- Location
- Drachyench on Discord
Alternatively, and this may just be me, maybe a lot of low-power players like campaigns that look more like Vinland Saga or the first Baldur's Gate than they want to play Bleach: The RPG?
Dungeons and Dragons Megathread
- Thread starter Havocfett
- Start date
Are we seriously claiming that lower-fantasy is BadWrongFun now?
Seriously?
AuraTwilight
The Sorcerer of Smiles
- Location
- The Silver City
At the risk of lapsing into vintage style AuraTwilight it always seemed to me that what the "high power" types wanted is to to succeed through GM coddling but then be told they succeed because they are special animuuu snowflakes. It's really just the old RPGsite argument, only with nicer people making it.
Wow, sweeping generalizations sure are bullshit.
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
When you want to play an actual superhero, and are constantly told, no, play "Mortals, the Dysenterying," instead, one starts to feel a lot of sympathy for that position.
Now, of course, people wanting to play low magic gritty fantasy is perfectly okay if that's what's fun for them. But...
After so much stormwind and "noncasters should remain mooks" and "actually using your class abilities intelligently rather than pandering to some grog's nostaligia glasses vision of AD&D means you're an munchkin" ....
Well, you start to hate people who say that D&D should be low fantasy.
I don't agree with Mistborn's logic, but boy do I sympathize a lot with the emotion behind his/her argument.
- Location
- Elendel, Scadrial
I think it's important to nail down what the terms of the debate here. The 5e fans in this thread are the ones making the badwrong fun argument here. There is version of D&D that support both "high power fantasy game" and "low power fantasy games" and that version is 3e. It's the 5e fans who are saying they will be unsatisfied unless they are catered to exclusively.
Are you honestly going to argue that 3.5 supports low power games? Because that's...not really true.
Moreover, you started this discussion by lambasting anyone who liked 5th, as well as some outright fabrications about previous editions of dnd(that you have yet to answer). I don't think your opponents are the one's hung up on badwrongfun.
Last edited:
- Location
- Elendel, Scadrial
Of course it does, low level 3.5 characters are not "high power" by any stretch of the imagination. There's even a well respected set of house rules for people who want to play low level games exclusively.
On the other hand the range of power 5e covers is not different form previous edition it is just smaller. By definition that means the edition change is excluding some peoples preferences.
Core 3.5 has rules for non-magical characters to go up to level 20. This does not mean that non magical characters are supported from level 1-20. And while those rules exist, the fact that they are houserules means that they're not really supported by the game itself.
Also, I like how you continue to talk as though DnD started in 3.5. Have you read my previous posts?
No, we're arguing that 3.5ed is a shitty ruleset, not that it's impossible to have fun with it.
I mean, in decades past kids had fun playing with wooden toy soldiers. That we've got more sophisticated and better constructed entertainment today for playing with digital toy soldiers doesn't mean that the wooden toy soldiers are worthless as far as entertainment goes.
They're just really crappy by modern standards.
AuraTwilight
The Sorcerer of Smiles
- Location
- The Silver City
Didn't you literally criticize 5E for being a 'DM May I?" game that relied on house rules?
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
To be fair, one can argue that carving stone is easier than getting water to form a statue.
eg, fixing bad rules is easier that having to create new rules yourself for everything.
But honestly, there comes a point where things are so broken you're better of scrapping everything and starting fresh. Whether d20 is that broken depends on who you ask.
Ursine
Concerned Citizen
- Location
- Home, Sweet Home
3.5 was not broken, at least not in the unplayable sense, it just offered a particular game play experience. 5e offers a different experience. Both are good, it just depends what you want at the time.
And House Rules are not a valid arguement to say 3.5 can focus on lower magic games, because I can make House Rules to make Rifts playable if I try hard enough. The game as it stands does not support that game style at all well.
Incidently, Iron Heroes was by far my favorite rules variant for 3.5, even if I never got my group to play it past a one-shot. Iron Heroes was definitely low fantasy.
