the martial classes, the concept being able to use a power only once per 'day' blew my mind.  What?  I keep pulling a groin muscle or something?  Wouldn't I learn NOT to swing it that way after a while?  Or maybe my body would adapt??

[Callie Del Noire]

Multiclassing has ALWAYS sucked.

But for ME, whenever someone wants to 'multiclass' I keep hearing that warning bell about players who want to be good at everything.  At once.  And that's just not fair for anyone who want to be a single class.  Nor is it really plausible to me.

As for utility spells...  Those are what the 4e Rituals were for.

Also, most of those types of spells were utterly, utterly broken.  From broken pointless to broken powerful.  A good school was Divination.  Where it ran the gamut from players "why bother" to GMs "why bother with this adventure?  A simple Scry just broke it.  Again."

Rituals was WoTC's attempt to fix that.  Which they admit they didn't really.  Also, the Essentials line of books has brought several of them back.

As for the Powers, they make sense for certain classes.  Like Wizards and Clerics.  After all, they've ALWAYS had cooldowns and durations.  When it came to the martial classes, the concept being able to use a power only once per 'day' blew my mind.  What?  I keep pulling a groin muscle or something?  Wouldn't I learn NOT to swing it that way after a while?  Or maybe my body would adapt??

I disagree, but it's a matter of style. if you're like me and you want to a secondary spell caster (more utility spells for bypassing traps,ect than vaporizing folks) a rogue/mage is helpful. Or a fighter who is more agile and sneaky that a front line version with heavy armor and such.

Not all non-damage spells are 'broken'. 4e Rituals suck BUT they do allow the GM to work things more to his/her favor.

[TheGlyphstone]

Agreed, and it depended on what you were multiclassing. Full Caster/Anything mean less full casting, which meant a less powerful character in the end - if you wanted to be good at everything, you just played a wizard or sorcerer or druid or cleric. Noncasters benefited heavily from multiclassing as long as they kept full BAB (for warriors) or sneak attack (for rogues) or high skill points (for skillmonkeys), because WotC sucked at class design and tended to frontload the good stuff in the first few levels of melee classes (i.e, Fighter 2/4 as almost mandatory for melee characters, on top of being as flavorful as stale tofu).

[Chris Brady]

Which annoyed me no end.  The most basic of classes, the most common and iconic in fantasy literature, reduced to being dipped like a bad sauce.  But really, if anyone should be blamed, it's Monte Cook.  He loves his Magic styled trap cards and D&D magic, and in 3e it showed.  Everything he did was around those two assumptions.  3.5 was an attempt to try and get away from that...  Not far enough, but hey.

4e was a radical departure.  One I'm STILL not comfortable with, truth be told.

[TheGlyphstone]

They just rehired MC, actually, so that might be a bad sign for 5.0.

[RubySlippers]

This is what I like most of the pre-3e DnD you have options a GM in 2.0 didn't need to use proficiencies, allow optional character classes and could mess around with the game all they wanted. In 3e+ you could not toss out feats and skills and have the rogue be a rogue, a fighter a  fighter it didn't help much. Which is why I jumped ship with my favorite game it is my game I can add or subtract as I want to.

But multiclassing is not an issue for me in fact sometimes I needed it once a DM banned the monk so I did a Fighter/Rogue that was an expert in unarmed combat, physical skills and was a self-styled monk just used cestus when going at it with support feats. In a 2.0 game they banned the bard in one campaign so I did a half-elf cleric/thief that was a performer of a dieity of the arts a self-styled holy bard. Plus the slow progression in the older rules made the combos sometimes a pain to advance with but at least offered options.

[MasterMischief]

Meh.

Wake me when they finally give up class based systems.

[Avis habilis]

Wake me when they finally give up class based systems.

From D&D? You're gonna be asleep a long, long time man.

Although now I'm imagining a d20 variant without classes where you just buy stuff with your XP. Want to increase your BAB by 1? Pay X experience points. Want to case level 1 wizard spells? Pay Y points. Hmm...

[MasterMischief]

Although now I'm imagining a d20 variant without classes where you just buy stuff with your XP.

IKR  Wouldn't that be crazy.   ;D

[TheGlyphstone]

You mean like Trued20 or Mutants and Masterminds? It's Power Points instead of XP, but otherwise identical.

[MasterMischief]

True20 still has Classes, although they are far more vague.

