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Ladybird said:
The thing is, they haven't really done that. 5.5 is looking like a mess that doesn't have it's own identity or really improve on 5. It's just a thing to buy. Or not buy? It's up to you. Or is it?

I genuinely don't know, outside of "quick we need a new core book", what problem 5.5 is trying to solve.
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"We need something to fully exploit the game's 50th Anniversary, and 5E has already been around for a decade ... "
 
Ladybird said:
The thing is, they haven't really done that. 5.5 is looking like a mess that doesn't have it's own identity or really improve on 5. It's just a thing to buy. Or not buy? It's up to you. Or is it?

I genuinely don't know, outside of "quick we need a new core book", what problem 5.5 is trying to solve.
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To be clear I don't really buy the idea that they're having any real plan to allign D&D rules & video gaming. I thought I had seen some WOTC person say they would steal some stuff from Larian's implementation, and that's it. I expect glorified note taking at best. Actually doing aligning two mediums as part of core design would require investment, creativity and vision - currencies they've been bankrupt in for a while, and digging lower now to cut corners.

And yes I agree about the total lack of identity. 5e was already weird on that point and reeks of design by comittee/checklist/reddit and 5.5 seems like reheated 5e with more reddit feedback and possibly BG3 checklist.
 
Ladybird said:
The thing is, they haven't really done that. 5.5 is looking like a mess that doesn't have it's own identity or really improve on 5. It's just a thing to buy. Or not buy? It's up to you. Or is it?

I genuinely don't know, outside of "quick we need a new core book", what problem 5.5 is trying to solve.
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According to the general consensus elsewhere all forms of summoning, counterspell, druid wildshape, and something about rogues needed a kick in the balls. A fighters, monks, and some barbarian subclasses get minor quality of life fixes. Monsters get more elemental damage instead of 'counts as a magic weapon' so that barbarians take more damage. Npc casters get fewer spells and more non-spell fireball/lightning bolt substitutions. And characters all get feats at first level.
 
I wanted to see what's new, and that article seems to have a sort of recent comprehensive list
https://www.dicebreaker.com/games/one-dandd/how-to/one-dnd-changes

TL; DR
-they add stronghold rules (surely not inpired by Matt Colville's book)
-bringing back more feats at various levels & possibly epic feats
-put the Tasha things in the base rules
-tried and failed to reorganize classes
-make barb rage useful outside of combat (probably a good idea tbh)
-new subclasses
-druids have subclasses linked to specific biomes (dumb idea)
-tweaks that seem mostly pointless and reddit feedback -driven
-idk, got bored mid-article
 
My writing was ugly, but legible till I got into TTRPGs. I didn't really care much about writing (or academic stuff) till then. Once I did, my writing improved significantly. But I realized that I actually could write block letters about as fast as cursive, and only got faster the more I practiced. And block letters were more legible and presentable for purposes of sharing my game notes (I wrote a LOT of house rules and such). So I ditched cursive completely and never looked back.

Once I got a computer and learned how to type I wrote my notes in digital format instead. Then I either emailed or printed (or both) them for play. But my handwriting atrophied somewhat and my hand gets tired when I write by hand.

RE: the whatever they might call the next totally not a new edition of D&D: I don't think any of us are the target audience, but I don't mind much any of the potential changes I've seen floating around. Though, I stopped keeping track after the OGL fiasco.

I like the idea of feats, so I would grant everyone a free feat at level 1 as a house rule, even if they don't make it an official rule. The problem with feats is implementation. And their implementation in 5e (or whatever I saw in the early totally not 6e playtest material) is not that bad. 3e was horribad, though. Never played 4e, so don't know about that one.

But making feats in 5e a default rule is not gonna stop me from getting the next not new edition of D&D. Lack of funds, or WotC being WotC will.
 
Feats are basically considered a default rule in practice now anyway. From what I remember WotC's own research revealed that almost everyone used feats.

There were some admirable attempts, most likely from Mike Mearls, to change the culture of D&D in some positive ways with 5e, but they didn't stick either with the fan base or with WotC.
 
I will note that nearly every player who sat at my tables for the ~5 years I ran games in Adventurer's League used Feats. Bounded accuracy means it's not really required to get to that vaunted 18 or 20 stat value, and I didn't notice much of a culture of people being insulted for "only" having say a 16 in their classes premier stat.

