What DnD edition has the best combat system?
I mostly play 2nd edition, where the majority of weapons, barring conventional swords, are pointless. I've heard that in earlier editions damage was not based on your weapon, and in certain later editions the combat system was too complex.
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3e is casterland. Spellcasters win combats while the other classes just stand in front of them. There's a lot of complicated rules for martial combat that simply are redundant because casters will either kill or incapacitate the enemy.
4e is much better balanced. It is basically a skirmish wargame lite with CRPG style 'powers' for each Class. Personally I prefer much more fluid, simulationist combat, and I even like theatre of the mind without minis, whereas 4e requires minis/tokens and a grid and is highly abstracted.
5e is a lot like 3e albeit somewhat more balanced and 'streamlined'.
>I've heard that in earlier editions damage was not based on your weapon,
If you go back the Little Brown Books (OD&D sans supplements), all weapons to 1d6 damage.
But LBB expected you to own CHAINMAIL and use it's to-hit rules.
And CHAINMAIL checks if attacks hit by rolling 2d6 and checking weapons against armor on pick related.
You can rolepaly while playing 4e... but you can technically roleplay while doing anything.
4e isn't a roleplaying game, it was a new pic related that gripped into the IP a bit tighter.
I play a Fighter in 5e, and it's nothing like you describe 3e as being.
The martial types win combats in 5e. The casters set us up to win. Damage is not how they contribute, at least in my experience.
My party has a Druid, a Ranger, a Bard and a Monk, in addition to my fighter. We all do have some spell casting, as my Fighter is an Eldritch Knight, and the Monk is a 4 Elements.
But I, by a pretty wide margin, have the most kills. Not to say that the others don't contribute (only the monk is kinda overshadowed) but the bard is mostly buffing or debuffing, and the Druid is mostly tanking hits as a bear or wolf. Me and the Ranger are the primary damage dealers, and the Ranger just isn't as good at that as my Fighter is.
We're at level 7 currently, so perhaps things will change as the casters get more powerful spells, but as is, right now they're support for the guys who win the fights, they couldn't do it on their own.
This. As someone once said, 4e would be a lot better received if it was called "DnD Tactics".
Came here to say 5e. A place for everything, everything in its place, and a lot of different ways to contribute to the wins.
4e. They tried to sell it as an rpg, but the design clearly shows more effort was put into a solid tactical game. Like other anons in this thread have said, it would have done better as D&D Tactics.
I'm still waiting for a good CRPG built on the 4e rules
4e, hands down.
Moon druids are only good for tanking and Rangers are only good for being told to use UA ranger instead. Fighter damage doesn't even get that good until 11, when they get their third attack.
Wizards in 5e can contribute with massive AoE damage and disables. A single well placed Hypnotic Pattern or fireball is going to win encounters.
>A place for everything, everything in its place, and a lot of different ways to contribute to the wins.
That describes 4e infinitely more than 5e.
>the majority of weapons, barring conventional swords, are pointless.
Actually use speed factors. Might also want to check out Combat and Tactics.
Importing 1e's weapon vs. armour type table an also do a lot to fix that. Longswords are still king, but it actually gives other weapons reasons to shine. Darts are already the ultimate anti-caster weapon.
>Darts are already the ultimate anti-caster weapon.
Don't darts get stupid with a high strength fighter specializing them cause you can throw like 3 of them at once?
Or was that an AD&D thing?
How is it not a roleplaying game? What does it not give that 3e/5e do give?
As you know, the 5e themes originated in 4e with stuff like the Hospitaler being able to claim lodgings with nobility/your order.
Heck, I'd say that it's better for roleplaying than 3e. For one, it's skill system actually mattered rather than being wizardville, skills not needed.
In fact, 5e has 4e's skill system, but worse.
Also 5e's backgrounds are 4e's themes... but again, worse.
You could argue it does stuff that goes too far with your ability to suspend your disbelief (and, I mean, you are totally allowed to do that, although that's rather pitiful), but arguing it's less of an RPG is absurd.
