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

[kyoryu]

Not sure if you're reading the wotc forums, but there's a lot of circle jerk about how the lack of defined abilities makes doing cool stuff easier. These people legitimately think the fighter is fine, and could probably do with losing a background or theme to make him more generic.

I think there's a certain amount of truth to that. Given a menu of options to choose from, there's a real tendency to think only within that "menu." With only a single option, you're kind of forced into thinking outside of the box.

I don't know that I'd necessarily *want* to go back to 1e-style fighters, but even the preview fighter had a few more interesting mechanics than that - and he's supposedly the most stripped-down style of fighter.

[Scowling Dragon]

So what really needs to be done, if one wants mundane classes to stay mundane, is to scale back on casting progression.

Then casting becomes really boring because if you TRULY want balance then you have to reduce casting to just 4e spells.

[Seerow]

I think there's a certain amount of truth to that. Given a menu of options to choose from, there's a real tendency to think only within that "menu." With only a single option, you're kind of forced into thinking outside of the box.

I don't know that I'd necessarily *want* to go back to 1e-style fighters, but even the preview fighter had a few more interesting mechanics than that - and he's supposedly the most stripped-down style of fighter.

Here check this out

http://community.wizards.com/go/thre...er..._or_is_he

Seriously it's a thread dedicated to how the Fighter doesn't need more options, the Fighter should just be convincing his DM to let him called shot on everything to hack off limbs and such. And the worst part is there's almost nobody there disagreeing.

[kyoryu]

Then casting becomes really boring because if you TRULY want balance then you have to reduce casting to just 4e spells.

... or introduce complications/difficulty to casting, which is the 1e route.

Also, a lot of this did originate with 1e, where high level characters weren't necessarily supposed to be "adventurers", per se. A 15th level fighter isn't some dude with a stick any more, he's a freakin' LORD with an army to command. A lot of the linear/quadratic issues came about in 3rd ed because a) the drawbacks to casting (casting time, interrupts, uncertainty) were removed and b) the overall presumption of gameplay minimized the "fighter becoming a Lord" aspect of the game, and those rules were pretty well tossed out.

That's actually a big thing for me with 5th ed - are they really going to address the overall style of campaigns? A lot of rules that might work in a more "world" style game (where you might have multiple characters, death can be pretty permanent, and retiring characters isn't an option) don't work *at all* in a game which is the "party of friends going on adventures" style. Doesn't mean either style is better, but your ruleset has kind of got to aim for one or the other.

Here check this out

http://community.wizards.com/go/thre...er..._or_is_he

Seriously it's a thread dedicated to how the Fighter doesn't need more options, the Fighter should just be convincing his DM to let him called shot on everything to hack off limbs and such. And the worst part is there's almost nobody there disagreeing.

Oh, I'm sure there's people making that argument. I just think they're taking it to the point of silliness. As I've said elsewhere, I don't mind being able to get small bonuses on a regular basis, or large ones where the situation lends itself, but to have a majority of your game effect rely on description alone is a bit too close to "magic tea party" for me.

[Scowling Dragon]

Im not sure how well 1e worked so I can't comment.=P

[Ashdate]

I think there's a certain amount of truth to that. Given a menu of options to choose from, there's a real tendency to think only within that "menu." With only a single option, you're kind of forced into thinking outside of the box.

I don't know that I'd necessarily *want* to go back to 1e-style fighters, but even the preview fighter had a few more interesting mechanics than that - and he's supposedly the most stripped-down style of fighter.

I'm going to be honest here: I've heard several times that "stripped down characters" naturally allow more flexibility due to forcing people to think outside the box, but I don't really understand where that is coming from.

In my experience, there are simply particularly players that want to explore outside the powers listed on their sheet. My friend normally plays a Goliath Warden in our 4e games, and he often tries to perform actions that are outside the listed powers on his sheet. When he played the fighter in our 5e playtest last Tuesday, he once again tried to perform some actions outside the listed powers. In other words, his "creativity" is not necessarily a result of 5e's changes.

