Social Justice Warriors have been demanding more homosexuality, more racial diversity, and less masculinity in games for a while now. Sometimes, there are token gestures, like how Skyrim let you get gay married despite that being jarringly out of place in its pseudo-early-medieval Northern Europe context. Sometimes, it's outright denial, like when the makers of Kingdom Come: Deliverance refused to throw token black into its game set in medieval Bohemia, despite angry bloggers insisting medieval Europe was as diverse as modern New York City.
And sometimes, it's total embrace.
In case you've been out of the loop, Bioware hired a social justice warrior who doesn't actually like video games to be one of the lead designers for Dragon Age. Now, on a fundamental level, story really doesn't make or break a fun video game. Dark Souls is one of my favorite RPGs, and the plot is barely even present. The problem is that when something other than making a great game is the focus of the company, everything suffers.
People have focused on the imbalance of love interests (25% of the main cast is gay...just like real life!), but the real problem goes much deeper than that. Senior management at a company has limited time and energy. If they're true believers in the social justice agenda, it affects the entire company. It means the very limited, valuable time senior leadership has is at least partially taken up by social justice nonsense. An overt political agenda places a damper on the office environment. People who don't believe in a company's mission won't last long, and when that company's mission is extreme politics, there's an awful lot of talent that becomes unavailable. And of course, senior employees who don't like the new direction will leave. David Gaider isn't just indulging a bit of SJW nonsense to make people happy. He's a true believer, and Social Justice has become central to Bioware's activity as a company.
The result is obvious in Dragon Age: Inquisition. The artwork is great (it's not hard to find radically left-wing artists). Great care was put into the plot line about helping a homosexual come out to his father. A lot of attention was put into the transsexual NPC. There was plenty of lore scattered in the game world dealing with sexual politics. However, it was clear that Bioware had no such interest in making sure the combat was fun, the pacing worked, or the gear was worthwhile...in other words, the actual game. Not to mention that the game was full of bugs on release. But even after patches, the game is simply not fun to play. It's not broken or awful. It's just boring. The whole game is practically on autopilot, side quests are pointless, and the difficulty tends to be heavily imbalanced in favor of the player. This isn't a coincidence. When the focus of a company isn't the product, quality suffers.
Sunday, November 8, 2015
Wednesday, September 30, 2015
Destiny is Terrible
Destiny was supposed to be THE big event that got people into the new generation of game consoles. I've heard from people in the know that the game, which cost $500m to make, is not hitting sales targets. No surprise; the game is awful.
1. The class system is boring. The whole point of an RPG-type structure is that as you level up, you get new capability. In Destiny, the main change is that you can use higher DPS weapons and wear stronger armor. But since the enemies are just the same things as before with higher DPS and stronger armor, who cares? The only thing differentiating one class from another is a slowly-recharging grenade and an even slower "super" ability. Most of the time is spent shooting the same enemies with the same four or five weapons over and over.
2. The loot is boring. Over the course of 8 levels, the only noticeable change I saw in the loot I got was that sometimes I found a gun that would unlock a red dot sight or higher damage as I used it more, or armor that would grant me more ammo reserves if I used it enough. No fireballs. No heat-seaking missiles. No infrared scopes. No cerebral bores. Just the same machine gun, but more DPS and a red dot. Whee.
3. The maps are boring. When I started the game and saw the first main location was Earth, I was thought, "Aw, cool, I get to explore the planet Earth! Next-gen is here!" Wrong. In Destiny, "Earth" means "An old cosmodrome in Russia." The end. You will not go to post-apocalyptic NYC. You will not go to a jungle island in the Pacific. You will not even go to other places in Russia. You get the one cosmodrome, and that's "Earth." The core game has only five maps like this, so you can forget about seeing much in the way of anything new or interesting. Also, going through the game means revisiting the same locations in these maps over...and over...and over. Compared to the scope of even last-gen games, it's pathetic.
4. The 'MMO' aspect is a joke. Most missions are only accessible to people you personally invite. There are a few with random match-making, so you can forget about encountering any kinds of guilds or groups online as you go through the game. Unless you play the competitive multiplayer, the game feels like a very, very boring take on Borderlands. You will occasionally see other players on the same map as you, running whatever quest they're doing. If you want to, you can silently help them kill some bad guys. You mostly won't want to.
5. The setting is incomprehensible. Imagine if in Star Wars, Leia kept saying "The Death Star is very dangerous," but you never see it blow up Alderaan. In fact, no one even mentions it can blow up planets. Or that it's a battle station. And it's not called the "Death Star." It's called "Moribus Prime." So the story is that the Rebellion is going to blow up Moribus Prime because "it's dangerous." Also, you never see anyone use the Force or even hear what the Force is. People just say "May the Force be with you" and "He is strong in the Force." There's no Darth Vader to personify the evil, either, just an undifferentiated mass of Storm Troopers who never speak or do anything except sit around, waiting for the Rebel Alliance to attack. Destiny is like that, only somehow even more confusing.
6. The crafting is unintuitive and tedious. The elements you find for crafting all have made-up sci-fi names, so you won't have any clue what they are. Since the things you can craft have equally obscure names and there are a bizarre number of elements and items, you'll probably just find yourself avoiding the crafting menus altogether. Crafting is generally a terrible idea in games, and Destiny just makes it extra terrible.
7. At low levels, the shops have nothing for you. Boy, my weapon is garbage. It's like five levels behind! I'll just go to the shop and...oh, they only sell gear for level 40 and above. Nevermind. Nevermind forever. I'll just go grind through a boss again and hope he drops something that isn't crap (P.S., the boss is going to drop crap).
Basically, Destiny is garbage. It was made by people who don't understand what makes games fun, what makes sci-fi interesting, or understand that "depth" doesn't mean "autistic levels of complexity." Stay away.
1. The class system is boring. The whole point of an RPG-type structure is that as you level up, you get new capability. In Destiny, the main change is that you can use higher DPS weapons and wear stronger armor. But since the enemies are just the same things as before with higher DPS and stronger armor, who cares? The only thing differentiating one class from another is a slowly-recharging grenade and an even slower "super" ability. Most of the time is spent shooting the same enemies with the same four or five weapons over and over.
2. The loot is boring. Over the course of 8 levels, the only noticeable change I saw in the loot I got was that sometimes I found a gun that would unlock a red dot sight or higher damage as I used it more, or armor that would grant me more ammo reserves if I used it enough. No fireballs. No heat-seaking missiles. No infrared scopes. No cerebral bores. Just the same machine gun, but more DPS and a red dot. Whee.
3. The maps are boring. When I started the game and saw the first main location was Earth, I was thought, "Aw, cool, I get to explore the planet Earth! Next-gen is here!" Wrong. In Destiny, "Earth" means "An old cosmodrome in Russia." The end. You will not go to post-apocalyptic NYC. You will not go to a jungle island in the Pacific. You will not even go to other places in Russia. You get the one cosmodrome, and that's "Earth." The core game has only five maps like this, so you can forget about seeing much in the way of anything new or interesting. Also, going through the game means revisiting the same locations in these maps over...and over...and over. Compared to the scope of even last-gen games, it's pathetic.
4. The 'MMO' aspect is a joke. Most missions are only accessible to people you personally invite. There are a few with random match-making, so you can forget about encountering any kinds of guilds or groups online as you go through the game. Unless you play the competitive multiplayer, the game feels like a very, very boring take on Borderlands. You will occasionally see other players on the same map as you, running whatever quest they're doing. If you want to, you can silently help them kill some bad guys. You mostly won't want to.