AD&D lets you get up to six attacks a round with dart specialisation. That's the highest number of attacks per round you can get aside from the warrior attacks vs creatures with less than 1 HD (which is equal to his level). Technically, a 20th-level warrior can get up to 21 attacks per round against creatures with less than 1 HD if he dual-wields.
2E is still AD&D
Speed factors absolutely do not fix the issue, they just end up confirming the supremacy of a handful of swords. Without rules for reach to make up for it, there's basically nothing to redeem melee weapons that aren't the one-handed blades in AD&D.
>Without rules for reach to make up for it
You can import those from 1e. There's no reason to only restrict yourself to 2e stuff when playing AD&D.
Strike! does grid/positioning based style combat quite well, if that's what you are looking for, and is technically a D&D offshoot.
Is the pdf available anywhere? I'd kind of like a look at it before I buy the thing with a bloody watermark.
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This should be a scrubbed one too.
Combat rules start at 90 if I remember correctly. Check that first imo, it's the best part.
Also pdf related is expansion playtest just so you know what sort of stuff you are in for in the future.
Thanks a bunch. Now on to convincing some players.
Yeah, that's the hard part. Thankfully, after a few failures I found some people that are open to experimentation (now I just need to find the will and time to DM, ha).
>That describes 4e infinitely more than 5e.
I have to disagree. 4e only really had 4 roles and they tried too hard to have too many classes per role. 5e has 12 and only 12 different classes and each one of them can fill a variety of roles in dramatically different ways. Very different feel.
It's not that it's less of a RPG it rather that it's fare more of a tactical combat game.
>only 12 different classes
13 now.
And I'll have to disagree with that in turn. The secondary role effects in 4e are much more prominent and have much more impact than in 5e.
It becomes especially apparent if you compare the 4e fighter vs the 5e fighter (not even counting Knight/Slayer who are technically also fighter types) or rogue vs rogue.
And between casters, the 5e casters are much, much more similar because of shared spell lists than 4e classes are.
I mean, you are entitled to your opinion, but if you feel like actually thinking about this stuff, you could try and compare how playing a fighter with a polearm vs two weapons changes the game in 4e and 5e.
That is the truly surprising thing about 5e - the extreme lack of splats for 5e. The game has been out for what? Coming on 3 years now and I don't have a phb 2 or books for the classes giving me extra options or a book for extra feats. What gives, Wizards?
Maybe not exactly related with your point, but one thing that really really grinds my gears about the classes in 5e was how stripped down they were. First, you don't get interesting choices until 3 when you get your first archetypes and even then not all archetypes are created equal. Secondly the feat selection (assuming your gm plays with feats) is abysmal which further limits character customization. If we're looking at it from a combat point of view, 5e's options are extremely barebones for the player. Give me 4e and it's multitudes of options at any given class level any day, thanks.
This is awful. What is wrong with the designer? It's like he took all the worst parts of 4e and made them worse.
It takes a special kind of dunce to see a game that failed as hard as 4e did and instead of learning from its mistakes, to celebrate them.
>Coming on 3 years now and I don't have a phb 2 or books for the classes giving me extra options or a book for extra feats. What gives, Wizards?
We get weekly unearthed arcana now, and that usually means 3 new archetypes each week. It's all getting playtested, and people are encouraged to provide feedback because eventually its going to be put into books.
They're really taking a long, slow route of little by little, with as much feedback as they can collect before putting anything to print.
I'd say it improves quite a lot on 4e. Classes and the way they use their powers are a lot more unique and less samey from the start. Separating Class and Role lets them pack a lot of concepts into a lot less space than 4e. Dropping minor bonuses and replacing them with advantage and just using low numbers in general is also pretty nice, makes play quite a bit faster.
But yeah, if you didn't like what 4e was doing, this is that but dialed up to 11.
They should market it as 'Chainmail'. Go back to the roots.
It makes for a pretty good basis for board games so far. Not great, but pretty good. Would make for a great skirmish game without too much effort.
But it's totally the wrong scale for Chainmail. If it's any D&D-related wargame, it's a grid-based successor to Battlesystem Skirmishes.
