D&D 5th Edition: the fifth edition of the discussion thread

[Draz74]

Incidentally, the game seems to be moving more and more in a pro-re-fluffing direction. The podcast talks about how drawing and sheathing weapons -- including switching between them -- has become basically the job of the players to come up with appropriate fluff for, with the simplified action economy.

Likewise, the Human race's mechanics require a bit of re-fluffing -- at least, if they're going to make any sense to me at all. I mean, I'm definitely not going to be happy about a non-refluffed version of "Humans get +1 to all ability scores." That would imply that the average human is as agile as a lightfoot halfling, as strong as a half-orc, as tough as a hill dwarf, as intelligent as a high elf, etc. (Plus even better, in one of the six ability scores.) Which is patently ridiculous.

The humans only make sense if you refluff them as "they're not actually as strong/intelligent/etc. as their ability scores would indicate; but they treat those scores as being higher because they basically just get a +1/2 racial bonus on all ability checks because of their luck/determination/whatever."

Now, there's nothing wrong with refluffing fundamentally. But it's not a traditional thing for D&D to embrace ... and frankly, if I'm going to play an RPG where it's up to the players to make their character's mechanics make sense like this, I'd rather play Legend or Risus or something.

Sub Class, Background, and Specialty are all optional mechanics.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Sub-Classes aren't optional.

it's a small difference when read, but IMO makes a rather large difference in play.

Agreed. My "interesting." comment was just indicating that I hadn't considered the difference yet, and that I'll need to mull it over for a while before I decide which version I like better.

From the looks of it, fighter abilities are requiring the expenditure of CS dice rather than allowing saves.

Yes, that appears to be the direction they're headed. Which I don't love, even though I feel like the CS dice mechanic has some potential. It leads to fluff problems like you mention, where targets of differing Strength are equally easy to push around.

This also means that Paladins/Berserkers/etc. won't be able to do things like bull rushes very effectively (since they don't have CS dice), unless they have separate class abilities of their own that enable such maneuvers. If they do, that could actually be OK -- I'm fine with Fighters being the only class who are able to be good at all combat maneuvers, as long as Monks can be good at Tripping, Berserkers can be good at Bull Rushing, etc.

Remember in the early 4e previews when they had the Emerald Griffon and similar fluffy feats that ended up as Astral Fire and such after the major backlash? My guess is that traditions will either end up on the fluffy end like that (wu jen, stormlord, diabolist, etc.)

Hmmm, refresh my memory. All I remember about those feats' mechanics is that one of them allowed you to avoid friendly fire with your AoE spells.

or on the functional end like traditional schools (beguiler/dread necro/warmage style plus some pyromancy/summoning/etc. classifications).

Would seem more likely if there weren't a Necromancer Specialty in the latest packet.

The suggested subclass and suggested specialty would definitely help newbies without making the overall structure too simple; it's essentially like giving a 2e newbie the basic fighter to play with and introducing kits and weapon specialization later.

Yeah, it's not too crazy. But it's more complex than it was before they decided that every class should have subclasses.

I guess my real concern about the three-width build structure is that there will be some Sub-Classes and some Specialties that overlap too much, i.e. cover the exact same archetype/concept, but with wildly different mechanics. That would be very not-elegant.