Funny you mention the “forgot to play test it” part with Skills and Powers. Thanks to the *brilliant* savvy of Lorraine Williams, there was no play testing allowed at TSR, because she didn’t want employees “playing on company time”
I've talked to the Old Guard about the TSR death spiral. And they never fail to bring that point up. With reactions varying from the thousand yard stare, fits of laughter or me having to make a saving throw against acid spray
Legolamb was the name of the elf I played in a comedy game we ran one Christmas. Played as a upper class toffee nosed git. Hearing you talk about legolamb gave me a flashback Thanks mr w.
I got tired of my players always playing the same few race + class combinations so I use a house rule that's halfway between the old and new. One of your attribute bonuses has to be in your racial stereotype attributes. The other can be in whatever you want. So, you can be that super strong warrior gnome with a +2 in strength but still have a +1 in a racial stereotype attribute, etc.
I just used a modified stat array of 16/15/14/12/10/8, basically no mater what Race/Class combo they choose they can at least have a 16 in the primary stat, two 16s if there was a bit of synergy, or three sixteens or even an 18 if there was really good synergy.
I felt exactly the same way about Beorn in the Hobbit movies! I understood they left him out of the 70s Hobbit animated movie (it was made for TV so the story had to be thrifted down, I understand) but if you're going to make the book into a sweeping epic at least leave in the cool bits from the actual book!
Sounds to me that Tasha's Cauldron is looking to turn D&D into GURPS easy mode edition, I could be wrong and I doubt it'll fix any of D&D 5th ed. problems or appease those who accuse it of being on the wrong side of history.
The funny thing about gurps is that if the game masters keen to focus on balance there's always a trade-off for power. And since the game focuses more on skills and you can adjust difficulties not so much by raw power by complexity in an encounter It can address some of the issues.
@@mostlyjoe That's just it though, it has no balance. From what I've read, a person can write up some inter-species mongrel like something straight of peak tumblr with all the pros and none of the cons
I feel like people treat DnD like a video game. You can always throw out what you dont like. If someone rolls up with Chad ThunderCock the dungeon destroyer, keep a murder mystery in your back pocket and make him spend 3 hours doing dialogue.
The % to raise stats is actually a nice thing I have to say, though it should be applied to every class and not just one class. In other words, that's how Fire Emblem works.
There's several systems that use that exact mechanic. And yes, if you apply it across the board is it good way to improve characters. The issue with the Cavalier was they were the only ones with that ability which caused them rapidly become better than everyone else
So, I have Tasha's and it's been a few years. Customize your Origin has been a horrible addition to the game. As an optional rule it's fine, however with Wizards basically turning it into the default for race design and even discontinuing old books so they can remake the races using their new standards has drastically screwed up the game. As it was you'd see standardized race/class combos for optimization but generally there'd be some variety in a party being composed of a few different races due to needing coverage what I saw it turn into was everyone picking which ever race could trivialize the campaign's theme or taking the Custom Race for a free feat. So far I've seen an all Goliath/Triton party in Icewind Dale and an all Tiefling party when going into the Inferno. Subclasses - Power Creep out the Wazoo. There's a couple where it's fine: Barbarian needed some decent subs to compete with Totem, Fighter had some nice additions, and Stars Druid while strong was a good choice in design philosophy to start using Wildshape as a resource for alternate subclass specific mechanics. However they gave Cleric the two most game breaking Subs in the game, and buffed the wizard AGAIN. Patrons was a neat concept, but ultimately not really as helpful as the Ravnica supplement on Guilds. Magic items were added, creating a lot of common magic items to add to the list from Xanathars, and while it's nice to have some minor magical swag to make a magic rich setting pop the power creep has hit here too. One is a better spell scroll the two others are about on par with minor feats. The DM tools it provides are mostly useless since it basically styles itself in the new WotC philosophy of coddling, handholding, and telling the DM to just make shit up. The only thing of real worth in the section and all anyone remembers it for is the Sidekick rules which, while useful, are incredibly plain and generic even for something that's supposed to be simplified.
