I have no trouble understanding the concept. I do have a trouble with fully supporting the concept since it always comes across to me as 'We want all the stuff with as few strings as possible.'
That and this idea that many seem to have that religion is automatically some sort of bad thing.
I'm not sure how religion is a string or a drawback?
Some people just want to play a spellstriking gish without being religious. It's just a different character background and personality.
This is one of the reasons I want a proper swordmage class. Every attempt to play one goes:
Person A - "We need a swordmage class"
Person B - "Just play a paladin and reskin/refluff"
Person A - "Ok i'll play paladin and refluff to go without an oath/god/divine related stuff"
Person B - "No you can't do that you're playing paladin you can't change the entire theme and point of the class"
I have no trouble understanding the concept. I do have a trouble with fully supporting the concept since it always comes across to me as 'We want all the stuff with as few strings as possible.'
That and this idea that many seem to have that religion is automatically some sort of bad thing.
I linked the thread for a reason. If you want to discuss this topic, go to that thread and don't derail this one.
And when religion again being a significant/relevant aspect of the game is a desire for 6th edition? (Sorry if I was unclear on that, but it is something I would indeed like to see).
Oh, ok. How would you implement this?
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A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
Uh, the Paladin in neither OD&D nor AD&D1E were required to be attached to a church/religion. The only requirement regarding religion comes from the fact they cannot keep much treasure. All this would be doing is returning Paladin's back to what they were when the game first began.....
Paladins will never be allowed to possess more than four magical items, excluding the armor, shield and up to four weapons they normally use. They will give away all treasure that they win, save that which is necessary to maintain themselves, their men, and a modest castle. Gifts must be to the poor or to charitable or religious institutions, i.e. not to some other character played in the game. - Supplement I, Greyhawk p. 9
The AD&D 1E PHB is slightly different, but still does not require a Paladin to be pledged to a god or religion: An immediate tithe (10%) of all income — be it treasure, wages, or whatever — must be given to whatever charitable religious institution (not a clerical player character) of lawful good alignment the paladin selects. - PHB, p.24
It bears repeating that the Classes in the Core Rules are supposed to be useable in nearly any campaign setting. They are generic representations of common fantasy archetypes.
If you tie Paladins or Clerics directly to specific gods, you also tie them to the specific campaign setting that uses those gods.
I would also like for Religion, Nature, Arcana, and History be grouped up into one "Lore" skill as well as making another "Lifting" skill based on Strength and an Endurance skill based on Constitution.
At that point why not just call it a 'Stuff I know' skill.... Meanwhile you want to separate 'lifting' and 'endurance' out as additional physical skills?
Why do there need to be four skills for "stuff I know" when there is only one skill for being Athletic. Being good at swimming and being good at lifting weights are totally different things, but they're currently just covered by one skill, and "Surviving" is also just one skill.
Also, yes, because there are no Constitution based skills for some nonsense reason, and there's only one Strength based one.
Anyways, the game developers have said that 6e will be backwards compatible with 5e. So they can't change that much.
Where have you heard any official dev talk about a potential 6e?
Regardless, I'm in both camps. I would love to see what's coming for 6e and would certainly give it a try, and at the same time I want 5e to live a nice, long, healthy life and hope that great 6e is still many years away. I have a lot of ideas for how to improve the game for 6e but it's just my own opinion so it's not like it's going to go anywhere.
The game component of D&D is a miniature combat game, the pursuit of players to "get more choices" isn't the result of their not being enough options, but a desire of players wanting "more powerful options". You claim its not about "power gaming", but I claim that it is precisely ONLY about power gaming and has absolutely nothing to do with role-playing.
I definitely dispute this. Is wanting to a fighter, a rogue, and a wizard to play differently only because of powergaming?
Wanting new mechanics is not wanting more powerful options. You can make something play differently without it being more powerful. In fact WotC has managed to make 13 classes which more or less perform in the same power ballpark with the odd exception. I mean in theory you could remove all mechanics and classes, and just have a single 'character' which is identical for all players and performs in exactly the same way and just refluff it however. It would be 100% balanced with no power creep at all.
