Dungeons & Dragons - New & Old

I have been reading my copy of the new PHB and so far I really like what I see. It is the direction I wanted 4ed to go in back when that was first released. I was super dissapointed in 4th ed when it came out. On release all the classes played almost identically and playing a warrior hardly felt any different than playing a wizard. They went so hard towards complete balance they wound up being very bland and generic. I am sure that morphed over time to be better but by then I had moved on to pathfinder. I can see D&D 5th ed really appealing to a lot of folks like me who went towards pathfinder.

I have not fully read the new PHB but what I have seen so far looks really good and I like the advantage/disadvantage thing a lot better than the 5 billion status effect change things you had to keep track of in 4th ed. Will see how it progresses but it looks like it should be a pretty fun edition to play.

I have never done anything D&D besides the arcade game and started off by ordering 2 things. I was told by someone at work that the Paul Kemp Trilogy would be a good intro into those types of books.

I also ordered Castle Ravenloft the board game for my gaming friends and I to attempt to play this weekend, if someone has experience with this or even tips I would appreciate.

Grimsark_sl said:

And now 5e is barely off the press and people are complaining that its 3.75e... But what would you be saying if it wasn't?!?

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We already have 3.75. It's called Pathfinder. That's literally what Pathfinder is called. It is called 3.75.

OneofOne_sl said:

That seems unnecessarily assholish. What's got your underwear bunched up? You think 3.5 players killed 4e by... not playing it because it sucked?

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Their business model is screwed up.

The game is targeted at kids, because kids want to play D&D and newer is better (right?), but kids can't pay for the books. When those kids hit their twenties they have disposable income, but they are already entrenched in the edition of the game they grew up with and resent the new edition. Resulting in situations like 4E where fans are missing one of the core rule books (DMG 3) and several campaign settings (Planescape / Dragonlance / Greyhawk).

3.5 players didn't pay it forward and support the hobby. They whined and bitched online and stopped buying books. Zero class.

I've just finished reading the 5E PHB. They brought back everything I hated about 3.5 and "streamlined" the rules. This game is not meant for me, but I'm a fan of D&D. So I'm going to buy all the books this time around and hope Wizards doesn't abort another edition before it's complete.

So you're mad that (quite a lot of) players took a look at 4e, said no thanks, and didn't support WOTC? I didn't realize it was the job of the consumer to prop up shitty products, but thanks for the info! Now I know that, since I bought EQ and EQ2, that I'm required to buy EQ3, to pay it forward and support SOE!

OneofOne_sl said:

So you're mad that (quite a lot of) players took a look at 4e, said no thanks, and didn't support WOTC? I didn't realize it was the job of the consumer to prop up shitty products, but thanks for the info!

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Typical 3.5 fan. Have fun slobbering Paizo's cock.

You mad, bro?

So mad.

That I'm going to buy every 5E book that comes out.

As much as I think 4th is greatnowthe PHB was shit and the Monster Manual was shit. Sure, I'm sad that meaningful products stopped coming out for it three years ago but I don't blame anyone but WotC for that. It's not their fault that people didn't keep buying their products after a shitty launch. WotC's latter attempt to relaunch with Essentials was fucking retarded.

All of my criticisms right now with 5th are that they didn't continue to go forward. Instead of making something new they ran back and decided to fight Pathfinder with their own updated 3.5 rule set.

Also the price tag on the books. Having a MSRP of 50 dollars is ridiculous. These books are made of ink and paper. You can by a generic brand tablet for that with multi-core Android operating system stuff for that.

Krassus_sl said:

I also ordered Castle Ravenloft the board game for my gaming friends and I to attempt to play this weekend, if someone has experience with this or even tips I would appreciate.

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Absolutely love the game. More players, the harder it is.

Grimsark_sl said:

I'm not trying to pick a fight, but Pathfinder is a completely unique product line separate of D&D.

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Pathfinder is a d20 product that uses the d20 open gaming license. It is not a "completely unique" anything.

Gavinrad_sl said:

I always thought 3.5 was the biggest joke. It was basically just a few errata and house rules that they milked for an entire new edition. At least they actually tried something new for 4th ed.

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4th had a lot of great ideas, and it's a shame the tone of the game turned so many people off so quickly. One of my favorite things about 4th was the designer's willingness to break away from 3.X's slavish devotion to modular stat blocks. 3.X had such a focus on hit dice and stat progressions being predictable that published monster stats and the resulting encounters became extremely formulaic.

3.5 itself was essentially a chunk of errata, but it was badly needed. A lot of spells (time stop, haste) and a few feats completely broke the game. Pathfinder is so popular because 3.X was, at its heart, a great system, and because they've patched many of the remaining bugs left over from the 3.0 > 3.5 upgrade.

I agree that 3.5 had gotten stale, and WotC gets some kudos for trying something new. It's just unfortunate that they didn't let a lot of the new 3.5 authors finish more 3.5 stuff before they released 4th. Elder evils, MM III, MM V, and the other books near the end 3.5's lifecycle were some of the best stuff they had put out. It was so fresh becuase they moved their core writers to 4th, and the new blood taking over 3.5 put out some great stuff from unexpected directions. I wish we had seen more of that before 4th.

Xasten_sl said:

I agree that 3.5 had gotten stale, and WotC gets some kudos for trying something new. It's just unfortunate that they didn't let a lot of the new 3.5 authors finish more 3.5 stuff before they released 4th. Elder evils, MM III, MM V, and the other books near the end 3.5's lifecycle were some of the best stuff they had put out. It was so fresh becuase they moved their core writers to 4th, and the new blood taking over 3.5 put out some great stuff from unexpected directions. I wish we had seen more of that before 4th.

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What books are missing from 3.5? What books were cut?

Himeo_sl said:

What books are missing from 3.5? What books were cut?

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I never said anything was "missing" or "cut." I simply said that I wish we had seen more. I'd have enjoyed books on Constructs & Fey like the Draconomicon or Libris Mortis. I would have liked the BoED and BoVD (as sloppy as those two were) on law and chaos. I wanted a monster builder guidebook that did away with the strict HD progression and was essentially a massive list of cool abilities and ways to break the mold. I create a lot of monsters for my 3.5 campaign, and there's so much they could have done with encounter design that they never did.

I would have liked a revised Heroes of Battle. They missed the boat on that book for army combat. I use a homebrew simplified Heroclix type system for my game's army battles, and exploring different systems in an official book would have been welcome. I wanted to see more planescape, and I'd like to have seen a complete retune and relaunch several core classes.

My point is that the system was getting a bit stale for me and when they moved the core writers to 4th edition the ringers (which, ironically, were a lot of old school AD&D devs) breathed new life into the edition for me. I loved what I saw. They took risks at the end of 3.5 because they knew that 4th edition would soon replace it, but those risks turned out to be awesome.

Pathfinder actually offers a lot of that which is one reason it became so popular.

Grimsark_sl said:

Meanwhile, Pathfinder, is more a pretender than it is an actual D&D product.

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A pretender that was a pretty significant improvement over 3.5. I never actually managed to get into a game of 4th, but I have played Pathfinder and any time I referred to it as 3.75 was because it was pretty much a strictly better version of 3.5, not because I felt it was a 'pretender'.

Star Wars d20 isn't 3.75. That wasn't what anyone was trying to make. Pathfinderisa full update of 3.5. You do Pathfinder a real disservice when you call it a pretender when it's been the better selling product for years now.

Yeah, focus on the marketing part and not the "having a really good product people want to play" part.