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Saph
2012-05-28, 05:17 PM
This thread is intended as a general quick-reference guide to the new D&D playtest, as well as a place to post play experiences. Contributions are welcome!

Forum Note

This thread is designed as a quick-reference summary for people curious about the contents of the current draft of the new edition but who don't want to sign up for the playtest or read the rules. It's intended to be a specialised thread intended for cataloguing/discussing mechanics, rather than the general one (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=242069) we already have. The idea is that someone who just wants to find out about the mechanics can open this thread and look at the first post, rather than scrolling through a couple of hundred posts in the other one.

I know there's some overlap between this thread and the other, but I figure supplying a summary for newcomers is enough of a niche to justify a separate thread. Please don't ask for the threads to be merged, as I'd rather not have to explain this to the moderators with the big guns. :smalltongue:
Legal Note

As per the D&D Next playtest agreement (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/files/DNDNextPlaytestingAgreement.pdf), public discussion of the playtest materials and playtesting experience is permitted. The Wizards DnD Twitter feed (https://twitter.com/#!/Wizards_DnD) has clarified this as "you can talk about the mechanics, just don't post excerpts (https://twitter.com/Wizards_DnD/status/205653132464758784) or exact text (https://twitter.com/Wizards_DnD/status/205639760394465280)".

As such, while I'll post summaries and general descriptions, I won't post excerpts, verbatim quotes, or exact text. Please respect the playtest agreement and do the same. Thanks!

Playtest Summary

General Changes

Skills have been largely replaced by ability checks. There are no skill points, and the most you can get to boost a skill is "training", which seems to be determined by your background and amounts to a +3 modifier.
3e-style saving throws and 4e-style Defences have also been largely replaced by ability checks. Fortitude, Reflex, and Will are gone: in their place you make a Constitution, Dexterity, or Wisdom check.
Situational modifiers are mostly gone: you only have 'advantage' (which means you roll twice and take the best) or 'disadvantage' (which means you roll twice and take the worst). If you have advantage and disadvantage, they cancel each other out.
The 3e/4e action economy of standard action + move action + immediate/swift/minor/whatever action model has been simplified. Instead of a 'standard action' everything is now an 'action', and you can move your speed once per round for free.
Everyone can Spring Attack now, but there are no attacks of opportunity.
Characters

All characters start with a 'theme' (which gives you a feat) and a 'background' (which gives you training in several skills). The backgrounds also come with minor but interesting special features, such as free lodging or knowing where to look up information.
Feats appear to be quite powerful, more in line with the stronger 3.5 feats than the heroic-tier feats of 4e. Feat progression seems to be as 3.5 or Pathfinder.
Racial bonuses or penalties against specific threats are gone: in place of things like a 3.5 dwarf's +2 against poison or an 3.5 elf's +2 against enchantment, you now either get 'resistance' (half damage) or flat-out immunity.
Damage & Healing

Healing is a hybrid of 4e and earlier editions. If you're on negatives and are healed, you do a 4e-style up-to-zero-and-then-add. However, Healing Surges are gone - the amount you heal is based on the healing effect, and your total amount of healing isn't limited as it was in 4e.
Hit Dice are back, but not as you knew them. You get one per level, and they basically act as a pool of restorable HP: if you take a short rest and use a healer's kit you can spend Hit Dice to heal the dice result plus Con mod. Once you're out of Hit Dice you have to fall back on magical healing.
Taking a long rest fully heals you, 4e-style.
Equipment

Finesse weapons have been introduced, allowing you to automatically use Dex on attacks/damage. Low-Str high-Dex characters can rejoice in no longer having a feat tax. :smalltongue:
Light/medium/heavy armour now lets you add your full Dex bonus/half your Dex bonus/none of your Dex bonus, respectively. Eyeballing the numbers, medium armour seems somewhat pointless.
Electrum coinage is back, for the 3 of you who care.
Magic

Wizards use Vancian casting.
Clerics use 3.5 Spirit Shaman casting. (It's basically Sorcerer-style spontaneous casting, except better because you get to change your spells known each day.)
Both Wizards and Clerics get at-will spells, in the style of 4e or Pathfinder. Some are utility effects like detect magic, while others are spammable attacks roughly equivalent in power to a 3.5 first-level spell or a 4e at-will.
Spell levels appear to be as they were in all editions except 4e. Both Wizards and Clerics start off with 1st-level spells and get a new level of spells at each odd-numbered character level. (Insert joke about the word 'level' here. (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0012.html))
4e-style Rituals are back, but now they're an alternative rather than mandatory. You can cast a ritual spell by spending money without preparing the spell in advance, or you can save money and just use a spell slot normally.
The Classes

Cleric

Channel Divinity is back, as in 4e. Its standard use is Turn Undead, but you gain uses for it as you level up.
Clerics use Wisdom for their attack/damage rolls for spells, with a small extra bonus.
The two clerics are split into a bashy heavily armoured hammer-wielder, and a laser-shooting ranged attacker.
Fighter

The fighter is the simplest class with the shortest character sheet. It doesn't do much but deal damage, though it does do a lot of damage.
The pre-packaged feats give the benefits of 3e-style Cleave and 4e-style Reaping Strike.
As they level up, fighters get a surge power that lets them take an extra action twice a day.
Rogue

Sneak attack is more powerful, but harder to qualify for - it goes up by 1d6 per level, but flanking doesn't give advantage.
Rogues get Skill Mastery, discussed here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=244630).
At present, rogues seem to be the only class that gets to pick locks or disarm traps.
Wizard

Wizards use Intelligence for their spell attacks in the same way that Clerics use Wisdom.
Wizards (and only wizards) become 'disrupted' if they take damage, making it more difficult for them to cast spells on their next turn. Their Armour Class is also terrible and they can't cast in armour.
Wizards get the most at-will spells. Probably the most interesting is ray of frost, which doesn't do any damage but immobilises for a round on a hit.
Summary

Without having played it, my first impression of the playtest rules is that they really do look like a hybrid of 4e, 3e, and AD&D, with some bits from earlier editions and from Pathfinder.

Things that particularly stand out so far:

- Emphasis on ability checks as a catch-all mechanic.
- Emphasis on improvisation and general rules rather than specific rules/powers for everything.
- Far fewer situational/stacking bonuses, faster and simpler mechanics.

And that's it! Post any thoughts or suggestions below, and I'll have more detailed feedback once we get to play it this Saturday!

Edit: First session's done! Link below.

Playtest Writeups

Session 1 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=13334306#post13334306)
Session 2 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=13373066#post13373066)

Kurald Galain
2012-05-28, 05:32 PM
Tidbits I noticed,


While you can move your speed per round for free, you also get Spring Attack for free. That is, if you can move 40 feet per round, you may also elect to move 20 feet, attack, then move 20 feet more.
Healing surges are still there, except they're called hit dice now. Clerical healing no longer requires a surge, but you can spend surges to heal outside of combat without needing a cleric.
Lock picks only give you a bonus if you're proficient with them.
There aren't any mechanics for Attacks Of Opportunity in the playtest.
Wizards can't cast spells while wearing armor.
Resistance is now a flat 50% damage, not a set amount to subtract; likewise, vulnerability is a flat 200% damage.
There are still situational modifiers; for example, being prone gives enemies a +2 to attack you, rather than "advantage".
Charmed is now a condition (which means you can't attack the person who charmed you) as is Frightened (you have to get the source of the effect out of your sight ASAP) and Intoxicated (you get damage resistance and "disadvantage" to everything).
Most 4E conditions are gone, including Slowed, Dazed, and Weakened.

Tengu_temp
2012-05-28, 05:37 PM
Do fighters and rogues get any options in combat like in 4e, or are they mostly limited to auto-attacking like in 3.5?

Tengu_temp
2012-05-28, 05:39 PM
Do fighters and rogues get any options in combat like in 4e, or are they mostly limited to auto-attacking like in 3.5?

Morty
2012-05-28, 05:46 PM
I remember something being said about lower-level enemies being more threatening to higher-level characters than in 3rd edition. Is that true? Or I guess the better question would be do we have enough data to answer that?

Dienekes
2012-05-28, 05:49 PM
Do fighters and rogues get any options in combat like in 4e, or are they mostly limited to auto-attacking like in 3.5?

So far, fighters and rogues are even more limited than they were in 3.5, options like disarming, bull rushing, tripping all don't show up in this playtest.

However the designers have said that in this first playtest they've used the most basic version of the fighter imaginable, and that maneuvers are guaranteed to be in the actual game.

Dienekes
2012-05-28, 05:51 PM
Do fighters and rogues get any options in combat like in 4e, or are they mostly limited to auto-attacking like in 3.5?

So far, fighters and rogues are even more limited than they were in 3.5, options like disarming, bull rushing, tripping all don't show up in this playtest.

However the designers have said that in this first playtest they've used the most basic version of the fighter imaginable, and that maneuvers are guaranteed to be in the actual game.

Saph
2012-05-28, 05:58 PM
@Kurald: good catches!

@Tengu: The fighter is definitely an auto-attacker - pure damage and nothing else. None of the varied attacks and maneuvers of a ToB character, or even the more limited powers of a 4e char. Hopefully we'll get more options in later iterations.

The rogue is more of a lurker - he hits hard when he has advantage, but advantage takes more effort to get, which seems to encourage an ambusher style.


I remember something being said about lower-level enemies being more threatening to higher-level characters than in 3rd edition. Is that true? Or I guess the better question would be do we have enough data to answer that?

Attack and AC curves seem flatter in this edition than past ones - it's harder to boost your attacks and defences, which suggests that it'll be more difficult to become flat-out invulnerable to low-level monsters. However, the playtest characters stop at 3rd level, so we can't test this properly.

Tengu_temp
2012-05-28, 05:59 PM
@Dienekes - I see what you did there.

Also, as I suspected. I know the game will be highly modular, but I wondered did they test the more complex (and more interesting to me), less classic versions yet. Apparently not.

HeadlessMermaid
2012-05-28, 09:49 PM
What about knowledge checks? Are they... a thing? Are they treated like an Intelligence check, like other skills? Is training via background applicable? And if so, are they divided to categories, like 3.5?

Starbuck_II
2012-05-28, 10:30 PM
What about knowledge checks? Are they... a thing? Are they treated like an Intelligence check, like other skills? Is training via background applicable? And if so, are they divided to categories, like 3.5?

Yes, Lore is the general skill. Specific type of Lore get bonuses from backgrounds.

Crow
2012-05-29, 04:11 AM
To the folks whining about "auto attacking":

Has it occurred to you that the fighter and rogue may actually have *more* options? Now that the ruleset doesn't hold your hand and tell you specifically what you're allowed to do, you are free to use your imagination and do anything it doesn't explicitly forbid.

Dienekes
2012-05-29, 04:17 AM
To the folks whining about "auto attacking":

Has it occurred to you that the fighter and rogue may actually have *more* options? Now that the ruleset doesn't hold your hand and tell you specifically what you're allowed to do, you are free to use your imagination and do anything it doesn't explicitly forbid.

Which requires the game to run on DM fiat instead of hard rules, which could, depending on the DM in question completely screw them over or make them absolute combat monsters. As a generally non-trusting person, I don't like when a classes entire ability to be interesting is determined by someone else interpreting what I can do.

Felhammer
2012-05-29, 04:55 AM
Which requires the game to run on DM fiat instead of hard rules, which could, depending on the DM in question completely screw them over or make them absolute combat monsters. As a generally non-trusting person, I don't like when a classes entire ability to be interesting is determined by someone else interpreting what I can do.

^^ This.

I have gamed with good DMs and bad DMs. The good are far out numbered by the bad. Some rules are there to help give everyone a good frame work from which to have fun.

Saph
2012-05-29, 05:07 AM
It's a trade-off. Having rules for everything gives a framework for less experienced GMs to fall back on, and sometimes it's nice to have the clarity. On the other hand, it does slow the game down, and it tends to produce an attitude of "you can only do it if the rules specifically say you can".

With regard to combat options I'd have liked to see them copy the Pathfinder CMB/CMD system, since I think this was one of the things that Pathfinder got exactly right. You have a combat maneuver bonus, and a combat maneuver defence, and they get used for everything that isn't a direct attack. Better than either 3.5 or 4e, IMO.

Kurald Galain
2012-05-29, 05:12 AM
I have gamed with good DMs and bad DMs. The good are far out numbered by the bad. Some rules are there to help give everyone a good frame work from which to have fun.

I choose not to game with bad DMs. Because I do not believe that having rules against a bad DM makes him any less of a bad DM.

GnomeGninjas
2012-05-29, 06:00 AM
What are the monsters like? Do they follow mostly the same rules as the players (excluding special powers) like in 3.5 or do they follow there own fairly different set of rules like in editions other than 3.x?

Tengu_temp
2012-05-29, 10:27 AM
To the folks whining about "auto attacking":

Has it occurred to you that the fighter and rogue may actually have *more* options? Now that the ruleset doesn't hold your hand and tell you specifically what you're allowed to do, you are free to use your imagination and do anything it doesn't explicitly forbid.

This attitude is totally not condescending, no sirree.

I like my games to be both mechanically and narratively interesting. A game with no rules for non-standard attacks is not mechanically interesting. Saying that lack of such rules opens up more options is a fallacy, because it heavily depends on what kind of DM you're playing with, and because a DM who allows and (much more important!) encourages you to to use nonstandard solutions in a mechanically simple game will do the same in a game that gives you lots of options on its own.
Also, if you want to see a game where "use your imagination and go out of the box" is actually a part of the design, look at FATE. In DND it's not a part of the design.

I'm looking forward to the playtest of the alternative, more ToB-like ruleset for non-casters. I'm sure it will be much more interesting for me. And speaking of which...

---

Are non-primary stats of any use for characters? Is there a point for a fighter to invest in intelligence, for a rogue to invest in wisdom, for anyone to invest in charisma?

Kurald Galain
2012-05-29, 10:30 AM
Also, if you want to see a game where "use your imagination and go out of the box" is actually a part of the design, look at FATE. In DND it's not a part of the design.

That is very much part of the design of 1st and 2nd edition D&D. 5E does try to appeal to fans of each edition, after all.

Madara
2012-05-29, 10:40 AM
Are non-primary stats of any use for characters? Is there a point for a fighter to invest in intelligence, for a rogue to invest in wisdom, for anyone to invest in charisma?

They seem to be a lot more relevant. It seems like no one can be SAD, but most will be MAD 2-3.

Tengu_temp
2012-05-29, 10:41 AM
That is very much part of the design of 1st and 2nd edition D&D. 5E does try to appeal to fans of each edition, after all.

It still heavily depends on the DM in these editions. For example, let's say that I want to kill a goblin by pushing him into a fireplace instead of attacking with my sword. Three different DMs will handle it differently:
- DM Alpha decides that this counts as an unarmed attack (so it's harder than attacking with my sword), and if it succeeds then instead of dealing normal damage, the goblin suffers 1d6 fire damage from being in the fire.
- DM Beta decides that this will be mechanically resolved exactly as a normal attack, just different fluff-wise.
- DM Gamma decides that it's a tricky thing, so I will receive a small penalty to attack, but if I succeed the attack will deal extra fire damage in addition to ordinary damage.

All three DMs allow out of the box solutions, but only Gamma encourages it. In Beta's game they make no difference, while Alpha actively discourages them.

FATE requires the DM to approach it like Gamma. It's part of the design. In DND, it's not.

Saph
2012-05-29, 10:43 AM
What are the monsters like? Do they follow mostly the same rules as the players (excluding special powers) like in 3.5 or do they follow there own fairly different set of rules like in editions other than 3.x?

They seem to follow more-or-less the same rules as PCs, a la 3.5. The way they're presented actually makes me think of AD&D more than anything, but that might just be me.

Monster HP varies hugely. Kobolds and goblins have 2-5 HP, while giant-types like ogres and minotaurs have 100 HP or even more.


Are non-primary stats of any use for characters? Is there a point for a fighter to invest in intelligence, for a rogue to invest in wisdom, for anyone to invest in charisma?

Ability checks now cover saving throws. So any dump stat now carries the risk of being attacked through that stat.

Tengu_temp
2012-05-29, 10:47 AM
How can you be attacked through intelligence or charisma? Except for social situations, in the latter's case.

Saph
2012-05-29, 10:55 AM
How can you be attacked through intelligence or charisma?

Mechanically? By anything that says "roll an Int save" or "roll a Cha save". We don't yet know how common attacks against the respective attributes will be, but it's not like 3e/4e where you had Fort, Reflex, or Will.

Kurald Galain
2012-05-29, 11:13 AM
FATE requires the DM to approach it like Gamma. It's part of the design. In DND, it's not.

Okay, but 1E and 2E also lean towards Gamma since you get extra experience for clever ideas, as an incentive or reward. Also, 4E clearly uses the Alpha approach, since the oft-cited Page 42 ensures that clever tricks will be less effective than your at-will attacks. In both cases, that's part of the design, too.

Ashdate
2012-05-29, 12:05 PM
Okay, but 1E and 2E also lean towards Gamma since you get extra experience for clever ideas, as an incentive or reward. Also, 4E clearly uses the Alpha approach, since the oft-cited Page 42 ensures that clever tricks will be less effective than your at-will attacks. In both cases, that's part of the design, too.

In fairness, the "limited damage expressions" in page 42 generally have the potential to deal more damage than at-will attacks. I believe the problem isn't the table, so much as that Wizard's underestimated how powerful static damage bonuses to attacks were.

Essentially, while you're correct that the damage expressions tend to be worse than at-will attacks, the intent (I believe) was that they would be more powerful. The incentive is there, just not necessarily the reward.

Crow
2012-05-29, 12:23 PM
This attitude is totally not condescending, no sirree.

I like my games to be both mechanically and narratively interesting. A game with no rules for non-standard attacks is not mechanically interesting. Saying that lack of such rules opens up more options is a fallacy, because it heavily depends on what kind of DM you're playing with, and because a DM who allows and (much more important!) encourages you to to use nonstandard solutions in a mechanically simple game will do the same in a game that gives you lots of options on its own.
Also, if you want to see a game where "use your imagination and go out of the box" is actually a part of the design, look at FATE. In DND it's not a part of the design.


How was I condescending?

Your assertion that my statement is a fallacy is simply not true. You will always have more options if you are not constrained by the rules, than if you have to have every option included in the rules. Yes, you need to have a DM who understands this, and your play experience will vary depending on the DM. There's no way around that, and some people obviously don't like that. It's a different mindset.

However, being able to have your character do things that are outside the rules, and having a DM to adjudicate them so as not to automatically be auto-fails, is the one thing tabletop rpg's have going over video games in my opinion (aside from the social aspect). If the rules are going to cover every single action, you start to approach the point where a DM is no longer neccessary, and at that point, why not play a video game instead?

Morty
2012-05-29, 12:39 PM
Attack and AC curves seem flatter in this edition than past ones - it's harder to boost your attacks and defences, which suggests that it'll be more difficult to become flat-out invulnerable to low-level monsters. However, the playtest characters stop at 3rd level, so we can't test this properly.

Interesting. That would indeed probably work but like you said, we'd need to look at the entire level progression from 1 to 20 (or whatever the highest level will be) to be sure.

theNater
2012-05-29, 12:43 PM
Does the cleric have healing options/abilities that don't use up their action for the round?

Saph
2012-05-29, 12:46 PM
Does the cleric have healing options/abilities that don't use up their action for the round?

Nope. As far as I can see all spells, attacks, etc for all characters take an action to use.

prufock
2012-05-29, 01:00 PM
It's been mentioned that fortitude, reflex, and will saves have been replaced with the relevant ability checks to resist. However, I didn't see mention that there are now also strength, intelligence, and charisma resist checks.

So far I'm not blown away. I like the simplification, but it seems like there isn't enough change to really justify a new edition. Not like 4e was compared to 3.5 anyway. It seems like a weak mashup of the two.

I'm hoping there will be more options. I know the printed characters only go to level 3, but they (especially the martial types) need more things to do.

DCs for everything seem like they'll be lower. I kind of like that. It means, I hope, that stacking bonuses into the stratosphere has been reined in. "Soft" limits based on level are a good thing in my opinion.

So there's some good, some not so good, but I haven't seen anything REALLY bad about it. I haven't run the module yet, but I'm hoping to get that chance in the coming weeks.

Urpriest
2012-05-29, 01:11 PM
Just butting in a bit on the improvisation debate: DM fiat is a problem because anything a DM can fiat, sufficiently well-designed rules can duplicate.

Example: Suppose a player is being "creative". It's a tough fight, and the enemy has lots of hit points. The party is taking too long to kill the creature and running low on resources.

Our "creative" player says "I attack the monster, then twist my sword in the wound, dealing double damage!"

Now maybe you think this is a sufficiently cool description. If you don't, imagine that the player had described it in such a way that you would indeed rule it to be double damage. So you let him get away with it.

Later that fight, or in another fight, the player again decides to deal more damage. Maybe this time he says,

"I attack the monster, then jump up, throwing my weight into the thrust to push further and deal double damage!"

Now the player can just keep doing this. And at some point, if you're a half-decent DM, you're going to say "this time you just deal normal damage". Maybe you only let this sort of thing happen once per fight, or you only let it happen when the fight is especially hard, or you only let him pull this sort of thing off once per session. You put some sort of limit on it.

Great. You've just invented Encounter Powers. Or Daily Powers, or "unlocked when the fight is really hard" powers.

The thing is, you have a number of choices of how often you let the player deal double damage. And whatever frequency you choose, this will affect their average damage. Similar things can be said if the player is instead being "creative" in order to push monsters around tactically, or debuff them, or whatever. Whatever you do, you're faced with the question "what should the player's average damage dealt/damage taken/control of the battlefield" be?

And that question has an answer. Not just an answer for your game, but potentially a set of answers that can cover everyone's game. After all, in the end it's merely a mechanical question of how much damage the player should do to keep the fights functioning as intended. The answer may be hard to discover, but it's harder to discover when improvising on the fly than through rigorous playtesting. A sufficiently competent game designer will come up with objectively better answers to this question than you, and even a mediocre one will come up with better answers than the majority of DMs. Rules will always be better at handling improvisation than fiat, because fiat is created on the fly, while rules, at their best (which is what 5e is supposed to be) are tested.

valadil
2012-05-29, 01:33 PM
Thank you for posting this! I haven't had time for RPGs lately but desperately wanted to see what D&D Next looked like. This has piqued my curiosity.


Just butting in a bit on the improvisation debate: DM fiat is a problem because anything a DM can fiat, sufficiently well-designed rules can duplicate.

Example: Suppose a player is being "creative". It's a tough fight, and the enemy has lots of hit points. The party is taking too long to kill the creature and running low on resources.


You can't have a rule for everything. If you do, you'll have so many rules you can't find anything and might as well not even have the rule in the first place (see: GURPS).

What you want IMO, is a number of rules for reference and example. To use your example, if a player wants to throw a little twist on their sword attack, how I handle that depends on my basis in the rules that are already written. If I already know there's a spell that gives a player double damage for a number of rounds, I have something to compare the player's request to. If there's a feat that grants a daily power to get double damage, I can shove that in the player's face when he says his description is worth the same thing.

Or if a player wants to jump off a table during his attack, I can use the chandelier swing attack for reference and make something similar. Basically what the improvising GM's job is, is to identify the closest core rule and mutate that to fit what the player is doing or use that rule as the basis to deny the request.

Urpriest
2012-05-29, 01:47 PM
You can't have a rule for everything. If you do, you'll have so many rules you can't find anything and might as well not even have the rule in the first place (see: GURPS).

What you want IMO, is a number of rules for reference and example. To use your example, if a player wants to throw a little twist on their sword attack, how I handle that depends on my basis in the rules that are already written. If I already know there's a spell that gives a player double damage for a number of rounds, I have something to compare the player's request to. If there's a feat that grants a daily power to get double damage, I can shove that in the player's face when he says his description is worth the same thing.

Or if a player wants to jump off a table during his attack, I can use the chandelier swing attack for reference and make something similar. Basically what the improvising GM's job is, is to identify the closest core rule and mutate that to fit what the player is doing or use that rule as the basis to deny the request.

You can have a rule for everything and still have a very simple system. Most free-form systems fall under that description. The ideal is to have a system with as few rules as possible that cover everything anyone will try to do.

For your jumping off a table example, there are a number of ways to handle that comprehensively. For example, Exalted has Stunts, and that jump and the chandelier swing would both qualify as two-die stunts. You could also have a more specific rule for an acrobatic maneuver, with the chandelier listed as an example and jumping off a table being something covered by its definition.

It actually looks like 5e is doing something similar. It's got a generalized concept of advantage that doesn't stack, which already seems like the sort of thing that encourages creativity. It's got generalized ability checks at the same power as the default skills, which means that it probably will have a section advising DMs to call for ability checks if a player does something creative. I hope that the maneuvers function similarly: guidelines for how often a player can do something creative, and what sorts of results are level-appropriate for that creativity.

valadil
2012-05-29, 02:07 PM
You can have a rule for everything and still have a very simple system. Most free-form systems fall under that description. The ideal is to have a system with as few rules as possible that cover everything anyone will try to do.

Maybe I should have said distinct rule? If you want chandelier swinging and table vaulting attacks to be mechanically distinct, I'm not sure a general purpose rule is enough. (Note that I'm not really arguing, I'd love to see a system that proves me wrong.) I'm of the opinion that if the player keeps coming up with attacks and you tell them to roll acrobatic assault over and over, eventually they'll give up on coming up with interesting attacks.

Starbuck_II
2012-05-29, 02:09 PM
Does the cleric have healing options/abilities that don't use up their action for the round?

