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jackMost new editions of DnD come with ideas where I think "oh, that's a good idea" at the time, but it's hard to see more clearly whether they actually made things good or not.
5e introduced Advantage and Disadvantage. Basically, if you're attacking or attempting something similar in any advantageous situation, from hiding, or attacking someone impaired, or a long list of other scenarios, you get advantage -- you get to roll two d20 instead of one and choose the better. It also "turns on" some special abilities like the rogue's backstab. Disadvantage is the same but you have to choose the worse.
At first, I thought it sounded sort of gimicky and simplified. In 3.5e those would all be a +4 or a -4 or something, and would stack, and that felt real-er somehow, maybe because it's just what I'm used to.
But even though I still haven't had a chance to play much, the more I thought about it, the more I'm interested in it. I thought about the probabilities and what's interesting is that it never makes something possible or impossible, it basically halves the chance of succeeding or failing. But that actually simplifies a lot of things, it means you don't need to worry about the action being pointless or automatic, but it will *always* make it easier or harder.
That makes it easier to apply in a range of situations without worrying about the fine detail too much. And as someone pointed out, it allows a lot more free-form combat. If someone wants to swing on the chandelier, you don't have to respond, "ok, but it won't actually help", you can easily say, "sure, acrobatics check DC 15, if you succeed you'll have advantage". If they take some out-of-combat action that should help them but you're not sure how much -- advantage is probably appropriate.
In particular, 5e reduced the size of many modifiers relative to the range of a d20 dice, so many more things are within the "possible, whether likely or not" range not "always unless you roll a 1" or "never unless you roll a 20". That means, the number of +4 bonuses has to be strictly limited or players will go from "balanced" to "basically always hit" with the right shenanigans. But advantage/disadvantage doesn't have that problem, the underlying chance is the same.
I don't quite like the hack that "advantage and disadvantage cancel out" but it's probably necessary.
Vulnerability and resistance are similar, they double and halve the amount of damage dealt. That means you can have monsters or characters which care about particular damage types, but never be in a situation where it's trivial or pointless to fight.
Balance for what timescale
I struggled to put this into words, but it seems like old editions of DnD were balanced for a campaign. There are all sorts of rules that only make a difference if you expect to play the same character through all the levels, classes that are weaker early on but stronger later or vice versa. More like roguelikes than most modern roleplaying sessions.
3.5e is more balanced for a day. You recover many of your resources each night. Throughout a day, you need to judge how many spell slots and similar resources to expend and still have some in reserve. But you're not really expected to do that between days: "we had a really lucky first session so now we'll have an easier time in following sessions" whether because you found some good magic swords or found a clever way to bypass the orc army, or whatever, is the exception not the rule. And honestly, the GM should probably fudge things so each day has about the same amount of interesting challenge, not set up a campaign you play fifty sessions of and let good or bad outcomes affect the next dozen sessions -- that's fine, but it's not what 3.5e is made for.
4e is balanced for a single encounter. As much as people try to say otherwise, most of the polish goes toward ensuring that each encounter is a tactical match for the party. Just like a 2e party might shy away from a too-deadly dungeon but a 3.5e party assumes the dungeon is balanced for them, a 3.5e party might choose which encounters they can handle, but a 4e party is expected to just find all encounters at the "fun challenge" level.
4e does this very well, and I know people who've found it works fine for all the other aspects of roleplaying, but for me it just doesn't work well. It's great at tactical combat if that's what you want. But being focused on particular encounters means that the rest of the story is warped around them: it's hard to have any sneaking in anywhere or dramatic negotiating, if you always have to end in the same fight anyway.
5e zooms out to 3.5e scope again, which suits me well. I'd be interested to play an old-school campaign too, but I probably don't have time.
5e introduced Advantage and Disadvantage. Basically, if you're attacking or attempting something similar in any advantageous situation, from hiding, or attacking someone impaired, or a long list of other scenarios, you get advantage -- you get to roll two d20 instead of one and choose the better. It also "turns on" some special abilities like the rogue's backstab. Disadvantage is the same but you have to choose the worse.
