Usage data says otherwise, insofar as wizards and sorcerers go.
I'm well aware any such Advanced Rules book wouldn't be a personal love letter to my own personal game, all "here you in specific are, you beautiful ghost ***** you". That would be ridiculous. But there are complaints that crop up all the time in discussions about this game, and it drives me up the wall that nobody at Wizards-the-company ever bothers addressing them. Like, what the actual hell are you guys doing with your time? @_@
A thing to remember about things everybody on the internet agrees on: DDB has an impressive 5 million(!) registrered users, and while I don't want to deepdive into Hasbro's figures to try to guesstimate their current sales numbers, an older article (May 2018) gives this figure:
He declined to disclose sales numbers but noted that in 2017, the D&D brand had a 44 percent sales growth over 2016, and the most number of players in its history — 12 million to 15 million in North America alone.
So even if every user on DDB was active in all the forum discussions, it's still a stretch to assume that all voices are heard. I believe Crawford and Mearls have touched on this before, but how do they (a) confirm that a change is wanted by everyone when not everyone uses the same digital channels, and (b) avoid conflict where one player brings their newly printed errata (or worse: a book) to a table that's run fine on the first printing of the PHB since it released?
My personal experience in that regard is that I bought my first D&D books (3e) like a few weeks before I suddenly saw a 3.5 edition in the shelves, and bought those too. I was still in the "planning my campaign" phase so it didn't alter the game, but it was an extra expense that I in retrospect could've skipped entirely. I didn't buy any more 3/3.5 books anyway and we didn't play that much, so there would've been no issue. But when we got into 4e we played a crapton of that and together in the group we owned every single core and X Power book, while trying to make good use of the online character builder because of the massive errata bloat... only to find that with the release of Essentials the character builder turned to crap for our use. We could no longer assume that every feat was balanced around the same assumption of what a "basic attack" or "at-will power" was supposed to be, while still being hellbent of trying to optimise our characters for the deadly encounters our GM would craft (and he also chafed at how the monsters in MM1 were minions compared to similar CR creatures in MM3).
With that background in 3e and 4e, I think about how errata can cause as much trouble as it solves depending on the table. I believe that half of my groups I have played 5e with would have ignored or complained if there was an official 5.5 set of rules, especially if they rewrote core classes (like ranger or sorcerer) unless they had been very diligent in touching up every class so nothing felt left behind.
That's the same reasoning people have used to shoot down folks who want a more engaging experience with the game time and time again - 'the masses don't want anything but the simplest, most stripped-down, bare-bones, deep-cut experience possible. Even the basic game is too much for them.'
Cool. They don't have to buy the book.
Just like the overwhelming majority of those twelve to fifteen million theoretical players likely have one PHB between them, no DMG, one set of dice everybody shares, and otherwise just the minimal possible investment for a game they tried once and then put on the shelf. People can invest as heavily as they like. People constantly bag on the folks who want more out of this game by telling us that we're a minority and our opinions don't count; we should just count our blessings, play our Champion fighters, and like it.
Nah. People who don't want the extra overhead can skip the book with all the extra overhead in it, the same way they skip Xanathar's Guide and Volo's Guide to DM Headaches. Just like folks skip the unending monsoon torrent of Adventure Modules Wizards releases because nobody has time to play a dozen different campaigns a year. They might buy one or two of those books when it's time for the next game and they feel like having a base to start with, but nobody plays all of those books. Yet people don't complain about them landing, ne? They just move on and wait for the next book with stuff in it they can actually use.
Wizards can take one Adventure Module off the roster and replace it with a crunch book, ne? Would that really be so bad?
I am not against an "Advanced" supplement. I am against buying a 3rd party version. IF WotC puts out something, they at least have a road map of future products and can ensure that the book is compatible with new books. A 3rd party can't do that and WotC are in no way obligated to take it into consideration on their end.
The only way I see an ENworld "5.5" would work is if it went the way of Paizo and made their own game and people jump ship. I am not sure that it would have the same effect that Pathfinder had though. People went to Pathfinder because it was basically D&D 3.75 and was familiar instead of a new rule set. D&D isn't switching editions and creating the same window of opportunity.