I dunno why he called the Book of Weeaboo Fightan Magic that weird name. Is Mr. Welsh from France or something? "Book of Nine Swords"? Must've been a European locale title.
Tome of Battle actually IS good book though. The flavoring is a bit weeby, but if you wanted to avoid straight up becoming some martial wizard, you could limit yourself to straight up short range melee maneuvers like mountain hammer and the like.
5th edition was already dull and uninspired. Only your setting book can bring me back, at this point. Also, gestalt is just multi-class from AD&D. It was kind of annoying back then, but manageable. And if you didn't have Skills and Powers as DM only options, you were insane. That whole series as a dungeon master toolbox had some potential... But that's never how these things worked out.
Gestalt was useful if you didn't have enough players to cover the necessary roles for an adventure but yeah, definitely halve their XP gain or stick them on the slow XP track (in PF1 at least, I don't remember if 3e had different XP tracks) or something
I have quick question for you, sir. I just downloaded the PDF of Night’s Dark Terror from DriveThruRPG. It’s short quite a few maps. Where do you recommend I can get a PDF copy that is complete?
Legally I don't know of any. And the phanbased ones I was going to recommend seem to have been taken down. There's a few out there at atlas of mystara but it's not all of the maps and it's pretty spotty on which ones you're going to find. And all the takedowns seem to be recently
not to encourage sailing the high seas, but since you've already bought it, google "The Trove" (legally a 501(c)(3) library) their copy seems to have all the maps, though I don't have a point of reference to compare
@@burningbronze7555 fair enough, I mean it's not a perfect idea. But I guess it's something. Either that or keep the racial +2 and allow the +1 to put anywhere?
You can always play a game with alternative mechanics. One of my favorites is Chronicles of the Outlands by Better Games. Then there is always Amber Diceless. LOLZ!
frankly, I think 5e has more pressing matter it needs to address in its systems such as marshal classes being underpowered and shields and everything about them being an afterthought, seriously I once played a game where we all started a level 5 so our characters wouldn't get TPK'ed by the first mob we encountered and I still couldn't make a sword and board character worth a dam, why is using a shield offensively something you need to learn? finally, why is the barbarian shoehorned into being a dumb brute if every class has roots in an archetype from fantasy and mythology like the ranger is Aragorn/Legolam and the Bard someone like Odyessius or Hermes, why is the Barbarian who would probably be drawn from Robert E. Howard and Fritz Liber be stupid? all their characters are Philosophers, Conan and Kull in particular.
By the time I picked up skills and powers, I was already transitioning to generic systems like GURPS. So my case It was too little too late. Worse that the book was so poorly written and edited. And by that point it was blatantly obvious that they stopped play testing. Even more infuriating, all the fun setting materials that they were working on dried up going into the rehash of everything with 3rd edition. These days I'm starting to look more Runequest for entertainment.
I've got a lesser seen opinion of 5e. I don't hate it, but have grown apathetic to it. Each new book doesn't address my issues with the system. But rather than decry what I "hate" about it, I just stopped buying D&D products I don't have interest in. I'm not going to buy books I don't have faith in before really being convinced it's good enough for my dollars. I will argue with you on 1 point. To set aside all the Adventure modules for 1e/Basic D&D when discussing releases is a bit of bad faith. We're talking about dozens of books and among them that are considered legendary adventures. To discard things like Barrier peaks, tomb of horrors, temple of elemental Evil, and the Dragonlance adventures because they don't have the same production value as hardcover books made in the past five years is a bit disingenuous no? That's before we get into things like the box sets and softcover sourcebooks like Greyhawk and Lakhmar.
By production value I meant it's a lot easier to produce a 32-page black and white module than it is to create 128 page full color hardback. The quality of The Adventures of the first edition modules is legendary and I don't think we've had anything even come close and 5th edition in terms of originality or story.
