Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition - Now your playing with Playtests!

[Scowling Dragon]

No Play by post playing. Sorry fellas.

I wonder why though. At least on their site?

[Pyromancer999]

I came across this (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4news/dndnextfaq) while trying to find out how to get my copy (still working on that) but it should help with anyone confused about what they can legally do or not do with the play test.

Sure thing!

Can you do the same for me, if it's not any trouble?

As for my opinions on the playtest link:

Not working. Signed up twice to no avail. There's a thread full of complaints on the WOTC forums that is literally growing a page every 5-10 minutes. Each updated link does not work. Crazy stuff. Crazy stuff.

[noparlpf]

Guys, I literally tried the Sword and Board blog's link five minutes ago, and it worked fine. Try again?

[Gryffon]

A google link will get past a lot more work firewalls than rapidshare.

[Pyromancer999]

Guys, I literally tried the Sword and Board blog's link five minutes ago, and it worked fine. Try again?

Not seeing a link to the link. Where is it?

[hamlet]

A google link will get past a lot more work firewalls than rapidshare.

Not this one believe it or not.

I have a theory that our firewall was programed by mentally deficient chimps.

[Orsen]

If you find it, can you PM it to me?


Guys, I literally tried the Sword and Board blog's link five minutes ago, and it worked fine. Try again?

I don't know what's happening. I almost instantly get a 404 - File not found. :smallfrown:

[noparlpf]

Not seeing a link to the link. Where is it?

Google "Sword and Board" blog. It's their latest post. It's a rapidshare link, though, so some firewalls might block it.


Am I allowed to upload the files to Google Docs for other people, or is that considered against the rules? Is there a clause in WotC's rules saying that if they're incredibly inept we can just circumvent them? (I wish.)

[Welknair]

I'm very curious to see how they balance the magic and nonmagic classes. It's difficult to tell with just this. At the moment, as others have said, things are looking quite 3.5esque.

[Siegel]

Wow, at level 1 all the stuff my fighter can do is attack with a +2...

[Scowling Dragon]

Id actually call it 4e done in a 3e way.

Others see it as 3e done in a 4e way.

[noparlpf]

I'm very curious to see how they balance the magic and nonmagic classes. It's difficult to tell with just this. At the moment, as others have said, things are looking quite 3.5esque.

Well, if the fighter gets more uses of its multiple-actions-a-round thing...
(...wizards will all dip Fighter 2.)

[Welknair]

Wow, at level 1 all the stuff my fighter can do is attack with a +2...

Check out the Theme. Not much, but still something.

[Pyromancer999]

Google "Sword and Board" blog. It's their latest post. It's a rapidshare link, though, so some firewalls might block it.


Am I allowed to upload the files to Google Docs for other people, or is that considered against the rules? Is there a clause in WotC's rules saying that if they're incredibly inept we can just circumvent them? (I wish.)

Thanks. Got it and ran through it quickly.

Good:

Seems to be more similar to 3.X
Seems to be room for customization(Not in the playtest, but I think one will at least be able to chose from more than one Rogue Scheme eventually)
Seems to be generally playable


Bad:

Seems to not be as flavorful
Seems a bit shoddy, can't say why, but perhaps that's just the fact that it's just a playtest



Some funny things I noticed:

If I'm correct, movement is now a free action that can be taken 1/round
Some of the monsters are funny
You can cast Charm Person on a person without chance for a save.....providing you've essentially beaten the tar out of them or they're a 1st level character

[Welknair]

Hmm.. I hadn't noticed the movement thing, but now that I think about it, it seems that way.. So they're abolishing the whole Standard v Move Actions? I need to do some rereading.

[Pyromancer999]

Hmm.. I hadn't noticed the movement thing, but now that I think about it, it seems that way.. So they're abolishing the whole Standard v Move Actions? I need to do some rereading.

Yep. Single action each turn, movement is a free 1/round action. That's how it is.

[noparlpf]

There don't seem to be different kinds of actions...There's one action per round (two if you're a fighter using that ability), you can move once per round, and you can make reactions to things, which is how things like Feather Fall work now.

[Welknair]

Yep. Single action each turn, movement is a free 1/round action. That's how it is.

Did that rereading and I agree with your interpretation. It reminds me a bit of the White Wolf d10 approach to the matter.

[50Copper]

{Scrubbed}

[Scowling Dragon]

OK DUDE. 50Copper, calling people idiots for disliking 4e is mean. Relax take a chill pill.

Nobody wants a dumb fighter with no choices. But remember what they said? That they are implementing modularity with the game. These may all simply be the simplest choices.

[Welknair]

{Scrubbed}

This is what playtesting is for, my friend. I'm pretty sure that the first wave of playtesting surveys will be pretty unanimous on the Fighter needing more nice things and versatility.

[DogbertLinc]

Yes, I do believe they mentioned in one of the blogs that the pre-gen fighter would be the simplest one possible and later iterations of the playtest would include different themes and such with Powers for the Fighter. To satisfy people who just want the beatstick and people who want fancy beatsticks.

[The Troubadour]

They sent me the e-mail to download the playtest packet, but I can't seem to access the site. :-(

[Scowling Dragon]

Dam it really sucks that PbP is not allowed. Even on their website. Could have made aprivate one. Just for play-testers. How else am I supposed to test the rules? Nobody I know wants to interrupt the current campaign for untested rules.

[Pyromancer999]

They sent me the e-mail to download the playtest packet, but I can't seem to access the site. :-(

You're not the only one. There's a packet download problem thread on the WotC forums with a new link. And failing that, Sword and Board seems to work well.

[Conundrum]

I wonder what the chances are of WOTC finding a 5e PbP game on a completely random forum? ie. not here, but just a small privately-hosted one. Could always see if we can assemble a group of people who are willing to risk it... :smalltongue:

[Scowling Dragon]

Im not sure. Sure their anti PbP guidelines are asinine but If I get caught I don't want to be kicked out of the forum.

[GRM13]

Either I'm having problems or the Sword and Board one is dead as well :(

[Conundrum]

Im not sure. Sure their anti PbP guidelines are asinine but If I get caught I don't want to be kicked out of the forum.

Well I'd imagine they'd have difficulty proving who you are on a completely different forum.

[Scowling Dragon]

Does this forum have policies against it?

[Dienekes]

Now he was banned before I got a chance to see what he wrote, but I'll throw in, yeah the Fighter is looking a bit lackluster.

Now part of that is probably because I'm new here and missed something (speaking of everyone seems to have a +3 to attack or spells that comes out of nowhere).

They're not as plain as 3.5 fighter just with Fighter's Surge. But that seems all we've got so far. It's still pretty generic: I attack. This turn I attack twice! Hell even the old trip, disarm, bull rush options appear to be gone.

I haven't really looked over spells yet, but from a precursory look Ray of Frost looks problematic.

And on the note on spells the Save mechanic looks potentially problematic. When facing a warrior type if you want him to be less effective you know you have to pump up AC. If you want to hold your own against a properly prepared spellcaster, you could potentially have to keep all your ability scores high. While it doesn't look that way yet (all spells seem to be Dex, Con, or Will saves except one Int check) it's something to watch out for.

[Chess435]

Does this forum have policies against it?

Yes, I believe it does.

[Textor44]

Does this forum have policies against it?

The playtest is bound by an NDA agreement pertaining to the rule mechanics, so "reproducing" them on the forums digitally would be a violation of the NDA agreement from Wizards, so I'd assume that GitP would frown upon that.

[Pyromancer999]

Does this forum have policies against it?

Not sure, although there's a good chance that WotC might try to get the forums shut down or something similar if it happens.

[Scowling Dragon]

Then Im not risking it.

[Yora]

This forum has extremely rabbid censorship rules. But I think we are forbidden to talk about them.

Either I'm having problems or the Sword and Board one is dead as well :(
Yes, it has been taken down. Wait for 30 minutes and google again. :smallbiggrin:

[Clawhound]

I'm glad that the fighter is dirt simple. That's the point. The core should be dirty dirt simple. That way, you can play BASIC D&D if you want to. (Or, at least, as close as you can get to it.)

Then again, because it's more freeform, you can do what we old geezers did in the old days and make stuff up. Turn over some tables. Throw marbles. Push somebody underneath the chandelier while the rogue unties the rope. It's all great fun when there aren't really any rules.

[Ichneumon]

Well, I've finally read through the whole thing and I quite like it. Sure, it will still require work (like adding options for martial maneuvers for one thing). But I like the core system they've produced and if the final game will look anything like this. I'll likely purchase the game and enjoy it.

[Scowling Dragon]

You know. Yeah. Its fun. Il buy it. Its like a 4e that I could get behind. Simple, yet has most of the stuff I want.

It may not be the one true game for everybody but it just feels...Solid and fun.

[J.Gellert]

I like how it feels "familiar" again. For example, it's High Elf instead of Eladrin.

It's really far too early to tell if I'll ever play it, but so far so good.

[Textor44]

You know. Yeah. Its fun. Il buy it. Its like a 4e that I could get behind. Simple, yet has most of the stuff I want.

It may not be the one true game for everybody but it just feels...Solid and fun.

Well, since this is just the first of many iterations, it may evolve to be something that a lot more people can get behind. As long as people fill out the surveys Wizard sends out with honesty and constructive feedback, I think 5e may become the best version of D&D yet.

[Ziegander]

I hate to be what seems to be the sole debbie downer here, but I like basically nothing that I'm seeing here. The rules seem to be familiar and yet poorly thought out, if at all. Spells still dominate everything else (Ray of Frost is 100% broken). Clerics are even better than they used to be (Now better than Wizards?). Oh, except healing is still abysmally bad, and possibly worse than it used to be. Fighters are absolutely retarded. Rituals are just extra spells at-will if casters want to spend some extra time and materials to use them. Non-casters can't access rituals at all.

[Ichneumon]

I like how it feels "familiar" again. For example, it's High Elf instead of Eladrin.

It's really far too early to tell if I'll ever play it, but so far so good.

Yeah, I liked that too. I had mixed feelings though about the fact that all the races include their subrace name, yet nowhere could I find any information on whether those sub-races have any mechanical difference. I'm assuming that's something they're still working on. Yet even if they don't, I guess I could like it.

[Ranting Fool]

Well I've finally gotten my hands on it and have had a nice read. I am quietly optimistic about it (That and for the first time in ages I won't be the DM as since it's a pre-made people are willing to have a go) looking forward to this weekend and a proper play test.

[Ranting Fool]

As long as people fill out the surveys Wizard sends out with honesty and constructive feedback, I think 5e may become the best version of D&D yet.

+1

They asked for feedback, and feedback they shall have ! :smallbiggrin:

[Craft (Cheese)]

Not quite finished reading through everything yet, but first impressions:

- As far as I can tell, Clerics are basically Favored Souls now, casting just like a 3.5 Sorcerer.

- There's no separation between arcane and divine spells?

[EatAtEmrakuls]

I'm glad that the fighter is dirt simple. That's the point. The core should be dirty dirt simple. That way, you can play BASIC D&D if you want to. (Or, at least, as close as you can get to it.)

Then again, because it's more freeform, you can do what we old geezers did in the old days and make stuff up. Turn over some tables. Throw marbles. Push somebody underneath the chandelier while the rogue unties the rope. It's all great fun when there aren't really any rules.

And when my Fighter is taking on Cthulhu, turning over tables and throwing marbles is going to help...how?

[Scowling Dragon]

Non-casters can't access rituals at all.

Thats good.

I agree that there are some poorly balanced spells that needsa fixing.

Also, I know its none of my buisnes but please cut down on the word "Retarded". I use it too sometimes, but it just becomes annoying and looses impact if you wave it around to much.

Im also tired of being aggressive towards WOTC. Yes their shmucks sometimes but thier trying. And I will respect that.

If THEY try and WE try then maybe we can just have peace.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

- There's no separation between arcane and divine spells?

The spells listed are only those used in the playtest, and the character sheets list which PCs have access to which spells. I assume that there will be different spell lists in the final version which list which classes get which spells.

[EatAtEmrakuls]

Looks pretty terrible.

Fighters are once again "I attack!" monkeys and nothing more.

Armor doesnt make sense.
Sudded Leather, 25gp, 13+Dex Mod AC, Light Armor.
Ringmail, 35gp, 13+Half Dex mod AC, Medium armor.

y u cost more for less ringmail?

10ft pole costs more than a 10ft ladder.

The Hit Die recovery mechanic is a much worse version of Healing Surges, except now it requires a kit to use and keep track of how many uses of the kit you have. Still only get 1 recovery per level.

Editing in more info:

Medusa has a save or die. It goes off every time a PC starts its turn. They make a DC 12 Con check or they are instantly turn to stone. Permanently. You can get around this by covering your eyes, which makes you roll twice to hit (Take worse result), and gives the Medusa two rolls to hit you, take better result. If you are surprised you don't get a chance to negate the save or die.

Thoughts from another forum-goer on what is, admittedly, a less biased forum.

Also, the mundane gear list looks like it was copy+pasted from the SRD.

[Scots Dragon]

And when my Fighter is taking on Cthulhu, turning over tables and throwing marbles is going to help...how?

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but since this playtest is relatively low-level as things go... wouldn't you be facing off against Cthulhu with hypothetical class features that you gained somewhat after your most prominent enemies stopped being goblins and kobolds?

[EatAtEmrakuls]

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but since this playtest is relatively low-level as things go... wouldn't you be facing off against Cthulhu with hypothetical class features that you gained somewhat after your most prominent enemies stopped being goblins and kobolds?

I really don't expect this 5e Fighter to gain more impressive abilities, since the only Fighter in any recollection of have capable of such feats was the 4e fighter, which we all know this will not even come close to resembling.

[Scots Dragon]

I really don't expect this 5e Fighter to gain more impressive abilities, since the only Fighter in any recollection of have capable of such feats was the 4e fighter, which we all know this will not even come close to resembling.

There have been explicit statements that this is 'bare bones' and that later material will introduce the more interesting fighter abilities from earlier editions. And if you're really, really irritated at the changes from 4th edition when it comes to the fighter, you do have an opportunity to respond with constructive criticism as part of the fact that this is a public playtest.

Note the latter word; it's a test. This is not a finalised product.

[Yora]

Now I've looked at it. "Trimmed down 3.5e". Might as well call it 3.6e. Sweet, I like.

[EatAtEmrakuls]

There have been explicit statements that this is 'bare bones' and that later material will introduce the more interesting fighter abilities from earlier editions. And if you're really, really irritated at the changes from 4th edition when it comes to the fighter, you do have an opportunity to respond with constructive criticism as part of the fact that this is a public playtest.

Note the latter word; it's a test. This is not a finalised product.

Which I will be doing, as soon as my play-test concludes tonight.

[Katana_Geldar]

I don't like how they've taken away skills. It's a BIG step back.

[EatAtEmrakuls]

Now I've looked at it. "Trimmed down 3.5e". Might as well call it 3.6e. Sweet, I like.

..This is a sentiment I do not understand in the slightest.

3.5 already exists. It has more years of source material backing it.

Why would you ever want a new edition to resemble it almost exactly, even if you did like the prior version? You could easily houserule 3.5 at this point and it would be identical to this playtest.

[Scowling Dragon]

I don't like how they've taken away skills. It's a BIG step back.

I agree with this. I like skill points.

[Ziegander]

Thats good.

I agree that there are some poorly balanced spells that needsa fixing.

Also, I know its none of my buisnes but please cut down on the word "Retarded". I use it too sometimes, but it just becomes annoying and looses impact if you wave it around to much.

Im also tired of being aggressive towards WOTC. Yes their shmucks sometimes but thier trying. And I will respect that.

If THEY try and WE try then maybe we can just have peace.

I said I didn't like anything I read. That's not being aggressive, that's stating my feelings.

The Fighter, compared to ALL three of the other classes literally reads as if it is mentally deficient. Retarded is pretty fitting.

One more thing that really sucks about the new rules set:

Ability scores as saves. Seems like a cool idea. In practice it means that you need a good score in everything to not get helplessly ganked at some point. It means that the Fighter is in even more trouble than ever before because all he does is attack AC, but Wizards and Clerics can attack at least seven different defenses!

[EatAtEmrakuls]

I agree with this. I like skill points.

Training was fine. And less messy.

[Oracle_Hunter]

Well, a quick read-through raises some questions, but mostly I'm glad that:

(1) It is elegant
(2) 3.Xers seem to like it
(3) WotC finally discovered the "fluid movement" school of combat moves :smalltongue:

EDIT: Ability Scores as Saves. Good, but not quite what I thought it would be. By making all ability scores (theoretically) relevant to play you have less incentive to min/max on ability scores. This should lead to greater diversity of stat allocation which, IMHO, is a more interesting way to go.

[Scowling Dragon]

I said I didn't like anything I read. That's not being aggressive, that's stating my feelings.

I was just being general.