Some spells use mechanic that they cost nothing (except the slot) and you can still do something else.
Cleric of Moradin has Healing Word spell: Range 50 feet, cures 1d6 hp to a target and you can still make an attack (melee/ranged) or cast a cantrip spell.

The other healing spell is Cure Light Wound (touch range), no extra action like Healing Word, but 1d8 + magic mod (wis for Cleric) hp.

So Healing word is better if you need healing, but there are far away and you still want to do other things in combat

CLW is for better healing, but you can't do anything else and need touch range.

On note, Cleric of Pelor has a cantrip that deals 1d8 + stat mod radiant damage within 50 ft.
So had he known Healing word he could heal and still deal decent damage, but the chose CLW instead.

Although, since no touch AC exists, you need to hit normal AC which can be hard.

theNater
2012-05-29, 02:17 PM
Some spells use mechanic that they cost nothing (except the slot) and you can still do something else.
Cleric of Moradin has Healing Word spell: Range 50 feet, cures 1d6 hp to a target and you can still make an attack (melee/ranged) or cast a cantrip spell.
That's interesting. Definitely makes me curious to see how it works out in play.

Tengu_temp
2012-05-29, 02:31 PM
So far I'm not blown away. I like the simplification, but it seems like there isn't enough change to really justify a new edition. Not like 4e was compared to 3.5 anyway. It seems like a weak mashup of the two.

I'm hoping there will be more options. I know the printed characters only go to level 3, but they (especially the martial types) need more things to do.

Remember that 5e will be a very modular game. For example, a fighter can be a simple class with almost no features like in AD&D, or it can use options in the vein of ToB options or 4e powers. The playtest just hasn't shown us the latter yet, and I'm looking forward to when it does.

Person_Man
2012-05-29, 03:20 PM
I feel that eliminating Immediate/Swift Actions and Attacks of Opportunity while loading up on "Free Action" extras like Cleave and Action Surge and Healing Word is a bad thing.

Action Economy (gaining extra actions, and denying your enemies' their actions) is the first and most important touchstone of optimization. To the degree that a game allows you to mess with the action economy is the degree to which the game can be broken.

I'm not a fan of 4E, because most of the Powers and Feats are as boring as yo mama is ugly. But that was a result of having hundreds of "small" Powers and Feats and magic items which had minor effects or modifiers, not a balanced Action Economy.

5E could correct this by having "big" interesting powers while maintaining a balanced Action Economy. But it looks like it's moving towards the worst of all possible worlds, with a very loose Action Economy and a jumble of different abilities.

Nich_Critic
2012-05-29, 04:35 PM
I feel that eliminating Immediate/Swift Actions and Attacks of Opportunity while loading up on "Free Action" extras like Cleave and Action Surge and Healing Word is a bad thing.

Action Economy (gaining extra actions, and denying your enemies' their actions) is the first and most important touchstone of optimization. To the degree that a game allows you to mess with the action economy is the degree to which the game can be broken.

I'm not a fan of 4E, because most of the Powers and Feats are as boring as yo mama is ugly. But that was a result of having hundreds of "small" Powers and Feats and magic items which had minor effects or modifiers, not a balanced Action Economy.

5E could correct this by having "big" interesting powers while maintaining a balanced Action Economy. But it looks like it's moving towards the worst of all possible worlds, with a very loose Action Economy and a jumble of different abilities.

Yeah. Having swift actions was a little clunky, but the way it is now, it seems like either you will do precisely one thing a turn, because the designers never let you combine anything good to your attack, or the system will horribly break as you just stack free action on top of free action.

Starbuck_II
2012-05-29, 06:21 PM
Yeah. Having swift actions was a little clunky, but the way it is now, it seems like either you will do precisely one thing a turn, because the designers never let you combine anything good to your attack, or the system will horribly break as you just stack free action on top of free action.

Well, Spiritual Hammer is a 1st level spell now. Deals 1d8+casting mod, Hit casting mod (also hit +2 for magic in addition if you didn't know that rule).
Cast that and you are getting free hits for a minute or something.

erikun
2012-05-29, 10:41 PM
Looks... okay. Some things do look like a good simplification of the system: resistance and weakness, advantage and disadvantage, and so on. Action + move looks like it would keep things more obvious, rather than needing to ask "How do you use your move action?"

On the other hand, we may be seeing a bit too much oversimplication. Single-action turns combined with the Hit Dice idea seems to indicate that either 1) there is no in-combat healing away from the Cleric, or 2) that you can use 4e's "Second Wind" in combat, but it potentially would heal only a small amount. You only get skill training from backgrounds (apparently) and themes look like just a thematic feat; both feel more like 3e's "you can play anything that we think up for you to buy" rather than earlier D&D's idea of not limiting backgrounds to prepackaged parcels.

Clerics look good, assuming they get at least medium armor (preferably heavy armor for the Templar-types) and the Spirit Shaman casting style looks good. Interesting difference with Wizards, although it would make the traditional "spellsword" rather difficult to use. Not much on Fighters and Rogues, although AD&D Fighters worked very well without much definition.


To the folks whining about "auto attacking":

Has it occurred to you that the fighter and rogue may actually have *more* options? Now that the ruleset doesn't hold your hand and tell you specifically what you're allowed to do, you are free to use your imagination and do anything it doesn't explicitly forbid.
Unless there is some clear or obvious way to resolve other options, they probably won't be allowed by most DMs or determined by odd rulings. It is very easy that we may end up with 3e's solution (You must have the feat to do so) or 4e's solution (You may do so, but it's worse than any other option).


Are non-primary stats of any use for characters? Is there a point for a fighter to invest in intelligence, for a rogue to invest in wisdom, for anyone to invest in charisma?
Resisting illusions, "Will Saves", and resisting charm, respectively.

Jerthanis
2012-05-30, 02:04 AM
Just butting in a bit on the improvisation debate: DM fiat is a problem because anything a DM can fiat, sufficiently well-designed rules can duplicate.

In addition to your well made case, having an encouragement towards a great volume of DM fiat decisions can lead to a plethora of problems.

A player and a DM can have very different ideas about what is possible and what isn't. Can I pin a giant to the floor by shoving my sword through its foot? A DM might rule that the giant can easily pull his foot out, since the sword is only embedded with as much force as your puny human frame can put behind it, while he can pull out with the force of a giant. So when the DM fiats "Okay, the giant lifts his foot, prying the sword out of the floor with a wrenching noise" the Player could justifiably say, "Hey, you made my action pointless, all I got out of it was disarming myself to no end. I don't want to have done that if it wasn't going to do anything but penalize me!"

Okay, so a DM can warn the PC when an action isn't going to do much, but then you just get to endless negotiations over what you're going to do and how and things slow down because the player doesn't want to waste their turn doing something creative, but the DM doesn't want to compromise the reality of the world in the favor of the PCs. After all, if swinging on chandeliers doubles peoples' damage, then wouldn't it make sense in-world if chandeliers were set up in defensive positions in castles, designed for the elite units to swing on them to better repel invaders?

In addition, it sort of encourages a sort of attitude of passive aggressiveness on the part of Players. I know players who are creative and always want to apply their personality to the way their characters behave in combat, but they get really upset when it doesn't work as well as they imagined, essentially being irritable if it isn't "DM Gamma" as was characterized earlier. To avoid that, DMs could fall into allowing their actions to gain the most powerful reasonable benefits, to avoid potential irritability. Meanwhile, players who aren't as concerned or irritable might get a more balanced treatment of a Beta DM if it's ALL DM fiat on these nonstandard tactics. Essentially being a certain degree of unreasonable as a player benefits you because the squeaky wheel gets the grease as it were.

You can say, "Don't game with jerks" but everyone's a jerk to SOME extent and in different ways. It isn't a binary situation where some people are White Hat gamers and some are Black Hat gamers... It's more of a gradient going in all sorts of directions. Being 1% more passive aggressive than everyone else gives you 1% of a bonus with pure DM fiat, but perhaps only 0.5% of a bonus with some DM fiat and some hard rules guidelines.

Denkal
2012-05-30, 05:21 AM
Regarding the "Auto-Attack" debate, I've looked at the rules for checks, contests, and skill saving throws, since skills dictate almost everything in this playtest, and I've found something interesting under Strength saving throws.
it says something along the lines of how the DM will usually use a strength saving throw to escape a grapple or resist being pushed. This leads me to believe that tripping, pushing, grappling, and such are still meant to be options, even if the rules so far don't outline how a DM should handle it.

From what I've read, the purpose of this playtest is to gauge how the system supports different playing styles, so it's likely also a test of how the system supports different DMing styles.
For example, one DM might say that tripping is an attack that warrants a Dexterity saving throw, DC equal to the attack roll. Another might consider it a contest.

Dark Herald
2012-05-30, 06:52 AM
Although, since no touch AC exists, you need to hit normal AC which can be hard.

Due to the way saves work now, touch attacks could be easily added in through spells that allow a dexterity save for no damage. But no spells are implemented that way in the playtest, especially those that previously were touch attacks.

DigoDragon
2012-05-30, 07:33 AM
At present, rogues seem to be the only class that gets to pick locks or disarm traps.

Now, if I was reading it correctly, it seems anyone could find the traps, just that only the rogue has the expertise to disarm the trap? From the test I did, it seems to work okay this way and still makes the rogue useful outside of combat.
It's kinda like how in my household everyone notices the DVR on the TV, but only my daughter can program it. :smalltongue:


On a different note: The monster entries no longer have a CR, it's back to an EXP value like 2nd edition. That saves me a couple steps in experience calculation.

SuperPanda
2012-05-30, 07:58 AM
On the action thing with creative actions:

I haven't had a chance to try it, but the E6 variant rule for raises and calls sounds like a perfect fit for what you guys are looking for.

Player states the cool thing they are trying to do and the effect they want it to have and self balances it against the failure penalty, DM calls if it sounds fair or offers a counter proposal for the failure. DM disallows the raise if there is no real chance of failure and/or if the success boon far outweighs the failure.

Its a simple mechanic that sounds awesome with mature players and a reasonable DM. I seem to only have 1 or the other in any gaming group I play with.

Thialfi
2012-05-30, 07:59 AM
Just butting in a bit on the improvisation debate: DM fiat is a problem because anything a DM can fiat, sufficiently well-designed rules can duplicate.

Example: Suppose a player is being "creative". It's a tough fight, and the enemy has lots of hit points. The party is taking too long to kill the creature and running low on resources.

Our "creative" player says "I attack the monster, then twist my sword in the wound, dealing double damage!"

Now maybe you think this is a sufficiently cool description. If you don't, imagine that the player had described it in such a way that you would indeed rule it to be double damage. So you let him get away with it.

Later that fight, or in another fight, the player again decides to deal more damage. Maybe this time he says,

"I attack the monster, then jump up, throwing my weight into the thrust to push further and deal double damage!"

Now the player can just keep doing this. And at some point, if you're a half-decent DM, you're going to say "this time you just deal normal damage". Maybe you only let this sort of thing happen once per fight, or you only let it happen when the fight is especially hard, or you only let him pull this sort of thing off once per session. You put some sort of limit on it.

Great. You've just invented Encounter Powers. Or Daily Powers, or "unlocked when the fight is really hard" powers.

The thing is, you have a number of choices of how often you let the player deal double damage. And whatever frequency you choose, this will affect their average damage. Similar things can be said if the player is instead being "creative" in order to push monsters around tactically, or debuff them, or whatever. Whatever you do, you're faced with the question "what should the player's average damage dealt/damage taken/control of the battlefield" be?

And that question has an answer. Not just an answer for your game, but potentially a set of answers that can cover everyone's game. After all, in the end it's merely a mechanical question of how much damage the player should do to keep the fights functioning as intended. The answer may be hard to discover, but it's harder to discover when improvising on the fly than through rigorous playtesting. A sufficiently competent game designer will come up with objectively better answers to this question than you, and even a mediocre one will come up with better answers than the majority of DMs. Rules will always be better at handling improvisation than fiat, because fiat is created on the fly, while rules, at their best (which is what 5e is supposed to be) are tested.

I am not a big fan of creativity in combat situations like you describe unless the players are okay with having the tables turned on them. I don't want monsters or players doing things the other can't do. For every "I twist the sword to do double damage" you should expect a "the ogre grabs you and slams you into the ceiling and then throws you on to the floor inflicting double damage".

If you want to be creative, focus your energy on tactics and outsmarting the enemy, not trying to get a free gift from the DM.

Ashdate
2012-05-30, 08:36 AM
Well, Spiritual Hammer is a 1st level spell now. Deals 1d8+casting mod, Hit casting mod (also hit +2 for magic in addition if you didn't know that rule).
Cast that and you are getting free hits for a minute or something.

I think Spiritual Hammer is either an exception to the normal "you get to add your ability mod to damage rolls" for spells, or a misprint. It says the hammer deals 1d8 damage only (compare it to other spells like Lance of Faith and Shocking Grasps which clearly state you add your relevant ability modifier). In the context of being able to do other things for a minute while potentially hitting with the hammer for damage, I think that's fair, but wanted to point that out and see how other groups interpreted it.

Speaking of Spiritual Hammer, our group found the wording that it's used "as part of your action" confusing. It would probably be better worded to make it clear that the hammer's attacks are "free". I post a bit about it below.

This is cross-posted from another forum I go to (http://www.gamespite.net/talkingtime/showthread.php?t=13058), but it sums my thoughts on the game/module they presented pretty well, so I'm posting it here for discussion:



Tried this tonight at our game. It didn't really go over well. Being a Gary Gygax adventure, I ran it gridless and made rolls behind the screen and let the dice fall where they may (normally I do them in the open, so no big deal). The players decided to enter the Goblin caves first, and as per the module quickly found themselves facing the nearby Ogre. It was heading for TPK land, but part of it I think was that we were misreading the Spiritual Hammer spell (it's a bit ambiguous whether using it takes the cleric's action or not; in the future I will rule it doesn't), and I had forgotten to copy the Mage Hand spell as a supplement to the Wizard's character sheet, which would have been handy when the Fighter has tossed his axe and needed it to fight the Ogre (kind of unnecessary since he has a crossbow, but...).

I think there were some growing pains going from 4e to this. The biggest was probably the wizard and cleric not using the fact they can move before and after they attack to go in and out of cover between their ranged attacks. I'm sure some players will find the new way of doing skills liberating, but others (like my players) might find themselves trying to find excuses to use their handful of +3 skill bonuses (certainly a side effect of playing 4e), rather than assuming they might be able to do a particular task simply by having a decent ability score related to it.

My players seemed to enjoy the brisk combat (even if they technically never made it very far), but the player playing the Fighter, despite his best efforts at improvising in combat (something the rules as given aren't very good at I feel, particularly since it's just "whatever the DM decides") found it boring just rolling a d20 and hitting for 2d6 + whatever damage. The Wizard I don't think ever dipped into his level one spells (Sleep wasn't going to be very good against the Ogre; but as an aside I think that spell deserved a nerf so that was a thing), so the player spent most of his time magic missile'ing goblins and Ray of Frosting occasionally (as an aside, Ray of Frost is pretty potent for an at-will). The rogue got to sneak attack once (against a goblin his regular damage would have killed anyway); I don't think the problem is getting stealth, the problem was probably that the player admittedly hadn't played a rogue in a while (shortly after a pitfall trap hits him: "Hey, my character can detect traps!"). The cleric felt awfully not-clericy given his propensity to stand behind the fighter and cast Lance of Faith, but that was probably because it was by far his best option in combat. I know that Lance of Faith is an option in 4e from level one, but I dunno, it feels wrong that they effectively quadrupled it's range and made it as or more powerful than the melee option (as an example, consider the difference between the Wizard's Magic Missile and shorter range Shocking Grasp in terms of damage, which feels a bit more fair).

Things that were kind of missed: attacks of opportunity, flanking. As said, we played it without a grid of miniatures (something we don't do often), but I've got to say the lack of attacks of opportunity took a lot of risk out of combat. At one point the fighter dove between the Ogre's legs to retrieve his axe, which was cinematic, but given that he could have just walked around and retrieved it, I didn't want to award the player with an Advantage. The rules are a bit coy about when to grant Advantage, generally saying that you need magic or a special ability, which is fine except starting at level one with no magic items and few special abilities, it found it hard to justify giving them without setting some uncomfortable precedents.

On a side note, one of my players was a bit disappointed when I told him he didn't need to make a check to build a clean burning fire (so as not to easily give out their position to the hordes in the caves). I figured given his Wisdom and the fact had Survival for a skill bonus, he didn't need to roll. I think I kind of see where his disappointment came from; this player likes to see the occasional failure for the often hilarious results that come with it. I'm not saying that the rule is a problem (clearly you can house rule it out) but I it was probably an unintended side effect.

I mentioned that I had some issues with the module they chose, and I think one of my players hit the nail on the head when he said they chose the Caves of Chaos because of it's nostalgic value, rather than being a good choice to show off the new features in the system (which I think should have been the priority if they were going to declare that classes and monsters are still a "work in progress"). There was certainly a certain amount of charm to be playing a Gygax module (they made me roll for each crossbow bolt/sling bullet to see if they were still usable), but beyond that it was playing like old-school D&D, which isn't bad, but not what my group was looking for.

I think some choice in character creation (such as between backgrounds and themes) would have helped to, particularly that some of the choices Wizard gave were boring. The Wizard's background is a "Sage" and his Theme is a "Magic-User"? Really? That's the best you could come up with?

Three of the four who attended last night (the fifth has an eye infection and couldn't make it) told me they would prefer to go back to 4e. We'll see what else comes out, but at this point I think you can colour our group rather lukewarm on "DND Next" so far.

Malachei
2012-05-30, 12:20 PM
Regarding skills being determined mostly by attributes: Does that mean a high-level character's skills are not that much higher than a low-level character's skills? Do abilities increase dramatically?

Overall, in comparison to 3.5, this looks like a much less complex game to me. Of course, there will be additional material and then the splatbook wave comes rolling in, but the basic concept of combat looks a lot simpler.

Which can be a good thing and a bad thing.

Ashdate
2012-05-30, 12:46 PM
It's honestly too early to tell! From what they've shown so far, there isn't any indication that your stats (i.e. strength, wisdom, etc) increase naturally, although perhaps through magical items. Ditto on skill increases; it's possible that you may be able to get small bonuses to your skill "specialties" (i.e. +4 instead of +3) but who knows at this point. There is, with the material presented, no difference in skill/ability checks between a level 1 character and a level 3 one (magical items not-withstanding).

DMs are expected to determine the difficulty and assign DCs accordingly. As an example, a check of "23-26" would indicate that to do such a task (an example the book gives would be to break a heavy iron door or pick a one-of-a-kind lock) would theoretically (at this point) only be reasonably performed by someone with a high stat (16 or higher) + relevant skill. I'm, at this point, assuming you'll be able to further specialize in skills to make such DCs possible, but we'll see.

I can tell you that combat was pretty simple, but then again, players had few options outside of improvising, and the monsters presented in the module generally were killed in one hit (biggies like the Ogre notwithstanding). My players improvised where they could (the Fighter grabbed one of the goblins pointing a crossbow at the thief and forced it at his goblin neighbour, the rogue tried to throw his lantern at the Ogre), but otherwise it was either the cleric Lance of Faith'ing and the Wizard Magic Missile enemies that generally fell after they took 5 hp of damage. Quick, but I wouldn't necessarily call it tactical like you would find in the 4e sense. It wasn't bad mind you, but I only call it a highlight because of its length, not its content.

Metahuman1
2012-05-30, 01:16 PM
At what point can we expect to start seeing mid and high level play testing?

3.X's great failing was that it seems the designers didn't give the mid to high level game play enough testing to catch a lot of problems with spells and such and to realize how limited they'd left there skill monkey's and warriors. I'd hate to see that either be repeated or "fixed" the way they did in 4E where they made every level identical.

Janus
2012-05-30, 01:43 PM
I haven't had a chance to play the game yet, but I like what I've read in the rules so far. I freaking love the AD&D presentation of the monsters, and reading the rules, it looks like they're back to being pretty darned dangerous. For instance, aside from a potion or something in the module, it looks like the medusa's petrification is permanent, though I wouldn't be surprised if higher level spells could cure it.
And as much as I like 4e, I'm all right with powers being gone. It's nice to have short character sheets.


For every "I twist the sword to do double damage" you should expect a "the ogre grabs you and slams you into the ceiling and then throws you on to the floor inflicting double damage".
Does the ogre say, "Puny god," after he's done? :smallbiggrin:

Bruendor_Cavescout
2012-05-30, 04:05 PM
With regards to the DM Fiat argument - it has no place here. We're looking at an incomplete set of rules, and are being asked to test how those rules work together. There may be rules on how to push a baddy off a cliff; there may not. This is like complaining that the windows on a car are manual instead of electric when we're supposed to be doing engine testing.

So, what works, and what doesn't? Let's draw up a list!

Pros:

1. Combat is faster. This is probably the biggest change between 4E and NE. Monsters have greatly reduced hit points, and many low-level creatures go down after a single solid hit. A battle between a party of five and, say, a dozen goblins, can be resolved very quickly - less than half the time that a similar battle would take in 4E. It feels like combat in 2E (and most likely 1E as well, though I have no background in that) - quickly resolved, with less time wasted on AoOs or other immediate actions.

2. Characters are powerful, even at 1st level. In the two hour game I ran on Monday, the party killed two dozen goblins, an ogre and eight hobgoblins before getting pinned down by nine more hobgoblins boxing them in. It's impressive what a character can do - the fighter does lots of damage on a hit and a bit on a miss; the rogue's backstab does a lot of damage if he's got advantage; the battle cleric is tough to hit and hits hard; the laser cleric heals well and is killer with his ranged spells; and the wizard has a bevy of useful cantrips.

3. Magic is powerful, even at 1st level. 0-level spells can be cast at-will, meaning your 1st level wizard will never be stuck throwing darts. If you decide to cast a 1st level spell, then it feels powerful. Sleep can knock out a sizable portion of weak creatures. The clerics' powers are similarly strong. 2nd level spells are similarly more powerful - it certainly feels like the designers have decided that if you're going to use a spell slot, it should count for something.

Cons:

1. Combat turns feel too simple. You know how I said earlier that the characters have power? Well, there's a flip side to this - they're all one-trick ponies. The fighter hits things hard - and that's it. The rogue backstabs people - and that's it. And so on. It feels like they've gone back a few steps too far in removing complexity. Perhaps this is from seeing a limited view of the game rules - time will tell on this.

2. Spell imbalance. Some spells are AMAZING - others aren't worth taking. This has always been the case, but it really stands out in this playtest. The wizard has four 1st level spells, most of which appear weaker than his 0-level options. Sleep is good, but situational. Shield grants half-cover, giving him an AC 13 instead of 11. Comprehend Languages...wastes a slot, more often than not. This is exacerbated by the powerful spells that the clerics get. I'm hoping this is a strange occurance that has played out due to the limited playtest we're examining, and that there are better spell choices out there.

Those are the bits that stand out clearly in my mind from my limited play experience.

Jerthanis
2012-05-30, 04:41 PM
With regards to the DM Fiat argument - it has no place here. We're looking at an incomplete set of rules, and are being asked to test how those rules work together. There may be rules on how to push a baddy off a cliff; there may not. This is like complaining that the windows on a car are manual instead of electric when we're supposed to be doing engine testing.

Well, there is a stated goal of increasing DM arbitration and encouraging player ingenuity and we're discussing whether that's a good idea and discussing how it's going to work.

It's really more like we're supposed to do engine testing for a new Ethanol engine and we're discussing the pros and cons of Ethanol as a fuel source.

kyoryu
2012-05-30, 04:54 PM
I am not a big fan of creativity in combat situations like you describe unless the players are okay with having the tables turned on them. I don't want monsters or players doing things the other can't do. For every "I twist the sword to do double damage" you should expect a "the ogre grabs you and slams you into the ceiling and then throws you on to the floor inflicting double damage".

If you want to be creative, focus your energy on tactics and outsmarting the enemy, not trying to get a free gift from the DM.

I think that as a general rule, I'd require that those types of combat tricks utilize some environmental or situational element, otherwise the ability to do so is simply assumed to be part of a standard attack, and can be added as flavor.

IOW, if "twisting a blade" does double damage, it's reasonable to expect that EVERY FIGHTER EVER TRAINED would be taught to do so as a basic drill, as a matter of course.

(Not to mention it's kind of a dumb idea, as while you're mucking around with your blade in the middle of somebody he's likely hacking you apart. But whatever).

Urpriest
2012-05-30, 05:00 PM
I think that as a general rule, I'd require that those types of combat tricks utilize some environmental or situational element, otherwise the ability to do so is simply assumed to be part of a standard attack, and can be added as flavor.

IOW, if "twisting a blade" does double damage, it's reasonable to expect that EVERY FIGHTER EVER TRAINED would be taught to do so as a basic drill, as a matter of course.

(Not to mention it's kind of a dumb idea, as while you're mucking around with your blade in the middle of somebody he's likely hacking you apart. But whatever).

Ok, so assume the creative player uses the situation every time. The same principles apply.

kyoryu
2012-05-30, 05:02 PM
Ok, so assume the creative player uses the situation every time. The same principles apply.

But they can't. That's the point of it being *situational*. If they can use the same situation in every case, it's not a situation any more.

Knocking an enemy into a fireplace is a fine way to be creative, and may result in a damage bonus. It's also totally unusable if there's not a fireplace. That makes it situational.

Twisting a blade isn't situational, it can be used in every single scenario.

Urpriest
2012-05-30, 05:04 PM
But they can't. That's the point of it being *situational*. If they can use the same situation in every case, it's not a situation any more.

