Ok while I can see how to newbies the idea of having to think this stuff through is daunting but what I think people need are not more rules, what WOTC needs to be much better at doing is presenting online resources to help teach DMs how to do this at their own tables. ...
Far better would be a series of articles by different DMs walking through how they manage crafting at their table, otherwise the very nature of the subject means you are looking at 50 pages plus of rules, tables, options and ideas for just one niche thing
If you feel that defining something takes away DM agency, that's the very first thing that should be addressed. DM agency is or at least should be absolute. There is value in rules consistency across tables, especially with respect to something like Adventurers League, but when it comes to their own campaign DM agency trumps that.
WotC absolutely needs to do better helping DMs learn how to DM, but online resources are not the right way to go about that. Online resources should be about extras, options, ideas. "How to DM" is an essential quality they should address in the core books, and it so happens they have an entire book for that purpose: the Dungeon Master's Guide. Unfortunately, the DMG fails abysmally (I'll add an 'in my opinion' here, though honestly this seems so obvious to me I daresay the point doesn't need to be qualified like that) in doing what should be its main job. Various ways to handle special/magical items in a campaign - which would include the possibility of crafting - seems like a totally obvious subject to cover in the DMG. Instead what we get is about a hundred pages of tables and lists of stuff with one or two "unless you decide your game is different" sentences thrown in there, devoid of any suggestions or advice about why and how you might want your game to be different or even about how or why what's in the DMG is supposed to be great.
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Ok, my initial reaction to having all the options and abilities for the Adepts was a bit negative. They have a LOT of potential abilities to choose from and would certainly have more abilities than the current Monk. On the surface it looks like a serious jump in power.
But then I realized that while they may have a lot that they can do, all of those abilities are fueled by the same limited pool of resources. Kind of like how casters may have 9 prepared spells, but can't cast all of them due to a limited number of Spell Slots. So the Adept (Monk) just has more things they can do with their Ki Points in a given moment. I can live with that.
Now whether each of these "tools" are balanced... well, that is a different story. I like some of them quite a bit and they all allow for a level customization that I would really like to play with. But some of them are a bit much. Vengeful Spirit and Instant Step stood out as a bit much. Vengeful Spirit is I think WAY too much while Instant Step could be reigned in a bit and be fine.
All in all, I think the concept is good but it needs a bit more refinement. I hope WotC is watching and gives us something that falls more into the middle ground of what we have and what En World has going.
Ok while I can see how to newbies the idea of having to think this stuff through is daunting but what I think people need are not more rules, what WOTC needs to be much better at doing is presenting online resources to help teach DMs how to do this at their own tables. ...
Far better would be a series of articles by different DMs walking through how they manage crafting at their table, otherwise the very nature of the subject means you are looking at 50 pages plus of rules, tables, options and ideas for just one niche thing
If you feel that defining something takes away DM agency, that's the very first thing that should be addressed. DM agency is or at least should be absolute. There is value in rules consistency across tables, especially with respect to something like Adventurers League, but when it comes to their own campaign DM agency trumps that.
WotC absolutely needs to do better helping DMs learn how to DM, but online resources are not the right way to go about that. Online resources should be about extras, options, ideas. "How to DM" is an essential quality they should address in the core books, and it so happens they have an entire book for that purpose: the Dungeon Master's Guide. Unfortunately, the DMG fails abysmally (I'll add an 'in my opinion' here, though honestly this seems so obvious to me I daresay the point doesn't need to be qualified like that) in doing what should be its main job. Various ways to handle special/magical items in a campaign - which would include the possibility of crafting - seems like a totally obvious subject to cover in the DMG. Instead what we get is about a hundred pages of tables and lists of stuff with one or two "unless you decide your game is different" sentences thrown in there, devoid of any suggestions or advice about why and how you might want your game to be different or even about how or why what's in the DMG is supposed to be great.
I agree the DMG could be improved but, what would you remove for what would need to be a weighty section on crafting. Why would it need to be weighty, because it would need to be flexible enough for DMs to apply how they want without prescribing or limiting things. The problem with that is that covering it in 1-2 pages just won’t cover it off.
Crafting is such a varied wide ranging thing, how do you compare creating an existing item to wanting to craft something unique and new, either a mundane or a magic item. The first person that I have seen get it semi right online is Matt Mercer in campaign 1 of critical roll where Percy created such things as an electric glove, a silencer for his rifle (zone of silence) and crafted his entire rifle. These things took time and all we saw was the at table dice rolling after Taliesan stated he had talked in detail with Matt about his ideas away from the table.
Crafting is such a specialized and niche thing that I really don’t see the value in Wizards devoting pages and pages to it in the limited space that is the DMG.
I will also ask, what in the DMG is horrendous, it is very basic, as an experienced GM the world building sections where a fun flick through but didn’t give me anything new, but maybe 20+ years ago they would have done.
I will also ask, what in the DMG is horrendous, it is very basic, as an experienced GM the world building sections where a fun flick through but didn’t give me anything new, but maybe 20+ years ago they would have done.