All about marketing. Imagine the buz.
ITT: retards that mix balance and combat system. The imbalances with casters are not related to the quality of a sub-system.
3rd edition combat system is not bad if taken by itself, if you like the "map".
You asked about the weapons - in 3rd, the choice is relatively meaningful. You have "reliable" weapons like axes, hammers and straight sword, with a good dice and reasonable critical; "damage" weapons like picks and curved blades that have x4 criticals and/or high threat. Other weapons like bolas, harpoons, whips are for control. A mix of 3.5 and PF gives you a good panoply. Better use PF for some specific feat to make ranged combat reliable.
4ed is your choice if you like more the "map" part, because even if I don't like it as a DnD game, the tactical part can be fun.
MORE IMPORTANT: If you play 2nd, try to import BECMI's Weapon mastery with some tweak. It will make wonders. Especially the defensive techniques like parries and AC improvements (-4) against specific enemies, other weapons stunning, poisons and whatever.
also I forgot: many martial powers in 4ed have a [w] keyword. Is used to states, say, that a given power will deal 4x[w] damage - that is, you will roll the weapon damage dice 4 times (and add something, like Str or Dex).
That is a very smart thing, because makes the Weapon Damage Dice, relevant. In 3rd and PF, with greater bonuses at high level, the weapon damage tend to disappear. Things like Vital Strike in PF are feat taxed to death.
As someone who loves 4e a lot, you are, for the most part, wrong
Not about how 4e powes work, but rather about how they make weapon damage dice relevant. In 4e, a weapon with a +3 proficiency bonus that deals 1d6 damage is better than a weapon with a +2 proficiency bonus that deals 1d12 damage, and an attack that deals 4[W]+*stat* damage deals less damage on average by a long shot than an attack that deals 1[W]+*stat* damage and hits twice
The lack of splats is on purpose, Wizards is trying to avoid the massive rules and options bloat that happened in 3rd edition.
This way the can keep the core mechanics relatively neat and simple.
When/if we start getting splatbooks, i would assume they are more settings and such, rather than the typical splatbooks we've seen in the past.
Right, which is why "1[W]+ stat twice" is kinda rare, but X[W] + Stat isn't.
Anyway, while the math is wonky, the idea behind it was great. It's just that for large damage dice you either give up precision or your off hand, and usually both are worth more than the ~1 increase you get.
There's still cases where bigger damage dice is better, though.
I was telling about the idea behind it.
>a game that failed as hard as 4e did
By being extremely successful?
>Catalog
let's not kid ourselves now. The fact that 5ed looks back to 3rd and PF more than anything else is a big giveaway.
as someone that loves math, you are, for the most part, a fagit
+2 vs +3 is a 5% difference, I see no "twice at much"
+2 vs +3 is a 5% difference, and yes, that is greater than the 26 or so percent difference between the damage output of a d12 weapon vs a d6 weapon at level 1. But damage output is rarely as valuable as getting the hits, and the difference in the percentage shrinks constantly
4e places a lot of value on actually landing your encounter and daily powers, and the main value of landing those hits is usually the effect riders, not the increased damage. A 10% increase in overall damage is not worth a 5% decrease in your chance of landing a Knockout, or a Villain's Menace, or, most important of all, one of the blade cascade strikes.
There are only two classes for which damage matters more than accuracy in a weapon, and that's the knight and slayer, the classes without daily powers who's encounter powers they can use retroactively after they hit
That Mearls is a giant 3.5 fanboy who hates martials?
Indeed, it's shown in virtually every aspect of both 5e and 4e Essentials
>That Mearls is a giant 3.5 fanboy who hates martials?
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Merdeals is a huge fag, but
- He has an hand in Bo9S
- Was responsible for 4e too
You are born wrong
>How is it not a roleplaying game?
There's not enough rules and powers that let you roll dice to avoid having to roleplay.
>essentials
yes, there was essentials too. Another evidence of lost fanbase without new gains.
You literally self-defeated your argument
>4e only really had 4 roles and they tried too hard to have too many classes per role.