And the value of a given feat for a given build was often seen as just better than that +2 to stat.

I think the game overall is worse off because of feats and feat bloat. It adds a bunch of extra complexity and exception based rules into the game. Its one reason why I made the shift backward towards B/X style rules. Those rules have fewer exception based components, on average.
 
I'm partial to how feats were done in 13th Age or Castles and Crusades.

In 13th Age they're mostly linked to class features as small optional ways to improve them, so you get to make at least one genuine choice each time you level up. It also shows that one of the big problems with 3e and 4e feats was not the mechanics (although in many case it was that too) but the presentation*.

In Castles and Crusades they're at the back of the DMs book and are basically just ways to swap out class features for alternate options so that if someone really wants to play a character who goes into a berserker rage and have it reflected mechanically they can.

*Presentation is a hugely underrated aspect of D&D. The big one that sticks in my mind was when people complained in 3e about "Dead levels". In some cases that made sense - levels in which Fighters did not gain feats were essentially dead - but the idea of Clerics or Sorcerers having dead levels was purely based on the fact that getting new spells wasn't written in the column under class features. Yet this was considered such a problem that Pathfinder went and fully bloated out both those classes.
 
TJS said:
*Presentation is a hugely underrated aspect of D&D. The big one that sticks in my mind was when people complained in 3e about "Dead levels". In some cases that made sense - levels in which Fighters did not gain feats were essentially dead - but the idea of Clerics or Sorcerers having dead levels was purely based on the fact that getting new spells wasn't written in the column under class features. Yet this was considered such a problem that Pathfinder went and fully bloated out both those classes.
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Fighters in 3e technically also got +1 AB and 1d10hp (one of the highest HD type) per level. So not even that was entirely accurate—saying that fighters had dead levels. I'm not sure any class truly had dead levels back then, if you looked closely enough. But I haven't read them in years, so not 100% on that.

In 5e you only get +1 Proficiency Bonus each 4 levels above 1. So I can see the case for having to give something else to every class each level there.

RE: Feats & Exception Based Mechanics. I can see the complaint for that, but it depends on what people even mean by that (especially considering that D&D arguably has a lot of exception based mechanics baked into it regardless). I hate the idea of locking certain combat options that should be available to everyone behind a feat, for example. But someone needing a feat to be better at dual wielding is fine by me.
 
VisionStorm said:
My writing was ugly, but legible till I got into TTRPGs. I didn't really care much about writing (or academic stuff) till then. Once I did, my writing improved significantly. But I realized that I actually could write block letters about as fast as cursive, and only got faster the more I practiced. And block letters were more legible and presentable for purposes of sharing my game notes (I wrote a LOT of house rules and such). So I ditched cursive completely and never looked back.

Once I got a computer and learned how to type I wrote my notes in digital format instead. Then I either emailed or printed (or both) them for play. But my handwriting atrophied somewhat and my hand gets tired when I write by hand.
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Up until that moment, that post could as well have been written by me:grin:!
 
:madgoose: Your loops are not touching the right line. Do it again!
:crygoose: My middle finger has a bunion the size of a peanut!
:madgoose: More space inside your loops! Ten times each word!
:crygoose: But it's the digital age!
:madgoose: And when society falls apart it'll be all your fault we couldn't rebuild it back to what it was! Keep writing, no one can read that chicken scratch!
 
EmperorNorton said:
I always use my tablet for character sheets when playing in person games because I write things by hand so little that my handwriting has atrophied to the point of uselessness.
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I like using Google docs for character sheets. That way they can be shared with the GM, so both player and GM have ready access to the current state of the character.
Ladybird said:
I don't think my daughter has been.

