Serious question Veeky Forums

People like things dumbed down and casualised. This is why 4e and 5e keep getting worse and worse but people will love them.
3.5 is true patrician tier

>try to be funny
>don't be funny,, be anti-funny
>try to be serious
>create the most hilarious comic he has ever created

Serious question Veeky Forums

How is it possible that after all these years they still haven't come out with something better than pic related.
Was this just the pinnacle of D&D design or did they give up completely on trying to do better?

>mfw I genuinely enjoyed CAD

...

nice try OP

Okay you're going to have to explain this to me because that post makes no goddamn sense.

1: What "dumbed down" and "casualized" means in a fucking TABLETOP game where the FUCKING GUY RUNNING IT determines the complexity and difficulty
2: How the two terms even apply even slightly compared to how 3e completely, unambiguously, utterly removed all roleplaying by having rules for literally everything.

...

How will he ever recover?

>the FUCKING GUY RUNNING IT determines the complexity and difficulty
No he doesn't.

Of course, the more complicated a system is, the better it is! That's why GURPS is the pinnacle of all roleplaying.

Imagine making a comic based on your own kid dying and the internet laughing about it and still making funny edits 10 years later.

>he doesnt know the difference between complicated and complex

I shiggy diggy

wtf is that shit

>>Complicated: consisting of many interconnecting parts or elements; intricate.
>>Complex: consisting of many different and connected parts.
These are the definitions I got when I quickly googled it. So I would say it's fair to assume that they are the same.

Not the guy you are responding to but I think I see where he is going with his argument though I do not agree. It sounds like he is arguing that the games rules are streamlined to make it easier for new players to come in to the game. Meaning that people who aren't going to take the game seriously, are entering the hobby and contaminating it. At least that's what I understanding from his argument.

>3e completely, unambiguously, utterly removed all roleplaying by having rules for literally everything.

I shouldn't even have to explain what is wrong with this statement but I guess I do because your handler let you on the internet again.

>removed all roleplaying

It did not. I have roleplayed in D&D 3e just fine. I have observed other people roleplaying in D&D 3e. I have observed people roleplaying in every fucking D&D edition. Thus by simple proof of counterexample you are outright wrong. Also, a system of rules does not aid nor inhibit roleplaying, you stupid fuck. Roleplaying is generally done outside of the rules. Unless by "roleplaying" you mean "I can't seduce the orc barbarian in the midst of battle with a nat20 wah wah wah".

> having rules for literally everything.

I know this is hyperbole, but it's still fucking stupid. Not to mention, there is nothing wrong with having a rules-set for something. A lot of people didn't even use those rules-sets but those who did had something to refer to.

3.5 is far from the pinnacle of RPG design, 5e has a lot of things that are pretty much flat-out better. The action economy and movement rules (i.e. can move between attacks and AoOs are no longer retarded) are improved, feats are at least better (though still shit in their own way), the skill list is a bit more condensed, and grappling is sure easier (the AoO should have remained in in my mind because it makes sense you should be able to stab someone who's trying to grab you), but 5e is missing a lot of the cool content 3.5 had.

>capitalization and over-use of "fucking"
Looks like Tumblr's trying to make a point.

>What "dumbed down" and "casualized" means in a fucking TABLETOP game

It means the game's rules are made easier, and also the game's lethality is reduced. The former is not necessarily bad, nor is the latter necessarily bad either. Streamlining rules is good. Cutting out rules to make it palatable to normies, is not.

>where the FUCKING GUY RUNNING IT determines the complexity and difficulty

Depends if the fucking guy running it is running a published adventure. Also, if he uses monsters from the book, they inherently carry the game's difficulty with them. D&D has a set structure to how you are supposed to set up encounters and challenges and the game's difficulty level is reflected in this. Sure, an experienced DM will adjust for this if he wants to, but you are retarded if you think the system has no effect on the lethality of the game. But then, you do seem retarded from what I read of your post, so I guess I won't be too annoyed by that.

>Cutting out rules to make it palatable to normies, is not.
I guess it would be completely beyond your comprehension that the rules might be changed for the sake of the people who actually play the game.

Complicated has a negitive connotation but complex doesn't

4e has more rules to it than 2e by a large margin, and unlike 2e it's not a clusterfuck that makes no sense. The only things that were cut out were things that were ultimately worthless or absurdly overpowered when you put any mechanics to it.

