D&D 5e has failed

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Voss
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Post by Voss »

codeGlaze wrote:
angelfromanotherpin wrote:Critical Role is a bunch of voice actors streaming their D&D game on Wil Wheaton's gaming channel. They're more watchable than most tabletop gaming streams because they're all professional performers.

I haven't seen the video, but I assume CR is 'saving' D&D by being the most visible promotion for the hobby, because the actual D&D division at Hasbro doesn't have a fucking advertising budget.
QFT
Explained better than anything I would have come up with.

The explosion in "mainstream" tabletopping kind of implies there's a market waiting to be tapped into by some actual talent, no?
Not necessarily. The catch with YouTube video a and the like is often they are viewed regardless of the content. Especially with celebrities involved, the draw is the peek into those people. The specifics of what they're doing is often irrelevant.
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Post by Mask_De_H »

Voss wrote:
codeGlaze wrote:
angelfromanotherpin wrote:Critical Role is a bunch of voice actors streaming their D&D game on Wil Wheaton's gaming channel. They're more watchable than most tabletop gaming streams because they're all professional performers.

I haven't seen the video, but I assume CR is 'saving' D&D by being the most visible promotion for the hobby, because the actual D&D division at Hasbro doesn't have a fucking advertising budget.
QFT
Explained better than anything I would have come up with.

The explosion in "mainstream" tabletopping kind of implies there's a market waiting to be tapped into by some actual talent, no?
Not necessarily. The catch with YouTube video a and the like is often they are viewed regardless of the content. Especially with celebrities involved, the draw is the peek into those people. The specifics of what they're doing is often irrelevant.
On the flip side, people are more inclined to do anything celebrities do that is available to them, because celebrities do them. For every say 100 people that watch Critical Role because they want to bang Felicia Day or her friends, a nonzero percentage of them will want to actually elfgame that probably didn't before. And of that nonzero percent, a large percentage will wash out due to no nearby games or shit DMs or some sort of nonsense. But the remaining group of players do more for the hobby's life than Mearls is doing for damn sure.

It's also shrewd for Hasbro to enforce the brand recognition of D&D = role-playing through this, for even if a viewer never plays a single game, it is still establishing D&D as the only game in town to them. It's like Band-Aids and bandages.
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Post by OgreBattle »

Been in a fun D&D5e game for the last few weeks, I've found it's crunchy enough to deliver tactical/strategic combat which is the part of D&D that I pay the most rules attention to. But I haven't been in any 3e games that super intensively used the skill system and formal rules for kingdom building so "DM wings it" is what I'm used to.

Was a bit annoying to roll 10 attacks and 10 damage with animated objects as I don't have that many d20's on me.

Had a DM I trust and players I get along with though, if it was a pickup game at the local gaming shop with smelly strangers then my experience could've been as bad as pickup games from other editions I've played.

The relative simplicity of 5e numbers to track (proficiency, proficiency bonus, stat bonus) was also handy when I forgot my character sheet and had to quickly recalculate stuff for a lvl9 wizard.

The full casters and magic swordsmen types took up more tabletop time and contributed more to combat than the fighter and rogue. The monk's mobility came into play fighting flying monsters with high ground to leap off of. Animated Object was actually too slow to catch up with flying monsters swooping and running, so wound up putting that away to grant fly to a melee character.
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Post by Pseudo Stupidity »

Is there a list of spells that fvcking kill people for 5e? All the spells are different and I'm in a 5e game now, so boy was I surprised when color spray ended up being wet garbage. Save or be blinded for one round!? What shit is that?

There are definitely some broken spells in there starting at level 1, like Tasha's Hideous Laughter (single-target int save [HAHAHA] or get fucked), but I really don't want to read all the spells to pick out the ones that aren't fetid piles of shit.

Also Portent is a broken ability and is so obviously broken I don't know how it was written. Sure, let the Wizard decide what his target's saving throw will be with no action taken on the Wizard's part. That won't make literally any fight they decide to use that ability on a guaranteed win. It's neat flavor to know the future, but maybe the mechanic of "substitute a pre-rolled D20 for any roll, even an opponent's roll" is a mechanic that breaks the game in half.
Last edited by Pseudo Stupidity on Mon Jun 05, 2017 6:16 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by saithorthepyro »

So far my 5th edition experience was running Curse of Strahd for my younger brother when he insisted on it after haven checked it out from the local library. It wasn't too bad, albeit more from my younger siblings just doing what the module expected because none of them are over 18 yet. Which ended up really hurting when they got TPK by a group of six? (can't remember exact number) shadows and they only had two characters capable of magic attacks.