And House Rules are not a valid arguement to say 3.5 can focus on lower magic games, because I can make House Rules to make Rifts playable if I try hard enough. The game as it stands does not support that game style at all well.
Incidently, Iron Heroes was by far my favorite rules variant for 3.5, even if I never got my group to play it past a one-shot. Iron Heroes was definitely low fantasy.
Last edited:
Shephard
Still in Statis
House rules don't count. If they did, then I could easily go and house rule 5E to being 'High Power', with most of said house rules being supported inside the Dungeon's Master Guide (And I am, in fact, using some of them for a homebrew setting I'm working on).
Except...You're the one continually complaining about 5E. You're the one who's acting as though playing 5E and having fun with it is bad. Whereas the people supporting 5E have repeatedly pointed out that you can get High Level Fantasy in...Exalted or...Y'know, 3E?
There's also Legend, for blatantly godlike martial classes too.
The 5E fans aren't saying High Power is 'badwrong fun'. They are saying they don't see a reason that 5E needs to be High Power just because 3E was.
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
In fact, I have been going on for page about why 5e not being High Power was a a deliberate design decision - and the RIGHT one for D&D as a franchise.
Shephard
Still in Statis
I have to agree. Personally, the whole 'Wizards are unbeatable gods' and 'Heroes can kill entire armies' by themselves was not something that interested me. Even for the book/setting I'm writing that's based on the concept of 'higher level' persons being superhumanly powerful, entire armies being irrelevant...Isn't really that interesting to me.
I mean, it's cool that people liked 3.5 ed and Exalted and Legend (Where fighters get to fly!) and so on and so forth, but fifth edition is the first version of Dungeons and Dragons that had me interested.
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
I *like* D&D as high fantasy magipunk sci-fi (and no i'm not referring to Eberron. Eberron is smalltime. FR has MYTHALS). The problem is, the fanbase largely doesn't. So to remain viable as a gameline, D&D has to submit to the wishes of the fanbase, and be low/mid fantasy.
That's all there is to it. 5e is designed for lower magic heroic fantasy and that's fine.
Complaining about the switch is kinda pointless. It was inevitable, and the only surprise is that it didn't come sooner.
I'm still playing 3.5, and that's also fine.
That's all there is to it. 5e is designed for lower magic heroic fantasy and that's fine.
Complaining about the switch is kinda pointless. It was inevitable, and the only surprise is that it didn't come sooner.
I'm still playing 3.5, and that's also fine.
Ursine
Concerned Citizen
- Location
- Home, Sweet Home
What is not fine is throwing wasp's nests into orphanages. And sadly this came up in a D&D game a while back.
What everything comes down to is that Edition Wars are pointless.
Its not like WOTC won't create a new edition in five or six years anyway. The next one might be exactly what Mistborn wants. Eventually, every gamer will have their own unique D&D edition, which we will all play with a bunch of AIs, thus eliminating any need to interact even with other gamers. And hasn't that been the dream all along?
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
LIES. Making fun of Pathfailure will Never get old.
Hey we went and nerfed every single ally buff in the game! While also giving casters more incentive to focus on save-or-dies rather that control or support spells! Because Pathfinder HATES FRIENDSHIP.
Ursine
Concerned Citizen
- Location
- Home, Sweet Home
See, the problem here is that the Grogs don't actually want a low magic game. They want a high magic game except nobody but wizards get magic. Which, in fact, isn't actually an inherently bad design. I mean, that's basically what Exalted is, the Exalts are magical superpowered fight wizards and non-fight-wizards are mooks. The thing is, they insist that they should do this and that you should have non-casters as actual PC options and claim this is a good idea instead of just a trap.