Honestly, most of it. The worldbuilding sections are 90% lists of "maybe you want to have this on your world" - the exact thing that would be great as a web supplement, but in the DMG could be pared down to half or less of the pages devoted to it now and replaced with advice on how to cook up a world instead of the line-up-at-the-world-buffet approach we have now. Same with the treasure chapter, as mentioned above, and definitely same with the interminable tables of random X. More advice and fewer examples, please. Examples don't help with creativity half as much as even a semi-coherent pep talk would. Part 1, creating a world and a multiverse, is longer than part 3, running the game and the dungeon master's workshop - running the game alone should warrant more pages than worldbuilding IMO. Adventure environments and between adventures get as many pages as creating adventures and creating NPCs - surely that too doesn't seem like the right balance, never mind that the former two could be incorporated in the worldbuilding chapter in the first place? The whole thing just falls flat for me. Xanathar's DM tools chapter is, if you take out the score of random encounter tables, 50 pages of straight upgrades to the corresponding DMG content. It's certainly not perfect either, but it's all material that arguably should have been in the DMG in the first place.
Edit: while I'm at it, how nobody on the DMG dev team looked at the table of contents and thought that having worldbuilding be the first thing on the list and actually running a game all but last might just be the wrong way around is beyond me.
I will also ask, what in the DMG is horrendous, it is very basic, as an experienced GM the world building sections where a fun flick through but didn’t give me anything new, but maybe 20+ years ago they would have done.
Honestly, most of it. The worldbuilding sections are 90% lists of "maybe you want to have this on your world" - the exact thing that would be great as a web supplement, but in the DMG could be pared down to half or less of the pages devoted to it now and replaced with advice on how to cook up a world instead of the line-up-at-the-world-buffet approach we have now. Same with the treasure chapter, as mentioned above, and definitely same with the interminable tables of random X. More advice and fewer examples, please. Examples don't help with creativity half as much as even a semi-coherent pep talk would. Part 1, creating a world and a multiverse, is longer than part 3, running the game and the dungeon master's workshop - running the game alone should warrant more pages than worldbuilding IMO. Adventure environments and between adventures get as many pages as creating adventures and creating NPCs - surely that too doesn't seem like the right balance, never mind that the former two could be incorporated in the worldbuilding chapter in the first place? The whole thing just falls flat for me. Xanathar's DM tools chapter is, if you take out the score of random encounter tables, 50 pages of straight upgrades to the corresponding DMG content. It's certainly not perfect either, but it's all material that arguably should have been in the DMG in the first place.
I picked it up again and re reviewed it and yes, there are an awful lot of tables in it, personally I can't stand random encounter or loot tables, but I imagine there are many who use them there is also an awful lot of stuff that really I agree could be removed but I am conscious I am coming to it as someone who has been doing this for years and I don't like assuming something isn't useful to someone else.
I think we can both agree the DMG probably needs the most work and can be improved without actually changing the mechanics of the game. For me rather then adding new rules for things like Crafting putting in more detail supporting new DM's helping them both understand how to tell stories, but also how to innovate and be creative in how they use the rules they have and allow there players to do things. But the fact remains that no matter how good the DMG is, in many ways having it makes it already better then what i had back in the day, nothing is going to beat simply putting in the hours of doing the GM role and I think that is something that just has to be accepted.
The whole CR needs reworking as well, but again like I have said in the past I have yet to find a system that can mathematically help a DM create challanging encounters pitched just hard enough. Maybe if they try tweaking it to 3-4 encounters in a day, or find a way to allow the number of encounters faced to be plugged into the calculation?
1) I picked it up again and re reviewed it and yes, there are an awful lot of tables in it, personally I can't stand random encounter or loot tables, but I imagine there are many who use them there is also an awful lot of stuff that really I agree could be removed but I am conscious I am coming to it as someone who has been doing this for years and I don't like assuming something isn't useful to someone else.
2) I think we can both agree the DMG probably needs the most work and can be improved without actually changing the mechanics of the game. For me rather then adding new rules for things like Crafting putting in more detail supporting new DM's helping them both understand how to tell stories, but also how to innovate and be creative in how they use the rules they have and allow there players to do things. But the fact remains that no matter how good the DMG is, in many ways having it makes it already better then what i had back in the day, nothing is going to beat simply putting in the hours of doing the GM role and I think that is something that just has to be accepted.
3) The whole CR needs reworking as well, but again like I have said in the past I have yet to find a system that can mathematically help a DM create challanging encounters pitched just hard enough. Maybe if they try tweaking it to 3-4 encounters in a day, or find a way to allow the number of encounters faced to be plugged into the calculation?
1) Anything is usually better than nothing, as you point out in that second paragraph, but that doesn't make everything good. I'm not saying nobody could ever find the endless lists and tables useful, I'm saying similar content could be created in a much more useful format.
2) It might be a bit radical in practice, but just about all the contents of the DMG could be linked to how to tell stories - including crafting. A big part of the DMG should not be "here's how we do X", which implicitly suggests "here's how you should do X" despite any qualifiers WotC might add, but rather "here are a couple of approaches to X, followed by suggestions about why you might want to develop your own version of X and how you can make it an engaging part of the world and the adventures the party will set out on". Crafting magical items could be relatively common or it could be vanishingly rare; clearly the stories that will develop will differ significantly already because of that alone.
3) CR does need reworking, and I see how you can't find a mathematical system that does what CR aims at doing. I think that's because math, at least math that can be done without an advanced degree, can't account for all the circumstances in which an encounter might happen, all the creative solutions the players might come up with, or whether the DM picks a tactically astute approach or goes for brute forcing the fight with the enemy mobs. CR should explicitly be a ballpark number, and even then probably really a handful of numbers (CR 3 if alone and an open fight, CR 4 if more than one, CR 6 if ambushing, something like that). And I stress explicitly, since right now there are people asking if they did anything wrong calculating CRs or encounters because what happened at their game table didn't correspond to what the official calculation methods suggest should have happened. It's also just not great DMing to not deviate from what's in the module or your pre-game prep, just because those things should be theoretically correct. What happens in practice is more important than what should have happened in theory, and that's something that should be made more abundantly clear in the books. Run with the story that develops on the table, don't try to run the story that's in your or someone else's head.