@@Mr_Welch I agree wholeheartedly. I've personally started buying things like Dungeon Crawl Classics modules and adapted them to the 5e games I run because Module play is very different from the Campaign book play.
All in all, we're talking about a +2 and a -2 maybe. It's just not a big deal either way. It's also not a major statement about race or gender in America that my elf can have +2 constitution. It's fairly obvious where this is all going. Race selection will initially be a cosmetic choice and they'll write some racial feats for those who wanna lean in to being the most elven elf in elvendom.
Hell, racial bonuses have always been small precisely so a mostly cosmetic option can't effect game balance. If I have sociopolitical feelings about it, it's only that treating elves and dwarves with the weight of real world racial issues is foolhardy and unwise.
Game becomes overpowered. All races and classes become the same. Everyone stops playing because it's now just completely fucking stupid. Release new addition with only basic races and classes. Players demand more and more bells and whistles... Rinse. Repeat.
Funny you mention the “forgot to play test it” part with Skills and Powers. Thanks to the *brilliant* savvy of Lorraine Williams, there was no play testing allowed at TSR, because she didn’t want employees “playing on company time”
I've talked to the Old Guard about the TSR death spiral. And they never fail to bring that point up. With reactions varying from the thousand yard stare, fits of laughter or me having to make a saving throw against acid spray
Oh, I see someone already beat me to this sentiment.
7:08 I'm betting they didn't FORGET to playtest it, they weren't ALLOWED to playtest it because she who shall not be named was a giant tool.
Legolamb was the name of the elf I played in a comedy game we ran one Christmas.
Played as a upper class toffee nosed git.
Hearing you talk about legolamb gave me a flashback
Thanks mr w.
Unearthed Arcana in 1AD&D was one of my favorite books. I loved the barbarian.
loved and hated how they were antimagic! what was with all the polearms?
"...and when you remove the nostalgia, actually bad for the setting."
Hmm.....I wonder whatever you could be referencing.... *looks at psionics*
In defence of Tasha's having race creation rules, 1e did have a "Make your own Class" in Dragon magazine #109
Also in the DMG in 2nd edition. Didn't work well but it was there
I got tired of my players always playing the same few race + class combinations so I use a house rule that's halfway between the old and new. One of your attribute bonuses has to be in your racial stereotype attributes. The other can be in whatever you want. So, you can be that super strong warrior gnome with a +2 in strength but still have a +1 in a racial stereotype attribute, etc.
I just used a modified stat array of 16/15/14/12/10/8, basically no mater what Race/Class combo they choose they can at least have a 16 in the primary stat, two 16s if there was a bit of synergy, or three sixteens or even an 18 if there was really good synergy.
I felt exactly the same way about Beorn in the Hobbit movies! I understood they left him out of the 70s Hobbit animated movie (it was made for TV so the story had to be thrifted down, I understand) but if you're going to make the book into a sweeping epic at least leave in the cool bits from the actual book!
What was always a bad idea in D&D: PSIONICS
Pathfinder mostly solved the psionics problem. By dividing it into 6 separate classes
Sounds to me that Tasha's Cauldron is looking to turn D&D into GURPS easy mode edition, I could be wrong and I doubt it'll fix any of D&D 5th ed. problems or appease those who accuse it of being on the wrong side of history.
The funny thing about gurps is that if the game masters keen to focus on balance there's always a trade-off for power. And since the game focuses more on skills and you can adjust difficulties not so much by raw power by complexity in an encounter It can address some of the issues.
@@mostlyjoe That's just it though, it has no balance. From what I've read, a person can write up some inter-species mongrel like something straight of peak tumblr with all the pros and none of the cons
@@epicslacker9762 with diminishing returns due to the flattened math.
I feel like people treat DnD like a video game. You can always throw out what you dont like. If someone rolls up with Chad ThunderCock the dungeon destroyer, keep a murder mystery in your back pocket and make him spend 3 hours doing dialogue.
