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Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2017 10:04 am
by amethal
Given the whole "bounded accuracy" thing they are so proud of, what is the point of the ability score increases anyway? What are they supposed to achieve?

(What they actually achieve is to make it look like WotC did some actual game design, whilst letting them get away with providing a derisory number of feats, and giving them something to point to if anyone asks what happened to all their promises about a "modular" game system.)

Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2017 2:11 pm
by shinimasu
FrankTrollman wrote:The point is that setting your feats to be equal to a boring math fix bonus would be horrible even if that had succeeded. Especially if that had succeeded. Telling players that they could just as easily take completely flavorless numeric bonuses instead of having any personally identifiable traits is fucking horrible. Completely flavorless math fix bonuses should never be on the menu because they are fucking cancer. Making them the default option is the worst possible design choice.

-Username17
Alright I take the point now, thanks for the clarification. I do think that feats should be balanced against something external to the feat itself though because it helps prevent bloat. I think the idea in previous editions was "feats should all be balanced against other feats" which makes sense but when other feats are terrible then it follows all new feats will be terrible.

Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2017 2:31 pm
by Voss
amethal wrote:Given the whole "bounded accuracy" thing they are so proud of, what is the point of the ability score increases anyway? What are they supposed to achieve?

(What they actually achieve is to make it look like WotC did some actual game design, whilst letting them get away with providing a derisory number of feats, and giving them something to point to if anyone asks what happened to all their promises about a "modular" game system.)
What they are supposed to achieve is to tick a box that reads 'present in a previous version of D&D' and 'see, we totally included elements of 3rd edition'

Also to provide the illusion of progression, since very little else does.


@shinimasu- how does that prevent bloat? If they were actually creating new products, they could absolutely write a shitload of feats, and yes most of them would be terrible. That they're 'worth' ( but not really) a stat upgrade doesn't change that at all.

Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2017 2:40 pm
by shinimasu
I suppose my logic was that if X is something substantial (not necessarily a stat increase since lets assume this is 5e done by someone more competent) then the feats themselves could be and should be meatier. Less compulsion to create a bunch of weird mini feats that only do about half or a third of what a feat should actually do.

Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2017 4:37 pm
by deaddmwalking
Let's talk about feats for a moment. Obviously, they were one of the more innovative features of D&D 3.x - it was definitely a big departure from earlier editions of D&D. They were a new resource in addition to class features, so the fact is that they were very conservative with them. A cleric was going to get 7 or 8 feats in 20 levels, so they were a relatively scarce resource, but they were brand new, so there was some concern about 'breaking the game' by making them too freely available.

In terms of how important they were supposed to be, it seems like they were aiming for 'pretty good, but not as good as class features' for the most part. The Fighter was an attempt to Voltron enough of them together to replace class features completely - so they're intended to be close to as good as a class feature... That's actually not a terrible place to start working from a design perspective.

A feat ought to let you choose some 'subfeatures' for a class that isn't a default option. If you have a bunch of Martial classes, it might make sense that some of them are sneaky and others aren't. A feat could be a way to plug in 'stealth' as an optional class feature. But ultimately, they didn't use them to their full potential.

I think the 'two-weapon fighting' tree is the best example of why feats didn't really accomplish what they were trying to do. In the first case, getting a second attack is a pretty good deal. It makes the character mechanically different and provides some options. On the other hand, getting an additional off-hand attack at a -15 penalty isn't nearly as good as the first feat you spent - and you're 15 levels higher. If getting one attack at your full BAB is worth a feat at level one, how could getting another attack at -15 also be worth a feat at high levels?

The specific implementation of feat chains also caused problems. Picking up an interesting ability that you wanted could be impossible if you didn't plan ahead. Why do you need Combat Expertise to learn 'Improved Disarm'.

Ultimately, they made individual feats too small, players received too few of them, and the total number of available feats was too high. Every new list of 300 feats actually made players FEEL WORSE because there were more options but they couldn't get any more of them. As the number of feats increased, the number of feats you had to 'give up' to make a selection went up.