Meanwhile, the player who normally plays the Half-Elf Psion in our 4e group took the thief and did not deviate from the options on his sheet, despite occasionally using his mind affecting powers out of combat in our 4e game.

Granted, the rules can absolutely play a big role in encouraging/discouraging more freeform thinking. People malign 4e for it's list of powers, but it has the most comprehensive guidelines for "making stuff up" compared to any previous edition (including the currently presented rules in 5e)!

Aside: Yes, the 4e rules as printed ("Page 42") put damage too low in many cases. My opinion was this wasn't intentional; Wizards simply underestimated static damage bonuses. I try and beef up the rewards in my games to compensate, to attempt to make the damage greater than a character's at-will attack. You know what? Despite this some of my players stick to the powers on their sheet. I can't blame the system if some players don't want to leave their comfort zone! But, particularly for new DMs, Page 42 represent a good starting point to encourage players to push enemies into firepits and swing from chandeliers, and I hope they put something similar in 5e.

In contrast, I've played in 2e and 3.5 games where creativity was/was not rewarded by the DM, causing myself and other players to continue to play the game straight. A lack of rules telling you what you can and cannot do is not necessarily going to produce fighters who don't do one thing!

TL/DR: It's players who think outside the box and the DMs who reward them for doing so, not the system, that causes it. Lauding 5e for allowing DMs to decide how players are rewarded for their unique actions is neither revolutionary, and I would go as far as to say it's lazy game design.

[Tyndmyr]

Also, a lot of this did originate with 1e, where high level characters weren't necessarily supposed to be "adventurers", per se. A 15th level fighter isn't some dude with a stick any more, he's a freakin' LORD with an army to command. A lot of the linear/quadratic issues came about in 3rd ed because a) the drawbacks to casting (casting time, interrupts, uncertainty) were removed and b) the overall presumption of gameplay minimized the "fighter becoming a Lord" aspect of the game, and those rules were pretty well tossed out.

That's actually a big thing for me with 5th ed - are they really going to address the overall style of campaigns? A lot of rules that might work in a more "world" style game (where you might have multiple characters, death can be pretty permanent, and retiring characters isn't an option) don't work *at all* in a game which is the "party of friends going on adventures" style. Doesn't mean either style is better, but your ruleset has kind of got to aim for one or the other.

I honestly hope they bring the lord element back. See, in 3.5, the idea of being a lord sounds fantastic, but doesn't translate well. You can take leadership...but so can the sorc, and frankly, he's better at it. And most dungeon crawls don't have room for a coupla hundred followers anyway, and most adventures are not built for them.

I don't necessarily want casters gimped....but if we can give more/better options in other elements of the game, that sounds awesome to me.

[noparlpf]

Then casting becomes really boring because if you TRULY want balance then you have to reduce casting to just 4e spells.

I'm most familiar with 3.X, and I could see it potentially working alright with casting progression dropped back so the highest spell level is, say, 6th, and with some kind of prerequisites for higher-level spells. So Cure Light Wounds is prerequisite to Cure Moderate Wounds, or Burning hands is prerequisite to Scorching Ray is prerequisite to Fireball. Obviously this would require some playtesting to balance things out, but that's how thing usually go, right?

[Janus]

I honestly hope they bring the lord element back. See, in 3.5, the idea of being a lord sounds fantastic, but doesn't translate well. You can take leadership...but so can the sorc, and frankly, he's better at it. And most dungeon crawls don't have room for a coupla hundred followers anyway, and most adventures are not built for them.

For what it's worth, the playtest rules mention that Charisma affects followers, henchmen, etc., so maybe they will bring the mechanic back into core gameplay.

[Corvus]

And now for something completely different and irrelevant to every other conversation going on right now:

The only way to make a magic user as weak as a Fighter is to make the magic not be magic. I'm completely ok with magic being stronger than mundane; If it wasn't, it would ruin my suspension of disbelief.

