D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7

[Hunter Killer]

Everything you guys are saying sounds awful. Weren't they supposed to be taking the best parts of each previous additional mixing them together? Doesn't sound like that's the approach they took at all.

[Zeful]

Everything you guys are saying sounds awful. Weren't they supposed to be taking the best parts of each previous additional mixing them together? Doesn't sound like that's the approach they took at all.

To paraphrase Jake Solomon, "put 10 people in a room and ask them for 8 things D&D did best, and you'll leave with 100 different features."

[Excession]

Everything you guys are saying sounds awful. Weren't they supposed to be taking the best parts of each previous additional mixing them together? Doesn't sound like that's the approach they took at all.

There are good things as well, we just like to complain first. And second.

They seem to have removed most of the really bad feats, though some remain. Yes, I'm looking at you Heighten Spell, with your once per day effect. Fluff descriptions are even more hilariously awesome, such as the dubbed Monk and the Bonding with a Familiar section that sounds like a cooking recipe. I want a turkey familiar now; a roasted one. The manoeuvres that rolled multiple dice and took the maximum are all gone, except Step of the Wind. Having one defensive manoeuvre that boosted defences and another that reduced damage is gone. Fewer manoeuvres needlessly roll the die you spend, but that's balanced by your skill die. It looks to me like a lot of the stuff I rated as 1 or 2 in their survey is gone, it's just that my inner cynic is struggling to understand why they needed us to tell them this stuff sucked.

[Gwendol]

Monks... look like they could be some fun to play. Or at least significantly better than in their 3.5 incarnation.

[Yora]

Combat Surge and Ace in the Hole seem way to useless to even have them in the game. Just remove them outright.

Martial Damage Bonus is boring.

Clerics don't need Combat Expertise. Who did have that idea and for what reasons?

Skill Dice are also unneccessary, get back to a +3 bonus.

Spells per day are weird.

[Scowling Dragon]

I like spells per day. Its nice, its weird (Its like Terry Pratchet. Every spell LITERALLY takes up space in your head), and there is a perfectly logical explanation for it.

[Gwendol]

I'd say damage bonus for a monk is a welcome addition, as are ki powers! Sheesh! Switch from fire to ice and you can practically be Sub-Zero :-)

[Nu]

A whole lot to absorb right now in the new packet (didn't receive an e-mail so I'm just now finding out about it). As someone who is play testing a fighter, I feel like all of the cool toys (those being the maneuvers that I found at least moderately interesting) just got taken away.

The maneuvers I liked the most: Mighty Exertion, Danger Sense, and Cleave. Guess how many of the above are in the new packet? At least Parry is free again and even buffed slightly. Too bad Glancing Blow continues to get worse and worse. I mean, some of the maneuvers aren't actually changing that much, but changing the dice size to a max of d6 means that all of the maneuvers that say "roll all dice and take the highest result" now have a cap of 6 rather than 10.

On the bright side, monks look a lot more powerful now that Flurry of Blows is actually kinda good.

The rules for creating your own fighting style seem to be gone again. Hope they come back soon.

[Friv]

Alright, and with the note that this is entirely based on a very quick glance:

I kind of like skill dice; rolling two dice isn't much harder than rolling one, and it lets you have notably stronger characters while keeping with the D&D theme that anyone can beat up a much stronger person if they get staggeringly lucky.

I dislike handing expertise out like candy, but I suppose it makes sense, and it's a neat basic idea. I don't see why clerics need it when they don't get the maneuvers, though.

I really dislike dead levels. Just stop the game at Level 10 if you're going that route.

I like that clerics and wizards only get one spell per day of Levels 6-9, no matter how strong they get. It reduces the chances of soloing encounters, especially if powerful wands get removed and powerful scrolls get reduced in availability.

[Kurald Galain]

I kind of like skill dice; rolling two dice isn't much harder than rolling one, and it lets you have notably stronger characters while keeping with the D&D theme that anyone can beat up a much stronger person if they get staggeringly lucky.

