D&D 5e has failed

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Wed Oct 28, 2015 9:44 pm

MGuy wrote:
nockermensch wrote:http://store.steampowered.com/app/325600
Just check the reviews. I found myself wondering which denner had written each one there.
Is this game built for 4th ed because the first review sounds like someone complaining about playing 4th

Modifications make it much more 4e like, because complex spell effects would be too much work for PCs.

Ice9 · Post by **Ice9** » Wed Oct 28, 2015 9:57 pm

There legitimately are lots of D&D spells/abilities that would be hard to do in a computer game. Open-ended polymorphing, illusions, mind reading, anything that lets you see or move through walls, etc.

But this game didn't even get close to that far. It falls down at even having Fireball work the right way, and that's like the easiest possible case.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Thu Oct 29, 2015 1:54 am

Ice9 wrote:There legitimately are lots of D&D spells/abilities that would be hard to do in a computer game. Open-ended polymorphing,

True, short of a targeted polymorph thing where you basically go "Ditto uses Transform!" against whatever creatures are there. But even "turn into one of like five monsters" is generally good enough. It worked for BG and NWN.

illusions, mind reading

Pretty much these. These are the big ones, short of basically being plot powers (having "Use Detect Thoughts" appear as a conversation option if you have that spell available, etc). You could get by with illusory summons, Shadow Evocation, and creating illusory terrain though. Basically any case of "It's ___ spell effect, but they have a chance to disbelieve, at which point they completely ignore it and it has no effect on them"), but not complex illusions.

anything that lets you see or move through walls

Piece of piss. BG has the ability to scry any place on the map. Setting "Is ethereal so can just walk through crap" is easy in a game with a 3D background. For a 2D drawn background it's still easy to do, it might just look weird as there would be times where the game can't tell whether to draw you in front of or behind something. But it would still work just fine.

The real problem with the latter is, much like teleporting, the problem with avoiding areas with important "progress plot" triggers.

So overall, there's actually a fair amount you can put in a PC game, especially if you did the revolutionary thing of making them turn-based where you can afford to open sub-menus of "Which specific illusion to I want to throw out" and all that.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Thu Oct 29, 2015 3:58 am

Dorf Fortress.

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How does Pillars of Eternity compare to Baldur's Gate?

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Thu Oct 29, 2015 5:42 am

OgreBattle wrote:How does Pillars of Eternity compare to Baldur's Gate?

I didn't get very far in the story, it seemed pretentious and not well done and very railroady, but I gave up because of combat.

Combat is the dumbest kind of dumb. And by that I mean, still way better than Sword Coast Legends, but still really bad. Real time with pause, so basically the same as Baldur's Gate, but area spells have two areas, a red and a yellow, and the yellow does no damage to party members, but still has the same effect. Maybe it has less CC attached? But hard to tell, because almost every spell has the same minor CC attached, very little hard stuns, lots of roots.

You basically don't need to AoE, and all spells from 1 to whatever across all classes are interchangeable.

brized · Post by **brized** » Thu Oct 29, 2015 5:51 am

PoE combat mechanics-wise feels between BG1 and BG2, with some modern UI and inventory conveniences. Casters rule the day. They tried to put in a system to remove the 5-minute workday, but failed.

Story-wise it's pretty blah. The underlying themes weren't well developed enough to relate to. Ditto for the main character's personal arc.

They clearly made an effort, but the setting's unique features still feel tacked on like D&D magic rather than thought through and integrated. The stronghold also feels half baked; its flavor doesn't fit the mechanics. There's a stat that tracks how popular it is, but no matter how high it gets the place is still a ghost town when you're walking around in it.

The NPC companions aren't very compelling; it feels like most of their character arcs are incomplete. And the main antagonist was a lot like Irenicus, but not as relatable or hateable.

All in all, it needed another year in development and/or a tighter scope...As in, cutting 50-60% of the content that made it into the published game.

Ghremdal · Post by **Ghremdal** » Thu Oct 29, 2015 10:48 am

I really liked PoE.

Mechanics were pretty solid, I really dug the all abilities matter, and each class had distinctive specials. Some classes were stronger then others, but they fixed the worst parts with patches.

I played on Path of the Damned, so there were no targeting circles, Wizards were not that great since a lot of stuff is resistant and the encounter design was fairly good. AI leaves things to be desired though.

I like the main story, but its not presented well. I think it needs more emphasis on the personal connection between the protagonist, antagonist and the lady. A lot of the relationship is dumped at the end of the game, it would be better if they handed it out in smaller parcels throughout the game.

I thought the companions were fantastically designed though. Every one is interesting, and I got a feel for them as real people that belong to that world instead of larger then life companions we are used to from big budget games.