There used to be something for 2e I believe where you built your own Class with abilities.  Each ability cost XP, so if you made some uber Class it would take forever to level.

[Avis habilis]

True20 still has Classes, although they are far more vague.

Three extremely loosely defined "roles". Professional warrior, wizard/psychic/Jedi, & everybody else.

There used to be something for 2e I believe where you built your own Class with abilities.  Each ability cost XP, so if you made some uber Class it would take forever to level.

There was a custom class sidebar that gave you a menu of options with a point cost. If you really loaded a class you could end up with one that took 4000 XP to reach level 2.

[MasterMischief]

There was a custom class sidebar that gave you a menu of options with a point cost. If you really loaded a class you could end up with one that took 4000 XP to reach level 2.

It worked well for me.  I just wanted to give Theives a d6 instead of that death sentance of a d4.

[Callie Del Noire]

It worked well for me.  I just wanted to give Theives a d6 instead of that death sentance of a d4.

When did Rogues have d4 hp?

[MasterMischief]

When did Rogues have d4 hp?

Ahahahahaha.

Ahem.  Sorry.  Before they were called Rogues.

EDIT: I could have sworn they had d4 back in AD&D.  Apparently, I was having flashbacks to Basic.

[Callie Del Noire]

Ahahahahaha.

Ahem.  Sorry.  Before they were called Rogues.

EDIT: I could have sworn they had d4 back in AD&D.  Apparently, I was having flashbacks to Basic.

I dont' recall them having d4 back then. (My first D&D game was Basic waaay back in '79)

[Avis habilis]

Up until AD&D thieves used d4. Come to think of it, they kept on using it in B/X, BECMI & the Rules Cyclopedia too, so that's up until 1991.

Even 1e AD&D thieves got d6.

[MasterMischief]

Thieves have always been shafted.   ;D

[Callie Del Noire]

http://www.enworld.org/index.php?page=dnd5e

ENWorld's page on the subject.

And of course the boys at Penny Arcade have it right ..

[MasterMischief]

Imagine a game where you can play the version of D&D you love best. And then imagine everyone plays at the same table, in the same adventure. We aim to make a universal game system that lets you play the game in whatever way, whatever style, with whatever focus you want, whether you want to kick down doors and kill monsters, engage in high intrigue, intense roleplaying, or simply to immerse yourself in a shared world. We’re creating a game where the mechanics can be as complex or as light as you want them.

I am curious to see how well they can pull this off.  This could either be genius or epic fail.  G.U.R.P.S. had a lot of optional rules, but then it started as a very heavy system.  It would be interesting to see a game built from the ground up that can be played light, heavy or anything in between.  I have toyed with this idea myself whenever I have considered writing my own system.

[Callie Del Noire]

Imagine a game where you can play the version of D&D you love best. And then imagine everyone plays at the same table, in the same adventure. We aim to make a universal game system that lets you play the game in whatever way, whatever style, with whatever focus you want, whether you want to kick down doors and kill monsters, engage in high intrigue, intense roleplaying, or simply to immerse yourself in a shared world. We’re creating a game where the mechanics can be as complex or as light as you want them.

Is it me or does this sound like PR/Marketing Grunts press release to say everything without saying anything concrete?

[MasterMischief]

Is it me or does this sound like PR/Marketing Grunts press release to say everything without saying anything concrete?

Not to me.  It sounds rather specific rather than 'It will be a continuation of the most popular role playing game ever.'

[Callie Del Noire]

Not to me.  It sounds rather specific rather than 'It will be a continuation of the most popular role playing game ever.'

The thing is.. you can't get all the versions to work together.. it's nigh impossible to move a 2.0/3.0/3.5 PC to 4E already.. (or vice versa) and even from 2nd to 3rd editons it didn't work.. We got the conversion rules while we were on deployement back in 2000ish.. and we had two PCs who went from being two 'weak sauce' types (triple class characters) to being something like 8 levels above everyone. (no more dividing your hp/xp between 2 or 3 classes).

Be honest.. either the 'old school' folks will win back their system or the 'New edition' crowd will. It cant' be a universal balm to everyone. And they seem to claim they can do it all.

[MasterMischief]

It is a tall order, I will grant you that.  And I am sure it will not be all things to everyone.  But I am not taking it so literally that it will be exactly all editions.  I am guessing they may do something like the very basics are Characteristics + Class.  Then you can add the options of Skills and/or optional Feats and/or optional Daily/Encounter/At-Wills.