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

[Ranting Fool]

Also the H.Cleric's Quarterstaff appears to have a typo it says +1 atk when it should be +2 unless I missed a penalty

For some reason it looks like the cleric is using his str -1 rather then his dex for +hit dispite the fact that it is a finesse weapon (which does say you could use EITHER str OR dex)

[captaineddie]

For some reason it looks like the cleric is using his str -1 rather then his dex for +hit dispite the fact that it is a finesse weapon (which does say you could use EITHER str OR dex)

I think he's using it's DEX to calculate his attack, maybe the wizard doesn't have the +2 his class gives? Perhaps the +2 is only for attacks made via spells. And not melee attacks.

[navar100]

While this sounds good in theory, the problem is what's known as the Golf Club effect. Everyone needs to carry a "golf club bag" of various weapons to deal with various different threats. In 3E this applies to damage reduction - you "need" to carry weapons that breach DR/silver, DR/cold iron, DR/adamantine and so on, which gets expensive if you also need those weapons to be +1 keen wounding magebane or whatever. Another disadvantage for non-casters.

How common is that in actual game play? Obviously everyone's games are different, but it's not like every encounter is fighting a monster with DR. Most fights tend to be against opponents without any DR. Then there are DR fights where the warriors do have the proper weapon and/or because they know about what the foe is in advance a spellcaster has the proper buff spell that provides the DR equivalent.

DR in theory is supposed to be what makes the monster tough. If the party has the proper weapon, then DR is meaningless. For those fights where the party does not have the proper DR weapon, that is on purpose design by the DM to be part of the challenge for that encounter. It is that lack of proper weapon that made the challenge CR +1 or +2 with other factors.

If the DM is continuously putting the party against monsters of different DR the party lacks, that is being a jerk, not a 3E bug.

[Dienekes]

On Rogues and Sneak Attack. I don't think they're meant to get a sneak attack off each round. Sneak Attack appears to be +1d6 per level instead of every 2, and since Con isn't added to hp everything has less health. So if you do get a SA off it's awesome, can easily take off half of your opponents health or more in one hit. If you crit, you probably killed it.

[DrBurr]

I think he's using it's DEX to calculate his attack, maybe the wizard doesn't have the +2 his class gives? Perhaps the +2 is only for attacks made via spells. And not melee attacks.

Yes the +2 for the Wiz and Cleric only apply to spells but the Human Cleric's Quarterstaff uses his Dex mod of 2 so it should be a +2 to hit, 1d8+2 bludgeon not +1 to hit, 1d8-1 bludgeon

The only explanation is that WOTC done goofed and copied the Wizards staff without checking the Cleric's stats

[Draz74]

Oh, very interesting tidbit from the pregens that I don't think anyone has commented on yet:

The character sheet only lists Spell Slots up to Level 7.

[SSGoW]

Yes the +2 for the Wiz and Cleric only apply to spells but the Human Cleric's Quarterstaff uses his Dex mod of 2 so it should be a +2 to hit, 1d8+2 bludgeon not +1 to hit, 1d8-1 bludgeon

The only explanation is that WOTC done goofed and copied the Wizards staff without checking the Cleric's stats

Maybe Clerics/Wizards can't use their DEX for melee weapon Attack/Damage since they don't have the martial training and such?

They both have the same damage output (1d8-1), both have negative strength, and both have positive dex. Thus although the weapon is finessable their classes don't allow them to do so. The Rogue however is all about dex so he would be able to use Str OR Dex.

[Draz74]

Or, they revised the rules for weapon after they wrote the pregen character sheets. (Or the other way around, but that seems less likely.)

[DrBurr]

Maybe Clerics/Wizards can't use their DEX for melee weapon Attack/Damage since they don't have the martial training and such?

They both have the same damage output (1d8-1), both have negative strength, and both have positive dex. Thus although the weapon is finessable their classes don't allow them to do so. The Rogue however is all about dex so he would be able to use Str OR Dex.

Hmm I think your on to something if you look at Human Cleric they aren't proficient in finesse weapons so they shouldn't be able to use staffs at all, unless there's an improficient rule, Still the Wizard has training in Quarterstaff's so they shouldn't take a penalty to their damage, because of their DEX bonus, so that's probably a typo and giving the cleric the staff would of been a mistake in their haste

This still leaves the Fighter's mysterious +3, the Dwarf Cleric's +2, the Wizard's +1 to spells and the Rogue's +2

[Scowling Dragon]

Oh, very interesting tidbit from the pregens that I don't think anyone has commented on yet:

The character sheet only lists Spell Slots up to Level 7.

Actually thats probably the best level. Level 7 spells are very powerful, but not godly. Im sure that level 8-10 spells will be introduced in epic supplements.

[Crow]

Actually thats probably the best level. Level 7 spells are very powerful, but not godly. Im sure that level 8-10 spells will be introduced in epic supplements.