For a crowd funded game its done a very good job.

malak · Post by **malak** » Thu Oct 29, 2015 12:41 pm

Ghremdal wrote:Mechanics were pretty solid, I really dug the all abilities matter, and each class had distinctive specials. Some classes were stronger then others, but they fixed the worst parts with patches.

Well, not really. Ciphers still rule the day. But while not fixed, it's certainly much improved. But someone thought that having some characters on a per-day schedule and others on a per-encounter schedule was a good idea. Probably because they were afraid to diverge to much from D&D expectations while still wanting to do their cool custom classes.

What they did do well is having summoning that was powerful, but not completely overpowered.

But with all the good things from the patches up to white marches, they broke the attribute system by changing perception to give accuracy (=to hit bonus).
You could get bonuses to everything easily, only accuracy bonuses were very hard to get, and for a good reason. Now everyone just walks around with maxed perception. Bah.

Ghremdal wrote:I played on Path of the Damned, so there were no targeting circles, Wizards were not that great since a lot of stuff is resistant and the encounter design was fairly good. AI leaves things to be desired though.

Still suffers from being not turn-based though. On PotM and expert mode, the problem is that with party-AI, you lose because the party-AI sucks, while without it, you have no indications when characters are idling, and the auto-pause is integrated in a way that it annoys you after a short time. Many fights are won because stupid AI and weird monster bodyblocking behavior means that sometimes, the minions block their own hard hitters... sigh.

This game should really have turn-based combats and a proper grid.

Ghremdal wrote:I thought the companions were fantastically designed though. Every one is interesting, and I got a feel for them as real people that belong to that world instead of larger then life companions we are used to from big budget games.

Durance and the Grieving Mother were amazing, indeed. Eder is ok, but the rest? Aloth's schizophrenia-thingy was horrible and annoying, and I actually walked back from the Skaen temple to base to be able to sacrifice Kana instead of a self-rolled companion, I just hated him so much.

Night Goat · Post by **Night Goat** » Thu Oct 29, 2015 4:30 pm

http://steamspy.com/app/325600

Sword Coast Legends is flopping hard. Fewer people own it now than did a week ago.

CapnTthePirateG · Post by **CapnTthePirateG** » Thu Oct 29, 2015 11:29 pm

Fuck it, no one else is talking about it, let's talk about the Sword Coast Adventures handbook. Or the previews, rather, I'm not giving Mearls any more money.

It's just bringing back old FR shit with very few new ideas. There's an Undying warlock back, representing a pact you've made with an immortal creature like a lich. Now, I could point out that this is a really shitty archetype fluffwise because all your patrons are explicitly stabbable by a group of adventurers, but let's face it: this is really in here to rip off the House of the Undying from A Song of Ice and Fire.

There's another god damn bladesinger, which is a wizard archetype that gets melee bonuses like int to AC and melee cantrips. Now, I have only heard of one person playing a bladesinger, and that was back in middle school. I'm fairly certain this would not be a popular archetype if the 2e one wasn't crazy overpowered, and I don't remember it being good in 3e or 4e.

There's a purple dragon knight that looks like an excuse to sneak the warlord in. Funny, that class wasn't in the PHB at all despite Mearls claiming that it would have all classes from all PHBs, and IMO is a more interesting class than, say, the sorcerer.

The Realms apparently exploded again.

Apparently there are 5 variants of tiefling.

Whatever.

Rawbeard · Post by **Rawbeard** » Fri Oct 30, 2015 10:39 am

are the Realms made from explodium, or something?

Ferret · Post by **Ferret** » Fri Oct 30, 2015 4:53 pm

The 5e bladesinger is pretty nice. You're tougher to hit than an eldtritch knight, you get 2 - 4 minutes of Bladesong per day (read: effectively unlimited) and when you're NOT being weirdo fighter you're still a wizard. So this is basically a wizard who can slum it to beat things with a stick when he's not conjuring a pack of skeletons to solve the problem.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Fri Oct 30, 2015 5:02 pm

Rawbeard wrote:are the Realms made from explodium, or something?

Well, canonically, there's about dozen? Two? High-end schemes to explode the world going there at any given time. It's only natural every so often, one of them succeeds.

CapnTthePirateG · Post by **CapnTthePirateG** » Fri Oct 30, 2015 10:32 pm

Rawbeard wrote:are the Realms made from explodium, or something?

You also need to remember that the Realms explodes on every edition change so the new mechanics can show up in Drizzt books.

Krusk · Post by **Krusk** » Fri Oct 30, 2015 11:54 pm

Cant a pc obstensibly be a lich? So youd gain powers from your buddy, carl, who lives next door.