Knocking an enemy into a fireplace is a fine way to be creative, and may result in a damage bonus. It's also totally unusable if there's not a fireplace. That makes it situational.

Twisting a blade isn't situational, it can be used in every single scenario.

Recall my example involved a different "creative" tactic each time.

kyoryu
2012-05-30, 05:16 PM
Recall my example involved a different "creative" tactic each time.

Indeed. None of which were situational.

Which means that the mechanic effectively becomes "come up with something neat and get double damage!", at which point all of your math has to assume that. It becomes baseline, not a bonus. At which point all of the enemies need to either do double damage to compensate, or get the same option of getting double damage when I come up with a description.

Situational bonuses, however, don't necessarily have the same issues... "knocking someone into a fireplace" can be used by either side, *and* has the advantage of being defensible in most systems by not standing next to the stinking fireplace in the first place. Bonuses like that can add a strategic element to the game, rather than just static damage boosts.

I'm not really sure what your point is with this, or what you're advocating. The closest I can get to is a system that allows you, with description, to get a generic bonus to damage/etc., given a description (and possibly some other associated penalty).

That seems *generally* reasonable and isn't unlike existing abilities such as Power Attack, except for presentation. However, systems like that *tend to* be a bit weak as there is usually a mathematically optimal choice, due to most game designers' weak grasp of game theory, and end up introducing complexity without actually adding depth.

Kurald Galain
2012-05-30, 05:17 PM
But they can't. That's the point of it being *situational*. If they can use the same situation in every case, it's not a situation any more.

Precisely.

If a player can seriously come up with a different creatively situational approach for every single combat, then he deserves the extra damage. Note that numerous RPGs already do precisely that (e.g. OTE, Exalted, Wushu), and this simply encourages players to make awesome descriptions. I consider that a good thing.

And, of course, the player who can do this every single round is a hypothetical example, and an appeal to absurdity fallacy. The reality is that players will use it every now and then, and that it won't always work for them either.

kyoryu
2012-05-30, 06:16 PM
Precisely.

If a player can seriously come up with a different creatively situational approach for every single combat, then he deserves the extra damage. Note that numerous RPGs already do precisely that (e.g. OTE, Exalted, Wushu), and this simply encourages players to make awesome descriptions. I consider that a good thing.

And, of course, the player who can do this every single round is a hypothetical example, and an appeal to absurdity fallacy. The reality is that players will use it every now and then, and that it won't always work for them either.

Actually, while I think that allowing double damage for description is a poor bolt-on to existing D&D, I also think it'd be a *fine* aspect of another game. But if you're going to go that route, it needs to be part of the core assumptions. Allowing for the possibility of doubling damage every round in 4e breaks the "game" aspect pretty badly.

It's also a matter of what skills you want to reward. Different versions reward different skills - 3.x rewards build optimization and creative use of spells pretty heavily. 4e rewards tactical skill and build optimization (though build optimization less heavily than 3.x). A game that rewards player creativity overall is something that I'd be very much interested in playing, but it ain't 3.x or 4e.

Kurald Galain
2012-05-30, 06:21 PM
A game that rewards player creativity overall is something that I'd be very much interested in playing, but it ain't 3.x or 4e.

Do you think it could be 5E?

cfalcon
2012-05-30, 06:54 PM
To the folks whining about "auto attacking":

Has it occurred to you that the fighter and rogue may actually have *more* options? Now that the ruleset doesn't hold your hand and tell you specifically what you're allowed to do, you are free to use your imagination and do anything it doesn't explicitly forbid.

+1, this is also my opinion on this.


My brief opinion on looking at the playtest documents (my group hasn't responded yet to see if we are actually going to test anything) is that I don't see anything that drives me away, but I don't see anything that is super compelling either. I probably wouldn't expect too this early, however- at this early stage of 4ed I knew I wasn't interested (based on rumors of the casting and melee changes), and at this stage of 3ed I was pretty sure I was all over it (based largely on what of the d20 system had leaked).

kyoryu
2012-05-30, 07:30 PM
Do you think it could be 5E?

Could be. I doubt it, since so much of 5e seems to be about a return to D&D "form". I'd be fine with it, though, so long as the game was balanced around it.

Also, double damage is a huge modifier - a smaller modifier would be much easier to shoehorn into a game without totally breaking it.

HeadlessMermaid
2012-05-30, 08:11 PM
I think that the "twist my sword to cause more damage" is a bad example, because damage is one of the things for which there ARE rules already. (You roll dice. There. :smalltongue:)

Here's another example (very simple, but more applicable): A party member and an orc are fighting on the edge of a cliff, and the player says "I try to push the orc off the cliff". Lacking more specific rules and relying on ability checks, the DM says "make a Strength check". The orc may try to push back (using Strength), or evade (using Dexterity).

I believe that using ability checks is an intuitive system. Provided that the abilities themselves are well-defined, and everyone understands what they mean and where they apply exactly, it's not so hard to use them for any given situation. So, at least in theory, you'll end up with a coherent, all-encompassing system, without a lot of specific rules.

There WILL be quibbling about the implementation, but I think that with proper guidelines, good will and trust (and a fair and reasonable DM), it can actually be an experience I'd personally enjoy. I understand it's not everyone's cup of tea, though, so I wouldn't try to convince anyone.

P.S. Here's how I imagine a more complex situation (disregarding the advantage/disadvantage thingy, because I'm not yet sure how it works). The DM's arsenal in this case consists of ability checks and common sense. I wonder if 5e will be old school like that, or if I'm imagining it wrong.

PLAYER1: I try to push the elephant off the cliff!
DM: Wait a minute. That thing is huge, you can barely reach its knee. No matter how strong you are, you can't move it. You can try a strength check to push one leg, but all you'll accomplish is make it temporarily lose control of said leg.
P1: Aright, me and Player 2 are both ridiculously strong, so we'll both spend our action this round to push one side leg each, and then we'll move back. I go first, he goes second. That way, the elephant will fall, right?
P2: Yeah, that's great!
DM: (*checks their character sheets, verifies that their intelligence is not in the nether regions*) If you both succeed, the elephant will fall on Player 2. Are you sure you want to do this?
P2: Can't I try to evade the falling elephant with a dexterity check?
DM: Sure you can try, but it's risky.
P2: I'll risk it!
DM: OK, roll your strength checks Vs the elephant's strength - it's not used to evading medium creatures, so it tries to push back.
P1: I succeed, yay! I now move back!
P2: I succeed, yay! I...
DM: OK, the moment P2 pushes the second leg, the elephant falls sideways. It's going to crush you, P2! Make a dexterity check Vs DC [depends on the guidelines].
P2: Aww, I failed.
DM: Ouch. You take damage (*checks rules for damage from falling objects, using a third of the elephant's weight, because it didn't entirely fall on him - frankly, he eyeballs it*), and you can't move. On the elephant's turn, it tries to get up, but doesn't quite manage. Next round, what do you guys do?

navar100
2012-05-30, 08:34 PM
Which requires the game to run on DM fiat instead of hard rules, which could, depending on the DM in question completely screw them over or make them absolute combat monsters. As a generally non-trusting person, I don't like when a classes entire ability to be interesting is determined by someone else interpreting what I can do.

Agreed. This was something that bothered me about 2E that I'm glad 3E corrected. Obviously the DM runs the game, but there is such a thing as too much control. It's annoying to have to ask the DM for permission for "everything". Skills and feats provided defined parameters. Players know what their characters can and cannot do. DM interpretation is then only necessary for the inspirational imaginations of coolness.

However, maybe this concept of needing the DM's permission for everything is their on purpose inclusion of pre-3E D&D for their modular something from every edition. :smallyuk:

HeadlessMermaid
2012-05-30, 11:42 PM
Agreed. This was something that bothered me about 2E that I'm glad 3E corrected. Obviously the DM runs the game, but there is such a thing as too much control. It's annoying to have to ask the DM for permission for "everything". Skills and feats provided defined parameters. Players know what their characters can and cannot do
I understand these concerns. And I would be wary, too, of trying this with an unknown DM. Letting him decide almost everything is a recipe with the potential for disaster, or greatness, or anything in between. But I don't do unknown DMs anyway, I play with people I trust. And I trust them to handle this wisely.

Even in 3.5, I've had the most fun with DMs who'd bend the rules all the time: introducing parameters that weren't written and disallowing things that were, sometimes to our mechanical advantage and sometimes to our mechanical disadvantage, but always, ALWAYS serving immersion and a more rewarding game. They weren't out to get us. I bend the rules beyond recognition, too. And the least fun I've had was hearing the phrase "there's no rule for that".

Fortunately, I haven't heard that in a long time. So I'm fairly confident that the people I play with (and I) can pull it off - possibly after fumbling a bit with the new rationale.

But it isn't new, is it? It's old.

Quite unexpectedly, this whole thing has filled me with nostalgia for 2E. I just now realized how much I'd missed trying something in game and not knowing what will come of it. Oh dear, I missed it so much!

Suppose you're playing 3.5 and say "I bull rush the orc, trying to push it off the cliff". You know exactly what will happen if you win the opposed roll, and exactly what will happen if you lose. And now, just for a moment, imagine that you really ARE on that cliff. Forget the game rules. Imagine that within reason (the laws of physics and magic in this world), ANYTHING can happen.

The DM may roll and say: "Surprise, as you push the orc, he manages to grab your wrist. He won't let go! He takes you down with him as he falls! You try to hold back? OK, roll... you succeed partially: you don't fall off, but you can't stay on your feet either. You're now face down on the cliff, one hand grabbing the rock and one hand dangling helplessly off the edge, with an orc holding on to it for dear life! What do you do?"

Is that fair? Frankly, I don't give a damn. It's unpredictable, it's exciting, it feels real and at the same time extraordinary, it's not freeform (there were rolls involved, and stats affected the results)... what more do I want?

(I know, I know, other people don't want that at all. Again, I'm not trying to convert anyone. And frankly I don't know if I'll dig the new edition in the end, there are a lot of things to consider. I'm just explaining how I see it.)

Kerrin
2012-05-31, 12:39 AM
Maybe one option in their stated modular system will be the more free form way and another option will be more rules defined with a detailed skills system.

Tehnar
2012-05-31, 02:16 AM
Suppose you're playing 3.5 and say "I bull rush the orc, trying to push it off the cliff". You know exactly what will happen if you win the opposed roll, and exactly what will happen if you lose. And now, just for a moment, imagine that you really ARE on that cliff. Forget the game rules. Imagine that within reason (the laws of physics and magic in this world), ANYTHING can happen.



In 3.5 there is unpredictability, though it is governed by the dice rather then the GM. In your bull rush example, dependant on how much you beat the orc you push him back a certain distance.

If you don't have the improved bull rush feat, he can take a AoO, and if the GM is crafty enough he could have tried to grapple the PC so that they fall together.

The point is that rules for common situations allow the GM more freedom and impartiallity. You don't have to make a GM decision on the spot, that may or may not be impartial. If you know the rules you can adapt them to the situation at hand, and resolve the action within the rules.

When you have (well designed) rules, I find that you get more immersed in the role play. You are more aware of what your character can and cannot do, and resolving actions is not a magical tea party, but you as a player choosing course dependant on what your character can do.

I don't think that there should be a rule for every situation that could come up, but there should be rules for common situations adventurers could find themselves in. Even better there should be a system of guidelines to resolve things the rules do not cover.

Seika
2012-05-31, 03:57 AM
I believe that using ability checks is an intuitive system. Provided that the abilities themselves are well-defined, and everyone understands what they mean and where they apply exactly, it's not so hard to use them for any given situation. So, at least in theory, you'll end up with a coherent, all-encompassing system, without a lot of specific rules.

There WILL be quibbling about the implementation, but I think that with proper guidelines, good will and trust (and a fair and reasonable DM), it can actually be an experience I'd personally enjoy. I understand it's not everyone's cup of tea, though, so I wouldn't try to convince anyone.

P.S. Here's how I imagine a more complex situation (disregarding the advantage/disadvantage thingy, because I'm not yet sure how it works). The DM's arsenal in this case consists of ability checks and common sense. I wonder if 5e will be old school like that, or if I'm imagining it wrong.

PLAYER1: I try to push the elephant off the cliff!
DM: Wait a minute. That thing is huge, you can barely reach its knee. No matter how strong you are, you can't move it. You can try a strength check to push one leg, but all you'll accomplish is make it temporarily lose control of said leg.
P1: Aright, me and Player 2 are both ridiculously strong, so we'll both spend our action this round to push one side leg each, and then we'll move back. I go first, he goes second. That way, the elephant will fall, right?
P2: Yeah, that's great!
DM: (*checks their character sheets, verifies that their intelligence is not in the nether regions*) If you both succeed, the elephant will fall on Player 2. Are you sure you want to do this?
P2: Can't I try to evade the falling elephant with a dexterity check?
DM: Sure you can try, but it's risky.
P2: I'll risk it!
DM: OK, roll your strength checks Vs the elephant's strength - it's not used to evading medium creatures, so it tries to push back.
P1: I succeed, yay! I now move back!
P2: I succeed, yay! I...
DM: OK, the moment P2 pushes the second leg, the elephant falls sideways. It's going to crush you, P2! Make a dexterity check Vs DC [depends on the guidelines].
P2: Aww, I failed.
DM: Ouch. You take damage (*checks rules for damage from falling objects, using a third of the elephant's weight, because it didn't entirely fall on him - frankly, he eyeballs it*), and you can't move. On the elephant's turn, it tries to get up, but doesn't quite manage. Next round, what do you guys do?

Very much agreed with this, and it's something I'd personally love to see return to a modern D&D edition. That hypothetical situation looks like a load of fun to be involved with. Ability checks as one of the main resolution possibilities seem interesting and a good way of streamlining characters, though I'm sure there may be some difficulties involved with arbitration.

I suppose this edition does look like it requires a relatively intelligent and creative DM to go with your players, but the rewards seem enormous.

Otherwise ... I'd like a bit more info on skills. So far we know that they can give bonuses to your checks, but not a lot else. There was a background which gave some skill bonuses to various Lore-types, though. Hm...

Incidentally, speaking of backgrounds, I was amused by the little piece of advice on a character sheet which says (paraphrased) 'If you want to be old-school, go ahead and chuck out the background and theme ideas.' :smalltongue:

HeadlessMermaid
2012-05-31, 06:41 AM
In 3.5 there is unpredictability, though it is governed by the dice rather then the GM.
Actually, it's governed by the dice and the game's designers. Its unpredictability applies only to the things that the designers, well, predicted. :smalltongue: If they didn't predict it, you can't even try it. (For example, there are no rules for mutilation in combat, therefore you can't attempt to chop off a foe's limb with your greataxe. Isn't that limiting?)

Now, about the "magical tea party" you mentioned (with contempt, I gather?)... that's not at all what I had in mind. I expect the DM to be reasonable, I expect his decisions to make sense, and I don't expect him to pull random and conflicting rules out of his behind. I expect dice, stats and relative modifiers to determine each outcome. No tea parties of any kind.

In the end, I trust my own DMs to make informed decisions on the spot more than I trust a bunch of game designers to fulfill the noble but impossible quest of Predicting Everything We'll Ever Need.

The designers of 3.5 tried to do that, and also tried to provide rules that are complicated yet internally consistent, and which make sense for Everything We'll Ever Need. So how did it go? To answer that, I'd simply count the threads of "RAW Vs RAI", "RAW Vs Common Sense", and "is that RAW? the rules aren't clear..."

(Disclaimer: I play 3.5 exclusively lately, I really like it - without being blind to its faults - and I just happened to be consumed by a surge of nostalgia today. I may be over it by midnight. Also note that using ability checks often doesn't necessarily mean that 5e will end up like 2E, so it's possible that none of the above will even apply. We'll see.)


I don't think that there should be a rule for every situation that could come up, but there should be rules for common situations adventurers could find themselves in. Even better there should be a system of guidelines to resolve things the rules do not cover.
Oh, I agree with that in principle. We obviously imagine the ideal implementation differently, that's OK. :)

Psyren
2012-05-31, 08:10 AM
I also downloaded the files, and somehow knew that Saph would have a way better write-up in place than I ever could. :smallsmile:

I definitely agree with Ur-Priest and Person_Man. Freeform is well and good, but I'm of the school of thought that rules encourage creativity more than they stifle it, and more importantly prevent arguments/resentment during a session when the DM can easily say yes or no.

As far as the rules, I agree also that they're pretty bare right now, particularly for fighters and rogues. I'll reserve judgement on the new Fighter until the maneuvers system drops. For now, I'm glad enough that spell levels are back that I'm cautiously optimistic about the rest.

Tehnar
2012-05-31, 08:23 AM
The thing that bothers or worries me is the following, and why I consider it a magical tea party is that in 5E you basically have to ask the GM if your character will get a bonus or how a situation will be resolved. Its very loosely defined how to go about with that. Your success, or even the attempt at a action is dependant on the GM's whim, not your characters abilities or your inginuity.

Take the bull rush example (the orc or the elephant it doens't matter). Even with a normal, reasonable, experienced GM things will vary from session to session, or even during the same session. I know when I GM I can't keep the same focus during the first few hours and at 2 am, after 4 beers. The answer to the question "what do I throw to bull rush that orc?" can vary with the same GM, let alone different ones.

And if you find that you are bullrushing often enough and come with a compromise with the GM on the exact mechanics, well guess what, you just houseruled it. Only its a standard common only to your group, and you let the designer off the game scot free for being lazy and not coming up with it in the first place. For a product you paid for.

I also play a lot of 3.5/pathfinder and I saw the RAW debates. Most things are so silly that any sane GM would just say "no, you can't." Still it was not a perfect system and could use improvement. I think the additional rules (even if flawed) did more the fewer rules of ADnD did. From the simple fact that a vast majority of people switched to 3.5 and that they keep playing it even after 4E came out.

Saph
2012-05-31, 08:32 AM
I also downloaded the files, and somehow knew that Saph would have a way better write-up in place than I ever could. :smallsmile:

Aww, thanks. :smallbiggrin:

We've got our game scheduled for Saturday, so we'll get a proper look at the mechanics then. From my readthrough of the Caves of Chaos module it seems VERY combat-heavy. I read somewhere that this is the same module they've used for playtesting the earlier editions . . . if it's true it might explain some things!

QuidEst
2012-05-31, 08:56 AM
Looks interesting from what I've read here. I think the Intoxicated condition (DR and disadvantage) is a rather neat representation, for instance.

Not sure how I feel about wizards being still squishier, but hey… having cool blasty/warpy magic to make up for it will be nice.

For now, I have Pathfinder to keep me entertained.

Urpriest
2012-05-31, 09:11 AM
To the various suggestions of ability checks: that's precisely what I'm talking about. If the book says "if the players want to do something creative, call for an ability check!" then the game has rules for those situations. Recall the original 3.5 example of someone pushing a goblin into a fire. Some DMs would call it a Strength check, others a Bull Rush, others an Unarmed Strike. Each option has a different chance of failure and makes the "creative" move either encouraged or discouraged. Having a unified way to handle this sort of thing is a step towards rules and away from DM control, and it seems to be how 5e is going.

I think we could even have more detail, actually, and still satisfy the fiat-favoring of this thread. Many games have a game mechanic called something like Complications. When a player fails a task, rather than dying (you push the orc off, he grabs your arm, you can't shake him off, you fall and die), the DM introduces a complication (you can't shake him off, now you're lying facedown in the dirt, hanging off the cliff). Basically, the game should have guidelines for how many complications to attach to an action (The orc example was already fairly long, and would likely start annoying the players left out of the spotlight, especially if this was a new group that took awhile to roll everything. Any longer and it's going to ruin others' fun.), and how much risk should be attached to those complications (At what point might the character actually die? Should the character take damage?). Balancing those concerns out and working out the game theory, the game designers should be able to come up with a system that encourages creativity and provides for precisely the sort of situations you guys seem to want.

Think about it like this: a good DM might do that whole orc scenario on their own. Most DMs will do something else: the orc will just fall with no complications, the orc will grab your arm and you'll die, nothing will happen because the orc is not a moron and isn't going to stand there while you try to push him off the cliff. Remember, 75% of DMs are incompetent in one way or another, just as in every hobby and every occupation ever. If we can get those 75% of DMs coming up with cool scenarios by putting balanced tools to create them in the rules then we widen the play experience.

Person_Man
2012-05-31, 09:16 AM
It's been mentioned that fortitude, reflex, and will saves have been replaced with the relevant ability checks to resist. However, I didn't see mention that there are now also strength, intelligence, and charisma resist checks.

I noticed this, and mentally began writing my 5E Wizard's Handbook. Step 1. Identify spells that target each of 6 attributes, and keep a list of the weakest attribute for each creature.

Above and beyond the Action Economy problem I described earlier in the thread, this is going to be another major balance issue. If a Fighter can only target AC (and maybe Dex and Con with certain Feats) but a Wizard can target every attribute, then the Wizard will almost always hit his enemies more reliably then the Fighter.

Kerrin
2012-05-31, 11:38 AM
If a Fighter can only target AC (and maybe Dex and Con with certain Feats) but a Wizard can target every attribute, then the Wizard will almost always hit his enemies more reliably then the Fighter.
Aye. I'm hoping that if spell casters can target all six attributes plus AC that the game designers will give the non-spell casters ways to attack all six attributes plus AC.

Hopefully we'll see that when the more complete (complex?) non-spell caster material is released. Something like (just making these up on the fly)...

STR - bull rush ability
CON - body slam ability
DEX - tripping ability
INT - tactics ability
WIS - feint ability
CHA - intimidate ability

Or something.

Someone else mentioned it but possibly giving the non-spell casters a way to chain abilities like grapple someone (STR) then squeeze them (CON). Use one ability to set up another.

I think if they can get all the classes to fall somewhere around Tier 4 (lower powered game) and Tier 3 (higher powered game) things could be fairly decent.

Jerthanis
2012-05-31, 12:32 PM
Another issue I have with the way 5e seems to do DM Fiat stuff too is that because the difference between the weakest PC and the strongest monster is a difference of 5 points. This means that in a straight up contest, that Cleric will shove that Ogre off the cliff something like 30% of the time. There's just not enough granularity in Ability check vs Ability check and too much is based on the outcome of a linearly scaling probability die roll.

It's like, I really like the rule for Jumping in 5e because it's a consistent result of something you'd expect a certain degree of consistency from. You don't have a difference of like, 15 feet from your shortest jump to your longest, you pretty much jump about the same distance MOST of the time. So having static jumping distances makes a lot of sense. I would imagine contests would go somewhat the same, where you get a certain sense of consistency with the results.

Perhaps there could be a certain quality that you can have when entering a Contest, similar to having Advantage or Disadvantage, perhaps called Routine or Prepared or something, where the action is something where you could expect somewhat consistent results, like wrestling (where the significantly bigger and stronger has a consistent ability to expect to win such a contest) where it treats the rolls like a Rogue's Skill Mastery, and all rolls below 10 are treated as 10s. Maybe this is too complicated or powerful but it seems distinct enough from Advantage and Disadvantage to be its own thing. Since a guy with 18 strength wrestling a 9 strength guy already has an advantage, and saying "He has Advantage" doesn't really make sense, but having a larger degree of consistency to their outcomes might make some kind of sense. But perhaps this would create situations where grapples were pretty much inescapable and a 9 strength would never ever be smart to try contesting an 11 strength since it would go from 45% success to something like 20%.

So maybe I'm crazy, but does anyone else sort of think the die result being so important, and in many ways more important than the character's attributes, might make absurd situations like a wizard pinning a dragon occur with some regularity, or am I blowing this way out of proportion?

kyoryu
2012-05-31, 12:33 PM
I think we could even have more detail, actually, and still satisfy the fiat-favoring of this thread. Many games have a game mechanic called something like Complications. When a player fails a task, rather than dying (you push the orc off, he grabs your arm, you can't shake him off, you fall and die), the DM introduces a complication (you can't shake him off, now you're lying facedown in the dirt, hanging off the cliff). Basically, the game should have guidelines for how many complications to attach to an action.

I think this is a reasonable idea (play Burning Wheel much, btw?). A simple chart could give appropriate types of compliations based on degree of failure - a simple failure would result in a minor complication, while an epic failure could result in death.

There's a few scenarios where while the task might not be complex, the consequences of failure are - navigating a tightrope over a net isn't inherently more difficult than doing the same over lava (psychological factors aside). But, this could be combatted with having something like three charts for "consequence severity", leaving the core idea intact. I'm totally not sure this is necessary.

This would leave the DM some room in both assigning the specific complications that occur, as well as in setting the difficulty of the initial test.



It's like, I really like the rule for Jumping in 5e because it's a consistent result of something you'd expect a certain degree of consistency from. You don't have a difference of like, 15 feet from your shortest jump to your longest, you pretty much jump about the same distance MOST of the time.

Perhaps, in a static, prepared environment, under no stress (apart from doing a good jump), and consistent footing.

One of the things that the randomness of dice is supposed to represent is not only variance in your performance, but the variance in the environment that aren't necessarily reflected as discrete game elements.

Tehnar
2012-05-31, 12:36 PM
Based on this playtest/preview, I predict that the optimal way to generate characters will be to have a single high ability score and others low to moderate.

First its very stupid that saves are ability checks. Ability checks like they did them from 3.0 onwards are very stupid, since the deviation you can get on the dice you roll is many times greater then the modifier to that same roll. If you remember drowning rules from 3.5 and how dreadful was it to make those DC 10 constitution checks (they also screwed up the DC system for that). A substantial difference in ability score (lets say 6) did not really help you much with making or failing the check. The roll of the dice matters more then the ability score.