Oh, no. I'm not really interested in EN World's book, outside of maybe using it as inspiration for stuff if it's any good. I was using it as a springboard to try and deal with the fact that every single heckin' time anyone mentions any kind of advanced rules overlay, an optional 5.5e, or anything similar, we get told that literally no one wants that and we should feel bad for trying to find some depth and creativity in this game instead of just playing our Champion Freaking Fighters and liking it.
I see a lot of people arguing that rules are a "straight jacket" and hurt your creativity.
To me it's the other way round: the lack of rules limits my RP. Why is that? Because I am only one person with a (imo) huge but nevertheless limited amount of creativity.
WotC, Paizo and other companies have dozens of authors with at least as much (and probably more) creativity as I do. So if those authors think up character concepts and ideas and write them down in the form of rules and feats, that actually inspires me to ideas I'd never have had without those rules.
I'll take Pathfinder as an example since it's the only rules-heavy english language system I know.
Pathfinder has hundreds of feats and classes and Prestige Classes. Reading through the combat feat section alone you'll find a magnitude of feats that allow you to be a master of two weapons, wield a spear like a whirling dervish striking from afar like a snake or closing in for the kill from one moment to another, be an intimidating, cleaving monster who frightens her enemies with every attack, use your shield as an actual weapon and take two of them so nothing can hurt you, be a proud defender who protects their allies with a shield or by swiping the enemy's weapons away, team up with your best friends and pick teamwork feats so the team is actually more than the sum of its parts, be an accomplished veteran with a trick up their sleeves for every occasion, be a martial master focusing on combat maneuvers to disarm, trip, sunder or otherwise hinder your enemies or even just get yourself a trusty animal companion, no matter what class you are.
That right there is more character concepts than D&D 5 has classes, each one unique with unique mechanics that also feel unique during gameplay. And that is just the melee feats and *before* you even decide which class you want to play.
Pathfinder obviously has many flaws, the "mandatory stat stick items", complicated modifier system and insane aquatic combat rules being just some of them.
But the sheer amount of ideas and possible characters and adventures that their feats, classes and archetypes invoke? I will pick that over 5e's "fluff everything" approach every day.
So if someone releases a book with even just a dozen flavourful feats for 5e, I am absolutely going to buy it.
Oh, no. I'm not really interested in EN World's book, outside of maybe using it as inspiration for stuff if it's any good. I was using it as a springboard to try and deal with the fact that every single heckin' time anyone mentions any kind of advanced rules overlay, an optional 5.5e, or anything similar, we get told that literally no one wants that and we should feel bad for trying to find some depth and creativity in this game instead of just playing our Champion Freaking Fighters and liking it.
Heh. We all saw how well that worked.
At some point I will have to go and go over one of your other posts but there is something that it is said here that is completely false. “We should feel bad for trying to find some depth and creativity in this game” but are you really trying to find some depth? There are dozens of posts here that you seem to skip over that have stated that you can be very creative in this system. Currently I play a belly dancer-type of assassin and got creative with how I used the multi-class system of the game(monk/bard/rogue). I used my creativity(and a nice tutorial from nerdarchy).
You have stated in another post that you have no options and that a class is on rails after lever 2-3. Well welcome to RPGs, even with 3.5 and pathfinder there is a rail system there. However there are options after level 3 and it is called multi-classing.
Master of the Blade? It is totally doable in 5e. Samurai, monk-kensai multiclass can put you there(or even a samurai/bard-college of swords). Hell just doing a quick search in YouTube for “DnD 5e Master of the Blade” yielded me with at least 2 videos on how to make a master of the blade or tips on how to make one.
I don’t think there is a lack of creativity in what can be done. It seems like you just want a shortcut to get what you want. Heck there is even a home brew class that is a “Master of the Blades”
I'm just going to address this because it keeps coming up.
I play GURPS, when a GURPS game is available in my general area. I love that ruleset. Creating a GURPS character is like being presented with a six-foot block of granite and a bunch of sculpting tools before being told 'whatever you hew from this stone is yours.'
5e, on the other hand, gives you a coloring-book image of a character someone else has already made and says "color it whichever way you like, make this thing somebody else built that has only a loose, tangential relation to what you want to do yours!"
No Kasumi, I am not a munchkin looking for free power gaming. That's just a nonsensical assertion, because if I was looking for powergaming I know exactly how to do that already. It's not hard. 5e does not hide its powergaming. I could rig up a Vhuman Sharpshooter Crossbow Expert Battlemaster with a Boba Fet helmet like everybody else and wreck every conceivable level of face. I could do a Hexorlockadin that deals five hundred damage with a quadruple smite by fifth level without issue. I've won both of the Build Throwdowns that DorkForge put up in Tips and Tactics to fish for awesome builds. I very much know how to powergame, and do not need any new rules for it.