Or maybe they just folded the level 8 and 9 stuff into lower levels (There were some serious underperformers in there) and went with 7 levels to pace out the progression a bit more.

[Scowling Dragon]

Also possible. But personaly my fav spells are all level 7 spells.

[Crow]

Also possible. But personaly my fav spells are all level 7 spells.

Yeah, you never really seemed to have enough 7th level slots.

[Scowling Dragon]

Its the level when you get the spells that feel legendary (Not godlike).

Kill with a touch, create a demiplane, cause insanity, epidemics.

8-9th spells where already godlike (Earthquakes and Tsunamis) so it was kinda stupid trying to create spells that where double+good+god.

[EatAtEmrakuls]

{Scrubbed}

[Scowling Dragon]

So are you just grabbing negative quotes off other forums or something?

[Seerow]

-The equipment chart lists a Greataxe's damage as 1d12, yet the Dwarf Fighter who uses a Greataxe rolls 2d6. Similarly a Dagger is listed as 1d4, a Sling as 1d6, and a Warhammer as 1d8, but the characters who use them roll 1d6, 1d8, and 1d10 respectively.

You know looking at it that way, maybe it's not a typo on the character sheets, and they're actually giving a +1 damage die size as part of their proficiency, along with the +2 to hit? So a non-proficient person using a dagger and 16 dex has +3 for 1d4+3, while a proficient person has +5 for 1d6+3?

How many weapons in the character sheets don't match up with that? Though you would think they could take the time to tell us that as a part of the playtest, because when running the module I'm sure there's at least a chance you'll encounter a weapon besides what you had with you at the start that you may want to pick up and use. I mean why give us rules for masterwork weapons but not weapon proficiencies?

[DrBurr]

I find it quiet amusing that none of those people seem to even want to try this game their just sit their whining about face value, instead of complaining you can do one of two things

1)Play the game and see how it plays
2)Play around with the numbers and begin House ruling to fit your flavor, heck I've already added all the core races missing from this playtest

[EatAtEmrakuls]

So are you just grabbing negative quotes off other forums or something?

They're not all negative. And they're a realistic interpretation of the game, this forum has rose-tinted shades for anything vaguely resembling 3.5.

[Scowling Dragon]

Actually as a 3e player this forum is incredibly rose tinted view of 4e.

Im being halfway serious there. I actually think this forum is actually very neutral towards the subject.

We are more rose tinted towards DD in general I think.

You just see 3e praise and ignore its criticism and think the forum is heavily biased.

Your heavily biased pro 4e and Im heavily biased pro 3e. So we got a balance right here.

[Scots Dragon]

Not everyone here is overly fond of 3rd edition, but that doesn't necessarily mean we're exactly singing the praises of 4th edition; the 3e/4e thing is not a binary. Like the numbers three and four in other contexts, there are preceding numbers and more than an insignificant number of people here may indeed prefer those editions. I know I do.

On the topic of 5th edition, a major problem here is that its overall lack of completeness and polish at this point makes it very hard to judge as a system. Until we get a more complete (and hopefully proof-read) picture of the rules that form the basis of this new system, it'll be hard to properly judge.

[oxybe]

First impression of simply giving most the material an hour's worth of looking over since i had to get ready for work and mulling over it for a day:

a lot stuff seems familiar at first glance.

that's not necessarily a good thing.

Monsters:
i skipped the fluff of these and went right to the crunch of the first 3-4 critters. stat and ability-wise these seemed to all bleed together, with some numbers being raised or lowered. my initial impression seems to indicate that either they haven't decided on a "schtick" for most monsters and unless it's a caster/supernatural beastie they all seem to blend together, with some situational boosts here and there (like the berserker's temp boosts or hobgoblin situational damage)

this was really the last thing i looked at before leaving for work so i can't say much on it.

Rules:
i understand this is supposed to be a barebones model to test out the rules, but that's the goal, they simply should not be going "ask your DM to adjudicate" so darn often.

you're not testing the rules at that point. you're testing your GM. which is doubly worse since on my initial glance i couldn't find a guideline for DCs beyond "wing it".

at this point this seems more like a PR kit then anything else as there was little guidance i could find on what we should be stress testing or simply looking out for. i would have preferred to have more guidance rather then simply be given an adventure (which i admit, i haven't even opened the PDF so i might be missing some information)

i will say that advantages/disadvantages are an interesting way of dealing with their want of less profound number accumulation/lower curve. if i was a mathematician or engineer i'd be able to better figure out and understand the applications thereof but from what i understand though, on an advantage you should be getting an average roll of 13-14 ish whereas on a disadvantage you should be getting something along the lines of 7-8. hooray for anydice!

