So Veeky Forums, is D&D Next/5e the Age of Sigmar edition of D&D?

>it's too much of a flop to be the real thing
WotC doesn't release their sales figures, but 4 reprint cycles in just under 2 years (the first and the fourth being the largest) suggests it is going very well for such an expensive game.

No, 5e is actually the best system in its franchise.

Yeah, that's the totemist picture. Yes, Wayne Reynolds is still bad at anatomy and boobs.

The powers are 'true to the book', though. They currently have the 'Antlion Head' and 'Girallon Arms' powers active. Most totemist powers are basically spiritually 'equipping' magical beast parts to their body.

I'm assuming the armor isn't a power and is instead just ugly ass armor.

Here's another picture of one, using Basilisk Mask and Displacer Beast Hide.
The leg spikes are natural, I think - they were a fey player race introduced in the book.

I don't deny that it's going well. It just seems to be going well on some whole other planet. I hear sales figures, but I never see it. Has all the 5e advertising moved to Myspace and Vine or something?

Is there anything significant in the system that wasn't in previous editions?

Tell me more about how CR works.

Teach me how to challenge a party against monsters that use different save types when only two of your saves scale by level, meaning that beyond a certain level failure is almost guaranteed for some party members.

And then there's the fact that power formatting has just plain gone backwards since 4e. Natural language is a plague on the hobby.

People act like Hit Dice are Healing Surges from 4e, but they're not. 4e Healing Surges were a way to LIMIT healing and pace the day, since you could only heal as many times as you had surges. Hit Dice don't limit the heals you can receive.

Technically they're not 100% new - they're Reserve Points from Mike Mearls earlier game Iron Heroes.

Bonds/Traits are new to DnD but are pretty much empty in terms of how they actually affect the system.

There's nothing in particular that DnD5e does that 13th Age doesn't do better.

>has polarised the community

Not really. It's been generally well received, and the only people who really complain about are the very bottom of the barrel, the worst of the lot.

It's actually the most popular roleplaying game at this point, and even people who prefer to play other editions or other games can respect that it is a solid bit of design and several times better than [version of D&D they hate].

Like, I get that you're just here to start shit, but the honest answer is that 5e has been a fair success, and while a few people are still going through the various "new system" complaints, those will disperse with time as more content arrives from both official sources and from homebrew, alongside general familiarity.

Online multi-media marketing paradigms have changed a lot in the last 5 years. The biggest form of advertisement of D&D 5E are actual plays, podcasts, and streams. Acquisitions, Inc. and other sponsored internet celebrity streams have made more money for WotC than a banner ad ever could.

While technically true that core 5e is better than core 3.PF, 3.PF has the advantage that it's been out long enough, with enough supplementary material can be beaten/tier-restricted in a shape that approaches being interesting.

It's better than a turd, but worse than a polished, bejeweled, flavoured turd.

5e remains a low-effort blob that doesn't do anything especially well. It has absolutely nothing in it to recommend it over another game.

Nobody asked about your hipster game, fuckboy.

The same place everyone advertises these days: internet celebrities and content creation workshops.

DnD5e is kind of like the Transformers 4 of RPGs.

It sold well and is one of the highest grossing movies of all time.

It's also completely not worth buying, because it appeals to the lowest common denominator in the worst way. To mix movie metaphors - It's not The Incredibles or The Iron Giant, it's Angry Birds The Movie.

You know what else is a successful game? Monopoly.

The Justin Beiber of RPGs?

It's strange how little advertising 5e got even here on Veeky Forums around it's release. I wasn't aware it existed until the middle of last year despite it being around for almost a year prior to that point.

>trimmed down mechanics in the name of easier fluff and create-your-own-content

While true, D&D has always at its core been designed to be user-friendly in this regard. So if it's easier to create your own content, that's a mark in its favor.

>ditched existing fluff in the name of giving you a sandbox

Actually it ties in far more closely to existing fluff. Forgotten Realms fluff, anyway, but that's not a bad thing; in any even this edition is if anything tied more closely to its "default (the Realms) then 3rd Edition ever was to Greyhawk or 4th was to their Points of Light thing. And again, D&D has at its core always sought to be fairly modular.

>ditching 'gamey' crunch and selling that lack of crunch as better for narrative.