And less lethal? Are you high? In 3e you can make wands that grant infinite healing by pooling together your gold at Lv2.

Try Fantasycraft

Oh god not this fuckery! Maybe I'll ironically play this someday. Fucking kek mate.

True or not, this is very low-quality bait.

sage

But I'll bite. If "they" means "the industry as a whole", look at, hum, everything Fantasy Flight Gaming has produced.

Ever.

It's all better. Not all good, but all better. Having a blast with the Warhammer Fantasy TTRPG.

It's a game you play when you have an SJW fetish and also have standard /d/ fetishes. It's like a more subtle FATAL, even though this game lacks any subtly.

In fairness 2E is pretty clusterfucked, don't get me wrong, it's a decent edition, but its pretty messy. I think what really killed D&D was the inclusion of skills (non-weapon proficiencies if your a 2e fan) and feats. The feeling of rules for everything really started when skills and feats entered the game. 2E was really the transition edition from the old gritty, grim dark, survive if you can OD&D, B/X (BECMI), 1E to the shiny new, epic hero, 1 vs 100 odds, 3.X. 4E, 5E. It is also the first edition to have the misfortune of existing under WotC control.

>I know this is hyperbole, but it's still fucking stupid. Not to mention, there is nothing wrong with having a rules-set for something. A lot of people didn't even use those rules-sets but those who did had something to refer to.
as much as I think D&D is mediocre in all its forms, this user is correct: it's easier to leave out rules or whole subsystems out of a rules-heavy game than to make up whole subsystems for a rules-light system from scratch

Serious question Veeky Forums

How is it possible that after all these years they still haven't come out with something better than pic related.
Was this just the pinnacle of D&D design or did they give up completely on trying to do better?
Am I doing it right?

>a system of rules does not aid nor inhibit roleplaying
This is how I know you've never played a system that wasn't D&D
Opinion discarded

>I think what really killed D&D was the inclusion of skills (non-weapon proficiencies if your a 2e fan) and feats.
I'm inclined to agree. Skills completely changed the paradigm of the game into something it was not meant for and it reduced a lot of interaction with the game world to a roll of the dice. Feats took away a lot of the abilities most classes had and forced them to buy neutered versions back piecemeal, encouraging builds and optimization, making character creation its own metagame.

...

4E fixed 3.5's biggest problems but critically flubbed some other very basic stuff. WotC tried to fix it with Essentials, failed, and decided to go make the safest possible game instead of trying another round of fixing it.

You can understand what happened more if you look at the end of 3.5's lifecycle. A bunch of the late 3.5 books (Tome Of Battle, Magic of Incarnum, Tome Of Magic) were supposed to double as market research for whether mechanical ideas were good. ToB was a wild success. MoI implemented its clever ideas in a horribly convoluted way and had fluff that nobody cared for. I don't even know what happened to Tome Of Magic to make it such a mess (but people liked Binders). Then they moved to the next edition before trying more things.

If all the books succeeded, I think 4E would've been the at-will/encounter/daily system, plus strong buffs that use item slots, plus non-vancian spell mechanics fitting into the daily powers for casters.

Instead we only got the ToB-based stuff. And that was the most combat-mechanics oriented book of the three (the fluff-heavy ToM being a tire fire), so they decided that meant people didn't care about fluff.

Serious question Veeky Forums

How is it possible that after all these years they still haven't come out with something better than pic related.
Was this just the pinnacle of D&D design or did they give up completely on trying to do better?

>so they decided that meant people didn't care about fluff.

Half of the problem with 3.5 was the degree to which fluff and crunch were married.

>you need to join the super secret assassin club (which requires killing someone for the specific purpose of joining) to learn how to not accidentally poison yourself
>barbarians inexplicably forget how to get angry if they're too devoted to their code of honor
>bards can't get better at music unless they go fuck da police periodically

and that's just the shit I can easily dig up out of the SRD.

I've thought about this for a while and I think I can accurately pinpoint what I see as the most major issues people seem to be generally unable to identify when they complain about newer editions. This list comes from talking to many different players and DMs, people in my groups and outside of my groups, over the years.

3.X Altered the rules, style, and feels of the game to give the game an epic hero feel. Where as prior to that the game was about survival. Monsters where scaled in 3.X to allow players to face challenges that were appropriate for their levels.