5. The setting is incomprehensible. Imagine if in Star Wars, Leia kept saying "The Death Star is very dangerous," but you never see it blow up Alderaan. In fact, no one even mentions it can blow up planets. Or that it's a battle station. And it's not called the "Death Star." It's called "Moribus Prime." So the story is that the Rebellion is going to blow up Moribus Prime because "it's dangerous." Also, you never see anyone use the Force or even hear what the Force is. People just say "May the Force be with you" and "He is strong in the Force." There's no Darth Vader to personify the evil, either, just an undifferentiated mass of Storm Troopers who never speak or do anything except sit around, waiting for the Rebel Alliance to attack. Destiny is like that, only somehow even more confusing.
6. The crafting is unintuitive and tedious. The elements you find for crafting all have made-up sci-fi names, so you won't have any clue what they are. Since the things you can craft have equally obscure names and there are a bizarre number of elements and items, you'll probably just find yourself avoiding the crafting menus altogether. Crafting is generally a terrible idea in games, and Destiny just makes it extra terrible.
7. At low levels, the shops have nothing for you. Boy, my weapon is garbage. It's like five levels behind! I'll just go to the shop and...oh, they only sell gear for level 40 and above. Nevermind. Nevermind forever. I'll just go grind through a boss again and hope he drops something that isn't crap (P.S., the boss is going to drop crap).
Basically, Destiny is garbage. It was made by people who don't understand what makes games fun, what makes sci-fi interesting, or understand that "depth" doesn't mean "autistic levels of complexity." Stay away.
Saturday, September 19, 2015
Concentration Killed CoDzilla
Last game session, I noticed something about the Druid's combat spells...nearly every single one of them is tagged with Concentration. This is a new mechanic in 5e. You can only have one Concentration effect active at a time, and if you get hit while one is active, you have to make a Constitution saving throw with a DC equal to the damage you took.
The result of this is that the CoDzilla problem from 3rd edition is gone. In case you didn't know, in 3rd, you could make a god-like cleric by stacking the right buff spells and feats. Likewise, the "Batman" wizard (a wizard who can become any class by activating the right spells) is a thing of the past. 4e solved this by standardizing abilities, but at the cost of alienating a lot of fans and making too many classes feel too similar. In 5e, spells feel a lot more like their classic incarnations, but the addition of Concentration keeps things from getting out of hand. Also, only allowing one effect at a time makes the game simpler to run.
The result of this is that the CoDzilla problem from 3rd edition is gone. In case you didn't know, in 3rd, you could make a god-like cleric by stacking the right buff spells and feats. Likewise, the "Batman" wizard (a wizard who can become any class by activating the right spells) is a thing of the past. 4e solved this by standardizing abilities, but at the cost of alienating a lot of fans and making too many classes feel too similar. In 5e, spells feel a lot more like their classic incarnations, but the addition of Concentration keeps things from getting out of hand. Also, only allowing one effect at a time makes the game simpler to run.
Thursday, September 17, 2015
Grognards Are Terrible People
Something I only came to appreciate as an adult is that there's a wide gulf between a grown man with a past-time and a manchild whose life is his toys. There is a contingent of adults who are overly passionate about things like comic book plot continuity, the consistency of the fake science in Star Trek, obscure computations in RPGs, the DPS of various weapons in a video game, and so on. These people are almost invariably failures at life.
In D&D, there are a lot of these types. Come on, this is a hobby where public events have signs like, "We reserve the right to remove anyone from the premises who does not practice proper hygiene." I've learned to stay away from these types. Anyone who is going to get worked up about the lore for the Dire Wolf being totally wrong in some edition of D&D not only isn't going to be much fun in your party, he's also not going to be a decent person to be around.
In D&D, there are a lot of these types. Come on, this is a hobby where public events have signs like, "We reserve the right to remove anyone from the premises who does not practice proper hygiene." I've learned to stay away from these types. Anyone who is going to get worked up about the lore for the Dire Wolf being totally wrong in some edition of D&D not only isn't going to be much fun in your party, he's also not going to be a decent person to be around.
Friday, September 4, 2015
The 5e Druid Is Pretty Fun
I've now played the Druid a few times. Obviously, its offensive ability is fairly limited, but the ability to turn into virtually any animal I want is a blast. Need to scale a wall? Become a spider. Dive under the water? Become a shark or crocodile. Need a quick buffer of HP to get out of a jam in combat? Become a bear. 5e really throws the limits off transformations by having the power recharge every short rest.
The spells are also really solid. I can give everyone +10 to stealth checks. Goodberry is always a favorite (especially since I recharge 2 slots on a short rest). The animal-related spells are a bit tricky to grapple with, but I think with a little creativity, they should become plenty useful. DMs don't often think a lot about fauna, so I'm guessing I'll need to help mine along by asking what kinds of animals might be around.
It's certainly a lot better than the 4e Druid. Since most 4e spells were combat-oriented, taking animal form really crippled the character. I remember a friend of mine trying to play a druid in a 4e campaign I was running, and it just plain didn't work. It wasn't as bad as the summoner wizard he tried earlier, but still, it just wasn't much fun.
In 4e, your animal form was pure fluff. Basically, you had a set of abilities you could use in human form, and a set of abilities you could use in animal form. It fell into the trap a lot of classes in that edition did, where there were seemingly tons of powers you could mix and match, but you really needed to focus on one specific grouping to be any good. Either go with Beast Form abilities or stick strictly with human form abilities. Otherwise, you wind up with powers you almost never use. It also had that common issue of certain spells having such specific conditions attached to them that the right opportunity to use them never really came up.
5e doesn't have this issue, of course. The Druid has a fairly large selection of spells, and many of them can be used outside of combat. This particular druid isn't going the Circle of the Moon route, so I'm mostly playing as a humanoid caster who uses Wild Shape sparingly and mostly to get out of jams (like being pulled into the water by a merrow).
It's a good class.
The spells are also really solid. I can give everyone +10 to stealth checks. Goodberry is always a favorite (especially since I recharge 2 slots on a short rest). The animal-related spells are a bit tricky to grapple with, but I think with a little creativity, they should become plenty useful. DMs don't often think a lot about fauna, so I'm guessing I'll need to help mine along by asking what kinds of animals might be around.
It's certainly a lot better than the 4e Druid. Since most 4e spells were combat-oriented, taking animal form really crippled the character. I remember a friend of mine trying to play a druid in a 4e campaign I was running, and it just plain didn't work. It wasn't as bad as the summoner wizard he tried earlier, but still, it just wasn't much fun.
In 4e, your animal form was pure fluff. Basically, you had a set of abilities you could use in human form, and a set of abilities you could use in animal form. It fell into the trap a lot of classes in that edition did, where there were seemingly tons of powers you could mix and match, but you really needed to focus on one specific grouping to be any good. Either go with Beast Form abilities or stick strictly with human form abilities. Otherwise, you wind up with powers you almost never use. It also had that common issue of certain spells having such specific conditions attached to them that the right opportunity to use them never really came up.
5e doesn't have this issue, of course. The Druid has a fairly large selection of spells, and many of them can be used outside of combat. This particular druid isn't going the Circle of the Moon route, so I'm mostly playing as a humanoid caster who uses Wild Shape sparingly and mostly to get out of jams (like being pulled into the water by a merrow).
It's a good class.
Friday, August 14, 2015
Japan's Game Industry Is Committing Seppuku
I recently made the mistake of trying to play Gran Turismo 6 again. For some reason, I had deluded myself into thinking it's a very good game that I've neglected. Of course, this is false. It's a terrible game that I put down because it's boring and repetitive.