My dislike of the system comes from reading the actual books, some of Mearl's dev stuff, the complete lack of content, and bad stories about the original play-test and what the intent was behind them.
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Post by phlapjackage »

New module / campaign thing for D&D5?

http://io9.gizmodo.com/the-mind-behind- ... 1795816921
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Post by CapnTthePirateG »

Pseudo Stupidity wrote: Also Portent is a broken ability and is so obviously broken I don't know how it was written. Sure, let the Wizard decide what his target's saving throw will be with no action taken on the Wizard's part. That won't make literally any fight they decide to use that ability on a guaranteed win. It's neat flavor to know the future, but maybe the mechanic of "substitute a pre-rolled D20 for any roll, even an opponent's roll" is a mechanic that breaks the game in half.
Legendary monsters get 3 free autosaves.

You're also incredibly limited in the amount of spells you can use that end a fight in one save. I'm not saying they're not there, I'm saying you have to really dumpster dive for them, because Mearls went with the Pathfinder route of nerfing spells people used but didn't think to nerf plane shift.
Last edited by CapnTthePirateG on Thu Jun 08, 2017 12:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by GnomeWorks »

Unfuck your tags!

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Post by Pseudo Stupidity »

CapnTthePirateG wrote: Legendary monsters get 3 free autosaves.

You're also incredibly limited in the amount of spells you can use that end a fight in one save. I'm not saying they're not there, I'm saying you have to really dumpster dive for them, because Mearls went with the Pathfinder route of nerfing spells people used but didn't think to nerf plane shift.
<Googles> but there aren't many legendary monsters at all. It seems like being able to select anyone outside of that list and say "You are now dead/my new body/teleported to the plane of cocks, no save" is kind of fucked. Against legendary creatures you can still just cast Contagion (and guarantee your hit with Portent lolol) then stunlock them, but you might need to cast it twice against legendaries.

Portent is gamebreaking because it takes something that's meant to have a chance of success/failure and completely removes the chance of success/failure from it. That's not really an issue for an attack roll, but it is an issue for things that instakill or have even more powerful effects. The only defense against Portent is being legendary or immune to everything.
Last edited by Pseudo Stupidity on Thu Jun 08, 2017 1:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by TheFlatline »

You know D&D is having issues when they're reskinning board games that were infamous for their uneven balance and pacing.

This time, they're reskinning Betrayal at House on the Hill as Betrayal at Baldur's Gate.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/228 ... ldurs-gate

I'm curious if they'll even write new haunts or just write shitty flavor text for the old haunts. My bet is on the latter. Especially since all the chipboard parts are identical, down to the pentagram shaped character sheets and the horrid clips.

Haunting possession isn't a terribly big part of D&D. I guess the conceit works though. It just seems silly.
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Post by Aryxbez »

I know we've spoken of sales about 5e already, its speculation as well. How about this, since people recently talking about the sales mark of Tabletop RPG's, but includes 5e pretty often: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread ... RPG-market

I'm not posting this to cause any issues, pardon if I'm breaking a rule, I mostly interested in the discussion it brings, and if any new findings can be derived from it. Though I am fairly skeptical of what's been shown, and especially more of what people have said (though good to see people criticizing our hobby).
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Post by Username17 »

I don't even know what to say about that. The numbers don't seem to be off by a little bit, they appear to be complete gibberish. Let's take a single company: Hasbro. According to Vault, 32% of Hasbro's sales are from gaming. According to wikipedia, Hasbro's last reported sales were 4.45 billion dollars. If both those figures are accurate, Hasbro's gaming market share was 1.4 billion dollars. Which according to the Enworld article is nearly 300 million dollars a year more than the entire gaming market. Now I guess you could say they are doing some carve outs by not counting MTGO or whatever, but the bottom line is we are talking one company and what the actual fuck?