And the mechanical side and the RP side do impact each other. Yes you can in theory refluff and imagine a paladin as a completely different character which RP's however you want. But the fact is a lot of DM's will say 'nope', you are a paladin, therefore you have to include these things in your character/backstory and you have no choice. I'm lucky enough to have a DM which will let me play a paladin without an oath or god, but that's not the case for many people.
It's not wrong to want to enjoy both the RP side and the mechanical side of DnD.
Let it be, Jenkens. This tangent is wildly off-topic, and frankly BL just up and admitted that he completely understands what we're talking about. He just doesn't care, because Powergaming Is Evil and the game rules don't matter because Power of Imagination. There's no sense beating your head against a brick wall. It's just unnecessary frustration and a headache nobody needs
Anyways, the game developers have said that 6e will be backwards compatible with 5e. So they can't change that much.
Where have you heard any official dev talk about a potential 6e?
Regardless, I'm in both camps. I would love to see what's coming for 6e and would certainly give it a try, and at the same time I want 5e to live a nice, long, healthy life and hope that great 6e is still many years away. I have a lot of ideas for how to improve the game for 6e but it's just my own opinion so it's not like it's going to go anywhere.
I do 't remember the exact source, but I think that one of the game developers said that due to the success of 5e, 6e, would be a refined or similar edition. All 5e content would be usable with 6e.
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A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
BigLizard, you have been arguing very civilly and I respect you for that. I believe that the point of adding in new options is to add mechanical uniqueness. Not strictly more power, but rather the options to do new strange things. For example, the mechanics for curses in 5e are terrible. All that they do is allow you to do a little more damage to a target, or make they have disadvantage on some checks. You can't build a mechanically supported cursing character in 5e without out it being pretty boring to play.
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A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
Mechanics and power are not the same thing at all. You can have different mechanics without them being better or worse. Yes you can add new mechanics which are more powerful which is power creep. But it's also possible to add mechanics which are less powerful as well.
I would happily accept a character half as powerful as one of the current classes if its mechanics fit what I wanted to do more.
And I still disagree that RP and mechanics are 100% separate. If you pick a certain class, many DM's will rule you have to RP in a certain way. That is mechanics and fluff directly interacting.
Likewise, I could RP my warhammer as a bow. But mechanically, that bow has a range of 5ft...
For many players, optimizing builds is a puzzle solving exercise, which is just as legitimate a form of fun as any other.
If they go into your game, and use your “curse narrative concept,” then try to go into another DM’s game and do the same they will likely be told to piss off. The point of having it set down mechanically is so that the player can know objectively that their puzzle solving the build paid off. And so that they know there were no special favors from a “narrative” perspective that influenced their “mechanical” effectiveness.
While I am inclined to agree with you that not optimizing can open a lot more doors narratively, I do still believe that mechanics are important as well. Too much narrative and too few mechanics and we may as well just write a book together and stop pretending to “play a game” at all. There has to be a balance.
BigLizard, you have been arguing very civilly and I respect you for that. I believe that the point of adding in new options is to add mechanical uniqueness. Not strictly more power, but rather the options to do new strange things. For example, the mechanics for curses in 5e are terrible. All that they do is allow you to do a little more damage to a target, or make they have disadvantage on some checks. You can't build a mechanically supported cursing character in 5e without out it being pretty boring to play.
I get that, but my point here is and I think its here that I differ in my thinking and approach. If there are "curse mechanics", suddenly playing a curse character is good (if the mechanics are deemed good) or bad (if the mechanics are deemed bad). Why? Why do we allow mechanics to have such control over creating a cool character concepts, a character who's narrative concept is he curses people when this really is a very narrative, story driven element that can through cooperation with the DM have whatever narrative impact they want it to be. Is a new mechanic for that really necessary?
I promise you with zero mechanics I could put you in one of my games as Witch that curses people and it would be a far more dynamic and diverse experience in which your abilities will have more impact then you could ever have if we created a mechanical class structure defined by rules with X effect for Y damage as is the case with most class abilities. Like I can help you realize a far more interesting character that way then any mechanic will ever be able to produce.