If you haven't played GT5 or GT6, about 80% of the content (nearly 1000 of the ~1200 cars and a similar percentage of the tracks) are literally spruced-up PS2 and PSP content. I don't mean that the tracks and cars are repeats, I mean they are literally using the same geometry, sound files, and textures from earlier games and just processing them through a new rendering engine. Car upgrades are unrealistic (I didn't know a 1968 Shelby GT had an engine computer), customization options are limited mainly to paint color, and a huge portion of the cars are actually just slight variations of a handful of Nissan and Mitsubishi models that Kazunori Yamauchi is in love with. On top of that, the entire games consist of starting at the back of the back and having 3-5 laps to finish first.
If you ever wondered how PC gamers felt when buying a late-generation console-to-PC port, Gran Turismo 5 gave you a taste.
How did a great series fall so far? I followed a bit of news here and there, and Yamauchi was constantly living a fantasy as a race car driver, spending huge quantities of time test driving exotic cars, taking the whole development team to retreats at race tracks, meeting with car companies to pretend he matters in the automotive world ("Vision GT" was his attempt to get auto manufacturers to treat him like a real car designer), and giving interviews rather than working on either GT5 or GT6.
He spent countless hours promoting his idiotic Vision GT idea, flying around the world to sit in automobile cockpits and lovingly caress their interiors (rather than, you know, obtaining CAD data), and fan his balls while blathering about how racing is "poetry" or something. Apparently the poem involves using other cars as billiard balls and not getting deducted points for running off the track or causing collisions, but whatever. Everything except actually producing content for GT was top priority for him, and it showed.
But I'm not here to just talk about Yamauchi. He's symptomatic of a wider problem in Japanese game development, the "game god." In Japan, lead developers who have been around since the cowboy days of console development are revered as infallible sages. Kazunori Yamauchi, Hironobu Sakaguchi, Shigeru Miyamoto, Hideo Kojima, and others are all examples of the game god problem. These guys all believe in their own myth and are obsessed with their own genius. Each fancies himself some kind of visionary artist savant whose talent goes far beyond merely making video games (Yamauchi fancies himself an elite car designer, Inafune thinks of him as a genius movie director, etc), and since he now has virtually free rein at the company he helped enrich with his earlier games, he inflicts increasingly absurd inanities on customers.
The cult of the game god is bringing down once-legendary game studios. Super Mario Galaxy 2 once again failed to win the audiences, Metal Gear Solid is a self-parody, Final Fantasy is embarrassing, and Gran Turismo is so lazy it makes Need for Speed look innovative. For some reason, this doesn't happen as much in the USA. Maybe after the public debacles of 3D Realms and Ion Storm, everyone's extremely wary of giving too much freedom to any individual game developer. Maybe the way American corporate law works militates against that. Whatever the reason, Japanese game development is going to continue its downward slide until the cult of the game god gets purged.
If you haven't played GT5 or GT6, about 80% of the content (nearly 1000 of the ~1200 cars and a similar percentage of the tracks) are literally spruced-up PS2 and PSP content. I don't mean that the tracks and cars are repeats, I mean they are literally using the same geometry, sound files, and textures from earlier games and just processing them through a new rendering engine. Car upgrades are unrealistic (I didn't know a 1968 Shelby GT had an engine computer), customization options are limited mainly to paint color, and a huge portion of the cars are actually just slight variations of a handful of Nissan and Mitsubishi models that Kazunori Yamauchi is in love with. On top of that, the entire games consist of starting at the back of the back and having 3-5 laps to finish first.
 | |
| If those look look like blurry PS2 textures, it's because they are. |
How did a great series fall so far? I followed a bit of news here and there, and Yamauchi was constantly living a fantasy as a race car driver, spending huge quantities of time test driving exotic cars, taking the whole development team to retreats at race tracks, meeting with car companies to pretend he matters in the automotive world ("Vision GT" was his attempt to get auto manufacturers to treat him like a real car designer), and giving interviews rather than working on either GT5 or GT6.
 |
| Yamauchi hard at work not developing games in Paris. |
But I'm not here to just talk about Yamauchi. He's symptomatic of a wider problem in Japanese game development, the "game god." In Japan, lead developers who have been around since the cowboy days of console development are revered as infallible sages. Kazunori Yamauchi, Hironobu Sakaguchi, Shigeru Miyamoto, Hideo Kojima, and others are all examples of the game god problem. These guys all believe in their own myth and are obsessed with their own genius. Each fancies himself some kind of visionary artist savant whose talent goes far beyond merely making video games (Yamauchi fancies himself an elite car designer, Inafune thinks of him as a genius movie director, etc), and since he now has virtually free rein at the company he helped enrich with his earlier games, he inflicts increasingly absurd inanities on customers.
The cult of the game god is bringing down once-legendary game studios. Super Mario Galaxy 2 once again failed to win the audiences, Metal Gear Solid is a self-parody, Final Fantasy is embarrassing, and Gran Turismo is so lazy it makes Need for Speed look innovative. For some reason, this doesn't happen as much in the USA. Maybe after the public debacles of 3D Realms and Ion Storm, everyone's extremely wary of giving too much freedom to any individual game developer. Maybe the way American corporate law works militates against that. Whatever the reason, Japanese game development is going to continue its downward slide until the cult of the game god gets purged.
Friday, July 31, 2015
5e's Deadly Druid
Finally, I'm getting a break from running the game and have a chance to actually play a 5e character! Naturally, I've drawn up a worthless hippie druid named Rolfe N'Dar who never bathes and considers the lives of trees to be more important than those of his comrades. You know, kind of an extension of myself. There are a lot of changes from 3rd edition, most of which make the character more fun to play.
In previous editions, the druid's most notable ability was Wild Shape, which allowed him to shape-shift into various beasts. However, he didn't get this ability until level 7 in 2nd edition or level 5 in 3rd. Further, he only had a small number of uses per day. In keeping with 5e's general philosophy of making every character fun, the druid gets Wild Shape right away, and it can be used twice per 1-hour rest. Strength is also not important for a 5e Druid, as there are a couple combat cantrips available that make us of WIS for the attack.
There are two paths for the Druid, Circle of the Moon and Circle of Nature (which has multiple subdomains). In online chatter, Circle of the Moon tends to be favored due to the more powerful Wild Shape forms available. I'm a maverick who plays by his own rules, so I chose Circle of Nature (forest). Also, it seemed more fitting for the N'Dar character to be a forest druid anyway. However, the Circle of Nature shouldn't be too quickly discounted, as it grants the ability to recharge a limited number of spell slots on a short rest and several extra prepped spells. It really comes down to whether you want to focus more on casting or your Wild Shape.
In previous editions, the druid's most notable ability was Wild Shape, which allowed him to shape-shift into various beasts. However, he didn't get this ability until level 7 in 2nd edition or level 5 in 3rd. Further, he only had a small number of uses per day. In keeping with 5e's general philosophy of making every character fun, the druid gets Wild Shape right away, and it can be used twice per 1-hour rest. Strength is also not important for a 5e Druid, as there are a couple combat cantrips available that make us of WIS for the attack.