I was taught cursive, but one day at school (97ish?) I just realised "nobody cared and this is making my writing worse," so I just stopped and have never looked back.
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Because cursive aspires to be decorative, sloppy cursive looks so much worse than sloppy print.
TJS said:
Most people just scribble initials I believe. I do have a standard signature but no one has actually checked it against anything in decades, and half the time nowadays when I sign something it's on a glass surface so my muscle memory for my signature doesn't work anyway.
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Yeah, when those UPS stylus things came along, I realized nobody actually cared about signatures so I just began randomly wiggling my pen as my signature.
Exploderwizard said:
There are no tech issues with pen & paper. It just works.
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interrupted-line-pencil-with-broken-point.jpg

The other tech issue with pencils comes up in drawing. The declining sharpness as you draw affects your line weight.
Urdlen's best boy said:
-tweaks that seem mostly pointless and reddit feedback -driven
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SavAce said:
Same. Overall, on one side is a variety of diversity/sensitivity concerned tweaks, on the other side is a bunch of mechanical rebalancing tweaks. Given the shape of how WotC/Hasbro work, it's not like a strong vision from a game designer of a bold new take, or anything like that. It's by a committee of whoever hasn't been fired yet. Seems like, if you enjoy 5e, maybe you'll like some of the balance/class refresh stuff, and it's down to how much you care about that part.
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That's my biggest issue with what I have seen. I like RPGs that are designed, but this just feels like they gathered a wishlist and followed it. Most of the reasons 3E sucked were because they slavishly followed what their survey told them people wanted, even if those things were contradictory.

Fortunately, I am burned out on D&D in general at the moment. It's nothing against the game. I've had a lot of fun with D&D, but I'm just tired of the constraints its fundamental design puts on play.
Self Saboteur said:
I like feats and use them but is it weird I really dislike the term Feat and prefer Talent for the exact same purpose?
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Same here. I've hated the term since 3E first came out.
 
Baulderstone said:
I like using Google docs for character sheets. That way they can be shared with the GM, so both player and GM have ready access to the current state of the character.

Because cursive aspires to be decorative, sloppy cursive looks so much worse than sloppy print.

Yeah, when those UPS stylus things came along, I realized nobody actually cared about signatures so I just began randomly wiggling my pen as my signature.

interrupted-line-pencil-with-broken-point.jpg

The other tech issue with pencils comes up in drawing. The declining sharpness as you draw affects your line weight.


That's my biggest issue with what I have seen. I like RPGs that are designed, but this just feels like they gathered a wishlist and followed it. Most of the reasons 3E sucked were because they slavishly followed what their survey told them people wanted, even if those things were contradictory.

Fortunately, I am burned out on D&D in general at the moment. It's nothing against the game. I've had a lot of fun with D&D, but I'm just tired of the constraints its fundamental design puts on play.

Same here. I've hated the term since 3E first came out.
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Analog pencil sharpeners work just fine and continue being useful following an EMP attack or power outage.
 
I don’t mind feats as they currently are in 5E. I’m in two campaigns (one I run, one I play), and out of the 13 total characters, only 3 have taken a feat and those were specific to how they wanted their characters to feel in play.

So we don’t feel feats are absolutely necessary nor completely useless. Which is exactly as it should be.

The idea of returning to feat trees in 6E turns me off completely. But then, I’ve been running this campaign for three and a half years now and I’m starting to burn out on D&D again. So I expect that I’ll wrap this campaign up in 2024 and skip 6E entirely.

And even if I keep running this campaign to level 20, which is at least another two years of play, I see no reason to change systems at all.
 
robertsconley said:
WotC knew exactly what they were doing and did a lot of things right from 2014 to 2016. But the churn continued and the staff changed and the newcomers thought they could do better and starting to repeat the mistakes of previous editions.
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This is definitely the impression I get from things I am seeing
 
burbles said:
OK, left of field question here from an old fogey - if you (and the children cited) don't use cursive, then how can you write your signature?

Do you just write block letters, or use the equivalent of a Japanese hanko or something?

Edited to add:
I know that cheques are being phased out of the Australian banking system (so that the number of times you sign something has reduced), but you still need it for passports and other identity documents.
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To answer your first question, skill with cursive is not necessary for a legal signature, at least in the US. In my experience, the majority of post-cursive signers make a scribble that vaguely resembles a name and call it good. Furthermore, folks who are disabled or illiterate still need to sign contracts from time to time - for them a clear distinctive signature is out of the question.

Even though checks are going the way of the dodo and e-signatures have been a thing ever since the E-Sign Act in 2000, physical or "wet" signatures are still relevant for documents that require notarization. There are logistical, bureaucratic, security, and technological challenges to getting documents notarized electronically across all 50 states.

