D&D Discussion

[GravityEmblem]

The point about cautious fighting reminds me of a video about encounter balance whose thesis was “the DM doesn’t balance the encounters, the PLAYERS balance the encounters”—basically, by choosing whether to fight or avoid the enemy. That’s another way 2E and 5E have opposite design philosophies. 5E’s idea of combat balance is the other one mentioned in the video, “not too easy, and not too hard.” Which, come to think of it, really explains a lot about why dying is so difficult in 5E, and why people tend to get upset if they die and aren’t expecting it. The system doesn’t expect the players to die, and if they do, it’s the DM’s fault. Meanwhile, 2E expects the players to drop like flies if they don’t make careful decisions about when and how to fight.

[Daos]

Oh, I know of Dragonsfoot.  I don't have an account, but I lurk sometimes.  It's a little too grognardy for me to actually join.  (There used to be a rule that you weren't even allowed to say 3E; they called it TETSNBN (The Edition That Shall Not Be Named), which gives you an idea of the maturity level there.)

But anyway, oof, yeah, I looked up the Zivilyn Priest Class and that is pretty awful.  You need 15 INT and 16 WIS, but can only wield a quarterstaff for weapons (nothing else), no armor, and you have major access to All, Astral, Divination, Necromantic, and Plant and can Turn Undead.  Like...wow.  Major access to Astral, you say?  The sphere with only two core spells in it (both of which are 5th level or higher)?  Tome of Magic at least bumps it up to 5 spells, but geez.  Yeah, I'm going to have to rework that entirely at some point.  Grant them the Time sphere for one (weirdly, Tales of the Lance specifies that their priest classes are compatible with Tome of Magic, but do not include any of the new spheres) and a bunch of other stuff to balance that out.

Aug 19, 2023 14:59:56 GMT -8 Matt4 said:

My problem with 1DnD or whatever (leaving out the whole OGL fiasco) is that it didn't really feel much different from 5e, and yet most of the differences that were actually there felt worsening of 5e stuff lol but yeah, after the first couple of UAs I completely stopped reading about it (same for all my dnd friends), so Idk where they are at right now.

I wouldn't worry about it.  From what I heard, they decided to roll back about 90% of the changes they set up in the first handful of UAs anyway, so the entire thing was a big waste of time, I guess.  XD

Aug 19, 2023 15:09:14 GMT -8 GravityEmblem said:

The point about cautious fighting reminds me of a video about encounter balance whose thesis was “the DM doesn’t balance the encounters, the PLAYERS balance the encounters”—basically, by choosing whether to fight or avoid the enemy. That’s another way 2E and 5E have opposite design philosophies. 5E’s idea of combat balance is the other one mentioned in the video, “not too easy, and not too hard.” Which, come to think of it, really explains a lot about why dying is so difficult in 5E, and why people tend to get upset if they die and aren’t expecting it. The system doesn’t expect the players to die, and if they do, it’s the DM’s fault. Meanwhile, 2E expects the players to drop like flies if they don’t make careful decisions about when and how to fight.

Oh, yes.  The concept of 'balanced encounters' and 'challenge rating' did not exist in 2E.  The game was very randomized, so random encounters were, indeed, quite random.  The DM could make adjustments on the fly, of course, but it was not impossible to roll say, a dragon or something for a 1st level party, especially if they ventured somewhere particularly dangerous.

But yes, 2E was set up on the idea that players will run if things get too rough.  They even had a whole mechanic for morale, so even if you were overwhelmed, you could potentially do enough damage to scare off the rest, and end the fight early.  Go back even earlier than that, and PCs didn't even earn XP for fighting; they earned it for treasure acquisition.  So it was smarter to avoid fighting entirely when it was possible--it ate up resources and risked death.

The philosophies are very different, and it tripped me up a lot when I first started running 5E.  It took me awhile to really get a grasp on that.  I knew the mechanics were different, but it took a long time for me to understand that the philosophies themselves were also different.

[Daos]

So I'm about three quarters of the way through Dragons of Fate. And I'm annoyed by something.

SPOILER: Click to show

{Spoilers for Dragons of Fate}
I don't like how much Destina has been completely sidelined. She was the main character in the first book, right up to the point Tas was introduced, then she became a side-character. Now with Tas, Sturm, Raistlin, Huma and Magius, she's barely in the book at all. She's essentially just the vessel the Greygem is using, barely even a character. She reminds me of that one NPC the DM keeps forgetting exists until someone asks about them. "Oh, Destina? Uh, yeah, she retired early for the night. That's it." Even more annoying as she's the only woman in the group, and the only person of color.

Granted, I still have 1/4 left to go, but I doubt much is going to change in that time.

[Daos]

I meant to mention it earlier, but I finished Dragons of Fate.  The last ten chapters or so were so short, I just sort of blazed through them quickly.  Boy, things really flew off the rails at the end there; which was the case for the first book, too.

SPOILER: Click to show

{Dragons of Fate Spoilers}

As for characters, I was spot on about Destina barely being in the book. But also, Sturm didn't really do anything either. I think he was the only character to not get a POV chapter at any point. He was just...there. I thought the whole point of bringing him back was that he was the least fleshed out Hero of the Lance (on account of dying so early), but they don't actually do anything much with him. Finally, where the Abyss was Kaz? Is he just ret-gone? I kept expecting him to show up, or at least get name-dropped. I guess not, though.