The Fighter, compared to ALL three of the other classes literally reads as if it is mentally deficient. Retarded is pretty fitting.

I would say that its too little of a slight.


Training was fine. And less messy.

I disagree. Training was way too simple, dumbed down and didn't actualy address the problem of at high levels skills being useless.

[EatAtEmrakuls]

I was just being general.


I would say that its too little of a slight.



I disagree. Training was way too simple, dumbed down and didn't actualy address the problem of at high levels skills being useless.

High level skills were never useless in my games. Only Arcana became trivialized due to a poorly thought-out epic destiny.

On conditions, they all seem very bleh. None of them really stand out, and some, like intoxicated, are just plain messy. Rolling 1d6 every time you take damage for reduction? That's a pain, and unnecessary.

Really these rules don't seem very streamlined at all compared to 4es approach. Maybe compared to 3.5s rules, yeah.

EDIT: And why doesn't blinded grant advantage when you're attacking the blind target?

[Textor44]

I don't like how they've taken away skills. It's a BIG step back.

I don't think they have. They've stated repeatedly that they are looking carefully at the skills system-- I'm thinking they haven't taken skills away, I think they simply haven't implemented them yet.

[Katana_Geldar]

I'd be happy if they made skills similar to SW Saga, make it scaleable to class, opportunity to train in more and the DCs didn't scale with level.

Have they taken away the last part?

[Scowling Dragon]

Oh yes. 4e Streamlined things way too much.

Again I disagree on skills. Jump becomes useless due to flying opponents and flight spells ect.

[EatAtEmrakuls]

Oh yes. 4e Streamlined things way too much.

Again I disagree on skills. Jump becomes useless due to flying opponents and flight spells ect.

Jump's useless now, in this play-test. At least, as your level went up, your jump length improved over time.

[Conundrum]

I don't think they have. They've stated repeatedly that they are looking carefully at the skills system-- I'm thinking they haven't taken skills away, I think they simply haven't implemented them yet.

This is the impression I got, too. The character sheets do say "Play without Backgrounds and Themes for a more old-school feel", implying that there is a character-creation method for boosting skills apart from the "+3 to four skills" that the backgrounds seem to give.

[Scowling Dragon]

It improved too little and never reached epic status (as in leap over buildings epic).

[J.Gellert]

I don't think they have. They've stated repeatedly that they are looking carefully at the skills system-- I'm thinking they haven't taken skills away, I think they simply haven't implemented them yet.

Exactly; at this point, it's a lot safer to talk about how things we see, than things we can't see.

[Yora]

..This is a sentiment I do not understand in the slightest.

3.5 already exists. It has more years of source material backing it.

Why would you ever want a new edition to resemble it almost exactly, even if you did like the prior version? You could easily houserule 3.5 at this point and it would be identical to this playtest.
Sure, but that would be messy with all the notes. Having it as a book is neater.

[Ziegander]

Ability Scores as Saves. Good, but not quite what I thought it would be. By making all ability scores (theoretically) relevant to play you have less incentive to min/max on ability scores. This should lead to greater diversity of stat allocation which, IMHO, is a more interesting way to go.

It's seriously going to make gameplay almost impossible without a daunting amount of effort on the part of the DM or without running pregenerating modules (which assumes that the module designers even know that there is a problem and try to mitigate it). Why? Because if save-or-dies and save-or-get-f***ed effects can target all six of the ability scores, then at nearly every turn at least one member of the party WILL face a monster that can severely screw that member over. That is, as I mentioned earlier, unless the DM (or module designer) goes to great lengths to pit his party against monsters that ONLY have attacks that target the party's strengths (which will be highly variable and thus almost impossible to do).

[Scowling Dragon]

Again, in the whole playtest we have seen only 1 save or die effect and even its by-passable.

[Craft (Cheese)]

I do wonder what happened to hit point thresholds though...

[Yora]

What do you mean by that?

[Bayonet Priest]

This is the impression I got, too. The character sheets do say "Play without Backgrounds and Themes for a more old-school feel", implying that there is a character-creation method for boosting skills apart from the "+3 to four skills" that the backgrounds seem to give.

Maybe but I always thought that "old school" often meant no skills period except for rogues, that is what dumping backgrounds would do here.


It's seriously going to make gameplay almost impossible without a daunting amount of effort on the part of the DM or without running pregenerating modules (which assumes that the module designers even know that there is a problem and try to mitigate it). Why? Because if save-or-dies and save-or-get-f***ed effects can target all six of the ability scores, then at nearly every turn at least one member of the party WILL face a monster that can severely screw that member over. That is, as I mentioned earlier, unless the DM (or module designer) goes to great lengths to pit his party against monsters that ONLY have attacks that target the party's strengths (which will be highly variable and thus almost impossible to do).

I don't know. What if most effects just target Dex, Con, and Wis anyway? Then it's the same as it ever was. I've only skimmed the materials so far but I don't think I saw any saves targeted against anything else except for one that targeted Cha.

[Craft (Cheese)]

I do wonder what happened to hit point thresholds though...

[Scots Dragon]

This is the game that created the Tome of Horrors. If you *can't* get screwed over in one of many major areas, the game isn't working properly.

[Oracle_Hunter]

It's seriously going to make gameplay almost impossible without a daunting amount of effort on the part of the DM or without running pregenerating modules (which assumes that the module designers even know that there is a problem and try to mitigate it). Why? Because if save-or-dies and save-or-get-f***ed effects can target all six of the ability scores, then at nearly every turn at least one member of the party WILL face a monster that can severely screw that member over. That is, as I mentioned earlier, unless the DM (or module designer) goes to great lengths to pit his party against monsters that ONLY have attacks that target the party's strengths (which will be highly variable and thus almost impossible to do).
...or the DM doesn't use those abilities unless he actually wants to kill a PC that adventure.

IMHO, SoS/D are a sometimes food :smalltongue:

[Bayonet Priest]

I do wonder what happened to hit point thresholds though...

Sleep had one. Creatures above 10 hp get drowsy and get there speeds halved. Creatures 10 hp or below have to make a Wisdom save or fall unconcious until someone wakes them.

[Seerow]

I'm still having trouble accessing the material. The email link I got was broken, and the blog that was referenced upthread seems to have had its material removed (at least the rapidshare link in the blog was broken).

[Ziegander]

Again, in the whole playtest we have seen only 1 save or die effect and even its by-passable.

I am not optimistic that this is a trend that will continue. Do you honestly believe that most monsters will just attack against AC or have abilities that are "easily" bypassed? Even if you did believe that, does that even sound like an interesting game to play?


What if most effects just target Dex, Con, and Wis anyway? Then it's the same as it ever was. I've only skimmed the materials so far but I don't think I saw any saves targeted against anything else except for one that targeted Cha.

If that is the case, then what the heck is the point of using ability scores as saving throws?

[Craft (Cheese)]

Sleep had one. Creatures above 10 hp get drowsy and get there speeds halved. Creatures 10 hp or below have to make a Wisdom save or fall unconcious until someone wakes them.

Ah, I missed that, thanks. Though still, I thought the medusa's gaze was one of the specific examples of something that would have a hit point threshold?


Also... why is the pregen fighter using chainmail instead of a chain shirt? Same result, but it'd save him 25 GP.

[EatAtEmrakuls]

On wealth and items:

Electrum pieces are useless. Being worth half of one gold piece is pointless, and will never see use.

The point about Ring Mail vs. Studded Leather stands. Most armor is, frankly, pointless, but Ring Mail takes the cake in that category. Chain Mail is close to useless, especially since it seems every stat matters now.

Removing heavy armor: Why is a die roll necessary there?

Ladders/Ten-Foot Poles: ....:smallsigh: Now I'm convinced they're trolling us.

Healer's Kits seemed hairbrained, I foresee houseruling them as unnecessary to spend healing surges...I'm sorry..."hit dice" in between encounters.

[Scowling Dragon]

I like the healers kit. Makes more sense at least.

[EatAtEmrakuls]

I like the healers kit. Makes more sense at least.

We're already treating hit points as abstract, so why are we utilizing a medical kit as the only ability to regain hit points aside from magic?

Why is catching your breath for 10 minutes any less realistic than herbs and band-aids after being skewered by a spear?

We aren't even achieving verisimilitude at this point.

[Bayonet Priest]

If that is the case, then what the heck is the point of using ability scores as saving throws?

Well it offers a more unified mechanic and cuts out one step of figuring saving throws.


Ah, I missed that, thanks. Though still, I thought the medusa's gaze was one of the specific examples of something that would have a hit point threshold?


Also... why is the pregen fighter using chainmail instead of a chain shirt? Same result, but it'd save him 25 GP.

Yeah the armor seems out of wack, hell if the rogue spent even close to as much on armor as the fighter did he'd have a chain shirt and be sitting pretty at 17 AC compared to the fighter's 15.

[Craft (Cheese)]

Ladders/Ten-Foot Poles: ....:smallsigh: Now I'm convinced they're trolling us.

HA! I mostly skipped over the adventuring gear table. I can't believe they made that mistake again.

Anyway, I'll try to get a playtest run, but I'm not excited for it. There's just nothing that grabs me and says "Hey you! Play this!"

[bokodasu]

Yay, change of plans, I get to look at it now! Printing right now, but pardon me for just a moment, I just realized what the included adventure is.

SQUEEEEEEEEE!

Ahem. Now I will go and formally analyze this product based on its quantifiable merits, giving it the sober and thoughtful consideration it deserves.

Squee!

[Yora]

Caves of Chaos is a bad module!

"And you should feel bad!" :smallwink:

But yeah, it's all not that exiting right now. It's like "Here are my house rules, do you think they are okay?" To which I say "yeah, looks fine to me."

[EatAtEmrakuls]

So after reading over the play-test, two of our players have dropped out, due to not wanting to get anywhere near this monstrosity, in their words.

So my chance to test this out may be postponed a few days.

More thoughts:

Spells. Relatively boring. Almost everything seems like a rehash.

Glad to see they retained Healing Word, to allow Clerics to do more than heal mindlessly.

Ray of Frost is ridiculously broken.

As is Searing Light.

[Kurald Galain]

Various preview material suggests that you'll get the option to multi-train skills as you level up, gaining better bonuses.

...and that is necessary, because at present there is too little variance between skill values, making the rolls on them too random.



Do you honestly believe that most monsters will just attack against AC or have abilities that are "easily" bypassed?
That's a very good question, actually. I believe Mike Mearls was the one who initially came up with the idea that equipment destroyed by a rust monster should automatically come back a few minutes later, because long-term consequences are Not Fun. Indeed, that is very much 4E's philosophy; I cannot tell from the playtest whether it also applies to 5E.

[Yora]

That sounds like Myths & Magic.

[Dienekes]

If that is the case, then what the heck is the point of using ability scores as saving throws?

I'm not 100% on ability=saves either, but I understand why they're doing it. From 3.0 Con was tied to Fortitude, Dex was to Reflex, and Wis was to Will. They were not the exact same because what they were trying to match scaled so they had to scale. Since there appears to be less scaling in numbers in general theoretically Con+d20 would roughly equal 10+Int or whatever, now some modifiers would have to be in place to take into account what is focused more but in general that's the idea. So there's no reason for having a specific thing called Fort save when it's not matched against anything but an ability score so you get ability score = saves.

Now so far we need to keep a few things in mind. 1) Martial abilities have been promised to us, but not in this test. 2) So far the spells have followed the Fort/Ref/Will pattern without calling them that.

This leaves me to hope that when we get martial maneuvers they're read something like:

Knock Back
Make a melee attack roll opposed to the opponents Str Save. If your roll is successful the opponent moves back 5 feet.

Or whatever. So that way to defend against a mage you'll want Con, Dex, Wis saves. To defend against a martial you'll want AC, and maybe Str, Dex, and Int saves.

Mind you this is the optimistic view of it, something I feel dirty even saying. The pessimist in me says that martial maneuvers will be useless and spells will end up targeting every ability save.

[Pyromancer999]

The Charm Person spell is really, really overpowered. Essentially all 1st level characters can be affected without save, and at higher levels, all you have to do to hit an enemy with it with no chance of a save is to beat the living tar out of him. Sounds a bit odd to me.

Edit:

An example to make things clearer on how I see it being used:

Scenario #1:
Enemy NPC: I'll never give you the information!
Evil PC: Oh, don't worry. After we torture you enough, you'll give us the information....whether you want to or not.

An actually sort of badass usage I suppose, but most PCs aren't evil.

Scenario #2:
Neutral Important NPC: I won't help you!
A short butt-kicking and a Charm Person later.....
Neutral Important NPC: Of course I'll help you, new best friends!

Just......wrecks the storyline. And is just a little creepy.

Scenario #3:
Sheriff(Good NPC): We need you folk to find a way to deal with the evil bandit warlord that's plaguing the city!
Good PC: Don't worry! We'll beat the living tar out of him....
Sheriff: Good!
Good PC: Until he becomes our friend! Then he won't attack the city anymore.
Sheriff: WTF.

This scenario speaks for itself.

So, spells, especially this one, need some work.

[Swooper]

Okay, I've read most of it now. Thoughts:

I love the advantage/disadvantage mechanic. I'm reading it like it doesn't stack, so if two things give you an advantage at the same time you still only roll twice. I always hated situational bonuses in 3.5, this is much better.
Anyone else notice how sleep can put creatures to sleep forever unless they ever take damage or someone wakes them up? No duration given.
HP thresholds on spells (like sleep and charm) are weird. Not sure how that will play out.
Also, I don't like the complete lack of format for spell descriptions. Stuff like range, targets, area of effect, saving throw etc. should be noted before the spell description for easy checking.
I don't like the (lack of) skills. Hoping whoever said skills simply haven't been fully implemented yet is right.
Observation: Wizard and cleric have different casting mechanisms. Wizard works like a 3.5 prepared caster mainly, cleric seems to work like a spontaneous caster, though it's noted that he prepares spells so I'm not sure.
I'm thinking there will be a Complex Combat Actions module that's not included here, that will have stuff like Grapple, Bull Rush, Charging, penalties for being injured (blooded in 4E lingo) etc.
The Adventuring Gear list is a copypasta of the one from the 3.5 PHB. It's a placeholder guys, of course it still has the ladder/pole loop. Don't worry about it.
Do humans not have any racial bonuses or am I just not seeing them? I notice the human cleric happens to have an extra orison over the dwarf cleric. Is that it? How does this work for, say, fighters?
Aaand that's all I have for now.

[DrBurr]

I like it. Its not 4e and looks more similar to 3.5 but still I think its simple easy to read and looks like it'll be fun I dont see what everyone is complaining about. Sure there are no Skills but theirs a reason for that, theirs never been a set way to do skills so you can't unify people from various bases if you choose one of the many systems. Likely Skills will be a module released later maybe this summer that you can opt to use.

I dont like the lack of Character Creation or at least explanation of race bonuses though my friend and I are trying to reverse engineer a semi working model so we can have Elf Clerics and Human Wizards, and I'm not a fan of prewritten adventures so I'm happy theirs a bestiary, with Kobolds.

I'll either play this tomorrow night with my group or Tuesday and give a full opinion then

[Dandria]

I don't know, I've been reading the PDF and. . . well, it seems to be pretty freaking sweet.

I mean, I'm not a great fan of D&D as a whole, so make of that what you want, but the mechanics sound solid and I could see myself actually enjoying this game. It's clear that this time around they built atop the past editions: 3.5, of course, but also a lot from proper AD&D and 4E. The good parts, I'd say. Also, thanks God they hammered in that HPs are an abstraction and kept the idea of short and long rest from 4E.

And if it crashes and burns, at least I'll still have the flames of a new, bitter edition war to keep me warm, so there's that.

Cheers!

EDIT: Oh yeah, skills. Man, how I hope they'll go with something along the lines of NWPs. I miss them.

[EatAtEmrakuls]

Classes:

Wizard seemed...I don't even know. It didn't look underpowered. But it also didn't look fun, really.

Rogue can apparently hide behind anything that covers a quarter of his body. I hope I get rogue, so I can buy venetian blinds, put them over my face, and walk around hidden all the time.

Overall the classes just seem really plain. They work, but nothing strikes me as fun. Nothing says to me, "hey, look, you want to play this."

[Textor44]

I dont like the lack of Character Creation or at least explanation of race bonuses though my friend and I are trying to reverse engineer a semi working model so we can have Elf Clerics and Human Wizards, and I'm not a fan of prewritten adventures so I'm happy theirs a bestiary, with Kobolds.


This is really part of their test... it's not about "oh, here's D&D5e, go have fun!" It's "Here's some characters, here's some monsters, here's the situation you are in... how does this work for you? How do the mechanics feel? What's wrong with this? What's right with this?"

Character creation is later on, and then they'll have everyone rolling up tons of characters and listening to "this isn't intuitive, this is unbalanced..." and tweaking things over and over again.