At first, I thought it sounded sort of gimicky and simplified. In 3.5e those would all be a +4 or a -4 or something, and would stack, and that felt real-er somehow, maybe because it's just what I'm used to.
But even though I still haven't had a chance to play much, the more I thought about it, the more I'm interested in it. I thought about the probabilities and what's interesting is that it never makes something possible or impossible, it basically halves the chance of succeeding or failing. But that actually simplifies a lot of things, it means you don't need to worry about the action being pointless or automatic, but it will *always* make it easier or harder.
That makes it easier to apply in a range of situations without worrying about the fine detail too much. And as someone pointed out, it allows a lot more free-form combat. If someone wants to swing on the chandelier, you don't have to respond, "ok, but it won't actually help", you can easily say, "sure, acrobatics check DC 15, if you succeed you'll have advantage". If they take some out-of-combat action that should help them but you're not sure how much -- advantage is probably appropriate.
In particular, 5e reduced the size of many modifiers relative to the range of a d20 dice, so many more things are within the "possible, whether likely or not" range not "always unless you roll a 1" or "never unless you roll a 20". That means, the number of +4 bonuses has to be strictly limited or players will go from "balanced" to "basically always hit" with the right shenanigans. But advantage/disadvantage doesn't have that problem, the underlying chance is the same.
I don't quite like the hack that "advantage and disadvantage cancel out" but it's probably necessary.
Vulnerability and resistance are similar, they double and halve the amount of damage dealt. That means you can have monsters or characters which care about particular damage types, but never be in a situation where it's trivial or pointless to fight.
Balance for what timescale
I struggled to put this into words, but it seems like old editions of DnD were balanced for a campaign. There are all sorts of rules that only make a difference if you expect to play the same character through all the levels, classes that are weaker early on but stronger later or vice versa. More like roguelikes than most modern roleplaying sessions.
3.5e is more balanced for a day. You recover many of your resources each night. Throughout a day, you need to judge how many spell slots and similar resources to expend and still have some in reserve. But you're not really expected to do that between days: "we had a really lucky first session so now we'll have an easier time in following sessions" whether because you found some good magic swords or found a clever way to bypass the orc army, or whatever, is the exception not the rule. And honestly, the GM should probably fudge things so each day has about the same amount of interesting challenge, not set up a campaign you play fifty sessions of and let good or bad outcomes affect the next dozen sessions -- that's fine, but it's not what 3.5e is made for.
4e is balanced for a single encounter. As much as people try to say otherwise, most of the polish goes toward ensuring that each encounter is a tactical match for the party. Just like a 2e party might shy away from a too-deadly dungeon but a 3.5e party assumes the dungeon is balanced for them, a 3.5e party might choose which encounters they can handle, but a 4e party is expected to just find all encounters at the "fun challenge" level.
4e does this very well, and I know people who've found it works fine for all the other aspects of roleplaying, but for me it just doesn't work well. It's great at tactical combat if that's what you want. But being focused on particular encounters means that the rest of the story is warped around them: it's hard to have any sneaking in anywhere or dramatic negotiating, if you always have to end in the same fight anyway.
5e zooms out to 3.5e scope again, which suits me well. I'd be interested to play an old-school campaign too, but I probably don't have time.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-26 12:18 am (UTC)I have always had a strong preference for character classes to play in ways that feel distinct, which leads me to be disinclined to solutions that feel to blur different classes into each other or make them work overly similarly. The old "linear fighter, quadratic wizard" issue seems to still be a thing without a really good solution in any big-name game; I am unhappy with approaches that actively nerf magic, or try to make the whole game feel like a 3e campaign capped at level 6, but I fear that so long as there is a vocal portion of the fanbase objecting to their Plain Guy With Sword feeling "unrealistic" or "anime-ish", we're not going to get something focused as much on making high-level fighters feel a scale of powerful that keeps up with high-level wizards, which is the direction I would favour.