There are two paths for the Druid, Circle of the Moon and Circle of Nature (which has multiple subdomains). In online chatter, Circle of the Moon tends to be favored due to the more powerful Wild Shape forms available. I'm a maverick who plays by his own rules, so I chose Circle of Nature (forest). Also, it seemed more fitting for the N'Dar character to be a forest druid anyway. However, the Circle of Nature shouldn't be too quickly discounted, as it grants the ability to recharge a limited number of spell slots on a short rest and several extra prepped spells. It really comes down to whether you want to focus more on casting or your Wild Shape.
Monday, July 13, 2015
Call of Duty is Almost Done
Via this article on a meaningless petition, I happened across the interesting statistic that beginning with Black Ops II, each successive iteration of Call of Duty has seen double-digit decline in sales. That's huge!! Some of this is due no doubt to online sales (I bought Advanced Warfare on PSN), but Activision isn't crowing about beating any sales records, and Bobby Kotick isn't one to keep mum when business is good. All is proceeding as I have foreseen.
The problem with entertainment is people need novelty. A couple years ago, I predicted COD's relentless pace of annual releases would cause product fatigue in the market. The core issue isn't quality. COD continues to be the best shooter for your money. The problem is that as soon as a new game drops, the clock starts ticking. You've got twelve months to enjoy it before the next version hits and 70% of the people you play with move on to the next game. Unless you play every day, you're probably going to feel like you didn't get everything you wanted out of the game before it died.
Successful inter-generational franchises space out the releases far enough for each one to be a major event. Grand Theft Auto (a game I happen to loathe) might not have gross LTD sales as high as Call of Duty, but it's proven to be a much more stable source of revenue for Rockstar. Activision's getting ready to release the twelfth iteration of Call of Duty, no doubt to even greater apathy than Advanced Warfare met. Today's teenagers and college students, who are always the drivers of the FPS market, don't seem that excited by the game.
So far, every console generation has had a fun, accessible multiplayer shooter that blew up sales charts and ruled dorm rooms. It was Goldeneye back in the 1990s, Halo when I was in college, and Call of Duty more recently. It will be interesting to see if anyone can figure out how to capture that segment as everyone seems to be getting tired of the killstreaks and perks that defined COD.
The problem with entertainment is people need novelty. A couple years ago, I predicted COD's relentless pace of annual releases would cause product fatigue in the market. The core issue isn't quality. COD continues to be the best shooter for your money. The problem is that as soon as a new game drops, the clock starts ticking. You've got twelve months to enjoy it before the next version hits and 70% of the people you play with move on to the next game. Unless you play every day, you're probably going to feel like you didn't get everything you wanted out of the game before it died.
Successful inter-generational franchises space out the releases far enough for each one to be a major event. Grand Theft Auto (a game I happen to loathe) might not have gross LTD sales as high as Call of Duty, but it's proven to be a much more stable source of revenue for Rockstar. Activision's getting ready to release the twelfth iteration of Call of Duty, no doubt to even greater apathy than Advanced Warfare met. Today's teenagers and college students, who are always the drivers of the FPS market, don't seem that excited by the game.
So far, every console generation has had a fun, accessible multiplayer shooter that blew up sales charts and ruled dorm rooms. It was Goldeneye back in the 1990s, Halo when I was in college, and Call of Duty more recently. It will be interesting to see if anyone can figure out how to capture that segment as everyone seems to be getting tired of the killstreaks and perks that defined COD.
5e Spell Cards
Like every edition of D&D before it, 5th edition has the annoying issue of looking up spells. Either you can look them up in the book ($25 on Amazon), which can be a little tedious, use a third-party app with a not-exactly-legal spell list, or buy spell cards. D&D Insider, which generated very nice character sheets at the exorbitant price of $75 a year, is no more, and its successor got killed off with no announcement of any plans to resurrect it. It seems that Wizards has given up almost entirely on making digital tools itself.
Anyway, the cards are okay. However, there aren't any duplicates, so don't plan on sharing. Amazon has recently slashed the price on a number of decks, so now might be a good time to order one for your character. I'm playing a Druid, and while $12 is pricey, it's money I don't expect to have to spend again.
Anyway, the cards are okay. However, there aren't any duplicates, so don't plan on sharing. Amazon has recently slashed the price on a number of decks, so now might be a good time to order one for your character. I'm playing a Druid, and while $12 is pricey, it's money I don't expect to have to spend again.
Monday, July 6, 2015
5e is Clobbering Pathfinder on Amazon
Wizards has held its sales numbers pretty close to its chest, but Amazon can give some idea of who's hot and who's not. The Pathfinder core rulebook is currently ranked in the 3400s among all books on Amazon, while D&D's Player's Handbook is ranked at 68(!!!!!).
It's also worth noting that the 4e PHB has dropped to 28K, while the 3.5 PHB sits at 26K. I think it is fair to say that 4e is officially dead now. I certainly won't miss paying $75/yr so that my players can have the nice, printed sheets that the Character Builder provided. This handy tool estimates PF core book sales at ~150 per month, and D&D sales at ~1K per month.
I think this bodes well for the future of D&D, which has now resumed its place as the best-selling TTRPG. Pathfinder is a very well-supported product, but because it began life as a fresh coat of paint slapped on D&D 3.5, it has many of the same weaknesses and flaws as that system. The philosophy of "a mechanic for every situation" is a dead-end, and there's a good reason no new RPGs adopt it. 5e is a much fresher, more modern take on the classic game that strikes a good balance between depth and accessibility.
I think in another 10 years, we'll look at Pathfinder as a stopgap measure that existed to give D&D fans who didn't like 4e something to play while Wizards figured out how to take the game into the future.
It's also worth noting that the 4e PHB has dropped to 28K, while the 3.5 PHB sits at 26K. I think it is fair to say that 4e is officially dead now. I certainly won't miss paying $75/yr so that my players can have the nice, printed sheets that the Character Builder provided. This handy tool estimates PF core book sales at ~150 per month, and D&D sales at ~1K per month.
I think this bodes well for the future of D&D, which has now resumed its place as the best-selling TTRPG. Pathfinder is a very well-supported product, but because it began life as a fresh coat of paint slapped on D&D 3.5, it has many of the same weaknesses and flaws as that system. The philosophy of "a mechanic for every situation" is a dead-end, and there's a good reason no new RPGs adopt it. 5e is a much fresher, more modern take on the classic game that strikes a good balance between depth and accessibility.
I think in another 10 years, we'll look at Pathfinder as a stopgap measure that existed to give D&D fans who didn't like 4e something to play while Wizards figured out how to take the game into the future.
Saturday, July 4, 2015
Understanding the Wii U's Failure
If you read too much game journalism and too many neogaf forum posts, you probably think Nintendo's current problems stem from not making the Wii powerful enough and "losing the hardcore." This is completely false. First, let's dispel a few myths about the Wii itself.
- Wii owners didn't buy games. This is, of course, completely false. The Wii's tie ratio was 8.8. This isn't record-breaking, but it's within normal historical bounds. Nintendo's highest-ever tie ratio for a home console was for the Gamecube, with a tie ratio of 9.6 . Its lowest was for the N64, with a tie ratio of of 6.8. 8.8 is pretty close to the NES tie ratio of 8.1. Notably, the Xbox 360 and PS2 each had a tie ratio over 10.
- Wii owners didn't buy sequels. The games that sold the Wii were Wii Sports, Wii Fit, Mario Kart Wii, New Super Mario Bros Wii, and Wii Play. With the exception of the two Mario-themed games, which did not get sequels, the sales of the sequels to these games sold on par with the original releases, as seen on this list of best-selling Wii games.
- The Wii was a fad. The Wii consistently sold well from its launch in November 2006 through early 2010. That's too long to be a fad.