One other thing - certain classes granted 'extra feats' as a bonus ability. That didn't always play nicely. For example, the Monk could get Improved Trip as a Bonus Feat at 6th level - but if you really wanted the ability, you could also qualify for it as soon as 1st level (if human). It was possible to get a Class Feature that was completely redundant based on your earlier choices. Any ability that lets you choose from a list gets less valuable the more selections you've already made. If you give a class a bonus feat at 4th, 8th, 12th, 16th and 20th level from a list of 5 choices, they're going to get their #1 choice at 4th level. By the time they hit 20th level, they're forced to take the feat that they didn't want four other times - it's anti-climatic.

Of course, 4th and 5th edition didn't address any of the problems with Feats, which I think they really could have. There was enough experience with them to really address some of the problems.

Solution 1 - Less Feat Duplication
Feats were split into too many small pieces. Many feats can be made better by automatically granting the feats further down the chain. When you get 'Two-Weapon Fighting' you should get as many attacks with you off-hand weapon as you do with your primary weapon - functionally granting the benefit of 'Improved Two-Weapon Fighting' and 'Greater Two-Weapon Fighting[/b].

This helps ensure that you're not always choosing the same 'flavor ability' over and over - each time you choose a Feat, it should do something you couldn't do before.

Solution 2 - More Feats
While reducing the number of available feats through consolidation helps, feats are interesting enough that you want to provide them faster. One per level isn't crazy. Keep in mind that most games don't get to Level 20 - so for most games you're still talking about a half-dozen feats.

Solution 3 - More Flavor
A feat that gives you +1 AC or +2 on a Saving Throw may be 'worth having', but they don't make your character any more interesting. If you want to represent an ability like being 'extra dodgy' or 'super-tough' there are better ways. One problem you may run into is that if you make the feat 'fun', you may want to limit the number of times it can be used. That can be tricky - you may need a resource mechanic associated with these otherwise you have people 'stunting' every action.

That's a good start on the problems. They were very popular, but 'feat bloat' was a problem and they really did a point where people were frustrated by how many feats there were - some of that problem was complexity and some of that problem was simply publishing feats that nobody ever cared about. I've made a lot of characters, but there are at least hundreds of feats that I never used and I'll bet that NOBODY ever used them. They're just a waste of space at that point.

Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2017 12:25 am
by Neurosis
What about advantage, that thing where you get to roll two dice and take the higher? I don't mean how you get it or where it applies or whatever, just the idea itself. That seems like something good to steal to me...with some tweaking...and at a glance. (How I've implemented it, to the half-assed degree that I have, is that in my campaign where there is only one PC and that PC dying or becoming a statue is the end of the campaign, that character always gets advantage on all life or death rolls, i.e. saving throws. This seemed like a reasonable compromise between 'there are no save or die/save or lose effects anymore' and 'about 30% of monsters invoke at least a 5% chance of game over + no continues'.)

I actually agree that the simplification of 5E has its appeal, but it's bafflingly at odds with some of the other decisions (like having six fucking saving throw stats). It also felt like while monster attack bonuses and damage seem to have been brought into a place that is saner than 3E, where past a certain level monsters that hit things are going to hit you all the fucking time, and the only question is how hard, but I was equally baffled that they did not decide to do the same thing with monster hit points, which are still crazy high for the same slugger type monsters.

I also don't mind the idea that some monsters are explicitly boss monsters, and this get extra actions when your party fights them solo. That seemed pretty cool as far as playing with action economy goes.

Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2017 3:43 am
by deaddmwalking
Iterative probability being what it is, given enough opportunities, your player will fail even with advantage. I'm not sure what the save DC is and/or the bonus, but even with 'roll twice, take the best' there is a good chance for failure. Assuming they need a 6 or better on one die (ie, fail on a 1-5) you have a 6.25% chance of failing each roll; that is to say, you still have a better than 5% chance of just being dead.

That's a pretty high probability for a campaign ending event. For the sake of comparison, between 2 and 3 'near-death experiences' has the same probability to end in disaster as a game of Russian Roulette.

As far as whether advantage is good or not, I think it generally is. Taking some number of your best dice is a relatively good way of representing better skill while still keeping your players on the RNG.

Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2017 6:54 am
by Voss
Then again, a reroll isn't that novel. And the specific implementation- roll twice in the first place, is just moving the 4e Avenger class mechanic to everyone (assuming it wasn't done somewhere else before that, which it probably was). So not at all a 5e idea.

@Neurosis- you really aren't paying attention to the attack numbers. It's entirely possible to stack bullshit up until ancient red dragons can only hit you on 19+. And you can do it at mid-levels, long before you'd be expected to fight one. At the same time, their AC is capped really hard, to the point that you can bring in an army of level 1s to paper cut it to death. (Or hit it reliably yourself in the mid levels). The numbers fail in a different way, but they're not even vaguely sane.

And also, it is possible to keep up with hit bonuses in 3e. There are a lot of hoops to jump through (honestly too many, most of which involve the Christmas tree and a lot of system mastery) but it can be done. Numbers in 4th and 5th are just bad jokes. Mearls and company simply fail at math full stop.

Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2017 9:33 am
by OgreBattle
Let's talk about feats for a moment.
A lot of lower end combat feats feel like they gate away basic "I am a fighting man" maneuvers like trip/disarm/grapple/power attack/expertise/etc. what TOME did with Edge and martial proficiency basically answers that for 3e, but building a Next Edition one should make a wide variety of "a goon in a Conan novel can do it" maneuvers be a core part of the game that doesn't involve an elaborate subsystem like grappling.
What about advantage, that thing where you get to roll two dice and take the higher?
If you have a short list of things that grant advantage/disadvantage and stick to it without bullshit splat book addons and making it take effort to get against level appropriate opposition, it works. Like...

You have Advantage when...
...you have positional superiority over a foe that is flanked, prone
...opponent can't see/sense you, is restrained

You attack with Disadvantage when...
...You can't see/sense your target because of sensory overload, blinded, etc.
...you're ability to attack is restrained by a burly gorilla

Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2017 4:25 am
by Aryxbez
Did Animate Dead spell get errata'd to be Concentration at all? My more pertinent question however, given Spell's Description, how do you maintain having 100 or more Skeletons at 11th level, or even the 24 you have at 6th? (Numbers claimed according to this)

As I imagine if you can't maintain control of them, the only way to "get them back" is to have your remaining forces murder them, then use those body of bones to reanimate them as skeletons.

Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2017 5:26 am
by Username17
Aryxbez wrote:Did Animate Dead spell get errata'd to be Concentration at all? My more pertinent question however, given Spell's Description, how do you maintain having 100 or more Skeletons at 11th level, or even the 24 you have at 6th? (Numbers claimed according to this)

As I imagine if you can't maintain control of them, the only way to "get them back" is to have your remaining forces murder them, then use those body of bones to reanimate them as skeletons.
You prepare Animate Dead in all your slots. When you get a 4th level spell slot, you cast it as a 3rd level spell and as a 4th level spell. And you do this every day to continue controlling your army every day or replacing fallen soldiers with new ones. Because bounded accuracy assures us that having a shit tonne of skeletons is better than anything you'd do with any of your spell slots.

-Username17

Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2017 6:19 am
by Aryxbez
FrankTrollman wrote:You prepare Animate Dead in all your slots. When you get a 4th level spell slot, you cast it as a 3rd level spell and as a 4th level spell. And you do this every day to continue controlling your army every day or replacing fallen soldiers with new ones. Because bounded accuracy assures us that having a shit tonne of skeletons is better than anything you'd do with any of your spell slots.

-Username17
Fair enough there, but not sure how you're gonna keep 100 skeletons at 11th, and 24 at 6th. Far as I'm understanding, at 11th you only have 3 castings for 3rd, 4th respectively, which is only gonna get you 30 Kept (each 3rd =4 kept, every 4th spell =6 kept. So 3x3rd lv Animate Dead =12 kept. 3x4th lv Animate Dead =18 kept. Totaling 30). I am Realizing you keep them for 24hrs, means you can rest 3 times to Keep 90 easily, however Building the army seems to be slow going if I'm understanding that you only get one skeleton per casting. So you can build 6 skeletons every 8hrs, then on 3rd rest going into 24th, you'll still have spells let over to cast for more skeletons, bringing up to 16 skeletons per 24 hours.