I rather like "first-level characters aren't Indiana Jones and unless they are careful they will be the decorative skeletons that warn Indiana Jones there's a trap here" as a general paradigm, but first-level wizards who have a significant chance of dying if they anger a housecat did strike me as overdoing it. It's harder for me to feel higher levels as the scale of achievement I'd really like them to be if the early bits were too easy, and it's definitely a hard thing to balance the early levels feeling too easy with them killing people too easily, though I can think of a few 3.5 and PF low-level adventures that do an impressive job.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-26 11:17 am (UTC)It sounds like you want to play campaigns that go on long enough that people have time to, and benefit from, getting to know the 3.5e mechanics enough to play at higher levels, in which case maybe that already suits you best (perhaps borrowing some of the principles from 4e and 5e to make fighters genuinely equivalent to high level wizards in ways other than just damage output).
I think a lot of my experience is that I've never played a campaign that's gone on that long, so something that focusses on an adventuring party in the mid levels works well for me.
I partially agree about specialisation. I think it's often most fun when people work *together*, and that's most naturally achieved if they have different, complementary, abilities. I think again there's something about scope. 4e made for GREAT cooperation at the tactical level because everyone had abilities that affected lots of detail, it was like a board game in a good way (although also, for me, in a bad way). Other editions were more like "you need the fighter in combat, the rogue when sneaking, and the wizard twice a day", which works well if all those things are quick, but badly if they're extended. 5e tries to do something between but I've not played enough to see how it works.
I think it's important that, unless combat is simplified a lot compared to most 3.5e/4e/5e combats, all characters have stuff to contribute in combat, but ideally they have *different* stuff.
Now I'm writing this, I would be interested to play an older-school campaign where combats are straight-forward but it depends how much you're prepared, how stocked up you are on resources, etc. I'll have to see if I could make that work. The biggest problem is that it some ways it plays against later editions focus on more varied abilities.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-26 07:20 pm (UTC)I would certainly ideally like to run campaigns that go on for long enough to cover a wide range of the zero-to-legend span, I am fairly solidly attached to longer-form narrative, buts I may have said before, I am unconvinced 3.5 actually works in the last quarter or so of that range. Then again, I am not aware of anything that really does that better.
I partially agree about specialisation. I think it's often most fun when people work *together*, and that's most naturally achieved if they have different, complementary, abilities.
Agreed entirely.
Other editions were more like "you need the fighter in combat, the rogue when sneaking, and the wizard twice a day", which works well if all those things are quick, but badly if they're extended.
Other editions do tend to focus quite a bit more on combat by default than I tend to favour.
I think it's important that, unless combat is simplified a lot compared to most 3.5e/4e/5e combats, all characters have stuff to contribute in combat, but ideally they have *different* stuff.
For myself as a player, I am entirely satisfied to take a sidekick role generally, including being the healbot in combat, because I think that can make for interesting roleplaying opportunities, but I'm aware that lots of people find not being able to actively contribute in combat boring.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-28 04:12 pm (UTC)Yeah. I would in theory, but I've more naturally gravitated to intermediate lengths. Fortunately those are a lot more practical given my time availability :)
I am unconvinced 3.5 actually works in the last quarter or so of that range. Then again, I am not aware of anything that really does that better.
Yeah, 3.5e high levels are definitely a bit rough, but I don't know what you'd do instead. I can't think of any games I've heard of that even attempt something in that space. And it's naturally hard to have anything which (a) ties into the same mechanics used at lower levels and also (b) gives a feel of properly mythic characters, the archmages and warrior-kings.
I think part of the problem is that some people's idea of that level of attainment is normal humans who are just absolutely world class, but living in the same genre of film as they did at 1st level. And others is, obviously you can achieve superhuman hercules munchausen like feats of wuxia at that point, there's no point quibbling with what's realistic. And other people imagine something else, e.g. that you're literally demi-gods or otherwise have some specific world-buidling process behind being so awesome. And DnD tries to straddle all of those, which means you can end up without a clear idea of what you're imagining when, e.g. someone shrugs off a cannon-ball to the face. Is it "just a graze"? Are they unbelievably lucky and good at dodging? Or does it literally just bounce off?
So you have to make sure everyone's playing with the same interpretation in their head or it won't make sense. And you constantly run into questions like, "ok, NOW are we stretching the analogy of what hit points 'are'" and "so I'm the best wizard in the world but I can do this specific list of things, where's the, you know, original research?"