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The DMG should be a D&D construction kit, lots of optional alternative rules, ways to play, expanded concepts like west marches, stronghold building, kingdom running, advanced and alternative systems, anything and everything to allow DM's to create their own custom way to play and of course most importantly 50 years worth of collected advice on the subject of running the game.
Not disagreeing here, but I really want the DMG to find a better balance between proposing a myriad of options and offering advice on making up your own things. Finding your own way to play and run a game should be more than a D&D LEGO set built from a giant box of blocks, DMs should be encouraged to think about what kind of blocks that maybe don't exist yet would be good for them.
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1) I picked it up again and re reviewed it and yes, there are an awful lot of tables in it, personally I can't stand random encounter or loot tables, but I imagine there are many who use them there is also an awful lot of stuff that really I agree could be removed but I am conscious I am coming to it as someone who has been doing this for years and I don't like assuming something isn't useful to someone else.
2) I think we can both agree the DMG probably needs the most work and can be improved without actually changing the mechanics of the game. For me rather then adding new rules for things like Crafting putting in more detail supporting new DM's helping them both understand how to tell stories, but also how to innovate and be creative in how they use the rules they have and allow there players to do things. But the fact remains that no matter how good the DMG is, in many ways having it makes it already better then what i had back in the day, nothing is going to beat simply putting in the hours of doing the GM role and I think that is something that just has to be accepted.
3) The whole CR needs reworking as well, but again like I have said in the past I have yet to find a system that can mathematically help a DM create challanging encounters pitched just hard enough. Maybe if they try tweaking it to 3-4 encounters in a day, or find a way to allow the number of encounters faced to be plugged into the calculation?
1) Anything is usually better than nothing, as you point out in that second paragraph, but that doesn't make everything good. I'm not saying nobody could ever find the endless lists and tables useful, I'm saying similar content could be created in a much more useful format.
2) It might be a bit radical in practice, but just about all the contents of the DMG could be linked to how to tell stories - including crafting. A big part of the DMG should not be "here's how we do X", which implicitly suggests "here's how you should do X" despite any qualifiers WotC might add, but rather "here are a couple of approaches to X, followed by suggestions about why you might want to develop your own version of X and how you can make it an engaging part of the world and the adventures the party will set out on". Crafting magical items could be relatively common or it could be vanishingly rare; clearly the stories that will develop will differ significantly already because of that alone.
3) CR does need reworking, and I see how you can't find a mathematical system that does what CR aims at doing. I think that's because math, at least math that can be done without an advanced degree, can't account for all the circumstances in which an encounter might happen, all the creative solutions the players might come up with, or whether the DM picks a tactically astute approach or goes for brute forcing the fight with the enemy mobs. CR should explicitly be a ballpark number, and even then probably really a handful of numbers (CR 3 if alone and an open fight, CR 4 if more than one, CR 6 if ambushing, something like that). And I stress explicitly, since right now there are people asking if they did anything wrong calculating CRs or encounters because what happened at their game table didn't correspond to what the official calculation methods suggest should have happened. It's also just not great DMing to not deviate from what's in the module or your pre-game prep, just because those things should be theoretically correct. What happens in practice is more important than what should have happened in theory, and that's something that should be made more abundantly clear in the books. Run with the story that develops on the table, don't try to run the story that's in your or someone else's head.
I think we are in pretty much agreement here, but the point you make about CR really does get the heart of the issue. I said earlier that the moment WOTC write out a rule it limits DM creativity, someone argued and said the rules can be ignored, and they are right, but CR is such a great example of something that, because it is defined, many feel they have to use to create all encounters. This is why I would love to see DnD 5.5E not add more mechanics and hard rules, but like you say provide inspiration for how DM's can apply the thin layer of actual rules and then use their own imagination to sculpt something in there own style.
RAW has become such a major thing now, Chris Perkins has said that he has had people message him that he has done things wrong in his own live games, this is Chris Perkins being told he has got rules wrong. As he attempts to continually point out the only key rule is that everyone has fun, Gary Gygax stated the rules where a guidline that could be ignored, changed and used as desired but so many now come to the game treating the rulebook and DMG as some sort of Gospel that must be applied exactly as written or you are not playing the game right
I think we are in pretty much agreement here, but the point you make about CR really does get the heart of the issue. I said earlier that the moment WOTC write out a rule it limits DM creativity, someone argued and said the rules can be ignored, and they are right, but CR is such a great example of something that, because it is defined, many feel they have to use to create all encounters. This is why I would love to see DnD 5.5E not add more mechanics and hard rules, but like you say provide inspiration for how DM's can apply the thin layer of actual rules and then use their own imagination to sculpt something in there own style.
RAW has become such a major thing now, Chris Perkins has said that he has had people message him that he has done things wrong in his own live games, this is Chris Perkins being told he has got rules wrong. As he attempts to continually point out the only key rule is that everyone has fun, Gary Gygax stated the rules where a guidline that could be ignored, changed and used as desired but so many now come to the game treating the rulebook and DMG as some sort of Gospel that must be applied exactly as written or you are not playing the game right
RAW has been a big thing probably since AD&D 2nd (possibly even earlier, not enough personal experience to say) and certainly since 3rd edition. Ruleslawyering is nothing new. Just about every big live game I can remember had someone make it clear the group wasn't going to do everything by the book, for various reasons, but it doesn't always get across. I'm not surprised Chris Perkins got called out, though it is a sad state of affairs. He's the quintessential DM for me, super knowledgeable, understated, makes the game entirely about the players, and does it all without needing props or gimmicks or having to look things up.