You don't have to make magic users be as weak as a Fighter - instead make the Fighter as strong as Magic Users.

Go at look at some of the fighters of lore and mythology - Cu Cuhlainn, Hercules etc and so on. What they do is not mundane. Why can't that be the archetype for Fighters?

Fighters should also be getting built in Spell Resistance of some type. Its the type of thing they do in legends and stories - shrug off the evil spell caster's spells and keep on going.

[noparlpf]

You don't have to make magic users be as weak as a Fighter - instead make the Fighter as strong as Magic Users.

Go at look at some of the fighters of lore and mythology - Cu Cuhlainn, Hercules etc and so on. What they do is not mundane. Why can't that be the archetype for Fighters?

Fighters should also be getting built in Spell Resistance of some type. Its the type of thing they do in legends and stories - shrug off the evil spell caster's spells and keep on going.

Hercules might not be the best example because he's a demigod. Try Beowulf. Oh wait--WotC statted Beowulf in a Dragon Magazine. He was something like an 11th level Fighter.

[kyoryu]

I honestly hope they bring the lord element back. See, in 3.5, the idea of being a lord sounds fantastic, but doesn't translate well. You can take leadership...but so can the sorc, and frankly, he's better at it. And most dungeon crawls don't have room for a coupla hundred followers anyway, and most adventures are not built for them.

I don't necessarily want casters gimped....but if we can give more/better options in other elements of the game, that sounds awesome to me.

Yeah, I agree - but that also suggests a return to more "world-based" gaming, where the elder game turns from tackling bigger/nastier bad guys to being the movers and shakers in the world.

And I think that would be awesome. But it would be highly controversial. And that's all really the crux of my point with WotC needing to figure out what the overall campaign structure really is, and designing the game for that.

[WitchSlayer]

I disagree with this. I think magic being more powerful should only be so if it's higher level. A 20th level wizard and a 20th level fighter should be equally powerful overall, otherwise what's the point of levels?

(On the other hand, I would also do away with straight fighters. In my house rules, everyone has some kind of supernatural, psionic, or magical abilities built in by 20th level, since it just goes with the territory of that level.)

I wouldn't do away with straight fighters, I would just say that by the time you reach a certain level you are above and beyond what any human can do, so it's okay to break physics a little with pure fighting prowess. I want to be able to do Fist of the North Star stuff with my rapier, dangit.

[Draz74]

The only way to make a magic user as weak as a Fighter is to make the magic not be magic. I'm completely ok with magic being stronger than mundane; If it wasn't, it would ruin my suspension of disbelief.

Play a 3.5e campaign where the magic classes are the Hexblade, Paladin, and Adept, and the mundane classes are the Warblade and a nonmagical Factotum variant.

It's easy to create a magic system that leaves casters weaker than mundanes. The challenge is creating such a system where playing a caster is still fun.

[Kurald Galain]

...That's seriously a question? I don't see how they could possibly have given the fighter fewer things to do without removing him from the game completely.

Yeah, how about this one. Having a long rest fully restores your hit points. Do you think that's (a) good, (b) too much, or (c) not enough. Huh??

Oh wow.

The survey is awful.

We should hold a meta-survey about the survey

[DefKab]

See, the weird part is that it's not the high levels that are the only offenders.
Sure, at level 17 you have access to world-tearing magic as a magic user, but by this point, it's pretty much just icing on the cake...
As it's been proven over and over again, even a 1st level wizard/sorcerer/druid/cleric stomps on a 1st level fighter.
That's what makes this playtest at least half good. We know now that the fighter sucks at 1st even, then we don't need anymore to know that he's gonna be x19 worse as he levels...

I'm okay with non-mundane fighters. They already have flaming burst swords, they're magic enough by that point just trying to keep up. If you want to keep your fighters mundane, you keep them low level, where the wizards should be mostly mundane too. But, if you want 20th level Demi-Plane making power, then fighters need to be on that level. And honestly, in 3.5, the spell list was so bloated you could chop off whole sections to give each class magic with fully different feelings... All kinds of buffs for the fighter, the more creative magic for Wizards, the splashy explosions for Sorcerer, and the divine healing for clerics, and you'd still have plenty of spells in each list...