At 6th level, you only have 3 castings for 3rd level if I understand. So that'll get you 9 skeletons over 24hrs, and can only keep up to 12, so you can't really keep 24, without the other half turning on each other.

I feel like I'm missing something glaring here, So by all means I hope to be corrected. This is probably the only time I've ever cared about something in 5E enough to actually be looking this crap up.

EDIT: Looks like I missed the significance of the following Passage: "you animate or reassert control over two additional Undead creatures for each slot above 3rd.

So you actually are getting 3 raised per 4th casting (12 raised), or 6 kept, and 1 raised per 3rd casting (3 raised) or 4 kept, every 8 hours.

I also forgot the idea that you can prepare Animate Dead into 5th level slot as well, If so, that'll give extra 8 kept per casting, or raise 5 per casting.

Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2017 6:40 am
by Chamomile
You can only take one eight hour long rest per 24 hours, so you can only stack your skeletons twice. However, a wizard has three third-level, three fourth-level, two fifth-level, and one sixth-level spell to burn on animating skeletons. Four per third level means twelve total, six per fourth-level means eighteen plus twelve is thirty total, eight per fifth-level means sixteen plus thirty is forty-six total, and ten per sixth-level means ten plus forty-six equals fifty-six skeletons total.

Now, since you can only long rest once per 24 hours and Animate Dead also lasts 24 hours, if you take that long rest in the middle of Animate Dead's duration, you will lose control of your horde before you can reassert control. Animate Dead reasserts control over up to four minions at level 3, but can only animate a single minion, which means your second batch of castings must be raising new minions because if you had already done this trick once you would have already lost control of your horde. Nothing says you can't reassert control over skeletons you've lost control over, you just have to have been the one who first animated them, however you do need some means of restraining the uncontrolled horde and that makes the horde much less mobile, so we'll assume you aren't doing that. So three skeletons from first level spells, nine from fourth, ten from fifth, and seven from sixth is 29 total, added to the earlier 56 means that you can have up to 85 skeletons. This is technically less than a hundred, but bear in mind you can get that number up to 112 if you're staying in one place and can chain up your animated skeletons, let them go out of control while you raise up others, and then reassert control over them in large batches. So when people talk about an 11th-level necromancer having over a hundred skeletons, they're referring to this situation, which isn't likely to be an option for player characters, who are limited to only 56 under normal circumstances, and can beef that up to 85 in dire circumstances. It is true that rebuilding the army requires three days of continuous casting before it's ready to go on the fourth day, and that's assuming you have the skeletons and bows necessary to go immediately, but even adding in a few days of travel and grave yard looting, plus even as much as a week to have a bunch of shortbows crafted at the nearest city, you're looking at a maximum of two weeks downtime. Unless you're in a race against the clock situation, you can do that, and in exchange you get to be more powerful than an entire level appropriate party of five even before you factor in your 1st and 2nd level spells.

Also worth noting that if you are specifically a necromancy wizard with the School of Necromancy and not, say, a cleric or a wizard of another school who realized partway through that Animate Dead is the road to real ultimate power, you have Undead Thralls. Depending on your reading, this either lets you rebuild your army in one less day or increases the total size of your army by one per spell, which is an extra nine skeletons at 11th.

There's also a conversation to be had about whether or not 5th+ spell slots should be reserved for Animate Objects, and if so how many of them. Animate Objects is a better minions spell than any one casting of Animate Dead, except it only lasts for one encounter and is Concentration duration.

Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2017 6:57 am
by Ghremdal
You also get arcane recovery or whats it called for 2 more level 5 spells.

At level 11 56 bow skeletons is overkill for most things you will encounter anyway.

Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2017 10:10 am
by Aryxbez
Thank you Chamomile, I apologize for my Inaccurate edit at the end, but least the math before it should be accurate, as it matches similar results to yours. I'd only merely point out your mistake of saying " So three skeletons from first level spells", but the rest is helpful. Way you posted it made it harder to read for first read through on the mathematics though.