I think, in the end, people keep forgetting that this isn't a product. It's the first draft of a set of rules, and are subject to massive, sweeping changes over the next few years as they approach having an actual releasable product.

[Timeless Error]

Classes:

Wizard seemed...I don't even know. It didn't look underpowered. But it also didn't look fun, really.

Rogue can apparently hide behind anything that covers a quarter of his body. I hope I get rogue, so I can buy venetian blinds, put them over my face, and walk around hidden all the time.

Overall the classes just seem really plain. They work, but nothing strikes me as fun. Nothing says to me, "hey, look, you want to play this."

But I think what we're seeing is just the raw, basic form of the classes. The design team has promised us several layers of customizable complexity, but has also told us that we won't be getting them in the initial playtest.

[Shades of Gray]

There are certainly some errors. The rogue's dagger is doing as much damage as the shortsword.

It's also weird that unarmed strikes are just as good as a dagger, except for the fact that they can't be thrown.

[NMBLNG]

The sword and board blog link isn't working. Can someone post / PM me a link to a download? (I promise, I signed up!)

[Seerow]

The sword and board blog link isn't working. Can someone post / PM me a link to a download? (I promise, I signed up!)

If you're using chrome, try a different browser. Turns out that's the issue for a lot of people. (Or try replacing %21 with !).

[navar100]

It's seriously going to make gameplay almost impossible without a daunting amount of effort on the part of the DM or without running pregenerating modules (which assumes that the module designers even know that there is a problem and try to mitigate it). Why? Because if save-or-dies and save-or-get-f***ed effects can target all six of the ability scores, then at nearly every turn at least one member of the party WILL face a monster that can severely screw that member over. That is, as I mentioned earlier, unless the DM (or module designer) goes to great lengths to pit his party against monsters that ONLY have attacks that target the party's strengths (which will be highly variable and thus almost impossible to do).

Agreed. 3E simplifying the saving throw system was a good feature. It was easy to figure out which save to use as opposed to 2E where it took a while to figure out if it was save vs death, vs spell, vs rod staff wand, or what. I did like 4E's improvement on it by allowing the better of two ability scores to be used as the modifier. That eased the burden of MAD and didn't inflate the importance of one ability score over another. If all ability scores matter for different things, then all classes are MAD and an 8 in a score will mean your character's death eventually. This is one instance I would like to see 4E's influence - the three standard saving throws and use the better of two ability scores for the modifier.

[Dienekes]

So to reiterate how stupid I think the armor rules are. Take a look at the dwarven fighter and notice that he decided to pay 25 gold for the benefit of -5 feet per round.

[Seerow]

I absolutely hate their hit dice mechanic. It's like healing surges, except they're random, weaker, and you get fewer of them until much higher level. Basically just all around terrible because they wanted to make people who didn't want magical healing to rely on them happy.

[navar100]

So, what Tiers are the classes now?

[Craft (Cheese)]

So to reiterate how stupid I think the armor rules are. Take a look at the dwarven fighter and notice that he decided to pay 25 gold for the benefit of -5 feet per round.

Dwarves don't take a speed penalty for wearing heavy armor. He still paid 25 GP for absolutely nothing, but it's not as bad as it seems. Presumably there'll be some feats and class features that'll require being in heavy armor to work, though with heavy armor being so ****ty compared to light armor they'd better be pretty amazing feats...

[Draz74]

So to reiterate how stupid I think the armor rules are. Take a look at the dwarven fighter and notice that he decided to pay 25 gold for the benefit of -5 feet per round.

No, dwarves have the ability of not getting their speed reduced by armor anyway. So his speed must have already been at -5. So he's paying 25 gp for ... absolutely nothing. Which is better than paying 25 gp for a disadvantage. :smalltongue:

EDIT: Ninja'd? Swordsage'd? Neither of those classes exist yet in this game ...

[Thump]

...
They took away ability damage/drain and negative levels.

Not playing this POS.

inb4copypasta of 4e

[Flickerdart]

So, what Tiers are the classes now?
I'd put Fighter and Rogue at T4 - while they can't do much except attack, we don't know that they're bad at this. The casters are T3 or possibly T2 - they don't seem to have anything gamebreaking (Charm and Ray of Frost excluded), can game the action economy somewhat, and have utility stuff. But of course, until we see the Monk, D&D's mage killer, the casters will seem really strong.

[Dienekes]

Dwarves don't take a speed penalty for wearing heavy armor. He still paid 25 GP for absolutely nothing, but it's not as bad as it seems. Presumably there'll be some feats and class features that'll require being in heavy armor to work, though with heavy armor being so ****ty compared to light armor they'd better be pretty amazing feats...

Indeed, you're right. I just saw the 25 move speed and jumped to conclusions. Instead he paid 25 gold so that Shocking Grasp works more effectively on him, much better.

I still think the rules as presented are pretty dumb in this regard. Also with shields, I don't actually see a reason for getting a light shield. Unless you really, really don't have 10 gold on you.

[Craft (Cheese)]

...
They took away ability damage/drain and negative levels.

I'd save judgement on that until we see the full 20 levels of play: Of course we're not going to see Enervation being used on level 3 characters...

@Draz: May I propose "Halfling'd" for the time being?

@Dienekes: Of course, though again, my presumption is they intend to have stuff that requires one option over the other and differentiate them that way, sortof like how different weapon groups were differentiated in 4E for the most part. Still terrible game design though. (If you're going to do something like require quarterstaffs for tripping, why not just bake tripping into the base mechanics of the quarterstaff instead of making it a feat elsewhere?)

[Seerow]

It's okay the move speed won't matter anyway. What with Wizards being able to reduce your move speed to 0 with no saving throw as an at will ability.

[Craft (Cheese)]

It's okay the move speed won't matter anyway. What with Wizards being able to reduce your move speed to 0 with no saving throw as an at will ability.

Uhh, the wizard still has to succeed on an attack roll. Unless there's already some piece of cheese that lets you auto-succeed on every attack roll already that I missed.

[Scots Dragon]

This is a D&D web forum. There's more cheese here than there is in France.

That said, Ray of Frost will probably be amongst the first things they fix in the initial playtest errata.

[NMBLNG]

Or you could use KTorrent


If you're using chrome, try a different browser. Turns out that's the issue for a lot of people. (Or try replacing %21 with !).

[huttj509]

The Charm Person spell is really, really overpowered. Essentially all 1st level characters can be affected without save, and at higher levels, all you have to do to hit an enemy with it with no chance of a save is to beat the living tar out of him. Sounds a bit odd to me.

Edit:

An example to make things clearer on how I see it being used:

Scenario #1:
Enemy NPC: I'll never give you the information!
Evil PC: Oh, don't worry. After we torture you enough, you'll give us the information....whether you want to or not.

An actually sort of badass usage I suppose, but most PCs aren't evil.

Scenario #2:
Neutral Important NPC: I won't help you!
A short butt-kicking and a Charm Person later.....
Neutral Important NPC: Of course I'll help you, new best friends!

Just......wrecks the storyline. And is just a little creepy.

Scenario #3:
Sheriff(Good NPC): We need you folk to find a way to deal with the evil bandit warlord that's plaguing the city!
Good PC: Don't worry! We'll beat the living tar out of him....
Sheriff: Good!
Good PC: Until he becomes our friend! Then he won't attack the city anymore.
Sheriff: WTF.

This scenario speaks for itself.

So, spells, especially this one, need some work.


Read it again. Even the first level elf wizard has 16 hp, not enough to auto-charm. Also, it just prevents the caster from being attacked, not allies. So you can charm, then you have a better chance to diplomance him.

Edit: Charmed is not dominated. Read the description under 'conditions.'

[Ranting Fool]

Did I skim over something?

There seems to be no Flat footed or Touch attack AC.

Or BAB. Then again the +hit for the Dwarf warrior is +6 (Str is only +3) so I doubt we are seeing everything.

[huttj509]

Uhh, the wizard still has to succeed on an attack roll. Unless there's already some piece of cheese that lets you auto-succeed on every attack roll already that I missed.

And uses the mage's action. I mean, yeah, if it's all against 1, the mage using their actions to keep the one from moving (but can still attack) is great, but in a larger fight, it might not be worthwhile to lock yourself down each round to immobilize an enemy for one round.

[Dienekes]

I'd put Fighter and Rogue at T4 - while they can't do much except attack, we don't know that they're bad at this. The casters are T3 or possibly T2 - they don't seem to have anything gamebreaking (Charm and Ray of Frost excluded), can game the action economy somewhat, and have utility stuff. But of course, until we see the Monk, D&D's mage killer, the casters will seem really strong.

I don't know about the Rogue. A better version of Skill Mastery at 1st level for every skill he's trained in? That's really awesome just by itself depending on what shenanigans skills can do.

[Roland St. Jude]

Sheriff: Now seems to be a good time for three general warnings. First, please don't advise or facilitate copyright infringement here. Second, please keep it civil and don't insult other people based on their playstyle preferences. Third, please tone down the hostility and profanity.

[EatAtEmrakuls]

Did I skim over something?

There seems to be no Flat footed or Touch attack AC.

Or BAB. Then again the +hit for the Dwarf warrior is +6 (Str is only +3) so I doubt we are seeing everything.

3 things they did right.

[Craft (Cheese)]

BAB seems to be constant: Fighter gets +3 for weapons, Wizard gets the same for spells (and +2 for weapons), while the clerics get +2 for weapons and +0 for spells.

Wait wait wait, Fighter only gets +1 extra point of BAB!?

[Empedocles]

Can somebody please help me?

I've had it emailed to 2 different emails (1 of which was my WotC account email) and had both of them be a 400 error. I also reset my cache, and tried the Sword & Board link. Anyone have any possible solutions?

[Craft (Cheese)]

BAB seems to be constant: Fighter gets +3 for weapons, Wizard gets the same for spells (and +2 for weapons), while the clerics get +2 for weapons and +0 for spells.

Wait wait wait, Fighter only gets +1 extra point of BAB!?

My mistake folks: The Quarterstaff is a finesse weapon, making the attribute bonus +2 (the wizard's DEX modifier), meaning the wizard's weapon BAB is -1. That sounds much better.

[Dienekes]

BAB seems to be constant: Fighter gets +3 for weapons, Wizard gets the same for spells (and +2 for weapons), while the clerics get +2 for weapons and +0 for spells.

Wait wait wait, Fighter only gets +1 extra point of BAB!?

I think the wizard is using Dex instead of Str on the quarterstaff so +0 for weapons (and -2 damage? I think they were thinking of 3.5 finesse here). Rogue +2 weapons, Cleric seems to maybe be either +2 in both or one or the other. The numbers are funky.

[Craft (Cheese)]

I think the wizard is using Dex instead of Str on the quarterstaff so +0 for weapons. Rogue +2 weapons, Cleric seems to maybe be either +2 in both or one or the other. The numbers are funky.

I corrected my Wizard mistake above, though it IS weird now that I look at both clerics instead of just one: The Moradin cleric has a higher spell attack bonus even though his WIS modifier is lower! The frick's up with that? I have a feeling there's more to calculating attack bonuses than we got to see in the how to play document.

[DrBurr]

This is really part of their test... it's not about "oh, here's D&D5e, go have fun!" It's "Here's some characters, here's some monsters, here's the situation you are in... how does this work for you? How do the mechanics feel? What's wrong with this? What's right with this?"

Character creation is later on, and then they'll have everyone rolling up tons of characters and listening to "this isn't intuitive, this is unbalanced..." and tweaking things over and over again.

I think, in the end, people keep forgetting that this isn't a product. It's the first draft of a set of rules, and are subject to massive, sweeping changes over the next few years as they approach having an actual releasable product.

I'm aware but I still want my group to have fun and I have more than 5 members committed for my Tuesday group, plus Its fun

[Pyromancer999]

Read it again. Even the first level elf wizard has 16 hp, not enough to auto-charm. Also, it just prevents the caster from being attacked, not allies. So you can charm, then you have a better chance to diplomance him.

Edit: Charmed is not dominated. Read the description under 'conditions.'

Hmmm....true. So they'd just have to beat the tar out of them to auto-charm. The point is, it's still a good ability, and should not allow for auto-charming.

[navar100]

Why is WOTC so focused on having heavy armor be The Suck? Why must it reduce speed? It's fine to reduce speed if not proficient but proficiency implies knowing how to walk in it. At least make it based on Strength. At some Strength score armor no longer encumbers you to cause a lower speed.

I get it. No warrior in heavy armor will beat Usain Bolt or Michael Phelps in their respective races, but come on, they can win against the tortoise that beat the hare.

[DefKab]

I think I just got slapped in the face... I am actually offended.
Give me a second while I ice this bruise.

Serious, WOTC, WTF?

Ok, some fighters dont want the Highest AC, they want mobility, and might sacrifice the heavy armor for it. Got it.
THIS IS NOT THAT FIGHTER.
That fighter has a good Dex.
That fighter has something to do with its mobility.

This fighter is a Dwarf. With an OK, but not good, Dex, and gains NOTHING by losing out on AC.

HOWEVER, the Paladin, c'mon, that's what he is, no, he OUTSTRIPS the fighter's AC. So, the Fighter is in the back with the Rogue, because they can't take it, and meanwhile, the Wizard is laughing maniacally as he single handidly shuts down any one creature he wants. You know, unless that creature has a ranged weapon, then he just shrugs and shoots the Wizard in the FACE.

UHG. This is infuriating.
It looks like 3.5, meaning it has little purpose to exist, as 3.5 is STILL better supported.
It BORROWS from 4th, but only in a way that makes it suck. (Hit Dice is fine. I'm all for mundane healing. But 4e did it better.)
And it tries to Emulate AD&D. Hell, the Module looks like it's from the 1980s, and that's great, because it seems like the Adventure is the only thing that's worth having out of this package!

I'll play the playtest, WOTC, but only because if enough people write to you, you might be convinced to get the hell out of my game...

And note, none of this mentions what they left out. Just what they wanted to show. You know, what they thought was the BEST PARTS...

EDIT: Oh, LOL! Now I know why I liked the Module, it was written by Gary Gygax! Glad to see WOTC is really comin' up with somethin' original here....

[Thanatos 51-50]

So, I've signed up for the Playtest and whenever I click the handy link in my E-mail to download the data I get...

A web page informing me I have a bad link.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

[Draz74]

Some thoughts:

On Boring Fighters

People are complaining that the Level 1 Fighter can't do anything but swing attack after attack. That's true ... but, um, duh. They pretty much told us in preview articles that they were going to start out by introducing a Fighter that appealed to grognards or newbies who don't want to have to make choices as a Fighter in fights, just kill stuff.

I'm not concerned with the Fighter being boring, because we know they're going to eventually include ACFs or feats or whatever to give the Fighter some more interesting options. Heck, even with just the preview materials, it's easy to assume that the "Guardian" theme of the Cleric of Moradin is also accessible to Fighters, and swap it in.

I assume the Fighter's lack of class features is also because his main class feature is just bonuses to attack and damage; at least, his attack/damage numbers don't seem to match his ability modifiers (even with the additional +2 damage that is listed as a class feature ... hmmm ... apparently I'm missing something).

What I am concerned with is that they won't be able to truly balance characters with more numerical bonuses against characters who swap out such bonuses in favor of more flexibility. I don't see the two versions of the Fighter really playing well together at the same table.

On Races

Same issue, really, with Humans. People are complaining (at least on the WotC boards) about how the human has no racial features. But the human pregen has higher ability scores across the board -- +1 to all scores, it looks like -- than the other characters. So apparently that's the Humans' appeal. Blech. Not only boring, and hard to balance with races that have actual options from their race, but also kind of breaks verisimilitude, since all the normal NPC humans probably aren't going to have higher-than-average ability scores due to this Human Racial "Feature."

As long as I'm complaining about Races ... the Elves are immune to sleep and charm effects. Not resistant, not gain-advantage-when-saving-against, just immune. Same with Dwarves and poison. Apparently WotC still hasn't learned that immunities are bad game design.

Poison

Speaking of poison ... it seems like poison just deals extra damage on a hit, which is negated by a CON-save. That's a little bit boring, but frankly it's better than any previous D&D poison rules. (Still unrealistic, but then, so were all the others.) 1e and 2e poison turned combat into a long, swingy series of save-or-lose effects. 3e and 4e poison (by separate means) both turned combat into a slow grind-fest of bookkeeping. 5e poison so far is definitely a step in the right direction.

One problem with it, though, is that it leads to a lot of dice-rolling on a single attack. Now the attack of a poisonous creature involves an attack roll, a damage roll, a CON save, and a poison-damage roll. So, basically, in terms of how long it takes to resolve, it takes as long as two attacks. Yuck. I think just one additional die roll to resolve poison would be preferable, which should obviously be a CON save. So I think I'd recommend to WotC that the poison damage added to an attack should be changed to a flat number, save-for-half. One thing that would be nice about this would be that getting poisoned always sucks (except for Dwarves, I guess).