4e has the same roles D&D's always had dating back to AD&D.
And each class, even within the same role, play wildly different from each other, so only having 4 roles isn't nearly as restrictive as you're trying to make it sound.
>4ed Rogue and ADnD BECMI Thief are the same
4rries, ladies and gentlemen
Mearls hated being a part of 4e. The only 2 things he's known in in 4e for is Essentials, which is widely regarded as the single worst thing to happen to 4e, and being the one to push for every class being AEDU, which a lot of 4e detractors complain about.
That and continuing the stupid "Warlords literally shout hands back on" meme that demonstrates that being a lead designer on a game doesn't necessarily mean you have any fucking clue what you're talking about in regards to it.
4e PHB1
>Rob Heinsoo, Andy Collins, James Wyatt
4e DMG1
>James Wyatt
4e MM1 (The worst of the 4e core set thanks to wonky monster maths)
>Mike Mearls, Stephen Schubert, James Wyatt
Do not get me wrong, Mearls was definitely heavily involved in 4e production, Essentials is pretty much his work and he definitely learned his lesson about 4e monster maths because he also made Monster Vault and MM3.
But take one look at the classes in books where he was the lead designer and his tendencies are extremely obvious. The Mage subclass for wizards gets all the nice things wizards got previously and more. The warpriest subclass for clerics got most of the nice cleric things plus superior melee capabilities for wisdom-based clerics. The Slayer and Knight subclasses for fighter and thief subclass for rogue however can do nothing but basic attack all day every day and are universally worse than the standard 4e versions.
Reading comprehension isn't your strong suit I take it.
Still it gives no bases on the fact hat "he hates martials". Is bullshit.
And 4ed HPs are bullshit. All the morale thing is pointless once a poisoned weapon appears.
It helps the disconnect in a whole edition of disconnected rules
so list each role and class per edition; prove me wrong. Come on, do it.
HP in D&D has always been really abstract. 4e was just the first time the healing was equally abstract.
Plus poison usually gives you Ongoing Damage or some kind of effect.
Warlords can't do TOO much about status effects, but he can heal the ongoing damage, though this ends up being more "YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE, IF YOU DIE TO POISON LIKE A LITTLE FAGGOT, IM GOING DOWN TO HELL AND SMACKING THE SHIT OUT OF YOU MYSELF!" levels of making them overcome it and fighting on in spite of the pain, and less literally screaming the poison out of their system.
>All the morale thing is pointless once a poisoned weapon appears.
Huh?
Typically 4
>The beefy guy who stands in front of everyone else to get punched in the face instead of his squishier allies
>The less beefy guy who can kill things well, either from a distance or doing it all sneaky breeky
>Someone else who can do the odd job stuff that helps the party out, like picking locks, sneaking, casting magic. Occasionally overlaps with the damage guy
>And the 4th guy who's job is to keep the other 3 from dying horribly.
According to an interview with (IIRC) Heinsoo, during the PHB's development a *certain someone* on the 4e team constantly pushed to make the Wizard stronger, on the basis that "wizards have to be the best, that's how it works in D&D!"
Hmmm I wonder who that could have been
The problem I have, the reason of the post above, is people explaining HP as "dodging". Is not only typical of 4rries, mind it.
Is not the Warlord dealing or not dealing with status effect. Is the people stating that the HP loss is recovered by the character once he hears the Warlord because "HPs are morale, at least before you are bloodied" while the FIRST you get could be being stabbed in the face by a poisoned knife.
>>The less beefy guy who can kill things well, either from a distance or doing it all sneaky breeky
Typically 4rrie, I'd rather say.
In BECMI and ADnD, the damage output of the rogue is far from being his main role. You can agree or disagree (I prefere the 3.X approach, at least CONCEPTUALLY, no need to derail about knock).