Source: I have worked in a relevant industry for the past ten years.
 
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Brock Savage said:
To answer your first question, skill with cursive is not necessary for a legal signature, at least in the US. In my experience, the majority of post-cursive signers make a scribble that vaguely resembles a name and call it good. Furthermore, folks who are disabled or illiterate still need to sign contracts from time to time - for them a clear distinctive signature is out of the question.

Even though checks are going the way of the dodo and e-signatures have been a thing ever since the E-Sign Act in 2000, physical or "wet" signatures are going to be around for a while. There are logistical, bureaucratic, security, and technological challenges to getting everyone signing electronically.

Source: I have worked in a relevant industry for the past ten years.
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A large part of my job involves having people sign things, and it's rare that I don't use e-signing. In fact, it's annoying when I can't rely on e-signing. I need to print out the document I prepared on my computer. I need to physically meet the signer. I need to go home and scan the document. Then I need to upload into our document system.

Also with esigning, it's going to make sure every page gets initialed. It sucks to have one missing initial on p. 16 that you need to run back and get.

And when I say document, it's usually around 30 pages or so. so it's a big waste.
 
Baulderstone said:
A large part of my job involves having people sign things, and it's rare that I don't use e-signing. In fact, it's annoying when I can't rely on e-signing. I need to print out the document I prepared on my computer. I need to physically meet the signer. I need to go home and scan the document. Then I need to upload into our document system.

Also with esigning, it's going to make sure every page gets initialed. It sucks to have one missing initial on p. 16 that you need to run back and get.

And when I say document, it's usually around 30 pages or so. so it's a big waste.
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I should have specified that wet signatures will be required for notarized documents. Getting all 50 states to adopt electronic notarizations could be challenging. I will update the OG post

I agree that e-sigs are easy-peasy for transactions that don't require notarizations; I assume they are purchase agreements in your case. Even for mundane document signings I have experienced institutional inertia and push back from boomers who don't trust it.
 
Brock Savage said:
I agree that e-sigs are easy-peasy for transactions that don't require notarizations; I assume they are purchase agreements in your case. Even then there is tremendous institutional inertia and push back from old people who don't trust it. I should have specified that wet signatures will be required for notarized documents. Getting all 50 states to adopt electronic notarizations could be challenging. I will update the OG post
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Just to be clear, I wasn't disagreeing with your post, just adding my own experience, which is real estate in New Jersey (every state in the US has its own real estate laws, so I have no idea about elsewhere). I fully believe there are plenty of areas where e-signing has not been adopted.
 
Endless Flight said:
I think anything that proves your identity should require a “wet” signature but anything else, not really.
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The challenge is that many important transactions need notarization which requires a notary to positively identify the signer* and witness the signature. Even though my former industry is pushing it hard, remote online notarization is not legal in all states and even then it can be a hassle to make it happen.

*The notary may also refuse the notarization of the signer appears to be confused, disoriented, coerced, intoxicated etc.
 
Baulderstone said:
Just to be clear, I wasn't disagreeing with your post, just adding my own experience, which is real estate in New Jersey (every state in the US has its own real estate laws, so I have no idea about elsewhere). I fully believe there are plenty of areas where e-signing has not been adopted.
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It's a mess. The laws regarding the signing of various contracts and transactions varies wildly from state to state; even though I worked with all 50 of them it would be impossible to keep all of them in my head.
 
Baulderstone said:
The ship has indeed sailed. In trying to be everything to everyone, D&D has gone to a place where it has all the mechanical design headaches of skill-based games and class-based games while not providing what I like about either.
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Oh I definitely get they have to please a broad audience. Honestly 5E seemed to succeed pretty well at that (it brought a lot of people back to D&D who left after 4E and it even brought in a number of OSR people). Again I don't really play 5E much so can't really weigh in too much on it, but I was fine with it the times i played it (to me it seems better than 3E or 4E in terms of having the things I want). I'd rather play older editions at this point (I think once I fell off with 4E, I felt less of a need to play the latest edition of D&D)
 
I definitely only want realism in my elf games. No way dragons as depicted can fly. I think D&D does a disservice to the entire hobby by putting flying dragons into the game.

Oh, and how can any rule set be exceptional if it isn't leaning into exception based design.

:clown::tongue:
 
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