So what actually happened? If you look at the top of the list, you'll notice all the best-selling games (really, the system-selling games) were released before 2010. To understand what happened, let's break Wii games down into three categories:
- New Market Games -- Straightforward, neutrally branded, family-friendly titles that can be played in short play sessions. Simplicity should not be confused with lack of polish. Includes games such as Wii Sports and Just Dance.
- Old Market Games -- Games that focus on graphics, epic music and stories, and require a significant time investment to enjoy. Examples include the Legend of Zelda, Soul Calibur, and Call of Duty.
- Shovelware -- Poor imitations of popular ideas that rely mainly on consumer ignorance. This includes everything from Ninjabread Man to Shellshock: Nam '67.
The New Market Games mostly sold very well. Nintendo was almost the sole developer of any real new NMGs, but there were a handful by other developers. There were some misfires, like Wii Music, but overall, this was a successful direction. Old Market Games, which the game media and forum posters focus on, tended to do poorly (the market for these titles was mainly on the HD consoles), and shovelware only had a brief spurt of popularity until the new market wised up to this trick. Third Parties tended to confuse the simplicity of Wii Sports with bad quality and couldn't figure out why their garbage didn't sell. This overall hurt everyone, as customers came to rely on Nintendo branding to sort out good from garbage. The Gamecube
What happened in 2010 was some kind of developer revolution at Nintendo. Nintendo basically stopped releasing NMGs at this point, the only one being Wii Party. Around this time, Shigeru Miyamoto, Eiji Aonuma, and Yoshio Sakamoto began speaking very openly about their personal visions for gaming and the direction they were going to lead the market. Essentially, they declared that now that the Wii was so successful, they were going to start producing the kinds of games that failed to sell the Gamecube. The idea seemed to be that the reasons games like Wind Waker and Super Mario Sunshine failed was that the Gamecube didn't sell well, not that the Gamecube failed to sell well because those games didn't excite the market. So what they dropped was the second-worst-selling 3D Mario game of all time, the worst-selling Metroid game of all time, and the second-worst-selling Zelda game of all time. Gamers don't want 3D Mario. No one cares about Sakamoto's inane storytelling. And Zelda players don't want feminine, cartoony games.
Don't believe me? Look at sales numbers. New Super Mario Bros is the second best-selling Mario games of all time, and the best-selling stand-alone title. Not only that, but it clearly cost less to make than Super Mario Galaxy. Any businessman with an ounce of sense would have ordered his employees to make a sequel to the first game rather than the second. However, Miyamoto is obsessed with 3D (he's behind the 3DS, greenlit the Virtual Boy, and why there were no 2D Mario games for almost 20 years). Essentially, he is convinced that his vision is the "correct" one, and the reason the market doesn't embrace 3D Mario is people haven't been properly educated. As a result, Mario Galaxy 2 got a blowout budget and marketing campaign, while 2D Mario didn't happen again on the Wii (and the Wii U sequel was borderline shovelware).
That brings us to the Wii U. The Wii U is the capstone on Nintendo's rejection of New Market Games. The Wii controller was designed by a team of lower-ranked Nintendo engineers to address the problem of people not playing games due to the controller being too complicated. Miyamoto's contribution was the plug for attachments, which only ever got used by one thing. It's small, simple, not too expensive, and there are fun 4-player games for it. By contrast, the Wii U controller, which is entirely Miyamoto's "genius" idea, is basically the most complicated home console controller ever devised (okay, it gets the #2 slot), it's three times more expensive than a PS4 controller, and it consumes so many system resources that there's no way to use more than two of them. It is, in essence, a reprise of his totally failed GBA-Gamecube connectivity idea.
That is why the Wii U is failing. It's not failing because people don't understand Miyamoto's brilliant controller idea. It's failing because he's got no business acumen, doesn't understand what people want from a controller, and seized the reins from the junior employees who had turned the company around.
Sunday, June 21, 2015
5e's Rust Monster
There's been a bit of whining in the D&D community that the Rust Monster just isn't scary enough any more. Here's a rundown of the differences:
Clearly, the worst of them all is the 2e Rust Monster, due to the generally lower scaling and scarcity of magic items. The 3rd edition version seems bad, but when you take into account Magic Mart and how rapidly the party's AC gets nearly out of reach, it's not too awful.
The Rust Monster is another iconic D&D monster, but this is in part because it's too awful. It's essentially a monster that your front-line fighters out entirely, unless you gave them time to change into leather gear, or room to escape and change. Basically, parties will do whatever they can to avoid them, which makes them not a very good monster to actually use.
In 5e, the scarcity of magic items is why they aren't affected. If you are running a campaign where you allow players to have easy access to magic items, I would strongly recommend modifying this trait. If you are playing 5e RAW, remember, your players might go a long time without ever seeing more than a few pieces of uncommon gear.
The cumulative damage bonus means players are more likely to fight them, and you can use them in groups without it being an overwhelming ruination of player gear. Players *might* decide to run and change, or they may just tough it out, drawing a backup weapon and using it until it dissolves. It's also a good time to use the Magic Weapon spell.
So it's true. The 5e Rust Monster is not as big a threat as in older editions. But in my experience running the game, that makes them a more usable enemy. They're still something that plate-wearing fighters will want to keep a healthy distance from.
- 2nd Edition: Rust monster immediately corrodes things it touches, eats them. Magic things have a 10%-30% chance of not getting corroded.
- 3rd Edition: Rust monster makes a +3 touch attack, corrodes things it touches, and eats them. It's a DC17 dex save to protect a magic item.
- 4th Edition: Rust Monster has to hit first (or be hit) to trigger rusting, then can hit again with a bigger attack to destroy a rusting item. This is only a once-per-encounter attack for the lower-level specimens, and a recharging ability for the higher-level ones. Rusting is a cumulative, temporary penalty.
- 5th Edition: Each time a Rust Monster touches or is touched by an item, it takes a cumulative, permanent penalty until it rusts away. Magic items are immune.
The Rust Monster is another iconic D&D monster, but this is in part because it's too awful. It's essentially a monster that your front-line fighters out entirely, unless you gave them time to change into leather gear, or room to escape and change. Basically, parties will do whatever they can to avoid them, which makes them not a very good monster to actually use.
In 5e, the scarcity of magic items is why they aren't affected. If you are running a campaign where you allow players to have easy access to magic items, I would strongly recommend modifying this trait. If you are playing 5e RAW, remember, your players might go a long time without ever seeing more than a few pieces of uncommon gear.
The cumulative damage bonus means players are more likely to fight them, and you can use them in groups without it being an overwhelming ruination of player gear. Players *might* decide to run and change, or they may just tough it out, drawing a backup weapon and using it until it dissolves. It's also a good time to use the Magic Weapon spell.
So it's true. The 5e Rust Monster is not as big a threat as in older editions. But in my experience running the game, that makes them a more usable enemy. They're still something that plate-wearing fighters will want to keep a healthy distance from.
Sunday, June 14, 2015
The Death of Magic Mart
Dungeons and Dragons always had magic items. But, possibly inspired by Diablo, 3rd edition went crazy with the concept. Tons of new magical items were introduced, and the rules explicitly stated that players could buy anything they wanted that they found in the rule books. This was possibly the most world-breaking idea introduced by the game. The fluff claims that magic is rare in the world, yet you can apparently walk into any town and find stores that keep arsenals of magical gear in stock...yet these pieces cost a king's ransom for just one simple +2 magic sword. Gear essentially became a way to further augment your character's ability as you leveled up. It also destroyed the concept of loot, making it pointless to explore random dungeons and side quests except to level up. Hence, many DMs house-ruled Magic Mart out of the game.