As a side note, I'll join the choir here and mention that Intoxicated is terrible for game flow. Damage Reduction is already a mechanic that annoys me ... but this is variable DR, 1d6. Talk about awkward mechanics.

On Dice Mechanics

I have mixed feelings about the "Advantage/Disadvantage" mechanic, which replaces (basically) all Circumstance Modifiers from earlier editions. On the one hand, it's nice to have a unified mechanic for them. Makes the DM's decision process much easier. And it gives an easy way for lots of spells or effects to give non-stacking bonuses to a character.

But on the other hand, the non-stacking thing doesn't really make sense. So if I'm drunk, hanging upside down, using an improvised bow and arrow, firing at a concealed target that's outside my bow's normal range, I still only get an (effective) -5 penalty to my attack? Ha.

Even worse, if I have Advantage on the same attack for some reason, it cancels all the Disadvantages by RAW.

Also, there are situations (like the elf's Keen Senses) where the Advantage bonus seems a little overpowering. And other situations where it probably won't be severe enough. The advantage of subjective Circumstance Modifiers was adaptability.

This new reroll-based system would be more commendable if it meant the game was getting rid of fiddly modifiers to die rolls in general, which slow the game down with math. But they don't. The new skill system is plenty proof of that -- +3 situational modifiers to various checks all over the place. (That bothers me more than the lack of a set skill list.)

Almost-Brilliant Idea: Constitution

The one thing in the ruleset that really made me stop and say, "Huh, that's new ... and elegant ..." was the rule that, when you level up and roll for new Hit Points, you get a minimum number of new HP equal to your CON bonus (if any). That's a cute way to make CON matter to your HP without making it matter too much, like it did in 3e. And it's a cute way to allow characters to roll for HP without the danger of rolling a 1 and crippling their character's defenses forever more.

But as I thought about it, I realized it wasn't really so great for two reasons:

I don't really have a problem with HP/level simply being a set number instead of a die roll.
Most characters aren't going to have a CON modifier higher than +2. So that's not really going to improve HP rolls much; it just lets you turn 1's into 2's. Which is especially lame for big-HD classes like Fighters.

Oddly, after presenting this improved, almost-cool new rule, the pregen characters don't use it. They just add the average numbers of HP (rounded down) at each level. Lame.

On Ability Scores

CON won't be the dominant defensive stat that it was in 3e. But I'm still thinking it will be the second-most important stat for pretty much everyone. :smallsigh:

As other people have been saying, CHA is back to its classic position as the universal dump stat. It doesn't even resist Fear effects anymore, like they said it would a couple weeks ago. (Maybe because they've been realizing that having to have every score high for Saving Throws against spells is a problem?) None of the pregen classes use CHA at all, except (probably, based on some reverse-engineered guessing) for the uses/day of the Cleric's Channel Divinity power. And the rules for social encounters use CHA, of course ... but they also encourage the DM to frequently ignore the dice and just roleplay social encounters without them. So ... yeah. 8 CHA seems like it will be very common once again. And INT isn't in much better shape, unless you're a Wizard.

Interestingly, no indication yet about whether ability scores will increase as you level up. Except that apparently they don't, at Levels 1-3.

Based on reverse-engineering guesses, they seem to still be assuming a standard ability score array of 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8. And Races seem to grant only ability bonuses, not penalties. (Hello, 4e. :smallsigh:)

On Monster Stat Blocks

On a quick eyeball, I'm guessing that monsters' stats are generated similar to 4e, mostly looked up on a table based on the monster's Role and Difficulty Level. They certainly aren't constructed using the same rules as PCs, with an initial boost in HP equal to CON score.

I like having monsters follow the same rules as PCs, but I have also heard a lot of 4e DMs praise the simplified monster stat block generator, so I guess it might be worth it in spite of my design aesthetic.

On Six Saving Throws

I think people are worrying a little too much about having to keep seven different defenses (including AC) high. Especially from a spellcaster-centric point of view; I actually think STR saves will be most common against warrior-types, not spellcasters. (E.g. bull rush.) And we don't know yet whether ability scores scale with level, and whether all of them scale at the same rate.

I'm pretty sure WotC has enough balance sense to avoid Spell Save DCs scaling with the level of spell slot used. That would be uber-broken in this system.

On Daily Resources

I'm not really a big fan of daily resources. They still seem like they'll put the pressure on DMs to provide a lot of urgency in order to avoid the 15-minute workday. But as long as Vancian Casting is here to stay, I guess it's sensible for all classes to have daily resources that they can try to spend on the same schedule as the caster's spell slots.

Which the Fighter and the Halfling do, but (apparently) not the Rogue, Human, Dwarf, or Elf. Odd.

On Equipment Lists

I do think people are making too big a deal of messy tables for weapons, armor, and equipment; these were obviously just thrown together and can be changed a LOT by playtesting.

I am a bit concerned about the weapons seeming a little bland, though. And a few other nitpicks about weapons. Oh -- like Longbow being a "simple" ranged weapon. Uh. Look at the longbow's historical use. It shouldn't be a simple weapon; it should be (in 3e jargon) an exotic weapon.

OK, I'll add more later, but I've gotta sign off for now ...

[Craft (Cheese)]

As long as I'm complaining about Races ... the Elves are immune to sleep and charm effects. Not resistant, not gain-advantage-when-saving-against, just immune. Same with Dwarves and poison. Apparently WotC still hasn't learned that immunities are bad game design.

What you're forgetting here is that elves being immune to sleep is "iconic", and thus a sacred cow. What!? My elf character isn't immune to sleep effects anymore!? Those bastards are copying WoW again to bring in the kiddies! *gets pitchfork and torch*


I'm pretty sure WotC has enough balance sense to avoid Spell Save DCs scaling with the level of spell slot used. That would be uber-broken in this system.

By my reading of the magic section, that's how it already works. DC is always 10 + primary spellcasting modifier. (INT for wizards, WIS for clerics).

[Textor44]

13.5 hours, and I'm still trying to get the playtest downloaded. They really must not have prepared properly for the demand.

FYI, I just swapped from firefox to IE on the download link, and it went through. If anyone else is having issues, you may try swapping browsers temporarily and see if that fixes it.

[The Troubadour]

None of the pregen classes use CHA at all, except (probably, based on some reverse-engineered guessing) for the uses/day of the Cleric's Channel Divinity power.

I think that's based on Wisdom.

[Starbuck_II]

13.5 hours, and I'm still trying to get the playtest downloaded. They really must not have prepared properly for the demand.

FYI, I just swapped from firefox to IE on the download link, and it went through. If anyone else is having issues, you may try swapping browsers temporarily and see if that fixes it.

Or try the backup link:
http://wizards.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2230

[Draz74]

OK, I'm back ...


...
They took away ability damage/drain the very worst of all 3e's bookkeeping nightmares, which made you re-calculate your entire character mid-battle.

HALELUJAH.


What you're forgetting here is that elves being immune to sleep is "iconic", and thus a sacred cow. What!? My elf character isn't immune to sleep effects anymore!? Those bastards are copying WoW again to bring in the kiddies! *gets pitchfork and torch*
Yeah, and I wouldn't have been quite as annoyed if it was just sleep effects they were immune to. But Charm effects, too ...


I think that's based on Wisdom.
Equally possible.

On Class Balance

So far, this edition is looking to be just as much "spellcasters = win" as 3e. The spells are still powerful, the spellcasters still know a lot of different spells, and they still get a pretty liberal quantity of spells per day. Well, maybe not at Level 1. But by Level 3, they can prepare/cast 5 spells per day. That's more than I was hoping for -- in my book, when they gain their first Level 2 spell slot(s), it should come at the expense of Level 1 spell slots.

Mirror Image caught my eye. One of the classic, best defensive spells in 3e. So how did they nerf it? Well, they made it conjure 2 images, instead of 1d4+1. So it still gives the Wizard a 67% miss chance when he first casts it. Wow. I guess it can now also be destroyed by area spells, so that's another nerf. Still ... seems pretty powerful. And so do a lot of other spells, besides the obviously-overpowered Ray of Frost that everyone's protesting.

And this is only when the spells are prepared in Level 1-2 spell slots. They've said that spells gain more powerful effects when prepared in higher slots. (I'm pretty sure they just deleted such lines from the playtest document. I remember the fluff description at the beginning of one spell implying how it grows in power later in the game, even though its provided rules text didn't have anything scaling.) For some spells, such as Cure Light Wounds, which look weak here, that's good. But other spells, I'm a little worried to think about them improving and scaling.

Besides the fact that spellcasting is still awesome (and therefore the Wizard), my spidey sense is also tingling about ClericZilla being a thing. The pregen Cleric of Moradin is ... impressive, in melee, even without his spells. And his spells are nothing to sneeze at either. He might not outfight the Fighter, but even if he doesn't, I'm having a hard time seeing what design space is left for the Paladin, if a Cleric can be this martial. Also, Clerics seem to be operating with Spirit Shaman-style casting: prepare a number of spells in the morning, then cast from that selection spontaneously throughout the day. Which is a very powerful mechanic, moreso than the Wizard's strict preparation. It's not entirely clear whether Clerics "know" (can prepare from) their entire spell list ... but I'm guessing they can, since it would be really annoying to keep track of a "Spells Known" list and a "Spells Prepared" list and a "Spell Slots Used" table.

Oh yeah, and Clerics also essentially get bonus spell slots (above the amount that was already worrying me) from their Channel Divinity feature. They can only use Channel Divinity charges to replicate a select few spells, as well as some effects that aren't technically spells but might as well be ... but considering that lets them spontaneously "cast" a number of magical effects without even having to prepare them, it's pretty powerful.

Leaving casters behind for now ... I'm also kind of worried about the Rogue sucking. They've talked about how they're trying to get away from the phenomenon in 4e, and to a lesser extent in 3e, where the Rogue made up for his lack of traditional melee power by being a melee glass cannon with high DPR. I have mixed feelings about that. It can work, if the game has enough mechanical non-combat elements for the Rogue to have meaningful class features. This playtest ruleset ... doesn't. There's just not all that much that the Rogue can do compared to the other characters, in any situation that doesn't involve traps or sneaking or locked doors.

The Rogue's best feature is Skill Mastery, where he can always Take 10 on a trained skill check. No, wait, it's better than that -- he can roll the die, then if it's lower than a 10, upgrade it to a 10 before he adds his bonus and announces the result. Cool. (And quite similar to the "Coasting" rules in my own homebrew system, by the by.) But wait -- it's not as cool as it sounds, due to the limited breadth of abilities that can be covered by Trained "Skills" in this system. The sample Rogue can breeze through opening locks, finding traps, sneaking, buying and selling, handling animals, and gossiping with the common folk. That's nice ... but there's a lot of roguish tasks in the world that aren't covered in that list, which the Rogue should be able to "show off" and make look easy, which he can't. Put that together with a lack of cool combat abilities, and ... yeah. I'd rather play some other class.

On Spells

Besides the worry I noted earlier, about many spells being overpowered, I'm also worried that they're just not being written carefully enough. As someone on the WotC forums noted, there's no duration given for Sleep. If nobody slaps you to wake you up, you apparently Sleep indefinitely. I guess that kind of has a Sleeping Beauty fairy tale vibe, but ... no.

Likewise, the Battle Psalm spell perpetuates Ye Olde Bard Ambiguity, where it doesn't make it clear what the caster can do while they "continue singing" to make the duration of the spell continue. As-written, I'd interpret it the same way rules gurus interpreted Bard Song: you can keep singing while you do anything that's not prohibited (i.e. cast more spells). Continuing to sing doesn't require spending your Action on it each turn. But DMs who prohibited Bards from attacking while they sang will still do so for Clerics with the Battle Psalm spell. Is a little clarification clause too much to ask?

I'm also pretty disappointed with the Rituals system. Instead of noncombat effects being a truly separate mechanic, like they were in 4e, they are just an extra line at the end of a spell that lets a caster cast those spells outside combat, without even preparing them or expending a spell slot. I guess that's not bad, in and of itself -- it really just means that if a caster cares enough about performing a Ritual spell quickly, enough to spend a Prepared spell on it, he can do so. So I guess my real issue is that there aren't very many Rituals provided (just Alarm, I think), and they suck (just like in 4e, on the whole). Spending 25 gp and ten minutes on eight hours of home security seems pretty steep.

And the 25 gp of material components that an Alarm ritual requires aren't even generic components like 4e had. No, they're the same old "ha ha, I get it, funny joke" components that older editions had. So you'll either have to do a load of bookkeeping for material components, or abstract them away like 3e did with spell component pouches (in which case, what's the point?) And even if you cast the spell as a non-ritual, you need to spend 1 gp on a silver bell material component. Come on WotC, I thought we were past all that. I mean, requiring a special gem or a rare dragon's scale for powerful rituals would be kind of cool and flavorful, but ... requiring a 1-gp bell for an Alarm spell? That's just annoying.

On Monetary Bookkeeping

Speaking of keeping track of material components, simplifying or abstracting mundane inventories doesn't seem to be on the priority list. Coinage is the part that is already annoying me the most. Keeping track of the party's coins was a pain in the butt in 3e, and it looks even worse here with the addition return of two more kinds of coins, with a "fluff" note that these new kinds of coins are actually hard to even spend, drawing suspicion from merchants and so forth.

On Scaling

One of the things that does please me is that WotC seems to be sticking to their plan of having HP/damage scale pretty quickly, but having attack bonuses and AC largely stay the same. I mean, we don't know enough details of character advancement to say whether that's going to stay true forever, but it's a good sign.

On Save-Or-Dies

Charm is a little overpowered in non-combat situations right now, but I'm not too worried about that -- I like that they are at least trying to make sure that effects with HP Thresholds (like Sleep) have some uses against creatures that are above those thresholds.

That being said, if you're embracing a HP Threshold mechanic, why the devil doesn't it apply to the Medusa too? I mean, you're already abandoning the Medusa's mythological roots by making it so that tough characters (i.e. those that succeed on their CON save) can resist the petrification effect, so why shouldn't having a lot of HP protect you in the same way?

On Critical Hits

Critical Hits are mostly 4e-style: only on a 20 (although I'd imagine class features or feats could change that at higher levels), deal maximum damage. Good. This was one of the things I thought 4e did well. Interestingly, bonus damage such as Sneak Attack is also maximized. That should keep crits painful through all levels of the game!

TL;DR

I will probably remember other comments I was going to make, later. But in the meantime, here's my overall impression:

The playtest rules do a very good job feeling like D&D. IMO, in spite of having the unified "d20 + modifiers vs. DC" dice mechanic, they are more similar to 2e than they are to 3e. And the little bits of successful 3e and 4e mechanics that sneak in are nice, in some cases.

But other than this general atmosphere, the rules mostly fail to be an impressive, elegant piece of game design.

[J.Gellert]

Reading a bit on the monsters now...

I like how they say that trolls may live under bridges because they fear fire :smallbiggrin:

And skeletons are automatons now I see, this will end the debate on what do skeletons do when uncontrolled.

Zombies are The Plague now, or can be.

Also loving the information on orcs, it takes me back to Tolkien, long before the dirty bastards were proud-warrior-race material.

[Vovix]

Has anyone tried playing with the ruleset as opposed to just reading through? I'm probably going to try to get our group to play tomorrow. The biggest problem seems to be that we have more than five people.

[Knaight]

I've got mixed opinions on this. Some of it is elegant, some of it is likeable, and some of it is a mess. The equipment is a joke (though the light/medium/heavy armor division is different, though they really don't need a plethora of types), and then there is the perception section. Said perception section seems to be inspired by 1e, in which the player notes every little thing their character does searching. Only, now they have to roll on top of that. It's awful. Spells are also dubious. However, if those things are changed, I could see this becoming a genuinely good game, a first for D&D. I said the same about 4e before it came out though, so I suspect that this optimism is misplaced.

[Craft (Cheese)]

Has anyone tried playing with the ruleset as opposed to just reading through? I'm probably going to try to get our group to play tomorrow. The biggest problem seems to be that we have more than five people.

I've been trying to talk my partner into it, but he doesn't seem interested in attempting it. He's the only one I play regularly with (we do solo sessions together) so I'm not sure if I'll be able to get a game organized anytime soon.

[Draz74]

However, if those things are changed, I could see this becoming a genuinely good game, a first for D&D. I said the same about 4e before it came out though, so I suspect that this optimism is misplaced.

Hmmm, I'm a lot less disappointed with 5e than I was with 4e ... but that might just be due to a difference in how high I let my expectations get. :smalltongue:

So far, I'm inclined to say that I'm going to like 5e better than any other edition except 3e. The way it's going, I'm guessing it will be better than 3e in some ways, but not amazingly so. Of course, it's still early enough that anything could happen.