When people in my games talk about character concepts, what the characters abilities are, what their role in the game is, we don't open the book to find it. Its when you start looking in the book, that is where all the disappointment is found (case in point in these discussions about classes).
This is why a conversation like this about class diversity sadness me because I recognize it has nothing to do with story, narrative, character concepts or role-playing, its about people trying to find new "builds" in a game about "fighting monsters". I get that this is part of the game but in that cycle, of trying to create more classes more abilities, new ways to do the same thing in a different way, these aren't things that will make your D&D games better, they will always lead to disappointment. Class abilities and effects are not going to help you define a better character concept. Mechanics are not going to "support" your narrative stories, they will always get in the way in particular if your a stickler for rules which I think modern DM's are becoming more and more. I mean consider the idea that a DM says "no" to re-flavoring classes to meet narratives. That to me is a horrifying revelation about modern DM's, its quite literarily the opposite of everything D&D has tried to be for 40 years.
The only positive thing about creating more defined classes, creating "balance" and defining mechanics in certain terms does is make the game easier to translate to a video game. The idea that mechanics can support narratives, is actually quite ridiculous to me. Mechanics almost exclusively destroy narrative play, I don't understand the desire to have more of them.
I do however understand that in an environment where the precedence has already been set, aka, there are already dozens of classes and sub-classes, that in that environment there is a desire for more as people seem to be stuck in the loop that if a class does not "forbadem" define their character concept, then there character concept is impossible to achieve. With such a mentality and approach to the game, it makes sense that players would find disappointment, in particular if DM's are so inflexible that the re-enforce this idea that "if it ain't in the book it doesn't exist.". That is actually the saddest revelation of them all since the DM guide very specifically in very certain terms defines why DM's should not behave this way.
I think we are going to have to agree to disagree. In your first paragraph, you state:
If there are "curse mechanics", suddenly playing a curse character is good (if the mechanics are deemed good) or bad (if the mechanics are deemed bad). Why? Why do we allow mechanics to have such control over creating a cool character concepts, a character who's narrative concept is he curses people when this really is a very narrative, story driven element that can through cooperation with the DM have whatever narrative impact they want it to be. Is a new mechanic for that really necessary?
First, what is wrong with a character being good or bad? Secondly, not everything can be accomplished with narrative. The rules exist for a reason. If you think narrative is so powerful and important, why bother playing with rules? Why not use a diceless roleplay system, or any other derivative? I think that a new mechanic is necessary because if the characters actions aren't mechanically supported, they aren't actually doing anything. Let's say that I want my character to put a curse on someone that gives them bad luck, or some other curse. Playing your way, do you just tell the DM that the target is now cursed? Is the DM just supposed to assign random debuffs to it? I think that for a character to actually work, the theme needs to be supported by mechanics.
This is why a conversation like this about class diversity sadness me because I recognize it has nothing to do with story, narrative, character concepts or role-playing, its about people trying to find new "builds" in a game about "fighting monsters". I get that this is part of the game but in that cycle, of trying to create more classes more abilities, new ways to do the same thing in a different way, these aren't things that will make your D&D games better, they will always lead to disappointment. Class abilities and effects are not going to help you define a better character concept. Mechanics are not going to "support" your narrative stories, they will always get in the way in particular if your a stickler for rules which I think modern DM's are becoming more and more. I mean consider the idea that a DM says "no" to re-flavoring classes to meet narratives. That to me is a horrifying revelation about modern DM's, its quite literarily the opposite of everything D&D has tried to be for 40 years.
The first statement of your sentence is wrong, at least for the way I play the game. I don't want new things to do the same thing. I want mechanically unique abilities that allow more interesting characters to be made. If my character isn't doesn't have any actual mechanical support, then I am just pretending that they can do something. Mechanics do support my narrative stories. They are the foundation of them.
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A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
The game component of D&D is a miniature combat game, the pursuit of players to "get more choices" isn't the result of their not being enough options, but a desire of players wanting "more powerful options". You claim its not about "power gaming", but I claim that it is precisely ONLY about power gaming and has absolutely nothing to do with role-playing.
I definitely dispute this. Is wanting to a fighter, a rogue, and a wizard to play differently only because of powergaming?