I don't know what process led them to those conclusions, but they very obviously aren't close to the real numbers. Which is not to say RPGs aren't a tiny piece of pie. They totally are. RPGs are the cheapest hobby you can have. Cheaper than knitting. Cheaper than cheese tasting. The dollar sales figures are going to be small. But I have no reason to believe the reported numbers from the enworld aticle are particularly close.
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Post by Ghremdal »

Yeah I dont get the RPG numbers either. If 2014 was 15 mil, and lets say 5e pushed that to 25 mil in 2015, what happened in 2016 that it grew another 10 mil. And for the record while its possible that wotc sold 300k 5e books in that year, what happened in 2016? I seriously disbelieve that WotC sold double the amount of 5e books compared to 2015 for the simple fact they are not releasing anything new. If anything 300k books is closer to the number of total lifetime sales of 5e.

So for the numbers are true something must have soldcakes in 2016 to make up for such a increase. But what? I didnt exactly see a reneisance in the rpg industry.
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Post by tussock »

5e releases two modules (in April and September) and an FR book (in November) each year. 2016 was Curse of Strahd, Storm King's Thunder, and Volo's Guide to Monsters. Big books around 250 pages.

Which isn't nothing, but yeah, the steady reduction in web support and such doesn't scream big sales, nor does their third party support flaking out on them. The products themselves are larger and more expensive though, so if numbers hold they'll be turning over more money.

The market would grow from 2013 to anything else of course, the last 4e book was Feb 2012. D&D books published in 2013 are a handful of "premium reprints" from past editions, top sellers were like Pathfinder in it's 4th year, Numenera, and that Star Wars with the funky dice from memory. None of those were huge sellers, Monte didn't make millions (unless it was 2 of them).
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Post by Voss »

FrankTrollman wrote:I don't even know what to say about that. The numbers don't seem to be off by a little bit, they appear to be complete gibberish. Let's take a single company: Hasbro. According to Vault, 32% of Hasbro's sales are from gaming. According to wikipedia, Hasbro's last reported sales were 4.45 billion dollars. If both those figures are accurate, Hasbro's gaming market share was 1.4 billion dollars. Which according to the Enworld article is nearly 300 million dollars a year more than the entire gaming market. Now I guess you could say they are doing some carve outs by not counting MTGO or whatever, but the bottom line is we are talking one company and what the actual fuck?
The Enworld article is basically just going off the ICV2's voluntary reporting by indie store owners, and apparently randomly tosses in kickstarter numbers from somewhere. The 1.4 billion was Hasbro's reported gaming profit in their annual report. Which included fucking everything 'game' related that Hasbro does- including actual money-makers like Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit and shit, as well as MTG, across all platforms, including digital.

Basically the 'article' (and the ICV2) takes unconfirmed self-reporting by stores at face value and makes no attempt to reconcile it with actual numbers. And apparently treats 'hobby board games' as a One True Scotsman argument that presumably lets them exclude things like Monopoly and other 'non hobby' board games:
We define "hobby games" as those games produced for a "gamer" market, generally (although not always) sold primarily in the hobby channel of game and card specialty stores. We define the “hobby games market” as the market for those games regardless of whether they’re sold in the hobby channel or other channels.
https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/351 ... -2-billion

So, yeah. This is pure gibberish and tautologies all the way down.

Hasbro's annual reports are here:
http://investor.hasbro.com/annuals.cfm

They happily use professional classifications and actual numbers (well, for categories, no specifics), so it isn't surprising things don't match up well- it's two entirely different conversations.
Sadly they don't give numbers for WotC as a division or D&D as a brand- just that it D&D did see some of the of 9% growth in the games division.
The games category grew 9% in 2016 compared to 2015. Higher net revenues resulted from Franchise
Brand MAGIC: THE GATHERING products as well as from other games brands, including, but not limited to, PIE
FACE, DUEL MASTERS, SIMON, BOP-IT, YAHTZEE, TRIVIAL PURSUIT, DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, and CLUE
products as well as the successful 2016 launch of the SPEAK-OUT game. These higher net revenues were partially
offset by lower net revenues from Franchise Brand MONOPOLY products and various other games brands,
including, but not limited to, TROUBLE, TWISTER, ELEFUN & FRIENDS, OPERATION and SCRABBLE products.
Feel free to note that MTG is a Franchise Brand (and most of that growth), while D&D was a contributor along the lines of Yahtzee or Clue (Cluedo for people across the pond).


