D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7

[Zeful]

Right, but that just makes the stealth rules clumsy. You generally make one check to attack, defend, disarm, heal, etc. Why should stealth rules involve making individual "contests" against each individual? It should be one roll for each side.

So when you run guards they all share the attack same roll? Because in game each of those other contests are against individual. It's not as different as you imply.

Keeping track of the hidden status is no more difficult that tracking who's dead on the battlefield. Arguably easier really, as the player is essentially setting their "spot" DC when they roll, and you only have to check one set of stats. Compared to combat when you have to track attacks, defenses, saving throws, and skills like balance, move silently, disable device, spellcraft.

[TheOOB]

So when you run guards they all share the attack same roll? Because in game each of those other contests are against individual. It's not as different as you imply.

Keeping track of the hidden status is no more difficult that tracking who's dead on the battlefield. Arguably easier really, as the player is essentially setting their "spot" DC when they roll, and you only have to check one set of stats. Compared to combat when you have to track attacks, defenses, saving throws, and skills like balance, move silently, disable device, spellcraft.

You're argument is based on the idea that the DM should have as much to keep track of out of combat as in combat, which is not true. D&D is, at it's heart, a combat oriented game, it wears it's wargaming roots on it's sleeve. It's not fair to expect the DM to keep track of individual stats and statuses of everyone the players come across out of combat.

[The New Bruceski]

That seems like something that should be dealt with on DM terms rather than official rules. How often a character/NPC makes spot checks, and who they inform, really depends on the person and the situation. There are a lot of intangibles. A party of adventurers walking into the Tomb of Horrors is going to have different approaches to it if they know where they are and the reputation.

[Leon]

They are not seriously thinking about or applying their own rules, they're throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks.

Sounds about right for WotC

[TheOOB]

That seems like something that should be dealt with on DM terms rather than official rules. How often a character/NPC makes spot checks, and who they inform, really depends on the person and the situation. There are a lot of intangibles. A party of adventurers walking into the Tomb of Horrors is going to have different approaches to it if they know where they are and the reputation.

No, that's a trap. Any time a DM has to make up a rule on the fly the rules failed the DM. I could see multiple possible options existing, but the book needs clear rules for stealth so that there is a functional baseline for everyone to work off of.

I actually really likes passive perception from 4e and thought it worked well for the majority of situations. In 4e I'd only have a guard roll their perception if the PC got really close to them or interacted with them in some way.

[Zeful]

You're argument is based on the idea that the DM should have as much to keep track of out of combat as in combat, which is not true. D&D is, at it's heart, a combat oriented game, it wears it's wargaming roots on it's sleeve. It's not fair to expect the DM to keep track of individual stats and statuses of everyone the players come across out of combat.

No it's not. My argument is pointing out his argument wasn't as valid as he thought it was by pointing out that in compared to running a single combat encounter of any scale- running a stealth encounter of identical scale is easier because there are only like 4 things you have to track. Spot/Listen/Perception, Line of Sight, concealment, and the hidden status itself. You only need the first if the second and third exist, and the fourth is the result.

Even doing that every round is going to be less work for the DM than trying to run the same encounter in combat. He still has to track skills, he still has to track line of sight and concealment, he still has to track the status (including hidden by the way considering concealment), he now also has to track HP, TAB, AC, Saves, DR, SR, ER, Special Attacks, Damage, and Spells.

Calling it "unfair" to expect a DM to do the same things he does anyway, but with less variables is ludicrous. It's ignoring that the system is capable of something because it's "extra work"? Unless invisibility, improved or otherwise is just going to invalidate play or just not exist, the DM has to use the stealth ruless per person, in combat (adding another set of things the DM has to track), so he's going to be recording Spot/Listen/Perception checks on enemy stat blocks, the only extra work he has to do is light the dungeon. Which is particularily easy considering dungeon and all that.

[Knaight]

Keeping track of the hidden status is no more difficult that tracking who's dead on the battlefield. Arguably easier really, as the player is essentially setting their "spot" DC when they roll, and you only have to check one set of stats. Compared to combat when you have to track attacks, defenses, saving throws, and skills like balance, move silently, disable device, spellcraft.

This is inaccurate. Dead and Alive are simple states that everyone has, Hidden is a relationship between a character and another. Say there are three people on each side, and both sides are trying to hide from the other - this makes eighteen hidden/not hidden values if you track per person, as each person is hiding from three people and there are six people hiding. We have eighteen binary states, whereas dead and alive produce a maximum of six, on account of there being only six people.