He's implying because a poison weapon applies the poison on hit, that a hit can't be a "near miss" but has to actually deliver the poison to the target's bloodstream
Which isn't an invalid point. But it does indicate the main problem that all arguments focused on 4e have which is that both sides care about completely different things
No one who likes 4e cares about how simulationist it is, and no one who hates 4e cares about how mechanically interesting it is. So all the arguments just end up being moronic circlejerks with both sides completely missing the arguments the other side is making
Fighter mage cleric thief
Is that so fucking hard
>the party's healer is a 4e Intelligence warlord with 8 Charisma and no social skills training
>the warlord "talks so good" that people's wounds magically seal up without scarring, even the unconscious fighter's injuries, letting them get back into the fight!
Defend this.
The rogue is the "odd jobs" guy in 2e and AD&D, but the killy guy in 4e
the killy guy in AD&D is the wizard
>The problem I have, the reason of the post above, is people explaining HP as "dodging".
I generally bypass this with groups by making HP rules as follows
>Hit points are whatever they need to be to make sense at the time.
Took a hit from a dragon? Obviously not a direct hit from the house-sized lizard or you'd be paste, so clearly dodged it(unless it killed you,. then yes, direct hit).
Got punched? Could be a punch in the face. Oh, the Warlord healed you? Well maybe you just thought he hit you harder than it really did.
Poison knife? You're alive, so he clearly didn't flat-out stab you in the face. He clearly nicked you enough to draw blood though if the poison took effect.
Just for Warlords mind you. When my party's healer is a Cleric that has literally magic healing, I'm a bit more free with the "Meat Points" aspect of Hit Points.
Why do people like you always seem to have a really awful grasp of the English language?
>INT Warlord
has more "field medic"-type experience, and is less "inspiring."
He's good at recognizing injuries for what they are, and with a few quick bandages, gauze, some peroxide or whathaveyou, if able to do a quick patch-job that won't hold up forever, but it's enough to get you back into the fight at least.
Or if ranged healing, he tells you it's not as bad as it looks, and recommends ending the fight ASAP so he can give proper medical attention, maybe advising to throw some bandages from his pack on it as a temporary fix.
Why?
That's obviously something the player and DM in the game where that character is present should decide for themselves. 4e does not care about how it works in-universe, it cares about how it works as a game mechanic.
Maybe he's a field medic shouting medical advice? Or an arrogant marshal who's smug superiority drives everyone else to work harder to prove the little shit wrong? Or a near-robotic tactical savant listing off the horrible things that will happen if they fail? Or a loud jackass who just shouts "STOP DYING"?
>He's implying because a poison weapon applies the poison on hit, that a hit can't be a "near miss" but has to actually deliver the poison to the target's bloodstream
which is why in 1e poison is save or die
not neccessarily a good thing, but it keeps in line with the type of stories it is meant to emulate, where only evil aligned npcs use poison and its a dishonourable and evil thing to do that is out of the question for proper people
>Have you tried not dying? That would be a good idea.
>Fuck it, I'm getting back up just so I can shove my boot up this idiots ass.
>not neccessarily a good thing, but it keeps in line with the type of stories it is meant to emulate, where only evil aligned npcs use poison and its a dishonourable and evil thing to do that is out of the question for proper people
And then runs straight into 'Oh, right. PCs are murderous grave-robbing thieves'.
How is someone unconscious even listening to the warlord?
Remember kids, Heal is Wis-based, not Int-based.
You are right is even worse and goes beyond the poison.
yes, but like klingons.
killing recklessly to plunder and conquor
honorably
I am sneakyposting, unseen by others.
Also, it does not make my arguments less valid.
Maybe they aren't fully unconscious? Maybe they respond to the needs of their friends despite not being conscious? Maybe the warlord just shouts really loud until they get off their lazy asses and get back in the fight?
Use your imagination
Ah but honour is in the victory, not how you achieve it!
>writing like a retard doesn't make me retarded
Sure.
yes, animate rope and dimension door are there for that. Kill stuff
I still read no arguments, but I can spot a butthurt faggot.
Guess he wasn't really unconscious. Or he heard him in spite of it. Or if the Warlord is close enough, he can just slap the shit out of the guy to wake him up. How doesn't really matter, 4e isn't as hampered by specific rules and charts as 3e is.
