Zero Buzz on 5E...Is It Dead Out The Gate?

Krusk · Post by **Krusk** » Mon Feb 09, 2015 11:55 pm

FLGS RPG sales data http://gamesandstuffonline.com/?p=1689 as best they provide. I figure its something.

Dungeons and Dragons is top spot, but it doesn't distinguish editions or tools like minis etc. It also says it was top spot Q3 as well as Q4, so evidently 5e is selling something.

I was there Saturday, and it had 1 new reprint of a 2nd ed core book. No reprints of 3.X books. Loads of new 4e books unsold. Loads of new 5e books unsold. Loads of new DND minis. It had loads of 1/2e adventures and splat books used, and probably 20 3.X splats from various 3rd parties, WoTC, and Forgotten realms crap. Loads of 4e used.

Ironically, the store is filled with numenera crap, but that isn't on the list at all.

Also weirdly enough, the fucking Firefly RPG is still somehow on the top 20 list. So I feel like maybe there is a big jump from top dog or two (DND/PF) and spot number 3-20. Maybe someone started a group up, and everyone bought a core book?

I picked up a copy of https://palladium-store.com/1001/produc ... rseas.html this used, but rifts still isn't on the list at all. (obviously. I'm mostly bragging about how my next rifts game I'm totally playing a dolphin). Rifts didn't make the list, even with my purchase though.

erik · Post by **erik** » Tue Feb 10, 2015 4:10 am

Thanks for sharing that Krusk.

I flipped through Q1-Q4 there, and it looks like Numenera was passable Q1-2 and sank down hard in Q3 (#18 from #'s 11 and 9 previous quarters) in the face of D&D and then off the top 20. Kind of unexpected considering they have a more aggressive release than a fair bit of the competition. It's a sample size of one store only so everything gets a dash of salt.

While the grouping of all editions of D&D into one banner on its face seems a bit specious, by his accounting it doesn't sound too silly to do so. It's pretty obvious that 5e is the meat behind that #1 ranking when his commentary from previous quarters is that Pathfinder was bringing in 5x the sales of D&D and the next quarter D&D was double Pathfinder's sales even with a bump to other RPG sales in that period.

It sounds like a big jump from #1 to #2, and then #3-4, then on down.
According to the guy's reviews, the sales spread across the board however such that there isn't a majority of sales in a single RPG so not surprising that your ill-considered Rifts purchase didn't make the list.

Sales metrics aside, the next most interesting thing was [edit] Into Through the Breach. I'd never heard of it before today but it sounds worth checking out. Hopefully the mechanics aren't shite since the pitch he gave sounds interesting.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Tue Feb 17, 2015 10:06 am

So 5E is here and all and we know its going to be here for at least a little while. My question right now is whether or not anyone has any idea what they 'could' possibly do wit expansion material for this game? 5E is pretty empty under the hood so what could the writers possibly add to the game withou making it more unhinged?

Vnonymous · Post by **Vnonymous** » Tue Feb 17, 2015 2:30 pm

Anecdote: I was at my FLGS today. From looking at the shelf and asking someone at the store, it seems like 5e isn't selling well. Pathfinder is doing much better than 5e and they were sold out of the PF core books.

I was there to actually play 5e, and so far I'm not impressed. I ended up buying a 3.5 Player's Handbook and DMG, both still shrink wrapped.

Ferret · Post by **Ferret** » Tue Feb 17, 2015 2:51 pm

MGuy wrote:So 5E is here and all and we know its going to be here for at least a little while. My question right now is whether or not anyone has any idea what they 'could' possibly do wit expansion material for this game? 5E is pretty empty under the hood so what could the writers possibly add to the game withou making it more unhinged?

More subclasses, more spells, more feats. All of which will absolutely make things more unhinged. Particularly since their website-official stuff appears to be articles Mearls wrote on his lunch break the day they post.

I'll be very interested to see the Elementalist expansion, to dissect and see who's doing the mechanical development; are the adventure authors getting handed new races/subclasses/feats/backgrounds by the WotC Development team, or has WotC really just written off doing actual development themselves and letting the licensee for each adventure path just make it up themselves?

Vnonymous · Post by **Vnonymous** » Tue Feb 17, 2015 5:25 pm

I think the big one will be the tradition/subclass bullshit that each class gets. Right now, if you're a sorcerer you either got your inborn magic from a dragon or you're a wild mage.