I want options for people who don't powergame. People who put character before crunch, and then usually get to be super weak and unhelpful to their party because they're trying to follow their hearts and don't know how to make the vision in their head line up with the game systems. People who ask their DM if they can switch to this character they found on the Internet because they're sick of the character they built lagging behind Boba "Hand Crossbow" Fet or Johnny "Every Charisma Caster in the Game ********ing Each Other" Dragonburn. People who don't know how to sit down and spend four to six hours smashing the nightmarish homebrew editor in this website into spitting out something within hailing distance of what they want.
If all I was concerned with was whuppin' ass and claiming lewtz, I'd just do that. But that is, in fact, the opposite of my concerns. So maybe drop that line of accusation, hm?
6 hours?!? Try 36 (or more) for a solid, properly coded and well constructed homebrew. It can take 6 hours to just get the framework right sometimes if the design is complex enough.
And that's when the design is possible at all. Heh, DDB still flat-out refuses to give me my "1/3 Warlock" casting progression on a rogue so I can do the Beguiler subclass. But yeah.
Yeesh. I really am trying to figure out why people are so intensely, ferociously, passionately, violently against any sort of expanded crunch options for 5e? I am well aware this game will never be GURPS, and it doesn't need to be. But holy shit, is there really just no middle ground whatsoever between GURPS and the 5e approach of "this is your character sheet. You can decide the fluffy things like appearance and such, but every mechanical decision about your character was made before you even got to the table. Enjoy!"?
The fact that you can't make a "1/3 warlock" rogue in DDB is a limitation of the website, not 5E's rules. Publishing "5.5 E" rules would not overcome that limitation.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
True. But hey - if Wizards released a subclass with third-caster Pact Magic, then DDB would have to get off their heckin' duffs and figure out a way to make that work. like they already did for the Profane Soul but refuse to enable for anyone else.
Some of my desire for expanded rules is a desire for Wizards to put some pressure on DDB to figure out their shit, yes. I am more aware than most people that DDB has been in the process of doing so for the last year-plus, but man. It really feels like maybe they should put a heckin' rush on it. Even then though, lemme put this a different way for people.
*
Why is the DM expected to build half the game rules?
Everybody keeps saying "Just homebrew rules already, JEEEEEEEEEEZ!" Query: why should I, as a DM, have to create my own personal PHB, my own personal DMG, and so on and so forth to get the game to function properly because Wizards failed to finish their own task? DMs already have a ton of stuff to do; designing the entire ruleset of their own game system is beyond most of them. It's one reason why you get so many DMs that say "if it's not in the PHB, you can't do it." Because they just don't have it in them to design custom everything for their players. Why should they have to? Why should Wizards be let off the hook for foisting the vast majority of their game design duties off onto their players? If I have to build it, test it, and make it work myself, why the Fignewton **** am I also expected to pay someone else for it?
And that's when the design is possible at all. Heh, DDB still flat-out refuses to give me my "1/3 Warlock" casting progression on a rogue so I can do the Beguiler subclass. But yeah.
Yeesh. I really am trying to figure out why people are so intensely, ferociously, passionately, violently against any sort of expanded crunch options for 5e? I am well aware this game will never be GURPS, and it doesn't need to be. But holy shit, is there really just no middle ground whatsoever between GURPS and the 5e approach of "this is your character sheet. You can decide the fluffy things like appearance and such, but every mechanical decision about your character was made before you even got to the table. Enjoy!"?
Actually it is not decided by the time you hit the table. This is the thing that you keep overlooking. If either you or your DM is creative you should be able to be more mechanical decisions during the course of the campaign. Heck, my DM still has to make mechanical rulings during the game and sometimes has to homebrew on the fly. A good DM can do that. Hell again look at other stuff like YouTube videos, or even DnD streams/podcasts. How come they can make mechanical rulings in the course of their game?
I am also confused. You keep saying you want more mechanics that decide every encounter you have(ie grapple, etc) but yet keep saying that every mechanical decision in the game is decided for you before the game has started. 5e is really RP friendly and doesn’t bog everything down in mechanics(which is a good thing).