[huttj509]

I suspect many of the DM handwavey things were explicitly on purpose. Do comment on that sort of thing in the surveys. As has been mentioned, they've done things in the past like leave off Turn Undead, to see if people noticed (they very much did, thus it was confirmed as 'this needs to be in there' iconic part of DnD).

I noticed the rules listed did a LOT to remind people that improvisation was allowed (heck, under the possible combat actions, one was specifically called 'improvise'). I suspect one of the things they're specifically looking for in the feedback is whether people consider this a good thing, annoying, etc.

Honestly, if you ask 10 people to list 5 things that make DnD DnD, you'll get a lot of different answers, and some important ones will be left off because they're "obvious." They want to learn what people aren't telling them, often because the players themselves don't realize that they expect to see it until it's not there.

It's not a DnD Next preview, it's a playtest. Ideally they're still developing things based on feedback.

[MukkTB]

#1 I prefer my magic users and my fighters Tier 3.
#2 I agree with Seerow. Even though in the past we've thrown stones at each other over the 3.5/4e divide.

[Starbuck_II]

Yeah, how about this one. Having a long rest fully restores your hit points. Do you think that's (a) good, (b) too much, or (c) not enough. Huh??

Well, obviously, having a long rest should grant you 1 or more action points as well like 4E.
Action points were a good idea, but too plentiful in 4E (like Healing surges) to evoke 2E feeling. But 1 should be fine (maybe a feat for a 2nd or 3rd max).
Action points: grant +1d6 to a Abil check/save, attack, skill roll. Or 1 action (move or standard, or whatever the action is called now that isn't move).

Oh and to add to Fighter question, I read this:
He has an axe and a crossbow. Surely you can see how that might be too many.

[Craft (Cheese)]

The survey is awful.

"Does this feel like a D&D Cleric?"

That didn't surprise me at all, actually. Since day one their design goal has been "to make all the fans of previous editions feel equally catered toward simultaneously", not "to make a game that's actually fun to play."

It's easy to create a magic system that leaves casters weaker than mundanes. The challenge is creating such a system where playing a caster is still fun.

Skyrim. Play a stealth-abusing archer/whirling dual-wielder. Then play a character who never uses melee weapons, and never uses any damage-dealing spells aside from Telekinesis. Which one is more effective? Which one is more fun?

[1337 b4k4]

That didn't surprise me at all, actually. Since day one their design goal has been "to make all the fans of previous editions feel equally catered toward simultaneously", not "to make a game that's actually fun to play."

You know, the two aren't mutually exclusive. In fact, there's a good chance that someone who's a fan of a particular edition, might consider that edition "a game that's actually fun to play".

[Tyndmyr]

See, the weird part is that it's not the high levels that are the only offenders.
Sure, at level 17 you have access to world-tearing magic as a magic user, but by this point, it's pretty much just icing on the cake...
As it's been proven over and over again, even a 1st level wizard/sorcerer/druid/cleric stomps on a 1st level fighter.
That's what makes this playtest at least half good. We know now that the fighter sucks at 1st even, then we don't need anymore to know that he's gonna be x19 worse as he levels...

That's...entirely untrue in 3.5. Remember the Arena we had going on here a while back? The VAST majority of those were melee combatants. Plenty of fighters did fine. Honestly, warforged fighter with javelin and decent stats tended to trump first level casters hard, even if they were optimized.

[Saph]

That's...entirely untrue in 3.5. Remember the Arena we had going on here a while back? The VAST majority of those were melee combatants. Plenty of fighters did fine. Honestly, warforged fighter with javelin and decent stats tended to trump first level casters hard, even if they were optimized.