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All in all, I think the concept is good but it needs a bit more refinement. I hope WotC is watching and gives us something that falls more into the middle ground of what we have and what En World has going.
I looked at those pages you posted and noped the heck out. I don't want D&D to become anything close to that
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You didn't offend him with your disinterest. You didn't offend him at all, in fact. [REDACTED]
You don't like it? That's perfectly fine. Explain why. Provide points to debate and discuss. Posting to say nothing but "lolnah" is pointless.
You don't like so much depth, diversity, and crunch for a class? Tell us why. Offer a well reasoned, cogently argued view on the proposed rules so people can engage with your ideas [REDACTED].
Notes: Please stay constructive, even when the other user is not.
All in all, I think the concept is good but it needs a bit more refinement. I hope WotC is watching and gives us something that falls more into the middle ground of what we have and what En World has going.
I looked at those pages you posted and noped the heck out. I don't want D&D to become anything close to that
Very constructive. I like how you analyzed the information and provided reasoned and well measured feedback on the particular points you felt were important. Thank you for your participation in the discussion.
[REDACTED]
I'm certain that if you assembled D&D 5e's options for every class that are scattered throughout the books and put them all together, almost all the classes would have around 10 pages of information and options.
You didn't offend him with your disinterest. You didn't offend him at all, in fact. [REDACTED]
You don't like it? That's perfectly fine. Explain why. Provide points to debate and discuss. Posting to say nothing but "lolnah" is pointless.
You don't like so much depth, diversity, and crunch for a class? Tell us why. Offer a well reasoned, cogently argued view on the proposed rules so people can engage with your ideas [REDACTED].
Yeah definitely not offended, but I also don't want to waste my time either. I have pretty much given up on having any kind of conversation in this thread regarding the merits and flaws of Level Up and what it could mean for D&D. I will just make sure that I and the people I game with fill out every survey that WotC puts out. Who knows what we might get in the coming months.
You didn't offend him with your disinterest. You didn't offend him at all, in fact. [REDACTED]
You don't like it? That's perfectly fine. Explain why. Provide points to debate and discuss. Posting to say nothing but "lolnah" is pointless.
You don't like so much depth, diversity, and crunch for a class? Tell us why. Offer a well reasoned, cogently argued view on the proposed rules so people can engage with your ideas [REDACTED].
Yeah definitely not offended, but I also don't want to waste my time either. I have pretty much given up on having any kind of conversation in this thread regarding the merits and flaws of Level Up and what it could mean for D&D. I will just make sure that I and the people I game with fill out every survey that WotC puts out. Who knows what we might get in the coming months.
The Level up rules mean nothing for DnD for a very simple reason, WOTC has committed to 5.5E being backwards compatible, that means all the sub classes in Tashas, Xanathers, and every other source book that has them have to be fully usable with no tweaks, changes or updates needed.
It means that the classes will still level the same way, that they will still "unlock" benefits at the same levels. It means the rules for actions, bonus actions etc will all remain. It means the mechanic around spell slots and how spells are used will stay the same, skills, proficiencies etc wont be changing because changing all that means much of the older material needs PDF print offs and errata to become compatible and that is not a backwards compatible game. From reading it Level up's idea of "Backwards compatibility" is that you can use 5E adventures, although I imagine you still need to make changes to make them actually balance.
The changes I envisage WOTC making are tweaks to the existing classes, maybe giving the Monk class the makeover that Sorcerer etc got in tashas. Maybe adding a couple of spell slots to Warlocks. I expect racial ASI's to be removed all together and either more points to spend in the points buy system, or a different standard array with higher values, or just give players an auto +1 and +2 to add at character creation.
I expect to see some tweaks to existing spells and the "weaker" subclasses levelled up, wild mage sorceror for instance
You didn't offend him with your disinterest. You didn't offend him at all, in fact. [REDACTED]
You don't like it? That's perfectly fine. Explain why. Provide points to debate and discuss. Posting to say nothing but "lolnah" is pointless.
You don't like so much depth, diversity, and crunch for a class? Tell us why. Offer a well reasoned, cogently argued view on the proposed rules so people can engage with your ideas [REDACTED].
Yeah definitely not offended, but I also don't want to waste my time either. I have pretty much given up on having any kind of conversation in this thread regarding the merits and flaws of Level Up and what it could mean for D&D. I will just make sure that I and the people I game with fill out every survey that WotC puts out. Who knows what we might get in the coming months.
The Level up rules mean nothing for DnD for a very simple reason, WOTC has committed to 5.5E being backwards compatible, that means all the sub classes in Tashas, Xanathers, and every other source book that has them have to be fully usable with no tweaks, changes or updates needed.
It means that the classes will still level the same way, that they will still "unlock" benefits at the same levels. It means the rules for actions, bonus actions etc will all remain. It means the mechanic around spell slots and how spells are used will stay the same, skills, proficiencies etc wont be changing because changing all that means much of the older material needs PDF print offs and errata to become compatible and that is not a backwards compatible game. From reading it Level up's idea of "Backwards compatibility" is that you can use 5E adventures, although I imagine you still need to make changes to make them actually balance.