Given how much that was called out as leading to broken rules, I cannot see how that is a bad thing.

>promised swathes of new content at release (re-done races/modular systems) that hasn't shown up

I was unaware of any such promises.

>nuked all archives of existing content and support to force uptake of new products

Nope. I can still find all the old 3rd Edition stuff on WotC's website, in any event. Dunno about 4E, because I don't care about 4E.

>almost opposite approach to power, from high fantasy to low fantasy and low fantasy to space fantasy

In a world with monks and rangers that can cast spells, I hesitate to call D&D "low" fantasy.

>has polarised the community

Oh, every Edition release since AD&D has done that.

That would explain it. I don't watch TV, I don't watch streams, I don't give a damn about celebrities, and now thanks to you guys I have this terrifying vision in my head of the internet turning into everything that was bad about TV and made me like the move to the internet in the first place.

I liked the text I could read at my own pace, the easy copy-paste, the Ctrl-F. And now the internet is going to turn into streams of talking heads like the talking heads on TV? Noooooo!

>While technically true that core 5e is better than core 3.PF, 3.PF has the advantage that it's been out long enough, with enough supplementary material can be beaten/tier-restricted in a shape that approaches being interesting.
>massive, all-consuming bloat is good
Almost anything worthwhile you find in a 3.5 or PF splatbook can be converted to 5e with ease anyways.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: 5e is without a doubt the best edition of D&D to date. Borrowing heavily from AD&D2e and 3-3.5 it actually managed to polish the both of them without ending up an unrecognizable mess like 4e.

I'd like to think that Justin Bieber has a hit of a human being behind his marketing and music. You can see the person there.

DnD5e is the worst parts of 'design-by-committee/focus groups'. It's more like a KPOP band. But without the cute girls.

>There's nothing in particular that DnD5e does that 13th Age doesn't do better.

Sell.

>a KPOP band. But without the cute girls
Is... is there even such a thing?
I don't think I want to see that.

But 4e is the most consistently designed edition of DnD, created as a response to the weaknesses in 3e?
4e is literally 3e without caster supremacy. That's it. All the rules are 90% the same. The only thing different is that class powers are now uniformly formatted, while still being overall distinct in theme thanks to the class features at the start of the class writeups (e.g. Fighter being a deathcube, Rogue having Sneak attack).

It's the same damn game as 3e.

>5e remains a low-effort blob

Given the massive playtesting that went on during its development from both WotC and the community they invited into it, I'm not sure it's intellectually honest to call it "low-effort".

Oh boy, another edition war thread! Yay!

5e was a step in the right direction. They got rid of splatbook bloat (thank the gods), the power gap between casters/martials is now lessened, the rules are now more RAI than RAW which is a good thing, and so on.

This will be my only sensible comment. After this, I am going to post nothing but bait for the obvious bullshit that this thread is going to devolve to. I fully expect that when I go on break today, there will be 200+ replies, 50 retarded images, and a bunch of autistic virgin neckbeards howling and shitting at one another how their playpen is better than the others.

>But 4e is the most consistently designed edition of DnD, created as a response to the weaknesses in 3e?

D&D 4E was created in response to two things:
1) World of WarCraft and MMOs in general;
2) The power-level issues of 3.5

However the result was:
1) Like an MMO, 4E just can't do noncombat. At all. It also just plain *feels* like a video game.
2) The result of this was making every class "feel" the same. The Fighter and the Wizard are structured along the exact same lines and play in fundamentally the exact same way. When playing as a Fighter you'll just feel like a Muscle Wizard, and when playing as a Wizard you'll just feel like a Magic Fighter.

>All the rules are 90% the same.

Well here's someone who's never even touched 5E.

>It's the same damn game as 3e.

Even if this were true - though it is not - but even if it were true, how would that necessarily be bad? Consider the success of 3.X and Pathfinder.

d20 aside, 5e is more mechanically similar to 2e than 3e

>13th Age
>Sell

Seriously?
Well, it has a free SRD at 13thagesrd.com/

It's written by Jonathan Tween (lead on 3e) and Rob Heinsoo (lead on 4e).

Instead of a skill system you have backgrounds, e.g. instead of 'Sail +4' and 'Navigate +2' you just have 'Salty Sea Dog +4'.
This also means that you could have a Barbarian with the background 'Spirit Shaman +3' to represent being able to cast rituals out of combat.