[ClothedInVelvet]

I enjoyed my read-through of the rules, but I think that enjoyment was heavily based in my assumption that they're only testing a few parts of this. For example, I am REALLY hoping that the equipment rules are just there because they figured players would be able to use them quickly. I think it'd be dumb to drop the basic 10 from AC and add it to armor. That implies that the naked man is always insanely easy to hit (even with 20 Dex, he'd have 5 AC). But I'm fairly confident that they're testing things like the cleric spellcasting, basic fighter mechanics, advantage/disadvantage, etc. And those things I thought were decent. Draz had some good points, but I think this is a good base to be working from.

I'm also assuming they left a lot of things out. Skills, for one thing. Using ability scores on skill checks is fine at level 4, but if your level 20 fighter only has 20 strength (a seemingly arbitrary limit at this point), he only climbs slightly better than a halfling bard with 8 strength. I think that WotC will recognize this (especially if they actually read my survey), and I'm looking forward to seeing the other parts of the system as its revealed.

[Just to Browse]

I'll be DMing the pre-made adventure on Saturday or Sunday, and shall report back post-haste with hate and praise.

[Ichneumon]

I like the fluff and flavourful writingstyle they've adopted to write these documents. The way they describe the monters etc.

[Venser]

I LOVE IT :D

So much like 4th edition never existed :D

[WitchSlayer]

My general reaction:

Nnnyyeeeehh.

It's not BAD, it's just for everything that I liked about the system, the advantage/disadvantage system (Although it'll probably need some tweaking because having a disadvantage is going to be a really really tough thing to deal with and may make you feel useless if you have it for a while), the backgrounds, the themes, the raw simplicity of the way it works there are things that I didn't like or that made me worry, the ray of frost debacle, fighters being kind of meh again, the saves for every stat which worries me once things start targeting all stats rather than a select few from what we've seen of the bestiary/module. It seems to me like they picked things from 3e, 2e and 4e and mooshed them together and the end result.. Isn't that good. Although this is just an alpha.

Oh and then there's my massive pet peeve which is: Redundant weapons. Club being 100% superior to mace and flail being 100% superior to warhammer. Also are damage types REALLY necessary? Thought dwarf was an interesting choice for fighter rather than the ever iconic human.

Also a weird thing to note: If high elves are both the ones who live in the forest sing dance and use bows... AND the ones famous for their lore and magical prowess

What are NORMAL elves?

Oh and of course armor and Dexterity as the godstat and quarterstaff being the best sneak attack weapon.

Could use a lot of work, hope they get things worked out and we'll be able to see more!

Edit: Also the spells could be formatted better! Slice away the fluffy stuff from the actual mechanical description!

[huttj509]

One thing to do is make sure to cross reference stuff. Yes, I realize it's more annoying with a PDF than a book, but as an example:

I, too, noticed the alarm spell's specific components. I saw they had a gold cost, and noticed in the spell section that a reagent pouch was mentioned. Cross reference this to the equipment list! You load up a pouch with X gold worth of unusual/uncommon components. Then, if you cast something ;like alarm as a ritual, you just subtract the gold value. The abstraction is "oh, I have 25 GP of materials left in my pouch, and they happen to be what I need for this alarm spell." However, it allows spells to have flavorful components without either being pointless (because one component pouch has everything you need, period, for all time unless it's specifically called out), or overly annoying (ok, now HOW much guano are you carrying around?).

Similarly with charm. It lasts an hour, it might not do what you think it does, it ends when you or an ally attacks, you can't cast it at the beginning of combat and have your enemy be your best buddy for the next week. I also like the phrasing at the end, no assumed "people will be pissed," but still specifying there are consequences.

BTW, my jaw dropped at the Slayer, that looks awesome.

Also, read the letter from Mearls. This is not the all inclusive "this is what it will be." It's commented out that some things are deliberately left out/changed, because they want to see what people consider iconic and necessary (such as an earlier playtest where they left Turn Undead off clerics, and everyone was asking 'where's Turn Undead?' Good clue that Turn Undead is considered iconic and necessary).

Take it as it is, submit the surveys, feel free to dislike things, but please tone down the vitriol and hyperbole. I realize this is the internet, where overstatement is the new understatement, but still.

[SSGoW]

From what I have seen... I like it so far but I've only skimmed the couple pdf.

I like the attack rolls + saves. This gives melee (such as the dwarven fighter) a better chance at surviving the first round of combat versus a caster. I'm liking the 2ed fighter feel.

The new advantage rule... Is interesting and I can't wait to run a game.

[Kurald Galain]

I think backgrounds are redundant to themes (that is, while both give a different in-game benefit, they occupy the same design space as character history).

[Justin Halliday]

I was looking forward to this, but after a read-through it looks a bit too regressive for me.

My expanded thoughts on the rules:

http://heroesagainstdarkness.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/d-next-early-thoughts-and-opinions.html

I think they're deliberately avoiding any terminology from 4th Edition. And the problem with the Fighter's Surge power is that it will encourage a 15 minute workday, because those two extra actions are likely to get used in rounds 1 and 2 of the first fight.

[Anecronwashere]

I like the choice of Module for the playtest, there isn't much railroading and various ways of going through it so you can actually explore the playstyle you want and some others in their uses

Less bias towards playstyles in here means (hopefully) less later

[Dienekes]

I think backgrounds are redundant to themes (that is, while both give a different in-game benefit, they occupy the same design space as character history).

I'm actually ok with this, since it can add more versatility in character creation: Your character can be born a peasant and be just as effective a guardian as someone who went soldier for their background. Mind you not all of them are like this, I assume a Rogue will game the backgrounds for the best skills, and depending on how skill checks work Sage seems like the perfect fit for a wizard.


I think they're deliberately avoiding any terminology from 4th Edition. And the problem with the Fighter's Surge power is that it will encourage a 15 minute workday, because those two extra actions are likely to get used in rounds 1 and 2 of the first fight.

Honestly if you do that, that's just bad resource management.

[Tehnar]

I have seen better homebrew documents (better edited, more self consistant) then this. Hasbro should really think about that, and that they paid someone to actually produce this.

The only good idea I think they had was the advantage/disadvantage system and they screwed it up by not allowing it to stack.

The Paizo people must be raising their champaigne glasses high right about now.

[Scowling Dragon]

Again, Paizo didn't take much influence from the playtests.

[Anecronwashere]

I have seen better homebrew documents (better edited, more self consistant) then this. Hasbro should really think about that, and that they paid someone to actually produce this.

The only good idea I think they had was the advantage/disadvantage system and they screwed it up by not allowing it to stack.

The Paizo people must be raising their champaigne glasses high right about now.

This is the playtest and is alright for what it is.
It's up to us to see if any features and the game as a whole (that we are given) plays like 'D&D'.
And Stacking directly would suck. Roll 5D20 then pick the worst???
If it was a scaling mechanism that got harder as it went along then yes. (something exponential maybe?)

The fighter has a few good traits, the Wizard needs better written spells and Battle Psalm needs to be clarified among other things, but that's things we actually need to test.

[Duos Greanleef]

Perhaps I missed it somewhere, but what is the action economy like? From the reading, it sounds like Standard/Move/Minor, but I'm not seeing that anywhere.
Edit: Learn to read, Duos.

Also: Every skill has a saving throw. Holy awesome crap, Batman!

[Anecronwashere]

It's 1 Action/round
Free Move Action 1/round

Fighters get 2Actions/round 2/day at 2nd level

[Swooper]

This is a D&D web forum. There's more cheese here than there is in France.
...Do you mind if I sig that?

[supermonkeyjoe]

It's 1 Action/round
Free Move Action 1/round

Fighters get 2Actions/round 2/day at 2nd level

Actually in the combat section it says you can move before and after your action so Move Action 1/round isn't strictly accurate.

As far as i'm reading it everyone effectively has spring attack/shot on the run for free, and unless I'm missing it I've seen no mention of Attacks of opportunity anywhere.

[Username_too_lo]

Hmm:
Dwarven Cleric :durkon:
Halfling Rogue :belkar:
Evocation wizard elf :vaarsuvius:

Just a shame about the other two.

In other news, I miss my flanking and attacks of opportunity! I like the way that creatures get bonuses for working in packs, and I like the neo-fascist hobgoblins - Gobbotopia will Rise!

Bit confused about the new hiding rules - presumably a small creature can sneak up on a larger one and gain advantage. Can other allies shout out "Oi, Dave! He's behind you!"

Would have been a perfect opportunity to bring in 'Facing' rules; although this would only work on tabletop - that said, cone and range attacks are always only going to work on tabletop as well. Oh, and cleave, bull rush, and what the heck is up with having to take a ten foot run up to jump up? Up!

However, I did like the bit where it says "If you roll a 1, but the roleplaying was awesome - let it slide; you're the boss, not the dice."

I imagine the RPGA were spluttering into their Skaven miniatures collection.

[MReav]

Halfling Rogue :Belkar:

Belkar's a Ranger/Barbarian/Sexy Shoeless God Of War.

[Zombimode]

I think backgrounds are redundant to themes (that is, while both give a different in-game benefit, they occupy the same design space as character history).

Since Themes are just preselected Feats, they may just as well not exist. Just pick your feats manually. So there is no real overlap.

[Conundrum]

Bit confused about the new hiding rules - presumably a small creature can sneak up on a larger one and gain advantage. Can other allies shout out "Oi, Dave! He's behind you!"

As far as I'm aware, while in combat people are assumed to be aware in every direction. Outside of combat, the facing of the guard can be described by the DM and if any other guards see the intruder then they'd raise the alarm instead.

[huttj509]

As far as I'm aware, while in combat people are assumed to be aware in every direction. Outside of combat, the facing of the guard can be described by the DM and if any other guards see the intruder then they'd raise the alarm instead.

There was a mention of hiding behind a sleeping dragon. From the example, you're not using the dragon to hide FROM the dragon, you're using it to hide from other things.

[Username_too_lo]

Belkar's a Ranger/Barbarian/Sexy Shoeless God Of War.

Well, you're assuming that Barbarians/Rangers exist in world 5.0 - there's a Berserker in the Bestiary who doesn't read all that Belkary. He's probably a Class: Rogue / Background: Thief / Theme: Savage or something.

[Kurald Galain]

Since Themes are just preselected Feats, they may just as well not exist. Just pick your feats manually. So there is no real overlap.

Well, backgrounds are just preselected Skills.

The overlap is in the fluff (which is identical), not in the rules effect.

[Username_too_lo]

What about the new dying rules; what do people think of them? Without giving away too much, how long you lie helpless and dying basically depends on your con plus your level.

Presumably this allows for Epic characters to have an Epic death scene where they reveal to their son that they are actually a dragonborn prince of an infernal realm, or something.

No alignment on the sheets, either. Is this a 4e hangover, or something new? Alignment seems an afterthought but the evil cleric writeup implies that evil stuff works better against non-good aligned creatures.

[MReav]

Well, you're assuming that Barbarians/Rangers exist in world 5.0 - there's a Berserker in the Bestiary who doesn't read all that Belkary. He's probably a Class: Rogue / Background: Thief / Theme: Savage or something.

But halfling rogues are a pretty standard archetype in DND while Belkar is anything but. Therefore trying to shoehorn him into that role doesn't work.

[Zombimode]

Well, you're assuming that Barbarians/Rangers exist in world 5.0 - there's a Berserker in the Bestiary who doesn't read all that Belkary. He's probably a Class: Rogue / Background: Thief / Theme: Savage or something.

Barbarians and Rangers DO exist. The D&D Next PHB1 will contain all base classes that ever appeared in a PHB1 in any edition. The designers stated this much. More recently, while not featured in a design blog, the Ranger was at least mentioned.

From the looks of the Bestiary, monsters are not created like PCs. I wouldn't draw any conclusions from entries in the bestiary regarding future character options.

Edit: +1 to what the poster above said. Why the urge to shoehorn stuff like that in? Belkar is a halfling, we get it, and so is the sample Rogue. But Belkar is not sufficiently defined by just his race. From what we see, both have no similarities besides their race. And this is true for all the other OotSlers/sample characters as well.

[Clawhound]

I only just got the time to look at stuff.

Simplicity. I am in LOVE.

Looks like levels 1-3 barely emphasize magic items. GOOD. The game was constantly over-emphasizing magic items. I like the simpler approach.

I like the refocus on sandboxing. That's what D&D does best. That's why it's not an MMO.

I like the long list of crufty items.

I see elements of Basic, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th.

I adore the character sheets. I love how direct they are.

[Pyromancer999]

Barbarians and Rangers DO exist. The D&D Next PHB1 will contain all base classes that ever appeared in a PHB1 in any edition. The designers stated this much. More recently, while not featured in a design blog, the Ranger was at least mentioned.

Including Warlock and Sorcerer. Can't wait to see what goes down with that. Still, I heard it was any PHB for 3.5 and 4th.


Also, as an update for the WoTC playtest download problems, the link appears to be working just fine now, so anyone who was waiting for that can now download it freely.

[The Troubadour]

I like that backgrounds provide some free skills in addition to a fluffy benefit, but I was wondering:

1) The feats provided by Themes, are they exclusive to those Themes, or can I select them on my own?
As a matter of fact, is it even possible to customize feat selection, or are feats pre-selected by your Theme? For instance, will all Slayers gain Cleave at 3rd level?

2) How can you achieve mechanical parity between characters with Themes and Backgrounds and characters without those? Backgrounds provide both fluffy and crunchy benefits, and Themes provide crunchy benefits.

3) Fighters seem a bit "meh". I realize these characters only go up to level 3, but I'm still waiting to see a proper warrior from the sagas - the one who can swim for hours on the cold sea during a storm without getting exhausted, the one who can hold his breath for hours, the one who can jump towards a harpy and tear off her wings... And so on and so forth.

4) Why do spells with attack rolls, like Arc Lightning, still deal half damage on a miss? Wouldn't it be simpler then, to either convert all spells to use attack rolls or all spells to go up against saving throws, since the mechanics will basically work the same?

5) I would have preferred a more clarified description of action economy - Minor, Move, Standard, Reaction - instead of the current one.

6) The way CON interacts with Hit Dice doesn't scale well for all classes. A Wizard with CON 14 will recover 2-4 HP per Hit Die, while a Fighter with the same CON will recover 2-12 HP per Hit Die.

7) Overall, this feels a lot like 4th Edition with some nostalgic elements added in mostly for cosmetic reasons.

[Swooper]

The D&D Next PHB1 will contain all base classes that ever appeared in a PHB1 in any edition. The designers stated this much.
I wonder how far they'll take that, because if they're really going to include everything that's ever been a class in a player's handbook 1, we're going to be seeing elf, dwarf and halfling classes in there :smalltongue:

But, seriously, ignoring the sillyness of the OE demihuman classes, what does the supposed class list look like? We get the 11 classes from 3.x (barbarian, bard, cleric, druid, fighter, monk, paladin, ranger, rogue, sorcerer, wizard), warlord and warlock from 4E. 2nd Edition didn't have anything that wasn't in 3.x (well, rogues were called thieves back then but it's the same class) but didn't 1st have assassins as a base class?

[Swooper]

2) How can you achieve mechanical parity between characters with Themes and Backgrounds and characters without those? Backgrounds provide both fluffy and crunchy benefits, and Themes provide crunchy benefits.
Themes are just feat packages. You can ignore them and pick your own feats if you like. Backgrounds are the same for skills I think, and the fluff benefits from them is something that can just be easily roleplayed.

[Conundrum]

1) The feats provided by Themes, are they exclusive to those Themes, or can I select them on my own?
As a matter of fact, is it even possible to customize feat selection, or are feats pre-selected by your Theme? For instance, will all Slayers gain Cleave at 3rd level?

Pretty sure feats will be customisable. The way I interpreted it is that Themes give you a free feat, on top of your normal feat selections, but I'm not certain on that. The character sheet's lvl 3 feat is chosen for you for convenience, since there's no feat list yet.


2) How can you achieve mechanical parity between characters with Themes and Backgrounds and characters without those? Backgrounds provide both fluffy and crunchy benefits, and Themes provide crunchy benefits.

You can't - the same way that you can't achieve mechanical parity between Themed and Theme-less characters in 4e. They'd be an everyone-or-noone feature.


3) Fighters seem a bit "meh".

Plenty of other posters have covered this, we'll have to wait and see what the extra "layers" that WOTC have promised end up containing.


5) I would have preferred a more clarified description of action economy - Minor, Move, Standard, Reaction - instead of the current one.

I think this is very refined to be honest. During your turn, you get one action, and you get to move up to your speed. Reactions are completely separate from this, and are taken on a power/feat-by-power/feat basis.

[Tehnar]

This is the playtest and is alright for what it is.
It's up to us to see if any features and the game as a whole (that we are given) plays like 'D&D'.
And Stacking directly would suck. Roll 5D20 then pick the worst???
If it was a scaling mechanism that got harder as it went along then yes. (something exponential maybe?)