The changes I envisage WOTC making are tweaks to the existing classes, maybe giving the Monk class the makeover that Sorcerer etc got in tashas. Maybe adding a couple of spell slots to Warlocks. I expect racial ASI's to be removed all together and either more points to spend in the points buy system, or a different standard array with higher values, or just give players an auto +1 and +2 to add at character creation.
I expect to see some tweaks to existing spells and the "weaker" subclasses levelled up, wild mage sorceror for instance
I not sure that you noticed but all of the current 5e Monk subclasses are compatible with the Level Up Rules. The Traditions gain their features at the same time. Level up also uses all the same Action, Bonus Action and Reaction as standard 5e. Spell Slots work the same way as well. The whole system is designed to work with the in the framework of 5e, that is why it is advertised as 5e compatible. The rules they have presented are designed to be completely modular so that if you don't want the changes to the Classes, you can still use all the rules for Crafting, Exploration and the like to enhance your standard 5e games.
This how I know that no one has bother to actually read anything.
Additionally, the people that are filling out the Surveys for En World are the same people filling out the Surveys for WotC. That means that they are receiving the same information about what people want to see in the game. Will 5.5e be anything like Level Up. No. Not very likely. Will we see changes in 5.5e that address similar requests but in a different way. I think that is fairly likely.
I think I am done here. Time to Unsub from the thread and get on with other things.
From reading it Level up's idea of "Backwards compatibility" is that you can use 5E adventures, although I imagine you still need to make changes to make them actually balance.
No, from reading the Level Up designers make it clear they intend complete compatibility with 5E. No need to change anything. They repeat that explicitly in the comments too. It’s not a system makeover in any way, it’s additional and optional content.
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You didn't offend him with your disinterest. You didn't offend him at all, in fact. [REDACTED]
You don't like it? That's perfectly fine. Explain why. Provide points to debate and discuss. Posting to say nothing but "lolnah" is pointless.
You don't like so much depth, diversity, and crunch for a class? Tell us why. Offer a well reasoned, cogently argued view on the proposed rules so people can engage with your ideas [REDACTED].
How about "So many pages for just one class is going beyond mere "better complexity?"
In what way is that not a legitimate criticism?
It would help to know more about what's being criticized. Is it that there's more pages than they want to read? Do they think there's too many options, or that the options are too strong? It would be helpful to have a more in-depth explanation for that.
I'm certain that if you assembled D&D 5e's options for every class that are scattered throughout the books and put them all together, almost all the classes would have around 10 pages of information and options.
Now this is an actual counter-argument. For spellcasting classes that could be argued, because spell lists, but Rangers seemingly have no dedicated ranger spell lists in Level Up.
Furthermore, not sure why the Adept is being pulled out here when it is a completely new class vs comparing changes to the fighter class, which could be compared one for one to what already is.
Also note that, in Level Up, casting classes get their 10+ pages for class plus spell lists additionally. So then what?
I suspect that Third_Sundering (correct me if I'm wrong, Third) is including things like subclass options and CFVs, rather than just spells. Don't know how many pages that would take up per class though.
Adept is very clearly using the Monk class as a chassis for their abilities and options, so I think it's fair to us as a comparison vis-a-vis the monk class that inspired it.
I am very, very curious to see what options they have available to spellcasting classes. I'm salivating, actually.
From reading it Level up's idea of "Backwards compatibility" is that you can use 5E adventures, although I imagine you still need to make changes to make them actually balance.
No, from reading the Level Up designers make it clear they intend complete compatibility with 5E. No need to change anything. They repeat that explicitly in the comments too. It’s not a system makeover in any way, it’s additional and optional content.
Ok I really shouldn’t read and post at 4am while waiting for the Tyson Fury fight to kick off. It is good they are not trying to completely change, I had a quick look of the headline page on their website and they kept talking about adventures being backwards compatible and I didn’t read the part about the classes being in sync.
My comment was also encompassing comments by other people on this and the 5.5E announcement post calling for large whole scale changes to the DND rules, something that just won’t happen in 2024.
At the end of the day if this alternative set of rules works, is balanced and helps DMs then that is great I don’t think I will be applying it at my table because I really don’t see the problems others do, my players and I picked 5th edition because it is lightweight having previously been playing very rules heavy systems. We wanted something that let us roleplay and story tell without a ton of crunch and so far I have been able to navigate every issue that has been called out although I can see the shortcomings that are there and how less experienced GMs may feel a little unsure how to address things players want to do.
I hope this doesn’t become a pathfinder situation with this extension morphing into more and more books adding more and more crunch and eventually spawning its own system, there is also the possibility that in 2024 any tables using this system find they have to decide what in 5.5E can be removed or added.
As a final point the original post commented that WOTC should just get on with releasing the rules now, that would be the worst possible option. Rushing out a half baked un tested set of rules would do far far more harm. Having lived through examples of systems that do that I have seen the effect on the game and enjoyment round the table and then how hard it is to fix those issues without having to burn the whole system and start over. Maybe they will look at an extension like this and see what works and what doesn’t and then apply those learnings we can just wait and see.