If by "staggeringly lucky" you mean "it happens one time out of five, pretty much", then yes...

[navar100]

Perhaps taking away the fighter's toys is just to see how much people really, really want them by the number of complaints they get.

One spell per day will exacerbate 15-minute adventuring day syndrome. Once the spells are gone spellcasters aren't going to want to adventure anymore that game day because they have nothing to do. Every combat also becomes a frustratingly spongeworthy moment. Do I cast my one and only powerful spell now or will I need it more later?

There's no need to make spellcasters suck so that the warriors don't feel so bad.

[Morty]

Personally, I think that magicians being severely limited in the number of spells they can perform each day is a very good thing... just not in the kind of story D&D is supposed to tell. A handful of spells per day and an action-packed combat-focused gameplay don't mix.

[Cavelcade]

I think limiting higher level spells is a good idea, provided whatever the level just before you start seriously limiting them has fun tricks that stay fun but not game-breaking as you go on.

[Craft (Cheese)]

Personally, I think that magicians being severely limited in the number of spells they can perform each day is a very good thing... just not in the kind of story D&D is supposed to tell. A handful of spells per day and an action-packed combat-focused gameplay don't mix.

To reiterate what I've said before, I think limiting a caster's spellcasting ability could work if casters could meaningfully contribute without using their spells.

Also, an aside on the 15-minute workday: Old School Hack has an interesting way to handle this. Spells (and other special abilities) work by spending "awesome points". You earn awesome points by earning XP (spending your awesome points doesn't detract from your XP). It means you can't stop and rest to get back to full power, you have to keep pressing on through the dungeon to get your **** back.

[Friv]

If by "staggeringly lucky" you mean "it happens one time out of five, pretty much", then yes...

Is it really that often?

I admit that I am not good enough at probabilities to run the chances of d4 + d20 against d12 + d20, but it reads like your chances of beating the d12 + d20 guy are a lot lower than that.

Could easily be wrong.

[Craft (Cheese)]

The chance of a 1d4 skilled character beating a 1d12 skilled character in a straight-up opposed roll, with no modifiers on either side, is 31.59%.

The chance of a character with no training and no attribute bonus winning an opposed roll against a character with 1d12 training and a +4 attribute bonus is 11.58%

[Friv]

The chance of a 1d4 skilled character beating a 1d12 skilled character in a straight-up opposed roll, with no modifiers on either side, is 31.59%.

The chance of a character with no training and no attribute bonus winning an opposed roll against a character with 1d12 training and a +4 attribute bonus is 11.58%

Oookay.

In that case, I bashfully withdraw my comment. That's way too high.

[Draz74]

Personally, I think that magicians being severely limited in the number of spells they can perform each day is a very good thing... just not in the kind of story D&D is supposed to tell. A handful of spells per day and an action-packed combat-focused gameplay don't mix.

Yeah ... this latest packet does not excite me much, but at least the spells/day tables look like WotC has learned to curb *one* of the aspects of "Linear Fighters, Quadratic Wizards."

Is it really that often?

I admit that I am not good enough at probabilities to run the chances of d4 + d20 against d12 + d20, but it reads like your chances of beating the d12 + d20 guy are a lot lower than that.

Could easily be wrong.

Try fiddling around with AnyDice.com. I just typed in "output 1d20+1d12-1d20-1d4" and clicked "Calculate" and "At least." It informs me that in the contest you describe, there is a 3.9% chance of a tie, a 72.11% chance of the d12-player winning, and a 31.59% chance of the d4 player winning.

Of course, in practice there will be ability score modifiers involved too. Even if the d4 character has a 3 and the d12 character has a 20 (for a difference of 9 between the two modifiers), AnyDice tells me the weaker player still has a 6.9% chance of winning the contest.

[Aron Times]

Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to point out that spellcasters will likely get more ritual spells in the final version. Basically, the spell slots that wizards and clerics get are for combat spells that you need to cast NOW, as opposed to utility spells that you can afford to cast out of combat.