Now, lets take something more likely - a party of six is trying to sneak past a war band of ten. There are now sixty values for hiding to keep track of, as each of the six has a hidden value against each of ten enemies. By contrast, there are only sixteen variables to track for health. If you add another orc, six hidden values and one dead value get added. If you add another party member, ten hidden one values and one dead value get added. If you add one to each, seventeen hidden values and two dead values get added. Tracking per person is simply far more work for stealth than for combat.

[noparlpf]

Yes, but each player keeps track of which enemies they can see, and the DM keeps track of which PCs the NPCs can see. You won't necessarily know whether or not someone else can see you.

[Kurald Galain]

Yes, but each player keeps track of which enemies they can see, and the DM keeps track of which PCs the NPCs can see. You won't necessarily know whether or not someone else can see you.

That can still be done with a single "hidden" status - it just requires that the status be kept by the DM (whereas the player simply thinks they're hidden).

In general, I like this approach, and not just for stealth. For instance, if you fail an appraisal check badly enough, you should think that you know what an item is worth, but be off by an order of magnitude. Actually 5E's proposed hazard rules do that reasonably well, but this may require the DM to roll for certain checks where the outcome isn't obvious.

[Knaight]

Yes, but each player keeps track of which enemies they can see, and the DM keeps track of which PCs the NPCs can see. You won't necessarily know whether or not someone else can see you.

Putting aside how that is an optimistic view of how much work players do, that doesn't erase the problem. Take the warband example again - the GM gets to track all of the detection variables there, with 60 variables being the baseline. Each player tracks 3 and the GM 9 in the first example, as opposed to 1 and 3 for combat. They simply are not equivalent.

[noparlpf]

That can still be done with a single "hidden" status - it just requires that the status be kept by the DM (whereas the player simply thinks they're hidden).

In general, I like this approach, and not just for stealth. For instance, if you fail an appraisal check badly enough, you should think that you know what an item is worth, but be off by an order of magnitude. Actually 5E's proposed hazard rules do that reasonably well, but this may require the DM to roll for certain checks where the outcome isn't obvious.

It may be simpler, but it's unrealistic for the party member with Spot -3 to see the foe with a Hide check of 19 just because the party member with Spot +22 does.

[Kurald Galain]

It may be simpler, but it's unrealistic for the party member with Spot -3 to see the foe with a Hide check of 19 just because the party member with Spot +22 does.

It's easy to make up an extreme situation that supports your argument. However, to prevent them from becoming overly verbose, rules should be written for the common case, not for unlikely hypotheticals.

In other words, it's fine and realistic for the party member with Spot 3 to see the foe with a hide check of 15 because his fellow party member with Spot 7 (passive 17) points that out to him.

[Zeful]

This is inaccurate. Dead and Alive are simple states that everyone has, Hidden is a relationship between a character and another. Say there are three people on each side, and both sides are trying to hide from the other - this makes eighteen hidden/not hidden values if you track per person, as each person is hiding from three people and there are six people hiding. We have eighteen binary states, whereas dead and alive produce a maximum of six, on account of there being only six people.

The same logic applies to Illusion spells. And I doubt you'd advocate letting the entire party (enemy or otherwise) auto-save against them if someone else takes a free action to say they're illusions (likely with the excuse that "it's magic"). Incidently the Illusion school also includes invisibility, so if you do apply this logic inconsistently, then you have to track the hidden status against invisible enemies anyway and your entire following point is just pointless whining.

Now, lets take something more likely - a party of six is trying to sneak past a war band of ten. There are now sixty values for hiding to keep track of, as each of the six has a hidden value against each of ten enemies.
By contrast, there are only sixteen variables to track for health. If you add another orc, six hidden values and one dead value get added. If you add another party member, ten hidden one values and one dead value get added. If you add one to each, seventeen hidden values and two dead values get added. Tracking per person is simply far more work for stealth than for combat.

And that only applies on a recently mowed plain, at night, between 30-50ft away from the warband. Any other situation will have much more obstacles to provide total cover or concealment at which point, there is no hidden status to track because of the line of sight rules.

It's easy to make up an extreme situation that supports your argument. However, to prevent them from becoming overly verbose, rules should be written for the common case, not for unlikely hypotheticals.

In other words, it's fine and realistic for the party member with Spot 3 to see the foe with a hide check of 15 because his fellow party member with Spot 7 (passive 17) points that out to him.