Wanting new mechanics is not wanting more powerful options. You can make something play differently without it being more powerful. In fact WotC has managed to make 13 classes which more or less perform in the same power ballpark with the odd exception. I mean in theory you could remove all mechanics and classes, and just have a single 'character' which is identical for all players and performs in exactly the same way and just refluff it however. It would be 100% balanced with no power creep at all.
And the mechanical side and the RP side do impact each other. Yes you can in theory refluff and imagine a paladin as a completely different character which RP's however you want. But the fact is a lot of DM's will say 'nope', you are a paladin, therefore you have to include these things in your character/backstory and you have no choice. I'm lucky enough to have a DM which will let me play a paladin without an oath or god, but that's not the case for many people.
It's not wrong to want to enjoy both the RP side and the mechanical side of DnD.
I agree with all of this. I'll allow players to be flexible, letting them reflavors crossbows as guns, or other simple things. If someone wants to play a necromancer cleric that heals by applying undead flesh to wounds? Thats cool. But when the mechanics don't support the narrative, it doesn't make sense. The Warhammer relfavored as a longbow is a perfect example.
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A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
For many players, optimizing builds is a puzzle solving exercise, which is just as legitimate a form of fun as any other.
If they go into your game, and use your “curse narrative concept,” then try to go into another DM’s game and do the same they will likely be told to piss off. The point of having it set down mechanically is so that the player can know objectively that their puzzle solving the build paid off. And so that they know there were no special favors from a “narrative” perspective that influenced their “mechanical” effectiveness.
While I am inclined to agree with you that not optimizing can open a lot more doors narratively, I do still believe that mechanics are important as well. Too much narrative and too few mechanics and we may as well just write a book together and stop pretending to “play a game” at all. There has to be a balance.
I would respectfully disagree with your final line there, on two grounds. First, with or without mechanics, you are almost certainly just as much cooperatively writing a book. It is possible to have a campaign that consists of nothing but a series of tactical challenges, but never seen such a campaign personally.
Second, the mechanics are pure illusion. This is no chess match or other board game. Outside of using modules that contain sample characters for use in said module, the rules do not set up pieces on both sides in any balanced and tested manner. The DM always has full control of the environment around the PC's, regardless of official game mechanics. It is not any sort of conventional game when finite power (the PC's) are 'against' infinite power (The DM). The structure is there to give players something interesting to build with, but ideally it should be as invisible as possible, since the real 'game' is that collective storytelling.
One needs no DM simply for character creation.
It’s no big shocker that you disagree with me. I was honestly wondering what took so long and if you were feeling well.
I disagree that “the game” is the collective storytelling. Collective storytelling requires no rules, dice, classes, any of that. Throw all that out the window and go tell a story if you want.
D&D, like any TTRPG, is a “Social Storytelling Game” and therefore has three main aspects to it.
Social- People enjoying spending time together.
Storytelling- People enjoying a narrative about characters and plots and stuff.
Game- People enjoying “playing” by a common set of rules and guidelines.
The balance I mentioned is in regards to those three aspects and how they relate for each individual table. Not “balance” in the rules, or between PCs, or between PCs and DM. But balance as to how important each of those three aspects are to any given group: Social, Storytelling, and Gaming.
Without rules and dice and stuff, all that’s left is “Social Storytelling” like around a campfire.
Without narrative, all that’s left is “Social Gaming” like chess.
Without communal interaction, all that’s left is “Storytelling Game” like Fallout or Skyrim.
To save time:
My philosophy is that the “Narrative, Game, and Social“ aspects of D&D need to be in relative balance for every table. Everyone in the group needs to be in roughly the same mindset about how important those three things are for their group.
If everyone is there to “Experience The Story” together then no problem.
If everyone is there to “Play the Game” (roll rice, calculate stats, etc.) then no problem.
If everyone is there to “Hang Out with Friends” then no problem.
But if one person mostly cares about Story, and another mostly cares about Game, and another mostly cares about Friends, then nobody ends up having fun. Story & Friends will resent “that boring rules Nazi,” Rules & Story will resent “the annoying distracting player,” and Friends & Rules will resent "the spotlight thief.”