tl;dr: Hasbro doesn't give out specific numbers by brand, but claims D&D is growing a bit. But it's just a part of a big category, which _isn't_ their prime money maker- Hasbro Gaming brings in about a third of the revenue of the Franchise Brands, which includes M:TG and Monopoly
Last edited by Voss on Sat Jul 08, 2017 7:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by OgreBattle »

Some fellow's FFXIV conversions https://m.imgur.com/t/ffxiv/6gTDG19
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Post by Sir Aubergine »

OgreBattle wrote:Some fellow's FFXIV conversions https://m.imgur.com/t/ffxiv/6gTDG19
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Post by Hiram McDaniels »

OgreBattle wrote:Some fellow's FFXIV conversions https://m.imgur.com/t/ffxiv/6gTDG19
The Astrologer and Arcanist classes look interesting. There are new subclasses for Bards, Monks and Rogues so I guess this is meant to plug into existing 5e material. I would rather see full replacements.

The problem with most attempts to covert final fantasy to tabletop is that people are more concerned with porting over game code to rules text, so the authors are working backward from the idea that stats have to go to 255 and levels have to go from 1-99. I got in an argument with one cat on this forum about that already.

Plus, no one can agree with what final fantasy is supposed to look like. I mean what's the setting? The D&D inspired setting of the 1st game? Is it ivalice? The gaslight fantasy setting of 6? The thing I would want is the job system of 5, but d&d 3 already does that (albeit poorly).
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Post by CapnTthePirateG »

Ugh, playing adventurer's league and it's really driving home what a shit system 5e is, Inflated hit points are everywhere and it's very hard to come up with a build that can actually contribute rather than hitting for mediocre damage. Spell saves are incredibly swingy so the old strategy of save-or-lose (if you're not a diviner) seems to be more of a crapshoot.

Rerolling a battlemaster fighter to get Great Weapon Master and Polearm Master, but if anyone has any mega-DPS ideas I'm open to them.

On an unrelated note, they are releasing an actual, honest-to-god splatbook full of character options. Expect my review when it comes out.
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Post by Omegonthesane »

I assume the old standby of "necromancer with a bunch of skeleton archers" will get you laughed out of court if you even try it.
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Post by Chamomile »

Skeleton swarm doesn't even begin to come online until level 5 and doesn't really start to take off until a few levels after that. Mid-to-late game it's gamebreakingly OP, but if you want to do well in a level 1-4 adventure you've gotta figure something else out. Of course, skeleton swarm or not you're still a wizard, so you'll probably be fine. Also note that the Adventurer's League is in theory supposed to be RAW, so if you want a goddamn skeleton swarm they can't stop you without actual rules. In practice, the people in charge of running things may or may not tell you to fuck off.

Paladins have probably the best DPS in 5e for so long as their spells hold out. Don't use the spells as spells, just use all of them as smite fodder. Rangers are decent if you take the hunter archetype and not the beastmaster archetype.
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Post by CapnTthePirateG »

So I was going for necromancer (decided not to do the fighter respec after all) but the first 1-4 levels in AL are extraordinarily painful.

Sleep is basically worthless as everything has 40+ HP (really), blasting spells are as usual shit, and all the save every round spells are pretty bad because saves are so swingy you get fucked over a lot.

Also pretty sure you can't bring skeletons between adventures, and a lot of them are fairly railroady (last week's adventure had us all knocked out by Cutscene Poison Daggers and captured, this weeks we got to start a horse chase before I could say "can we just barricade the road like normal people" so I guess I'm looking for portable holes.

Might try a paladin if my necromancer gets killed/stealth nerfed.
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Post by Dogbert »

CapnTthePirateG wrote:Sleep is basically worthless as everything has 40+ HP (really)
Silly Capt. Sleep is not for NPCs, it is for ganking PCs you don't like.
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Post by JonSetanta »

Sleep is a good finisher.
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Post by Lokathor »

Having played 5e recently with folks who are totally new to the concept of DnD, it seems like the biggest crime of 5e is that it's complex enough that you can't quite play it as a drunk game with no prep, but you also can't play it as a game that has satisfying mechanics among the complex games where you would prep things.
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