You're confusing in-play character actions with progression decisions, as well as making the common mistake of assuming that "role playing" only happens in the spaces between the rules. It's a hugely common failing to assume that because a rule exists for an action, that rule takes precedence over the character having their roleplaying moment.
Allow me to point you towards Los Tiburon, Shark of the Land, a relatively infamous story from the 3.5/Pathfinder days wherein a half-orc monk gussied up as a luchadore managed to, basically, suplex a dragon out of the sky. It's an awesome story and a fantastic example of sticking to one's character concept even in the face of adversity. It's also completely impossible in 5e, because the grappling rules in 5e are so absolutely putrid, so incredibly useless and terrible at what they are intending to do, that you CANNOT play a luchadore in 5e. Not successfully. The rules do not allow it.
A DM could theoretically just call for a bunch of Strength checks or the like instead to determine success, yes. In the same way that the entirety of 5e's oh-so-vaunted combat engine could be reduced to "make a bunch of Strength checks to see if you successfully beat the ogre to death". Absolutely everything in the game could be reduced to 'describe what you want, then make the relevant ability check to see if it works." But nobody would play that game because it'd be boring as hell. No way to specialize, no way to demonstrate unique skills, talents or abilities, and no reason to use those rules instead of just writing it all out freeform. It's a bad way to run a game, which is why 5e went to the trouble of building out its entire combat engine instead of just saying "make a Strength or Dex check to figure out if you win a fight or not."
A properly written and developed set of rules do not contradict or eliminate Role Playing. They enhance it, give it form and drive. Without that structure, a player is left with "Uhhhhhh....sooo.....how's this work, exactly?" Which is hardly heroic or adventurous.
True. But hey - if Wizards released a subclass with third-caster Pact Magic, then DDB would have to get off their heckin' duffs and figure out a way to make that work. like they already did for the Profane Soul but refuse to enable for anyone else.
Some of my desire for expanded rules is a desire for Wizards to put some pressure on DDB to figure out their shit, yes. I am more aware than most people that DDB has been in the process of doing so for the last year-plus, but man. It really feels like maybe they should put a heckin' rush on it. Even then though, lemme put this a different way for people.
I'm not so certain that Wizards actually cares past making sure that the game is being promoted the way they want it to and DDB isn't cheating them out of revenue. I mean, look at how clunky this message forum is- it's missing some features that WotC's own forum had 15 years ago.
Why is the DM expected to build half the game rules?
Everybody keeps saying "Just homebrew rules already, JEEEEEEEEEEZ!" Query: why should I, as a DM, have to create my own personal PHB, my own personal DMG, and so on and so forth to get the game to function properly because Wizards failed to finish their own task? DMs already have a ton of stuff to do; designing the entire ruleset of their own game system is beyond most of them. It's one reason why you get so many DMs that say "if it's not in the PHB, you can't do it." Because they just don't have it in them to design custom everything for their players. Why should they have to? Why should Wizards be let off the hook for foisting the vast majority of their game design duties off onto their players? If I have to build it, test it, and make it work myself, why the Fignewton **** am I also expected to pay someone else for it?
Because you're the one who wants it. The fact that they didn't cater the rules precisely to fit what a single person wanted or expected out of the game does not mean that they failed to finish their own task. It just means that the thing that that person wants out of the game isn't a priority for Wizards of the Coast.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
You can’t do that mechanically in 5e? Opposed STR or Athletics check. There are creatures that use grapple mechanics.
also the whole reduction of declare what you want and make a check thing. You haven’t played much TTRPG’s outside of DnD have you? BESM has a system that is basically this and yet is a popular system to play outside of DnD. There are mechanics and yet it basically works like that. Really str vs str? I am guessing you don’t do dex builds or cast a lot of magic. There is a lot that goes on in a combat.
Let me go back to BESM real quick. It is applauded for its combat system which is exactly what you stated. Describe what your character is doing then till 2d6 and add you attack combat value and then the monster opposing it rolls 2d6 and adds it defensive combat value. BESM is lauded for its role play and number of customization options and yet if you look at it it is an incredibly simple system. And it uses only three stats.
Why am I telling you all of this? It is because you can do a lot even in DnD. Hell I have seen players say the most insane stuff that they want to do and it get done either a mechanics checks or just because the DM says hey go ahead. and yea it is possible in 5e to suplex a dragon. It has been done before and can be done again.