Don’t get me wrong, I like rules, and I like some friendly socializing. I personally prefer more of a balance towards center. I like a table full of people who are very knowledgeable about the rules, but don’t worry about optimization. A table full of people who love to RP and really get into character, but also aren’t going to blatantly ignore that there are rules to do it. People who don’t resent a little crosstalk (because we’re humans for crying out loud), but also remember that we are there for a group activity, not a cocktail party. So basically anywhere generally around the middle of the table is fine by me.
(Paraphrased from multiple accumulated posts of mine.)
So long as the thread is so hopelessly sabotaged regardless...allow me to present a wrinkle no one ever seems to suspect, especially when folks like Kotath are casting aspersions on my character. In spoilers, so people uninterested can simply cruise on by.
I love homebrew. I very much enjoy designing new things, and when I was DMing I enjoyed awarding my players treats and boons and other bits of personal homebrew to better fit the stories they were telling and the ideas they presented. I find it fun and engaging to build new things within the broad framework of 5e, and if the DDB Public Homebrew section is to be believed, I am significantly better at it than most average layperson players without any formal game design training. Anyone at my table I've shown my efforts to have almost universally lauded them, and even here when I discuss homebrew options and ideas people tend to agree with me more often than not. I say this not to toot my own horn, nobody cares about how good I am at amateur game design, but to establish that were I to push it, I could easily convince either of the DMs for the campaigns we're running now to allow me to utilize my own homebrew.
I do not do so. I almost never make use of anything I homebrew myself, and for the most part consider anything I create to be very strictly off-limits for my own use I'll happily make stuff for other folks, stuff to drop into the general pool of available options for our games, and if the DM is stymied on something I'll offer my assistance, but at almost no point do I allow myself to use anything I've homebrewed. No doubt that will seem like either a bogus humblebrag claim to folks who assume I'm evil, or sheerest nonsensical madness to folks who assume I'm stupid. It is neither.
What it is, is an acknowledgement that it's fundamentally unfair to the DM, but most especially to other players, for me to put those skills to use benefitting myself. The fact that I am significantly better than anyone else at my table at creating fun, unique, and balanced homebrew does not give me cart blanche to constantly demand special snowflake treatment and insist that I get to use all my own custom options while everyone else is stuck with the factory defaults. While I'm off being the star of the show with my scratch-built custom species, my intricate and engaging custom subclasses, a grimoire full of exotic new spells, and a slew of exciting feats, everybody else gets to pull from the books and feel like a washed-out olde-timey photo next to Ghost ***** and the Hero of Tomorrow. Doesn't matter that all my shift is nicely in line with the expected 5e power curve - my shit is all shiny and custom and new, none of theirs is, and that just sucks and drags everybody else's experience down. That is not okay, and nothing I will tolerate in my games even when I'm just a player and not the DM.
Nor is "well then just design new shit for everybody else, too!" the answer. That's even less appealing, having to play somebody else's imagination. On a few occasions I've still tried, when existing options simply didn't work well for what they were trying to do. Both players turned me down. Getting something specifically tailored for them, built from the ground up to be what they wanted to do, felt like cheating. It felt like screwing everybody else over, and like they were getting unfair treatment as well as having their own agency diminished. Instead, both players eventually decided on different options.
Being good at homebrew is a skill. Not everybody has it, and not everybody can acquire it. Even if you do have it, if nobody else at your table does? Then it doesn't benefit you. It just makes you the jackass who continually demands preferential Special Snowflake treatment, or the ***** who keeps coming up with Balanced and Equitable Homebrew that just-so-happens to perfectly fit the needs of their own character. That is powergaming of the sort folks should condemn. And it's also yet another reason why "will you PLEASE stop asking for rules and just...just homebrew everything?!" doesn't work.
I think there is a fundamental disconnect between what people want from DnD. And honestly I don't think it's possible to reconcile.
Some people want a fixed small bunch of pre-set of pieces you play with as basically a side thing. They aren't important and can just be flavoured as whatever. The story is most important and you can go entirely without the game aspect.