The fighter has a few good traits, the Wizard needs better written spells and Battle Psalm needs to be clarified among other things, but that's things we actually need to test.

I am not talking about their design decision, or what features they decided to include in the playtest. I am talking about basic things like consistency, proof reading and logic.

Things like the rogue character example doing d6 with daggers and d8 with slings, fighters having extra damage and hit for no specified reason. That medium armors are strictly worse then light/heavy. The torch which is better then a club which is better then the mace. Is it a undisclosed class feature? Is it a typo? How do you playtest if you don't know the mechanics behind the class?

The fact that there are 7 or so spells that require a saving throw but all of them are against con, wis or dex. They could at least include one example that is not.

Later they say something like this: "There are tasks that some characters can perform automatically while other characters have no chance of doing" with the example of a boulder in front of a cave given. It is obvious that the designers don't understand their own math with that statement. If one character were to fail at a task 100% of the time while another succeeds 100% of the time (using their threshold ability +5 >= DC), the autosuccess guy would need to have 24 str, while the auto fail guy would need 6 str, and a push DC of 19. Using their own example it is impossible for a mere adventurer to have a ability over 20; that is the realm of gods and mosters.

If I wrote a rough draft of a project with the same quality as this playtest was written I would get yelled at by my boss. If on the success of this project depends the future of my company, I would get fired for writting work of such quality.

[Scots Dragon]

...Do you mind if I sig that?

Go right ahead.

[Zombimode]

But, seriously, ignoring the sillyness of the OE demihuman classes, what does the supposed class list look like? We get the 11 classes from 3.x (barbarian, bard, cleric, druid, fighter, monk, paladin, ranger, rogue, sorcerer, wizard), warlord and warlock from 4E. 2nd Edition didn't have anything that wasn't in 3.x (well, rogues were called thieves back then but it's the same class) but didn't 1st have assassins as a base class?

Yeah, pretty much those (and yes to the Assassin).
1e had the Illusionist, which got extrapolated in 2e to the Specialist Wizard. They were their own classes, so technically Illusionist/Specialist Wizard should be one of the Base Classes in 5e. While I hope this will be the case, for some reason I doubt we will see it.


Pretty sure feats will be customisable. The way I interpreted it is that Themes give you a free feat, on top of your normal feat selections, but I'm not certain on that. The character sheet's lvl 3 feat is chosen for you for convenience, since there's no feat list yet.

From what was said about Themes they are just preselected Feats. Which implies you can ignore them and select your feats manually, so no extra feat. Of course, stuff can change, and the information is somewhat dated. Since the playtest does not contain character creation rules, we have no way of telling on how Themes are implemented currently.

[Conundrum]

Is it a undisclosed class feature? Is it a typo? How do you playtest if you don't know the mechanics behind the class?

For now, you take it in good faith that the math is sound and you test what they've given you. Otherwise they'd have to release the entire game system in one go, and they're obviously not ready to do that yet, but they require feedback on what IS done already.


The fact that there are 7 or so spells that require a saving throw but all of them are against con, wis or dex. They could at least include one example that is not.

Unless there aren't any that target the other saves. Which, judging by some of the responses to the "ability scores as saves" mechanic in this thread, might not be such a bad thing.


Later they say something like this: "There are tasks that some characters can perform automatically while other characters have no chance of doing" with the example of a boulder in front of a cave given.
-snip-

Perhaps they're reintroducing a take-10 mechanic when faced with no strict time pressure. This would change your math significantly, though perhaps not enough. The other possibility is that, when they reveal the entire skill system, this statement will be something to do with trained/untrained skills.

[Textor44]

If I wrote a rough draft of a project with the same quality as this playtest was written I would get yelled at by my boss. If on the success of this project depends the future of my company, I would get fired for writting work of such quality.

This isn't an essay or an article. This is a game. The game designers aren't trying to wow people with the playtest, they are trying to test mechanical components. They want to know people's thoughts on what is in front of them, not what they think of 5e as a complete product, since at the moment, 5e would fail utterly as a complete product. If this playtest was the final product, was actually released as the 5e PHB/DMG/MMs, then I'd agree with you. For now, I think that some of the criticism of the 5e playtest is unfair, since people keep wanting to judge it as if it were going to be showing up at your local game store in a month.

[Starbuck_II]

Oh and then there's my massive pet peeve which is: Redundant weapons. Club being 100% superior to mace and flail being 100% superior to warhammer. Also are damage types REALLY necessary? Thought dwarf was an interesting choice for fighter rather than the ever iconic human.

Skeletons still have resistance (1/2 damage) to slashing and piercing so damage types are important.



Also a weird thing to note: If high elves are both the ones who live in the forest sing dance and use bows... AND the ones famous for their lore and magical prowess

What are NORMAL elves?

This is why I liked 4E's race division of eldarin and high Elf.


Oh and of course armor and Dexterity as the godstat and quarterstaff being the best sneak attack weapon.

Yeah, and Heavy armor looks good if you dump Dex but otherwise not.

I liked how barbarian (Berserker and new rage mechanics) and Warlord are in the Bestiary.

[king.com]

I am not talking about their design decision, or what features they decided to include in the playtest. I am talking about basic things like consistency, proof reading and logic.

Things like the rogue character example doing d6 with daggers and d8 with slings, fighters having extra damage and hit for no specified reason. That medium armors are strictly worse then light/heavy. The torch which is better then a club which is better then the mace. Is it a undisclosed class feature? Is it a typo? How do you playtest if you don't know the mechanics behind the class?

The fact that there are 7 or so spells that require a saving throw but all of them are against con, wis or dex. They could at least include one example that is not.

Later they say something like this: "There are tasks that some characters can perform automatically while other characters have no chance of doing" with the example of a boulder in front of a cave given. It is obvious that the designers don't understand their own math with that statement. If one character were to fail at a task 100% of the time while another succeeds 100% of the time (using their threshold ability +5 >= DC), the autosuccess guy would need to have 24 str, while the auto fail guy would need 6 str, and a push DC of 19. Using their own example it is impossible for a mere adventurer to have a ability over 20; that is the realm of gods and mosters.

If I wrote a rough draft of a project with the same quality as this playtest was written I would get yelled at by my boss. If on the success of this project depends the future of my company, I would get fired for writting work of such quality.

Huh, this is actually amazingly good quality for any other rpg playtest ive been involved in. Theres a handful of editorial/explanation problems and they bothered to provide any kind of useful formatting (which I assume was the-for the public thing). I actually find it very funny that someone would yell at another adult human for making a mistake on a draft.

[Seerow]

Huh, this is actually amazingly good quality for any other rpg playtest ive been involved in. Theres a handful of editorial/explanation problems and they bothered to provide any kind of useful formatting (which I assume was the-for the public thing). I actually find it very funny that someone would yell at another adult human for making a mistake on a draft.

Clearly this playtest needed more playtesting before being released to the playtesters :smallmad:

[Person_Man]

So yesterday I got the "The D&D Next Playtest Has Begun!‏" email. Went and logged in again today on the site, but haven't gotten the actual materials yet. I assume everyone else on the planet has (either through the playtest, or torrents). Any initial thoughts? Has anyone posted a good summary yet?

[Tyndmyr]

So yesterday I got the "The D&D Next Playtest Has Begun!‏" email. Went and logged in again today on the site, but haven't gotten the actual materials yet. I assume everyone else on the planet has (either through the playtest, or torrents). Any initial thoughts? Has anyone posted a good summary yet?

My assessment is that it's closest to 3.5, but I see some 4e style formatting/typing, and some older influences on some of the rules. There's also the occasional bit of entirely novel stuff, and we are, as per usual, focusing on a traditional group and low levels.

I'm gonna do some hardcore statistical analysis of it next week, including dungeon runs with the full party, as well as non standard makeups(all wizards, etc), and do some comparative and pvp matchups. Gonna take a minute, but once it's done, I'll post it all, of course.

[SSGoW]

I asked my group to playtest the game.... They want to PvP the first session....

*Sigh*

[killem2]

After looking at the playtest stuff, it really resembles a lot like 3.5. The how to play packet isn't exactly the most detailed stuff ever. To those who haven't got in, it isn't like you get a pdf of a players hand book and dm book that's hundreds of pages lol.

Its bare bone!

[Clawhound]

If they stopped right here, more or less, they'd have a playable 1980's game. Considering how much fun we had back then, that's pretty good. This FEELS like D&D. Even the layout screams D&D.

I like the rethinking of bonuses. In general, fewer things give bonuses to hit. And bonuses to hit themselves are not always +1, but can be some other mechanics as well.

The monster manual is readable. I actually like it better with no art.

First level characters seem competent out the door.

Between the character sheets and the monster manual, I can run a game without the rules. I can make everything else up.

Mostly, I think that they answered, for themselves, what makes D&D not an MMO. There are no borders here.

[Stubbazubba]

I am not talking about their design decision, or what features they decided to include in the playtest. I am talking about basic things like consistency, proof reading and logic.

Things like the rogue character example doing d6 with daggers and d8 with slings, fighters having extra damage and hit for no specified reason. That medium armors are strictly worse then light/heavy. The torch which is better then a club which is better then the mace. Is it a undisclosed class feature? Is it a typo? How do you playtest if you don't know the mechanics behind the class?

The fact that there are 7 or so spells that require a saving throw but all of them are against con, wis or dex. They could at least include one example that is not.

Later they say something like this: "There are tasks that some characters can perform automatically while other characters have no chance of doing" with the example of a boulder in front of a cave given. It is obvious that the designers don't understand their own math with that statement. If one character were to fail at a task 100% of the time while another succeeds 100% of the time (using their threshold ability +5 >= DC), the autosuccess guy would need to have 24 str, while the auto fail guy would need 6 str, and a push DC of 19. Using their own example it is impossible for a mere adventurer to have a ability over 20; that is the realm of gods and mosters.

If I wrote a rough draft of a project with the same quality as this playtest was written I would get yelled at by my boss. If on the success of this project depends the future of my company, I would get fired for writting work of such quality.

I agree, they haven't really given us classes or anything to playtest, all they've given us is completely arbitrary statistics which, for all we know, the designers themselves couldn't build, and then ask us if these work right. So, here's the dilemma; in the madness of an open, public playtest, even if everyone feels like the Fighter feels right, the designers will pat themselves on the back and completely forget that chargen as-is doesn't actually produce the playtest Fighter. Whoops. Because the playtest document is so scattered and inconsistent, the feedback they receive is worthless. If the system isn't consistently functional for the first three levels and only 4/5 classes, then what are we playtesting, again? The fluff?

[J.Gellert]

If they stopped right here, more or less, they'd have a playable 1980's game. Considering how much fun we had back then, that's pretty good. This FEELS like D&D. Even the layout screams D&D.

I like the rethinking of bonuses. In general, fewer things give bonuses to hit. And bonuses to hit themselves are not always +1, but can be some other mechanics as well.

The monster manual is readable. I actually like it better with no art.

First level characters seem competent out the door.

Between the character sheets and the monster manual, I can run a game without the rules. I can make everything else up.

Mostly, I think that they answered, for themselves, what makes D&D not an MMO. There are no borders here.

Even if the final result ends up being very different, this playtest has the potential spawn a legacy of 3.5 house rules, if not a complete game. :smallbiggrin:

[Reverent-One]

I haven't been able to look over the rules thoroughly yet, but I've got to give them credit where it's due, they have done an impressive job of merging elements from multiple editions of D&D (as well as adding some new ones, I think). It's very evident from this thread, where there's people saying "It's a lot like X" where X may be any one of Old school D&D, 3.X, or 4e.

[Tyndmyr]

I agree, they haven't really given us classes or anything to playtest, all they've given us is completely arbitrary statistics which, for all we know, the designers themselves couldn't build, and then ask us if these work right. So, here's the dilemma; in the madness of an open, public playtest, even if everyone feels like the Fighter feels right, the designers will pat themselves on the back and completely forget that chargen as-is doesn't actually produce the playtest Fighter. Whoops. Because the playtest document is so scattered and inconsistent, the feedback they receive is worthless. If the system isn't consistently functional for the first three levels and only 4/5 classes, then what are we playtesting, again? The fluff?

This is part 1, and they're looking at basics, I'm sure.

We'll get to chargen later, and that will uncover much more that was missed, but hey...they can't fix everything at once.

[Clawhound]

Monsters seems to follow 4E in structure. Looks like the 4E xp rules are still there. As the XP rules for building encounters worked, that's good.

The way that 3/4E worked with abilities remained.

I see more 1 and 2e here, along with basic.

Where I see 3E is in weapon and armor rules.

The thing that I'm glad to NOT see is the upgrade treadmill. Although there will always be pressure to get better stuff, in 3E, there was a 100% tax on wealth just to keep your stuff up. If you spent your wealth on anything else, you were wasting it. In older version of D&D, with so little to buy, you wound up using your wealth more for other advantages, like exploring, social status, base building, etc. 4E made magic item boring and just as necessary to keep up. (Sad, because I generally *liked* 4E as a DM.)

My gut says that they kept many of the 4E innovations that made a DM's life easier.

You can easily hack in Touch attacks by attacking your opponents Dex bonus +10 or giving your attacker advantage.

Likewise, you can hack in flat-footed by subtracting a creature's Dex bonus form its AC, or just giving the attacker advantage.

Right now, I just decided that I like advantage. It covers any number of possible game situations that would otherwise take lots of numbers and recalculating.

[Stubbazubba]

This is part 1, and they're looking at basics, I'm sure.

OK, and which basics are those? The Hit Dice mechanic is different from what they said when they revealed it (d4s for Wizard or d6s? That's kind of important), the Rogue's class abilities are completely a game of Convince-the-DM, as are all skills right now, even the basic math of the attack roll doesn't seem to be derived in a consistent fashion. The Advantage/Disadvantage thing, I suppose, is relatively consistent, but they could have done that in a blog, not an entire playtest document. What am I supposed to give them feedback on?

[Clawhound]

Being a playtest version, I would assume that they want to know if the game plays well.

Were any of the monsters over or under effective?
Did you players find a combo that subverted the design?
Were any of the rules awkward or confusing in play?
Did the players have fun?
Could the player sheets be improved?
As a DM, did you keep wishing for some piece of data on every monsters?

[Stubbazubba]

Just for the record, I'm not trying to be vitriolic or anything, I just feel like this playtest isn't going to yield any useful results, because they're not testing a system, they're still testing numbers handed down arbitrarily.


Were any of the monsters over or under effective?

Since the monsters' attack/damage values are not derived in any transparent way, it will be hard to determine if this is a numbers issue or a mechanical issue.


Did you players find a combo that subverted the design?

See above.

OK, so even if we all report a lot of problems, unless WotC is actually made of wizards, I don't see how this playtest feedback will actually indicate whether a problem is with the system, or just the numbers in the system, or some combination of the two. In fact, if they've been working on this for supposedly about a year, I'm kind of aghast that this is all they have to show for it; "Here, test these arbitrary numbers and see if they fit. If they do, we'll make a system around these benchmarks. If not, we'll try another arbitrary batch of numbers and see what happens. Until the deadline comes, then, whatever batch of arbitrary numbers we're on will probably just get printed. Or maybe one of the earlier ones we liked better. Whatev. Have fun playtesting and be sure to purchase the final product, 'cause your input mattered!"

[Kurald Galain]

I don't think they need numerical feedback. Rather, they want to test whether people like the (dis)advantage rules, the new healing surge mechanic, the easy-to-play fighter, the return of Vancian, stuff like that.

Of course, asking that of a large enough crowd will likely give you a 33%/33%/33% spread between "yes", "no", and "don't care either way".

[Tyndmyr]

OK, and which basics are those? The Hit Dice mechanic is different from what they said when they revealed it (d4s for Wizard or d6s? That's kind of important), the Rogue's class abilities are completely a game of Convince-the-DM, as are all skills right now, even the basic math of the attack roll doesn't seem to be derived in a consistent fashion. The Advantage/Disadvantage thing, I suppose, is relatively consistent, but they could have done that in a blog, not an entire playtest document. What am I supposed to give them feedback on?

Not the underlying mechanics, but things like "do these chars feel D&Desque", and "do these chars work against these opponents".

Like I said, I'm going to run the chars through the dungeon, then run through parties composed of copies of one char, and see how they fare. This should give a pretty good idea of the balance of THESE CHARS. Does this say anything about the balance of wizard vs fighter at higher levels? Of course not. That comes later. But making sure you've got good baselines at level 1 is primary. If the game fails at level 1, it's kind of useless.

[Draz74]

I'm surprised how many people feel like the game is most similar to 3.X, when that's not my impression at all. I guess that means WotC has done a good job mixing editions up thoroughly.


Things like the rogue character example doing d6 with daggers and d8 with slings, fighters having extra damage and hit for no specified reason. That medium armors are strictly worse then light/heavy. The torch which is better then a club which is better then the mace.
I get the feeling that they made some last-minute adjustments to the Weapons list, such as nerfing the dagger's damage, after they had already written out the pregen character sheets. That's why there are several inconsistencies in the weapons' stats.

