TRPG General Chat

kviiri

20:00

Once something becomes an Acceptable Target, it becomes a solid conversational pattern to just reiterate the same complaints of it, over and over again, often with less and less semblance to the truth

G. Moylan

@Trish it was a marketing stunt and you can't tell me otherwise

GcL

@kviiri I blame the cats these days and the music they listen to!

Trish

@G.Moylan which in part is because of that damnatio memoriae

kviiri

Eg. how in DnD 4e "every class plays just the same" or how Wesley Crusher "always has to be the boy genius saving the ship" or similar

For 4e, I guess it used to be worse. Though I of course only see a part of the scene. Still, at least here we're well through the phase where you can just bash 4e without anyone batting an eye

G. Moylan

the closest acknowledgement of 4Es existence I've seen from WotC was their publishing of the D&D Adventure System Board Games, which were orignally released alongside 4E content but retained mechanics like Daily Powers, etc. when rebranded to match 5E trade dress in order to remain compatible with older board games.

The last one was released around the Dungeon of the Mad Mage came out and still uses phrases like At-Will and Daily Powers, but it's very clearly dressed for 5E and was released to correspond to the then-current 5E adventures

kviiri

20:05

Plus by my experience edition war spirit only really thrives with the new edition vs its main competition. The newest edition being bad can spur up grognard resistance, but once that newest edition is no longer the newest, it becomes a dead horse that doesn't "require" the hate treatment because it's already overthrown

Carcer

also worth keeping in mind that 5e is popular now for sure but it's kind of had an explosive influx of new players who don't have previous edition baggage thanks to D&D taking off in pop media

it's definitely something that 3.5e players would like more than they liked 4e, but I think if 4e hadn't existed and 5e was what had happened then, it would still have had an awful lot of they-changed-it-now-it-sucks backlash

KorvinStarmast

@Carcer You can find plenty of hate for 5e from 3.x players at GiTP forums.

Carcer

@KorvinStarmast I don't doubt it

KorvinStarmast

@Carcer I run across it with great frequency; I've learned who to ignore

Someone_Evil

@KorvinStarmast Can't you just generalize that to "You can find plenty of hate for X from Y at Z forums"?

Carcer

20:21

@Someone_Evil nah. not true for all combinations of x, y, or z

KorvinStarmast

@Someone_Evil Probably, but I was trying to keep it in context. 😃

Someone_Evil

@Carcer That's probably true, but I'll conjecture there's a Z for each combination of X and Y

Carcer

hmm

G. Moylan

"For a given z, derive x and y. You have 5 minutes. 10 points. "

Trish

urg... I vaguely remember there was a beam melee ability for Mekton that could, in any scale, cut pretty much through anything. the Lightsaber, so to say. I can't find it...

it doesn't seem to be in zeta

...or it was. Burst X (unlimited). It's "you shoot. If you hit, shoot again. And again. And again. And again. Till you miss"

GcL

21:03

@Someone_Evil I concur. For each Z there is a community that hates it and a porn of it. Rule 34 recursive subsection H.

kviiri

21:26

@Carcer DnD 5e is rather transformative in this sense. Whether by inherit merit, favorable circumstance or marketing, or some combination of these, it's induced a huge shift in demographics of who's playing.

GcL

It's also a heck of a lot easier to run. No THAC0 calculations of AD&D. No interminable stacks of bonuses and modifiers and conditions of 3.5. No ? of 4e.

kviiri

I don't think DnD 4e is particularly hard to run in comparison to 5e, expect maybe in terms of being a fair bit more specific regarding its encounter math

It has that "read the book and you'll be fine" quality to it, except the book is the DMG which has a fair likelihood of not getting read.

Bounded accuracy is really nice in that sense, you can just slap together an encounter based on any odds and ends you can think of and it might just work. Lots of people get a fairly good touch for eyeballing encounter difficulty. For 4e at least, probably earlier editions as well, a creature's power and level are different values so the monster stat blocks are way more specialized.

A level 6 normal monster cannot substitute for a level 3 boss monster, or something along those lines.

So as the campaign progresses, the toolkit of "usable monsters" remains fairly small but constantly in flux, which might indeed pose a bit of extra challenge for the GM.