The old school ADnD system was much better. Roll a D20 and you pass if you roll equal or less. There a high ability score had a much bigger effect then in 3.0+.

Therefore, since your ability scores don't matter (as) much when making saves (and other ability checks), spreading out your stat points will not be a good move. Focusing on your primary "attack" ability will be the preferance of a lot of people, since if you kill it faster you won't have to take as many saves after all.

Compound to that the fact that in the playtest there are no spells that target STR, INT or CHA, a lot of skills / situations are DEX/WIS based, I think we will see classes whose primary ability scores are DEX/WIS as the strong (overpowered) ones.

Even with the playtest rules it is clear that a DEX focused fighter (if you created one) is much better then a STR focused one.

Jerthanis
2012-05-31, 12:53 PM
Perhaps, in a static, prepared environment, under no stress (apart from doing a good jump), and consistent footing.

One of the things that the randomness of dice is supposed to represent is not only variance in your performance, but the variance in the environment that aren't necessarily reflected as discrete game elements.

Well, would those elements represent a difference of 19 feet between the longest jump and the shortest jump? If it did, does that mean a roll of a 1 means you tripped over a stone that wasn't there before and stumbled? Sure, a million things can go wrong, but if the die roll is representing the chance that things go wrong doing your consistent jump ability, doesn't it make more sense to check for "things going wrong" rather than say, "Based on your stat, how far do you jump today, 5 feet or 25 feet?"

Like, if the footing is uneven, Dex check or halve your distance jumped maybe? If you're under more stress than usual, Wis check to clear your mind and focus?

Doesn't that make more sense than "Strength Check to see if you overcome what I'm sure are a ton of hindering obstacles to manage to jump your full distance in spite of them... oh, medium roll, you're somewhat hindered, but you make the best of it, but you could jump twice this far if you faced less hindrances next time by random chance"?

Morty
2012-05-31, 02:56 PM
To detract a little from the discussion about spontaneity versus rules - do we know just what weapons are "finesse"? Was there any longer list of weapons in the playtest, or just the ones the pre-gen characters used?

bokodasu
2012-05-31, 03:16 PM
To detract a little from the discussion about spontaneity versus rules - do we know just what weapons are "finesse"? Was there any longer list of weapons in the playtest, or just the ones the pre-gen characters used?

There's an equipment list and it has a sampling of weapons, but I wouldn't be surprised if they all changed before too long. Anyway, it's pretty much what you'd expect (dagger, rapier, scimitar, short sword) - plus the quarterstaff.

theNater
2012-05-31, 03:27 PM
Well, would those elements represent a difference of 19 feet between the longest jump and the shortest jump? If it did, does that mean a roll of a 1 means you tripped over a stone that wasn't there before and stumbled? Sure, a million things can go wrong, but if the die roll is representing the chance that things go wrong doing your consistent jump ability, doesn't it make more sense to check for "things going wrong" rather than say, "Based on your stat, how far do you jump today, 5 feet or 25 feet?"

Like, if the footing is uneven, Dex check or halve your distance jumped maybe? If you're under more stress than usual, Wis check to clear your mind and focus?

Doesn't that make more sense than "Strength Check to see if you overcome what I'm sure are a ton of hindering obstacles to manage to jump your full distance in spite of them... oh, medium roll, you're somewhat hindered, but you make the best of it, but you could jump twice this far if you faced less hindrances next time by random chance"?
PCs generally aren't on a long jump track, so they will usually be facing multiple complicating situations(uneven ground, life-or-death stress, obstacles, etc.). While it may make sense to deal with each complication individually, doing so would make jumping take several die rolls, slowing down gameplay significantly.

Morty
2012-05-31, 03:37 PM
There's an equipment list and it has a sampling of weapons, but I wouldn't be surprised if they all changed before too long. Anyway, it's pretty much what you'd expect (dagger, rapier, scimitar, short sword) - plus the quarterstaff.

Well, that's progress. Still too short of a list, though.

Saph
2012-05-31, 03:42 PM
Well, that's progress. Still too short of a list, though.

One effect of this is that the most effective sneak-attack weapon in 5e is currently a staff.

Still, the poor old quarterstaff has been practically useless in every previous edition of the game, so maybe it deserves a little love.

Blackdrop
2012-05-31, 03:48 PM
I'm confused where people are seeing where only finesse weapons can be used for sneak attacks. Was it in article or something? Because the Blurb on the sheet just says you need Advantage.

kyoryu
2012-05-31, 03:49 PM
PCs generally aren't on a long jump track, so they will usually be facing multiple complicating situations(uneven ground, life-or-death stress, obstacles, etc.). While it may make sense to deal with each complication individually, doing so would make jumping take several die rolls, slowing down gameplay significantly.

That's pretty much where I'm at with it. If you accept that the max length is determined by strength (which I'm not, at least entirely), then given the number of times this actually comes up, and the overall importance of it in the game, I'm happy with the simplification for the sake of gameplay.

Yeah, we could write an entire jump subsystem that had separate checks and modifiers for all the possible confounding factors, but a) that's a lot of stuff to keep track of and b) in most cases, the quick 'n' dirty version is probably good enough anyway.

Of course, that gets a little bit into a philosophical point, where on one hand you have the idea of "roll the dice for the result, and then describe what happened" and on the other hand you have a more simulationist approach that wants to factor every iota into the calculation beforehand. They're both valid, but I'm pretty sure you can figure out which side I stand on.

Ashdate
2012-05-31, 03:56 PM
I'm confused where people are seeing where only finesse weapons can be used for sneak attacks. Was it in article or something? Because the Blurb on the sheet just says you need Advantage.

I think your confusion comes from what it actually being said. Saph isn't saying you can't sneak attack with a battleaxe, just that in terms of optimization the Quarterstaff is the current leader.

Finesse weapons allow you to add your dex modifier to both "to hit" AND "damage". A Quarterstaff, as listed, deals the most damage on a hit compared to the other finesse weapons like a rapier.

Blackdrop
2012-05-31, 03:57 PM
I think your confusion comes from what it actually being said. Saph isn't saying you can't sneak attack with a battleaxe, just that in terms of optimization the Quarterstaff is the current leader.

Finesse weapons allow you to add your dex modifier to both "to hit" AND "damage". A Quarterstaff, as listed, deals the most damage on a hit compared to the other finesse weapons like a rapier.

That's probably what it is.

Jerthanis
2012-05-31, 09:05 PM
That's pretty much where I'm at with it. If you accept that the max length is determined by strength (which I'm not, at least entirely), then given the number of times this actually comes up, and the overall importance of it in the game, I'm happy with the simplification for the sake of gameplay.



My main point really doesn't have anything to do with Jump, but was mainly that Ability checks aren't different enough between the extremes and will return utterly bizarre and inconsistent results. A Mage will outwrestle an Ogre and the Ogre will beat the Mage at chess a non-trivial percentage of the time. These abilities need to grant larger bonuses or they need to interact on a smaller die than a d20.

I think it makes sense to simplify for the sake of gameplay further such that you have a set distance you can jump under normal conditions and then modify that for less than normal conditions rather than assume every situation you will ever jump in will vary so wildly from moment to moment and jumper to jumper that it means the spontaneous difference of 19 feet of capability. The fact that I think it's slightly more realistic to have a baseline distance you jump based on your strength and training and you'll GENERALLY stick close to that average (and then modify based on worse conditions for a jump) is essentially a non-point. I don't think it matters if it's more realistic or less, though I personally do think it is more realistic. I mostly think it makes a better rule for a game BECAUSE it's simpler and makes for better gameplay because of its consistency when it comes to basic capabilities of your character.

Grogmir
2012-06-01, 11:23 AM
With regards to Rules inhibiting Stunts – Lack of rules leave it to DM Fiat I have never seen why.

Just a couple of ways we’ve always played DnD

3.5 / 5E Fighter.
I wish to attack this foe, but I also want to get him away from the wizard, so I’m going to Attack him and force him to stumble back under the weight of my attack.
DM: No Problem, You take a -2 to your attack & Make a Str Vs Con check to see if you push him back.
Result? Fighter makes basic attack and gets to pushes back.

4ED Fighter.
I wish to attack this foe, but I also want to get him away from the wizard but I’m out of manoeuvre powers, I’m going to Attack him and force him to stumble back under the weight of my attack.
DM: No Problem, You take a -2 to your attack & Make a STR Vs Fort check to see if you push him back.
Result? Fighter uses at will (that gives other tactical options) and pushes back.


3.5 / 5E Rogue
I wish to swing on the chandelier landing on the table behind my foe so I can get a flank in.
DM: No Problem: Roll a Agiliy (Dex) check to see if you make it
Result? Rogue Swings, lands, makes a basic attack with SA damage

4ED Rogue
I wish to swing on the chandelier landing on the table behind my foe so I can get a flank in.
DM: No Problem: Roll a Agility check to see if you make it
Result? Rogue Swings, Lands, makes an At Will attack (that gives other tactical options) and gets SA damage.


~ ~ ~

Overall impression.

It’s a step “Backwards”. But as that’s towards what people traditional see as DnD that’s no bad thing for most.

Personally I can just about handle a return to spell lists. IF the power curve is much reduced. I do not like the return to “simplistic” Melee rules, unless they are balanced. Which is very hard to do if they run off a different system to spells. Some people think that Melee / Spells Should be a different power level. But that’s a game ender for me.

So far it looks a lot like a DnD “Greatest Hits” edition. Trying to pick the best of 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th. And its very light on details. This is certainly a "Play test" rather than a "rules test". Which I think they would be better off doing.

kyoryu
2012-06-01, 04:03 PM
So far it looks a lot like a DnD “Greatest Hits” edition. Trying to pick the best of 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th. And its very light on details. This is certainly a "Play test" rather than a "rules test". Which I think they would be better off doing.

Actually, I think that's not a bad way of doing D&D Next - start with a base edition (probably 1st, or at most, 2nd), and take the stuff that worked from other editions and add it in, so long as it meshes well.

There's a lot of good ideas in all editions. It would be a huge mistake to not capitalize on those.

7RED7
2012-06-02, 11:46 AM
I think the way they are going about it is solid. You want a simple core ruleset that can be very efficient if you add nothing to it, but CAN support more detailed rules additions. I see it as trying to build a simple and reliable OS that is flexible enough to support future applications created by the original developer or third parties. Release a working product with Minesweeper and Notepad, and allow Elder Scrolls or Neverwinter Nights to be built on it, instead of releasing an OS designed to run just Elder Scrolls or Neverwinter nights respectively.

Obviously it's not going to please everybody (have you met everybody? they are very disagreeable), but I dig the mindset of finding core mechanics that can be expanded to support preferred aspects of multiple rulesets in the same game. One of the problems with DnD is that it is very denominational, and people will outright refuse to play some editions because they can't use the mechanics they enjoy. I have friends who prefer to only play 4e, friends who would only play 3.x, and others of various interests and tolerances, but I now some of the players would probably get along well and enjoy hanging out with each other (similar tastes and personalities) if the extreme differences could be mitigated. Rebuilding the ashen bridges between their splintered fan-bases is probably the best thing they can do as a long term business policy, and for the integrity of the game in general. The biggest thing here is making sure modules can be used without conflicts, and that alternate modules can be used in parallel with each other effectively. At least they are focusing player-base-wide playtests on the most core set of rules they are considering without all the extra frills that would complicate the results. Once it's been established what works (in its intended use, scale and complexity), what doesn't, and what could be better (in every case), then the complexity can be increased and more testing can be done. This release is not the entirety of the system and most likely not even the entirety of the core rules (even without factoring in modules), so getting bent out of shape over what isn't there is pointless as the intent is to analyze what is there and consider how that might be adjusted or improved as a foundation to support a wider range of optional rules.

You can always improve combat complexity (assuming the module concept isn't borked) by looking up some expanded rules and applying them in the manner you choose. Fighter X says "I want to twist my sword in the wound for a more devastating blow!", the DM says "Okay, if you want to play that way then we can use the Detailed Combat Module. It says here that you can take the effort to enhance your attack in various ways, and under 'Twist Sword in Wound' it says you can do an extra d6 damage and become disadvantaged as it requires more focus and leave you exposed while doing so, you'd have to learn a maneuver to do it without the disadvantage. Do you still want to do it?" "Yes!" says Fighter X. Wizard Y chimes in "Hold on, I don't want the monsters to be able to try and poke out my eyes or steal my staff in the middle of the fight, can't we just keep it simple?" The DM thinks for a moment and responds "Okay, I'll allow it, but it's just going to be between the monsters and you, Fighter X. Are we all copacetic?" "Wicked! I would totally lose an eye in an awesome fight!" shouts the fighter. "Fine, just don't take to long figuring it all out." responds the wizard. In absence of more details, the general rule still applies that players can only say what they are attempting to do and the DM decides the effect. A player can't say "I twist the sword for more damage", or "I kill the goblin in the fireplace." They can say "if I hit then I attempt to twist my sword in the wound" or "I try and push the goblin into the fireplace." It's up to the DM to decide if the sword twist or fireplace causes more damage, applies some status effect to the target or attacker, or simply has no extra effect at all, but gives kudos for the theatrics. In the case of added complexity through modules, the rules would be tested before finalizing inclusion in the core rulebook, or being released at a later date.

You are going to have bad DMs who can't adjudicate the rules properly, and you are going to have bad players who don't want to use the rules properly. Neither of these are going to be fixed by having a more complex core ruleset. A good DM can make things work between bad players, and good players can find fun in a bad DM's shenanigans. At the end of the day it's up to them to make the most of it, and the guy writing the game can't do jack to make them have fun.

Entire modules could be devoted towards action economy, grid based fighting (4e style pushing and general chessery), skill points, etc.

To add to Denkal's comment: I could see a lot of maneuvers/special attacks that aren't explicitly described implemented with the 'Contest' rules. Where the player wants to trip a monster with his polearm, and the DM decides it would be a contest of strength or dexterity (depending on the situation), the dice would be rolled, stats would be compared, and the DM determines whether the trip was successful and what status is imposed on the creature (e.g. knocked prone, pulled sideways, etc.). While a saving throw could be made if the creature was surprised and only had a second to react without being capable of a fully aware contest of abilities.

I would like to see a clear distinction between what stats are modified by class, race, feats, etc. as it makes it easier (as a DM) to deconstruct botched character sheets (happens at least once in every game).

I hope to get 5e playtesting going later this week after my last final. It will be interesting to see how my current players respond. Most all of them are new to RPGs and prefer 4e (I still run Pathfinder because the campaign has lasted, but give them some more at-will style things they can do) because their backgrounds are generally WoW and Multiplayer XBL games, so the "video-gamey feel" is a plus for them. As long as they have at-will abilities, a preset grid/map, don't have to use to much imagination, and the ability to complain about not being able to roleplay enough when all they do is run to find the next battle, they're usually happy.

TuggyNE
2012-06-02, 03:46 PM
Obviously it's not going to please everybody (have you met everybody? they are very disagreeable)

This amuses me, and I wish to sig it.

Also the rest of your post seems fairly sensible; let's hope WotC makes it turn out good. :smallwink:

TheThan
2012-06-02, 04:29 PM
One effect of this is that the most effective sneak-attack weapon in 5e is currently a staff.

Still, the poor old quarterstaff has been practically useless in every previous edition of the game, so maybe it deserves a little love.
I think it does. :smallbiggrin:

Anyway a couple of questions: The OP mentions that the magic system is basically a mishmash of different types of casting. (vancian, spirit shaman, pathfinder style cantrips and 4e style rituals). Can the system function as a low magic system?

Also how does magic items work? Does the Dm have to hand them out like candy on Halloween? Or can he truly make a magic item special and unique? I’m wondering how loot affects the character’s power scaling.

Tehnar
2012-06-02, 09:30 PM
After my first impressions that I posted about I decided to wait a week and get some playtesting in before my full review. We got to and cleared out the kobold caves as of writing this. This is going to be a long one, so brace yourself.

Disclaimer: I just want to say that I care nothing about WotC; all I want to see is a good product that I will enjoy in the future and spend my hard earned money and time on.

The document/presentation

First off, I don't consider this to be a pure playtest. Instead I view it in terms of free advertising, a preview of the future of DnD.

Frankly the presentation is bad. There are numerous inconsistencies through the document (why does the fighter have a extra +1 to hit?) that make it hard to properly playtest. Does that bonus apply to all weapons, or certain ones. What do I do when I pick up a shield and handaxe instead of a greataxe. The silly things all those questions could be answered by a simple 1 sentence addition to a character sheet that explains it. Every class has one or more of such inconsistencies.

To make things work, they even stated that these things are intentional, but obviously they didn't care enough to include the description to the playtesters, that is us. I mean I can't call Mike Mearls and ask him what he meant about X or Y.

Also there are references to saves against strength, intelligence and charisma, but none are presented to test. I really don't see the reason why they could not include at least one spell that targets any of these abilities.
EDIT: There are saves vs STR and INT in the module itself, as pointed out by Obryn. It seems to me though that those are more akin to ability checks in 3.0+ then saves.

I mean you think that those are not big mistakes, but I personally would be ashamed to submit a professional document to public review with those kind of mistakes. Its akin to not labeling your graphs, it just stinks of laziness.


Mechanics

At first glance at the document you notice that there are some things wrong with certain mechanics. Medium armor seems to be completely useless compared to heavy or light variants. Certain abilities (namely dexterity and wisdom) seem much more useful then others.

Which brings me to my next point, the core mechanic of 5E, the ability check. Skills, saves, attacks, everything is resolved via this mechanic (sometimes via the addition of a small modifier). For characters ability score modifiers will typically go from -1 to +4 (maybe +5).

If you played 3.0+ you know that ability checks were the worst part of that system. The values you roll on a d20 are many times greater then usually the bonus you will have to such an ability. This pretty much makes that ability score useless, as to resolve a task it is far more important how well you roll then the bonus you have related to that task. Using this system, a STR 10 character will beat a STR 20 character when making opposed STR checks a statistically significant percentage of cases that it is just silly.

Now 3.0+ also had this problem, as a lot of their mechanics are in reality based on the ability check. There were a lot of legitimate complaints about how combat at level 1 felt fiddly and random. 3.0+ fixed this problem by allowing you to add a lot of modifiers to your ability check, like base attack, base save or skill rank bonuses. Since the modifiers to the roll were comparable to the span of d20's values, you got a feel that the resources you invested into something matter more then a d20 roll. That your choices actually matter.

What that means is that in 5E there is no mechanical point in spreading your resources around to make a well rounded character. You will want to focus in a single ability score (the one you attack with) so you get a large modifiers (so you can rely on it a bit) and ignore the others (since the results will be random anyway). Given the mechanical constraints of the system it is even a smart thing to do, since killing the opposition faster will make your character take less ability checks.

Another thing related to ability checks is that DC's start at 11. Why they thought that is a good idea in 3.0+ I have no idea, but they still think its a good idea now. From what I gather they drew from ADnD (where if you roll under your ability score you pass) when they made that rule. I'm guessing their idea was this: a average person (ability=10) can make a easy task (DC 10) in combat 50% of the time. So rolling a 10 or lower in ADnD translates to a DC 11 check. Great so far. What they didn't consider is that a character with a 14 in such a ability score makes a easy task 70% of the time, but in 3.0 onwards he makes that task with only a 60% chance; and the higher your stat (or difficulty of the task) the % difference between the edition increases. Not only that, but doesn't it strike you odd that you make a easy task with a 50% chance of success. A series of bad rolls makes it very frustrating when you are trying to climb a wall and just can't seem to roll above 10 for 3 rounds in a row.

They also fixed the math of AC and saving throws that in most cases you will need a 10+ on a roll to succeed. With very limited ways of improving your chance to succeed during character creating (only by raising your abilities) and so far only 1 way to get a bonus during play (difficult to pull off) will result in very boring gameplay, a series of rolls hoping you roll higher then your opponent. Missing half the time is not fun.


The advantage/disadvantage mechanic is something new they introduced in 5E. I liked it at first glance. It looks simple to implement, simple to keep track of, simple to resolve while it still gives a good penalty/bonus. During the playtest my feelings of joy begun to dilute.

Given that the basic math in the game is to succeed you need a 10+, in effect this gives you a +/- 5 to your roll. It is a large bonus/penalty and if a ability allows you to give A/D with too little investment, that ability (or action) can be considered too strong and invalidate other options/classes. It needs further testing and balancing.


The other major part of 5E I want to touch is the movement system (action economy). I have mixed feelings about this. While it sped up the game a bit not to worry about things like drawing weapons, opening doors and so forth I feel it can invalidate some options characters can have. Why sunder or disarm someone if they can replace their weapon at no cost in actions for example.

Another part that worries me is the lack of opportunity attacks and the ability to take actions in the middle of your movement. Having a high movement speed (or a way to lower the enemies move speed) make you pretty much immune to melee combat. With this system I see very little point in melee focused characters/monsters.

TL;DR part:

In conclusion, I find this to be a very very shoddy piece of work. Consider that a team of experienced game designers work on this for over 8 months (and got paid to do so). Now look at some homebrew work on this very forum, or start up game systems on their own (like Legend) that were created in a similar span of time, with less people working on, that did not get paid for their work. I understand that this is a playtest (but it is also preview, a advertisement), but certain standards of professional work should apply.

Most of the mechanics in the game are taken from previous editions, mechanics that are poor and should be replaced with something else. The new mechanics are, for the most part, poorly thought out and they remove depth from the game without adding anything. A lot of mechanics that worked well from previous editions were removed, and we were told to improvise if such things come up, with very poor guidelines on how to do exactly that. The kind of guidelines we can't playtest.

In the end it is obvious to me that WotC does not respect their potential future customers, nor does it want/care for any feedback from this playtest. I wanted a new fresh edition of DnD, a new system with innovative, streamlined mechanics that will drive the hobby forward. Instead it takes several steps back.

7RED7
2012-06-02, 11:10 PM
@Tuggyne. Yeah sure, sir!

@Tehnar. Yeah, there's not much there, and what is has problems. However, this is looking at a mountain and saying "well that's not going to protect me in an accident" when the metal of your car's frame hasn't even been molded yet, and the ore hasn't been refined into metal yet, and the mountain hasn't been mined for the ore yet. Maybe the end result will still suck, but it takes time to get there.

Sure they could get it out the door more efficiently, but they are trying to go for a different goal than other developers. Those developers are starting with new material and shaping the sculpture they see in the marble. WotC is trying to find a way to re-merge divisions that have happened over the course of 38 years. People who play DnD are most likely going to play it because it's Dungeons and Dragons, not because it's the best thing out there, but because it's what they like. They have decided on the task of taking 38 years of recipes in all of their restaurants and going back through them to find out what they can get on the menu that will keep their repeat customers happy, get old customers back in the door, and hopefully be attractive to new customers. That is going to take longer than "Hey, I just put a lot of effort into a new recipe that no one has tried before and it turned out great!"
The chefs had some disagreements, the crust got a little burnt, and the sauce probably could have used less butter, but it's a free sample so go tell the cooks that they need to pay more attention to the flame and butter levels, and demand that they keep the little dish of glazing that you used to always dip it in.

Ashdate
2012-06-03, 07:26 AM
That's a lot of metaphors, and I'm not sure all of them go together!

Unfortunately, I've got to mostly agree with Tehnar; this could have used another month of internal playtesting, and it especially could have used a better module, or at least one that could push the new elements being introduced in 5e.

Tehnar
2012-06-03, 07:49 AM
Ill give you a analogy of my experience with 5E thus far.

You walk into a fancy restaurant, expecting a nice meal. When the waiter seats you, talking about how you are about to have the best meal of your life, on the table before you the glasses have stains and the tablecloth is wrinkled. The free complementary breadsticks are burnt, give off a funny smell and if you dare try one it tastes sour.

Now even though you did not pay for anything yet, and have yet to sample the main dish, would you stay and pay $50+ for a meal? When next door you have a restaurant you go to every day, that you know and like?

Saph
2012-06-03, 09:17 AM
Playtest Journal, Session 1: When In Doubt, Set Something On Fire

The Party

Elf Wizard: Ambiguously gendered. Spent half the game explaining the superiority of elves over other races. Source of the quote “If it’s got legs, I’m willing.”
Dwarf Fighter, later reincarnated as Dwarf Cleric: Spent half the game making comments about killing the elf.
‘Pacifist’ Human Cleric: Intended as a gentle, peaceful healer. It really didn’t work out that way.
Two Halfing Rogues: We had six players and five characters so the rogues doubled up. The rest of the players (in-character) kept referring to them as “the halflings” on grounds that halflings weren’t important enough to learn their names.
Dwarf Cleric: Described as follows:
Dwarf Cleric: “My dwarf’s name is McGruder and he has multiple personalities. Everyday, it’s a 50/50 roll to see if s/he’s male or female for the day. He also has lamb chops and a fondness for colourful scarves and fur clothing.”
DM: “So what gender are you again?”
Dwarf Cleric: “It can be a surprise.”
DM: “We’ll put it down as ‘undetermined’.”

Day 1: Kobold Hunting

The party arrived at the ravine of the Caves of Chaos and spent five minutes arguing over which cave to go into.

Dwarf Fighter: “We should go to Cave D.”
Elf Wizard: “Clearly, we should go to Cave A.”
Dwarf Cleric: “No, I think I’d rather go to the trees.”
Elf Wizard: “Very well, let’s take a vote.”
Halfling: “I think we should try Cave A.”
Dwarf Cleric: “Wait – halflings get a vote?”
Elf Wizard: “They get a vote; we just won’t count it.”

The discussion was resolved when the halflings headed for Cave A and promptly got ambushed.

