DnD 5E and FATE Accelerated
Jul. 3rd, 2015 10:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackDnD 5e
A while back I bought the 5e DnD ("DnD Next" or "DnD") player's handbook and just now have been reading through it. I actually really like it.
It reminds me of 3.5 but streamlined, with a few of the good aspects of earlier editions and 4e. That's about what I wanted out of DnD!
Many of the combat rules are simplified a bit, but look about equally balanced. Progression is simplified -- feats are more powerful, but optional, you can take them instead of a stat increase. Thus they do more to define your character and less to "here's a feat-tree you have to take".
There's no separate saves, you make a "dex save" or "con save". Your character has a single proficiency bonus which scales with level from +2 to about +5, which is added to everything you character is good at (weapons they're proficient with, skills they're trained with, etc).
They've added some fluff to the front page of the character sheet (personality trait, ideal, bond, flaw) and a suggesting for getting temporary mechanical advantage when your flaw comes into play. I have ideas for those bits up, to focus people further on the bits that actually come up in play (whether they matter mechanically or not).
The classes and races are similar to 3e -- there's the classic races (human, elf, dwarf, halfling) and further races (tiefling, dragonborn, gnome, half-orc) which don't automatically exist in all settings.
Like 4e, all spellcasters have a few infinite use cantrips which function as their standard attack options. I like that all characters have something specific to do in combat. And like 4e, fighter has some abilities beyond "hit it with my axe" to bring into play in combat -- although not many, I think that could be beefed up.
It reverts to generally winging the exact physical layout rather than using a battlemap. Which I like because combat is simpler and faster. Although I admit, it does remove some of the good effects in 4e, that there were many more tactical options for the party to work together, other than "we all hit it repeatedly".
The general power level is flatter between 1st level and 20th level, even more so than 4e. I think this is probably good, since it's almost impossible to balance things at both ends, but it does potentially mean less variation. But it has good effects that a character a few level higher than you" feels like "an adventurer like you, but more experienced" not "a demigod". And that there's less artificial scaling where every PC gets regular stat boosts to increase to-hit and damage-per-second and armour-class -- as does every monster.
It seems like, 1st level is really a tutorial level (although actually, I'd like an EVEN SIMPLER introduction for some newbies) where characters all have stuff they can do, but some of the key class features kick in at second level (eg. rogue has backstab damage at first level, but gets a free disengage/hide action from second which is nearly as class-defining). 4th or 5th feels like a typical point for experienced 3.5e players.
In addition to flattening the power level, the magic-item economy is gone. The classes are designed to be balanced mostly as-is, with a minimum amount of gold and almost no magic items. So you can run a low-magic campaign where the only magic is PC and NPC spellcasters, and add a magic sword for effect when it seems dramatic, not assume that everyone is carting around cartloads of +1 stuff else they're unplayable.
I think it could sensibly by used to run either an old-school "kick in the door and take as much treasure as you can before you die" session or a "mostly about roleplaying with some combat" session which are the sorts I enjoy the most.
4e is probably better for tactical combat -- I like that in theory, but never find it works well for me in practice.
Has anyone actually tried 5e?
FATE core and FATE accelerated
I've also been following a couple of people's suggestions and reading about FATE. IIUC it's based on ideas from FUDGE, based on a very freeform mechanics-light structure. Ideal for "here's a wacky idea about X" or "here's an existing setting (Dresden Files) with clear flavour but vague on specifics, can we adapt that to a game" and producing setting and character sheets with minimal write-up and no need to spend ages trying to balance PC activities.
Basically it sounds really fun if you want an adventure without tactical combat at all (there's still some tactics, but not based primarily on characters specific abilities).
Although some people apparently flounder if they're used to DnD -- there's definitely a "everyone should choose things that are appropriate, not always what would be most effective for the character". (Like Dogs-in-the-Vineyard, it seems it's more fun to pick character traits which come up about half the time -- but some people find it hard to resist arguing that they ALWAYS apply.)
Has anyone actually tried any of the editions of FATE?
A while back I bought the 5e DnD ("DnD Next" or "DnD") player's handbook and just now have been reading through it. I actually really like it.
It reminds me of 3.5 but streamlined, with a few of the good aspects of earlier editions and 4e. That's about what I wanted out of DnD!
Many of the combat rules are simplified a bit, but look about equally balanced. Progression is simplified -- feats are more powerful, but optional, you can take them instead of a stat increase. Thus they do more to define your character and less to "here's a feat-tree you have to take".