Skills as a mechanic are one of the biggest offenders for how the game was altered. Social skills reduced to a die role, what used to be a player having to verbal convince the DM while acting in character. As for technical skills, those where determined by the DM, if it was plausible your class or race might be able to preform some action (skill) then is was either and automatic success or you'd roll against one of your six ability scores (no modifiers).

Feats are the other big offender, the epic feel of 3.X comes in large part from feats. The concept of extraordinary abilities that in many cases crossed the boundaries of characters class. This lead to the idea that class concepts such as samurai (a fighter with and eastern motif) and sorcerer (a wizard who has natural magical ability) becoming completely separate classes rather than just concepts of motifs for existing classes.

3.x cont. Scaling monsters/Exp is another concept that seems to garner contention. The idea of monster encounters being scaled to character level has lead to the idea that characters are special and therefore better than all other creatures in a given D&D world. In older editions monster encounters were not necessarily designed with character levels in mind. However with 3.X that is exactly how it is reccomended every encounter be designed, and while it is up to the DM to create these encounters and we can all shit on bad DM's, when the majority of people whose first experience with D&D was 3.X came into the game, they weren't getting a lot of feedback from people who had been playing older editions for years. So in a way the casuals who started in third edition when it lauched were conditioned to accept that as normal game play.

Alongside scaling exp, is the level progression system, and the easy at which a character can reach high level play. The rate at which characters progress in levels is probably the biggest complaint I have heard about 3.X. Most people I have talked to have cited the lack of time getting to play a character, building it over time, as the biggest turn off for 3.X

4E While it was said a lot in the time leading to its launch and even after its launch, 4E was the MMO edition of D&D. WotC tried to give the game an MMO feel, using terminology and concepts widely found in MMOs. Strikers, Tanks, AoE, Dps, these are terms that were not used in D&D as a tabletop game, prior to 4E. It went further than that though, the concept of daily powers (complete with 24 hour cooldown time), at will powers, healing surges, these were all ideas drawn from MMOs. That, coupled with the fact that WotC was trying to digitze every aspect of its operation (remember the online only magazine, the digital table top funtion which never actually came to be, etc) is what lead to 4E's downfall. It may have been WotC's way of trying to draw the MMO crowd into D&D, but ironically 4E did more to destroy WotC's customer base than any other edition. You had the OSR movement that latched on to ever edition that came out prior to when WotC bought D&D and the PF crowd who Paizo catered to, quite well.

Extended combat encounters, is another complaint about 4E that comes up frequently. The edition is heavily geared towards combat, and is almost surgical in nature. This one still baffles me, you have at will power, and per combat power, daily power, and mundane action (standard attack), I have experienced this myself, and I'm still at a loss for how a single combat drags on for as long as it does, when characters have way more fire power than any other edition.

If 3E suffered from rapid level progression, 4E has a terminal case of it. The rate of level progression would probably be the biggest complaint if it weren't for the MMO concepts.

5E I will admit I have only a rough knowlegde of the rules for 5E but the complaints I keep hearing about 5E, is that it sliding rules complexity exists in an effort to get older edition fans to open their wallet to WotC. However most people who play seem to be playing with the most complex set of rules, in order to emulate a 3.X style of play, at least thats how it sounds to me.

Yes, AoE originated as a concept from MMOs.

4e was revolutionary in giving the wizard AoE attacks, like fireballs that affect large areas. Never before had this been a thing.

You are a retard

What sliding complexity? WotC claimed they would build that into the system, but never did.

>Strikers, Tanks, AoE, Dps
Most D&D groups had a "tank", by which you mean a guy with huge damage dealing capability on top of damage mitigation, whether he was Patrick's straight-up Human Fighter or Alfred's Aasimar Monk/Cleric/Paladin Wisdom tank. D&D 4e even goes out of its way to not use those MMO terms and video game "tanks" are Defenders. Same for Striker. "Area of effect" was not invented by MMOs. I don't have a clue how do you measure "DPS" in a game where every action and its effect come in rounds and not seconds, but I assume that you made up that bullshit.

It's a seller's market, OP, they don't gotta innovate for shit. If you innovate and try to sell it, you make peanuts. Give it away for free, and the knuckledraggers who populate the hobby can't understand it because it's not D&D.

But make a kickstarter under an assumed name with a sales pitch and tease artwork, and you can be just like the big boys because you don't got to deliver shit.