Glazius

21:48

4E isn't a game that plays well with lightly engaged players. Combat involves a lot of dynamic modifiers and out-of-turn decisions, such that play goes much faster if all the players know each others' movesets in addition to their own.

trogdor

I'm kinda biased for 4e in this respect because I liked it and got really into the mechanics

I was even the one at the table remembering one of the other player's more complicated stats for him really

Partly because I was also involved in making leveling up decisions for the purpose of keeping his push values as high as possible

IE basically I didn't think 4e was particularly hard to grasp mechanically but I got really into it

I will say it was a lot better in that respect than 3.5 though

Even if you discount for the fact that it had an online resource and not as many sprawling stat books as 3.5, the mechanics were still more streamlined and meant to actually work with each other from the start

At least on the PC side

Glazius

Yeah, it's got big Pierian Spring energy. It's paradoxically much harder just to "know your corner" of 4E because then you're missing out on all the other players who want to do teamwork with you.

trogdor

I will say that 5th ed is also better than 3.5 in that respect

kviiri

Must go to bed now

trogdor

Although it has mechanics that stick out like a sore thumb as having been much better integrated into 4e mechanics

kviiri

21:54

Around an hour ago, I made a bad call wrt "program a bit or go to bed" x)

Now it's time to make the good call

trogdor

I won't try to argue that 4e is definitely easier than 5th to pick up

I will say it probably depends on the person and what factors make things "easier to pick up" for them

I do think it has a lot to do with personal preference and how that clashes with or mutually complements the up and down sides of each game

I think 4e was better designed in specific terms of how each mechanic can be expected to work with other mechanics

With the price that that can get a bit complicated

I think 5e was designed with the intent to be simple but got muddled a bit by the fact that they felt it had to feel more like 3.5 in order to keep certain subsections of their community happy

And how they tacked on odds and ends from 4e mechanics but had to give them a new paintjob

So IMO it depends on which of those factors intrigues/puts you off more

In fact I would go as far as to say you can't really objectively label either system as better in this regard

I think you can only subjectively state your preference for the things one of them did that the other didn't do

I personally have a preference for 4e, some will disagree

trogdor

22:23

I myself might have even argued for 5th edition in this category of I didn't have just a really big weakness for mechanical Synergy and mechanics being designed with each other in mind

And as a result I also don't mind a little extra complexity in service of that

TheDragonOfFlame

I tried out 4e. It’s not bad, but I don’t love the lack of custom ability in attacks. Since all the attacks are basically scripted, you can’t really do your own thing with attacks and abilities..

BESW

I'm curious, how did you find 4e attacks to be more scripted than 3e or 5e's?

I found that the massive increase in variety of attacks available to choose from made characters a lot more distinct in 4e compared to my experience in 3.5.

A fighter in 3.5 had to spend very precious resources to gain access to more than numerically improved versions of the actions available to everyone, for example.

And 3e (and from what I’ve seen, 5e) tends to treat flavor text as semi-mechanical, while 4e was extremely explicit that any text describing how any power manifests in the world is pure suggestion and total re-skinning is encouraged in the PHB.

GcL

Was the power curve for wizards as compared to fighters still a quadratic increase?

BESW

So I feel like I don’t know what you mean by ‘scripted’ and I’m very interested to learn.

AncientSwordRage

23:09

@kviiri been there, done that 8-)

bobble

eek, your eyes are running into each other

AncientSwordRage

@bobble too much programming... Or not enough?

bobble

@AncientSwordRage is there a "just right" amount of programming?

TheDragonOfFlame

@BESW They literally have the attack description in the attack, can’t remember any specific examples. 5e just has attacks, which you can describe more. I thought it was a cool system thouhg

Maybe I didn’t like it as much because I’m not used to it.

Not trying to hate on it or anything

AncientSwordRage

@TheDragonOfFlame oh like, if there's a power called "do cool sword thing" then it feels like the only way to do that is to use the power?

@bobble if there is I've not discovered that yet

bobble

23:20

@AncientSwordRage perhaps you need to write a program to find it

AncientSwordRage

@bobble the irony is not lost on me...

bobble

@AncientSwordRage indeed, it would have a difficult time going over your head, as it would run into that tall hat of yours

AncientSwordRage

Oh my goodness? GOBLIN COURT HACK but with pets after rubs.

TheDragonOfFlame

@AncientSwordRage it’s like Commanding Strike. You shout a command as your sword glows blue with power, lashing out to pierce the creature.

Joel Derfner

@Someone_Evil Any chance you’re on? I just read your comment on my closed question that I deleted, and I’m having trouble figuring out how to undelete.

Someone_Evil

23:31

Do you not have an undelete button in the same place? Between edit and flag under the question?

bobble

thataplace

Joel Derfner

@Someone_Evil Thank you!

Someone_Evil

:)

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AncientSwordRage

@TheDragonOfFlame I'm not seeing the issue yet

MikeQ

23:43

Doesn't 3.x/5e do the same thing with its spell descriptions?

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