There's no separate saves, you make a "dex save" or "con save". Your character has a single proficiency bonus which scales with level from +2 to about +5, which is added to everything you character is good at (weapons they're proficient with, skills they're trained with, etc).
They've added some fluff to the front page of the character sheet (personality trait, ideal, bond, flaw) and a suggesting for getting temporary mechanical advantage when your flaw comes into play. I have ideas for those bits up, to focus people further on the bits that actually come up in play (whether they matter mechanically or not).
The classes and races are similar to 3e -- there's the classic races (human, elf, dwarf, halfling) and further races (tiefling, dragonborn, gnome, half-orc) which don't automatically exist in all settings.
Like 4e, all spellcasters have a few infinite use cantrips which function as their standard attack options. I like that all characters have something specific to do in combat. And like 4e, fighter has some abilities beyond "hit it with my axe" to bring into play in combat -- although not many, I think that could be beefed up.
It reverts to generally winging the exact physical layout rather than using a battlemap. Which I like because combat is simpler and faster. Although I admit, it does remove some of the good effects in 4e, that there were many more tactical options for the party to work together, other than "we all hit it repeatedly".
The general power level is flatter between 1st level and 20th level, even more so than 4e. I think this is probably good, since it's almost impossible to balance things at both ends, but it does potentially mean less variation. But it has good effects that a character a few level higher than you" feels like "an adventurer like you, but more experienced" not "a demigod". And that there's less artificial scaling where every PC gets regular stat boosts to increase to-hit and damage-per-second and armour-class -- as does every monster.
It seems like, 1st level is really a tutorial level (although actually, I'd like an EVEN SIMPLER introduction for some newbies) where characters all have stuff they can do, but some of the key class features kick in at second level (eg. rogue has backstab damage at first level, but gets a free disengage/hide action from second which is nearly as class-defining). 4th or 5th feels like a typical point for experienced 3.5e players.
In addition to flattening the power level, the magic-item economy is gone. The classes are designed to be balanced mostly as-is, with a minimum amount of gold and almost no magic items. So you can run a low-magic campaign where the only magic is PC and NPC spellcasters, and add a magic sword for effect when it seems dramatic, not assume that everyone is carting around cartloads of +1 stuff else they're unplayable.
I think it could sensibly by used to run either an old-school "kick in the door and take as much treasure as you can before you die" session or a "mostly about roleplaying with some combat" session which are the sorts I enjoy the most.
4e is probably better for tactical combat -- I like that in theory, but never find it works well for me in practice.
Has anyone actually tried 5e?
FATE core and FATE accelerated
I've also been following a couple of people's suggestions and reading about FATE. IIUC it's based on ideas from FUDGE, based on a very freeform mechanics-light structure. Ideal for "here's a wacky idea about X" or "here's an existing setting (Dresden Files) with clear flavour but vague on specifics, can we adapt that to a game" and producing setting and character sheets with minimal write-up and no need to spend ages trying to balance PC activities.
Basically it sounds really fun if you want an adventure without tactical combat at all (there's still some tactics, but not based primarily on characters specific abilities).
Although some people apparently flounder if they're used to DnD -- there's definitely a "everyone should choose things that are appropriate, not always what would be most effective for the character". (Like Dogs-in-the-Vineyard, it seems it's more fun to pick character traits which come up about half the time -- but some people find it hard to resist arguing that they ALWAYS apply.)
Has anyone actually tried any of the editions of FATE?
no subject
Date: 2015-07-03 03:57 pm (UTC)I can certainly see the point of that, but (at risk of being grammatically irritating) I'd query the relevant scale of "unique". I mean, it would seem to me that how much needs to go into that for making a fighter feel unique in a party of four fighters of the same general build is rather different from how much needs to go into that for making a fighter distinct in your classic party of one fighter-type, one cleric-type, one sorceror-type and one skill-monkey. I have tended to favour the latter both for story reasons and... for all that I dislike excessive minmaxing, the choice between four characters who can each hit for on average ten points and one character who with a bit of thought and synergies with the other very different characters' skills can hit for an average of sixty points does seem to come out good on a pure combat-mechanistic front too.
But a lot of the time in 3.5, there's a LOT of "these feats you must take if your group is optimised at all or your character just won't be effective" that don't have a lot of flavour justification, like "Power attack -- as you become a more skillful swordfighter, you can do more damage to people" which seems like it should apply to everyone.
