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

[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

[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.

[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.

Spoiler

Show

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 and click on the banner. Then you have to wait about 30min before you get an email apparently..