Except having only one hidden status makes that scenario more likely, as you only need one guy with good spot, everyone else can just ignore the check entirely, they'll never need to make it. Essentially, everyone else in the party has a Spot of "-" rather than "0".

[noparlpf]

It's easy to make up an extreme situation that supports your argument. However, to prevent them from becoming overly verbose, rules should be written for the common case, not for unlikely hypotheticals.

In other words, it's fine and realistic for the party member with Spot 3 to see the foe with a hide check of 15 because his fellow party member with Spot 7 (passive 17) points that out to him.

It's not a very unrealistic example--I've seen plenty of characters neglecting spot, while one or two party members put in max ranks and whatever else they can.

I think that it might make sense to give one PC a bonus (like, +10) to the check if another passed it. That would be "pointing the hidden foe out". It's still entirely possible for an unperceptive person to miss a well-hidden foe even after having them pointed out.

[Kurald Galain]

The same logic applies to Illusion spells. And I doubt you'd advocate letting the entire party (enemy or otherwise) auto-save against them if someone else takes a free action to say they're illusions (likely with the excuse that "it's magic").

This leads to another problem with individual checks for everything, i.e. that it skews or breaks the probabilities involved.

For instance, suppose there's an invisible (or hidden) object or character in the area. If you allow people to keep rolling for this, e.g. because you're a team of 6 people plus henchmen plus pack animals, then somebody is bound to roll a 20. That means that being unseen is basically undoable (this is the fundamental problem with the illusion rituals in 4E's PHB1). If you compensate for this by increasing the DC for detecting it, then you run into the opposite problem, i.e. that it becomes near-impossible for a lone creature to detect anything.

This is fixed by making only a single check (for the most skilled person in a group, with some bonuses for the amount of assistance he gets). This also has the twin advantages of being much faster and requiring much less bookkeeping.

After all, if your smart wizard friend says that wall over there is an illusion, wouldn't you tend to believe him? It's what he's good at, after all. If your elven ranger friend points out an ambush in the trees, you might still not see the ambush, but his warning should increase your alertness, negating the combat bonus of your hidden enemy. Come on people, combat in D&D lasts long enough already without the DM having to keep a matrix of 60 hidden statuses.

[noparlpf]

You can take an action (swift, or maybe move, not that we quite have those in Next if I remember rightly) to point out a hidden foe to a comrade, giving them a bonus (probably +10). It's more realistic than one party member making a check for everyone (and allows expert ninjas or whatever to remain hidden from some even if one party member can discern their location or track their movements), it's only slightly more complicated than having one party member make the check (which by the way completely defeats the purpose of individual characters having skills), and it slows down combat less than if multiple party members remain ignorant of the location of various enemies.

[Knaight]

The same logic applies to Illusion spells. And I doubt you'd advocate letting the entire party (enemy or otherwise) auto-save against them if someone else takes a free action to say they're illusions (likely with the excuse that "it's magic"). Incidently the Illusion school also includes invisibility, so if you do apply this logic inconsistently, then you have to track the hidden status against invisible enemies anyway and your entire following point is just pointless whining.

I'm entirely fine with everybody being able to see through an illusion once one person points it out,*and I'm entirely fine with having one roll for a group here to prevent the probabilities from going way out of the acceptable range. Furthermore, this doesn't change the fact that your entire assertion of equivalency is based on an objectively incorrect understanding of the mechanics involved. Similarly, trying to spin pointing out this false equivalency as pointless whining doesn't prevent the equivalency from continuing to be false.

*Some sort of group roll mechanic would be helpful anyways, and if this "bounded accuracy" skill system lives up to the name it should probably be fairly easy to make.

[Camelot]

Right, but that just makes the stealth rules clumsy. You generally make one check to attack, defend, disarm, heal, etc. Why should stealth rules involve making individual "contests" against each individual? It should be one roll for each side.

Rather than individual rolls, there should just be some benefit (or penalty) for hiding from multiple creatures; it should be easier/harder to hide when there are less/more creatures looking for you. Do something like d20 + the creature with the highest Wisdom bonus, and + 1 or +2 for every other creature.

And make hidden like invisibility! Having two different rules sets was dumb in 4e, and it'd be dumb here.

Having all the guards share one check would be dumb too, but the player who's doing the sneaking should only make one check. Then each of the guards has a chance to spot them. Since the player is only making one sneaking attempt, only one check is made. If you make a bunch of noise, all the guards are likely to spot you. But each guard may be paying different amounts of attention.