A major consequences of Magic Mart was that magic item bonuses were simply baked into the numbers. This had the unfortunate effect that magic items largely didn't feel that awesome. A Magic +2 Sword was a godlike weapon of smiting in AD&D, but by 4e, it was merely the base-level item you were expected to have at level six.
5e has returned to a low magic setting. Magic Mart is gone entirely---any special items you find are either randomly rolled or at the DM's discretion. Not only is a magic item bonus not baked into the numbers, but most magic gear has no modifier bonus at all. The Flame Tongue Sword is 2d6 of fire damage. There is no +2 Flame Tongue Sword.
The up side of this is players no regard Magic +N gear as trash to sell immediately, and finding something special is a big deal. The down side of this is that Eberron campaigns don't convert well.
A major consequences of Magic Mart was that magic item bonuses were simply baked into the numbers. This had the unfortunate effect that magic items largely didn't feel that awesome. A Magic +2 Sword was a godlike weapon of smiting in AD&D, but by 4e, it was merely the base-level item you were expected to have at level six.
5e has returned to a low magic setting. Magic Mart is gone entirely---any special items you find are either randomly rolled or at the DM's discretion. Not only is a magic item bonus not baked into the numbers, but most magic gear has no modifier bonus at all. The Flame Tongue Sword is 2d6 of fire damage. There is no +2 Flame Tongue Sword.
The up side of this is players no regard Magic +N gear as trash to sell immediately, and finding something special is a big deal. The down side of this is that Eberron campaigns don't convert well.
Wednesday, June 10, 2015
3.5's Legacy in 5e
In my last post, I said that 3.x and 5e are almost like two independent revisions of AD&D for as much as they have in common. However, there are some 3rd edition revisions that 5e has kept around---basically, anything that made 3.x easier to play than AD&D is retained, while things that made it more complicated (like touch AC, damage reduction, and the four-fold attack modifier) are jettisoned:
What's still around:
1. All modifiers are still based on ability scores. In AD&D, THAC0, saving throw bonuses, and kill bonuses all came from a huge array of tables at the end of the player's handbook. 3.5 simplified(!) things here by making all those +n bonuses to things based on your ability scores.
2. Skills replace table lookups. In AD&D, most things required a table lookup from some weirdly specific table, like "bending strong bars" or something odd like that. 3rd Edition introduced skills, which meant you could resolve most situations with a skill check. Even if there was some lengthy, detailed rule explaining how to do something specific, you could in practice just ignore it and have the player roll a skill check. This also means anyone can *try* to do just about anything.
3. Feats and class options are back. I think making character builds was what a lot of people loved about 3rd edition. The options are aggressively simplified (a 3.5 character would have at least 7 feats by level 20; a 5e character can have no more than four and may have zero.
4. Ability scores can improve as you level up. In AD&D, if you rolled a weak character, you had little recourse. 3rd edition introduced the idea of getting +1 to an ability every 4 levels. Of course, it had ability-enhancing magic items, too. 4th edition got rid of the items, but increased this to alternating +2 to two/+1 to all, which could result in ridiculous ability scores. 5th edition dials it back a little. You get either +2 ability points or a feat every 4 levels (except the fighter).
5. Multiclassing is simple again. Dual-classing in AD&D was cumbersome and weird. 3rd made it so that you just take levels in whatever class. This was easy to exploit, so 4e slapped the concept so hard that it turned into nothing more than a few feats and powers. 3rd-style multiclassing is back in 5e, but it's much, much harder to exploit.
Tuesday, June 9, 2015
Evolution of the Mind Flayer
The Mind Flayer is one of those iconic D&D monster that players love to not ever have to deal with in their campaigns. Let's look at how it's changed over the years. For 2e AC and THAC0, I'm going to put the more modern d20 system values:
2nd Edition:
The 2nd Edition Monstrous Manual is about 70% fluff and 30% stats. The stats can be kind of confusing, and there's often stuff like "if you find this in a cave, there's a 25% chance it will have eggs." There's generally enough fluff to be clear on what kind of habitat you find the monsters in, what they'll be doing, what kind of social hierarchy they have, etc. Anyway, the 2e Mind Flayer is a creepy bastard who lives in an underground city centered around a huge brain and keeps a couple mind-controlled slaves around. The artwork is terrible.
Hit points: 40
AC: 15
To hit: +9
Special crap: Resists magic powers and 90% magic damage, can stun for 3d4 rounds, tries to carry off stunned creatures and EAT THEIR BRAINS!!! The Mind Flayer has a tentacle attack. If he attaches all four of his tentacles, he sucks out your brains and YOU DIE!!! Psionic Mind Flayers are in there as an option, but I won't get into that.
Magic spells: Suggestion, charm person, charm monster, ESP, levitate, astral projection, and plane shift.
3.5th Edition:
The 3.5 MM gives the Mind Flayer about two full pages, including some nice illustrations, several round-by-round paragraphs detailing its tactics, how to run the monster as a character race, and a more powerful variant.
The basic Mind Flayer is an 8th-level enemy:
Hit points: 44
AC: 15 regular, 12 touch, 13 flat-footed
To hit: +8
Special crap: Gets to do its regular attack four times as a "full attack," has flat resist 25 to magic, can do that same stun blast and 4-tentacles-and-you-die trick, 11 skills that I'm not going to list, has Improved Grab, has three feats that you have to look up if you don't know by heart (Improved Initiative, Combat Casting, Weapon Finesse).
Magic spells: Charm monster, detect thoughts, levitate, plane shift, suggestion.
There is a 17th-level version that is a bit more complicated, but one thing to note is it has 27 AC, in keeping with 3rd's +1/2 level scaling concept.
4th edition:
This is the basic 4e Mind Flayer. It starts at level 14, so its numbers are a lot higher (4e has 3.5-like shifting). It's stripped out all the spells, feats, and most of the skills and boiled the monster down to two special powers. There's a 18th level version that has a bunch of powers, but I'll leave him out.
5th Edition:
The 5e MM has solid amounts of fluff and artwork. Each race typically gets a full page. The general feel is AD&D, but things are organized into tight, 4-e style stat blocks rather than 3.5's rambling text. The art is the best yet.
Hit points: 71
AC: 15
To hit: +7
Special crap: Advantage on saving throws against magic, and his save bonuses are pretty high. Not only is the mind blast back, but now it does 4d8+4 damage! He grapples you with a tentacle, and if you can't escape, he'll hit you next time with Extract Brain. Basically, the mind blast, grapple, and extract do so much damage that if you get hit with all three, you'll probably die.
Magic spells: Detect Thoughts, Levitate, Dominate Monster, Plane Shift.
WHAT IT ALL COMES DOWN TO:
While the numbers and powers look pretty similar, you have to remember that 8th-level 3rd edition Fighters will typically have an attack bonus of around +12/+7 (because having multiple attack bonuses is better), so 15 AC is basically a joke. In 2nd edition, the 8th-level Fighter attack bonus is between +7 and +9, and in 5th edition, it's the same. So again, we see that 5e is bringing the numbers more in line with AD&D.
One thing I noticed when reading the older stuff is just how much of a mess 3.5 is. The AD&D MM tends to have a serious problem with clarity and presentation, which the 3.5 MM solves with lengthy, detailed descriptions and just overall increasing the complexity of the system. Seriously, who wants to look up feats for monsters? Really, three different ACs? I try not to rag on 3.5 too much, but the 3.5 Monster Manual was a big step in the wrong direction.