Allow me to point you towards Los Tiburon, Shark of the Land, a relatively infamous story from the 3.5/Pathfinder days wherein a half-orc monk gussied up as a luchadore managed to, basically, suplex a dragon out of the sky. It's an awesome story and a fantastic example of sticking to one's character concept even in the face of adversity. It's also completely impossible in 5e, because the grappling rules in 5e are so absolutely putrid, so incredibly useless and terrible at what they are intending to do, that you CANNOT play a luchadore in 5e. Not successfully. The rules do not allow it.
It wasn't legal in the putrid, radioactive swamp that was 3.5 edition's grappling rules, which even WotC admitted were a mistake. For it to work as described, the GM either had never read the actual grapple rules or was running with heavy house rules.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
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One caveat....
There is a whole forum full of Wizard players who constantly complain about how much better Sorcerous have it. 🙄
How can WotC fix anything when people cannot even agree on what needs fixing?
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
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Usage data says otherwise, insofar as wizards and sorcerers go.
I'm well aware any such Advanced Rules book wouldn't be a personal love letter to my own personal game, all "here you in specific are, you beautiful ghost ***** you". That would be ridiculous. But there are complaints that crop up all the time in discussions about this game, and it drives me up the wall that nobody at Wizards-the-company ever bothers addressing them. Like, what the actual hell are you guys doing with your time? @_@
Please do not contact or message me.
Trying to figure out how to shoehorn another M:tG product into D&D. Obv....
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
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A thing to remember about things everybody on the internet agrees on: DDB has an impressive 5 million(!) registrered users, and while I don't want to deepdive into Hasbro's figures to try to guesstimate their current sales numbers, an older article (May 2018) gives this figure:
So even if every user on DDB was active in all the forum discussions, it's still a stretch to assume that all voices are heard. I believe Crawford and Mearls have touched on this before, but how do they (a) confirm that a change is wanted by everyone when not everyone uses the same digital channels, and (b) avoid conflict where one player brings their newly printed errata (or worse: a book) to a table that's run fine on the first printing of the PHB since it released?
My personal experience in that regard is that I bought my first D&D books (3e) like a few weeks before I suddenly saw a 3.5 edition in the shelves, and bought those too. I was still in the "planning my campaign" phase so it didn't alter the game, but it was an extra expense that I in retrospect could've skipped entirely. I didn't buy any more 3/3.5 books anyway and we didn't play that much, so there would've been no issue. But when we got into 4e we played a crapton of that and together in the group we owned every single core and X Power book, while trying to make good use of the online character builder because of the massive errata bloat... only to find that with the release of Essentials the character builder turned to crap for our use. We could no longer assume that every feat was balanced around the same assumption of what a "basic attack" or "at-will power" was supposed to be, while still being hellbent of trying to optimise our characters for the deadly encounters our GM would craft (and he also chafed at how the monsters in MM1 were minions compared to similar CR creatures in MM3).
With that background in 3e and 4e, I think about how errata can cause as much trouble as it solves depending on the table. I believe that half of my groups I have played 5e with would have ignored or complained if there was an official 5.5 set of rules, especially if they rewrote core classes (like ranger or sorcerer) unless they had been very diligent in touching up every class so nothing felt left behind.
I am one with the Force. The Force is with me.
That's the same reasoning people have used to shoot down folks who want a more engaging experience with the game time and time again - 'the masses don't want anything but the simplest, most stripped-down, bare-bones, deep-cut experience possible. Even the basic game is too much for them.'
Cool. They don't have to buy the book.
Just like the overwhelming majority of those twelve to fifteen million theoretical players likely have one PHB between them, no DMG, one set of dice everybody shares, and otherwise just the minimal possible investment for a game they tried once and then put on the shelf. People can invest as heavily as they like. People constantly bag on the folks who want more out of this game by telling us that we're a minority and our opinions don't count; we should just count our blessings, play our Champion fighters, and like it.
Nah. People who don't want the extra overhead can skip the book with all the extra overhead in it, the same way they skip Xanathar's Guide and Volo's Guide to DM Headaches. Just like folks skip the unending monsoon torrent of Adventure Modules Wizards releases because nobody has time to play a dozen different campaigns a year. They might buy one or two of those books when it's time for the next game and they feel like having a base to start with, but nobody plays all of those books. Yet people don't complain about them landing, ne? They just move on and wait for the next book with stuff in it they can actually use.