[willpell]

I am. +1 items, some of the most common items in the game and among the first found by the party, don't suck anymore!

On the other hand, with the amount of coolness you poured into a vanilla +1 armor, how are you going to make a legendary suit of +4 unholy fireproof shadowcraft plate sound like anything other than "just another suit of demon armor, slightly better than the seven you already have"? This is kind of the problem I have with magic items in the webcomic "Goblins"; a +1 sword leaves personally color-coded energy trails a foot long when you swing it, so the artist has to go a pretty far way to top himself with something that's supposed to be far more impressive than that.

[Zeful]

This leads to another problem with individual checks for everything, i.e. that it skews or breaks the probabilities involved.

For instance, suppose there's an invisible (or hidden) object or character in the area. If you allow people to keep rolling for this, e.g. because you're a team of 6 people plus henchmen plus pack animals, then somebody is bound to roll a 20. That means that being unseen is basically undoable (this is the fundamental problem with the illusion rituals in 4E's PHB1). If you compensate for this by increasing the DC for detecting it, then you run into the opposite problem, i.e. that it becomes near-impossible for a lone creature to detect anything.

This is fixed by making only a single check (for the most skilled person in a group, with some bonuses for the amount of assistance he gets). This also has the twin advantages of being much faster and requiring much less bookkeeping.

After all, if your smart wizard friend says that wall over there is an illusion, wouldn't you tend to believe him? It's what he's good at, after all. If your elven ranger friend points out an ambush in the trees, you might still not see the ambush, but his warning should increase your alertness, negating the combat bonus of your hidden enemy. Come on people, combat in D&D lasts long enough already without the DM having to keep a matrix of 60 hidden statuses.

The sixty statuses only apply in a handful of situations, and if compared to the number of situations where the number of hidden statuses will be much less, we find the latter is larger by a huge amount, to make the situation where the DM having to track 60 statuses similarly likely to a situation where one member of the party having a +22 to spot and another having a -3. And since you've already dismissed that argument as being an outlier, and thus inappropriate for discussion, the same must follow for the 60 statuses.

Also incidently, if they can't see the ambush, they haven't made the spot check, so your own example requires you to handle the hidden status individually. Doesn't mean they aren't aware, as following with the surprise round rules from 3.5, which actually doesn't specify the need for every character to make a spot check to be aware of the enemy. Which is yet another thing the DM has to track.

I'm entirely fine with everybody being able to see through an illusion once one person points it out,*and I'm entirely fine with having one roll for a group here to prevent the probabilities from going way out of the acceptable range. Furthermore, this doesn't change the fact that your entire assertion of equivalency is based on an objectively incorrect understanding of the mechanics involved. Similarly, trying to spin pointing out this false equivalency as pointless whining doesn't prevent the equivalency from continuing to be false.

*Some sort of group roll mechanic would be helpful anyways, and if this "bounded accuracy" skill system lives up to the name it should probably be fairly easy to make.

Really, so it's not based in logic to compare two situations that share similar qualities to emphasize that the complaint that it's "too much work" is a really bad argument? Firstly because Illusions and Stealth share actually do share quite a bit in common mechanically, essentially being one roll away from outright not working; and secondly because the original complaint, it being "too much work" for the DM to track hidden statuses, is kind of silly, despite the claim of 60 hidden statuses (which my response is that it's the DM's fault for forcing a stealth section on the party where he needs to track 60 statuses at once), because not only will he generally be handling more elements in combat anyway, but encounter and environment design is on him. Building a stealth proof dungeon is really easy, with the DM only really having to justify why it's all brightly lit to completely make stealth impossible.

[Knaight]

...and secondly because the original complaint, it being "too much work" for the DM to track hidden statuses, is kind of silly, despite the claim of 60 hidden statuses (which my response is that it's the DM's fault for forcing a stealth section on the party where he needs to track 60 statuses at once), because not only will he generally be handling more elements in combat anyway, but encounter and environment design is on him. Building a stealth proof dungeon is really easy, with the DM only really having to justify why it's all brightly lit to completely make stealth impossible.

The original comment was that your claim that stealth and combat were equivalent was flat out wrong. I made no comment regarding the desirability of the number of states to track, but merely pointed out the scale of the discrepancy and what that meant regarding your claim of equivalence. With that said, look at your current argument - the GM needs to specifically avoid any situation where a bunch of rolls come up. That's ridiculous. D&D is, theoretically, a system built to handle adventurers who go adventuring. If it can't handle sneaking past a group without a needlessly labor intensive process, then it is failing at its job.