unfortunately without knowing what WotC assumes to be the average to-roll number should be on the dice (i.e. what should your player assume an average roll is, in 4th ed's case in the ballpark of 10ish) this doesn't help gauge the impact too much at the moment.

as an afterthought with a flatter number progression across the board i can see future optimization focusing on getting advantage/rerolls more often if various bonuses are difficult to accrue/stack.

other then that information on what your character can actually do seems littered across the board. at this point i'm tossing this in the "it's simply a formatting/editing issue due to being a playtest" but i'll go further into this when i look over character.

i don't like the current healing rules. hit dice seems like a backhanded reference to healing surges and seems like we'll be sticking one player with the healer as mundane healing is going to be riding economy. i see no reason to have it be random, nor what the random element actually ads.

the "every stat is a save" worries me. while i understand they want to place a greater emphasis on stats themselves it could very well lead to more... boring stat arrays, if that makes sense.

since it's very much possible that you can be punished for dumpstatting via a save or suck/die on any given stat's save. i'm not saying this in a way that i'm for dumpstatting, truth be told i don't care if it occurs or not as most game that has stats sees it occuring, but historically speaking most classes simply favoured one or two stats as they formed the basis of their abilities.

if we get rolling as the stat generation method, i expect an even swingier game then ever depending on how saves are distributed to various effects across the levels.

if we get point buy, i expect a much more level stat distribution, mainly hitting the minimum required number to be effected then shoring up defences if the more debilitating effects are spread across the board pretty evenly. if they aren't spread evenly or are extremely rare, i don't see dumpsttating going away

one more thing about saves, i'm sad to see they moved away from 4th ed's "initiator rolls all the dice" and mixed it up between some defences being passive while others reactive. i rather liked the consistency between all characters having to overcome the enemy defences.

Characters:
first thing i did when i got the playtest rule is looked up the fighter, the game's poster boy for an armored packmule. the level 1 fighter looks extremely boring on paper, with little more then a repurposed 4th ed Cleave to his name. this saddens me since i remember hearing the fighter being one class they were giving a lot of thought over how it should play.

from looking at the character sheet and various quotes in the document there simply seems to be too much reliance on GM fiat for task resolution, and IMO with that you get player uncertainty with what their character can actually do. a stat of 18 (+4) in the vacuum given by the character sheet is not too descriptive on the character's capabilities.

to be brutally honest simply looking at the character sheet provided doesn't give me, a player, much idea on what i can actually do. reading more into the rules gave me more insight on what my character can do, but simply looking at the character sheet, the one resource i'll probably be referring to the most then thinking "gee wiz, what to do now?"

i'm expecting some rearranging of stuff but looks pretty bleak.

think about it this way: i tend to approach a PC's character sheet as the equivalent of the UI of a videogame, it should be giving you as much information as needed to make informed choices on your options at almost any given time in play without having to resort to looking in a book. what's not included is just as important as what is included.

this is why the first thing i did was jump onto the character sheet: with some familiarity with video game (RPGs), what does the UI tell me?

unfortunately, not much.

the lack of skills or skill-like stuff might not mean the character is unskilled, but simply having a list of stuff like "athletics" "history" "stealth" "soft-serve ice cream making" would at least give the player ideas or incentivize him to use his abilities, even if it is something as ridiculous as "can i use athletics to bench press the king and make him our friend?" (and yes, that is hyperbole).

i understand that there is a +3 to 3 skills section but it doesn't really stand out. like the difficulty of finding some information, it could simply be a presentation issue, but as a quick look over it's a bit worrying.

a video game doesn't need to tell you how high you can jump. you press the O button and you jump this will immediately tell you how high you jump. i had to look around for a bit in the rules as it seemed a bit hidden under the "movement" section.

i will say i prefer the "here is a definite length you can consistently jump without worrying about rolling to see if you fail to jump the 2 ft gap".

Final note:
a second impression after giving it a thorough read-through on monday might be coming. dunno if i'll be able to play the playtest or not as no one from my groups have even mentioned it beyond one guy, the one guy who had insider.

as i said earlier, a lot of it seems familiar but that's not a good thing. many of the elements that i see don't seem to interest me much as they are things i moved away from over the years.

well, things are getting muddled as it's been about 10 hours since i looked over the documents and i hadn't even clicked on the adventure's pdf.

so yeah... Oxybe's first impressions of 5th ed playtest document. all in all it's not looking like something i would consider running and even if it is barebones it does give us some insight on the direction they want the game to go and it's someplace i simply don't care for, which i'm not surprised based on the various Legends & Lore articles they've been putting out.

i understand they're going to be touting modularity and the possibility of options, but until i see them i'm judging the product i have, not the one i'm promised.

[Madara]

Is the cleric(Dwarf) missing the Orison section? Its listed on page one, but not 2...

Also, it seems that Turn Undead is a spell now.

