D&D (2024) Do you plan to adopt D&D5.5One2024Redux?

Micah Sweet said:

Best in what way? What makes it "best" to you? I can't see that in any sense beyond subjective preference, so what about 5.2 makes it better to you than everything else?

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Maxperson said:

I didn't play 4e so I had to look that up. This is not the same issue. Are they both kinda sorta under the header of fun? Yep. The entire game is. Having someone roll to hit a door, though, isn't the same as encountering guards at the gate. I've known many, many DMs who have gate guards, but not one that has had someone roll to stab a door. At least not outside the rare joke roll that wasn't to see anything other than answer, "You hit the door" no matter what was rolled.

The gate guard advice, by the way, is bad advice. Gate guards are a fantastic resource for the PCs when arriving at a new city. The guards ask them where they are from and what they are doing and then usher them inside. It takes all of 10-30 seconds. UNLESS!!!! The players want to know where something is. Often they will ask the name of a good tavern, or where the blacksmith is, or... If the encounter with the guards goes longer than 30 seconds, it's because the players wanted it to be longer. Once the group is familiar with a city, the guards can and should be ignored unless important to the story somehow.

Good gate guard advice would have been advice on when to encounter the guards and when not to, as well as advice on length of time for such an encounter and ways that the guards can help the PCs.

The 4e DMG, though, telling players that it's bad wrong fun to have a good encounter with guards at the gate. It is straight up saying that all gate guard encounters aren't fun.

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Shardstone said:

Micah, I'm not going to preface every post I make with "this is my opinion." Please stop asking me to add in the words "this is my opinion" to every statement I make.

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Cadence said:

5e Monster Manual View attachment 362005

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Any mention in the DMG?

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Crimson Longinus said:

@Hussar I agree that most of the stuff in the game should be "about something." Not everything, some bits can be adding flavour, but most of the time characters should be doing something consequential. But sometimes those "pointless side quests" can become satisfying stories in their own right.

One thing I've grown tired of RPGs in particular but in other media too are massive and overarching "main plots." I have come to appreciate episodic storytelling. If you have a big main story you follow for who knows many sessions (or episodes of a TV show) and then the campaign/show gets cancelled or the ending happens but just is bad, it kinda feels you wasted your time and it a bit retroactively spoils the things you liked about the previous sessions/episodes.

But in more episodic format where there are several consecutive smaller stories, linked by same characters and the setting, this obviously cannot happen. You will have several smaller endings, several short but completed stories. And if some of those are not that great, it doesn't really spoil those which were.

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James Gasik said:

You need "this is my opinion" as your signature, maybe.

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Maxperson said:

Yeah. I recently came to the conclusion that my next time out DMing will be episodic, rather than have a grand plot.

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Vaalingrade said:

We should just have the site auto-append 'this is my opinion' to every post just to end all the pedantic derails to inform people that the opinion they're stating is their opinion.

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James Gasik said:

Nobles are monsters if you are intended to fight them. Nobles are NPC's if you're intended to interact with them non-violently. A Noble can be both, or switch from one to the other depending on circumstances.

I just find the MM quote to be hilarious because the official definition of a monster is so all-encompassing it could actually mean the PC's are monsters (and I suppose, to the monsters, they are!).

The reality is simple- if you want your Noble to have combat stats, you use a stat block. In every edition of the game, you'd do that. But only rarely as a "Noble". Until the Aristocrat class was created, most nobles you'd find statted up in D&D had class levels, like the King of Cormyr in the Forgotten Realms being a 20th level Cavalier (?!). And often, these stats were to keep players from just assassinating leaders of state, lol.

It wasn't until 4e, and now 5e, that you'd have a generic "Noble" monster.

So moving away from that, there's now the issue of what being a noble means in D&D. Is a Barbarian Chieftain, the son of the old Chief, and the son of the Chief before him a noble? Would his daughter be a Barbarian princess and thus a noble, despite the fact that she can lop a man's head off with an axe?

Is a Frost Giant Jarl a noble? An Archdevil? How about the wealthy mayor of a town?

Is being a noble in a setting the result of the Divine Right of Kings? Do you have to be 2/3 God and one part Man? Or are you just a worshiped as a God?

Can you buy your way into the aristocracy or be granted a Knighthood? Is Conan a noble because he sat down on a throne and declared himself King?

There's no "one size fits all" description here, which does give a lot of weight to the argument that the Noble Background might not work when you interact with a culture you're not a part of. Is the Daimyo of House Kakita going to accept that this "round-eyed white demon" is actually a Noble from a distant land? Would it matter if he did?

The Background Features are written for a game where there is some mystical quality that sets a noble apart- it's a staple of Western European folklore. In The Matter of England or the Matter of France, there is something special about nobles, and most people recognize that on sight.

What's interesting is that not all D&D worlds are like that. Being a King isn't a big deal in the Forgotten Realms- having an army is! Just ask the Tuigan. But walk into the Kryptwood and Old Gnawbone will devour you the same as he would anyone else!

Being a King isn't particularly special in most D&D settings (Birthright being a notable exception) in of itself. So yeah, the background does kind of stick out like a sore thumb- it works if that's the kind of game you're running. But the feature (and the DMG) are written in a way that ways "this is how this works in D&D" as a general statement. Very strange.

Now me personally, I don't mind the players having special destinies and people noticing that there's more to that "moisture farmer" or "assistant pig-keeper" than meets the eye. The concept of being a Ta'veren is fine with me (I'd draw the line at a Kwisatz Haderach though)...to a point.

And that point is, when one player's story runs the risk of taking too much spotlight, or interfering with another's. As Matt Colville once quoted about something a friend said, "I didn't realize D&D is a game where your fun could be ruined by someone else's fun".

But all that having been said, if you don't want PC's who are inherently special, and have to earn their legend from scratch, something like the Noble Background isn't going to work out as written.

Whoever came up with the Backgrounds Concept was coming from a place where WotC was willing to define what D&D is. Which as we know, they quickly backed away from.

D&D is just a system of rules, man. The game is what you make of it.

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James Gasik said:

Sure, but at the same time, the Monster Manual defines everything as a monster.
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