Classes are obviously DnDlike - you could have called this game DnD5e when it came out and nobody would have noticed. There's a sliding scale of difficulty in the classes with paladin at the bottom and wizard at the top - which I personally dislike, but whatever, and endorsed complex fan-classes like the Vanguard (4e-style fighter) and the Stalwart (Hercules strongman) help make up for that.

Combat is ACTUALLY gridless/TOTM. As in, there's not a single reference to 5foot squares in the entire book. Instead ranges are abstract, and you're either engaged, close, or far from an enemy. If an enemy tries to engage one of your buddies, you can freely engage them if you're not already engaged - this is how blocker-types can 'protect the squishes', and vice versa for enemies.
Otherwise combat mostly works like you expect it to in DnD.

All the classes are relatively balanced except at the top end where a bit of caster supremacy starts to creep back in because of versatility.

There's a little more to it than that, but that's what *I* like about it anyway. Just take a look at the SRD if you're interested.

>blah blah blah
That's wonderful, but it still doesn't fucking sell.

>4e is an MMO
I seriously wish I could fucking murder you through the internet.

And none of this is changing that 5E in its first few months outsold 13th Age's entire run to date. It's a fantasy heartbreaker. Deal with it.

>Well, it has a free SRD at 13thagesrd.com/

So? 5E does as well:
5esrd.com/

So what's your point?

>WAAAAH!! WWWHHHHAAAAAAHHH!! I NEED MUH RULZ FOR EVWYTHING! WWWAAAAAHHHHH!! I CNAT DO ANYTHING IF I DUNT HAV RULES FOR IT!

4e mostly DIDN'T have exact rules for skills.

>You people are the same people who would declare that pulling a massive stone statue on top of someone in 4e would do tink damage.

Nah, that would be about the same realm as a daily if it took more than a single turn. An encounter power if it was able to be done in one.

I will pretend this isn't bait.

What 5e does well? It's a careful harmony of the best of older systems.

It has a degree of depth to its combat that is expanded by the ease of which improvisation comes to play ( all without requiring an extreme degree of system mastery, making new players able to rapidly learn and rapidly enjoy themselves), its classes are diverse but relatively balanced and easy to mix and match to create an impressive range of viable builds, the system is fully updated and modernized for streamlined efficiency without sacrificing any significant aspect of the game and actually enhancing most, it is by far the easiest of the D&D's to homebrew for since its stat blocks are simple and the mathematics are clear, obvious, and rather difficult to mess up if you remain within the guidelines, and its overhauled magic system has everything you could ask for (Cantrips at will, low-level spells remain relevant at high levels, classes that can convert spell slots into other powers, a revised vancian style for most clases that retains the ease of book-keeping but allows a degree of flexibility, a power point system (though, admittedly, it needs a little tweaking), extreme ease for any character to get magic if they want it, and spell effects that are versatile and easy to improvise with).

What 5e does well is that it looked at D&D, stripped it down to what it considered essential, and then built it back up will keeping the frills to a minimum. It is a clean, efficient system, and if your issue is that you want more frills, you'll be amazed by how easy it is to add them on your own.

>trimmed down mechanics in the name of easier fluff and create-your-own-content
Which is a good thing for a lot of people.

>ditched existing fluff in the name of giving you a sandbox
Except for almost all the supplementary material being Forgotten Realms, and all of the lore in the MM being Forgotten Realms, and all of the examples in the DMG and flavor text in the PH being Forgotten Realms. It's almost like they're defaulting to something, but what could it possibly be...

>ditching 'gamey' crunch and selling that lack of crunch as better for narrative.
Well yeah, that goes without saying.

>promised swathes of new content at release
They promised the opposite actually.

>(re-done races/modular systems) that hasn't shown up
Unearthed Arcana my dude. Though it has been a little lack luster.

>nuked all archives of existing content and support to force uptake of new products
That and all that largely obsolete content (the internet exists) actually cost them to maintain licensing, digital distribution and publishing rights for, even when they had outsourced most of it to Paizo, who apparently also couldn't afford to look after Dragon anymore. I don't know how it works in your country, but in the US all that shit actually costs time and money.

>almost opposite approach to power, from high fantasy to low fantasy and low fantasy to space fantasy
English please.