The % to raise stats is actually a nice thing I have to say, though it should be applied to every class and not just one class.
In other words, that's how Fire Emblem works.
There's several systems that use that exact mechanic. And yes, if you apply it across the board is it good way to improve characters. The issue with the Cavalier was they were the only ones with that ability which caused them rapidly become better than everyone else
@@Mr_Welch That much is certain!
Looking forward to your review of Tasha's Cauldron of Everything!
It took me a bit to realize Legolamb is a reference to the List. Good job Mr Welch.
So, I have Tasha's and it's been a few years.
Customize your Origin has been a horrible addition to the game. As an optional rule it's fine, however with Wizards basically turning it into the default for race design and even discontinuing old books so they can remake the races using their new standards has drastically screwed up the game. As it was you'd see standardized race/class combos for optimization but generally there'd be some variety in a party being composed of a few different races due to needing coverage what I saw it turn into was everyone picking which ever race could trivialize the campaign's theme or taking the Custom Race for a free feat. So far I've seen an all Goliath/Triton party in Icewind Dale and an all Tiefling party when going into the Inferno.
Subclasses - Power Creep out the Wazoo. There's a couple where it's fine: Barbarian needed some decent subs to compete with Totem, Fighter had some nice additions, and Stars Druid while strong was a good choice in design philosophy to start using Wildshape as a resource for alternate subclass specific mechanics. However they gave Cleric the two most game breaking Subs in the game, and buffed the wizard AGAIN.
Patrons was a neat concept, but ultimately not really as helpful as the Ravnica supplement on Guilds.
Magic items were added, creating a lot of common magic items to add to the list from Xanathars, and while it's nice to have some minor magical swag to make a magic rich setting pop the power creep has hit here too. One is a better spell scroll the two others are about on par with minor feats.
The DM tools it provides are mostly useless since it basically styles itself in the new WotC philosophy of coddling, handholding, and telling the DM to just make shit up. The only thing of real worth in the section and all anyone remembers it for is the Sidekick rules which, while useful, are incredibly plain and generic even for something that's supposed to be simplified.
I'm just playing ICRPG & Dungeon World over here...
I dunno why he called the Book of Weeaboo Fightan Magic that weird name. Is Mr. Welsh from France or something? "Book of Nine Swords"? Must've been a European locale title.
Tome of Battle actually IS good book though. The flavoring is a bit weeby, but if you wanted to avoid straight up becoming some martial wizard, you could limit yourself to straight up short range melee maneuvers like mountain hammer and the like.
5th edition was already dull and uninspired. Only your setting book can bring me back, at this point.
Also, gestalt is just multi-class from AD&D. It was kind of annoying back then, but manageable.
And if you didn't have Skills and Powers as DM only options, you were insane. That whole series as a dungeon master toolbox had some potential... But that's never how these things worked out.
Gestalt was useful if you didn't have enough players to cover the necessary roles for an adventure
but yeah, definitely halve their XP gain or stick them on the slow XP track (in PF1 at least, I don't remember if 3e had different XP tracks) or something
I have quick question for you, sir. I just downloaded the PDF of Night’s Dark Terror from DriveThruRPG. It’s short quite a few maps. Where do you recommend I can get a PDF copy that is complete?
Legally I don't know of any. And the phanbased ones I was going to recommend seem to have been taken down. There's a few out there at atlas of mystara but it's not all of the maps and it's pretty spotty on which ones you're going to find. And all the takedowns seem to be recently
not to encourage sailing the high seas, but since you've already bought it, google "The Trove" (legally a 501(c)(3) library)
their copy seems to have all the maps, though I don't have a point of reference to compare
I think a better implementation would be keep the racial +2 and allow changing the +1 based on class
Could work but what about classes with two or three base stats.
@@burningbronze7555 fair enough, I mean it's not a perfect idea. But I guess it's something. Either that or keep the racial +2 and allow the +1 to put anywhere?
