I Grew Up With D&D, Now I Want to Grow Out With 5E

I have grown up with Dungeons & Dragons.  Now three decades later I want to grow out with D&DNext, or 5^th Edition, or whatever we are calling it today.  What I mean by that is I want my game to grant my players the ability to deal with more situations effectively, rather than just slapping on plusses, to Armor Class, Base Attack, Damage, and Saves.  I know that some gamers may enjoy that but since the threat level scales with your character I never felt all that much more powerful or competent.  When a PC has the abilities to deal with a variety of encounters, challenges, and situations and not just bonuses to reflect power you will end up with longevity in your system.  Perhaps if powers and feats would have been built with this in mind 4^th Edition would have had more traction, and a new edition wouldn’t be on the way.  I will explain what I mean by all this in greater detail now.

Receiving static bonuses across the board that add to my ability to hit and damage have rarely made my characters feel more powerful.  This is probably because the monster that I was battling always had scaling hit points and defenses.  This is true of D & D historically and Pathfinder as well.  It probably applies to many other systems as well.  I hope the designers and playtesters cure it with the 5^th Edition.  I always tried to think about why my higher level character never crossed paths with lower level opponents.  I justified that the intelligent beings could tell just how powerful I was from the sight of me and knew better.  The unintelligent beings were just lucky to have not crossed my path.  I always questioned why a higher level adventurer wouldn’t just follow up on plot hooks from when they were lower level and go and loot dungeons, crypts, and abandoned keeps.  Sure the gold and magic would be less but so would the threats.  Just a boring way to go about things and stories of legend are rarely boring.

I felt that D&D was on to something in 4^th Edition with utility powers and skill utility powers.  These allowed PC’s to select from a variety of powers to help them overcome the problems in front of them.  Unfortunately the really cool ones fell to the way side and the ones that affected your character in combat were the only ones selected the majority of the time.  I think if you look up the skill utility City Rat and the class utility Invigorating Stride you will see how this was a good theory but did not implement as successfully as the designers would have liked.  Both are encounter powers but they are not equal whatsoever.  City Rat allows you to use a Streetwise check in place of a Stealth check against any enemies you have cover against at the end of a move as a free action.  That is a nice little extra ability for a warlock perhaps.  Invigorating Stride allows you to shift you Wisdom modifier as a move action as long as you don’t shift adjacent to an enemy and second wind at the same time.  Sure Invigorating Stride is a Ranger Class Utility and not available to other classes but the other classes all have their own version of clear cut choices.  Why on Oerth would you take anything else if you were a ranger?

The same sort of theory applies to feats.  There are many amazing feats but some of them will keep your character alive longer than others in most circumstances.  I never saw a player at first level select Camouflage in place of Weapon Focus or Expertise.  I never saw any player take Camouflage.  It is a +5 Stealth Bonus when you are outdoors and have any cover or concealment.  This is a situational bonus as you have to be out of doors and have cover.  The weapon feats on the other hand are used in nearly every round of every encounter of your characters career.  Feats that stack bonuses for attacks, damages, saves, and AC build your character up but don’t necessarily make your character any more interesting.  Camouflage would build your character out and Weapon Focus and Expertise feats build your character up.

The upward build with piles of crunch seem to shorten edition life.  3^rd Edition D&D was the first edition to introduce true player options from the start of the edition with feats and open multi-classing.  4^th Edition came closer behind third than any previous edition had come to its predecessor.  4^th Edition is filled with crunch, feats, powers, backgrounds, themes, paragon paths, epic destinies, etc.  The shelf life between 4E and the 5E is the shortest shelf life yet.  When you build characters up instead of out you handcuff the DM to challenge the party as much.  Encounters that should require some thought, cunning, and bravery to overcome become watered down into hitting the enemy as hard and as fast as you can.

I have had hundreds and hundreds of hours of fun playing 4^th Edition D&D and am excited about the playtest for DDNext.  We need to take the positive from each edition and polish it like a gnome jeweler and then use those mechanics, concepts, and ideas to build a new edition of the most beloved rpg of all time.  If monsters and threats don’t scale then characters don’t need to scale and can grow outwards and possibly only slightly upward during a whole adventuring career.  My favorite heroes could always handle any situation but not always by superior firepower and defenses.  Do you like your characters to grow up or out?  Let me know what you think.  Until next time, Roll Hard!