Those are the only options you get, and that's probably where a lot of the power creep will come in.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Feb 17, 2015 5:43 pm

Eventually someone is going to figure out that not giving any feats or advancement options at all is terrible and people hate it. They can't go back on the feat paradigm because that would be admitting defeat. So they'll have to kludge on prestige or paragon or something to be the selectable features at higher level.

These things will be laughably unbalanced. Apparently the plan is to outsource sourcebook production to Mearls' friends as freelancers. So expect several books to tackle this problem in different poorly conceived ways.

-Username17

Insomniac · Post by **Insomniac** » Tue Feb 17, 2015 11:19 pm

Vnonymous wrote:I think the big one will be the tradition/subclass bullshit that each class gets. Right now, if you're a sorcerer you either got your inborn magic from a dragon or you're a wild mage.

Those are the only options you get, and that's probably where a lot of the power creep will come in.

Much like Pathfinder started to get batshit with Race, Talent and Archetype bloat. Given a long enough time, a d20 game will just generate enough content to be a dumpster dive. 3.5 got that way with web articles, splatbooks, sourcebooks and Dungeon/Dragon magazines.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Wed Feb 18, 2015 4:05 am

There's been nearly a hundred classes presented for D&D over the years. 5e doesn't even have a full-time Illusionist or Beguiler yet.

The classes have a fixed bonus track, and random bullshit that isn't at all balanced against each other at various levels, they could just make a book with six new classes every six months by throwing darts at a wall and keep doing that for seven or eight years before they even had to be creative about it. The traditional difficultly in writing new D&D classes is power balance vs ease of application, and 5e just doesn't give a shit about any of that, so it basically writes itself.

"A mechanician is proficient in mechanical-making tools." There's one class ability where your toys cast your spells for you, you add five pages of boilerplate bullshit and you don't even have to provide DCs, because that's the GM's problem. Let it double the proficiency bonus at some point. Class finished.

Ditto with monster books. They've left room for "orc with bow" as a monster type with zero effort, other than filling a page with white noise about the perverse love orcs have for bows, and there's thousands of critters less crap than that to fill up books with.

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Tue Mar 03, 2015 1:41 am

Mass combat rules

You can think of the material presented in this series as similar to the first wave of the fifth edition playtest. These game mechanics are in draft form, usable in your campaign but not fully tempered by playtests and design iterations.

Previn · Post by **Previn** » Tue Mar 03, 2015 2:01 am

ishy wrote:Mass combat rules
You can think of the material presented in this series as similar to the first wave of the fifth edition playtest. These game mechanics are in draft form, usable in your campaign but not fully tempered by playtests and design iterations.

That is... incredibly unimaginative. If I didn't know better, I'd say that just grabbed the basics of WHFB and jammed it into the D&D rule set.

Dogbert · Post by **Dogbert** » Tue Mar 03, 2015 2:59 am

ishy wrote:Mass combat rules

Oh, so that's why murderhobos are still popular in the "no need for heroes" 5E. It must be sad that army officers fail to implement tactics or are outright disobeyed 3 out of 4 times.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Tue Mar 03, 2015 3:42 am

New survey to fill on player satisfaction

http://sgiz.mobi/s3/D-D-5e-Elements-Survey-2

-
Notes on previous survey such as how they will address concerns over rangers being unsatisfactory by releasing new 'optional' features for them.
http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/feature ... ack-survey

Ravengm · Post by **Ravengm** » Mon Mar 09, 2015 6:34 pm

OgreBattle wrote:New survey to fill on player satisfaction

http://sgiz.mobi/s3/D-D-5e-Elements-Survey-2

-
Notes on previous survey such as how they will address concerns over rangers being unsatisfactory by releasing new 'optional' features for them.
http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/feature ... ack-survey

I'd be willing to bet that these sorts of things are just going to trigger another avalanche of errata like in 4e, and we all know how that ended up.

Seerow · Post by **Seerow** » Mon Mar 09, 2015 6:39 pm

OgreBattle wrote:New survey to fill on player satisfaction

http://sgiz.mobi/s3/D-D-5e-Elements-Survey-2

-
Notes on previous survey such as how they will address concerns over rangers being unsatisfactory by releasing new 'optional' features for them.
http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/feature ... ack-survey

Betting now that making Rangers "satisfactory" doesn't actually involve making them not suck balls, but instead is some bullshit like the 3.5 spell-less ranger where he gives up all of his spellcasting for 1-3 bonus feats or some similarly shitty feature. Because most of the ranger complaints I saw back when I was following the 5e forum was how much they hate the ranger being a half caster, nevermind that casting ability being the only thing keeping the shitty class halfway useful.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Mon Mar 09, 2015 7:03 pm

Yeah, hiding behind a tree and conjuring a pile of flying snakes is about the only useful thing a high level ranger can do.