In other news, I like what they did to stone cunning

[DrBurr]

Is the cleric missing the Orison section? Its listed on page one, but not 2...

Its in Minor Spells same as the Wizards Cantrips

[Treblain]

The issue with negativity by playtesters is that there isn't really any point in criticizing the system, and not just because it's incomplete. We are reading the documents and trying the rules as playtesters, not as critics.

The notion that WotC will not gain anything from this playtest because of some missing or wrong information seems pretty silly, and even if it's true, what's the point whining about it? That would be their problem, not ours.

[Starbuck_II]

On Rogues and Sneak Attack. I don't think they're meant to get a sneak attack off each round. Sneak Attack appears to be +1d6 per level instead of every 2, and since Con isn't added to hp everything has less health. So if you do get a SA off it's awesome, can easily take off half of your opponents health or more in one hit. If you crit, you probably killed it.

No, if you have Ambusher feat, you keep advantage if you were hidden before you moved and attacked (melee).
Basically, they made sure this Rogue can sneak attack every (other) round.

Normal: you lose advantage if you move out of hidden (you could used a ranged weapon), but you'd lose advantage if you ranged attacked someone in melee (disadvantage cancels advantage).

But then why would you bother having simple damage resistances like "bludgeoning" or "slashing" at all? It's just absolutely pointless, it was pointless before because it just meant you had to pull out another weapon and it's even MORE pointless now with de-emphasized magic weapons and the fact you don't have to use an action to draw a weapon.

DR doesn't exist, Resistance exists. You deal 1/2 damage.
Not pointless, just more challenging.

[WitchSlayer]

How common is that in actual game play? Obviously everyone's games are different, but it's not like every encounter is fighting a monster with DR. Most fights tend to be against opponents without any DR. Then there are DR fights where the warriors do have the proper weapon and/or because they know about what the foe is in advance a spellcaster has the proper buff spell that provides the DR equivalent.

DR in theory is supposed to be what makes the monster tough. If the party has the proper weapon, then DR is meaningless. For those fights where the party does not have the proper DR weapon, that is on purpose design by the DM to be part of the challenge for that encounter. It is that lack of proper weapon that made the challenge CR +1 or +2 with other factors.

If the DM is continuously putting the party against monsters of different DR the party lacks, that is being a jerk, not a 3E bug.

But then why would you bother having simple damage resistances like "bludgeoning" or "slashing" at all? It's just absolutely pointless, it was pointless before because it just meant you had to pull out another weapon and it's even MORE pointless now with de-emphasized magic weapons and the fact you don't have to use an action to draw a weapon.

[EatAtEmrakuls]

The issue with negativity by playtesters is that there isn't really any point in criticizing the system, and not just because it's incomplete. We are reading the documents and trying the rules as playtesters, not as critics.

The notion that WotC will not gain anything from this playtest because of some missing or wrong information seems pretty silly, and even if it's true, what's the point whining about it? That would be their problem, not ours.

Its our problem for so many reasons. We want them to release a good product we enjoy. A playtest this incomplete means we can't give accurate feedback. We can't evaluate the system they're building the entire game upon. This lack of info makes it much harder to give our impressions. You seriously don't see how a poorly executed playtest is more than the company's problem?

[DrBurr]

Its our problem for so many reasons. We want them to release a good product we enjoy. A playtest this incomplete means we can't give accurate feedback. We can't evaluate the system they're building the entire game upon. This lack of info makes it much harder to give our impressions. You seriously don't see how a poorly executed playtest is more than the company's problem?

You act like this is the final draft, when this isn't even a real draft more like an outline of how the game will likely play. Its been well established we're not play testing stats though hence the reason why they handed us pregens, they want us to mainly test battle and potential synergies, now would it be nice to have simple math yes and it'd make house ruling until the next module easier, but it isn't a requirement for the job we've been asked to do.

Now from what I've seen we've got a party of characters a good chunk of spells and mechanics to use them so whats the problem?

[SSGoW]

You act like this is the final draft, when this isn't even a real draft more like an outline of how the game will likely play. Its been well established we're not play testing stats though hence the reason why they handed us pregens, they want us to mainly test battle and potential synergies, now would it be nice to have simple math yes and it'd make house ruling until the next module easier, but it isn't a requirement for the job we've been asked to do.

Now from what I've seen we've got a party of characters a good chunk of spells and mechanics to use them so whats the problem?

Wait wait wait! I thought they gave their finished product out to me for free cause I was special! I got a link straight from WoTC for 5th edition! Everything looks great and I can see where they play tested this product for months and months (which I somehow missed...).

*Ehem* Yeah I wish people would stop acting as if this really was the finished product. I actually see a ton of stuff that I will be putting into 2e/3.P/4e games. I'm not sure about other people received but I got a link to a rough draft not a finished product. :)