I can see the Restraining Skeletons thing to be bit of a stretch far as DM Fiat being kosher with that, but I can see the argument simply enough. Otherwise, if can't restrain em, you could just murder them, and raise them back up all over again. Not like killing them makes then unable to raise the pile of bones again, unlike 3E's specifications, so "pile of bones" still qualifies for raising them.
Chamomile wrote:Also worth noting that if you are specifically a necromancy wizard with the School of Necromancy and not, say, a cleric or a wizard of another school who realized partway through that Animate Dead is the road to real ultimate power, you have Undead Thralls. Depending on your reading, this either lets you rebuild your army in one less day or increases the total size of your army by one per spell, which is an extra nine skeletons at 11th.
Could you show me the exact wording on that ability? I couldn't find it in 5e SRD equivalents.


Eh on Animated Objects, 5-10 skeletons all Adventure are likely going to be far more useful. I recall vaguely you get a lot of objects that hit hard for their size however. So I could see it being a decent summon spell for a bossfight? Course then again your 56 something skeletons are near-on soloing boss fights anyway, throw in a party for mass death.
Ghremdal wrote:You also get arcane recovery or whats it called for 2 more level 5 spells.
Actually half the level (round up) so it'd be 6 spell slots, so you could use it to recover two uses of Animate Dead, or it's 4th lv version + Invisibility/Contagion, or 5th lv Version +...something.

Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2017 6:00 pm
by Voss
Animated Objects Tangent:

Animated objects is effectively a mathematical proof that the 5e designers are shit-eaters with no fucking clue what they're doing.

It isn't a game breaker like animate dead, but it is a worthwhile spell to cast in combat, as it effectively gives you 10 actions per turn for the duration (plus your actual actions), with an attack bonus that is probably in line with yours or slightly better. So you can reasonably expect to do 30-odd damage per round for an entire combat with a single action in round 1.

One of the quirks of the spell is if the animated objects have no limbs, they get flying instead. This is clearly superior, so while animating statues could be visually impressive and dramatic, it is actually really dumb. If it is 'securely attached' to something, its speed is zero. Which limits useful things to animate immensely.

Now the meat of the spell is where the math problems become painfully apparent. There is a reason I'm using the plural 'objects' and 'attacks,' as animating non-tiny objects is a poor life choice.

Small isn't the worst, since you still get 10, but for 5 hp each and average damage of 6.5 rather than 5.5, you lose out on +2 to hit and +2 AC.

Medium sees an immediate drop in utility. They have double the hit points, but you only get half the objects (each medium takes 2 of your 10), so barring area effects, hp is the same (but tiny has a much better dex save). But AC drops by 5, to hit drops by 3 and you only get 5 attacks that average 8 damage each rather than 10 averaging 5.5. 40 < 55 before you get to lower hit percentage (which, keep in mind +5 to hit was probably your total at level 1).

Large is even worse, as they count as 4 objects. 50 hp (as opposed to 80 for 4 tiny objects), AC 10 rather than 18, to hit is improved (from medium) to a +6, still 2 points worse than tiny guys. Average damage shoots up to 11 (per attack), but is still worse than the 22 put out by 4 tiny critters. Indeed, the potential output is actually worse than than 2 medium objects. Bigger is the worst possible choice you can make with this spell

Huge is just laughable full stop. Counts as 8. 80 hp rather than 160, AC 10 again. Does shoot back to +8 to hit, but average damage is 17 for its single swing, rather than 44 from the 8 tiny objects you have to give up.

So, yeah. Default assumption for animate objects is throw a bunch of copper pieces on the ground and animate those, and they fly off and kill people like a swarm of evil bees. Animating the Grand Statue of Set to eat his followers in a grand spectacle of ironic bloodshed is a complete fucking waste of your time, and that is sad.



If confronted by an opponent that can do area damage, just opt for a different spell. The huge statue isn't going to last for shit either at AC 10 and a mere 80 hp.

Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2017 6:27 am
by Hiram McDaniels
Neurosis wrote: I actually agree that the simplification of 5E has its appeal, but it's bafflingly at odds with some of the other decisions (like having six fucking saving throw stats).
Errr....yes and no. There are nominally six saving throws, but since most phb spells still target DEX, CON or WIS, in a practical sense there are only 3. Their rationale behind this I think was to eliminate saving throws are derived stats and streamline it in that way but of course this just winds up turning the other ability scores into trap options. Why would you ever be a strength based fighter when you have weapon finesse for free and get to not die from lightning bolts?

Of course wotc realized this and have been clumsily trying to correct the problem, which is why in the playtest doc for their psion class, most of the psychic manifestations target Intelligence. Because of course it makes sense that you would outsmart telekinesis. Of fucking course.

This feeds into my larger bugaboo about D&D. There are just too many legacy mechanics holding the game back from actually improving, and 5E's mission statement is fellating every edition that came before. Take saving throws for instance; there are a number of different ways they could have gone:

They could have just kept FORT/REF/WILL. Nobody would have complained.

They could have gone with ability scores as saves, but cut the list of ability scores down from 6 (SDCIWC) to like 4 and mapped the saves to those in a way that makes sense. But that would constitute a change, which always sends grognards into apoplectic fits of rage.

Or they could have gone with ability scores as saves, but jettisoned the old spell list and rewritten it from the ground up to target a more even distribution of stats. But again, this would cut off the steady supply of mountain dew flavored grognard jizz that wotc needs to maintain it's unnaturally long lifespan.

I actually like 5E quite a bit. No...that's not exactly true. 5E is like Liv Tyler from "One Night at McCool's". People that play it just project whatever they want onto it. I run 5E, but I'm constantly patching glaring rules omissions with shit from older editions.

Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2017 7:25 am
by Voss
Well...

A) finesse weapons are rather shit. And by finesse weapons, I mean rapiers, because the rest aren't worth taking at all, unless you're stuck with a class that won't let you. Because the damage bonuses for non-Spellcasters* are so few, opting for finesse weapons is a pretty significant downgrade in damage output, and a fighter in 5e absolutely can't afford to fall behind in damage output, as monster hp is already set to outpace their capacity, and poking monsters is their only gimmick.


*as ever, the real correct answer to Str vs Dex fighter is... Don't be a fighter.


B) psions targeting intelligence doesn't matter. The odds of a DM throwing even one in as an enemy are pretty low, so the fact that a beta version PC class has more int save based spells has a negligble impact on the number of int saves the PCs are going to attempt.

C) As far as grognards go, I'm not particularly convinced they migrated in any meaningful numbers from their sacred texts to the latest blasphemy. Who 5e was even targeted at is a pretty open question, but even though I don't even like 2nd edition, and haven't played it outside the Baldurs gate games in 20 years, I wouldn't bother to switch from 2nd to 5th. So much basic shit is missing it isn't even funny, and many of the changes feel like a step backwards from 1990s game design.


Well, aside from keeping 3rd edition changes like hit bonuses and ascending AC rather than descending AC and Thac0. But I bet they thought about it.

Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2017 9:38 am
by Chamomile
5e's streamlining has something to say for it, in much the same way as 4e's skill list was the best D&D had ever seen even though their skill system was a dumpster fire. It's great that every step of chargen can be explained in terms of things that people familiar with fantasy tropes will intuitively grasp. It's great that you can ask them to pick a race, a class, a background, and then select some skills off a list and they're done, because not once do you have to stop and explain how fucking skill points work. You do, however, have to explain how fucking ability scores work, so they tripped on the finish line, there. Putting skills, attacks, and saves on the same basic track was a really good idea, though. Having everything be "ability bonus + proficiency bonus" is defensible, the problem is that neither ability bonus nor proficiency bonus goes up in a hurry. You'd probably want the ability bonus to be the thing that increases and you'd want the increase to be across the board - this way you can throw out bounded accuracy but still have the gap within a same-level party between people who trained something and people who didn't just permanently be a +5 or whatever. Maybe have a level bonus and then a separate proficiency bonus or something. Just so long as it's not skill points, so long as the skills are a giant list of on/off toggles rather than a giant list of knobs that go from 1 to 23.