To my understanding, ritual spells are basically at-will spells with long casting times and (sometimes) costly material components, so the amount of magic wielded by 5e spellcasters should be on par with that of 3.5 spellcasters. It's just that their combat potential has been nerfed.

[Treblain]

Feats/Specialties in general seem screwed up; you have to go through all the feats in a specialty and make sure your build will qualify, essentially ruining the point of specialties being the "quick option" in the first place. Most feats are very weak, making specialties a much more minor part of the character. So much for modularity and making a martial priest by combining the cleric class with a martial specialty, since clerics just get combat expertise for free.

[Morty]

To reiterate what I've said before, I think limiting a caster's spellcasting ability could work if casters could meaningfully contribute without using their spells.

True. Unfortunately, it's unlikely to happen.

Yeah ... this latest packet does not excite me much, but at least the spells/day tables look like WotC has learned to curb *one* of the aspects of "Linear Fighters, Quadratic Wizards."

Yeah. I'm just not sure if it's the right balancing tool for the kind of game D&D is.

Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to point out that spellcasters will likely get more ritual spells in the final version. Basically, the spell slots that wizards and clerics get are for combat spells that you need to cast NOW, as opposed to utility spells that you can afford to cast out of combat.

To my understanding, ritual spells are basically at-will spells with long casting times and (sometimes) costly material components, so the amount of magic wielded by 5e spellcasters should be on par with that of 3.5 spellcasters. It's just that their combat potential has been nerfed.

I'll believe it when I see it.

[Craft (Cheese)]

True. Unfortunately, it's unlikely to happen.

Barring that, I wouldn't mind if casters went something resembling the Warlock route. You get... let's say 5 spells, maybe upgrading them as you level up. But you can cast them at will and they're all very broad spells with lots of different applications, both in and out of combat.

[navar100]

If I'm not casting a spell every round because I have so few spell slots, then I better be able to do something cool on those non-spellcasting rounds. Firing a crossbow for 1d8 damage with a low chance to hit or doing nothing but "concentrating on a spell" are not among such cool things. Clerics getting martial damage dice now doesn't seem like such a bad thing. What will wizards get?

[Morty]

Barring that, I wouldn't mind if casters went something resembling the Warlock route. You get... let's say 5 spells, maybe upgrading them as you level up. But you can cast them at will and they're all very broad spells with lots of different applications, both in and out of combat.

That might work well, but I think that many people expect the Wizard class to have access to a wide variety of spells they can sift through.

If I'm not casting a spell every round because I have so few spell slots, then I better be able to do something cool on those non-spellcasting rounds. Firing a crossbow for 1d8 damage with a low chance to hit or doing nothing but "concentrating on a spell" are not among such cool things. Clerics getting martial damage dice now doesn't seem like such a bad thing. What will wizards get?

Clerics getting martial damage might not be bad from a balance perspective, but this whole thing with all clerics being armored secondary fighters should have died long ago.

[Craft (Cheese)]

That might work well, but I think that many people expect the Wizard class to have access to a wide variety of spells they can sift through.

I consider that another problem, actually: Casters have too many damned spells. The 3.5 SRD lists 39 spells for a beginning wizard to choose from when building their character, as well as 19 cantrips to make themselves familiar with, though admittedly most of those cantrips are worthless even at 1st level. The situation gets even worse when you toss in supplements. Furthermore, many, many spells are either very specific in function or just a slight alteration of another spell: A good number of them could easily be merged together into a more general effect, and I think this would be for the better.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm just fine with choice and complexity. However, it's no secret I believe that choices and complexity are something that should be felt and explored in play, rather than frontloaded to happening before play starts. If I were in charge of designing 5E I'd see far, far fewer spells (a maximum of, like, 10 per spell level) with each spell being more flexible and useful to compensate. The 5E designers got one thing right with spell design when they folded Ghost Sounds and Silent Image together into Minor Illusion.