Encounter 1: Kobold Ambush

Party: Wizard, Fighter, 2x Rogue, Dwarf Cleric, Human Cleric
Enemy: 8x Kobold

Result: Complete massacre. Five kobolds were slaughtered in the first round, the rest fled into the tunnels, a sixth dying to a magic missile shot in the back. This segued immediately into:

Encounter 2: Another Kobold Ambush, This Time With Rats And A Pit

Party: Wizard, Fighter, 2x Rogue, Dwarf Cleric, Human Cleric
Enemy: 6x Kobold, 18x Cave Rat, 1x Dire Rat, 1x Pit Trap

One halfling fell into the pit, while the fighter got stuck on the other side and swarmed by rats. The Dwarf cleric declared “Hammertime!”, jumped across, and started clobbering rats, while the second halfling Disable Deviced the pit trap. The kobolds died and ran (again), and the rats did some minor damage before they were knocked out by a Sleep burst from the wizard and coup-de-graced while unconscious.

The party proceeded onwards. By this time the kobolds had raised the alarm and fetched their chief, who’d gone to the main common room to organise a response. The party walked right into the middle of them.

Encounter 3: All The Kobolds

Party: Wizard, Fighter, 2x Rogue, Dwarf Cleric, Human Cleric
Enemy: 32x Kobold, 1x Kobold Chief

Round 1: The fighter and one of the halflings charge into the crowd, hacking away, and the clerics advance behind them. The wizard drops another Sleep spell, putting about twenty kobolds to sleep.

Round 2: The awake kobolds start waking up the sleeping kobolds, while the halfling tries to get to the chief to kill him. The fighter and wizard are killing a kobold every round, but the fighter’s getting surrounded.

Round 3: The fighter gets stabbed multiple times and goes down. The human cleric rushes in and heals him up. The halfling stabs the chief, who takes cover.

Round 4: The fighter goes down again. The dwarf cleric heals him up again. The fighter and halfling rush the chief and wound him seriously. By this point the entire cavern’s awake except for one or two.

Round 5: The fighter gets surrounded by 7 kobolds, all with advantage, who stab him six times, reducing him to -25 HP and killing him instantly. The halfling also gets repeatedly stabbed but survives on 1 HP, fleeing next round. Facing 25 now-awake kobolds and with their main damage dealer dead, the party realise they’re onto a loser and decide to leg it.

One of the halflings smashes his lantern in the entrance to create a flaming barrier. The kobolds respond by forming a firing line and pelting the party with spears and daggers. The halflings run, the human cleric takes heavy damage, the dwarf cleric takes rear guard and orders the rest of the party to run while she covers their retreat. The elf wizard decides to demonstrate his bravery to the dwarf by standing side by side with her. The dwarf resolves the situation by slinging the elf over her shoulder and carrying her.

The combat went on hold at this point for five straight minutes of shipping/innuendoes, assisted by the dwarf cleric’s player’s extensive knowledge of Legolas/Gimli fanfiction.

Elf Wizard: “Take me McGruder! And then carry me.”
DM: “The human cleric’s still there, and she’s not going to have another turn before the kobolds.”
Dwarf Cleric: “Can I pick her up and carry her too?”
DM: “Make a Strength check . . . You succeed.”
Dwarf Cleric: “I sling her over the other shoulder and keep running.”
Dead Fighter: “Going for a threesome now?”
Pacifist Human Cleric: “Now you’re just getting greedy.”
DM: “So, McGruder carries the elf out of the cave, and somewhere along the way, hanging onto the dwarf becomes groping.”
Elf Wizard: “I’m in love!”
Dwarf Cleric: “Shut your mouth elf – there are better uses for it!”

The surviving party members withdrew out of the ravine and took an extended rest. The dwarf cleric’s player took the opportunity to draw her character:

http://i1084.photobucket.com/albums/j414/Saph7/2012-06-02170515.jpg
and the elf:

http://i1084.photobucket.com/albums/j414/Saph7/2012-06-02171041.jpg
Day 2: Kill the Goblins

Since the dwarf fighter had been killed on the previous adventuring day, the player respawned as another dwarf cleric.

Reincarnated Dwarf: “Hi, I’m Lag Junior. I’m looking for my father, a dwarf fighter named Lag Senior. Have you seen him?”
Pacifist Human Cleric: “No good dwarf, we’ve never been here before.”
Elf Wizard: “But we’re planning to adventure into this ravine – where we have never been before – for a quest.”
Dwarf Cleric: “Have we mentioned we’ve never been here before?”

The party bypassed the kobold caves and headed for the ogre cave instead. They saw the alive-looking bear and spent so much time arguing about whether to kill it (Pacifist Human Cleric: “But I like animals!”) that they woke up the ogre, who came out in a bad mood.

Encounter 4: Ogre Battle

Party: Wizard, 2x Rogue, 2x Dwarf Cleric, Human Cleric
Enemy: 1x Ogre

Result: Completely one-sided. The two Dwarf clerics stood side by side and made use of their ‘Defender’ feature, allowing them to give disadvantage (roll twice and take the worst) to any attack against an ally next to them.

DM: “The ogre attacks the dwarf cleric.”
Reincarnated Dwarf: “Defender!” *attack misses*
DM: “Fine, next turn the ogre attacks the other dwarf.”
Dwarf Cleric: “Defender!” *attack misses*
DM: “The ogre goes back to attacking the first dwarf.”
Reincarnated Dwarf: “Defender!” *attack misses*
DM: “This is ridiculous. You can do that every single time?”
Reincarnated Dwarf: “Why do you think I came back as the cleric?”

The ogre was slowly and painfully ground down over an 8-round battle, during which the monster landed exactly two hits. The elf wizard finished the ogre with a magic missile to the crotch.

DM: “Searching the cave you find a large sack of coins, a healing potion, an invisibility potion, six +1 arrows, a hard cheese, and a barrel of brandy worth 100 silver pieces.”
Dwarf Cleric: “Or a lot of brandy.”
Elf Wizard: “Time to get drunk!”

The party moved into the goblin caves.

Encounter 5: Goblin Slaughter

Party: Wizard, 2x Rogue, 2x Dwarf Cleric, Human Cleric
Enemy: 6x Goblin

Elf Wizard: “Send the halflings in first!”
Reincarnated Dwarf: “You know, you’re kind of racist.”
Elf Wizard: “I’m not racist – I just hate everything that’s not an elf, human or dwarf.”

The goblins win initiative and throw their spears at the halflings in the front rank.

Reincarnated Dwarf: “Defender!”
DM: “You’re five feet behind him! How the hell are you supposed to be protecting him with your shield?”
Reincarnated Dwarf: “They’re within five feet, it works. Defender!”
DM: “Fine, the other three target the other halfling.”
Dwarf Cleric: “Defender!”
DM: “Gah!”

In the rest of round 1 the first halfling kills a goblin with a throwing dagger, the second halfling kills a goblin with his sling, the Dwarf cleric steps up and kills a goblin with her warhammer, the reincarnated dwarf also kills a goblin with his warhammer, and the elf wizard kills a goblin with a magic missile. The last goblin opens a secret door and runs through it with a sack.

Pacifist Human Cleric: “He’s got our loot! After him!”

With the human cleric in the lead, the party chases the goblin through the secret door into what they recognise as the ogre’s cave.

DM (to the human cleric): “You run out into the area where you fought the ogre and see the goblin standing over the ogre’s body, looking dismayed.”
Pacifist Human Cleric: “I Radiant Lance him in the back of the head.” *critical hit*
DM: “It dies instantly. The rest of you arrive a few seconds later to see the corpse of the goblin lying face down with the back of its head blown off.”
Dwarf Cleric: “Ah . . . so what exactly . . . ?”
Pacifist Human Cleric: “It committed vicious suicide.”

The party advanced through the goblin caves, discussing their relationships.

Elf Wizard: “Hey McGruder, I have 50ft of hemp rope in my bag.”
Dwarf Cleric: “So do I.”
Elf Wizard: “100 ft of hemp rope – think of the possibilities.”
Halfling: “What is it with you and dwarves?”
Elf Wizard: “I’m going through a dwarf phase – at 90 it was a nymph phase, one of the worst decades of my life.”
Dwarf Cleric: “Don’t compare me to your past girlfriends.”
Elf Wizard: “Sorry dear. You’re the best dwarf I’ve had – well, you’re the only dwarf I’ve had, but you’re still the best.”
DM: “You emerge into a wider room. Tables set with large rocks as stools stand near a dim cookfire and amidst piles of bedding and trash. More than twenty goblins look up from their meals to stare at you.”
Dwarf Cleric: “Use diplomacy?”
Reincarnated Dwarf (to the elf): “Use burning hands!”
Halfling: “No, his burning hands are for the dwarf.”

Encounters 6 & 7: Yet More Goblin Slaughter

Party: Wizard, 2x Rogue, 2x Dwarf Cleric, Human Cleric
Enemy: 22x goblins plus reinforcements of 6x goblins

The wizard opened up with a sleep spell that knocked out about half the goblins. While the conscious goblins began to wake the sleeping ones, others advanced and opened fire.

DM: “Okay, you get eight attacks on the front rank, divided between—“
Reincarnated Dwarf: “Defender!”
DM: “NO! That’s it! I refuse to re-roll attacks for twenty-two goblins! We’re looking this bloody thing up!”

A closer reading of the rules revealed that since Defender was a reaction it could only be used once per round, which made it still powerful but not utterly ridiculous. Six more goblins piled in from behind and the wizard and human cleric turned to face them, while the dwarves and halflings advanced into the main room, closing on the goblins and methodically smashing them one by one. The goblins formed a firing squad and used ranged attacks, but since they didn’t have the kobold auto-advantage ability they were notably less dangerous. It was a long fight and every party member was wounded, several going down to only 1 or 2 HP (and the elf wizard was dropped to negatives) but the party ground the goblins down until only 8 were left. Seeing five PCs still up, the remaining goblins fled, running to get their leader.

Halfling: “Let’s get out of here before the reinforcements show up.”
Pacifist Human Cleric: “Someone help me with the unconscious elf.”
Reincarnated Dwarf: “I can coup de grace him.”
Pacifist Human Cleric: “That’s not what I meant.”

The party withdrew, camping out in the wilderness to heal and regain spells.

Day 3: Fire Solves Everything

The party came back yet again and this time decided to visit the hobgoblin caves. On discovering that the door was locked, they devised a plan of approach. I’m still not sure exactly who came up with it or what the reasoning was.

DM: “Okay, so let me get this straight. You want to go down and fetch the dead ogre, drag the dead ogre up to the hobgoblin cave and prop it up in front of the door, use the brandy to set the body on fire, then knock on the door and run away?”
Dwarf Cleric: “Yes, but we want to leave the cheese as well, “with compliments” carved into it, and before we set the ogre on fire we’ll leave McGruder’s scarf tied in a bow around a suitable appendage.”
DM: “Do I want to know which appendage?”
Dwarf Cleric: “No.”
DM: “Are you going to yell ‘Trick or Treat’?”
Everyone Else: “No, we’re going to hide so we can see their faces.”

They executed the plan. The hobgoblins opened the door and stood staring.

Halfling: “I use my sling to throw a turnip over the hobgoblin’s heads so it splatters over them!”
Pacifist Human Cleric: “I’ll use the invisibility potion to push the burning ogre over without them seeing me!”
Elf Wizard: “I’ll magic missile the ogre in the side of the head!”

The hobgoblins decided they must be under siege by lunatics and slammed the door and locked it. Pleased with their morning’s work, the party crossed the ravine to go into the orc caves instead. They didn’t spot the sentry and so got attacked by the occupants of both orc guardrooms at once.

Encounters 8 & 9: Orc Extermination

Party: Wizard, 2x Rogue, 2x Dwarf Cleric, Human Cleric
Enemy: 4x orcs plus reinforcements of 5x orcs

Result: Slaughter. Orcs are a lot weaker than they were in 3.5. The party massacred them in short order.

The party advanced into the orc caves. They detected a main orc common room and bypassed it, moving deeper into the caves until they discovered a door.

Elf Wizard: “I use my keen senses to listen at the door.”
Dwarf Cleric: “You mean big ears.”
Elf Wizard: “Keen senses!”
DM: “You hear the odd scraping noise.”
Reincarnated Dwarf: “I kick the door down.”

Encounter 10: We Got A Runner

Party: Wizard, 2x Rogue, 2x Dwarf Cleric, Human Cleric
Enemy: 2x orcs, 1x orc chief

Halfling: “Is there a big chandelier in the room? You know, a big one with lots of candles?”
DM: “Why would there be— sure, why not. There’s a huge candelabra thing right in the middle.”
Halfling: “I throw a dagger at the rope to cut it and set this place on fire too.” *attack success*
DM: “You know what? Fine. You cut the rope and the candelabra falls and bursts and sends all of its candles everywhere, all of which ignite the tapestries. The entire room is now on fire.”
Other Halfling: “Can I get to the door?”
Dwarf Cleric: “No, it opens in and the orcs are attacking us through it. Why?”
Other Halfing: “I wanted to set the doorway on fire.”
Reincarnated Dwarf: “The whole room is already on fire – how much more do you need?”

The two regular orcs were cut down and the orc chief only lasted another round before being brought to 8 HP – on his own he wasn’t remotely a threat to a full party. He turned and ran back through the burning room.

Reincarnated Dwarf: “I chase after him!”*
DM: “You see one of the burning tapestries swinging.”
Reincarnated Dwarf: “Secret door! I run through it!”
DM: “Does anyone else follow?”
Everyone: “YES.”

The party chased the orc chief through a secret room into the caves of the second orc tribe. The wizard slowed him down at one point with a Ray of Frost, letting the halfling get a hit in, but the orc chief managed to break away with 1 HP. In a scene similar to that bit on the Death Star in Star Wars: A New Hope, the party chased the orc chief straight through into the other tribe’s common room, where seventeen orcs and some orc whelps were resting. The orcs and the party stared at each other. I called for initiative and the human cleric won.

Pacifist Human Cleric: “Radiant lance on the orc chief!” *hit*
DM: “You kill him.”
Pacifist Human Cleric: “I radiant lance him in the face and yell out to all the others ‘And you’re next mother****ers!’”

Encounter 11: Orc Smackdown

Party: Wizard, 2x Rogue, 2x Dwarf Cleric, Human Cleric
Enemy: 17x orcs

DM: “The orc all grab their weapons and scream a battle-cry.”
Elf Wizard: “I use mage hand to pick up hot coals from one of the fires and drop it on the bedding.”
DM: “Fine. It catches. Now not only do you have a bunch of angry orcs attacking you, but the room is also on fire.”
Halfling: “Surprise!”
DM: “Well, the orcs have nowhere else to go, so they’ll fight their way out.”
Dwarf Cleric: “You mean they’ll die their way out.”

The party formed up in the bottleneck of the tunnel entrance and fought the orcs toe-to-toe, the two dwarves making up the front line with their Defender ability while the rest of the party fired ranged attacks over their heads. We noticed in this fight that the human cleric is an absolute murder machine – not only does she have healing spells, she has the best attack bonus and does more damage than anyone except the fighter.

Dwarf Cleric (in response to the human cleric lasering another orc to death): “You aren’t very good at being a pacifist, are you?”
Pacifist Human Cleric: “It’s an act of mercy. Their leader just got killed and they’re on fire. I’m easing their suffering.”
DM: “You’re the ones who LIT them on fire.”
Pacifist Human Cleric: “And they’re suffering.”

By this point everyone had had time to get used to the weird kinks of 5e combat. The combination of no AoOs and the free Spring Attack meant that the party could stand in the tunnel, move forward, attack an orc, and move back into their defensive formation. Once the orcs figured this out, they started standing back from the party, moving forward and attacking and moving back, allowing 12 orcs to all make melee attacks from only 2 open squares. However, their low damage meant they couldn’t drop the party fast enough. A couple of lucky hits at the end put both one of the halflings and the dwarf cleric into negatives, but the last orc fell to a shocking grasp from the wizard.

Pacifist Human Cleric: “We’d better carry them back.”
Reincarnated Dwarf: “I’ve got stonecunning, I use it to retrace our steps.”
DM: “You get back to the secret room that leads into the room with the orc chief.”
Reincarnated Dwarf: “I go all the way out!”
DM: “The room with the orc chief is on fire.”
Reincarnated Dwarf: “Oh yeah.”
Elf Wizard: “There was a barrel in this room, right? I’m going to see what’s in it.”
Reincarnated Dwarf: “Wait, can we hear anything.”
DM: “When you stop to listen, you can hear an intermittent clicking sound coming from the barrel.”
Reincarnated Dwarf: “Right, I’m not touching it.”
Halfling: “Glad we stopped to check that first.”
Elf Wizard: “I push over the barrel.”
DM: The two giant centipedes that were underneath the barrel attack you.”
Everyone: “Goddammit!”

Encounter 12: Creepy Crawlies

Party: Wizard, 2x Rogue, 2x Dwarf Cleric, Human Cleric
Enemy: 2x centipede

Result: Centipede bites wizard, wizard passes Con check, wizard kills centipede, dwarf kills centipede. The party took a short rest while waiting for the fire in the orc leader’s room to go out, then withdrew the way they’d came and left, carrying their unconscious comrades with them.

DM: “Okay, so what have we learned about fire?”
Pacifist Human Cleric: “It’s cool and we can never have enough of it?”

On which note we ended the session.

Conclusions and Wrap-Up

DM: “Well, there are about 8 sub-quests within the module, and you’ve now done bits and pieces of 4 of them.”
Elf Wizard: “A little appetiser here, a little glimpse over there.”
Pacifist Human Cleric: “It’s the Caves of Tapas, not the Caves of Chaos.”

Everyone in the group thoroughly enjoyed the session, but feelings about the actual ruleset were mixed. The game had been great fun, but the consensus was that we’d had fun because of our group, not because of the game.

The Good

Encounters ran fast. We ran through 12 encounters in about 5 hours.
Encounters worked better without a mat than 3.5 or 4e (though features like Defender mean you still need to track position). I stopped drawing the tunnel geography after a while, only using the battlemat when position mattered for whatever reason.
Characters felt more varied than 4e, playing significantly differently.
Monsters also felt more varied than 4e, due to the significant variety in HP. There was more middle ground between “joke enemy that goes down in one hit” and “sack of HP that you have to pound on for ages”.
Lack of specific rules means that improvising is fast (you just call for an ability check).
Characters move faster when getting up from prone, going through doors, etc, which leads to more fluid combats.
Lack of AoOs means faster movement and less worrying about how to get somewhere safely.
The Bad

Stealth rules are confusing and it’s often not clear when someone is or isn’t hidden. What happens when a halfling uses their special ability to hide behind another creature and that creature moves? Can they hide in dim light with or without cover? What happens if they move between cover?
Advantage/disadvantage is REALLY REALLY annoying when you’re rolling for 20+ enemies at once. Too many rolls!
The combination of lack of AoOs and spring attack leads to bizarre combats. Twenty enemies can attack in melee one after the other, all from the same square.
Class balance is wonky – see below.
Skill system feels clunky. If you’re getting rid of skill points, why keep the +3 bonuses to specific skills? You still spend just as long figuring our your result.
Serious confusion over what does and doesn’t count for what skill. Often players would ask for a lore/knowledge check and I had no idea which to use or what to tell them if they passed. Exacerbated by the fact that everyone can use Lore now, meaning that with a 6-person party it was a guarantee that someone would pass their check.
Most monsters don’t feel threatening unless they’re in vast swarms – numbers are what matter, not size. 30 kobolds were deadly, 20 goblins were dangerous, 10 orcs were easy, 1 ogre or orc/kobold chieftain was a joke.
Balance Issues

The healer cleric is highly lethal and fun to play, and immensely valuable to a party.
The warrior cleric is a good tank and also very strong, feeling like a 3.5 CoDzilla. Not sure if I’m a fan of the variable-duration buff spells, though.
Fighter is weak. Not enough AC, not enough HP. His DPS is great but he’s got zero variety of abilities and goes down fast. The warrior cleric is a better fighter than the fighter.
Rogues don’t have much motivation at level 1 to do sneak attacks and so tend to end up just spamming basic attacks. They don’t seem to have many interesting abilities either.
Wizard is a glass cannon. Goes down easily but spells are powerful and Sleep is INSANELY good, making the Wizard the ‘big gun’ class that you bring out for the tough fights. It makes 3.5 and 4e Sleep look weak.
Next Week

Despite our lukewarm feelings towards the new system we’re going to give it another shot next session. We’re going to advance the characters to 3rd level and take a smaller 3-4 person party into the more dangerous areas to see if it plays any different, so tune in then!

neonchameleon
2012-06-03, 11:19 AM
One of the two interchangable backup hobbits here :) My first time playing with Saph, and his games are even more fun to play in than they are to read. And I agree with pretty much all his impressions, but there are a few I'd draw out further.

First, speaking as a rogue, a lot of the game was an excercise in frustration. I appreciated that I could never score below a 16 on my stealth check and that was one thing in my favour. But it was just about the only thing in my favour - and at level 1 without night vision I couldn't leverage it at all - I had to stay in range of the torches underground. (To be fair this is a level 1 issue). Traps? There was one and I wasn't being careful. So straight in. Locks? Yes - but an axe would get through any lock we saw. And there was the issue with how effective stealth was - gritty ability where you could only hide in cover or cloaking device (Saph erred on the gritty side).

As a rogue, I found the combat a pain. First if my black dice hadn't been on murderous form (Saph asked at one point if it was weighted after I gave up on the yellow one that couldn't hit either kobold or rat) I'd have been the least effective party member. Hide then attack means I'm not doing anything half the time - and just attacking meant I had the second lowest to hit score and the lowest damage (not counting Magic Missile), and was squishy, not that I didn't pitch in to tank at the end of the big kobold fight, the big goblin fight, and the big orc fight when the real tanks were going down.

On a tangent, in a weird balance issue, the pacifist cleric at first level is round on round probably the second most lethal PC after only the fighter. By third level mathematically their best choice for DPR is to use the Aid Other action on the Rogue unless fighting low hp bad guys.

So all in all although the game was superbly fun, the rogue felt like an excercise in frustration. I was basically dependent on whatever levels of stealth and advantage I could coax out of the DM if I wanted to mechanically be much more than a torchbearer and sidekick in play. And although I pushed a little, it felt like pushing and trying to spotlight hog which was unpleasant (and I think Saph found that part of my play the same way - my apologies if so). And the alternative was a class that was about as bland as the fighter and a whole lot less effective.

Which was a pity. Especially because playing with that group was hilarious. But mostly because the problem of a mechanically simple and effective rogue that doesn't rely on pushing the DM has been solved IMO since 2010 with the 4e Essentials Thief and the range of thieves tricks it gets instead of the normal A/E/D combat powers of a 4e character. Half of them are move actions that help you get combat advantage (like one that allows you to hide faster and behind only light concealment), the other half help you do nasty things to shank a monster like hamstring it, knocking it prone.

And this brings me on to a couple of points of disagreement with Saph. Unfortunately they are both in the strengths column (and both 4e comparisons).

To me it doesn't feel as if there's more variety between D&D Next classes than 4e classes, especially not post-Essentials. If I just take Essentials as a baseline and ignore all the subtleties of 4e (it's really not good at presenting itself), there is clear water between the thief and fighter in Essentials in a way I simply didn't see in D&D next (the thief gets tricks, the fighter gets stances - neither of them get daily attack powers), and after 4e Defenders, the Guardian's abilities felt ... limited.

And I find 4e monsters much more varied than the monsters we had in the playtest. Essentially in the playtest it felt to me like we had "Multi-round monsters" (bosses), "Two hit monsters" (orcs), "One hit monsters" (goblins), and "Strong breeze monsters with Advantage" (kobolds, rats). They didn't appear to behave notably differently and the target number was (with literally two exceptions - unless we had the Dragonshields) in a two point spread.

On a final note, the Cleric of Moradin seemed to be playable both as a healer who tanked, and as a Paladin who tanked and did almost as much damage on a hit as a fighter while being able to heal people.

I'm running for a different group tomorrow - I'll probably post that over on rpg.net.

Saph
2012-06-03, 11:39 AM
Yeah, with hindsight the monsters aren't really all that varied – there really is very little variation between the attack/defence numbers and they only have one signature trick (or in some cases, such as the ogre, no trick at all). Having varied HP is a good start, but they need a lot more work to feel significantly different.

Draz74
2012-06-03, 12:55 PM
Unfortunately, I've got to mostly agree with Tehnar; this could have used another month of internal playtesting,
Meh, I'm not terribly impressed by the rules as they stand, but I don't think another month of internal playtesting would have been the magic fix. That would have just let WotC make another month's worth of decisions that people wouldn't like before they got any feedback from the fans.


and it especially could have used a better module, or at least one that could push the new elements being introduced in 5e.

This part, however, is correct.

Kurald Galain
2012-06-03, 02:17 PM
Well, a 4E rogue (or thief) is based on the principle that you'll have combat advantage (and thus sneak attack dice) pretty much all the time. The 5E rogue seems to be based on the idea that you have to work for it: you'll do low damage most of the time, high damage when you get it to work. Note that this is similar to the idea of a 2E rogue. While I like this in principle, it's tricky to balance how hard it should be to get sneak attack dice.

Overall my impression of the playtest is that other than the advantage mechanic, there is nothing new here. Playing second edition would be pretty much the same. While I like and enjoy 2E, I don't see this playtest as something flashy or innovative.