Embarrassing mistake, yes. Big deal? No. Not when the balance of the weapons list isn't the focus of this playtest.


Is it a undisclosed class feature? Is it a typo? How do you playtest if you don't know the mechanics behind the class?
Again -- not the focus of this playtest. Class balance is almost irrelevant so far.


The fact that there are 7 or so spells that require a saving throw but all of them are against con, wis or dex. They could at least include one example that is not.
I suspect that this was on purpose -- that spells that target the other three saves will be very rare, if they exist at all. I'm not sure I like that (I wanted spells targeting CHA, at least), but it means there's nothing necessarily wrong here.


Later they say something like this: "There are tasks that some characters can perform automatically while other characters have no chance of doing" with the example of a boulder in front of a cave given. It is obvious that the designers don't understand their own math with that statement. If one character were to fail at a task 100% of the time while another succeeds 100% of the time (using their threshold ability +5 >= DC), the autosuccess guy would need to have 24 str, while the auto fail guy would need 6 str, and a push DC of 19. Using their own example it is impossible for a mere adventurer to have a ability over 20; that is the realm of gods and mosters.
Here, you have a point. The math behind auto-success is pretty messed up.


So yesterday I got the "The D&D Next Playtest Has Begun!‏" email. Went and logged in again today on the site, but haven't gotten the actual materials yet. I assume everyone else on the planet has (either through the playtest, or torrents). Any initial thoughts? Has anyone posted a good summary yet?
I don't know if it was organized enough to call a "summary," but I posted thoughts about a lot of different topics from the playtest a couple pages back.


I'm gonna do some hardcore statistical analysis of it next week, including dungeon runs with the full party, as well as non standard makeups(all wizards, etc), and do some comparative and pvp matchups. Gonna take a minute, but once it's done, I'll post it all, of course.
Awesome.


Just for the record, I'm not trying to be vitriolic or anything, I just feel like this playtest isn't going to yield any useful results, because they're not testing a system, they're still testing numbers handed down arbitrarily.

I'm pretty sure they have a system for all of the numbers. Just because they haven't released that system to us yet doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It just means the numbers (and the balance of the system that generates them) aren't what they want us to be focusing on yet.

[Dienekes]

Just for the record, I'm not trying to be vitriolic or anything, I just feel like this playtest isn't going to yield any useful results, because they're not testing a system, they're still testing numbers handed down arbitrarily.

Since the monsters' attack/damage values are not derived in any transparent way, it will be hard to determine if this is a numbers issue or a mechanical issue.

See above.

OK, so even if we all report a lot of problems, unless WotC is actually made of wizards, I don't see how this playtest feedback will actually indicate whether a problem is with the system, or just the numbers in the system, or some combination of the two. In fact, if they've been working on this for supposedly about a year, I'm kind of aghast that this is all they have to show for it; "Here, test these arbitrary numbers and see if they fit. If they do, we'll make a system around these benchmarks. If not, we'll try another arbitrary batch of numbers and see what happens. Until the deadline comes, then, whatever batch of arbitrary numbers we're on will probably just get printed. Or maybe one of the earlier ones we liked better. Whatev. Have fun playtesting and be sure to purchase the final product, 'cause your input mattered!"

While I enjoy the marked pessimism and general feelings of uselessness you make a few assumptions. That the creators find the numbers arbitrary is one important one.

We do not see how these creatures were built, they, however, do. If creature X deals too much damage they can look at those numbers and see why. Maybe the template they used does not work. Maybe it's as simple as they put a +2 damage somewhere in an ability that doesn't make sense. Or maybe the fundamental math is wrong. Maybe through looking at what the big complaints are they can get a pretty good statistic of what works and what does not over the testing process. Hell, even if they are using random numbers, simply charting what gets shown as too weak or too strong until a good middle ground is created is a pretty easy statistical problem.

Now we can complain about this process sure. But data will still come. Also I kind of doubt this playtest is really about the numbers. It's more a mechanic check. Is this mechanic fun? Do you think the saving throw mechanic looks like it could work? How about the hard limit of 3 new spells per level does that seem a happy compromise?

Because you are right, to get a real analysis on the exact balance we will need more information, and they have said they will provide that information in the next batch of tests. But for now, it's simple a "does this feel good" type of analysis. Which is still useful. If everyone and their grandmother started yelling about the loss of base attack bonus they may try and find a way to somehow put that in, or at least show some system of gaining accuracy.

[Clawhound]

I pretty much agree.

I don't think that the numbers are random. That, and they don't need us to check the numbers. They can already do that with focus groups where they record the session and know every die that gets rolled. What they don't know is the experiential parts.

In a way, they are throwing spaghetti at the wall and they're seeing which parts fall off first. That's a messy way to do it, but sometimes just throwing the spaghetti is the most effective thing to do. If the community is going to hate something, better to find out now rather than later in the design process.

Once they send out the surveys, we'll know what exactly they want to learn about. My gut says that they'll focus on look & feel, enjoyability, length of game sessions, etc. Fine tuning the numbers will occur over the entire duration of the playtest.

[Person_Man]

Looking at the classes in the Playtest, two things struck me immediately:

Vancian magic has been resurrected, and the Fighter has a "per day" power as well. Using a "per day" balance point is a terrible idea for many reasons.
Int/Wis/Cha are still dump stats if your class doesn't run off of that stat.


These are bad things.

[king.com]

I dont know how many people out there who are interested in this stuff are like me and have not really played D&D before but from my reading of the documents, this is the first edition of D&D I really want to play.

I don't think too many are interested in my particular point of view (and in some cases perhaps actively against it) but I figure it cant hurt to put it out.


I like the way it is written, definitely room for confusion and misinterruptation but ultiamtely I read through it and understood what is going on. I feel as if I could grasp and learn these rules rather than being bombarded and humiliated the way 3.X ed does it or told what to do and how to do the way 4th ed seems to do it. I wanted to play 3.5 but didn't ever feel confident enough to do it (delayed my entrance to roleplaying for a good 4 years).

I like systems when your character creation process gives you a fleshed out person rather than a stat block and the themes/background seem perfect for this.

I got to the DM Guidelines and the second paragraph really got my intention, the one beginning with "The first rule of being a good DM..." (not sure if we are allow to quote blocks of text or anything). I can see people hating this but I adore this GM philosophy. The GM is in charge and in control, his/her job is to make sure everyone is enjoying themselves, if a rule stops that its a bad rule no matter what it does. GMs can hurt characters, even kill them and its okay. Everything is an opportunity not a result.

I LOVE the advantages/disadvantages system. I literally never need to know or understand modifiers if I dont want to. Its a catch all method to allow a GM to create entirely new rules and effects completely on the fly based entirely on their own fluff and it has a clear mechanic benefit without any approach to numbers.

Their example of a cloak of fire resistance could have damage reduction from fire or something else but instead a GM can create something of a mysticsm around the object and seems to absorb all the warmth around it and radiate a gentle glow of this heat outwards. It doesnt need to have any number attached to it at any point but simply provides an effect when fire would hit the player giving a disadvantage if they were casting a fireball spell while wearing it or an advantage while they are being hit by the fireball. This to me allows the prioritisation of the creative magic items rather than the blunt force '+3' kind of items.

The one danger I found is that the wording doesnt really say if a higher number of advantages or disadvantages still applies or not. Say 2 advantages and 1 disadvantages = advantage or nothing? I hope its the former.

I like the lack of skills but simply field of interaction you can work on. I hope theres not set skills in this system or atleast an option to run without them. Some people hate this idea and like to degrade it by calling it DM-mother-may-I? I understand not liking this style but the DM is not like a mother but is there to explain if that is possible in the world. Your asking if in this fictional world and story, can and how is my character able to do X? Maybe thats counter to what people like about D&D.

I like the saving throws goings off your stats. They are always there and again allow a DM to apply rules and logic on the fly and use it the same way you would a skill check - pick the relavent stat and have the player roll.
Makes a smoother mental transition than creating 3 whole new stats you need to worry about.

I'm very glad improvise is included as a standard action, also combat looks really fun to play, being able to throw advantages and disadvantages into the fight as it becomes relavent rather than learning a number of fringe case rules.

I like that a rogue is the only one to be able to use thieves tools, its part of what makes them who they are as an archetype. I've not really understood the perspective of 'so we must have a rogue in a party or use a pole'. If theres not a rogue, why are there so many traps around to deal with? Hopefully someone can enlightenment

Im sure someone is going to point out the many reasons why these change are dangerous/bad for D&D etc but I thought I would share an outsiders perspective.

[EatAtEmrakuls]

Comments on the playtest from around the web:


So I did a little number crunching on the advantage mechanic vs the traditional +2 to hit. It turns out advantage is better in almost all situations, but the amount it improves your odds changes depending on how likely you are to hit the target. The amount advantage improves your odds is an inverted parabola, with the peak at a 50/50 chance, where it's as good as a +5. In most other cases it's still better than a +2, just not by as much. However there is one exception: when you need to roll better than a natural 18 to hit. In that case, a flat +2 is better. It would also be true in cases where you could hit with less than a natural 3, but the natural 1 auto-miss rule make advantage better in those cases too.

Some more math on advantage/disadvantage:

Monster ACs in the playtest range from 10 to 20. The playtest Fighter gets +6 to hit. So, the playtest Fighter has a 35-85% chance to hit, depending on the enemy he's attacking.

With advantage, that range jumps to 57.75%-97.75%.

With disadvantage, it drops to 12.25%-72.25%.

To put it a different way, the odds of hitting an AC 14 normally is 65%, nearly the same as hitting an AC 19 with advantage or an AC 11 with disadvantage (both 64%).

I guess the interesting part of that is, with advantage you are more likely to hit than not against any enemy, while with disadvantage you are still more likely to hit than not against enemies with AC up to 12 (which is mostly the weakest ones), while anything higher you're more likely to miss. So advantage/disadvantage is a pretty swingy mechanic. If Fighters still had interesting attacks worth saving for when you were more likely to hit, this would be particularly useful information! Good thing they don't, we might have had some strategy on our hands which is of course NOT MY D&D!


Why on earth are the spells listed alphabetically?

Magic Missile is not only auto-hit, but at will. So the existence of the wizard will be incredibly stupid from a story perspective right out of the gate (no non-force-resistant monster can feasibly be a threat to an area).

The dying rules are actually decent.

Crossbows are hilariously bad.


The interesting thing about the armors is that for the base light, medium, and heavy armors there's literally no point when medium armor isn't strictly worse from an AC perspective than at least one of light or heavy armor. Things change around a little when you move to higher tiers of armor, but in general medium is a pointless median that nobody cares about. They can kind of force it into use by giving classes with no good reason to use Dex ****ty proficiencies, but it's still crappy.

[Dienekes]

Looking at the classes in the Playtest, two things struck me immediately:

Vancian magic has been resurrected, and the Fighter has a "per day" power as well. Using a "per day" balance point is a terrible idea for many reasons.
Int/Wis/Cha are still dump stats if your class doesn't run off of that stat.


These are bad things.

I agree, on 1. While I don't particularly mind Vancian the Fighter 2/day ability just seems odd. I'd have preferred if it was just a 1/encounter deal.

On 2, Int and Cha I agree. But since Wis is now the direct counter to any spells that can affect your mind I wouldn't put it as a dump.

[Madara]

So yesterday I got the "The D&D Next Playtest Has Begun!‏" email. Went and logged in again today on the site, but haven't gotten the actual materials yet. I assume everyone else on the planet has (either through the playtest, or torrents). Any initial thoughts? Has anyone posted a good summary yet?

You have to re-register an agreement thing, so go here (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/DnDNext.aspx) and click on the banner. Then you have to wait about 30min before you get an email apparently..

[Thomar_of_Uointer]

I agree, on 1. While I don't particularly mind Vancian the Fighter 2/day ability just seems odd. I'd have preferred if it was just a 1/encounter deal.

On 2, Int and Cha I agree. But since Wis is now the direct counter to any spells that can affect your mind I wouldn't put it as a dump.

It seems like Int and Cha could also be targeted by spells. I think you can't really dump any stats because of the way saving throws work now.

I really like how they've given all of the monstrous humanoids their own themes and abilities. Kobolds always keep pets, goblins have ties to the fey realms, orcs poison the land they live on, etc.

Is it just the playtest being bare-boned, or does it seem like this edition of D&D is much more open to houserules? I can definitely see hit points and death/dying being the first thing everyone houserules. If feats affect your class progression more than your class then I can see houseruled feats being easy to write.

I like how all of the Background abilities encourage role-playing when the players aren't in a dungeon.

[navar100]

If spells only target Con, Dex, and Wis, that's just another way of saying Fortitude, Reflex, and Will. It would be interesting cool if that's what magic targets only but warrior shticks target Str, Int, and Cha: Str for physical contest, Int for trickery, and Cha for ego. Whether this works mechanically is for playtest to decide. :smallsmile:

[Ziegander]

If spells only target Con, Dex, and Wis, that's just another way of saying Fortitude, Reflex, and Will. It would be interesting cool if that's what magic targets only but warrior shticks target Str, Int, and Cha: Str for physical contest, Int for trickery, and Cha for ego. Whether this works mechanically is for playtest to decide. :smallsmile:

That really would not make much sense. Warriors can't target Fortitude, Reflex, or Will? They can only target Muscle, Wits, and Ego? Warriors should be mostly about Muscle, Fortitude, and Reflex, while Mages should be mostly about Will, Wits, and Ego, but both should be capable of targeting all of those things.

Beyond that though, even if spells predominantly attack only Con, Dex, and Wis, there will be spells that attack the other three scores (unless WotC drops the whole notion of having saving throws for each of the six scores, which seems highly unlikely). Since Wizards get to choose which spells they get, there will be little reason to continue to pile up a Wisdom attacks, when you can go for versatility to pick up the "rare" Strength or Intelligence attack (we actually already have an example of a spell with an Intelligence save). Furthermore, simple hazards like the environment and traps will attack ability scores other than Con, Dex, and Wis.

[Scowling Dragon]

If they have equal capabilities then the classes begin to feel samey. How would a fighter target INT?

[EatAtEmrakuls]

If they have equal capabilities then the classes begin to feel samey. How would a fighter target INT?

Taunts, Battle Cries, etc

Imagination is a powerful thing.

More importantly than how badly this stat-defense fiasco makes the whole game, is the general feel that if AC, to hit, etc don't grow very well, and magic items are seriously under emphasized, it makes people who enjoy finding magic items and treasure, and growing and feeling much more powerful, under-focused by the developers.

My group, which spent 4 years on a 1-30 level 4e campaign, would never play this, just because of the feeling, not the mechanics.

[Scowling Dragon]

So we are literally judging how stupid your opponent is by their Int save?

"GET OVER HERE".

"Darn failed my save. Welp, got to run into the pit"

or

"We want to go into there"

"Roll your int saves"

"You pass and realize thats a stupid idea"

Thats not imagination, thats the exact opposite of that.

Also, taunts and battle cries are against charisma.

edit:

Also- Making Magic weapons part of the system is TAKING POWER FROM THE GAMER. It doesn't mean your becoming more powerful. It means that your passable because its built into the system!

If its a separate thing then a +1 sword actually means something as your actually ment to get it.

[EatAtEmrakuls]

So we are literally judging how stupid your opponent is by their Int save?

"GET OVER HERE".

"Darn failed my save. Welp, got to run into the pit"

or

"We want to go into there"

"Roll your int saves"

"You pass and realize thats a stupid idea"

Thats not imagination, thats the exact opposite of that.

Also, taunts and battle cries are against charisma.

So far NOTHING is against charisma, so that's not true.

Int is as important of a mental stat in a battle as any other. Making yourself look open, in order to draw your opponent in and then attack with...*shudder*...the new advantage mechanic is a perfect example of how a Fighter can make the opponent use an Int save to not fall for it.

[Scowling Dragon]

So far NOTHING is against charisma, so that's not true.

My force of personality against yours makes more sense then my force of personality VS how smart you are. Im just saying how it makes sense, not how it is.


Int is as important of a mental stat in a battle as any other. Making yourself look open, in order to draw your opponent in and then attack with...*shudder*...the new advantage mechanic is a perfect example of how a Fighter can make the opponent use an Int save to not fall for it.

Thats based on wisdom. How wise you are to a bluff =P.

Again, you seem to want perfect symmetry with Fighter VS wizard stuff. Again, this edition will never reach the point of symmetry that 4e reached. You might as well give up on this game prematurely.

[Ziegander]

So we are literally judging how stupid your opponent is by their Int save?

Yes? How could that not be what an Intelligence save is measuring? The only other thing an Intelligence save could possibly determine is how fast someone is able to think, rather than their ability to arrive at the correct answer, but that's reaching.