The sixty statuses only apply in a handful of situations, and if compared to the number of situations where the number of hidden statuses will be much less, we find the latter is larger by a huge amount, to make the situation where the DM having to track 60 statuses similarly likely to a situation where one member of the party having a +22 to spot and another having a -3. And since you've already dismissed that argument as being an outlier, and thus inappropriate for discussion, the same must follow for the 60 statuses.

This isn't remotely equivalent. Lets look at the known extremes, where 5e can get a -3 attribute and no skill, or a +5 attribute and +7 to skill, which is -3 to +12, slightly over half the range of the hypothetical +22.

Now, lets take the situations where 60+ checks come up:
Both Sides Hiding
1+ vs. 30+
2+ vs. 15+
3+ vs. 10+
4+ vs. 8+
5+ vs. 6+
Yes, I'm sure that some sort of ranged engagement where people try to use stealth with at least 5 people on one side and at least 6 on the other is an inconceivable edge case. Similarly, a group of 4 trying to sneak past, say, two hidden guard boxes with 4 people in each is utterly inconceivable. Truly these are outliers.

For one side hiding, one merely doubles the numbers on each side, and adds 7 vs 9, . A group of four people trying to sneak past a group of sixteen is downright normal. Then the are the situations with larger groups - say, hypothetically there is some sort of large creature, and a ship's crew is stuck in their cave and need to get out. Say that the PCs are escorting refugees somewhere, and there's a gate guard or two they need to get past. So on and so forth.

Added to all this, the line at which things start getting ridiculous is well short of 60 statuses. 30 would be bad enough, and you can get that with a group of 4 and a group of 3 both hiding from one another. Similarly, it's not anywhere near a real edge case, as we've only been looking at two sided conflicts thus far. Throw in a third side, and the necessary numbers get way smaller. Three groups of five reaches thirty, and adding in one more person from a fourth group brings it up to sixty. Tracking stealth for every single person is a ticket to accounting, and it simply isn't necessary.

[stainboy]

This is the only thing from your post that I don't like. Keeping track of hidden state relative to each creature is a pain, and in almost all practical situations the one enemy that spots you will call out your location to its allies anyway.

The idea is to keep you from getting kicked out of Hidden by rats / your own allies. If Orc A makes his Spot check then yeah, he alerts Orcs B, C, D, and E and you don't have to keep track of a Hidden state vs them anymore. Sorry if that was unclear.

Also, suppose one of your enemies is blind and deaf (because there are spells for that). You should be Hidden vs that enemy but not necessarily vs the un-debuffed enemy next to him, right?

[Ashdate]

Having all the guards share one check would be dumb too, but the player who's doing the sneaking should only make one check. Then each of the guards has a chance to spot them. Since the player is only making one sneaking attempt, only one check is made. If you make a bunch of noise, all the guards are likely to spot you. But each guard may be paying different amounts of attention.

From a DM perspective, I would prefer it to be a simple contest. You can either go with 4e's "passive perception", or you can make it an opposed check. In either case, all that matters is that the player rolls well enough to overcome the opponent's bonus, but it should never be one roll against seven; doing so only gives stealth an inherent disadvantage.

The benefit to a simple target DC is that it's very flexible, without punishing the player because even tho Guard 1, 2, and 3, didn't roll above a 10, Guard 4 rolled a nat 20. You could easily have guidelines that you could improvise. For example:

Set a base target DC of 10 to sneak past a single guard. Apply +/-2 modifiers based on conditions. Add +2 for each additional guard watching, +2 for each ideal conditions (i.e. well lit), and then add the highest Wisdom bonus amongst the applicable guards. Add a -2 for each condition that works against the guards; i.e. heavy shadows, heavy winds/noise.

This allows both the players and the DM to get rough sense of how difficult/easy a task it is to accomplish. The DM will of course, know the true DC, but at least the party rogue can size a situation up and tell his comrades with some amount of confidence whether sneaking by is likely to succeed.

If you, as a DM, wish to declare that one guard in particular is watching like a hawk, and another is taking drinks from a pocket flask, great. Don't apply the +2 bonus for the drinking guard (as he's not paying attention), and give the guard watching like a hawk a +1 bonus. If the players manage to distract/take out the hawk guard, they reduce the difficulty of sneaking by 3 (or possibly more, if that guard had the best wisdom bonus).