Indeed, and some of that feels to me very much like throwing all sorts of different mechanistic fixes at the very fundamental 2e issue with combat-types scaling linearly and wizards scaling quadratically such that they are way weaker for the first few levels and ridiculously much stronger at high level. (Like "give wizards lots of fairly low-level buff spells so that when they're at a point that they are tossing big destructive evocations around in combat that's not in competition with resources for them to power up fighters", and "for Desna's sake have all fighters take one level in an arcane spellcaster class at some point so they have true strike available for key moments.")
And a LOT of feats which provide small mechanical bonuses which you have to remember at various times. Like a board game. And I like doing that if I've time to get good at it -- if we've juuuuuust defeated some goblins, and I want to see, next session, can we improve our techniques and do better? But most of the time I DON'T have time to become good at it, it's just an endless vista of "here's 100 feats from the source book and 500 feats from other books you don't have and you can't wing it or it might be unbalanced, choose some, and if you choose wrong you may look greedy or stupid". Like, I might like to work up to that, but I've honestly not played enough to do so.
That makes a lot of sense, and I am sure I am thinking of this much more from a DM than player perspective; I definitely do have the drive for squeezing rulesets for interesting and effective outcomes, but that's far more likely to lead me to nuclear terraforming in Civ III than to thinking about RPGs.
(Incidentally, I am now 224 years into kittengame thanks primarily to the mention of it on your idle-games post a bit ago, and enjoying exploring the ruleset interactions and optimisation space of that immensely.)
And I know some people don't have that problem because they play a tactics-heavy game and do know the pros and cons of various minor advantages. And some people don't have that problem because they don't focus a lot on combat and it doesn't matter if characters are optimised. But it felt more accessible to me.
It certainly sounds so, yes. I shall be interested to see how your experience playing it works out.
no subject
Date: 2015-07-04 09:11 am (UTC)#1. Balance classes at high level by giving fighters essentially obligatory level-ups.
#2. Create more variety in characters -- a reason to play a whip-fighter rather than a trident-fighter.
#3. More options for optimisation and synergy.
I agree #1 was necessary, but it's not desirable it was necessary. I know *about* it but never played consistently enough to recognise the problem of my own experience. Likewise, I quite like the idea of "wiz, rogue, fighter, cleric", so I think having different sorts of fighter is superior but not necessary to enjoy the game.
I thought that's what _you_ were saying -- if not, how did you use feats, why do you care if feats are granular (or if they exist at all)?
I definitely do have the drive for squeezing rulesets for interesting and effective outcomes, but that's far more likely to lead me to nuclear terraforming in Civ III than to thinking about RPGs.
Likewise -- I love exploiting systems, but most of the time doing that isn't the most enjoyable part of a multi-player game. It's noticeable in magic -- I love the IDEA of discovering a deck which combines lots of previously-ignored cards into something surprisingly unbeatable. But when I actually play, having a tense back-and-forth where both decks do interesting things is usually more fun.
I shall be interested to see how your experience playing it works out.
Thank you, I'll report back if I actually manage to get a game going :)
no subject
Date: 2015-07-06 02:13 am (UTC)#1. Balance classes at high level by giving fighters essentially obligatory level-ups.
#2. Create more variety in characters -- a reason to play a whip-fighter rather than a trident-fighter.
#3. More options for optimisation and synergy.
I agree #1 was necessary, but it's not desirable it was necessary.
Is there a word missing there ?
#2 and #3 strike me as positives worth aiming for. #1 strikes me as a problem that needed fixing, but possibly not at that particular scale.
Likewise, I quite like the idea of "wiz, rogue, fighter, cleric", so I think having different sorts of fighter is superior but not necessary to enjoy the game.
I like the idea of having different kinds of classes that do those different things, and I certainly think adventures that give synergistic challenges are more fun; not to my mind absolutely necessary to split the talents in those directions an even four ways - splitting the "clericness" of a party up by having a paladin who also gets part of the "fighterness" works for me if they add up more or less competent in all that set of skills.
I thought that's what _you_ were saying -- if not, how did you use feats, why do you care if feats are granular (or if they exist at all)?
In an ideal world, what I would want is a system which well supports ability to make fighter-types distinct, character and flavour-wise, from the other major types and to an extent among themselves. I'd like to be able to play Conan as distinct from Lancelot as distinct from d'Artagnan and have rules that mechanistically supported that well without making any one of those archetypes drastically superior to any other at the same level (Which probably necessitates taking away d'Artagnan's musket and pistols, but so be it). Whether the way the rules support doing this is through different base character classes or different prestige classes or different selection of feats is immaterial to me at a personal preference level; at an approachability level, I can see that a reasonably small number of base classes is a good thing, and that without some sort of careful higher-level rules about multiclassing, checking prestige classes for balance becomes a combinatorial nightmare, so optional feats appear to be the scale at which most of this could be done within something recognisable as the paradigm of D&D.