>has polarised the community
Yeah, no. 5E is probably the most inoffensive edition of D&D to ever exist.

I said it was developed in response to MMOs. It's obviously not an MMO. The question, then, is why the designers tried to design it like an MMO when it so obviously isn't and couldn't be.

>the rules are now more RAI than RAW which is a good thing
RAI is NEVER a good thing. By definition it is unclear rules. By definition rules are supposed to be clear so that there is no confusion.

>1) Like an MMO, 4E just can't do noncombat. At all. It also just plain *feels* like a video game.

4e actually has more wordcount spent on noncombat in its first three corebooks than 3e. Please elaborate on why you feel it can't do noncombat any more than any prior edition.

>2) The result of this was making every class "feel" the same.

Please explain how a fighter using interception mechanics to make enemies stick to him, and hitting things with a big polearm. feels the same as a wizard shooting fireballs and making ice walls.
Does every character in a game of GURPS feel the same because they're all the 'human' class?
What about Vampire? Is everyone the same because everyone's power is called a 'Discipline'?

>Well here's someone who's never even touched 5E.

I mean to indicate that 4e has 90% of the same rules as 3e, not that 5e matches 3e.
I've been playing 5e since the playtests. Not the early ones, but I remember when martial dice were a thing, and Second Wind healed half your HP.

Because they didn't
They just pulled back the curtain on mechanics.

>It's actually the most popular roleplaying game at this point, and even people who prefer to play other editions or other games can respect that it is a solid bit of design and several times better than [version of D&D they hate].

I'd call it less 'Solid' and more 'Uninspired'. It's like an end table you bought for cheap. It might hold up fine but you don't think about it much and it doesn't really do much beyond sit there.

It's not a terrible edition but it isn't anything I'd call 'Good'.

I just don't get the hate on 5e.

It simplified checks, balanced classes and with their whole 'three pillars" of gaming, they did a fantastic job.

A tip I learned from some wizard on the internet.
If you don't like something, change the rule.

Still feel like a class is imbalanced? Balance it yourself!
Feel like something is too dumbed down? Make it more convoluted!
It isn't rocket science.

5e's SRD is noncomplete and is missing class options and spells.

As far as sales values - yes, the world's most well known RPG outsells an indie product. I'm not sure what this is meant to prove. Monopoly outsells Carcassonne.

>and Second Wind healed half your HP.

Ugh. That sounds atrocious. I'll take my short rest mechanic instead, thanks.

retard troll thread
you're a moron

>If you don't like something, do the game designer's job for them!

Balance is the game designer's job, not the end users.

There are a hundred fantasy RPGs out there right now being played, and ten of them are even good. 5e doesn't do anything to stand out.

>It might hold up fine but you don't think about it much and it doesn't really do much beyond sit there.

It's the first edition of D&D where I rolled up a thief and I actually *feel* like I'm playing a thief, and not simply a dungeon delver who moonlights in burglary.

I'm sorry, are you telling me that most people give their furniture any significant amount of thought? And that most furniture does anything other than just sit there?

If you're an autist, yes, I can see why you would think that.

That only really matters if the GM can't do his job though. There's no fundamental reason why a cleric and monk can't contribute equally in properly designed encounter.

And what makes them feel like that?

>Because balancing whatever facet you draw issue with is so difficult.

It's a great system, it fills no specific niche and it wasn't meant to.

You can make it as war gamey or as role playing as you want.

This proves Tweet and Heinsoo can't design for shit

>I'm not sure what this is meant to prove.

You said there's nothing in particular that 13th Age doesn't do better, so I helpfully filled in the gap in your knowledge. 13th Age is just another fantasy heartbreaker, the result of someone making THEIR perfect version of D&D without regard for what the market wanted.

The market is never wrong.

...making things clear and understandable is somehow a bad thing?

>I haven't played 5e

>4e actually has more wordcount spent on noncombat in its first three corebooks than 3e. Please elaborate on why you feel it can't do noncombat any more than any prior edition.

It's largely the disconnect between 4e combat and any semblance of reality. The character is built around combat, the majority of their abilities are designed to make sense in combat, but when taken outside of it, they become nonsensical, or even detrimental to the game.