[Igordragonian]

About Dragons Of Fate

SPOILER: Click to show

{Spoiler}
Wait. So it happens during the War of the lance?

[Daos]

It's a time travel story.  So it takes place in several different times.

SPOILER: Click to show

{Spoiler}
Most of it takes place during the Third Dragon War, though.

[Daos]

Has anyone here ever run or played in Curse of Strahd, or have any thoughts/opinions on it?

[Matt4]

Me, Marvoch and another friend of us gifted it to our regolar DM in the hope of playing it someday (but we first need to finish another campaign at least because otherwise then we have too many campaigns going on).

I'm so hyped to play it, I love the gothic ambience, vampires, tarokkas, werewolves... I mostly heard positive things about it too.

Why are you asking?

[Daos]

Curiosity, mostly.  I had recently watched a video where it was said Curse of Strahd was the most popular 5E adventure of all time.  Not sure how accurate that was, but I was surprised to hear it.  I had assumed it was largely niche since a) I don't really hear people talking about it much in my own circles and b) it's been seven years and WotC has never returned to the setting again.  Not that they are terribly prone to making good business decisions, granted.

I also heard about the 'controversy' regarding how it ends, which struck me as so asinine that it made me worry about the state of the D&D community at large.  It's like people today don't understand what themes are or how genre works.

[Matt4]

Sorry I don't understand: do you think the ending is asinine or the controversy around it? In any case, I haven't heard anything about either (and I don't intend to, to avoid spoilers ), so I can't comment on it.

[Daos]

I find the controversy around the ending to be asinine.  Without going into too much detail, there is apparently a large subset of 5E'ers who are upset that the ending to a grimdark, gothic horror game isn't...happy enough. 

To go into it in a little more depth:
(Minor spoilers for a 7 year old adventure, based on a 40 year old adventure, which in turn is based on tropes that are centuries old)

SPOILER: Click to show

{Spoiler}
These players apparently expect killing Strahd to break the curse on Barovia, freeing everyone trapped there and bringing about eternal peace, sunshine and rainbows.  But it doesn't.  It creates a brief respite, nothing more.  Because Evil can never truly be destroyed.  Also, this is Strahd's punishment.  He can never be freed from the curse; that's sort of the whole point of it.  These 5E'ers think that this negates their agency, because they went through all that trouble and he still comes back.  But the point of the adventure isn't to break the curse; the point is to escape it.

It shows a stunning lack of understanding of what gothic horror even is, how the setting of Ravenloft works, and is probably among one of the most entitled things I've ever heard.  Like, if I ran this game and my players reacted that way to the ending, I'd probably give up DMing forever at that point.

[TristenC]

Sept 29, 2023 9:31:32 GMT -8 Daos said:

Has anyone here ever run or played in Curse of Strahd, or have any thoughts/opinions on it?

I ran it a few years back (4+?) For some local Adventurer's league folks. Did pretty much the whole thing, side quests and all. I really enjoyed it, but I'm heavily partial to Ravenloft. It had a lot of depth and detail, and randomozed the critical item locations via the Tarokka deck.

Challenge rating was pretty good, and zones/chapters were described with level suggestions (everyone should be lvl 7 before going here or they are toast) but it didn't say "don't go" or "stop the pcs". If they wandered into an area like that I typically threw a small encounter at them near thag power and they quickly learned they were out of their depth and retreated.

Nobody in my group had a problem with the ending really

[TristenC]

I also am converting RA1 Feast of Goblyns to 5e which I am running for my wife and bro in law

[Daos]

What are your thoughts on cursed items?

I saw a video recently where someone said that cursed items 'take away player agency' and that DMs should tell players when an item is cursed beforehand, so they can choose whether they want to be cursed or not.  Which struck me as particularly asinine.  The whole point of cursed items is to punish players for acting recklessly.  Magic is dangerous and unpredictable.  If you are delving into some ancient tomb and find a glowing amulet and just put it on, without any precautions, you sort of get what's coming to you.

Or at least, that's how it used to be.  Back when magic was rare and mysterious and always had a cost.  Now it's everywhere, easy to use, and has no drawbacks.  Which makes cursed items a weird thing in 5E.  They don't seem to jive with their design philosophy at all, and I can only assume they were only included out of tradition.

But that's my take.  What do you all think?

[TristenC]

I mean, by that same token, rolling poorly or failing a save could be said to 'take away player agency'. I wanted to do a cool thing but the rules say i have to roll these shiny number rocks around.
They already nerfed control spells so badly in 5e that you get to repeat your save every. Round. until you pass. Which cuts the duration of most things from minutes or hours to a handfull of seconds.

At some point you have to draw the line.

I'm glad to see that in 5e DMG they kept the tradition that even identifying a magic item doesn't necessarily reveal if it was cursed most of the time.


I don't see it as out of character for 5e to have cursed items. Sure it's waaay harder to die in 5e, and easier to find/use magic items and it seems every class has some 'with magic' archetype option. But idk. It still doesn't seem out of place to me