On one level my philosophical ideal is "lots of granularity, lots of options with interestingly different flavour, all equally good". On the other, I can see that enough playtesting to confirm no hidden gamebreakers is a hard task, and that in a finite world it's probably better to have fewer feats if they are ensuingly better-tested for balance. I'd like to imagine a model where anything that's as nigh-essential in practice as the Power Attack->Cleave->Great Cleave feat tree to keeping a fighter up to the challenges should become a fixed feature of the class and leave the optional choices for ones that are more interesting. Then again, I'm a long way from sure how mechanistically different fighters can be within the basic role of "the character that hits things", so maybe that's an argument for a finite range of well-defined feats too.
Same arguments apply, I think, to distinguishing a cleric from an oracle from an inquisitor, though well-defined game settings seem to have an edge up in making the divine-spellcaster options distinct by making the relevant gods distinct, flavourwise. Likewise, with the range of stuff covered by the full set of more-or-less traditional D&D wizard spells, it's fairly easy to split them up into a handful of distinct schools and get flavour out of saying "OK, you are particularly into/good at/trained in X but you don't get to do Y and Z. Or summon things."
I'm interested in the potential for entirely different paradigms that might work well with those classic four, and I don't know enough about things people have tried in that direction; never been in games where anyone played a martial-artist monk type, for example, and that seems to be a fairly enduring character class.
no subject
Date: 2015-07-06 11:59 am (UTC)I mean, given the DnD rules at the time, it was necessary to have some way of giving fighters power progression that keeps up with wizards. But not every game needs that, it's better not to have that problem in the first place :)
not to my mind absolutely necessary to split the talents in those directions an even four ways
Yeah, I didn't necessarily mean _exactly_ those four, just that, characters with a range of specialisations ideally all timeshare time in a spotlight, and it's more forgiving to balance if you can be 10% better or worse and still the obvious "fighting" character, whereas if several characters are both optimised for raw damage output (or any other use), then being 10% better or worse can immediately make some of them feel superfluous.
I assume you can mix and match other combinations, although I don't know which work best.
I'd like to be able to play Conan as distinct from Lancelot as distinct from d'Artagnan and have rules that mechanistically supported that well
Yeah, definitely. It's blatant in 5e that wizards ideally don't know all spells for their level, so "enchantment wizard" and "blaster wizard" can be quite different characters. And fighters have SOME choices, but comparatively few, and only "archer or brawler or a couple of others", not the mix-and-match choose different spells can give wizards.
I think what I'd do is take a cue from 4e and from wizard design, and give fighters other abilities that are thematically appropriate, and function mechanically as spells, but are just dramatically appropriate. Either "as often as they like instead of a regular attack, but not always tactically appropriate" or "limited to N times per fight/session".
Eg. "Challenge, target makes a will save, else attempts to duel you in some way."
Eg. "Stunning blow, target makes fort save else is knocked unconscious (any ally may wake)" -- basically "fighter's sleep spell"
Eg. "Scything sweep, attack two adjacent enemy" there was lots of this in 4e, I'm not sure if it's in 5e or not, though hopefully it will show up if it hasn't already.
Eg. "Duellist's persistence" an attack where you engage for multiple turns doing minimal damage, but then get off a nova attack at the end that can function as a killing blow.
In fact, now I think of it, you could do the same between classes -- as magical classes share spells, but have different lists of class spells, martial classes could have a list of manouvers, and which ones you can choose for your class.
But this is all speculation, I've not tried it, I don't know if it would work.
optional feats appear to be the scale at which most of this could be done within something recognisable as the paradigm of D&D.
Right, I agree, SOMETHING should take the role of mechanical differentiation, and if so, it needs more granularity, but it seemed feats weren't really doing that anyway so I wasn't thinking in those terms.
If they were, you can add in some granularity, eg. "take a feat which gives you any three abilities from the mini-feats list" or something.
no subject
Date: 2015-07-06 05:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-07-07 01:16 pm (UTC)That's good to know, although I think it's partly a matter of focus -- it's not so much that you CAN have the feats to do that, as being explicitly guided towards it in character creation, as with wizards choosing spells. Or that, if you decide feats need a "once/encounter" limit or similar, there's an existing framework for it, each feat doesn't need to describe it differently.
no subject
Date: 2015-07-12 04:20 pm (UTC)