My original intent with this thread was less about EN World's books themselves, since they'll be completely and utterly impossible to implement in DDB where all my rules/characters live, and more about the project's implications for the market. If the books do extremely well, then clearly there is a market for optional overlay rules that improve the game's depth and provide a wider diversity of options for players no matter what the nay-sayers insist. This persistent idea of "you don't neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed better rules, you can already do anything you can possibly want to do/imagine - just tell the DM what you're doing and they'll figure it out!" will have an objectively provable mark against it, rather than just the response "and how many times do you narrate your brilliantly oddball, whacky, weird and Delightfuly RP-y Fun Idea to the DM, only for her to sit there for a few minutes, face in her palms as she tries to even figure out what the hell you just said, before sighing and saying 'Okay...roll an Athletics check, I guess...' because there's no good way to handle whatever oddness it is you're trying to do?"
The Level Up system isn't really something I can use, though I may snag a few PDFs just for inspiration on the homebrew side of things. But its existence is a sign to me that no, the people who want better rules aren't alone in wanting those better rules. Not necessarily more rules, or crunchier rules...just better rules. No matter what the Kotaths or Beardsingers or Scarloc Stormcalls might say about how idiotic we are for wanting them and how we should all just play different games.
We are also told that these rules are supplemental to and compatible with what already exists, which makes no sense since the casting classes have their own spell list sections in it.
I don't see the problem. You can have two versions of a class in your game if you want.
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If you feel that defining something takes away DM agency, that's the very first thing that should be addressed. DM agency is or at least should be absolute. There is value in rules consistency across tables, especially with respect to something like Adventurers League, but when it comes to their own campaign DM agency trumps that.
WotC absolutely needs to do better helping DMs learn how to DM, but online resources are not the right way to go about that. Online resources should be about extras, options, ideas. "How to DM" is an essential quality they should address in the core books, and it so happens they have an entire book for that purpose: the Dungeon Master's Guide. Unfortunately, the DMG fails abysmally (I'll add an 'in my opinion' here, though honestly this seems so obvious to me I daresay the point doesn't need to be qualified like that) in doing what should be its main job. Various ways to handle special/magical items in a campaign - which would include the possibility of crafting - seems like a totally obvious subject to cover in the DMG. Instead what we get is about a hundred pages of tables and lists of stuff with one or two "unless you decide your game is different" sentences thrown in there, devoid of any suggestions or advice about why and how you might want your game to be different or even about how or why what's in the DMG is supposed to be great.
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Ok, my initial reaction to having all the options and abilities for the Adepts was a bit negative. They have a LOT of potential abilities to choose from and would certainly have more abilities than the current Monk. On the surface it looks like a serious jump in power.
But then I realized that while they may have a lot that they can do, all of those abilities are fueled by the same limited pool of resources. Kind of like how casters may have 9 prepared spells, but can't cast all of them due to a limited number of Spell Slots. So the Adept (Monk) just has more things they can do with their Ki Points in a given moment. I can live with that.
Now whether each of these "tools" are balanced... well, that is a different story. I like some of them quite a bit and they all allow for a level customization that I would really like to play with. But some of them are a bit much. Vengeful Spirit and Instant Step stood out as a bit much. Vengeful Spirit is I think WAY too much while Instant Step could be reigned in a bit and be fine.
All in all, I think the concept is good but it needs a bit more refinement. I hope WotC is watching and gives us something that falls more into the middle ground of what we have and what En World has going.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
I agree the DMG could be improved but, what would you remove for what would need to be a weighty section on crafting. Why would it need to be weighty, because it would need to be flexible enough for DMs to apply how they want without prescribing or limiting things. The problem with that is that covering it in 1-2 pages just won’t cover it off.
Crafting is such a varied wide ranging thing, how do you compare creating an existing item to wanting to craft something unique and new, either a mundane or a magic item. The first person that I have seen get it semi right online is Matt Mercer in campaign 1 of critical roll where Percy created such things as an electric glove, a silencer for his rifle (zone of silence) and crafted his entire rifle. These things took time and all we saw was the at table dice rolling after Taliesan stated he had talked in detail with Matt about his ideas away from the table.
Crafting is such a specialized and niche thing that I really don’t see the value in Wizards devoting pages and pages to it in the limited space that is the DMG.
I will also ask, what in the DMG is horrendous, it is very basic, as an experienced GM the world building sections where a fun flick through but didn’t give me anything new, but maybe 20+ years ago they would have done.
Easily half of chapter 7 could be dropped without losing anything of consequence, that's 50 pages right there.
Honestly, most of it. The worldbuilding sections are 90% lists of "maybe you want to have this on your world" - the exact thing that would be great as a web supplement, but in the DMG could be pared down to half or less of the pages devoted to it now and replaced with advice on how to cook up a world instead of the line-up-at-the-world-buffet approach we have now. Same with the treasure chapter, as mentioned above, and definitely same with the interminable tables of random X. More advice and fewer examples, please. Examples don't help with creativity half as much as even a semi-coherent pep talk would. Part 1, creating a world and a multiverse, is longer than part 3, running the game and the dungeon master's workshop - running the game alone should warrant more pages than worldbuilding IMO. Adventure environments and between adventures get as many pages as creating adventures and creating NPCs - surely that too doesn't seem like the right balance, never mind that the former two could be incorporated in the worldbuilding chapter in the first place? The whole thing just falls flat for me. Xanathar's DM tools chapter is, if you take out the score of random encounter tables, 50 pages of straight upgrades to the corresponding DMG content. It's certainly not perfect either, but it's all material that arguably should have been in the DMG in the first place.
Edit: while I'm at it, how nobody on the DMG dev team looked at the table of contents and thought that having worldbuilding be the first thing on the list and actually running a game all but last might just be the wrong way around is beyond me.