If you tie all three of skills, attacks, and saves to this system, what you have is a system where any of those three can be used against any of the others and the numbers are automatically in the right ballpark, provided you're looking at same-level opposition. You can go ahead and have a feat that lets you roll Acrobatics to avoid enemy attacks, or have spells that compare their attack roll to the relevant save. In fact, all you'd have to change for 5e itself to get this working on a basic level (and ignoring the related but separate issue of bounded accuracy for now) is to have STR and CON be interchangeable saves, and also DEX and INT, and WIS and CHA. Every class who has proficiency in one of those saves automatically has proficiency in the other. Done. I think it'd be slightly more clear to go ahead and say that Fortitude is derived from highest of STR or CON plus proficiency, and then same with DEX/INT and Reflexes and WIS/CHA and Willpower, but if it turns out that people find it easier to just keep track of the six abilities, you could just hand them out proficiency in pairs and it'd be fine.

So long as you're doing that, though, it would probably be a lot easier to go ahead and #1 kill the sacred cow of the six ability scores and replace them with a set of three or four that directly correspond to saves (STR and CON can easily be combined for starters), and #2 just have those scores be the numbers that you add to your rolls directly, none of this 14(+2) bullshit. Explaining how ability scores work is by far the hardest part of explaining 5e chargen to new people and is a huge blackmark on an edition whose major accomplishment is being really easy to explain to newcomers. D&D doesn't have to suck up to grognards, it's D&D, it has well been proven that anything they publish will push a pretty good amount of books, and in any case the new demographic that 5e found appears to mostly be fresh blood, because again, being easy to get into is D&D 5e's biggest accomplishment and it looks like that might be the most important thing you can do as an RPG.

Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2017 9:52 pm
by deaddmwalking
Since 4e doesn't have an SRD, where I can find 4th editions skill list?

Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2017 10:24 pm
by Username17
deaddmwalking wrote:Since 4e doesn't have an SRD, where I can find 4th editions skill list?
Here.

I do think that Dungeoneering is the fucking stupidest name for a skill, but Andy Collins had been flogging that horse raw since 3.5.

-Username17

Posted: Sat Feb 11, 2017 1:15 am
by hogarth
FrankTrollman wrote:I do think that Dungeoneering is the fucking stupidest name for a skill, but Andy Collins had been flogging that horse raw since 3.5.
Of course the Dungeoneer's Survival Guide came out in 1986.

Posted: Sat Feb 11, 2017 2:54 am
by virgil
hogarth wrote:
FrankTrollman wrote:I do think that Dungeoneering is the fucking stupidest name for a skill, but Andy Collins had been flogging that horse raw since 3.5.
Of course the Dungeoneer's Survival Guide came out in 1986.
Uhmm...you do realize that Dungeoneer is not the name of a skill, right? Unless you also think there are people with proficiency in Wildernessing, Volo, or Rangering or something.

Posted: Sat Feb 11, 2017 2:59 am
by Prak
...Knowledge Dungeoneering, Virgil.

Is Dungeoneering worse than "Esocology?" Which is what I named the knowledge that combines Dungeoneering and Planes for my Dragonstar game...

Posted: Sat Feb 11, 2017 3:03 am
by Voss
virgil wrote:
hogarth wrote:
FrankTrollman wrote:I do think that Dungeoneering is the fucking stupidest name for a skill, but Andy Collins had been flogging that horse raw since 3.5.
Of course the Dungeoneer's Survival Guide came out in 1986.
Uhmm...you do realize that Dungeoneer is not the name of a skill, right? Unless you also think there are people with proficiency in Wildernessing, Volo, or Rangering or something.
Actually, in 4e they dropped 'knowledge' from all those skills. The skill absolutely was 'Dungeoneering.' Not that Knowledge: Dungeoneering is in any way better.

But Dungeoneer's Survival Guide was an actual 1e book (alongside Wilderness Survival Guide)
Prak wrote: Is Dungeoneering worse than "Esocology?" Which is what I named the knowledge that combines Dungeoneering and Planes for my Dragonstar game...
Possibly? It depends what you think the Esoc prefix means.