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

[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.blogspo...-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
Halfling Rogue
Evocation wizard elf

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

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.