Wizards can take one Adventure Module off the roster and replace it with a crunch book, ne? Would that really be so bad?
Please do not contact or message me.
I am not against an "Advanced" supplement. I am against buying a 3rd party version. IF WotC puts out something, they at least have a road map of future products and can ensure that the book is compatible with new books. A 3rd party can't do that and WotC are in no way obligated to take it into consideration on their end.
The only way I see an ENworld "5.5" would work is if it went the way of Paizo and made their own game and people jump ship. I am not sure that it would have the same effect that Pathfinder had though. People went to Pathfinder because it was basically D&D 3.75 and was familiar instead of a new rule set. D&D isn't switching editions and creating the same window of opportunity.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
Oh, no. I'm not really interested in EN World's book, outside of maybe using it as inspiration for stuff if it's any good. I was using it as a springboard to try and deal with the fact that every single heckin' time anyone mentions any kind of advanced rules overlay, an optional 5.5e, or anything similar, we get told that literally no one wants that and we should feel bad for trying to find some depth and creativity in this game instead of just playing our Champion Freaking Fighters and liking it.
Heh. We all saw how well that worked.
Please do not contact or message me.
I see a lot of people arguing that rules are a "straight jacket" and hurt your creativity.
To me it's the other way round: the lack of rules limits my RP. Why is that? Because I am only one person with a (imo) huge but nevertheless limited amount of creativity.
WotC, Paizo and other companies have dozens of authors with at least as much (and probably more) creativity as I do. So if those authors think up character concepts and ideas and write them down in the form of rules and feats, that actually inspires me to ideas I'd never have had without those rules.
I'll take Pathfinder as an example since it's the only rules-heavy english language system I know.
Pathfinder has hundreds of feats and classes and Prestige Classes. Reading through the combat feat section alone you'll find a magnitude of feats that allow you to be a master of two weapons, wield a spear like a whirling dervish striking from afar like a snake or closing in for the kill from one moment to another, be an intimidating, cleaving monster who frightens her enemies with every attack, use your shield as an actual weapon and take two of them so nothing can hurt you, be a proud defender who protects their allies with a shield or by swiping the enemy's weapons away, team up with your best friends and pick teamwork feats so the team is actually more than the sum of its parts, be an accomplished veteran with a trick up their sleeves for every occasion, be a martial master focusing on combat maneuvers to disarm, trip, sunder or otherwise hinder your enemies or even just get yourself a trusty animal companion, no matter what class you are.
That right there is more character concepts than D&D 5 has classes, each one unique with unique mechanics that also feel unique during gameplay. And that is just the melee feats and *before* you even decide which class you want to play.
Pathfinder obviously has many flaws, the "mandatory stat stick items", complicated modifier system and insane aquatic combat rules being just some of them.
But the sheer amount of ideas and possible characters and adventures that their feats, classes and archetypes invoke? I will pick that over 5e's "fluff everything" approach every day.
So if someone releases a book with even just a dozen flavourful feats for 5e, I am absolutely going to buy it.
At some point I will have to go and go over one of your other posts but there is something that it is said here that is completely false. “We should feel bad for trying to find some depth and creativity in this game” but are you really trying to find some depth? There are dozens of posts here that you seem to skip over that have stated that you can be very creative in this system. Currently I play a belly dancer-type of assassin and got creative with how I used the multi-class system of the game(monk/bard/rogue). I used my creativity(and a nice tutorial from nerdarchy).
You have stated in another post that you have no options and that a class is on rails after lever 2-3. Well welcome to RPGs, even with 3.5 and pathfinder there is a rail system there. However there are options after level 3 and it is called multi-classing.
Master of the Blade? It is totally doable in 5e. Samurai, monk-kensai multiclass can put you there(or even a samurai/bard-college of swords). Hell just doing a quick search in YouTube for “DnD 5e Master of the Blade” yielded me with at least 2 videos on how to make a master of the blade or tips on how to make one.
I don’t think there is a lack of creativity in what can be done. It seems like you just want a shortcut to get what you want. Heck there is even a home brew class that is a “Master of the Blades”
I'm just going to address this because it keeps coming up.
I play GURPS, when a GURPS game is available in my general area. I love that ruleset. Creating a GURPS character is like being presented with a six-foot block of granite and a bunch of sculpting tools before being told 'whatever you hew from this stone is yours.'