Some people want an in depth character building system to try to build whatever you want as your own creation like a video game RPG, and want their character to play how they want on the battlefield as well as off it.
What I don't like is the accusation that all the mechanical people want is more powerful options. If all I cared about was power, I'd be playing a palahexasorcadinlock or whatever the meta munchkin build is these days. If all I cared about was power, my storm herald barbarian wouldn't be using two weapon fighting, and would instead have just gone for great weapon master greataxe instead.
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I'm not sure how religion is a string or a drawback?
Some people just want to play a spellstriking gish without being religious. It's just a different character background and personality.
This is one of the reasons I want a proper swordmage class. Every attempt to play one goes:
Person A - "We need a swordmage class"
Person B - "Just play a paladin and reskin/refluff"
Person A - "Ok i'll play paladin and refluff to go without an oath/god/divine related stuff"
Person B - "No you can't do that you're playing paladin you can't change the entire theme and point of the class"
Oh, ok. How would you implement this?
A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
My Improved Lineage System
Uh, the Paladin in neither OD&D nor AD&D1E were required to be attached to a church/religion. The only requirement regarding religion comes from the fact they cannot keep much treasure. All this would be doing is returning Paladin's back to what they were when the game first began.....
Paladins will never be allowed to possess more than four magical items, excluding the armor, shield and up to four weapons they normally use. They will give away all treasure that they win, save that which is necessary to maintain themselves, their men, and a modest castle. Gifts must be to the poor or to charitable or religious institutions, i.e. not to some other character played in the game. - Supplement I, Greyhawk p. 9
The AD&D 1E PHB is slightly different, but still does not require a Paladin to be pledged to a god or religion: An immediate tithe (10%) of all income — be it treasure, wages, or whatever — must be given to whatever charitable religious institution (not a clerical player character) of lawful good alignment the paladin selects. - PHB, p.24
That they drop the Vancian magic systeme...
SHit is old as **** and obsolete, its time it goes the way of the Dodo.
"Normality is but an Illusion, Whats normal to the Spider, is only madness for the Fly"
Kain de Frostberg- Dark Knight - (Vengeance Pal3/ Hexblade 9), Port Mourn
Kain de Draakberg-Dark Knight lvl8-Avergreen(DitA)
What would you replace it with? Some sort of mana point system?
A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
My Improved Lineage System
It bears repeating that the Classes in the Core Rules are supposed to be useable in nearly any campaign setting. They are generic representations of common fantasy archetypes.
If you tie Paladins or Clerics directly to specific gods, you also tie them to the specific campaign setting that uses those gods.
<Insert clever signature here>
I agree. Apparently Dave Arneson originally wanted D&D Mages to have a spell point pool but Gary nixed that idea. The path not taken......
Why do there need to be four skills for "stuff I know" when there is only one skill for being Athletic. Being good at swimming and being good at lifting weights are totally different things, but they're currently just covered by one skill, and "Surviving" is also just one skill.
Also, yes, because there are no Constitution based skills for some nonsense reason, and there's only one Strength based one.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
Where have you heard any official dev talk about a potential 6e?
Regardless, I'm in both camps. I would love to see what's coming for 6e and would certainly give it a try, and at the same time I want 5e to live a nice, long, healthy life and hope that great 6e is still many years away. I have a lot of ideas for how to improve the game for 6e but it's just my own opinion so it's not like it's going to go anywhere.
I definitely dispute this. Is wanting to a fighter, a rogue, and a wizard to play differently only because of powergaming?
Wanting new mechanics is not wanting more powerful options. You can make something play differently without it being more powerful. In fact WotC has managed to make 13 classes which more or less perform in the same power ballpark with the odd exception. I mean in theory you could remove all mechanics and classes, and just have a single 'character' which is identical for all players and performs in exactly the same way and just refluff it however. It would be 100% balanced with no power creep at all.
And the mechanical side and the RP side do impact each other. Yes you can in theory refluff and imagine a paladin as a completely different character which RP's however you want. But the fact is a lot of DM's will say 'nope', you are a paladin, therefore you have to include these things in your character/backstory and you have no choice. I'm lucky enough to have a DM which will let me play a paladin without an oath or god, but that's not the case for many people.