The 3.5 die-hards are crying bitter tears over the loss of monsters as playable races and the reduced complexity that makes it too "casual-friendly." The fascinating thing is just how few of 3.5's monster-related innovations are retained in 5e. Essentially, 5e and 3.5 can be viewed as two entirely different revisions the AD&D source material. 3.5 is an across-the-board increase in precision, complexity and detail. The precision is welcome, but there are far too many additional rules, and the MM tends to be long-winded in explaining how to run a particular monster. 5e, by contrast, goes the opposite direction, making everything tighter, cleaner, and more to the point. It's heavier on the fluff than 4e without rambling the way 3.5 does. This is a running theme in 5e, and it's why I think it's the best D&D yet.
2nd Edition:
The 2nd Edition Monstrous Manual is about 70% fluff and 30% stats. The stats can be kind of confusing, and there's often stuff like "if you find this in a cave, there's a 25% chance it will have eggs." There's generally enough fluff to be clear on what kind of habitat you find the monsters in, what they'll be doing, what kind of social hierarchy they have, etc. Anyway, the 2e Mind Flayer is a creepy bastard who lives in an underground city centered around a huge brain and keeps a couple mind-controlled slaves around. The artwork is terrible.
AC: 15
To hit: +9
Special crap: Resists magic powers and 90% magic damage, can stun for 3d4 rounds, tries to carry off stunned creatures and EAT THEIR BRAINS!!! The Mind Flayer has a tentacle attack. If he attaches all four of his tentacles, he sucks out your brains and YOU DIE!!! Psionic Mind Flayers are in there as an option, but I won't get into that.
Magic spells: Suggestion, charm person, charm monster, ESP, levitate, astral projection, and plane shift.
3.5th Edition:
Hit points: 44
AC: 15 regular, 12 touch, 13 flat-footed
To hit: +8
Special crap: Gets to do its regular attack four times as a "full attack," has flat resist 25 to magic, can do that same stun blast and 4-tentacles-and-you-die trick, 11 skills that I'm not going to list, has Improved Grab, has three feats that you have to look up if you don't know by heart (Improved Initiative, Combat Casting, Weapon Finesse).
Magic spells: Charm monster, detect thoughts, levitate, plane shift, suggestion.
There is a 17th-level version that is a bit more complicated, but one thing to note is it has 27 AC, in keeping with 3rd's +1/2 level scaling concept.
4th edition:
This is the basic 4e Mind Flayer. It starts at level 14, so its numbers are a lot higher (4e has 3.5-like shifting). It's stripped out all the spells, feats, and most of the skills and boiled the monster down to two special powers. There's a 18th level version that has a bunch of powers, but I'll leave him out.
5th Edition:
The 5e MM has solid amounts of fluff and artwork. Each race typically gets a full page. The general feel is AD&D, but things are organized into tight, 4-e style stat blocks rather than 3.5's rambling text. The art is the best yet.
AC: 15
To hit: +7
Special crap: Advantage on saving throws against magic, and his save bonuses are pretty high. Not only is the mind blast back, but now it does 4d8+4 damage! He grapples you with a tentacle, and if you can't escape, he'll hit you next time with Extract Brain. Basically, the mind blast, grapple, and extract do so much damage that if you get hit with all three, you'll probably die.
Magic spells: Detect Thoughts, Levitate, Dominate Monster, Plane Shift.
WHAT IT ALL COMES DOWN TO:
While the numbers and powers look pretty similar, you have to remember that 8th-level 3rd edition Fighters will typically have an attack bonus of around +12/+7 (because having multiple attack bonuses is better), so 15 AC is basically a joke. In 2nd edition, the 8th-level Fighter attack bonus is between +7 and +9, and in 5th edition, it's the same. So again, we see that 5e is bringing the numbers more in line with AD&D.
One thing I noticed when reading the older stuff is just how much of a mess 3.5 is. The AD&D MM tends to have a serious problem with clarity and presentation, which the 3.5 MM solves with lengthy, detailed descriptions and just overall increasing the complexity of the system. Seriously, who wants to look up feats for monsters? Really, three different ACs? I try not to rag on 3.5 too much, but the 3.5 Monster Manual was a big step in the wrong direction.
The 3.5 die-hards are crying bitter tears over the loss of monsters as playable races and the reduced complexity that makes it too "casual-friendly." The fascinating thing is just how few of 3.5's monster-related innovations are retained in 5e. Essentially, 5e and 3.5 can be viewed as two entirely different revisions the AD&D source material. 3.5 is an across-the-board increase in precision, complexity and detail. The precision is welcome, but there are far too many additional rules, and the MM tends to be long-winded in explaining how to run a particular monster. 5e, by contrast, goes the opposite direction, making everything tighter, cleaner, and more to the point. It's heavier on the fluff than 4e without rambling the way 3.5 does. This is a running theme in 5e, and it's why I think it's the best D&D yet.
Sunday, June 7, 2015
5e's Bounded Accuracy
One of the most controversial aspects of 5e (at least for die-hard fans of 3.x/PF/4e) is so-called "bounded accuracy." What this essentially means is there is very little built-in scaling of bonuses to d20 rolls, and player ability scores are all capped at 20. The +1/2 level bonus is now gone, and the magic item bonus is no longer built in. If you've played 3rd or 4th edition, you know that a high-level wizard can jump across chasms more easily than a low-level barbarian, and a high-level fighter can pick most mundane locks with ease.
What the whiners say:
It ruins everything! The whole concept of attaining godlike power as you level has always been a fundamental part of D&D, and now 5e has ruined it. Everything sucks now! This isn't D&D!
Actual D&D History:
A +1/2 level bonus is actually not fundamental to D&D. This was actually new to 3rd edition. In AD&D 2nd, AC was based only on your armor, not your level. Each class' THAC0 increased at a different rate, so no, the Wizard never got any better than useless at trying to stab someone in full plate with a tower shield. Only the thief had any ability to disarm traps, sneak, or pick locks at all. The fighter eventually got better AC not by leveling up, but by first earning enough money to buy plate mail, then eventually finding some cool enchanted gear.
The concept:
The designers of 3rd edition brought in this entirely new idea that as players gain experience, they should just naturally become good at things. A wizard should, after surviving enough scrapes, eventually be so handy with a blade that he could easily best a city guard in melee combat, pick the lock on a house, scale a rocky wall, and bluff his way into an orc stronghold. 5e is a return to the old AD&D concept that fighters are good at fighting, thieves are good at thieving and wizards had best stay a healthy distance away from hobgoblins if all they're going to wear is pajamas.
How it worked in practice:
In actual practice, a 12th-level wizard's intrinsic +6 bonus to disarming traps didn't matter. Any trap a DM threw at a 12th-level party was, surprise surprise, always a 6 difficulty points harder than anything he threw at them when they were first level. In practice, that big modifier on the sheet didn't mean anything. It was just a big number that felt cool to look at because it was so huge. But really, the novelty of rolling a d20+22 wears off pretty quickly when you realize everything you meet has minimum 32 AC. Players tended to complain that it felt like the world just leveled up with you. If you've never played AD&D, but you've played The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, that's what I'm talking about.
The math:
Without getting into details, a 5e fighter will usually have +5 to hit, 1 attack, and 18 AC at level 1. At level 20, he'll have +11 to hit, four attacks, and at least 20 AC. The wizard will probably never have better than 10 AC and 1 attack, and his bonus will go from +2 to only +6. The "feel" is much more like AD&D than 3.x/PF/4e.