7RED7
2012-06-03, 11:34 PM
@Tehnar. The problem is that you are still making assumptions of quality that don't apply yet. It's not in the refining phase, it's in the taste-testing phase.
The nice meal doesn't happen until release, and that is not any time soon. The fact is it's not ready yet, and you were offered the current prototype to see what you like and don't like about it so you can offer your opinion and they can take that into consideration before they finalize the release. Anyone who wishes to participate is not being charged to do so, and therefore there really isn't any reason to have a sense of entitlement regarding its quality. For the sake of humor I'll continue the metaphor and say that you aren't being wined and dined, you are being asked to give them feedback on their recipe so that it will be something that you would want to eat when it eventually makes it to the menu. If you don't like the service or the dish then the constructive thing to do is to share your concerns with the owner who has offered to let you participate, and the destructive thing to do is jump on Yelp and write a bad review for a product that does not yet exist in a finished (or even intermediate state). Collect all the issues you have and send them back to WotC, otherwise there was no point in participating.

@Saph. Great writeup. Would read again. I wish I had more players with that much humor. :smallbiggrin:
"Everyone in the group thoroughly enjoyed the session, but feelings about the actual ruleset were mixed. The game had been great fun, but the consensus was that we’d had fun because of our group, not because of the game. "
That is the key to the whole thing. Rules are incapable of creating enjoyment if the chemistry isn't there. Otherwise you're only doing it out of routine.

@Draz74. Exactly. It's better to have something flawed now where player input can factor in at a more fundamental level, then to let feedback come later after core decisions have too much inertia.

Tehnar
2012-06-04, 07:43 AM
@Tehnar. The problem is that you are still making assumptions of quality that don't apply yet. It's not in the refining phase, it's in the taste-testing phase.
The nice meal doesn't happen until release, and that is not any time soon. The fact is it's not ready yet, and you were offered the current prototype to see what you like and don't like about it so you can offer your opinion and they can take that into consideration before they finalize the release. Anyone who wishes to participate is not being charged to do so, and therefore there really isn't any reason to have a sense of entitlement regarding its quality. For the sake of humor I'll continue the metaphor and say that you aren't being wined and dined, you are being asked to give them feedback on their recipe so that it will be something that you would want to eat when it eventually makes it to the menu. If you don't like the service or the dish then the constructive thing to do is to share your concerns with the owner who has offered to let you participate, and the destructive thing to do is jump on Yelp and write a bad review for a product that does not yet exist in a finished (or even intermediate state). Collect all the issues you have and send them back to WotC, otherwise there was no point in participating.


I filled out the survey and sent my feedback to WotC, but I don't think it will matter, for a couple of reasons:

1) I doubt WotC will take the player input seriously. As I explained above the entire playtest document was unprofessional, with errors that make it very hard to properly playtest it. If that is their level of respect towards the playtesters, I doubt they will take any critique seriously.

2) The core mechanics presented in the playtest are flawed, and do not make a game enjoyable. A playtest's point would be to work out the kinks in the system, but my opinion is that they go so deep it is better to throw out all the mechanics and start again. Also there is nothing really refined, innovative, or new in the mechanics they chose to show us. This is from a team of professional paid game designers that have been working 8+ months. I have serious doubts about their competence.


Now I did not review the entire possible future product, I only reviewed what I had before me. I never said that it lacked some feature, I focused only on the mechanics presented in the playtest.

I want DnD NEXT to succeed, to be a game with innovative, fresh mechanics that will drive the hobby forward. Not because of DnD, but because other designers will be forced to up their game and produce better products. If it brings the same old stale thing, only rehashed then the entire hobby will suffer. No one will have the motivation to beat DnD NEXT if their own systems already do.

I am not criticizing the entire future product, but rather the direction it is heading in.

Kurald Galain
2012-06-04, 07:56 AM
I think the main problem with 5E is that its core mechanic (1d20 + bonus >= target) has a far greater spread on the dice than on the bonuses. The die roll has a 20-point spread, whereas the bonuses have about a 5-point spread. Therefore, task resolution depends far more on randomness than on your character's abilities.

TheAbstruseOne
2012-06-04, 09:05 AM
Ill give you a analogy of my experience with 5E thus far.

You walk into a fancy restaurant, expecting a nice meal. When the waiter seats you, talking about how you are about to have the best meal of your life, on the table before you the glasses have stains and the tablecloth is wrinkled. The free complementary breadsticks are burnt, give off a funny smell and if you dare try one it tastes sour.

Now even though you did not pay for anything yet, and have yet to sample the main dish, would you stay and pay $50+ for a meal? When next door you have a restaurant you go to every day, that you know and like?

This is a horrible analogy and falls into the biggest misunderstanding of what the playtest is I've run across the past week and a half. Dungeons & Dragons Next is not a preview or quickstart. It is a playtest. It is not a complete game. It is not a finished product. It is a rough draft - less than that, a partial rough draft - for getting feedback on how the system works.

Let's rework your example to be more accurate:

You walk into a fancy restaurant, expecting a nice meal. When the waiter seats you, he explains that you can either dine on the normal menu which hasn't changed in some time (previous editions), or you can dine in the kitchen with the chef and try out new creations that haven't been put on the menu yet as a complimentary tasting session. So you leave the dining room with its fancy tableclothes, fine china, sculpted decor, and mood music and head into the kitchen.

It's noisy, utilitarian, and you're eating on a plain steel counter seated on a stool. The chef comes up with a dish and says, "I've attempted to combine a simple steak with a new sauce I've created." There is only one bite of a steak with a dab of sauce.

You immediately leave shouting to everyone who will listen how horrible the new menu at the restaurant is, how small the portions are, how terrible the decor is, and how the chef has no idea what he is doing. Even though you were told up front that this is not a full menu, that it's not going to be as pretty or refined as the final product will be, and that it is still a work in progress which needs your feedback to be finalized.

That is what D&D Next is. They've designed a core rules system. They are releasing for mass testing small portions of those rules in various states of completion in order to get fan feedback before those rules are finalized. Once they are finalized, those core rules will be reworded for clarity with examples given so that it is easier to understand. They will be formatted and laid out with artwork and other options to give them a smoother presentation. And not until those core rules are finalized and they have a stable foundation will they move forward with more complex, obscure, and optional rules.

You don't like something in the rules? Explain why you don't like them and make sure to tell the developers. If enough people also find the same faults, they'll either adapt the rules or include optional rules modules to suit you. If you just complain about how horrible the game is with inaccurate metaphors, all you're doing is hurting the game. You're not giving useful feedback and you're forming resentment amongst players, starting an edition war for an edition that isn't even finished yet.

So please, if there's something you don't like in D&D Next, explain what it is. For example, I don't like the way wizard spells are being handled. There's too much power discrepancy between the cantrips and 1st level spells, which if the power scaling of damage is followed will bring back both the Quadratic Wizard/Linear Fighter and the 10 Minute Workday problems that plagued previous editions, made even worse with the balance of some of the spells like Ray of Frost which, while useless against a mob of enemies, can completely lock down a powerful solo creature with little to no effort. This is a legitimate concern, one which I voiced to Wizards of the Coast. I didn't just say "wizards suck now", I explained exactly what issues I have. It's the only way we're going to have any useful discussions about the new edition.

wumpus
2012-06-04, 09:31 AM
Pacifist Human Cleric: “It’s the Caves of Tapas, not the Caves of Chaos.”

As someone who started with Basic D&D (second edition, reddish box), I can assure you that these dungeon room sequences are straight out of the Caves of Chaos. From memory, I think the Ogre was in entrance "E" but the treasure used to contain some counterfeit gold pieces (copper covered with a wash of gold). And likely more copper.

Catgirl killing part: A quick googling lists brandy as "typically" 80 proof (although Ogres might want to hoard stronger stuff). "100 proof was originally defined as the concentration that allowed alcohol to burn (quick and dirty proof that the grog was full strength in the Navy). This also might involve US-UK proof conversion. The point of this is: can the brandy be used to set the entire dungeon on fire or will one of the dwarves drink it first?

TheAbstruseOne
2012-06-04, 10:05 AM
Pacifist Human Cleric: “It’s the Caves of Tapas, not the Caves of Chaos.”

As someone who started with Basic D&D (second edition, reddish box), I can assure you that these dungeon room sequences are straight out of the Caves of Chaos. From memory, I think the Ogre was in entrance "E" but the treasure used to contain some counterfeit gold pieces (copper covered with a wash of gold). And likely more copper.

Catgirl killing part: A quick googling lists brandy as "typically" 80 proof (although Ogres might want to hoard stronger stuff). "100 proof was originally defined as the concentration that allowed alcohol to burn (quick and dirty proof that the grog was full strength in the Navy). This also might involve US-UK proof conversion. The point of this is: can the brandy be used to set the entire dungeon on fire or will one of the dwarves drink it first?
Proof is pretty much standardized internationally. It's the percentage of alcohol by volume multiplied by 2. So 80 proof alcohol is 40% alcohol. Most modern liquors will be about 80 proof unless otherwise marked (like Bacardi 151 or a whisky listed as "cask strength"). This is due to some international and state laws and just convenience.

However, regulations like that weren't common in the middle ages. Even though distillation was common, but there weren't really regulations about how strong/weak specific liquors had to be. So it's very conceivable that brandy in that era (especially good brandy) would've been over 100 proof since it's just distilled wine aged in a wooden cask.

Tehnar
2012-06-04, 10:05 AM
That is what D&D Next is. They've designed a core rules system. They are releasing for mass testing small portions of those rules in various states of completion in order to get fan feedback before those rules are finalized. Once they are finalized, those core rules will be reworded for clarity with examples given so that it is easier to understand. They will be formatted and laid out with artwork and other options to give them a smoother presentation. And not until those core rules are finalized and they have a stable foundation will they move forward with more complex, obscure, and optional rules.

You don't like something in the rules? Explain why you don't like them and make sure to tell the developers. If enough people also find the same faults, they'll either adapt the rules or include optional rules modules to suit you. If you just complain about how horrible the game is with inaccurate metaphors, all you're doing is hurting the game. You're not giving useful feedback and you're forming resentment amongst players, starting an edition war for an edition that isn't even finished yet.


First off it seems you missed my very lengthy post explaining why I think DnD NEXT is bad. You can find it here. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=13332359&postcount=99)

My beef with them was not with the artwork, the layout, spelling or narrative structure. My main beef was with two things, and I explained that in the link above:

1) A typical undergraduate student should be able to write a more coherent, professional document. This gives me the notion that WotC doesn't care about any feedback and/or its future customers.

2) The core mechanics they present ran from horrible to mediocre, and I explained why I think so in length in the link above. I did not complain about the lack of other mechanics, nor the clarity of the ones they showed us.

Perhaps after reading my initial post explaining all my points you will see that my metaphor is quite apt.

obryn
2012-06-04, 10:33 AM
Also there are references to saves against strength, intelligence and charisma, but none are presented to test. I really don't see the reason why they could not include at least one spell that targets any of those conditions.
I agree and disagree with your post, but I just want to note that there actually are saves against both Strength and Intelligence in the adventure itself - just not in the spells provided. I think two vs. Strength (involving nets and the like) and one vs. Int (that being the Minotaur maze).

-O

Tehnar
2012-06-04, 10:58 AM
I agree and disagree with your post, but I just want to note that there actually are saves against both Strength and Intelligence in the adventure itself - just not in the spells provided. I think two vs. Strength (involving nets and the like) and one vs. Int (that being the Minotaur maze).

-O

I stand corrected. I did not review the adventure itself, as I was a player and did not want spoilers.

I will edit my main post to reflect this.

Saph
2012-06-04, 11:18 AM
Pacifist Human Cleric: “It’s the Caves of Tapas, not the Caves of Chaos.”

As someone who started with Basic D&D (second edition, reddish box), I can assure you that these dungeon room sequences are straight out of the Caves of Chaos.

We know. The joke was that the way the party was going through them was rather like picking and choosing from a big table of food.

obryn
2012-06-04, 12:00 PM
I stand corrected. I did not review the adventure itself, as I was a player and did not want spoilers.

I will edit my main post to reflect this.
It's all good. As near as I can figure, there's no significant difference between a "save" and an ability score check at this stage of the game...

-O

Malachei
2012-06-04, 01:18 PM
I think the main problem with 5E is that its core mechanic (1d20 + bonus >= target) has a far greater spread on the dice than on the bonuses. The die roll has a 20-point spread, whereas the bonuses have about a 5-point spread. Therefore, task resolution depends far more on randomness than on your character's abilities.

Exactly my impression. That's a big issue for skill-based character concepts.

How does that impact finding/removing traps? I recall 1st edition, when our thief players would regularly die and, even if surviving, were quite frustrated by the success rates their chassis offered them.

scon
2012-06-04, 01:25 PM
OK, quick observation.

Just doing a read-through of the playtest materials.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Invisible creatures cast a shadow? The rule for Invisibility seems to say so.

Weird.

darkelf
2012-06-04, 01:25 PM
man, some of you kids are harsh.

fwiw, my group had a blast with the playtest. both i and the other guy who played the rogue didn't seem to have any problem finding interesting ways of finding cover for hiding most of the time. although the tendency of some cover, such as elven wizards, to move away at inopportune times is noted.

the fighter's AC is worse than the dwarf cleric's by virtue of the latter having a shield, whereas the fighter miserably spent all her gold on a crossbow. had the dwarf cleric fallen at any point, i'm sure the shield would've been "rescued" momentarily.

i like the shift of emphasis to character ability scores.

advantage/disadvantage is great. rolling dice is fun, rolling more dice is more fun. rolling dice is specifically more fun than piles of situational modifiers.

my 2cp? i like it. with some character creation rules and more spells and monsters (which, really, could be pillaged directly from 1e/2e), i think i'd be perfectly happy running a regular game with this core.

HeadlessMermaid
2012-06-04, 02:38 PM
I think the main problem with 5E is that its core mechanic (1d20 + bonus >= target) has a far greater spread on the dice than on the bonuses. The die roll has a 20-point spread, whereas the bonuses have about a 5-point spread. Therefore, task resolution depends far more on randomness than on your character's abilities.
I agree with this. I said earlier that using ability checks is a very intuitive and flexible system (and in principle, I still stand by that), but the math can screw it. This formula indeed screws it. The advantage/disadvantage rule and its exact implementation suddenly becomes very important, it can make or break the entire game.

And now, spoilered for length, some calculations about how ability checks could be, errr, calculated.

I was thinking, why should the modifier be [(ability score - 10) / 2] in the first place ? Why divide by 2? Why not use [ability score - 10]? Or simply use the unmodified ability score. Either way, all the static DCs need to be recalculated.


Opposed Ability Checks

Let's take for example Mike Tyson arm-wrestling That Guy Next Door - a strength check between someone with Str 20 and someone with Str 10.

With the normal ability modifier, the opposed roll is 1d20+5 Vs 1d20+0, and we have:

Mike Tyson wins 70% of the time
That Guy wins 26.25% of the time (or 45.6% with advantage)
Draw 3.75% of the time.


Using the ability score instead, the opposed roll is 1d20+20 Vs 1d20+10, and we have:

Mike Tyson wins 86.25% of the time
That Guy wins 11.25% of the time (or 21.23% with advantage)
Draw 2.5% of the time

Isn't the second method both a lot more believable (from a simulation perspective) and a lot more rewarding high stats (from a game mechanics perspective)?

Also, if we use Advantage, That Guy can still improve his chances, but let's not get crazy here. This is Mike Tyson, mmkay? On the other hand, with more comparable ability scores, Advantage/Disadvantage would be a much bigger deal.


Ability checks Vs DC

As for the static DCs, there's no need at all to re-introduce that appalling subtraction to the game. I'm not saying this ironically. It's indeed more rewarding to win when you roll high instead of low, and subtraction is indeed distracting. It was a good call to get rid of it, but the method was clunky. It was clunky because for some weird reason they kept the same DCs as a base to calculate everything, and jumped through hoops to make that happen.

But all they had to do was recalculate the DCs. If the roll is 1d20+ability score (not modifier), then an average DC, one you'll win (more or less) half the time if you're an average person and roll 1d20+10, should simply be 20 instead of 10. That way, you have:

DC 15, Easy Challenge (formerly 5):

Gimped person rolls 1d20+5, succeeds 55% of the time
Average person rolls 1d20+10, succeeds 80% of the time
Gifted person rolls 1d20+15, succeeds 100% of the time
Exceptional person rolls 1d20+20, succeeds 100% of the time


DC 20, Average challenge (formerly 10):

Gimped person rolls 1d20+5, succeeds 30% of the time
Average person rolls 1d20+10, succeeds 55% of the time
Gifted person rolls 1d20+15, succeeds 80% of the time
Exceptional person rolls 1d20+20, succeeds 100% of the time


DC 25, Difficult challenge (formerly 15):

Gimped person rolls 1d20+5, succeeds 5% of the time
Average person rolls 1d20+10, succeeds 30% of the time
Gifted person rolls 1d20+15, succeeds 55% of the time
Exceptional person rolls 1d20+20, succeeds 80% of the time


DC 30, Nigh impossible challenge (formerly 20):

Gimped person rolls 1d20+5, succeeds 0% of the time
Average person rolls 1d20+10, succeeds 5% of the time
Gifted person rolls 1d20+15, succeeds 30% of the time
Exceptional person rolls 1d20+20, succeeds 55% of the time

There. The DCs allow for a wide variation of success depending on your ability score. Chance is still a factor, but now it matters how strong or how wise you are. Easiest possible way to calculate everything, for the player and for the DM.

And the re-rolling of advantage/disadvantage still affects the result, but without making the ability scores themselves completely irrelevant. Average benefits the most from Advantage (and suffers the most from Disadvantage), while those with too high or too low scores are less impressed. This also sounds intuitive to me. Advantage/Disadvantage sounds like something that should easily tip the scales, when the scales are more or less balanced. Not so easily when the goal is really a piece of cake, or next to impossible.


...OK, this can't be right. I must be missing something. There can't be such an easy way to make ability checks (opposed, or Vs a static DC) work. There must be unforeseen consequences. Something else breaks horribly, and I didn't think of it. Please tell me what I'm missing, or what mistakes I made. (Otherwise, send this to WotC ASAP. :smalltongue:)

obryn
2012-06-04, 02:45 PM
was thinking, why should the modifier be [(ability score - 10) / 2] in the first place ? Why divide by 2? Why not use [ability score - 10]? Or simply use the unmodified ability score. Either way, all the static DCs need to be recalculated.
One interesting idea I saw quite a while back for opposed checks like arm wrestling is to use Roll + Modifier vs. a DC equal to your opponent's actual statistic. Makes Average Joe vs. Mike Tyson a lot more palatable. :)

-O

darkelf
2012-06-04, 03:14 PM
Let's take for example Mike Tyson arm-wrestling That Guy Next Door - a strength check between someone with Str 20 and someone with Str 10.

whereas to me, this probably just falls into the realm of "when not to use dice". unless, of course, its dramatically appropriate for that guy next door to have a fair chance of beating mike tyson (thank you, elan).

kyoryu
2012-06-04, 03:14 PM
I think the main problem with 5E is that its core mechanic (1d20 + bonus >= target) has a far greater spread on the dice than on the bonuses. The die roll has a 20-point spread, whereas the bonuses have about a 5-point spread. Therefore, task resolution depends far more on randomness than on your character's abilities.

To an extent. A +5 bonus means that the higher score will win ~70% of the time. A +3 drops that to about 62% of the time - just less than 2 in 3 (probably effectively 2 in 3 when you consider ties).

For arm-rasslin' that's probably low - but since that's pure strength I probably wouldn't bother rolling anyway. For other things, you could probably convince me otherwise.

Or to look at it from a different view, in your mind, what *should* the spread look like for the equivalent of a +3 (16) or +5 (20) strength vs. a 10 strength?

For reference, adding straight ability to the die roll gives you a 74% win rate for 16 vs. 10, and an 87% win rate for 20 vs. 10.

Given that most rolls aren't actually player vs. player, I kind of like the first numbers better. That 20 vs. 10 is getting close to automatic success, and if you have an auto success, why bother rolling or even having a rule in the first place?

HeadlessMermaid
2012-06-04, 03:31 PM
whereas to me, this probably just falls into the realm of "when not to use dice". unless, of course, its dramatically appropriate for that guy next door to have a fair chance of beating mike tyson (thank you, elan).
I understand that. But, from 3.5 onwards, dice weren't only applicable, they were obligatory and gave you 1 in 4 chances to beat Tyson! Whereas, if you use the ability score as is, you have 1 in 10 chances. Still odd, but not way out there.

Tehnar
2012-06-04, 04:32 PM
Yes, using a ability score (instead of a modifier) to make your checks is much better.

It even gives reasons to have odd scores.

darkelf
2012-06-04, 04:50 PM
I understand that. But, from 3.5 onwards, dice weren't only applicable, they were obligatory and gave you 1 in 4 chances to beat Tyson! Whereas, if you use the ability score as is, you have 1 in 10 chances. Still odd, but not way out there.

rule zero argues against "dice are obligatory." and 5e puts this front and center, there's a whole section in the DM guidelines on when its appropriate to use dice and when it's not.

TuggyNE
2012-06-04, 04:58 PM
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Invisible creatures cast a shadow? The rule for Invisibility seems to say so.

Awesome! Someone has been re-reading The Hobbit, methinks.

Tehnar
2012-06-04, 05:35 PM
rule zero argues against "dice are obligatory." and 5e puts this front and center, there's a whole section in the DM guidelines on when its appropriate to use dice and when it's not.

Don't you think that the designers shouldn't be lazy and create a system where you don't have to houserule or ignore large parts of it?

The emphasis on the DM being the boss, and letting him have freedom to create and change the rules is a bunch of c**p. Every table top RPG to this day gave you freedom to do exactly that. That they are putting that front and center as a feature boggles the mind.*

* To explain this a bit. I do not think a system should have a mechanic for every possible situation that comes up. I think there should be (well designed) mechanics for what characters commonly encounter, and a set of clear, coherent guidelines on how to adjudicate situations that are not covered by the mechanics in place.

darkelf
2012-06-04, 05:47 PM
I think there should be (well designed) mechanics for what characters commonly encounter, and a set of clear, coherent guidelines on how to adjudicate situations that are not covered by the mechanics in place.

we'll have to disagree then, i think the 5e guidelines are fine. if you really don't think that guy over there should be able to beat mike tyson at arm wrasslin, you don't need a fancy rule for it, just say "tyson wins" and move on to something interesting. that's something third graders can figure out.

kyoryu
2012-06-04, 05:56 PM
Don't you think that the designers shouldn't be lazy and create a system where you don't have to houserule or ignore large parts of it?

The emphasis on the DM being the boss, and letting him have freedom to create and change the rules is a bunch of c**p. Every table top RPG to this day gave you freedom to do exactly that. That they are putting that front and center as a feature boggles the mind.*

* To explain this a bit. I do not think a system should have a mechanic for every possible situation that comes up. I think there should be (well designed) mechanics for what characters commonly encounter, and a set of clear, coherent guidelines on how to adjudicate situations that are not covered by the mechanics in place.

An even easier trick to solve the Tyson problem is to model the arm rasslin' as a series of contests, rather than a single one. This will make it far, far more likely for Tyson to win.

Still, overall, I don't mind a certain level of swinginess even if it's not "realistic". It places more emphasis on players' actions than it does their builds, and lets more characters participate in more situations. It also reduces auto-success/auto-failures, and in my mind that's a *good* thing in a game.

Kurald Galain
2012-06-04, 06:23 PM
Given that most rolls aren't actually player vs. player, I kind of like the first numbers better. That 20 vs. 10 is getting close to automatic success, and if you have an auto success, why bother rolling or even having a rule in the first place?

I don't see how it's a problem that an extremely skilled and talented character has an automatic success on a low-difficulty task.

Not that a 87% chance is automatic anyway.

kyoryu
2012-06-04, 06:39 PM
I don't see how it's a problem that an extremely skilled and talented character has an automatic success on a low-difficulty task.

Not that a 87% chance is automatic anyway.

It's not the extremes like that that concern me so much. It's the fact that people min-max the averages into extreme situations.

In my mind, for a good game, more die rolls should be closer to 50/50 than 90/10.

Kurald Galain
2012-06-04, 06:57 PM
It's not the extremes like that that concern me so much. It's the fact that people min-max the averages into extreme situations.

In my mind, for a good game, more die rolls should be closer to 50/50 than 90/10.

I disagree. For example, if I'm playing the dextrous elf, then I want to be substantially better at climbing trees than my clumsy dwarf companion. If we're both close to 50/50, then my character is only pretending to be dextrous whereas in practice he's just as average as everyone else.

kyoryu
2012-06-04, 07:06 PM
I disagree. For example, if I'm playing the dextrous elf, then I want to be substantially better at climbing trees than my clumsy dwarf companion. If we're both close to 50/50, then my character is only pretending to be dextrous whereas in practice he's just as average as everyone else.

That doesn't invalidate my point. You could have a 60% chance of success, or even 70%, while the dwarf has a 40% chance. You're more likely to succeed than he is, but the rolls are still very, very far from certain.

My concern is when you start having a 95% chance of success on most rolls.

Kurald Galain
2012-06-04, 07:15 PM
That doesn't invalidate my point. You could have a 60% chance of success, or even 70%, while the dwarf has a 40% chance. You're more likely to succeed than he is, but the rolls are still very, very far from certain.
40/60 is too close for my liking: it is still pretty likely that you'll fail when the dwarf succeeds. I don't want that to happen too often.


My concern is when you start having a 95% chance of success on most rolls.
On most rolls that may be a problem. On the other hand, I'm totally fine with giving the expert 95% chance on an easy test (or conversely, giving the novice only 5% chance on a difficult test). So what if a skilled rogue has 99% chance of picking the pocket of a random peasant? That's what "skilled rogue" means.

It's only a problem when people start getting 95% success rate on overpowered things. A good example here is 3E diplomancers or 4E intimidators.