It's not wrong to want to enjoy both the RP side and the mechanical side of DnD.
Let it be, Jenkens. This tangent is wildly off-topic, and frankly BL just up and admitted that he completely understands what we're talking about. He just doesn't care, because Powergaming Is Evil and the game rules don't matter because Power of Imagination. There's no sense beating your head against a brick wall. It's just unnecessary frustration and a headache nobody needs
Please do not contact or message me.
I do 't remember the exact source, but I think that one of the game developers said that due to the success of 5e, 6e, would be a refined or similar edition. All 5e content would be usable with 6e.
A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
My Improved Lineage System
BigLizard, you have been arguing very civilly and I respect you for that. I believe that the point of adding in new options is to add mechanical uniqueness. Not strictly more power, but rather the options to do new strange things. For example, the mechanics for curses in 5e are terrible. All that they do is allow you to do a little more damage to a target, or make they have disadvantage on some checks. You can't build a mechanically supported cursing character in 5e without out it being pretty boring to play.
A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
My Improved Lineage System
Mechanics and power are not the same thing at all. You can have different mechanics without them being better or worse. Yes you can add new mechanics which are more powerful which is power creep. But it's also possible to add mechanics which are less powerful as well.
I would happily accept a character half as powerful as one of the current classes if its mechanics fit what I wanted to do more.
And I still disagree that RP and mechanics are 100% separate. If you pick a certain class, many DM's will rule you have to RP in a certain way. That is mechanics and fluff directly interacting.
Likewise, I could RP my warhammer as a bow. But mechanically, that bow has a range of 5ft...
BigLizard,
You missed some things:
For many players, optimizing builds is a puzzle solving exercise, which is just as legitimate a form of fun as any other.
If they go into your game, and use your “curse narrative concept,” then try to go into another DM’s game and do the same they will likely be told to piss off. The point of having it set down mechanically is so that the player can know objectively that their puzzle solving the build paid off. And so that they know there were no special favors from a “narrative” perspective that influenced their “mechanical” effectiveness.
While I am inclined to agree with you that not optimizing can open a lot more doors narratively, I do still believe that mechanics are important as well. Too much narrative and too few mechanics and we may as well just write a book together and stop pretending to “play a game” at all. There has to be a balance.
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I think we are going to have to agree to disagree. In your first paragraph, you state:
First, what is wrong with a character being good or bad? Secondly, not everything can be accomplished with narrative. The rules exist for a reason. If you think narrative is so powerful and important, why bother playing with rules? Why not use a diceless roleplay system, or any other derivative? I think that a new mechanic is necessary because if the characters actions aren't mechanically supported, they aren't actually doing anything. Let's say that I want my character to put a curse on someone that gives them bad luck, or some other curse. Playing your way, do you just tell the DM that the target is now cursed? Is the DM just supposed to assign random debuffs to it? I think that for a character to actually work, the theme needs to be supported by mechanics.
The first statement of your sentence is wrong, at least for the way I play the game. I don't want new things to do the same thing. I want mechanically unique abilities that allow more interesting characters to be made. If my character isn't doesn't have any actual mechanical support, then I am just pretending that they can do something. Mechanics do support my narrative stories. They are the foundation of them.
A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
My Improved Lineage System
I agree with all of this. I'll allow players to be flexible, letting them reflavors crossbows as guns, or other simple things. If someone wants to play a necromancer cleric that heals by applying undead flesh to wounds? Thats cool. But when the mechanics don't support the narrative, it doesn't make sense. The Warhammer relfavored as a longbow is a perfect example.
A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
My Improved Lineage System
It’s no big shocker that you disagree with me. I was honestly wondering what took so long and if you were feeling well.
I disagree that “the game” is the collective storytelling. Collective storytelling requires no rules, dice, classes, any of that. Throw all that out the window and go tell a story if you want.
D&D, like any TTRPG, is a “Social Storytelling Game” and therefore has three main aspects to it.
The balance I mentioned is in regards to those three aspects and how they relate for each individual table. Not “balance” in the rules, or between PCs, or between PCs and DM. But balance as to how important each of those three aspects are to any given group: Social, Storytelling, and Gaming.