It's more that the grogs don't understand Negative Play Experiences (and thus defend save or sucks/save or dies) and further want to insist on keeping the NPEs for sake of tradition. NPE, for those of you who aren't familiar with the term, are basically things that might technically be balanced but are incredibly unfun, often because they take control away from the player or have trap options that look cool and end up screwing people over. They're stuff that can be worked around but as a newbie will make you very sad and possibly put you off the game forever.
Infinity, a wargame which I love bringing up because it's fucking awesome (seriously), did a bunch of things to remove negative play experiences recently. They reduced the power of Rambo options and removed a lot of indirect fire weapons from the field because they were plenty balanced in normal play-but against a new player, an Avatar or Jotun showing up would probably wreck the shit out of you and you would not have much fun because you wouldn't know how to build and position your army to counter Rambos.
Magic: the Gathering has recently removed most if not all land destruction cards from the current format, because land destruction is balanced-but it is ridiculously unfun. "Oh hey I get to sit around doing nothing because I have no lands." etc etc. Same with the evolution of Magic counterspells, if you look at them. You go from the UU catch-all generic Counterspell to a bunch of more expensive and/or less powerful counter effects.
Or Exalted. Shaping defenses exist to remove NPEs, but the biggest NPE in Exalted is Paranoia Combat.
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
This is not what I was talking about.
Some grogs are like that. But there are also many, grog or otherwise, who insist that wizards should be casting blasty evocations only, and that you are a horribly horrible munchkin for wanting to use anything from the, oh, about 85% of the printed spells that aren't direct AD&D analogs.
Ironically, many of those spells are the ones that *don't* NPE the poor melee character next to you - that is, the ally buffs, the terrain reshaping spells that create walls or impediments, the illusions that let you creatively outwit the foe.
Nope, none of that "fun-having" nonsense. You're only allowed to either throw boring fireballs that add zero strategic depth, or instagib the enemy with save or dies and make the poor Barbarian feel small in the pants.
And that's before you run into the DM's that have demons come in the middle of the night and steal your holy symbol without even letting you roll listen to try and catch them in the act, or cover the land in anti-magic fields. Because no, you're not allowed to actually play a Wizard, Cleric or Druid. Play a commoner, aristocrat or bear, you putz.
And don't forget the lovely "It's not a traditional class so it must be some OP weird thing" crowd, who somehow manage to say this with a straight face despite candles of invocation being CORE.
You know what the ultimate NPE is? Having super powers on your character sheet and never being allowed to use them.
brb making an all-bear campaign for D&D. EVERYONE IS A BEAR
PUNY HUMANS ARE BURNING YOUR CAVES AND GRINDING YOU FOR XP
DID THEY THINK THAT HUMANS WERE THE ONLY ADVENTURERS AROUND?
PUNY HUMANS ARE BURNING YOUR CAVES AND GRINDING YOU FOR XP
DID THEY THINK THAT HUMANS WERE THE ONLY ADVENTURERS AROUND?
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
Alternatively, a Religion check on bears provides the following:
DC15: Bears do not attend any continuous services of worship. They are ready to kill at all hours of the week.
DC20: They mysteriously vanish every winter, perhaps to give reverence to their perverse fertility goddess while gorging on the souls of men lost to famine.
DC25: Bear society has no visibly ordained clerics.
DC35: SHIT NEVERMIND THEY HAVE THEM, RUN.
Source: Bear Lore
Last edited:
AuraTwilight
The Sorcerer of Smiles
- Location
- The Silver City
Ursine
Concerned Citizen
- Location
- Home, Sweet Home
YES, FEAR THE RIGHTEOUS FURY OF THE BEAR!
FOR VERILY, THE EVIL OF MAN DID RUNNETH OVER,
AND DIVINE JUSTICE WAS SENT UNTO THEM,
TO SMITE THEM IN THEIR HOMES,
TO SMITE THEM IN THEIR FIELDS,
TO RESTORE THE TRUE MASTERS OF THE LAND
TO THEIR SACRED DOMINION OVER ALL!
BOW BEFORE YOUR BEAR MASTERS!