Also can be smart enough to know a thing or two about being a field medic, but not have the WIS to do more than do quick fixes under the pressure of active combat.
Or maybe he does have the WIS and he's good at medical knowledge and is fully capable of doing it mid-combat thanks to his high intellect.
4e is a very flexible game fluff-wise. If you can't come up with an explanation for how something can happen, that's on you, not the system.
Any game is flexible fluffwise.
You want to know the real issue with 4e?
The hypocrites who claimed it was better when it wasn't. It was just different and anyone who said it wasn't better was 'brain damaged'.
>The hypocrites who claimed it was better when it wasn't. It was just different and anyone who said it wasn't better was 'brain damaged'.
I'm..not really sure what you're trying to argue here.
I'm not arguing anything, I'm stating that 4e fans claimed anyone who didn't believe their choice of game wasn't perfect was brain damaged. Because that really was (and still is) their argument for why 4e is better.
That's a lot of acrobatics checks to try to make sense of a rule and keep immersion, user
Only if you define 4e fans as "people who use that argument".
I'm a fan of 4e, and I don't think it's objectively better than all other systems. It's better at certain things than certain systems.
Sneaky Strangulations and Tactical Movement are sure helpful for killing stuff.
>wearing armor actually makes you more likely to get killed by some weapons as opposed to being nude
nani
>pic
Isn't that from the Swedish game Drakar och Demoner, supplement Krigarens handbok? Can any other swede back me up?
That's the D&D 3.5 weapon illustrations, man.
I'd recognize that wonky warhammer and retarded hooked hammer anywhere.
Fucking hell, I must have gotten the illustrations mixed up. Who knew weapons would look so similar?
Don't tell me you have something against war mallets and DIRE FLAILS.
>Because that really was (and still is) their argument for why 4e is better.
Well, I can't speak for what goes on in your imagination I suppose.
b-but that hammer's grip is wider than the scimitar's hilt
and the heads are even wider than the fucking grip
think of the horrifying ineffectiveness of that size a contact area
The biggest problem I have is the fact that most actual warhammer were closer to what are represented as picks there
(albeit is true that certain weapons that looked similar in fact were expected to be used mainly only on the pointy side, or mainly on the bludgeoning one - see Bec d Corbin and Lucerne Hammer, ignoring the reach.
You've got the context wrong on Essentials. It wasn't about his tastes on how class dynamics should function, it was him trying to have something like a Rules Cyclopedia equivalent for 4e because there was flagging interest and basically no new attachment among 'rule mastery' players. Everyone in that camp either was already playing 4e, done with it, or wouldn't touch it. The idea was explicitly to try and drill down into a few concepts and recapture some of the 'play the class' design that preceded 3.X; and if someone wanted something more intricate, they could move on to the immediately compatible and more detail-heavy mechanics of 4e-proper and run it alongside someone satisfied playing Babby's First Rogue.
Obviously that plan didn't work particularly well. Partly for the reasons you pointed out, and partly because of people having the same assumptions or misunderstandings about why it exists as it does.
Perhaps more importantly Essentials also marked a new production philosophy. Out of the gate, 4e had an EXTREMELY ambitious in-house production schedule of at least one product per month, on top of Dungeon/Dragon magazines and promotional and convention materials, which meant more in-house staff to pay as well as that they were competing with themselves for shelf space and product visibility. What successes they had were mitigated by them being over-ambitious. Essentials was them backing off of that and trying to be more conscious about where they spent man hours and how many products are actually presented to players.
Which is also a core idea behind how 5e's being ran now: slow, cautious, easier to approach by total neophytes.
I remember the hysteria wave in ENworld. I was disgusted and I am a 3.Fag.
But I have to admit a bit of schadenfreude.
Mostly for weapons that fuck up certain armors in a way that's harmful to you.
You should try MERPS/Rolemaster sometime. Armor makes you much easier to hit and damage, but reduces the likelihood of the system's deadly deadly critical hits from wrecking your shit.
That looks really unfun