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Creating Epic Boons on DDB
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Sigh.
So long as the thread is so hopelessly sabotaged regardless...allow me to present a wrinkle no one ever seems to suspect, especially when folks like Kotath are casting aspersions on my character. In spoilers, so people uninterested can simply cruise on by.
I love homebrew. I very much enjoy designing new things, and when I was DMing I enjoyed awarding my players treats and boons and other bits of personal homebrew to better fit the stories they were telling and the ideas they presented. I find it fun and engaging to build new things within the broad framework of 5e, and if the DDB Public Homebrew section is to be believed, I am significantly better at it than most average layperson players without any formal game design training. Anyone at my table I've shown my efforts to have almost universally lauded them, and even here when I discuss homebrew options and ideas people tend to agree with me more often than not. I say this not to toot my own horn, nobody cares about how good I am at amateur game design, but to establish that were I to push it, I could easily convince either of the DMs for the campaigns we're running now to allow me to utilize my own homebrew.
I do not do so. I almost never make use of anything I homebrew myself, and for the most part consider anything I create to be very strictly off-limits for my own use I'll happily make stuff for other folks, stuff to drop into the general pool of available options for our games, and if the DM is stymied on something I'll offer my assistance, but at almost no point do I allow myself to use anything I've homebrewed. No doubt that will seem like either a bogus humblebrag claim to folks who assume I'm evil, or sheerest nonsensical madness to folks who assume I'm stupid. It is neither.
What it is, is an acknowledgement that it's fundamentally unfair to the DM, but most especially to other players, for me to put those skills to use benefitting myself. The fact that I am significantly better than anyone else at my table at creating fun, unique, and balanced homebrew does not give me cart blanche to constantly demand special snowflake treatment and insist that I get to use all my own custom options while everyone else is stuck with the factory defaults. While I'm off being the star of the show with my scratch-built custom species, my intricate and engaging custom subclasses, a grimoire full of exotic new spells, and a slew of exciting feats, everybody else gets to pull from the books and feel like a washed-out olde-timey photo next to Ghost ***** and the Hero of Tomorrow. Doesn't matter that all my shift is nicely in line with the expected 5e power curve - my shit is all shiny and custom and new, none of theirs is, and that just sucks and drags everybody else's experience down. That is not okay, and nothing I will tolerate in my games even when I'm just a player and not the DM.
Nor is "well then just design new shit for everybody else, too!" the answer. That's even less appealing, having to play somebody else's imagination. On a few occasions I've still tried, when existing options simply didn't work well for what they were trying to do. Both players turned me down. Getting something specifically tailored for them, built from the ground up to be what they wanted to do, felt like cheating. It felt like screwing everybody else over, and like they were getting unfair treatment as well as having their own agency diminished. Instead, both players eventually decided on different options.
Being good at homebrew is a skill. Not everybody has it, and not everybody can acquire it. Even if you do have it, if nobody else at your table does? Then it doesn't benefit you. It just makes you the jackass who continually demands preferential Special Snowflake treatment, or the ***** who keeps coming up with Balanced and Equitable Homebrew that just-so-happens to perfectly fit the needs of their own character. That is powergaming of the sort folks should condemn. And it's also yet another reason why "will you PLEASE stop asking for rules and just...just homebrew everything?!" doesn't work.
Please do not contact or message me.
I think there is a fundamental disconnect between what people want from DnD. And honestly I don't think it's possible to reconcile.
Some people want a fixed small bunch of pre-set of pieces you play with as basically a side thing. They aren't important and can just be flavoured as whatever. The story is most important and you can go entirely without the game aspect.
Some people want an in depth character building system to try to build whatever you want as your own creation like a video game RPG, and want their character to play how they want on the battlefield as well as off it.
What I don't like is the accusation that all the mechanical people want is more powerful options. If all I cared about was power, I'd be playing a palahexasorcadinlock or whatever the meta munchkin build is these days. If all I cared about was power, my storm herald barbarian wouldn't be using two weapon fighting, and would instead have just gone for great weapon master greataxe instead.