In short, you can model a lot of different scenarios with a simple DC, without creating an overall high level of complexity (as seen in most stealth rule sets).

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Another option is to have perception be passive unless characters take an action to actively roll it. Sneaking past a bunch of guards with +2 Perception means you need to roll a 12 on your Stealth to beat them normally. If you make them suspicious because a guard you killed doesn't check in on time or something, one or more of them can take an action to roll Perception--which doesn't mean their Perception will automatically be higher than normal, because they could be searching the wrong area or listening for the wrong things, but it does raise your chance of discovery overall.

Doing it that way instead of adding modifiers for extra guards means you're not automatically spotted if you try to sneak past a doorway to a room holding 20 guards, and it means you can have particularly perceptive creatures around like bloodhounds or a high-Perception guard captain without either having to figure out who the "primary perceiver" is to add bonuses to or pooling stats in any way.

[Menteith]

Unless something has changed that I'm unaware of, D&D Next is attempting to get away from +X/-X modifiers, and instead tries to use Advantage for every situation - meaning that it's unlikely the stealth system, whatever it turns out to be, will use bonuses/penalties. While I think that some of the different systems that have been proposed in this thread are promising, it's worth keeping in mind that kind of design constraint when making a suggestion. If they've reneged on this design, feel free to ignore me.

[noparlpf]

Unless something has changed that I'm unaware of, D&D Next is attempting to get away from +X/-X modifiers, and instead tries to use Advantage for every situation - meaning that it's unlikely the stealth system, whatever it turns out to be, will use bonuses/penalties. While I think that some of the different systems that have been proposed in this thread are promising, it's worth keeping in mind that kind of design constraint when making a suggestion. If they've reneged on this design, feel free to ignore me.

Well, their intent is to make as many people as possible happy. If most people are ambivalent towards or happy with advantage, they'll implement it; if not, they might still implement it, but there's a chance they'll switch back to solid bonuses.

[Excession]

New Legends & Lore column is up, talking about what they're doing right now for classes, magic, and changes to backgrounds and specialities.

Specialities will be presented as more mechanical than they have been, so as to disassociate them from fluff. They give the example of "Duelist" being a poor name because it doesn't describe the mechanics that it gives your chararter while "Shield specialist" is a good name, because it helps you specialise in using a shield. I find this idea to be agreeable.

Backgrounds will give four skills instead of three, and they've changed the skill system yet again. I still think that if the background needs to be more than a small boost to few skills if you want to even notice that it's there. The background traits are the interesting bit, put more of those in IMO.

They might be getting somewhere with the Cleric, making Clerics of different gods play differently. Would need to see more deities to see if its going to make much difference though.

The idea of a pluggable magic systems and a "Magic User" class still don't do much for me. Having what is in effect an abstract base class behind all the magic users may restrict flexibility, leading to sameness and lack of differentiation.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

The idea of a pluggable magic systems and a "Magic User" class still don't do much for me. Having what is in effect an abstract base class behind all the magic users may restrict flexibility, leading to sameness and lack of differentiation.

Class groups didn't make everything in AD&D samey. What they did was allow for inheritance of abilities (assassins were "as the thief, except as follows," for instance) and for grouping classes for magical and other effects (e.g. paladin and ranger were fighter subclasses, so "fighter-only" magical swords could be used by them as well).

Of course, like many mechanics, this is a good idea that could have a poor implementation; if it turns out like power sources in 4e, where they make a big deal about the label but don't actually share mechanics most of the time (or when they do share mechanics, like Channel Divinity, all the classes get their own spin on it), it'll be a bunch of extra design work for nothing.

[Madfellow]

The idea of a pluggable magic systems and a "Magic User" class still don't do much for me. Having what is in effect an abstract base class behind all the magic users may restrict flexibility, leading to sameness and lack of differentiation.

I don't think that's what they're doing, though I admit the language is fairly vague there. It sounds like Magic User is just a wide category that caster classes get put into, not a class unto itself that casters branch out from. It's basically just a useful label that's there in case they ever want to make broad rules or fluff for casters as a whole. I'm not sure it's entirely necessary.

[Jacob.Tyr]

The fighter went over very well last time. Right now, we're focused on creating a set of options that allow someone to play a very simple fighter.

How what why? Lets make the fighter even simpler, great...