You effectively run two games, with two sets of characters, existing in separate and incompatible realities that are often at odds with each other. You have your "I need to find a battle" mode, and your "I'm in a battle" mode, like some kind of video game rpg.

Cool, what does the monk do here?

youtube.com/watch?v=zFuMpYTyRjw

I think it's really important to note here - BMX Bandit is REALLY GOOD at being a BMX bandit! He's coming up with all kinds of amazing plans! He can probably do all kinds of sick wheelies! I beat he could probably beat up ten guys at once!

But he's still not as good as the guy than can summon a horde of angels.

Are you sixteen? Is this your first time on the internet?

Essentially? It seems like they stepped back and asked themselves, "okay, so what do thieves do?", made up a list, and then came up with rules and mechanics to enable that list.

So as a result I've got a thief that can run like a motherfucker, climb like a mountain goat and jump from rooftop to rooftop with ease, pick pockets and open locks faster than you can say "Bob's your uncle", has that whole Thieves' Cant language back again from 2E which is just plain fun to have, and so on.

This isn't to say that 3E and 4E didn't try to make the thief a thief and nor that I couldn't do the above in them, but rather that 3E and 4E instead made up some powers and abilities, put them together, and called the end result the Rogue; whereas 5E feels more like they started with the concept of the Rogue and then developed everything from there.

>You effectively run two games, with two sets of characters, existing in separate and incompatible realities that are often at odds with each other. You have your "I need to find a battle" mode, and your "I'm in a battle" mode, like some kind of video game rpg.

Every edition has that. That's what 'Rolling init' swaps.

This is just as true of 5e and 3e, though? The vast majority of abilities are based around combat. 'Roll for initiative' transforms the game.

What abilities do you feel don't make sense out of combat?

Note, of course, that 'per encounter' is a game conceit, not a world simulation one. You can 100% play a wizard whose 'only spell is fireball'. Rename 'burning hands' to 'prematurely exploded fireball', Scorching Ray is Miniature Fireball, Fire Orb is Rolling Fireball, Meteor Swarm is Too Many Fireballs. He could be casting fireballs all the damn day - it's just that the 'per encounter Fireball' is the only one that ended up being /effective/.

I'm not accusing you of it personally, but this fact seems to boggle the minds of people who believe that game rules are the physics of the game world.

But a 4e Rogue can literally do all the exact same things...

Almost every fucking RPG works like that.
What the fuck are you smoking?

>The market is never wrong.

We could troll back and forth all day of this, so lemme try an example I got from Naggum:

The American market for binders is overwhelmingly three-ring.
The European market for binders is overwhelmingly two- or four-ring.

Is the market telling us about some ineffable preference of Americans for odd numbers in their ring binders? I doubt it. The market is probably right more often than it's wrong - but sometimes it's neither, it's just doing funny things with path dependencies on what things happened in the recent past.

I think you underestimate the extent to which people look to the books for flavour cues. 4e's abilities are all about combat, and working in combat.

It's almost like a lot of people shit on 4e through hearsay and not reading the rules or playing the game themselves.

3 ring increases security and retention to a preferable and optimal point while reducing the clutter associated with 4.

My issue with Per Encounter abilities is that there's no verisimilitude to it, no way to justify it.

Like, say you've got something that can be used 1/encounter.

If you have one 30 round encounter in two hours of in-game time, you can use it once. If you have 10 3 round encounters in two hours of in-came time, you can use it 10 times.

This is particularly bad when confronted with Fighter and other non-magical abilities. Why can my fighter only swing his sword a certain way once in combat, no matter how long that combat goes on for?

I much prefer things be "between rests" or "per day". I have an easier time justifying them.

So what you're telling me is that 13th age doesn't sell "because reasons" rather than 13th age doesn't sell because it's just another D&D clone with all the mechanics stripped out in favour of fluffy acting bullshit?

>favour of fluffy acting bullshit?
Roleplaying? IN ROLE PLAYING GAMES?!?!?!?!

the monk could scout ahead while the cleric is summoning his horde?

I mean who's to say the bad guy's are just gonna sit there and let you summon those angels, or not just stall until they're banished/dismissed or they got magic circles of evil up or something?

Transformers 4 is clearly one of the greatest movies ever made.
Monopoly is the greatest board game of all time.
The Da Vinci Code? A masterpiece of literature.
Minecraft? The game to end all games.