A lot of people do seem to have trouble telling the difference between "Casters generally outperform martial characters at high levels" and "Casters always outperform martial characters at every level".

[noparlpf]

That's...entirely untrue in 3.5. Remember the Arena we had going on here a while back? The VAST majority of those were melee combatants. Plenty of fighters did fine. Honestly, warforged fighter with javelin and decent stats tended to trump first level casters hard, even if they were optimized.

Yeah, low-level casters are kind of squishy, especially if they're not well optimised. All you need to do is win initiative and put a crossbow bolt into them.

[Dead_Jester]

That's...entirely untrue in 3.5. Remember the Arena we had going on here a while back? The VAST majority of those were melee combatants. Plenty of fighters did fine. Honestly, warforged fighter with javelin and decent stats tended to trump first level casters hard, even if they were optimized.

But then again, at low levels, if the caster goes first, something like Color Spray means an insta win, while for the fighter, you still need to hit and deal enough damage to kill him in 1 round, which, after 1st or 2nd level, can get pretty hard if the character isn't an optimized damage machine and if the caster invest in a bit of Con.

[Tyndmyr]

Yeah, low-level casters are kind of squishy, especially if they're not well optimised. All you need to do is win initiative and put a crossbow bolt into them.

Even if they are optimized, they tend to need to manage spells pretty carefully, and they don't typically have much in the way of defenses online yet. The best first level offensive spells are probably grease, color spray, and sleep. A warforged fighter is immune to two of those, and greasing him, while annoying, doesn't actually end the fight. The other optimized path(fell drained sonic snap with a MM reducer), warforged are also immune to. Most wizards don't deal particularly good damage at level one, and don't have a massive advantage in initiative.

Even at level 10, sure, a wizard will rock a fighter, but at level 1, the situation is usually reversed.

But then again, at low levels, if the caster goes first, something like Color Spray means an insta win, while for the fighter, you still need to hit and deal enough damage to kill him in 1 round, which, after 1st or 2nd level, can get pretty hard if the character isn't an optimized damage machine and if the caster invest in a bit of Con.

I should note that in the area, I was one of the few who played a caster, and yeah, I used color spray. It was one of the best options. Note that color spray has terrible range and a save. It's handy when it comes up, but if they beat you on init and go first...or they save...or they're immune....or the fight starts too far away, then no, you're not using that slot.

Even at second level, a caster with decent con(14-15), has a whopping what, 10 hp? It does not take an optimized damage dealer to beat that. Hell, some strength and a decentish roll is plenty.

[Krotchrot]

In response to the Wizards Auto hit MM, and the Fighters lack of an Auto Hit. Yeah the Slayer theme's Reaper benefit gives the Fighter an Auto Hit. However, if the Wizards MM stays an at-will, I think that Reaper should be baked into Fighter, and they change up Slayer.

[noparlpf]

Isn't Magic Missile still a 1st-level spell that can only be used a few times?
*checks again*
Wow, they really did make it a cantrip. If they keep metamagic and metamagic cost reducers, imagine an at-will Fell Drain Magic Missile as a cantrip. This seems problematic.

[navar100]

But then again, at low levels, if the caster goes first, something like Color Spray means an insta win, while for the fighter, you still need to hit and deal enough damage to kill him in 1 round, which, after 1st or 2nd level, can get pretty hard if the character isn't an optimized damage machine and if the caster invest in a bit of Con.

What, bad guys never make saving throws?

[1337 b4k4]

In response to the Wizards Auto hit MM, and the Fighters lack of an Auto Hit. Yeah the Slayer theme's Reaper benefit gives the Fighter an Auto Hit. However, if the Wizards MM stays an at-will, I think that Reaper should be baked into Fighter, and they change up Slayer.

If I read the rules correctly (I don't have them in front of me right now), magic missile isn't baked in to the MU. IIRC, MUs get a limited number of at-will spell slots (2 maybe?) that they can fill from a limited list. The playtest MU took a background or theme that gave them an expanded at-will set.