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I picked it up again and re reviewed it and yes, there are an awful lot of tables in it, personally I can't stand random encounter or loot tables, but I imagine there are many who use them there is also an awful lot of stuff that really I agree could be removed but I am conscious I am coming to it as someone who has been doing this for years and I don't like assuming something isn't useful to someone else.
I think we can both agree the DMG probably needs the most work and can be improved without actually changing the mechanics of the game. For me rather then adding new rules for things like Crafting putting in more detail supporting new DM's helping them both understand how to tell stories, but also how to innovate and be creative in how they use the rules they have and allow there players to do things. But the fact remains that no matter how good the DMG is, in many ways having it makes it already better then what i had back in the day, nothing is going to beat simply putting in the hours of doing the GM role and I think that is something that just has to be accepted.
The whole CR needs reworking as well, but again like I have said in the past I have yet to find a system that can mathematically help a DM create challanging encounters pitched just hard enough. Maybe if they try tweaking it to 3-4 encounters in a day, or find a way to allow the number of encounters faced to be plugged into the calculation?
1) Anything is usually better than nothing, as you point out in that second paragraph, but that doesn't make everything good. I'm not saying nobody could ever find the endless lists and tables useful, I'm saying similar content could be created in a much more useful format.
2) It might be a bit radical in practice, but just about all the contents of the DMG could be linked to how to tell stories - including crafting. A big part of the DMG should not be "here's how we do X", which implicitly suggests "here's how you should do X" despite any qualifiers WotC might add, but rather "here are a couple of approaches to X, followed by suggestions about why you might want to develop your own version of X and how you can make it an engaging part of the world and the adventures the party will set out on". Crafting magical items could be relatively common or it could be vanishingly rare; clearly the stories that will develop will differ significantly already because of that alone.
3) CR does need reworking, and I see how you can't find a mathematical system that does what CR aims at doing. I think that's because math, at least math that can be done without an advanced degree, can't account for all the circumstances in which an encounter might happen, all the creative solutions the players might come up with, or whether the DM picks a tactically astute approach or goes for brute forcing the fight with the enemy mobs. CR should explicitly be a ballpark number, and even then probably really a handful of numbers (CR 3 if alone and an open fight, CR 4 if more than one, CR 6 if ambushing, something like that). And I stress explicitly, since right now there are people asking if they did anything wrong calculating CRs or encounters because what happened at their game table didn't correspond to what the official calculation methods suggest should have happened. It's also just not great DMing to not deviate from what's in the module or your pre-game prep, just because those things should be theoretically correct. What happens in practice is more important than what should have happened in theory, and that's something that should be made more abundantly clear in the books. Run with the story that develops on the table, don't try to run the story that's in your or someone else's head.
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Not disagreeing here, but I really want the DMG to find a better balance between proposing a myriad of options and offering advice on making up your own things. Finding your own way to play and run a game should be more than a D&D LEGO set built from a giant box of blocks, DMs should be encouraged to think about what kind of blocks that maybe don't exist yet would be good for them.
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I think we are in pretty much agreement here, but the point you make about CR really does get the heart of the issue. I said earlier that the moment WOTC write out a rule it limits DM creativity, someone argued and said the rules can be ignored, and they are right, but CR is such a great example of something that, because it is defined, many feel they have to use to create all encounters. This is why I would love to see DnD 5.5E not add more mechanics and hard rules, but like you say provide inspiration for how DM's can apply the thin layer of actual rules and then use their own imagination to sculpt something in there own style.
RAW has become such a major thing now, Chris Perkins has said that he has had people message him that he has done things wrong in his own live games, this is Chris Perkins being told he has got rules wrong. As he attempts to continually point out the only key rule is that everyone has fun, Gary Gygax stated the rules where a guidline that could be ignored, changed and used as desired but so many now come to the game treating the rulebook and DMG as some sort of Gospel that must be applied exactly as written or you are not playing the game right
RAW has been a big thing probably since AD&D 2nd (possibly even earlier, not enough personal experience to say) and certainly since 3rd edition. Ruleslawyering is nothing new. Just about every big live game I can remember had someone make it clear the group wasn't going to do everything by the book, for various reasons, but it doesn't always get across. I'm not surprised Chris Perkins got called out, though it is a sad state of affairs. He's the quintessential DM for me, super knowledgeable, understated, makes the game entirely about the players, and does it all without needing props or gimmicks or having to look things up.
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I looked at those pages you posted and noped the heck out. I don't want D&D to become anything close to that
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
You didn't offend him with your disinterest. You didn't offend him at all, in fact. [REDACTED]
You don't like it? That's perfectly fine. Explain why. Provide points to debate and discuss. Posting to say nothing but "lolnah" is pointless.
You don't like so much depth, diversity, and crunch for a class? Tell us why. Offer a well reasoned, cogently argued view on the proposed rules so people can engage with your ideas [REDACTED].
Please do not contact or message me.
I'm certain that if you assembled D&D 5e's options for every class that are scattered throughout the books and put them all together, almost all the classes would have around 10 pages of information and options.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
Yeah definitely not offended, but I also don't want to waste my time either. I have pretty much given up on having any kind of conversation in this thread regarding the merits and flaws of Level Up and what it could mean for D&D. I will just make sure that I and the people I game with fill out every survey that WotC puts out. Who knows what we might get in the coming months.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
The Level up rules mean nothing for DnD for a very simple reason, WOTC has committed to 5.5E being backwards compatible, that means all the sub classes in Tashas, Xanathers, and every other source book that has them have to be fully usable with no tweaks, changes or updates needed.