[Aron Times]

If I'm not casting a spell every round because I have so few spell slots, then I better be able to do something cool on those non-spellcasting rounds. Firing a crossbow for 1d8 damage with a low chance to hit or doing nothing but "concentrating on a spell" are not among such cool things. Clerics getting martial damage dice now doesn't seem like such a bad thing. What will wizards get?

Cantrips are at-will, and off the top of my head, I can name Shocking Grasp, Ray of Frost, and Chill Touch as damage-dealing cantrips. All three of these scale with caster level, and are for all intents and purposes at-will attack powers. You will always have an at-will spell available, whether you're a cleric or a wizard or (presumably) a different type of spellcaster like the sorcerer.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

If I'm not casting a spell every round because I have so few spell slots, then I better be able to do something cool on those non-spellcasting rounds. Firing a crossbow for 1d8 damage with a low chance to hit or doing nothing but "concentrating on a spell" are not among such cool things. Clerics getting martial damage dice now doesn't seem like such a bad thing. What will wizards get?

Honestly, the current spell setup, where most spells require concentration to do anything and you can only have a certain number of spells running at once, would help the "what do I do this round?" problem if it were implemented better.

If a single offensive spell could last the whole combat--this encounter the wizard has a flaming sphere whizzing around the field and he can spend actions to make it explode; next encounter he can summon monster I a few tiny enemies every round and direct the 2 (then 4, then 6, then 8...) minions with his action; in the third encounter the ground rumbles to cause difficult terrain as long as he concentrates and he can spend his action to pop up small stone walls--and buff/utility spells lasted a long time but were exclusive so you had 1-2 buffs running all day instead of casting 3-4 buffs before each combat, then you could give the wizard 10-12 spells per day at most and still ensure he could do something interesting each round.

If they go back to the prior setup where spells are generally fire-and-forget instantaneous or round/level spells, then to maintain the 3e/4e target of 4-5 encounters per day of 4-5 rounds each the wizard will probably need a good 30+ daily spells like it used to have. Under that setup you can have highly limited spells/day and a wizard who's engaged every round, but not both.

I consider that another problem, actually: Casters have too many damned spells. The 3.5 SRD lists 39 spells for a beginning wizard to choose from when building their character, as well as 19 cantrips to make themselves familiar with, though admittedly most of those cantrips are worthless even at 1st level. The situation gets even worse when you toss in supplements. Furthermore, many, many spells are either very specific in function or just a slight alteration of another spell: A good number of them could easily be merged together into a more general effect, and I think this would be for the better.

There are two sides to the "too many spells" issue:

1) Having lots of situational spells mostly comes from the spell-preparation-as-puzzle thing of earlier editions; you're supposed to do legwork IC and figure things out OOC to determine what spells to prepare, and if spells were more broadly applicable that would defeat the purpose. Giving spells more limited, niche uses encouraged casters to seek out more spells, prepare situational spells in case they were useful, and try to figure out creative uses for weak spells. That's probably why we have fireball, lightning bolt, and cone of cold for the preparation-as-puzzle unlimited-spells-known wizard but have energy ball, energy bolt, and energy cone for the use-on-the-fly limited-powers-known 3e psion now that the metagame assumptions have changed.

I don't think broadening individual spells or condensing multiple spells into fewer spells is necessarily the best idea for 5e. In general, yes, that would be a good idea, but this is WotC we're talking about. It's the open-ended spells like silent image, polymorph, minor creation, etc. that they had trouble balancing and writing clear rules for, and that they removed in 4e or relegated to rituals because figuring out how to write them up in a simple, balanced form was beyond them.

What might be more workable would be giving the broader spells as class abilities and the narrower ones as spells. An illusionist and a transmuter can both learn fireball, expeditious retreat, and other straightforward spells, but only illusionists get the "silent image+ghost sound on steroids for as long as you want" class feature and only transmuters get the 5e equivalent of "polymorph into whatever monster you can think of."