Yes, I noted as much myself; it's called "reading comprehension", dear, you should try it.

As I said, it feels more like they came up with the abilities and put them into a Rogue class, rather than starting with a Rogue class and then developing abilities from there. Also, what said.

There's better clones, FantasyCraft for one

I said
> The market is probably right more often than it's wrong
and you shouldn't read anything into that about 13th age in specific.

Are you going to do anything other than be butthurt about how nobody likes your favorite indie game?

>This is particularly bad when confronted with Fighter and other non-magical abilities. Why can my fighter only swing his sword a certain way once in combat, no matter how long that combat goes on for?

You can swing your sword all combat long. You, as a player, are making the narrative decision that this time it's EFFECTIVE. You can shield bash all you want - but this time, you're declaring the perfect opening so that your shield bash hits home.

Per-encounter is still per-rest - in 4e, rests are just 5 minutes long.

13th Age is listed as a 'platinum seller' on DriveThruRPGs, putting it in the top sellers of games that aren't named DnD or Pathfinder.

4e was not good for anything other than designing encounters as a DM

the most ugly thing about it was the MMO way it approached classes and the huge cascade of moronic bloat it produced

>Yes, I noted as much myself; it's called "reading comprehension", dear, you should try it.

Yes, I'm damn confused though.

The 4e does literally all the same things as the 5e rogue + more...but the 5e Rogue is somehow more rogue-y?

The 5e rogue never gave me the sort of feeling of a dashing thief acrobat or a taunting fencer master like the 4e rogue did. It wasn't as agile or mobile, nor was it as good at punishing people who fucked up against them.

user you forget RPGs are a niche dominated by DnD and 3 or so minor competitors.

Quality equals popularity plus time. If 20 years from now people are still remarking on ho much they love Transformers 4, then yeah, it really is one of the greatest movies ever made, no matter how much you or I beg to differ (and believe me, I do, I hate that movie).

>Monopoly is the greatest board game of all time.

Well, I mean...it *is*, at least insofar as multiplayer games are concerned.

>The Da Vinci Code? A masterpiece of literature.

Nah, Angels & Demons is better.

>Minecraft? The game to end all games.

MineCraft is just LEGO on the computer, it's not hard to understand why people like it. LEGO is awesome.

When the monk class is inherently neutered by design and Clerics have the ability to perform any class role without sacrificing their niche, the whole "GM should be able to make everyone relevant" argument falls flat on its face.

I mean, you're basically comparing a guy who needs a magic item 2.5x the price of an equivalent magic weapon to a guy who can strike in melee, strike at range, (de)buff, summon extraplanar beings, control/destroy undead, control the battlefield, and heal without having to shoehorn themselves into a particular niche.

>narrative decision
How very un-D&D of the system.

Fuck off you retard

Funnily enough, the same arguments seem to be thrown around about AoS....

>Nah, Angels & Demons is better.

I hated Angels and Demons so very, very much.

PAPAL SUCCESSION DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY.

>bashing 3.x splat bloat

Sure it was taken to an extreme especially in the first 2 years of 3.0's release, but at least it was content. With the release schedule for supplements for 5e that we have now, we're gonna be lucky to have 5 supplements in a decade. I already feel tapped out of content in 5e and willing to shelf the system until some more splats trickle down.

Not really. In 2e and 5e, you often find a use for your "noncombat" abilities within combat, and your "combat" abilities outside of it. It's second nature to think with the entirety of your character in every situation. Even in 3rd it's not as sharp a divide, with opportunities at low levels for everyone and spellcasters at higher levels.

4e combat is built around rotating through your powers, and its rules on improvisation make it more often than not just not worth the effort. With the majority of those powers being "fancy attack X" and "fancy attack Y", their out-of-combat use tends to be rather limited. Even the forced slot of "utility" powers ends up with the player choosing the more combat relevant option when available, and in general these powers are the worst designed and most onerous to use in the game.

4e is a good skirmish battle game, but it falls short at being the complete package.

Pathfinder should just be thrown into a pit like the E.T. 2600 catridges were.

I don't think any game has damaged the hobby more and probably will never since.

lol butthurt

Not really. The complaints about AoS are mostly 'It simplified it to a stupid level'

4e didn't simplify stuff, it just worked out more consistent language.