Tehnar
2012-06-04, 07:20 PM
I agree with Kurald.

The 40/60 % split is too little for the player to perceive that their character (who invested in a ability) is better then a character that did not invest in that ability.

That means that character creation and allocation of resources is pretty much meaningless. The primary factor that determines success is not how you build your character, or how you play him, but a roll of the dice. That is just boring.


An even easier trick to solve the Tyson problem is to model the arm rasslin' as a series of contests, rather than a single one. This will make it far, far more likely for Tyson to win.


Having a contest that is resolved after more then 1 opposed test is good, and it starts to show who is better, even with the low spread of bonuses in 5E.

kyoryu
2012-06-04, 07:21 PM
On most rolls that may be a problem. On the other hand, I'm totally fine with giving the expert 95% chance on an easy test (or conversely, giving the novice only 5% chance on a difficult test). So what if a skilled rogue has 99% chance of picking the pocket of a random peasant? That's what "skilled rogue" means.

It's only a problem when people start getting 95% success rate on overpowered things. A good example here is 3E diplomancers or 4E intimidators.

And I don't mind the occasional 95/5 roll either, frankly. What I said was *most* rolls should be closer to 50/50 than 95/5. A game where most rolls end up in the 95/5 range is way too deterministic for my tastes.

And given that players will tend to remove chance of failure as a matter of course, that means I'm okay with the base system being more swingy. Because auto-success (or close to it) isn't really interesting in terms of gameplay.


I agree with Kurald.

The 40/60 % split is too little for the player to perceive that their character (who invested in a ability) is better then a character that did not invest in that ability.

That means that character creation and allocation of resources is pretty much meaningless. The primary factor that determines success is not how you build your character, or how you play him, but a roll of the dice. That is just boring.


Even in my example, I gave the option of 70% to the elf - but we'll go with the worse numbers.

The chance of the elf failing and the dwarf succeeding will happen about 1 in 7 times - the elf will fail 40 times in a hundred, and of those 40 times, the dwarf will succeed only 16.

If we go to 70% for the elf and 40% for the dwarf (these are not opposed rolls, the % is for either to succeed), the elf fails/dwarf succeeds only happens 12 times in a hundred.

We're also not talking about how specialized these characters are, so we've got some unstated assumptions here.

What percentage of the time *would* it be okay for the dwarf to succeed and the elf to fail?

Tehnar
2012-06-04, 07:44 PM
It depends on their difference of skill (or rather the amount they invested in their area of expertise).

This will all be very vague, but lets assume there are two characters of equal level participating in level appropriate tasks. The percentages are all eyeballed, and are given for actions performed in combat or other stressful time.

Easy task: skilled 95+%, unskilled 50%
Moderate task: skilled 70-80%, unskilled 10-25%
Hard task: skilled 50-60%, unskilled 5% or no chance
Very hard task: skilled 20-30%, unskilled no chance

I am aware that it would be impossible to achieve these kind of success ratings using a system of a single d20 roll and bonuses. However, though rough, these percentages feel right to me.

HeadlessMermaid
2012-06-04, 07:52 PM
I am aware that it would be impossible to achieve these kind of success ratings using a system of a single d20 roll and bonuses. However, though rough, these percentages feel right to me.
Skilled and unskilled is a binary distinction, and ability scores range from 1 to 20. If you could refine that, or if you could tell us what score constitutes "skilled" and what "unskilled", maybe we could work this out.

kyoryu
2012-06-04, 07:53 PM
It depends on their difference of skill (or rather the amount they invested in their area of expertise).

This will all be very vague, but lets assume there are two characters of equal level participating in level appropriate tasks. The percentages are all eyeballed, and are given for actions performed in combat or other stressful time.

Easy task: skilled 95+%, unskilled 50%
Moderate task: skilled 70-80%, unskilled 10-25%
Hard task: skilled 50-60%, unskilled 5% or no chance
Very hard task: skilled 20-30%, unskilled no chance

I am aware that it would be impossible to achieve these kind of success ratings using a system of a single d20 roll and bonuses. However, though rough, these percentages feel right to me.

And this shows us where our differences are - I really don't like that 95% for an "easy" task in combat... too many variables for things to just be that certain.

I also view failures on tasks as being an opportunity to add a complication, rather than just saying "ha! you fail!"

Tehnar
2012-06-05, 02:12 AM
The chance of the elf failing and the dwarf succeeding will happen about 1 in 7 times - the elf will fail 40 times in a hundred, and of those 40 times, the dwarf will succeed only 16.

If we go to 70% for the elf and 40% for the dwarf (these are not opposed rolls, the % is for either to succeed), the elf fails/dwarf succeeds only happens 12 times in a hundred.

We're also not talking about how specialized these characters are, so we've got some unstated assumptions here.

What percentage of the time *would* it be okay for the dwarf to succeed and the elf to fail?

The problem is not really that the dwarf will beat the wizard 1 in 7 times. The problem is that they will get exactly the same result 84% of the time. That is too high a percentage for me to distinguish between a skilled and unskilled participant in a task.

As for what constitutes a skilled and unskilled character, Ill try to give definitions regardless of a system. I see a unskilled character as one who has no or a minimum amount of a limited resource invested in a certain ability.

A skilled character has a significant amount of a limited resource invested in a certain ability.

Examples: In DnD 3.5 a skilled jumper at level 1 has a STR of at least 14 and 3 or 4 ranks in the jump skill. A very skilled jumper would probably have 4 ranks, a athletic and/or run feat and 16+ STR. A unskilled jumper would have no ranks in jump and typically low STR.

So the modifiers would go from +0 for a unskilled jumper to +13 for a very skilled jumper.

Kurald Galain
2012-06-05, 04:13 AM
Easy task: skilled 95+%, unskilled 50%
Moderate task: skilled 70-80%, unskilled 10-25%
Hard task: skilled 50-60%, unskilled 5% or no chance
Very hard task: skilled 20-30%, unskilled no chance
This would be a reasonable list in a design document.

Back when I was desiging RPGs my list went something like this:
{table]Difficulty|Novice|Trained|Expert
Easy|60%|85%|95%
Medium|25%|60%|85%
Hard|10%|25%|60%
[/table]


And this shows us where our differences are - I really don't like that 95% for an "easy" task in combat... too many variables for things to just be that certain.
That depends on what an "easy" task is. Why shouldn't the elf archer be able to climb a tree with almost no chance of failure?

kyoryu
2012-06-05, 11:46 AM
That depends on what an "easy" task is. Why shouldn't the elf archer be able to climb a tree with almost no chance of failure?

In a peaceful context, with no load, and no stress? Sure.

Carrying a backpack and other gear, while nasty things are trying to kill him? Maybe not.

neonchameleon
2012-06-05, 12:43 PM
I've just put a writeup of the session I DM'd last night (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?629985-Feast-of-Goblins-a-5e-playtest-report&p=15502314#post15502314) over on the RPG.net forums. Very different reactions to my session with Saph's group (and I'm afraid my writeup isn't as entertaining as his - I've concentrated on the game not the cross-talk).

Kerrin
2012-06-05, 12:43 PM
In a peaceful context, with no load, and no stress? Sure.

Carrying a backpack and other gear, while nasty things are trying to kill him? Maybe not.
In 5e terms, would the elf then have disadvantage (aka circumstantial penalties) when climbing under duress?

I guess it depends upon how the system defines average conditions for a skill check vs. exceptional conditions (e.g. circumstantial bonsues/penalties) for a skill check.

kyoryu
2012-06-05, 01:24 PM
In 5e terms, would the elf then have disadvantage (aka circumstantial penalties) when climbing under duress?

I guess it depends upon how the system defines average conditions for a skill check vs. exceptional conditions (e.g. circumstantial bonsues/penalties) for a skill check.

Dunno. I think being able to ignore those types of scenarios was the point of the Take Ten rule in 3.x, and appropriately sums up why I'm okay with these types of failures (assuming that most checks aren't done under Take Ten conditions).

Jerthanis
2012-06-05, 01:39 PM
In a peaceful context, with no load, and no stress? Sure.

Carrying a backpack and other gear, while nasty things are trying to kill him? Maybe not.

What is it with this assumption that the baseline system should always assume a sufficiently disruptive situation such that it justifies the absurd probabilities given by the rules?

If I can climb a tree effortlessly 95% of the time under ideal conditions, then when I am minorly inconvenienced I might climb it 85% of the time, but I shouldn't drop to 60% in all cases just because we assume that I MUST be under a weight of terrible circumstances. Circumstances we don't determine are quite so distracting when the clumsy dwarf tries and succeeds 45% of the time, meaning for all my adroitness, he's almost as good as I am.

There is a mechanic in place for this in 5e where for checks which don't rely on luck, when the DC is 5 points lower than your score (e.g. DC 11 compared to a score of 16), you automatically succeed at the task. The problem comes in the fact that if the roll IS required, a score of 16 actually only has a 65% chance of success versus a DC of 11, so between DC 11 and 12, the chance of success changes from 100% to 60% for that character. It's a threshold that just doesn't make sense.

navar100
2012-06-05, 02:59 PM
In a peaceful context, with no load, and no stress? Sure.

Carrying a backpack and other gear, while nasty things are trying to kill him? Maybe not.

I, on the other hand, would enjoy playing a character who is just that good. Having achieved some level above 1 and invested character build options into classes, feats, skills, whatever into achieving such a thing, I've earned it. Not fun is 100% success in absolutely everything. That's Pun Pun and only humorous in theoretical possibility. In actual play, I'm only gunning for being absolutely perfect in particular ways, granted some things have to cap at 95%.

You have a particular play style taste that is fun for you, not a road map for what D&D ought to be for everyone. You could end your campaign at level 10 and had the most stupendous awesome campaign EVAR. D&D would support that. For others of us, we'd like to go beyond that to level 20 or "to infinity and beyond" and enjoy such play. We could either start the campaign right then and there or have started at level 1 and eventually get the power through real world time and effort playing. D&D supports that play style too. Why should your preference deny that allowance?

kyoryu
2012-06-05, 04:03 PM
What is it with this assumption that the baseline system should always assume a sufficiently disruptive situation such that it justifies the absurd probabilities given by the rules?

Well, the system has to be based around some set of baseline conditions. Given that the baseline pretty much is that you're doing this stuff while adventuring, it makes a certain amount of sense to develop the system around that scenario.


If I can climb a tree effortlessly 95% of the time under ideal conditions, then when I am minorly inconvenienced I might climb it 85% of the time, but I shouldn't drop to 60% in all cases just because we assume that I MUST be under a weight of terrible circumstances. Circumstances we don't determine are quite so distracting when the clumsy dwarf tries and succeeds 45% of the time, meaning for all my adroitness, he's almost as good as I am.

Well, you'd succeed about two times for his one, so yeah, that's a lot better. A binary result is also not something that I'm fond of, and you'd have a higher average degree of success. Lastly, "failing" the roll might just mean it takes longer.

I think those might be okay percentages at low levels, but at high levels it might need to have a slightly higher spread. I don't know that I'd want it to be near 100%, though.


There is a mechanic in place for this in 5e where for checks which don't rely on luck, when the DC is 5 points lower than your score (e.g. DC 11 compared to a score of 16), you automatically succeed at the task. The problem comes in the fact that if the roll IS required, a score of 16 actually only has a 65% chance of success versus a DC of 11, so between DC 11 and 12, the chance of success changes from 100% to 60% for that character. It's a threshold that just doesn't make sense.

Huh, I'll have to check that out. That's a pretty steep edge function there.


You have a particular play style taste that is fun for you, not a road map for what D&D ought to be for everyone. You could end your campaign at level 10 and had the most stupendous awesome campaign EVAR. D&D would support that. For others of us, we'd like to go beyond that to level 20 or "to infinity and beyond" and enjoy such play. We could either start the campaign right then and there or have started at level 1 and eventually get the power through real world time and effort playing. D&D supports that play style too. Why should your preference deny that allowance?

And you have a particular play style taste that is fun for you, too, not a road map for what D&D ought to be for everyone. Either of us can house-rule the game into being what we want it to be, but you houseruling additional bonuses is no more or less acceptable than me houseruling arbitrary level caps.

Clearly, one of us will be disappointed with 5e as written.

More interesting is that we don't even seem to agree on behavior at low levels. Presumably, even if we disagreed on the behavior at level 20, we'd be significantly closer at level 1. And I don't think we are. And I think a lot of that boils down to the idea that, in my mind, failing is okay. It's the failures that make the game/story fun/interesting. Failures open up the game for interesting scenarios and stories to tell later.

Succeeding all the time (or even in just the areas that you decide your character is good at) is a different kind of fun, just not one I'm particularly interested in at this point in my life. Of course, I also don't think 1st level characters are really the best at anything. Moderately competent, but that's about it. I suspect that you'd disagree with that, as well.

Jerthanis
2012-06-05, 04:54 PM
Well, the system has to be based around some set of baseline conditions. Given that the baseline pretty much is that you're doing this stuff while adventuring, it makes a certain amount of sense to develop the system around that scenario.

But what is "Adventuring?" that makes routine tasks so gosh darned difficult?

And is adventuring always the same sort of scenario? Because sometimes adventuring is cooly examining a crime scene for signs of who the perpetrator is. Sometimes it's exploring an abandoned castle looking for a secret door to a rumored treasure vault behind a puzzle lock. Sometimes it's planning the best way through the mountain pass without attracting the native Jub Jub Birds' attention. Sometimes it's examining a script of ancient writing on a quiet tomb and trying to puzzle out its meaning. Sometimes it is engineering a pulley system to excavate a particularly heavy piece of treasure from a deep pit.

Adventuring isn't always "a high stress environment while wearing heavy gear and evading attacks from dangerous monsters", so to make all possible checks assume that you are always making them under those conditions completely ignores all kinds of situations that could be possible while "Adventuring" and if it ONLY models high-octane stunts then it will be a failure as a model of a reality in which things can happen other than those insane situations.

And how is it the clumsy dwarf isn't as distracted by these distracting conditions as the elf is, since he's not nearly so penalized from his ideal situation as the elf is? I still haven't seen an answer to that. Also, everything I've seen about 5e so far indicates that the spread WON'T increase with levels significantly. Perhaps 2 or 3 points more from attribute bonuses, magic items, feats, or additional themes, but right now we have no reason to expect a level 20 clumsy dwarf won't keep essentially the same spread with the adroit elf.

kyoryu
2012-06-05, 05:20 PM
But what is "Adventuring?" that makes routine tasks so gosh darned difficult?

D&D is built around the idea of it being a group of like-minded heroes going through nasty places and possibly finding traps and/or evil thingies that want to eat their faces off.

IOW, a typical day in Miami (couldn't resist).

Unsure footing, possible imminent violence, uncomfortable conditions, having to carry expedition gear, these things would be the kind of "baseline" expected.

The other scenarios are certainly possible, but aren't the "meat" of what the game attempts to simulate.

(this doesn't mean, of course, that your games have to focus on those aspects. Just that historically, that's been the primary focus of D&D).

It's at least as good of a baseline, and probably more useful, than baseline being "in a calm, serene, ideal environment with perfect tools and no distractions".

Jerthanis
2012-06-05, 06:19 PM
D&D is built around the idea of it being a group of like-minded heroes going through nasty places and possibly finding traps and/or evil thingies that want to eat their faces off.

IOW, a typical day in Miami (couldn't resist).

Unsure footing, possible imminent violence, uncomfortable conditions, having to carry expedition gear, these things would be the kind of "baseline" expected.

The other scenarios are certainly possible, but aren't the "meat" of what the game attempts to simulate.

(this doesn't mean, of course, that your games have to focus on those aspects. Just that historically, that's been the primary focus of D&D).

It's at least as good of a baseline, and probably more useful, than baseline being "in a calm, serene, ideal environment with perfect tools and no distractions".

The system you describe is unable to function in a logical way outside of a narrow playstyle and so I desperately hope that they don't go that way with their rules design because not only does it only simulate that one style of D&D, but I think it does so quite inaccurately and poorly in its current iteration due to the way ability checks work. The examples of absurd results arising out of the current framework are prolific.

Speaking of which, I still haven't heard why Clumsy Dwarf doesn't get as distracted when climbing the tree as the Adroit Elf does under the same assumedly catastrophic conditions that render Adroit Elf with a 60% chance to do something which he should find routine under ideal conditions. Clumsy Dwarf wouldn't have much better than a 45% chance to climb the tree under ideal conditions, so why are the same terrible circumstances that render a 30%+ loss in capacity on the part of the elf worthy of almost no penalty at all to the dwarf?

My point is, if you're going to have a baseline to judge a test of skills, it should be at some point between extremes of what the game can support. Having the baseline represent the most action-movie high-energy stunt baseline means that D&D can only support that baseline. If the baseline is that the D&D characters are CSI doctors calmly doing autopsies in well lit morgues with all their laser-sharpened tools available, it can't support more dicey situations. If instead we place the baseline somewhere in the middle and offer situational modifiers, we can model both and thus support both.

theNater
2012-06-05, 08:35 PM
Speaking of which, I still haven't heard why Clumsy Dwarf doesn't get as distracted when climbing the tree as the Adroit Elf does under the same assumedly catastrophic conditions that render Adroit Elf with a 60% chance to do something which he should find routine under ideal conditions. Clumsy Dwarf wouldn't have much better than a 45% chance to climb the tree under ideal conditions, so why are the same terrible circumstances that render a 30%+ loss in capacity on the part of the elf worthy of almost no penalty at all to the dwarf?
The example of Clumsy Dwarf having a 40% chance to climb a tree and Adroit Elf having a 60% or 70% chance was assuming they were both under the same conditions(the ones you are calling catastrophic). So if conditions are sufficiently ideal that Adroit Elf is autosucceeding, Clumsy Dwarf should likely be well above 45%.

And, frankly, climbing a tree under ideal conditions isn't really very hard. That should be pretty much an autosuccess for everybody, even Clumsy Dwarf.

navar100
2012-06-05, 08:38 PM
And you have a particular play style taste that is fun for you, too, not a road map for what D&D ought to be for everyone. Either of us can house-rule the game into being what we want it to be, but you houseruling additional bonuses is no more or less acceptable than me houseruling arbitrary level caps.

Clearly, one of us will be disappointed with 5e as written.

More interesting is that we don't even seem to agree on behavior at low levels. Presumably, even if we disagreed on the behavior at level 20, we'd be significantly closer at level 1. And I don't think we are. And I think a lot of that boils down to the idea that, in my mind, failing is okay. It's the failures that make the game/story fun/interesting. Failures open up the game for interesting scenarios and stories to tell later.

Succeeding all the time (or even in just the areas that you decide your character is good at) is a different kind of fun, just not one I'm particularly interested in at this point in my life. Of course, I also don't think 1st level characters are really the best at anything. Moderately competent, but that's about it. I suspect that you'd disagree with that, as well.

My preference does not prevent you from stopping at level 10 having a grand old time. Your preference would never let me get to level 20 denying me having a grand old time because level 20 wouldn't exist. Since my preference leads to more people having fun and wanting the game, that's the better option.

kyoryu
2012-06-05, 09:04 PM
My preference does not prevent you from stopping at level 10 having a grand old time. Your preference would never let me get to level 20 denying me having a grand old time because level 20 wouldn't exist. Since my preference leads to more people having fun and wanting the game, that's the better option.

I didn't say there wouldn't be a level 20. I just suggested it be less powerful than what you might prefer... which you could alter by increasing bonuses.

You're making up strawmen now.

navar100
2012-06-06, 09:57 AM
I didn't say there wouldn't be a level 20. I just suggested it be less powerful than what you might prefer... which you could alter by increasing bonuses.

You're making up strawmen now.

It's metaphorical but understandable on misinterpretation. You are forbidding high power play to those who like it so that everyone must play low power or you will be offended people play that way where as my preference for eventually reaching high power play does not prevent those who only like the low power play from doing so.

Person_Man
2012-06-07, 10:06 AM
I agree with this. I said earlier that using ability checks is a very intuitive and flexible system (and in principle, I still stand by that), but the math can screw it. This formula indeed screws it. The advantage/disadvantage rule and its exact implementation suddenly becomes very important, it can make or break the entire game.

And now, spoilered for length, some calculations about how ability checks could be, errr, calculated.

I was thinking, why should the modifier be [(ability score - 10) / 2] in the first place ? Why divide by 2? Why not use [ability score - 10]? Or simply use the unmodified ability score. Either way, all the static DCs need to be recalculated.


Opposed Ability Checks

Let's take for example Mike Tyson arm-wrestling That Guy Next Door - a strength check between someone with Str 20 and someone with Str 10.

With the normal ability modifier, the opposed roll is 1d20+5 Vs 1d20+0, and we have:

Mike Tyson wins 70% of the time
That Guy wins 26.25% of the time (or 45.6% with advantage)
Draw 3.75% of the time.


Using the ability score instead, the opposed roll is 1d20+20 Vs 1d20+10, and we have:

Mike Tyson wins 86.25% of the time
That Guy wins 11.25% of the time (or 21.23% with advantage)
Draw 2.5% of the time

Isn't the second method both a lot more believable (from a simulation perspective) and a lot more rewarding high stats (from a game mechanics perspective)?

Also, if we use Advantage, That Guy can still improve his chances, but let's not get crazy here. This is Mike Tyson, mmkay? On the other hand, with more comparable ability scores, Advantage/Disadvantage would be a much bigger deal.


Ability checks Vs DC

As for the static DCs, there's no need at all to re-introduce that appalling subtraction to the game. I'm not saying this ironically. It's indeed more rewarding to win when you roll high instead of low, and subtraction is indeed distracting. It was a good call to get rid of it, but the method was clunky. It was clunky because for some weird reason they kept the same DCs as a base to calculate everything, and jumped through hoops to make that happen.

But all they had to do was recalculate the DCs. If the roll is 1d20+ability score (not modifier), then an average DC, one you'll win (more or less) half the time if you're an average person and roll 1d20+10, should simply be 20 instead of 10. That way, you have:

DC 15, Easy Challenge (formerly 5):

Gimped person rolls 1d20+5, succeeds 55% of the time
Average person rolls 1d20+10, succeeds 80% of the time
Gifted person rolls 1d20+15, succeeds 100% of the time
Exceptional person rolls 1d20+20, succeeds 100% of the time


DC 20, Average challenge (formerly 10):

Gimped person rolls 1d20+5, succeeds 30% of the time
Average person rolls 1d20+10, succeeds 55% of the time
Gifted person rolls 1d20+15, succeeds 80% of the time
Exceptional person rolls 1d20+20, succeeds 100% of the time


DC 25, Difficult challenge (formerly 15):

Gimped person rolls 1d20+5, succeeds 5% of the time
Average person rolls 1d20+10, succeeds 30% of the time
Gifted person rolls 1d20+15, succeeds 55% of the time
Exceptional person rolls 1d20+20, succeeds 80% of the time


DC 30, Nigh impossible challenge (formerly 20):

Gimped person rolls 1d20+5, succeeds 0% of the time
Average person rolls 1d20+10, succeeds 5% of the time
Gifted person rolls 1d20+15, succeeds 30% of the time
Exceptional person rolls 1d20+20, succeeds 55% of the time

There. The DCs allow for a wide variation of success depending on your ability score. Chance is still a factor, but now it matters how strong or how wise you are. Easiest possible way to calculate everything, for the player and for the DM.

And the re-rolling of advantage/disadvantage still affects the result, but without making the ability scores themselves completely irrelevant. Average benefits the most from Advantage (and suffers the most from Disadvantage), while those with too high or too low scores are less impressed. This also sounds intuitive to me. Advantage/Disadvantage sounds like something that should easily tip the scales, when the scales are more or less balanced. Not so easily when the goal is really a piece of cake, or next to impossible.


...OK, this can't be right. I must be missing something. There can't be such an easy way to make ability checks (opposed, or Vs a static DC) work. There must be unforeseen consequences. Something else breaks horribly, and I didn't think of it. Please tell me what I'm missing, or what mistakes I made. (Otherwise, send this to WotC ASAP. :smalltongue:)

You should go post your math over on the WotC playtest forum. It's clear that they're sticking with the old system due to nostalgia value, even though it doesn't make any sense. I think that a flat 18 Strengths = +18 bonus would make much more intuitive and mathematical sense.

I would also add that they seriously need to find something meaningful for Intelligence, Charisma, and (to a lesser degree) Charisma. Ability scores should be balanced against other ability scores, and not through a trade-off of having weaker base classes or races. (I'm looking at you, 3.5 Half-Orc).

Jerthanis
2012-06-07, 12:17 PM
The example of Clumsy Dwarf having a 40% chance to climb a tree and Adroit Elf having a 60% or 70% chance was assuming they were both under the same conditions(the ones you are calling catastrophic). So if conditions are sufficiently ideal that Adroit Elf is autosucceeding, Clumsy Dwarf should likely be well above 45%.

And, frankly, climbing a tree under ideal conditions isn't really very hard. That should be pretty much an autosuccess for everybody, even Clumsy Dwarf.

We're talking about a difference between the most dextrous person possible and the least dextrous person possible. I'm assuming climbing this tree is a non-trivial task (DC 11-13) and the least dextrous person possible will beat the most dextrous person possible to the top a non-trivial percentage of the time under the same conditions. So I'm just wondering what these conditions are that are hugely penalizing to the most dextrous person possible when they aren't really hurting the least dextrous person possible very much at all.

HeadlessMermaid
2012-06-07, 02:03 PM
You should go post your math over on the WotC playtest forum. It's clear that they're sticking with the old system due to nostalgia value, even though it doesn't make any sense. I think that a flat 18 Strengths = +18 bonus would make much more intuitive and mathematical sense.
I get too intimidated by authority to post anything at WotC. :smalltongue:
Jokes aside, if you really see it that way, how about proposing it yourself. You have way better credentials.