So, yes, when you fake left, but smash right, and your opponent fails to see it coming, he has failed an Intelligence save (or at least he should, but the current system would probably call that a Reflex attack at best, and likely just a normal attack with a +2 bonus to the roll).

[EatAtEmrakuls]

My force of personality against yours makes more sense then my force of personality VS how smart you are. Im just saying how it makes sense, not how it is.



Thats based on wisdom. How wise you are to a bluff =P.

Again, you seem to want perfect symmetry with Fighter VS wizard stuff. Again, this edition will never reach the point of symmetry that 4e reached. You might as well give up on this game prematurely.

That's not a bluff. That's a tactic.

And if it doesn't reach some form of symmetry in offensive options, I will give up on this game prematurely, because it'll be nothing but a collage of 3.5s balance mistakes.

[Scowling Dragon]

And its a tactic based on a bluff. Again, there is no logical way to target Int, and if a attack bluff targets Int you might as well be rolling checks for everything.

And if it attempts to turn it into the same boring "nobody can be unique because we are too lazy to put effort" stuff that 4e was then Im dumping this here and now.

[Starbuck_II]

If spells only target Con, Dex, and Wis, that's just another way of saying Fortitude, Reflex, and Will. It would be interesting cool if that's what magic targets only but warrior shticks target Str, Int, and Cha: Str for physical contest, Int for trickery, and Cha for ego. Whether this works mechanically is for playtest to decide. :smallsmile:

Technically, you can do stunts vs other stats. In the improvise section, it mentions it.
Like:
Use a Strength contest to shove the other guy into a pit.
Use a Dexterity contest against an enemy during your movement to fake them out; if you win, you gain Advantage for your attack this turn; if you lose, the enemy gains Advantage on their next attack against you.
Dexterity contest vs. Dexterity or Constitution to throw sand in a guy's eyes, blinding him until he uses an action to clear it out.

Something along those lines.

[Dienekes]

If they have equal capabilities then the classes begin to feel samey. How would a fighter target INT?

Personally I would do it based off a tactician approach. Warlord does X maneuver make an Int check or switch spaces with an ally of the Warlord's choosing. Or Warlord does X maneuver and until the end of the turn if you do not make an Int Save all opponents gain Advantage over you. I'm sure if I tried I could think of some others.

Mind you, I'm using Warlord instead of Fighter, because I'm pretty sure we were told that would be a class and it fits the whole tactic approach I was going for. Personally I think Fighters will be mostly be making Str checks, Dex checks, Con checks, and maybe Wis checks.

As to symmetrical balance, yeah I doubt that'll be happening. Since they've already confirmed they're going with different subsystems for spells as opposed to whatever they end up doing with martial classes. Now that doesn't mean there won't be balance (insert Warblade, Beguiler, and Factotum argument here) it does mean it will be harder to do. Though that's supposedly why they're doing the multi-layered open playtest in the first place.

[Scowling Dragon]

To be honest INT is the only ability score that doesn't make any sense. Its the 6th wheel in this equation.

[Dienekes]

To be honest INT is the only ability score that doesn't make any sense. Its the 6th wheel in this equation.

Really? I think it's Cha. You can be tricked which is naturally an Int check in my mind. While Cha is your force of personality, it always seems to take an active roll in what it does, you force your personality onto others. I really can't think of what would be a Cha check, since Wis has historically taken the position of will power.

[Scowling Dragon]

Let me explain why:

STR: No need for an explanation
Dex: Same here
Con: Same here

Wisdom: If you view it as mental clarity it makes sense. How clear is your mind, and how well you think.

Charisma is force of personality. Some people can have high Charisma and be quiet and timid. It just depends on thier force of personality.

But Int? How does one measure smartness? I already have skills/ Levels to represent how much I know, and Wis for how well you think. So yeah. Int is redundant.

[Draz74]

INT saves could make sense vs. illusions. But other than that ... yeah, tricky to figure out what will make them important.

[Scowling Dragon]

Again: Wisdom Check. Is your mind clear enough to see through the illusions?

Thats what im doing in my homebrew- Getting rid of Intelligence.

Im also getting rid of AC and just using reflex saves. Their exactly the same thing anyway. Arm is DR.

[Crow]

Very first impression while reading the new rules:

The avarage human can deadlift 500-550 lbs.

I'm calling bull.

Going to continue reading now. Not a deal breaker or anything. Just saying.

[Ranting Fool]

Very first impression while reading the new rules:

The avarage human can deadlift 500-550 lbs.

I'm calling bull.

Going to continue reading now. Not a deal breaker or anything. Just saying.

hehe well also a human with 10 str can jump 10 foot forward with a running start.... Now granted that I've not done any tested jumping since I was in school but that seems a tad far for most people I know :smallbiggrin::smalltongue:

[Dienekes]

Again: Wisdom Check. Is your mind clear enough to see through the illusions?

Thats what im doing in my homebrew- Getting rid of Intelligence.

Im also getting rid of AC and just using reflex saves. Their exactly the same thing anyway. Arm is DR.

You could divide Will between Wis and Int. You make Wis your ability to keep control of your mind and Int as the way to puzzle things out.

For example, someone tries to Charm you: That's Wis. Someone tries to trick you: that's Int.

Then it would be divided more: Bluff, Tactics, Illusions would be opposed by Int. Mind Control, Intimidation, and Diplomacy would be opposed by Wis. The problem with this is Wisdom as a stat is generally perception as well, so people would argue that noticing illusions or that someone is lying would be Wisdom. What being wise has to do with perception? I have no idea, but it's been like that for as long as I've been playing. Mind you, you could probably make the same argument for using Int for Wis checks. Wouldn't I be smart enough to realize if the guy was actually a threat or not? Wouldn't I be smart enough to not be suckered into a raw deal? And so on.

Really when you get to the mental stats it's all a bit fuzzy to me as why anything but the most basic stuff is where it is. Int is if you're knowledgeable, so the Knowledge skills definitely go there. Cha is force of personality so if you try to force your personality on someone else you use that, so bluff, diplomacy uses Cha makes sense. Wis is, well, I don't quite know what wisdom actually is in the real world, it seems that fuzzy part of your mind that might not be able to do quadratic equations, but can just tell you that 2+2 equals 4 when they see it. The dictionary apparently says wisdom is having experience (we have exp points for that), knowledge (but isn't that already pretty definitively covered by Int?), and having good judgment. Well, players never have good judgment so that's out. But if the game says your ability to resist someone's affect on your personality and mind, is wisdom, sure, why not, I'll believe you.

[Scowling Dragon]

I say wisdom is mental clarity. How organized your mind is and how easy it is for you to learn new things.

[noparlpf]

Very first impression while reading the new rules:

The avarage human can deadlift 500-550 lbs.

I'm calling bull.

Going to continue reading now. Not a deal breaker or anything. Just saying.

Yeah, I've frequently had issues with the physical skills and the like in D&D. It's almost like they're written by sedentary geeks.

[Dienekes]

I say wisdom is mental clarity.

Ok, in a game, that makes sense mental clarity resists mental spells. I have no idea what that would mean in real life though. Maybe how little your emotions affect your judgment? How would you even get players to roleplay that?


How organized your mind is and how easy it is for you to learn new things.

The second one is I believe in the definition of Intelligence, so no there. The first one maybe, though I don't know what that would be in game terms. You can't test mind organization, can you? At least not in any way to make a game mechanic out of it.

[RedWarlock]

I say wisdom is mental clarity. How organized your mind is and how easy it is for you to learn new things.

But that's not what it is at all. Be careful about forcing your houserule justifications on the base game. Intelligence is learning, that's why it governs skill points in 3e, because you're more able to learn those skills. Wisdom I see as more like your sanity and focus, whereas Intelligence is rationality/logic and learning. That's why monks and divines have high wisdom, because they're more focused, more aware of the world around them, such as with the Monk's Nirvana-esque enlightenment.

Illusions could be done with either Intelligence saves OR Wisdom saves, either or both. Hight-Int characters would be able to figure out from details that don't match up rationally, whereas high-Wis characters would have the clarity you describe to resist the magic and perceive the illusion's falsehood.

[some guy]

hehe well also a human with 10 str can jump 10 foot forward with a running start.... Now granted that I've not done any tested jumping since I was in school but that seems a tad far for most people I know :smallbiggrin::smalltongue:

10 feet is very is easy to do with a running start, maybe not if you work behind a computer for a living, but if you earn your gold by *venturing forth in deep pits of despair I would reckon you could easily do that..


*You must gather your party before

[Crow]

Well, it says walk 10 ft then make a 10 foot jump. But whatever, close enough. I can nearly get 10 from standing, so pretty much anyone should get 10 running.

[noparlpf]

Well, it says walk 10 ft then make a 10 foot jump. But whatever, close enough. I can nearly get 10 from standing, so pretty much anyone should get 10 running.

Yeah, I think any reasonably fit adult human ought to manage a ten-foot long jump with a running start. Especially during combat with adrenaline and whatnot.

[Ranting Fool]

Well, it says walk 10 ft then make a 10 foot jump. But whatever, close enough. I can nearly get 10 from standing, so pretty much anyone should get 10 running.

See now I just want to messure out and mark down how far I can jump :smallbiggrin: sadly if I tried that right now i'd hit a wall rather quickly so it's more of a Park type activity :smallbiggrin::smalltongue:

World record is a bit over 29ft

[navar100]

I just want to say for the record now that any further opinions I may have in this thread are based on what I'm reading here and commenting on that, what I like, don't like, etc. I am not doing the playtest since my group is enmeshed with 3.P, and I have not read the 5E material.

[EatAtEmrakuls]

More comments from around the web:


Hey guys, check out the Medusa's Petrifying Gaze. They included rules for averting your eyes in the monster's stat block. You can probably see where this is going and yes... they somehow fell into the design trap that creates ALREADY: Medusa gaze works on blind people by RAW and by RAI you're better off being blind than averting your gaze (blinding yourself doesn't grant advantage to attackers).

Jolly good show WotC. I fully intend to buy 5e just so I can show future generations how NOT to design an RPG.


How aboot the 30+ attack rolls the DM has to make in that room with the kobolds? That's not per encounter...that's per freaking round because you know swarm rules were a 4E mechanic (they weren't) and thus were the devil.


http://i.imgur.com/nbTNm.jpg

Somebody that isnt me made this.


Unless I'm mistaken, Medusa's Petrifying Gaze also doesn't include any rules for line-of-sight, maximum range, or anything like that, so technically you could be turned to stone at any time if a Medusa exists in your game world. Even if you interpret the rules a bit so it doesn't work when the Medusa isn't in the same room as you, you could still be hiding around a corner or something and be subject to it.


"Okay guys, well done. Everyone make a constitution save."

"But we are in town, who is attacking us?"

"The Medusa scryed your location, and is peering through it."

[Loki_42]

Well, I'm running a game for my regular group tomorrow. Should be fun. I'm actually quite impressed by the rules, and interested in how they'll grow and change.

On the subject of mental ability scores, I've always had the most trouble with wisdom. It seems highly redundant with the other scores, with it at times doing things that Intelligence should do, and at other times doing things Charisma should do, while all the while having fluff that was wildly divergent from either of the other scores that was not represented at all by the mechanics.

[Roncorps]

You could divide Will between Wis and Int. You make Wis your ability to keep control of your mind and Int as the way to puzzle things out.

For example, someone tries to Charm you: That's Wis. Someone tries to trick you: that's Int.


Talking about INT vs WIS vs CHA, wouldn't the old AD&D 2nd optional rule come handy to see how the designer wanted us to see the characteristic ?

Strength is Stamina and Muscle
Dexterity is Aim and Balance
Constitution is Health and Fitness
Intelligence is Reason and Knowledge
Wisdom is Intuition and Willpower
Charisma is Leadership and Appearance.

So, going with the example of Charm and Trick, I would say the same. Charming is against Willpower and Trickery is against Reason.

[Conundrum]

Re: Wis vs Int

I've always thought of it like this. Intelligence is "book smarts" - knowledge you can gain from studying, like that a Wizard would gain from dedicating his life to the arcane arts.

Wisdom, on the other hand, is "street smarts" - that natural intuition that some people have and other people don't.

Sure, you might know all there is to know about -x monster-, but do you know how to survive on the harsh streets of -y town-?

[WitchSlayer]

Skeletons still have resistance (1/2 damage) to slashing and piercing so damage types are important.


This is why I liked 4E's race division of eldarin and high Elf.

Yeah, and Heavy armor looks good if you dump Dex but otherwise not.

I liked how barbarian (Berserker and new rage mechanics) and Warlord are in the Bestiary.

Yes, but I think the damage resistance to certain types of damage is a little redundant since now you're just going to find a weapon that deals damage to as many types as possible and then another one that fills in the gap. It's just a money sink and not a very good one at that.

And yes, I liked the race division as well, but, well, haters gonna hate.

[Swooper]

Hmm. Charisma is, partly, confidence, right? Wouldn't it make sense then that charisma, rather than wisdom, were used for saves against fear and other courage/morale type things?

[Doug Lampert]

Yeah, I think any reasonably fit adult human ought to manage a ten-foot long jump with a running start. Especially during combat with adrenaline and whatnot.

During combat even the guys at light load are probably wearing armor, a pack full of junk, heavy boots rather than sneakers, and carrying stuff in their hands. That makes the jump MUCH harder.

I'm not at all sure an average person can make 10' under those circumstances, now add some blood on the floor he's taking off from and make it slightly uneven. The basic rules should be set for use during an adventure by adventurers, which means world record jumps should be well above the upper bound.

That dead lift of 550 lb is FAR worse than it sounds! That's not likely to be a barbell, it's probably an unballanced weight without a good grip. A world champion weight lifter probably can't manage 550 lb under those circumstances.

If the characters ever are in a track and field competition on a well designed jumping pit with good footing and no gear, well, you can easily houserule that. Similarly for lifting barbells.

Basic capabilities should match what you can do in adventuring gear while in a cramped tunnel or whatever. Basic dead lift should be what you can lift if the weight is a boulder on the ground or something similar, not a barbell in a gym.

DougL

[Scots Dragon]

Also a weird thing to note: If high elves are both the ones who live in the forest sing dance and use bows... AND the ones famous for their lore and magical prowess

What are NORMAL elves?

The high elves are the normal elves, more or less. Or, more accurately, the high elves are the simply those who are most commonly encountered; those who balance a love of nature with a thirst for knowledge and an affinity for magic. It's less a 'high versus normal' and a 'varied types' deal.

The types usually presented, using the ideas almost verbatim from the Greyhawk setting, are high elves, aquatic elves, grey elves, wood elves, wild elves and dark elves (or drow, if you prefer; either term is applicable). There are a few similar interpretations in many of the standard campaign worlds; the Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance have their own interpretations of these

To put the 4th edition interpretation into perspective, the grey elves, who are arrogant, distant and intellectual are in fact the predecessor equivalent to the 'eladrin' types. The wood and wild elves split the difference between the 4th edition 'elves' in a sense, and are less intellectual but more intuitive and nature-friendly, as well as more likely to be archers.

And now you know.

I wouldn't have minded the change-over so much if it didn't introduce a dozen or so wide, sweeping retcons to the settings to which it should not have applied to. But we wound up with eladrin in the Forgotten Realms.

[Craft (Cheese)]

Yes, but I think the damage resistance to certain types of damage is a little redundant since now you're just going to find a weapon that deals damage to as many types as possible and then another one that fills in the gap. It's just a money sink and not a very good one at that.

This is why I hate element systems (which the weapon damage types effectively are): Weaknesses and Resistances are useless as a design tool unless there's different payoffs for using each damage type, and/or different situations aside from the weakness that makes that type more or less optimal.

[WitchSlayer]

The high elves are the normal elves, more or less. Or, more accurately, the high elves are the simply those who are most commonly encountered; those who balance a love of nature with a thirst for knowledge and an affinity for magic. It's less a 'high versus normal' and a 'varied types' deal.

The types usually presented, using the ideas almost verbatim from the Greyhawk setting, are high elves, aquatic elves, grey elves, wood elves, wild elves and dark elves (or drow, if you prefer; either term is applicable). There are a few similar interpretations in many of the standard campaign worlds; the Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance have their own interpretations of these

To put the 4th edition interpretation into perspective, the grey elves, who are arrogant, distant and intellectual are in fact the predecessor equivalent to the 'eladrin' types. The wood and wild elves split the difference between the 4th edition 'elves' in a sense, and are less intellectual but more intuitive and nature-friendly, as well as more likely to be archers.

And now you know.

I wouldn't have minded the change-over so much if it didn't introduce a dozen or so wide, sweeping retcons to the settings to which it should not have applied to. But we wound up with eladrin in the Forgotten Realms.

Ah so no low elves. Gotcha. Also in the Neverwinter books Eladrin were re-retconned when they introduced subraces.

That said it probably would've been easier just to say "elf" rather than "high elf" as that has certain connotations.