Well you see, one time an evil wizard cast a spell on the whole world...
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laughs in WFRP profession progression
I bet some obsessive nerd has converted DND to point buy (like wod, gurps, etc) instead of class and level based.
You get XP for stuff, and you can spend that as you like on all the stuff you'd get from leveling. Follow the recommended route and get a standard looking fighter. Or go crazy and buy nothing but hit dice. Or make a glass cannon by buying all the sneak attack dice and second attack (in case you miss) and nothing else.
Or, per this meme, buy superiority dice and maneuvers, and then also buy extended crit from champion.
It would be a mess. I think part of why dnd is popular is its comparably small decision space. There's just not a lot of room to fuck up your character
Or just play one of those systems. GURPS is great.
I have a hard enough time finding people and a schedule for mainstream games. Where the hell am I going to find people who want to GURP with me?
Online I guess if you're into VTT. You could maybe poke around at a game shop, I've even seen bulletin boards in some where you can post flyers, some people use that to find a group.
Yeah, I mostly play Fate or nWoD. But a lot of people are really emotionally invested in D&D, so sometimes I think of ways to try to trick them into playing something different while they think they're still playing D&D.
I suppose I'm lucky enough to have enough friends into ttrpgs to build a group of players open to the system I like. I lost some who were emotionally invested in D&D, but frankly they were the least fun ones to play with (min-max munchkins and rules lawyers undercut by an unfamiliar system), so I'm not too upset about it. Plus I've been empowered with many more options for creative play, and blessed with players interested in creative play.
that is one way of making people try out other gamea
Because 5e is a simple game made for adolescents. It's easy to pick up, easy to build a character, and easy to run. The problem is once you start trying to do anything particularly interesting, it crumbles. It foists basically all mechanic decisions that aren't directly related to combat onto DM adjudication, and provides very little guidance. I mean, last I checked you have the option to be proficient with various sets of craft tools, but the system doesn't actually explain what that actually does mechanically.
If you want to make interesting character builds, you have to transition to a more detailed system. I'm partial to GURPS myself, but Pathfinder 2e is a nice middle ground of detail while still being fairly familiar to someone used to D&D.
I mean, last I checked you have the option to be proficient with various sets of craft tools, but the system doesn't actually explain what that actually does mechanically.
Chapter 8, "Between Adventures," "Downtime," "Crafting." Page 187 in the 2014 version of the Player's Handbook. It tells you exactly how long it takes and how much it costs to create items using artisans' tools. I concede that it's pretty generic and would benefit from some refinement, but it does explain what you can do, mechanically, with your proficiency in artisans' tools.
(If the 2024 version of the Player's Handbook removed this guidance then I'm not sure what to say, except that I don't personally consider that version to be "5e.")
Xanathar's Guide to Everything also has an extensive section in Chapter 2, beginning on page 78, that does a great job fleshing out each type of tool proficiency and providing novel ways to use them. I highly recommend that if you're interested in crafting.
It foists basically all mechanic decisions that aren't directly related to combat onto DM adjudication, and provides very little guidance.
The idea here is that the D&D ruleset is supposed to be permissive, not restrictive:
- permissive - anything not explicitly prohibited is allowed
- restrictive - anything not explicitly allowed is prohibited
The gameplay experience depends greatly on which of these directions you interpret rules from. So, when you say that it "provides very little guidance", that's intentional, because it allows the DM and the players to use the basic structure of the game to support and inspire having fun and being creative. It should be a foundation, not a cage.
D&D was always intended to be an open framework for actual roleplaying. The munchkin concept of gaming the rules for min-maxing stats came later.
Rules lawyers, be they DM or player, make playing less fun.