5e, on the other hand, gives you a coloring-book image of a character someone else has already made and says "color it whichever way you like, make this thing somebody else built that has only a loose, tangential relation to what you want to do yours!"
No Kasumi, I am not a munchkin looking for free power gaming. That's just a nonsensical assertion, because if I was looking for powergaming I know exactly how to do that already. It's not hard. 5e does not hide its powergaming. I could rig up a Vhuman Sharpshooter Crossbow Expert Battlemaster with a Boba Fet helmet like everybody else and wreck every conceivable level of face. I could do a Hexorlockadin that deals five hundred damage with a quadruple smite by fifth level without issue. I've won both of the Build Throwdowns that DorkForge put up in Tips and Tactics to fish for awesome builds. I very much know how to powergame, and do not need any new rules for it.
I want options for people who don't powergame. People who put character before crunch, and then usually get to be super weak and unhelpful to their party because they're trying to follow their hearts and don't know how to make the vision in their head line up with the game systems. People who ask their DM if they can switch to this character they found on the Internet because they're sick of the character they built lagging behind Boba "Hand Crossbow" Fet or Johnny "Every Charisma Caster in the Game ********ing Each Other" Dragonburn. People who don't know how to sit down and spend four to six hours smashing the nightmarish homebrew editor in this website into spitting out something within hailing distance of what they want.
If all I was concerned with was whuppin' ass and claiming lewtz, I'd just do that. But that is, in fact, the opposite of my concerns. So maybe drop that line of accusation, hm?
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If that's what you're looking for, then maybe D&D 5th Edition is not actually the game for you.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
6 hours?!? Try 36 (or more) for a solid, properly coded and well constructed homebrew. It can take 6 hours to just get the framework right sometimes if the design is complex enough.
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Hardcovers, DDB & You
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And that's when the design is possible at all. Heh, DDB still flat-out refuses to give me my "1/3 Warlock" casting progression on a rogue so I can do the Beguiler subclass. But yeah.
Yeesh. I really am trying to figure out why people are so intensely, ferociously, passionately, violently against any sort of expanded crunch options for 5e? I am well aware this game will never be GURPS, and it doesn't need to be. But holy shit, is there really just no middle ground whatsoever between GURPS and the 5e approach of "this is your character sheet. You can decide the fluffy things like appearance and such, but every mechanical decision about your character was made before you even got to the table. Enjoy!"?
Please do not contact or message me.
The fact that you can't make a "1/3 warlock" rogue in DDB is a limitation of the website, not 5E's rules. Publishing "5.5 E" rules would not overcome that limitation.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
True. But hey - if Wizards released a subclass with third-caster Pact Magic, then DDB would have to get off their heckin' duffs and figure out a way to make that work. like they already did for the Profane Soul but refuse to enable for anyone else.
Some of my desire for expanded rules is a desire for Wizards to put some pressure on DDB to figure out their shit, yes. I am more aware than most people that DDB has been in the process of doing so for the last year-plus, but man. It really feels like maybe they should put a heckin' rush on it. Even then though, lemme put this a different way for people.
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Why is the DM expected to build half the game rules?
Everybody keeps saying "Just homebrew rules already, JEEEEEEEEEEZ!" Query: why should I, as a DM, have to create my own personal PHB, my own personal DMG, and so on and so forth to get the game to function properly because Wizards failed to finish their own task? DMs already have a ton of stuff to do; designing the entire ruleset of their own game system is beyond most of them. It's one reason why you get so many DMs that say "if it's not in the PHB, you can't do it." Because they just don't have it in them to design custom everything for their players. Why should they have to? Why should Wizards be let off the hook for foisting the vast majority of their game design duties off onto their players? If I have to build it, test it, and make it work myself, why the Fignewton **** am I also expected to pay someone else for it?
Please do not contact or message me.
Actually it is not decided by the time you hit the table. This is the thing that you keep overlooking. If either you or your DM is creative you should be able to be more mechanical decisions during the course of the campaign. Heck, my DM still has to make mechanical rulings during the game and sometimes has to homebrew on the fly. A good DM can do that. Hell again look at other stuff like YouTube videos, or even DnD streams/podcasts. How come they can make mechanical rulings in the course of their game?
