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No, I don't care that 'it's more book keeping'; when 5e has kineticists, then we can talk.

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[-] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 22 points 10 months ago

I don't love Pathfinder's "a class for everything" design, but I think I like 5e's "barely any choices to make" less.

I recently came to understand that 5e's shallowness is a strength. It's hard to make a bad character in 5e. But it's also hard to make a mechanically strong one. There just aren't enough choices to make. But that's really good for a lot of players who aren't going to develop any system mastery, and many of them frankly don't want to. They just want to sit down and play, and don't want to worry about "I need 13 Dex so I can take combat reflexes so I can take improved feint at 5th level" or whatever.

[-] Lianodel@ttrpg.network 9 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I dunno. When I was reading through PF2e, at a certain point it clicked for me that a lot of the rules actually make it easier to play a character by ear.

Take feats. There are tons, of different kinds, with different levels, sometimes with prerequisites. It seems like a lot of rules overhead, but that also means that you're not picking from the whole list every time you get one. If a player doesn't want to make a ton of choices, they can just pick one of the highest level feats they qualify for and have a pretty decent build. Maybe not optimized, but if they don't want to dig into the nitty gritty, that wasn't a priority anyway.

Plus, if a player wants to change their mind, the rules explicitly say you can swap things around. I know that works in 5e anyway by DM fiat, but still, it's nice to have a "don't worry too much" clause written in the books.

Ultimately a matter of personal preference, of course. I just think PF2e actually scales pretty well with player investment in the system, whether someone's really into character builds or just wants to follow some steps and get into the action.

I just wish pf2e wasn't so scared of certain things, I miss my melee monster alchemists

[-] frauddogg@lemmygrad.ml 6 points 10 months ago

See, I'm one of those who had a folder chock full of character concepts I'd built and kitted out without knowing if I'd ever run them; so the folder was a 'so long as I stick with the same GM for a long while, literally any of thees concepts can be wheeled out and minimally retooled to fit whatever we're doing'. I don't feel half the same urge to do that for 5e because of what you call the 'barely any choices to make' issue.

[-] TwilightVulpine@kbin.social 4 points 10 months ago

But if players don't want to make mechanical choices, maybe they'd be better off playing something like Dungeon World. I don't miss nested requirements when games hardly ever last long enough to use them, but the number of interesting gameplay choices to make in D&D is teetering on the edge of losing strategic appeal.

[-] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 5 points 10 months ago

Oh I 100% believe that the majority of D&D 5e players would be happier with a different game. For many different reasons. Some because they want more crunch, some because they want less. Some because they don't actually want to play a resource management dungeon crawl game at all. I mean, just look at how many players do one-fight-per-rest, and how many people cram social conflict into D&D despite the threadbare rules for it.

Unfortunately, D&D is such a big brand it just sucks all the air out of the room. Other games don't have the community or branding.

I mean, there's Pathfinder, but that's kind of the blues brothers "we've got both kinds of music: country and western" situation. It's very similar to D&D. I guess the next biggest is Vampire? And then way down at the end of the long tail there's like Fate, Gurps, shadowrun. I guess PbtA and Blades games are gaining some currency lately, too.

[-] frauddogg@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Oh man-- I could never get folks to run Shadowrun. Admittedly, I don't anymore either, because I don't have my Hero Lab registration code anymore, and last I looked, there were no other good character tools for Shadowrun. (Tried that open source Chummer program back in the day, but that just wasn't working for me.)

[-] acockworkorange@mander.xyz 10 points 10 months ago

Imagine pigeonholing your character in a class.

[-] Vespair@lemm.ee 8 points 10 months ago

Until prestige classes are a thing I'm sticking with 3.5

[-] Lianodel@ttrpg.network 2 points 10 months ago

I don't know if it scratches the same itch for you, but Archetypes do for me.

[-] Vespair@lemm.ee 5 points 10 months ago

They don't for me, tbh. Part of what was fun about prestige classes for me was that there was multiple ways to get to them. It was something a character, theoretically any character in most cases, could work towards regardless of where they started. Like a Bladesinger may have started as a fighter, a bard, a wizard, or more. It felt like a whole world of character possibilities. Archetypes feel more like a doctor picking their specialty of study, at least to me

[-] CannotSleep420@lemmygrad.ml 6 points 10 months ago

I'm just happy when I can meet semi regularly with a group for a campaign.

[-] HipsterTenZero@dormi.zone 5 points 10 months ago

See, i'm fine with less class options but I just can't go back to the stand-still & swing-til-one-side-falls-over meta of PF1e and 5e. If I could install the style meter from DMC into my TTRPGs, I would.

[-] zombiecalypse@feddit.ch 8 points 10 months ago

If you're serious: The Wushu system gives you one die per description element, so you literally get better the more dynamically you describe the scene!

[-] frauddogg@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 10 months ago

Oh I'm so lifting this as a house rule for my PF tables.

[-] sirblastalot@ttrpg.network 7 points 10 months ago

See, I think I have a lot of that in my games, but it's an undocumented duty of the DM. D&D can be very stand-and-deliver if you're doing theatre of the mind combat without much scene-setting, but it also becomes very tactical and/or swashbuckling if you describe the area in detail. Or, even better, use visual aids like a battle map. It really all comes down to: the players can't swing from the chandelier if they don't know there's a chandelier.

[-] AlolanYoda@mander.xyz 5 points 10 months ago

It finally clicked for me why I love 5e's combat so much (as the only TTRPG I've played - still a newbie!), while other people always criticize it. It's because my DM is awesome and keeps including visual aids, descriptions, and ways to make the combat dynamic such as using the environment either against the players or against the enemies!

[-] sirblastalot@ttrpg.network 6 points 10 months ago

The best DMs are a treasure; they can make anything fun.

I think "good" systems (from a DM's perspective anyway) are the ones that make that job take a the minimum amount of effort; If I need a monster, I can make a statblock, but if the system includes a monster manual that has it for me, I can spend that prep time on some other encounter. Likewise, having just enough lore, such that I can grab elements and inspiration, but not so much that I have to exhaustively research it, is a huge benefit.

From a player's perspective, I guess my priorities would be a system that isn't actively frustrating to use, and one that I can have a pretty good understanding of the likelihood of whether any particular choice will succeed or fail. Doesn't have to be perfect knowledge, just so long as I have the chance to make a meaningful decision between my options.

[-] frauddogg@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

If I'm honest, the literal only reason I still prefer Pathfinder over 5e is because a bunch of my go-to favorite classes don't exist and can't reliably be translated to 5e without a lot of kludging or just outright sawing pieces off and sanding the stumps down. 5e does play rather streamlined, and with a good DM, it goes from good to fantastic; but it's still a matter of 'where are my oracles, kineticists, soulknives, gunslingers, and swashbucklers?'

I just don't like playing base, core, or big four.

[-] HipsterTenZero@dormi.zone 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I appreciate that kind of stuff when its there. I also really like codified abilities and techniques I can pull off independent of the GM's current narration. I've got a little hedgehog dude in pf2e I'm playing with explicit benefits from doing cool and varied moves in battle. With strong reasons to swap between weapons, taunt, feint, spindash around and generally style on enemies, I find i've always really nice tools to keep combat engaging and to ratchet up the drama and tension from the player's side.

[-] Aski@ttrpg.network 3 points 9 months ago

D&D 3.5 also had a couple classes, TBH my favorite edition to make literally any kind of build.

this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2024
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