It means that the classes will still level the same way, that they will still "unlock" benefits at the same levels. It means the rules for actions, bonus actions etc will all remain. It means the mechanic around spell slots and how spells are used will stay the same, skills, proficiencies etc wont be changing because changing all that means much of the older material needs PDF print offs and errata to become compatible and that is not a backwards compatible game. From reading it Level up's idea of "Backwards compatibility" is that you can use 5E adventures, although I imagine you still need to make changes to make them actually balance.
The changes I envisage WOTC making are tweaks to the existing classes, maybe giving the Monk class the makeover that Sorcerer etc got in tashas. Maybe adding a couple of spell slots to Warlocks. I expect racial ASI's to be removed all together and either more points to spend in the points buy system, or a different standard array with higher values, or just give players an auto +1 and +2 to add at character creation.
I expect to see some tweaks to existing spells and the "weaker" subclasses levelled up, wild mage sorceror for instance
I not sure that you noticed but all of the current 5e Monk subclasses are compatible with the Level Up Rules. The Traditions gain their features at the same time. Level up also uses all the same Action, Bonus Action and Reaction as standard 5e. Spell Slots work the same way as well. The whole system is designed to work with the in the framework of 5e, that is why it is advertised as 5e compatible. The rules they have presented are designed to be completely modular so that if you don't want the changes to the Classes, you can still use all the rules for Crafting, Exploration and the like to enhance your standard 5e games.
This how I know that no one has bother to actually read anything.
Additionally, the people that are filling out the Surveys for En World are the same people filling out the Surveys for WotC. That means that they are receiving the same information about what people want to see in the game. Will 5.5e be anything like Level Up. No. Not very likely. Will we see changes in 5.5e that address similar requests but in a different way. I think that is fairly likely.
I think I am done here. Time to Unsub from the thread and get on with other things.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
No, from reading the Level Up designers make it clear they intend complete compatibility with 5E. No need to change anything. They repeat that explicitly in the comments too. It’s not a system makeover in any way, it’s additional and optional content.
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It would help to know more about what's being criticized. Is it that there's more pages than they want to read? Do they think there's too many options, or that the options are too strong? It would be helpful to have a more in-depth explanation for that.
I suspect that Third_Sundering (correct me if I'm wrong, Third) is including things like subclass options and CFVs, rather than just spells. Don't know how many pages that would take up per class though.
Adept is very clearly using the Monk class as a chassis for their abilities and options, so I think it's fair to us as a comparison vis-a-vis the monk class that inspired it.
I am very, very curious to see what options they have available to spellcasting classes. I'm salivating, actually.
Ok I really shouldn’t read and post at 4am while waiting for the Tyson Fury fight to kick off. It is good they are not trying to completely change, I had a quick look of the headline page on their website and they kept talking about adventures being backwards compatible and I didn’t read the part about the classes being in sync.
My comment was also encompassing comments by other people on this and the 5.5E announcement post calling for large whole scale changes to the DND rules, something that just won’t happen in 2024.
At the end of the day if this alternative set of rules works, is balanced and helps DMs then that is great I don’t think I will be applying it at my table because I really don’t see the problems others do, my players and I picked 5th edition because it is lightweight having previously been playing very rules heavy systems. We wanted something that let us roleplay and story tell without a ton of crunch and so far I have been able to navigate every issue that has been called out although I can see the shortcomings that are there and how less experienced GMs may feel a little unsure how to address things players want to do.
I hope this doesn’t become a pathfinder situation with this extension morphing into more and more books adding more and more crunch and eventually spawning its own system, there is also the possibility that in 2024 any tables using this system find they have to decide what in 5.5E can be removed or added.
As a final point the original post commented that WOTC should just get on with releasing the rules now, that would be the worst possible option. Rushing out a half baked un tested set of rules would do far far more harm. Having lived through examples of systems that do that I have seen the effect on the game and enjoyment round the table and then how hard it is to fix those issues without having to burn the whole system and start over. Maybe they will look at an extension like this and see what works and what doesn’t and then apply those learnings we can just wait and see.
My original intent with this thread was less about EN World's books themselves, since they'll be completely and utterly impossible to implement in DDB where all my rules/characters live, and more about the project's implications for the market. If the books do extremely well, then clearly there is a market for optional overlay rules that improve the game's depth and provide a wider diversity of options for players no matter what the nay-sayers insist. This persistent idea of "you don't neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed better rules, you can already do anything you can possibly want to do/imagine - just tell the DM what you're doing and they'll figure it out!" will have an objectively provable mark against it, rather than just the response "and how many times do you narrate your brilliantly oddball, whacky, weird and Delightfuly RP-y Fun Idea to the DM, only for her to sit there for a few minutes, face in her palms as she tries to even figure out what the hell you just said, before sighing and saying 'Okay...roll an Athletics check, I guess...' because there's no good way to handle whatever oddness it is you're trying to do?"
The Level Up system isn't really something I can use, though I may snag a few PDFs just for inspiration on the homebrew side of things. But its existence is a sign to me that no, the people who want better rules aren't alone in wanting those better rules. Not necessarily more rules, or crunchier rules...just better rules. No matter what the Kotaths or Beardsingers or Scarloc Stormcalls might say about how idiotic we are for wanting them and how we should all just play different games.
Please do not contact or message me.
I don't see the problem. You can have two versions of a class in your game if you want.
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