I am also confused. You keep saying you want more mechanics that decide every encounter you have(ie grapple, etc) but yet keep saying that every mechanical decision in the game is decided for you before the game has started. 5e is really RP friendly and doesn’t bog everything down in mechanics(which is a good thing).
You're confusing in-play character actions with progression decisions, as well as making the common mistake of assuming that "role playing" only happens in the spaces between the rules. It's a hugely common failing to assume that because a rule exists for an action, that rule takes precedence over the character having their roleplaying moment.
Allow me to point you towards Los Tiburon, Shark of the Land, a relatively infamous story from the 3.5/Pathfinder days wherein a half-orc monk gussied up as a luchadore managed to, basically, suplex a dragon out of the sky. It's an awesome story and a fantastic example of sticking to one's character concept even in the face of adversity. It's also completely impossible in 5e, because the grappling rules in 5e are so absolutely putrid, so incredibly useless and terrible at what they are intending to do, that you CANNOT play a luchadore in 5e. Not successfully. The rules do not allow it.
A DM could theoretically just call for a bunch of Strength checks or the like instead to determine success, yes. In the same way that the entirety of 5e's oh-so-vaunted combat engine could be reduced to "make a bunch of Strength checks to see if you successfully beat the ogre to death". Absolutely everything in the game could be reduced to 'describe what you want, then make the relevant ability check to see if it works." But nobody would play that game because it'd be boring as hell. No way to specialize, no way to demonstrate unique skills, talents or abilities, and no reason to use those rules instead of just writing it all out freeform. It's a bad way to run a game, which is why 5e went to the trouble of building out its entire combat engine instead of just saying "make a Strength or Dex check to figure out if you win a fight or not."
A properly written and developed set of rules do not contradict or eliminate Role Playing. They enhance it, give it form and drive. Without that structure, a player is left with "Uhhhhhh....sooo.....how's this work, exactly?" Which is hardly heroic or adventurous.
Please do not contact or message me.
I'm not so certain that Wizards actually cares past making sure that the game is being promoted the way they want it to and DDB isn't cheating them out of revenue. I mean, look at how clunky this message forum is- it's missing some features that WotC's own forum had 15 years ago.
Why is the DM expected to build half the game rules?
Everybody keeps saying "Just homebrew rules already, JEEEEEEEEEEZ!" Query: why should I, as a DM, have to create my own personal PHB, my own personal DMG, and so on and so forth to get the game to function properly because Wizards failed to finish their own task? DMs already have a ton of stuff to do; designing the entire ruleset of their own game system is beyond most of them. It's one reason why you get so many DMs that say "if it's not in the PHB, you can't do it." Because they just don't have it in them to design custom everything for their players. Why should they have to? Why should Wizards be let off the hook for foisting the vast majority of their game design duties off onto their players? If I have to build it, test it, and make it work myself, why the Fignewton **** am I also expected to pay someone else for it?
Because you're the one who wants it. The fact that they didn't cater the rules precisely to fit what a single person wanted or expected out of the game does not mean that they failed to finish their own task. It just means that the thing that that person wants out of the game isn't a priority for Wizards of the Coast.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
You can’t do that mechanically in 5e? Opposed STR or Athletics check. There are creatures that use grapple mechanics.
also the whole reduction of declare what you want and make a check thing. You haven’t played much TTRPG’s outside of DnD have you? BESM has a system that is basically this and yet is a popular system to play outside of DnD. There are mechanics and yet it basically works like that.
Really str vs str? I am guessing you don’t do dex builds or cast a lot of magic. There is a lot that goes on in a combat.
Let me go back to BESM real quick. It is applauded for its combat system which is exactly what you stated. Describe what your character is doing then till 2d6 and add you attack combat value and then the monster opposing it rolls 2d6 and adds it defensive combat value. BESM is lauded for its role play and number of customization options and yet if you look at it it is an incredibly simple system. And it uses only three stats.
Why am I telling you all of this? It is because you can do a lot even in DnD. Hell I have seen players say the most insane stuff that they want to do and it get done either a mechanics checks or just because the DM says hey go ahead.
and yea it is possible in 5e to suplex a dragon. It has been done before and can be done again.
It wasn't legal in the putrid, radioactive swamp that was 3.5 edition's grappling rules, which even WotC admitted were a mistake. For it to work as described, the GM either had never read the actual grapple rules or was running with heavy house rules.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.