How it works in practice:
I find I can throw greater variety into dungeons and still have it be fun. 4e's "minion" monsters are no longer necessary. Low-level monsters serve as minions just fine now. The main thing is that as players level up, the game feels less and less "flat." By level 20, the barbarian becomes a fire hose of damage, but he's *more* vulnerable to a mind-control spell cast by a monster of his same level than he was at level 1. The wizard unleashes insanely powerful blasts of magic, but an ancient dragon will make mincemeat of him if he gets too close. The challenge of the game actually increases as the party levels up, because the players have to become more skilled at exploiting their strengths and avoiding their weaknesses.
What the whiners say:
It ruins everything! The whole concept of attaining godlike power as you level has always been a fundamental part of D&D, and now 5e has ruined it. Everything sucks now! This isn't D&D!
Actual D&D History:
A +1/2 level bonus is actually not fundamental to D&D. This was actually new to 3rd edition. In AD&D 2nd, AC was based only on your armor, not your level. Each class' THAC0 increased at a different rate, so no, the Wizard never got any better than useless at trying to stab someone in full plate with a tower shield. Only the thief had any ability to disarm traps, sneak, or pick locks at all. The fighter eventually got better AC not by leveling up, but by first earning enough money to buy plate mail, then eventually finding some cool enchanted gear.
The concept:
The designers of 3rd edition brought in this entirely new idea that as players gain experience, they should just naturally become good at things. A wizard should, after surviving enough scrapes, eventually be so handy with a blade that he could easily best a city guard in melee combat, pick the lock on a house, scale a rocky wall, and bluff his way into an orc stronghold. 5e is a return to the old AD&D concept that fighters are good at fighting, thieves are good at thieving and wizards had best stay a healthy distance away from hobgoblins if all they're going to wear is pajamas.
How it worked in practice:
In actual practice, a 12th-level wizard's intrinsic +6 bonus to disarming traps didn't matter. Any trap a DM threw at a 12th-level party was, surprise surprise, always a 6 difficulty points harder than anything he threw at them when they were first level. In practice, that big modifier on the sheet didn't mean anything. It was just a big number that felt cool to look at because it was so huge. But really, the novelty of rolling a d20+22 wears off pretty quickly when you realize everything you meet has minimum 32 AC. Players tended to complain that it felt like the world just leveled up with you. If you've never played AD&D, but you've played The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, that's what I'm talking about.
The math:
Without getting into details, a 5e fighter will usually have +5 to hit, 1 attack, and 18 AC at level 1. At level 20, he'll have +11 to hit, four attacks, and at least 20 AC. The wizard will probably never have better than 10 AC and 1 attack, and his bonus will go from +2 to only +6. The "feel" is much more like AD&D than 3.x/PF/4e.
How it works in practice:
I find I can throw greater variety into dungeons and still have it be fun. 4e's "minion" monsters are no longer necessary. Low-level monsters serve as minions just fine now. The main thing is that as players level up, the game feels less and less "flat." By level 20, the barbarian becomes a fire hose of damage, but he's *more* vulnerable to a mind-control spell cast by a monster of his same level than he was at level 1. The wizard unleashes insanely powerful blasts of magic, but an ancient dragon will make mincemeat of him if he gets too close. The challenge of the game actually increases as the party levels up, because the players have to become more skilled at exploiting their strengths and avoiding their weaknesses.
Saturday, June 6, 2015
D&D 5e: As Simple As You like
One of the more remarkable things about Dungeons & Dragons 5th ed. is that there is little tradeoff between simplicity and power in character builds. In 1st & 2nd editions, "character build" was barely even a concept. You had your race, your class, your abilities...and not much else. The only real complexity on offer was in the caster classes. As a Cleric, you *could* just fill all your 1st-level slots with Cure Light Wounds and be fine, but at least you had options.
3.x/PF and 4e, by contrast, rewarded players who spent a lot of time learning the nuances of the class and fine-tuning their builds with massive payoffs in power. But players who didn't work too hard at their build were punished with weak, useless builds. If you were a 3.5 fighter who just picked cool-sounding feats instead of carefully planning out synergies...well, you might as well quit playing at Level 6. 4e narrowed the power band a bit, but it added the further wrinkle that players who didn't learn to use their Encounter, Daily, and Utility abilities effectively would still feel significantly underpowered.
5e starts with an AD&D-like foundation, and then allows more 3.x/4e-style flexibility as options. These options are laid out in such a way as to be mostly lateral moves in terms of power. The most obvious change is in the feats. Feats are now an alternative to ability score increases. It's hard to say which is more powerful, two ability points or a feat. They're roughly even. But players who just take the ability bonuses won't be punished.
Let's look at how this philosophy affects the Fighter.
The simplest Fighter build is to be a Champion who takes ability score upgrades whenever he has the option. If you go this route, you end up with essentially an AD&D fighter: You roll a lot of attacks, you have a lot of HP, you can use any weapon, and you have some nice static bonuses to a variety of numbers on your character sheet. There isn't a lot to think about.
On the other end, you can be a Battle Master, and you can take a mix of feats and ability score upgrades. This results in a much more complicated character sheet with a mix of powers and feats, somewhere between 4e and 3.5. The crazy thing is that if you run the numbers (and a lot of people have), the damage output of these builds comes out pretty close.
Other classes follow a similar pattern. There's a lot of depth to be explored, but you can play the class in a simple, straightforward way and still be a force to be reckoned with. It's about how you want to play, not about finding the perfect combination of stats that results in you dumping a bucket of damage dice on the table every time you hit while that "stupid newbie" can't figure out why he only ever seems to roll a single, lonely d8.
3.x/PF and 4e, by contrast, rewarded players who spent a lot of time learning the nuances of the class and fine-tuning their builds with massive payoffs in power. But players who didn't work too hard at their build were punished with weak, useless builds. If you were a 3.5 fighter who just picked cool-sounding feats instead of carefully planning out synergies...well, you might as well quit playing at Level 6. 4e narrowed the power band a bit, but it added the further wrinkle that players who didn't learn to use their Encounter, Daily, and Utility abilities effectively would still feel significantly underpowered.
5e starts with an AD&D-like foundation, and then allows more 3.x/4e-style flexibility as options. These options are laid out in such a way as to be mostly lateral moves in terms of power. The most obvious change is in the feats. Feats are now an alternative to ability score increases. It's hard to say which is more powerful, two ability points or a feat. They're roughly even. But players who just take the ability bonuses won't be punished.
Let's look at how this philosophy affects the Fighter.
The simplest Fighter build is to be a Champion who takes ability score upgrades whenever he has the option. If you go this route, you end up with essentially an AD&D fighter: You roll a lot of attacks, you have a lot of HP, you can use any weapon, and you have some nice static bonuses to a variety of numbers on your character sheet. There isn't a lot to think about.
On the other end, you can be a Battle Master, and you can take a mix of feats and ability score upgrades. This results in a much more complicated character sheet with a mix of powers and feats, somewhere between 4e and 3.5. The crazy thing is that if you run the numbers (and a lot of people have), the damage output of these builds comes out pretty close.
Other classes follow a similar pattern. There's a lot of depth to be explored, but you can play the class in a simple, straightforward way and still be a force to be reckoned with. It's about how you want to play, not about finding the perfect combination of stats that results in you dumping a bucket of damage dice on the table every time you hit while that "stupid newbie" can't figure out why he only ever seems to roll a single, lonely d8.
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