2) Why is it that casters have too many spells, rather than martial types having too few maneuvers? Sure, the 5e maneuvers all mostly suck, but if the 5e fighter could learn, say, 3-4 from among all the listed maneuvers at 1st level and then he got more worthwhile maneuvers as he leveled, that would certainly help. Just like there should be simpler casters for new caster players, there should be more complex noncasters for experienced noncaster players.

Giving martial classes the ability to match real-world warrior/soldier capabilities at the very least would go a long way to closing the caster/noncaster gap, but that requires writing up a lot more general combat rules and a lot more maneuvers to cover the gaps, and that's not going to happen as long as WotC thinks that it's okay to give some classes one single ability at each level and others 3+ abilities at each level.

Ideally, said maneuvers would be set up like ToB in that new players could essentially choose cool-sounding maneuvers at random and end up with a competent, versatile character, but again that's up to the WotC design team, so....

[Craft (Cheese)]

1) Having lots of situational spells mostly comes from the spell-preparation-as-puzzle thing of earlier editions; you're supposed to do legwork IC and figure things out OOC to determine what spells to prepare, and if spells were more broadly applicable that would defeat the purpose. Giving spells more limited, niche uses encouraged casters to seek out more spells, prepare situational spells in case they were useful, and try to figure out creative uses for weak spells. That's probably why we have fireball, lightning bolt, and cone of cold for the preparation-as-puzzle unlimited-spells-known wizard but have energy ball, energy bolt, and energy cone for the use-on-the-fly limited-powers-known 3e psion now that the metagame assumptions have changed.

Indeed, but my problem also applies to vancian casting as a whole: Guessing what encounters the DM is going to toss at you while you put your spell list together is putting the fun and complexity before play happens. Besides, in my experience, most players entirely bypass this "element" of the system by just keeping a "usual spells" list that they prepare every day unless something tells them they should prepare something else, and the 5e designers are sharply reducing this element anyway by putting all formerly-vancian casters on spirit shaman casting.

I don't think broadening individual spells or condensing multiple spells into fewer spells is necessarily the best idea for 5e. In general, yes, that would be a good idea, but this is WotC we're talking about. It's the open-ended spells like silent image, polymorph, minor creation, etc. that they had trouble balancing and writing clear rules for, and that they removed in 4e or relegated to rituals because figuring out how to write them up in a simple, balanced form was beyond them.

This is... an excellent point. Still though, I wouldn't mind seeing them trying, this is a playtest after all. It'd be a much more worthwhile experiment than... whatever the **** they're hoping to accomplish with skill dice.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Indeed, but my problem also applies to vancian casting as a whole: Guessing what encounters the DM is going to toss at you while you put your spell list together is putting the fun and complexity before play happens. Besides, in my experience, most players entirely bypass this "element" of the system by just keeping a "usual spells" list that they prepare every day unless something tells them they should prepare something else, and the 5e designers are sharply reducing this element anyway by putting all formerly-vancian casters on spirit shaman casting.

True. Hmm. As long as broadening spells doesn't come at the expense of all niche spells, I suppose I wouldn't mind it, though part of the fun of D&D spells is coming up with creative uses for more niche spells and juggling universal applicability with niche utility, as I mentioned before. I guess I don't see that preparation as being much of a problem since my group tends to do lots of recon/legwork anyway, so figuring out what spells to prepare, gear to take, etc. is more like the Big Plan part of a heist movie and less "Gee, I dunno, I guess I'll use yesterday's spell loadout," but I can see why some would dislike it and why the reduced Vancian-ness in 5e would make that less of an option.

This is... an excellent point. Still though, I wouldn't mind seeing them trying, this is a playtest after all. It'd be a much more worthwhile experiment than... whatever the **** they're hoping to accomplish with skill dice.

You know, you really shouldn't say you'd like to see them try and that it can't be worse than the skill system. They might take that as a challenge.

[Friv]

Having read through a bit more, I just discovered that disarm, trip and bull rush are now fighter maneuvers.