@@Neshoba1337 that would be so easy to use that I could explain it to people.
Hey now with the book of nine swords I beat the big bad to death with a shield after my sword was turned into a bouquet of flowers
I get your perspective here, it probably won't fix 5e but it might improve bits of it.
You can always play a game with alternative mechanics. One of my favorites is Chronicles of the Outlands by Better Games. Then there is always Amber Diceless. LOLZ!
frankly, I think 5e has more pressing matter it needs to address in its systems such as marshal classes being underpowered and shields and everything about them being an afterthought, seriously I once played a game where we all started a level 5 so our characters wouldn't get TPK'ed by the first mob we encountered and I still couldn't make a sword and board character worth a dam, why is using a shield offensively something you need to learn? finally, why is the barbarian shoehorned into being a dumb brute if every class has roots in an archetype from fantasy and mythology like the ranger is Aragorn/Legolam and the Bard someone like Odyessius or Hermes, why is the Barbarian who would probably be drawn from Robert E. Howard and Fritz Liber be stupid? all their characters are Philosophers, Conan and Kull in particular.
Another great video Sir!
Good rumble.
By the time I picked up skills and powers, I was already transitioning to generic systems like GURPS. So my case It was too little too late. Worse that the book was so poorly written and edited. And by that point it was blatantly obvious that they stopped play testing. Even more infuriating, all the fun setting materials that they were working on dried up going into the rehash of everything with 3rd edition. These days I'm starting to look more Runequest for entertainment.
All I can say is...great video.
As someone who loves Greyhawk I’m like, woohoo
As someone who hates Woke D&D I’m like, oh nooooooooo!
I've got a lesser seen opinion of 5e. I don't hate it, but have grown apathetic to it.
Each new book doesn't address my issues with the system. But rather than decry what I "hate" about it, I just stopped buying D&D products I don't have interest in. I'm not going to buy books I don't have faith in before really being convinced it's good enough for my dollars.
I will argue with you on 1 point. To set aside all the Adventure modules for 1e/Basic D&D when discussing releases is a bit of bad faith. We're talking about dozens of books and among them that are considered legendary adventures. To discard things like Barrier peaks, tomb of horrors, temple of elemental Evil, and the Dragonlance adventures because they don't have the same production value as hardcover books made in the past five years is a bit disingenuous no? That's before we get into things like the box sets and softcover sourcebooks like Greyhawk and Lakhmar.
By production value I meant it's a lot easier to produce a 32-page black and white module than it is to create 128 page full color hardback. The quality of The Adventures of the first edition modules is legendary and I don't think we've had anything even come close and 5th edition in terms of originality or story.
@@Mr_Welch I agree wholeheartedly. I've personally started buying things like Dungeon Crawl Classics modules and adapted them to the 5e games I run because Module play is very different from the Campaign book play.
@Agent Milos I agree a bit.
We had things like The greyhawk Box set, Lankhmar, the first Forgotten Realms, Battlesystem, the atlas books, and more.
Fly home bubby I work alone
Tome of Battle wasn't a bad book though. What are you on about?
All in all, we're talking about a +2 and a -2 maybe. It's just not a big deal either way. It's also not a major statement about race or gender in America that my elf can have +2 constitution. It's fairly obvious where this is all going. Race selection will initially be a cosmetic choice and they'll write some racial feats for those who wanna lean in to being the most elven elf in elvendom.
Hell, racial bonuses have always been small precisely so a mostly cosmetic option can't effect game balance. If I have sociopolitical feelings about it, it's only that treating elves and dwarves with the weight of real world racial issues is foolhardy and unwise.
The first Hobbit movie was alright.
Game becomes overpowered. All races and classes become the same. Everyone stops playing because it's now just completely fucking stupid. Release new addition with only basic races and classes. Players demand more and more bells and whistles... Rinse. Repeat.
D&D is dead, 5e killed it, what’s played now is an abomination