Insomniac · Post by **Insomniac** » Tue Mar 10, 2015 6:25 pm

DSMatticus wrote:Yeah, hiding behind a tree and conjuring a pile of flying snakes is about the only useful thing a high level ranger can do.

At least Pathfinder has Deadly Aim as the Ranged "Power Attack," Aspect of the Falcon+Gravity Bow plus a spell to make any enemy your favored enemy=
+1 to attack, +1 to criticals, 2d8 base damage bow at +6 to attack and damage on an enemy. Then you dump about 6 arrow attacks on them a round assuming Boots of Speed or Haste cast on you and throw a buffed Big Cat pouncing and Raking at an enemy.

The Ranger has been a known gimped class since playtest packets about 4 years ago now. The answer will likely be as you said, the "spell-less Ranger" trap option.

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Tue Mar 10, 2015 7:10 pm

Ferret wrote:
MGuy wrote:So 5E is here and all and we know its going to be here for at least a little while. My question right now is whether or not anyone has any idea what they 'could' possibly do wit expansion material for this game? 5E is pretty empty under the hood so what could the writers possibly add to the game withou making it more unhinged?
More subclasses, more spells, more feats. All of which will absolutely make things more unhinged. Particularly since their website-official stuff appears to be articles Mearls wrote on his lunch break the day they post.

I'll be very interested to see the Elementalist expansion, to dissect and see who's doing the mechanical development; are the adventure authors getting handed new races/subclasses/feats/backgrounds by the WotC Development team, or has WotC really just written off doing actual development themselves and letting the licensee for each adventure path just make it up themselves?

Well here are the races and spells.
Looks like someone has been reading AH and Frank's reviews:

Aarakocra in the Forgotten Realms
Never well established in Faerûn

I wonder, can the shape water cantrip make water flow upwards permanently?

shape water wrote:• You instantaneously move or otherwise change the flow of the water as you direct, up to 5 feet in any direction. This movement doesn’t have enough force to cause damage.

Ferret · Post by **Ferret** » Wed Mar 11, 2015 12:11 pm

I love that they removed the Flight invocation from Warlocks and harped in 4th edition that flight was a high level ability that was handed out too soon in 3rd, then in the very first expansion for 5th gave us a race with a flight speed from level one.

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Wed Mar 11, 2015 12:20 pm

Huh, there is an new 5th edition book out?
Or are we talking about web trash?

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Wed Mar 11, 2015 1:21 pm

It's web trash. It's noteworthy only for the fact that it contains a race that gets flight at level 1 and that it gives casters a pile of brand new shiny spells while everyone else gets exactly nothing.

I don't know how to parse that. It's kind of surreal, honestly. Obviously, everyone expects casters to get more options and power creep than anyone else, but not a single fucking archetype? It's like someone set up a joke and then walked away just before the punchline, and now I'm not even sure if there was one. Maybe I just listened to some dude tell me a really boring story.

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Wed Mar 11, 2015 2:27 pm

Korwin wrote:Huh, there is an new 5th edition book out?
Or are we talking about web trash?

IIRC new 5E content is based around adventures. Thus all expansion material is included with and relevant to adventures it is bundled with.

This is the player expansion stuff for the Princes of the Apocalypse adventure.

So as I understand it, it is not really web thrash, this is how all new 5E player content is going to look.

Insomniac · Post by **Insomniac** » Wed Mar 11, 2015 3:47 pm

Flight is a high level ability...

Aarockas get +2 Dexterity and FIFTY FEET FLY SPEED NATIVELY.

:/

brized · Post by **brized** » Wed Mar 11, 2015 8:08 pm

It's funny since the Raptorian exists in 3.5 as an example of how to handle a race like that in a fairly sane way. It's a problem with a known solution.

Eikre · Post by **Eikre** » Thu Mar 12, 2015 3:17 pm

What the fuck is an aarocka?

Google thinks it's been in D&D before, but can't give me any pictures or anything. Mostly it thinks it's the handle for some asshole named Aaron K.

The new one-in-every-party fuckface for 5E isn't "fallen angel" or "pixie" or even "elf, but with wings," it's a letter salad ©Wizards.