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[Flying Dice]

We literally just rerailed after the same old fucking edition wars argument. I'll take no part in this one beyond saying to take it somewhere else.

[Arcvasti]

We literally just rerailed after the same old fucking edition wars argument. I'll take no part in this one beyond saying to take it somewhere else.

Yeah, you're probably right. Spoilered it on general principle. If anyone actually wants to talk about it, PM me.I do not promise to respond to your PM, however.

[Neonivek]

Well don't worry the whole "They have a bajillion source books" issue hit 5e pretty hard anyway and already.

Especially since they are already making archtypes for the classes.

Then again they HAVE to make archtypes because "classes" are no where close to as freeform anymore.

[scriver]

What? Classes in DnD where never anywhere near freeform.

[Neonivek]

What? Classes in DnD where never anywhere near freeform.

Fighter, Rogue, Ranger

Sure they weren't "freeform" but they offered a bit more construction options be default.

[Flying Dice]

I don't get what you're saying about splatbooks; one of the big (and more successful, IMO) design goals of 5e was to condense material into fewer books to avoid the ten bajillion books (and highly variable balance) of 3.xe.

I think that the archetypes and backgrounds are only painfully less freeform (as opposed to slightly/moderately) in 5e if you're utterly unimaginative. The way they're set up, it's not too difficult to build houseruled ones, especially for the classes where such things are relevant. I like the system in 5e because it makes characters more mechanically consistent and easier to track than in 3.xe where you're picking and choosing a crapload of ACFs, specialized class variants, &c. from a bunch of different books.

Same deal as before, 3.xe is better if you want outright shenanigans and a character creation process akin to grabbing a ten-gallon bucket of Lego, while 5e is better if you want something that's relatively straightforward to set up (and not 4e) without discarding too much silliness and a character creation process akin to picking which mini you want to use and a set of paints. Both have their merits and both are fun.

[Neonivek]

Sure Flying Dice and while your at it the ultimate system is a blank sheet of paper.

You CANNOT give credit to a system for a lack of a feature.

You cannot give it credit for having these options by not having them. It needs to stand on its own two legs.

[My Name is Immaterial]

Hold on, explain to me how Rangers had more construction options.

[Flying Dice]

...What are you even arguing for or against, here? It does stand on its own two legs, but if you're picky and don't like the way it does things, you can change them or add to it. If you're trying to argue that a group modifying a system to suit their own tastes or rebalance it makes the system bad, I don't understand why you like 3.xe.

Have you ever even built a 3.ex character in that fashion? It's a royal pain in the ass, most of the features you're grabbing aren't properly balanced with core, and they're going to create a character that makes zero sense as anything except a statblock with a name tacked on. 5e's character creation, I'd argue, is inherently superior in terms of supporting roleplay. It allows you to optimize for a specific role in a way that contributes towards a coherent personality, history, and set of motivations. Any half-decently optimized 3.xe character is going to have stuff from half a dozen or more splatbooks, half of which clash with the campaign setting, and all of which are designed for a different sort of flavor.

Note that that's not bad, per se, but by your own argument it would be, because you have to make up a bunch of shit that contradicts the books just for the character to make sense. Personally, I'd suggest that, all other things being equal, a system where you can make an interesting, coherent, effective character with three books is better than one where you can make an incoherent mess of a rollplay-effective character from twenty books.

[Sergarr]

A half-decently optimized character is a wizard/cleric/druid with correct spells taken, and can be made solely in core.

It's only mundane characters that need massive exploitation through splat-books to turn them viable.

Flying Dice, do you usually play mundane characters?

[DoomOnion]

I have only one thing to say to this argument.

If you want character building freedom, DnD isn't the place to do it. It's always been about min maxing and efficiency in terms of combat, and even crafting as I've seen a few people cheesing the system to literally double or triple their money with one crafting run.

Get GURPS.

[Flying Dice]

I play a fairly even mix. I usually don't play tier 1 characters, apart from Wizards here and there. On the list of characters I've made that actually ended up in games in the past year or two, including both 3.xe and 5e, I've got: 1 Rogue, 2 Daring Outlaw Rogue/Swashbucklers, 1 Barbarian, 1 Barbarian/Fighter, 1 Monk/Psywar, 3 Wizards, 1 Sorcerer, 1 Scout, 1 Ranger, 2 Warlocks, and 1 Warblade. I've also made but never played a couple Paladins, a Knight, a Druid, and an assortment of unfleshed stuff.

Of those... I can't honestly peg any of the 3.5e characters as having used nothing except core materials. Maybe the Wizard that was a generalist, but that still plucked some spells from non-core.

--

That aside, we weren't talking about viability, we were talking about building a character the way we wanted to build them, i.e. in line with a certain motif or to fill a specific role. What I was getting at is that 3.ex does that by providing a mountain of splatbooks for piecemeal customization, where 5e does it by giving you some commonly-used archetypes which double as templates for making further ones to suit individual preferences.

Neither's bad, but they're certainly different, and each is better at certain things than the other.


e: GURPS comes with its own problems. It's further towards the end of the spectrum Neo was criticizing earlier in terms of making players work to make the system be what they need rather than having the options already there. The system's also more tuned for very general roleplay -- if a group is looking specifically for heroic fantasy, GURPS isn't the answer.

[DoomOnion]

Not necessarily, what is generic roleplay anyway? Shopping for groceries?

GURPS is the rule you go for when you want to design a character and have a gameplay where roleplay comes in first, and the system is there to make your character concept actually inter-lock with the game mechanics itself. So my wording may have been poor, but it's not like, GURPS is excessively shitty for anything not modern, you know what I mean?

DnD and GURPS are two vastly different rules, and I'm not here just to shill. I'm just saying DnD simply isn't for certain things like GURPS is very rules heavy and not suitable for casual onesie campaigns / scenarios. Ultimately, I'm saying you can't just say 5th e is bad because of certain things when in truth it's always been DnD's inherent problem.

edit: Editting to throw in more (potentially unnecessary defense for GURPS; You actually contradicted yourself. GURPS, like you and Neo said, is about making the system work for you. As in, it's very simulationist and takes every bit of that virtual reality you created for your characters down to numbers and algorithms that can be used to work out events and consequences of player choices and interactions. What you actually need as a GM to make the rule suited for you and your players is to choose which supplement to use, which in my opinion isn't exactly a downside.

[Neonivek]

Hold on, explain to me how Rangers had more construction options.

They had a construction split as well as some spell options that got expanded later on... AND familiar options that got expanded later on.

[My Name is Immaterial]

Hold on, explain to me how Rangers had more construction options.

They had a construction split as well as some spell options that got expanded later on... AND familiar options that got expanded later on.

You mean in splatbooks?