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Tue Dec 08, 2015 10:31 am

If your name happens to be Koumei don't click on the spoiler.

http://geekandsundry.com/be-a-sailor-sc ... er-sheets/

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Tue Dec 08, 2015 4:46 pm

Krusk wrote:Cant a pc obstensibly be a lich? So youd gain powers from your buddy, carl, who lives next door.

CapnTthePirateG · Post by **CapnTthePirateG** » Tue Mar 08, 2016 1:54 am

So Mearls has another lunch column out, which is shilling random 3rd-party crap on the D&D online store or whatever.

Amusingly the first review straight up says "we didn't actually do this as part of our design because we thought it was a bad idea and were worried about the 5 minute workday, but this guy did".

The second product touts " fourth edition design but elegantly bringing that design forward to fifth edition". So...padded sumo monsters and crap.

The third is basically "here are some adventures".

So to recap: This is now what the 5e D&D team does instead of delivering new content.

Holy shit is this edition running on fumes.

http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/feature ... 016-review

Mord · Post by **Mord** » Tue Mar 08, 2016 2:22 pm

That article wrote:A member of the Dungeons & Dragons brand team, Chris Lindsay is focused primarily on product development, which is a lot like herding cats in a darkened room with no doors and no windows.

I know that's supposed to sound whimsical and light-hearted, but it reads as sad and frustrated to me.

Gnorman · Post by **Gnorman** » Tue Mar 08, 2016 8:15 pm

That article also took two people to write, which is sadder.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Mar 08, 2016 8:56 pm

I don't understand why this is all so quarter assed. They are renting out the d&d brand to hacks that WotC already fired. Why isn't there a product every month? The bar is not high here. And they aren't even using their own staff to write these ficking things (not that they have any staff anymore).

Rage of Demons and Tyranny of Dragons were not hogh brow in concept or execution. And they didn't use up a lot of d&d's play space. I could name ten concepts just as deeply rooted in dnd lore with as little overlap or less in fifteen minutes. And so could most people who've DMed more than one edition. You could queue up a year's worth of product at one book a month during a bath and your water wouldn't be cold when you were finished.

I simply don't understand why the release schedule is SO empty. Making it look like they have a second fuck about the line would be trivial.

Mechalich · Post by **Mechalich** » Wed Mar 09, 2016 12:25 am

You'd think it would be cheap too. Making RPG books in 2016 is a lot less expensive than it used to be. I mean, WotC doesn't need to go the full Onyx Path by any means, but surely they can make a profit on books that sell even mid five-figures levels of copies if not less and it has to be worth doing that just to keep the IP in circulation.

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Wed Mar 09, 2016 12:31 am

Mechalich wrote:You'd think it would be cheap too. Making RPG books in 2016 is a lot less expensive than it used to be. I mean, WotC doesn't need to go the full Onyx Path by any means, but surely they can make a profit on books that sell even mid five-figures levels of copies if not less and it has to be worth doing that just to keep the IP in circulation.

You'd think so, but putting your ass on the line with something like effort isn't the way to survive in the D&D branch of Wizards, as the 4e culling showed. Making something serious has the chance to fail seriously. Since Mearls came up in a corporate culture where any failure was met with getting launched out of the proverbial airlock while being a lazy shit got him the head design job, you can see why having no fucks would be what's best for him and the design team.

If you don't even try, you can't succeed but you can say you did not fail.

drdaiba · Post by **drdaiba** » Wed Mar 09, 2016 5:36 am

Mask_De_H wrote: Since Mearls came up in a corporate culture where any failure was met with getting launched out of the proverbial airlock while being a lazy shit got him the head design job, you can see why having no fucks would be what's best for him and the design team.

Apparently WOTC is exactly like a regional branch of the modern Chinese Communist Party.

Ghremdal · Post by **Ghremdal** » Wed Mar 09, 2016 8:13 am

Mechalich wrote:You'd think it would be cheap too. Making RPG books in 2016 is a lot less expensive than it used to be. I mean, WotC doesn't need to go the full Onyx Path by any means, but surely they can make a profit on books that sell even mid five-figures levels of copies if not less and it has to be worth doing that just to keep the IP in circulation.

I do not think they can sell 50,000 copies of anything DnD related anymore. My estimates, based on amazon sale data and someone at WotC who said Amazon sales make 50% of their total sales, I estimate a top number of 200,000 PHB's sold with a more likely 150,000. I am not in the publishing business, but I think having 33 to 25 % return rate on your adventure books is not a thing that happens.

Another reason I don't think they can make 50,000 is that even those hacks WotC fired won't touch 5e once they got burned once. Three different companies produced adventures, and now Curse of Stradh is back to in house production. You would think that any of those companies would leap at the chance to make more books, if 5e made them any profit at all. I strongly suspect it didn't.