Kerrin
2012-06-07, 02:07 PM
By all the ... this makes too much sense! Kudos for creating something elegant and solves the mechanic well.

I've wondered why there was the -10 and /2 other than keeping things within the traditional ranges. I've never liked the step function that happens at the even ability scores.

Thanks for the enlightenment.


I agree with this. I said earlier that using ability checks is a very intuitive and flexible system (and in principle, I still stand by that), but the math can screw it. This formula indeed screws it. The advantage/disadvantage rule and its exact implementation suddenly becomes very important, it can make or break the entire game.

And now, spoilered for length, some calculations about how ability checks could be, errr, calculated.

I was thinking, why should the modifier be [(ability score - 10) / 2] in the first place ? Why divide by 2? Why not use [ability score - 10]? Or simply use the unmodified ability score. Either way, all the static DCs need to be recalculated.


Opposed Ability Checks

Let's take for example Mike Tyson arm-wrestling That Guy Next Door - a strength check between someone with Str 20 and someone with Str 10.

With the normal ability modifier, the opposed roll is 1d20+5 Vs 1d20+0, and we have:

Mike Tyson wins 70% of the time
That Guy wins 26.25% of the time (or 45.6% with advantage)
Draw 3.75% of the time.


Using the ability score instead, the opposed roll is 1d20+20 Vs 1d20+10, and we have:

Mike Tyson wins 86.25% of the time
That Guy wins 11.25% of the time (or 21.23% with advantage)
Draw 2.5% of the time

Isn't the second method both a lot more believable (from a simulation perspective) and a lot more rewarding high stats (from a game mechanics perspective)?

Also, if we use Advantage, That Guy can still improve his chances, but let's not get crazy here. This is Mike Tyson, mmkay? On the other hand, with more comparable ability scores, Advantage/Disadvantage would be a much bigger deal.


Ability checks Vs DC

As for the static DCs, there's no need at all to re-introduce that appalling subtraction to the game. I'm not saying this ironically. It's indeed more rewarding to win when you roll high instead of low, and subtraction is indeed distracting. It was a good call to get rid of it, but the method was clunky. It was clunky because for some weird reason they kept the same DCs as a base to calculate everything, and jumped through hoops to make that happen.

But all they had to do was recalculate the DCs. If the roll is 1d20+ability score (not modifier), then an average DC, one you'll win (more or less) half the time if you're an average person and roll 1d20+10, should simply be 20 instead of 10. That way, you have:

DC 15, Easy Challenge (formerly 5):

Gimped person rolls 1d20+5, succeeds 55% of the time
Average person rolls 1d20+10, succeeds 80% of the time
Gifted person rolls 1d20+15, succeeds 100% of the time
Exceptional person rolls 1d20+20, succeeds 100% of the time


DC 20, Average challenge (formerly 10):

Gimped person rolls 1d20+5, succeeds 30% of the time
Average person rolls 1d20+10, succeeds 55% of the time
Gifted person rolls 1d20+15, succeeds 80% of the time
Exceptional person rolls 1d20+20, succeeds 100% of the time


DC 25, Difficult challenge (formerly 15):

Gimped person rolls 1d20+5, succeeds 5% of the time
Average person rolls 1d20+10, succeeds 30% of the time
Gifted person rolls 1d20+15, succeeds 55% of the time
Exceptional person rolls 1d20+20, succeeds 80% of the time


DC 30, Nigh impossible challenge (formerly 20):

Gimped person rolls 1d20+5, succeeds 0% of the time
Average person rolls 1d20+10, succeeds 5% of the time
Gifted person rolls 1d20+15, succeeds 30% of the time
Exceptional person rolls 1d20+20, succeeds 55% of the time

There. The DCs allow for a wide variation of success depending on your ability score. Chance is still a factor, but now it matters how strong or how wise you are. Easiest possible way to calculate everything, for the player and for the DM.

And the re-rolling of advantage/disadvantage still affects the result, but without making the ability scores themselves completely irrelevant. Average benefits the most from Advantage (and suffers the most from Disadvantage), while those with too high or too low scores are less impressed. This also sounds intuitive to me. Advantage/Disadvantage sounds like something that should easily tip the scales, when the scales are more or less balanced. Not so easily when the goal is really a piece of cake, or next to impossible.


...OK, this can't be right. I must be missing something. There can't be such an easy way to make ability checks (opposed, or Vs a static DC) work. There must be unforeseen consequences. Something else breaks horribly, and I didn't think of it. Please tell me what I'm missing, or what mistakes I made. (Otherwise, send this to WotC ASAP. :smalltongue:)

theNater
2012-06-07, 07:16 PM
We're talking about a difference between the most dextrous person possible and the least dextrous person possible. I'm assuming climbing this tree is a non-trivial task (DC 11-13) and the least dextrous person possible will beat the most dextrous person possible to the top a non-trivial percentage of the time under the same conditions. So I'm just wondering what these conditions are that are hugely penalizing to the most dextrous person possible when they aren't really hurting the least dextrous person possible very much at all.
The thing you seem to be missing is that, in the scenarios described by kyoryu, the difference between the most dextrous person and the least dextrous person isn't a very big difference. If climbing the tree is routine for Adroit Elf, then it's pretty much routine for Clumsy Dwarf. If it is rough for Adroit Elf, then it's slightly rougher for Clumsy Dwarf.

Now, some people think that the difference between most dextrous and least dextrous should be larger than that, and that's fair. But you seem to be arguing against a scenario where the difference is large in one set of circumstances and small in another. This, as far as I can tell, is a situation no one is arguing for.

kyoryu
2012-06-07, 07:44 PM
The thing you seem to be missing is that, in the scenarios described by kyoryu, the difference between the most dextrous person and the least dextrous person isn't a very big difference. If climbing the tree is routine for Adroit Elf, then it's pretty much routine for Clumsy Dwarf. If it is rough for Adroit Elf, then it's slightly rougher for Clumsy Dwarf.

Now, some people think that the difference between most dextrous and least dextrous should be larger than that, and that's fair. But you seem to be arguing against a scenario where the difference is large in one set of circumstances and small in another. This, as far as I can tell, is a situation no one is arguing for.

To a certain extent, yeah. But then again, I like more down-to-earth games.

With a DC of 16, a bonus of 6 means you succeed half the time. I'm okay with that for a success chance for climbing a tree while things are trying to get you down.

For the Dwarf, though, he'd only succeed one in 4 times. That's probably not worth the risk, and frankly succeeding half as often is to me a pretty reasonable difference.

Of course, I don't view characters as being an extension of showing how awesome they are. Being "better" means exactly that - you're better, not the best in the world. "Best in the world" is a phrase that keeps coming up, and frighteningly often in relationship to 1st-level characters. I just don't view them that way, never have, but I understand some people do.

Dienekes
2012-06-07, 09:03 PM
I agree with this. I said earlier that using ability checks is a very intuitive and flexible system (and in principle, I still stand by that), but the math can screw it. This formula indeed screws it. The advantage/disadvantage rule and its exact implementation suddenly becomes very important, it can make or break the entire game.

And now, spoilered for length, some calculations about how ability checks could be, errr, calculated.

I was thinking, why should the modifier be [(ability score - 10) / 2] in the first place ? Why divide by 2? Why not use [ability score - 10]? Or simply use the unmodified ability score. Either way, all the static DCs need to be recalculated.


Opposed Ability Checks

Let's take for example Mike Tyson arm-wrestling That Guy Next Door - a strength check between someone with Str 20 and someone with Str 10.

With the normal ability modifier, the opposed roll is 1d20+5 Vs 1d20+0, and we have:

Mike Tyson wins 70% of the time
That Guy wins 26.25% of the time (or 45.6% with advantage)
Draw 3.75% of the time.


Using the ability score instead, the opposed roll is 1d20+20 Vs 1d20+10, and we have:

Mike Tyson wins 86.25% of the time
That Guy wins 11.25% of the time (or 21.23% with advantage)
Draw 2.5% of the time

Isn't the second method both a lot more believable (from a simulation perspective) and a lot more rewarding high stats (from a game mechanics perspective)?

Also, if we use Advantage, That Guy can still improve his chances, but let's not get crazy here. This is Mike Tyson, mmkay? On the other hand, with more comparable ability scores, Advantage/Disadvantage would be a much bigger deal.


Ability checks Vs DC

As for the static DCs, there's no need at all to re-introduce that appalling subtraction to the game. I'm not saying this ironically. It's indeed more rewarding to win when you roll high instead of low, and subtraction is indeed distracting. It was a good call to get rid of it, but the method was clunky. It was clunky because for some weird reason they kept the same DCs as a base to calculate everything, and jumped through hoops to make that happen.

But all they had to do was recalculate the DCs. If the roll is 1d20+ability score (not modifier), then an average DC, one you'll win (more or less) half the time if you're an average person and roll 1d20+10, should simply be 20 instead of 10. That way, you have:

DC 15, Easy Challenge (formerly 5):

Gimped person rolls 1d20+5, succeeds 55% of the time
Average person rolls 1d20+10, succeeds 80% of the time
Gifted person rolls 1d20+15, succeeds 100% of the time
Exceptional person rolls 1d20+20, succeeds 100% of the time


DC 20, Average challenge (formerly 10):

Gimped person rolls 1d20+5, succeeds 30% of the time
Average person rolls 1d20+10, succeeds 55% of the time
Gifted person rolls 1d20+15, succeeds 80% of the time
Exceptional person rolls 1d20+20, succeeds 100% of the time


DC 25, Difficult challenge (formerly 15):

Gimped person rolls 1d20+5, succeeds 5% of the time
Average person rolls 1d20+10, succeeds 30% of the time
Gifted person rolls 1d20+15, succeeds 55% of the time
Exceptional person rolls 1d20+20, succeeds 80% of the time


DC 30, Nigh impossible challenge (formerly 20):

Gimped person rolls 1d20+5, succeeds 0% of the time
Average person rolls 1d20+10, succeeds 5% of the time
Gifted person rolls 1d20+15, succeeds 30% of the time
Exceptional person rolls 1d20+20, succeeds 55% of the time

There. The DCs allow for a wide variation of success depending on your ability score. Chance is still a factor, but now it matters how strong or how wise you are. Easiest possible way to calculate everything, for the player and for the DM.

And the re-rolling of advantage/disadvantage still affects the result, but without making the ability scores themselves completely irrelevant. Average benefits the most from Advantage (and suffers the most from Disadvantage), while those with too high or too low scores are less impressed. This also sounds intuitive to me. Advantage/Disadvantage sounds like something that should easily tip the scales, when the scales are more or less balanced. Not so easily when the goal is really a piece of cake, or next to impossible.


...OK, this can't be right. I must be missing something. There can't be such an easy way to make ability checks (opposed, or Vs a static DC) work. There must be unforeseen consequences. Something else breaks horribly, and I didn't think of it. Please tell me what I'm missing, or what mistakes I made. (Otherwise, send this to WotC ASAP. :smalltongue:)

I like this a lot, the only downside I currently see is that training is under represented with the current numbers. A +3 bonus when your max score was only +4 or +5 is fairly noticeable. I'm not sure if that same +3 will matter as much when the base modifiers are in the teens.

Draz74
2012-06-08, 01:02 AM
I like this a lot, the only downside I currently see is that training is under represented with the current numbers. A +3 bonus when your max score was only +4 or +5 is fairly noticeable. I'm not sure if that same +3 will matter as much when the base modifiers are in the teens.

Sure, if you're basically multiplying the attribute numbers by 2 (on average, and after the overall shift in DCs), it makes sense to double other modifiers likewise.

Jerthanis
2012-06-08, 02:27 AM
Now, some people think that the difference between most dextrous and least dextrous should be larger than that, and that's fair. But you seem to be arguing against a scenario where the difference is large in one set of circumstances and small in another. This, as far as I can tell, is a situation no one is arguing for.

I'm trying to point out how absurd the results of the current system are. Essentially when straight d20 + Ability Score Bonus vs d20 + Ability Score Bonus is the fundamental system to resolve tasks and contests between people, then you have to accept that essentially Adroit Elf is not significantly better at dexy tasks than Clumsy Dwarf is. The Elf isn't agile, he merely pretends to be agile. In actuality he isn't significantly more agile by the numbers. By the same token the Wizard isn't significantly more intelligent than the Ogre because of the results which are returned by the system which determines the outcomes of their checks and contests.

Essentially, when this was brought up, it was mentioned that these checks are always (ALWAYS!!!) performed under sufficiently distracting conditions to justify whatever results they happen to return. I was pointing out that conditions detrimental enough to justify competent people failing do NOT seem to similarly penalize incompetent people trying the same task at the same time. If they DO similarly penalize both, and the incompetent is still pretty likely to succeed then it's as impossible to play a character whose Clumsyness or Adroitness are truly reflected in play. Essentially everyone will be almost entirely similar in their basic capabilities. You might track some tendencies at the extremes, but anything less is essentially a total contest of luck. My wizard's familiar will knock a dragon on its behind something like 20% of the time if it's allowed to roll.

And then, if we restrict who can roll against who based on how far their stats are from each other, you're essentially mandating a "you have to be this tall in order to ride" barrier between a 100% success rate on the favored actor to something like a 60% success rate based on whatever single unit of closeness you judge is the point where they can reasonably contest. There is no middle ground between essentially totally up in the air and "You can't even try". So saying that you can just only allow rolls when there's a reasonable chance of failure / a reasonable expectation of a real contest, you still return unfavorable results from the system.

I'm just expressing all the reasons I don't like the system as it is, and trying to express how more granularity, adding bigger numbers based on the character, and a smoother curve between "totally impossible" "50% chance" and "Automatically successful" would suit my tastes better and be more evocative of a real world situation. Because I actually WOULD very much like a system where you add the full stat to the checks and adjust DCs to match. That sounds like a system worthy of playtesting and seeing where the breaking points are and evaluating if it works or not and if it does work, it COULD be the core of a system I'd play. I wouldn't personally go to bat for it until I see some math on it and see it in play, but at the least I don't see glaring problems with it returning absurd results at a glance. Results which must be continuously justified after the fact.

Lycar
2012-06-08, 02:36 AM
Personally I believe the flaw of the skill system is its binary nature. You either succeed on a task or you don't, no shades of grey.

What would really improve the system isn't so much narrowing down the spread but making the quality of success mean something.

What I mean is that the amount you beat the DC by becomes important. So that the dwarf, while beating the DC to get any climbing done at all only climbs a meter or two, the elf, beating the DC by a higher margin, climbs half a dozen meters in the same time instead.

Yes this plays havoc with the movement rules as of 3.P but that is another matter.

Quality of success could also emphasis skill over raw talent. For example, if a character with a high stat and low skill and a character with a lower stat and more skill have the same modifier, the more skilled character could have the edge if the quality of success is capped by your skill ranks.

Say climbing depends on STR (as in 3.P) instead of DEX, then in the example the dwarf fighter and the elf archer could actually end up with the same modifier. But if the dwarf has only, say, 2 ranks in climb and the elf has 6, and we make it so that the amount you beat the DC by is capped by your skill ranks, then the more skilled elf can out-perform the dwarf despite their parity on skill check modifiers on virtue of having more skill.*

In other words, beating a simple skill check can be almost as easy for a less skilled and talented character as long as being more skilled still makes a difference. To get out of harms way from the angry monster may only require climbing 2 meters or so, something both the dwarf and the elf can pull off. But if it comes to scaling a cliff or a wall, while both can potentially do it, the elf will have the edge because he will be up there a lot faster then the dwarf.

The current, binary system does not support this kind of differentiation.

*EDIT: Although since the current system also makes it so that people rarely have skill points left for anything but the most essential skills, maybe make the result cap be the total modifier. Otherwise it would penalize people who can't spare skill points for Climb but are strong too much. Oh and the minimum result should be treated as 1 for climbing 0 feet on a successful roll isn't fun. :smalltongue:

HeadlessMermaid
2012-06-08, 08:11 AM
I like this a lot, the only downside I currently see is that training is under represented with the current numbers. A +3 bonus when your max score was only +4 or +5 is fairly noticeable. I'm not sure if that same +3 will matter as much when the base modifiers are in the teens.
As Draz74 said, all you'd have to do is adjust the +3 bonus and make it +6 instead. But that's assuming the +3 is "correct". Frankly, I don't know how they came up with that number, if they calculated it with specific results in mind, if they eyeballed it, if they chose it arbitrarily. I don't know if it's a flat bonus, applying for the rest of your career, or if it will scale somehow. Finally, I don't know how easy it will be to boost the stats themselves (by leveling up, boosts from race and/or class, magic items etc).

I'm not saying it's wrong (it seems fine at first glance), I just don't know how it works exactly.

Personally, I love skills. I hated it how 3.5 made non-Int based, 2 skill points/lvl classes "not know how to tie their shoelaces". And I've been houseruling "skill bonuses to match background" rules for a long time.

On the other hand, I obviously love skill monkeys too, I want the Rogue to do the coolest stuff with skills. And if class skills are gone, if all characters get the same amount of bonuses depending on background only... then I absolutely NEED the Rogue to have class abilities that emulate an affinity to skills. Or, more abstractly, "mundane, non-combat ways to deal with things".

It may be flat bonuses, or Advantage under certain circumstances, it may be about the quality of success on a skill check (like Lycar suggested above), it may even be a weird variant of non-combat maneuvers. I don't mind, I can do simple and I can do complicated. Just give me something.

Jerthanis
2012-06-08, 06:24 PM
Personally I believe the flaw of the skill system is its binary nature. You either succeed on a task or you don't, no shades of grey.

What would really improve the system isn't so much narrowing down the spread but making the quality of success mean something.

What I mean is that the amount you beat the DC by becomes important. So that the dwarf, while beating the DC to get any climbing done at all only climbs a meter or two, the elf, beating the DC by a higher margin, climbs half a dozen meters in the same time instead.

This is actually kind of an interesting idea and I kind of like it.

What if you took the margin of your success and crafted a result out of it? If you rolled a 17 versus DC 11, you could spend 3 points on climbing 6 feet higher and 3 points on digging handholds for people following you, reducing their DC by 1 or 2 or something. Or you could spend 5 marginal success points past what you needed to unlock something creating a key setting for a lock you picked. Or you could Pick pockets someone for the marginal success in bonus weight of an object purloined or spend some of your points planting an object on them while stealing the first item. I mean, obviously this would complicate things a lot, but it could provide for more detail as to what a skilled person can do with certain skills.

kyoryu
2012-06-08, 06:51 PM
This is actually kind of an interesting idea and I kind of like it.

What if you took the margin of your success and crafted a result out of it? If you rolled a 17 versus DC 11, you could spend 3 points on climbing 6 feet higher and 3 points on digging handholds for people following you, reducing their DC by 1 or 2 or something. Or you could spend 5 marginal success points past what you needed to unlock something creating a key setting for a lock you picked. Or you could Pick pockets someone for the marginal success in bonus weight of an object purloined or spend some of your points planting an object on them while stealing the first item. I mean, obviously this would complicate things a lot, but it could provide for more detail as to what a skilled person can do with certain skills.

Interestingly, that's a core mechanic in some systems. For instance, in BW, a hit in combat is modified by the number of success above the target you get, and you can determine how to spend those (increase damage, target a specific location, etc.)

Dienekes
2012-06-08, 06:51 PM
As Draz74 said, all you'd have to do is adjust the +3 bonus and make it +6 instead. But that's assuming the +3 is "correct". Frankly, I don't know how they came up with that number, if they calculated it with specific results in mind, if they eyeballed it, if they chose it arbitrarily. I don't know if it's a flat bonus, applying for the rest of your career, or if it will scale somehow. Finally, I don't know how easy it will be to boost the stats themselves (by leveling up, boosts from race and/or class, magic items etc).

I'm not saying it's wrong (it seems fine at first glance), I just don't know how it works exactly.

Personally, I love skills. I hated it how 3.5 made non-Int based, 2 skill points/lvl classes "not know how to tie their shoelaces". And I've been houseruling "skill bonuses to match background" rules for a long time.

On the other hand, I obviously love skill monkeys too, I want the Rogue to do the coolest stuff with skills. And if class skills are gone, if all characters get the same amount of bonuses depending on background only... then I absolutely NEED the Rogue to have class abilities that emulate an affinity to skills. Or, more abstractly, "mundane, non-combat ways to deal with things".

It may be flat bonuses, or Advantage under certain circumstances, it may be about the quality of success on a skill check (like Lycar suggested above), it may even be a weird variant of non-combat maneuvers. I don't mind, I can do simple and I can do complicated. Just give me something.

I don't think this is going to be too much of a problem, since of the Rogue presented it gets double the skills, and skill mastery at level 1, and free advantage on skills at level 2 (admittedly only twice a day).

Honestly the only reason why I don't think we've been getting a lot of how awesome rogues are at skills yet is because 1) the skill choice they've been handed kind of sucks (Commerce? Folk Lore? Animal Handling? when were we expected to test these out?) 2) the module given is essentially a bunch of fights where the skills don't really come into effect, and 3) I don't remember really reading how any of these skills work anyhow.

Saph
2012-06-10, 10:10 AM
Playtest Journal, Session 2: Caves of Blandness

The Party

Even after all the combats of last week the party had ended the session on level 1, so to vary things up a bit (and to make up for the smaller party) we advanced everyone to level 3 so as to get to try the higher-level class features.

Level 3 Elf Wizard: Played by the fighter's player from last week.
Level 3 Dwarf Fighter: Played by one of the rogues from last week.
Level 3 Human Cleric: Played by last week's wizard.
Level 3 Halfing Rogue: Played by last week's "pacifist" cleric.
Day 1: Hobgoblin Slaughter

The party started off with the hobgoblin caverns, and killed their way through them at high speed. The encounters mostly acted as an introduction to the relative capabilities of the classes at level 3, which turned out as follows:

The level 3 Wizard is notably less impressive than he was at level 1. Sleep is no longer a mass knockout once you're fighting things with 11 hit points, and Burning Hands scales poorly. His level 2 spells are nice, but not as overwhelming. The familiar is pretty fun, though, especially if you use it as an attack kitty (cat-delivered shocking grasp!)
The level 3 Rogue was slightly better than at level 1, due to the greatly increased sneak attack damage and the ability to remain hidden on a miss, but is still very short of options.
The level 3 Fighter gets Cleave. Again, the best single-target DPS, but cripplingly short of variety beyond "I hit it again". Notably, the player found axe-and-shield more effective than a two-hander since he was generally killing things on one hit anyway.
The level 3 Cleric of Pelor is INSANELY good. Maximised heals, high accuracy and damage, good armour, and Channel Radiance, a repeatable AoE nuke that instakills entire rooms full of monsters. A party of Clerics of Pelor is probably the strongest party out there at levels 2-3.
Two PCs nearly died to the hobgoblins, but this was more due to carelessness/bad luck than anything else – if the PCs had done things the slow, boring way they probably could have cleared out the hobgobs without risk.

Day 2: Owlbears, Oozes, and Bugbears

The party proceeded on their methodical way through the caves. First they met some rats, and killed them. Then they met an owlbear, and killed that. Then they got attacked by a Gray Ooze, and killed that too. Then they ran into two more Gray Oozes, and had to run away due to the nuisance factor of the equipment damage. Then they met the first room of bugbears and killed them. Then they reached the second room of bugbears and killed them too.

If this is starting to sound repetitive, that's because it was. By this point my motivation to GM the adventure was starting to run low. Every encounter was turning out exactly the same way: party meets monsters, party fights monsters, party either massacres monsters or runs away and comes back later to do it again. The party were starting to get the same feeling and it was decided that we'd stop exploring the caves and start cherry-picking the more interesting-sounding fights.

Day 3: Shrine of Evil Chaos

The party rested and came back. For the last hour and a half of gameplay we did things differently: I'd read out the names of the rooms in numerical order and the party would decide whether or not to play the encounter.

GM: "Room 51: Boulder-Filled-Passage."
Party: "No."
GM: "Room 52: Hall of Skeletons."
Party: "Yes."

Much annihilation of skeletons ensued, during which it was discovered that Turn Undead makes killing melee undead pretty easy. The party looted the room and moved on.

GM: "Room 53: Guard Room."
Party: "No."
GM: "Room 54: Acolytes' Chamber."
Party: "No."
GM: "Room 55: Evil Chapel."
Party: "That sounds good."

The PCs promptly set off every alarm in the place. This attracted the acolytes and Dark Adepts, whom the PCs massacred without difficulty.

To finish things off, I ran the Temple of Evil Chaos. Again the PCs set off the alarms, and the Priest of Evil Chaos came out to fight. After a few minutes of roleplaying where the Cleric of Pelor and the Priest of Evil Chaos both tried to out-shout each other convincing the other that their god was superior, the party swarmed the priest and slaughtered him easily. They looted the place and left, at which point we ended the session.

Class Power Rankings

Having played at both level 1 and level 3, the party's opinion on the rankings of the relative power levels of the classes was as follows:

1. Human Cleric: Does everything. High accuracy, good damage, best healing, good versatility, and area nukes.
2. Dwarven Cleric: Best defence. Versatile with decent healing and makes a good front-liner.
3. Wizard: Best attack at level 1, though the Cleric edges it out later on. Versatile, but the crappy AC makes them highly vulnerable.
4. Fighter: Best damage, but doesn't do anything else. Goes down too easily for a front-liner.
5. Rogue: Needs advantage, but doesn't have any consistent way of getting it. Skill abilities are mediocre, basic DPS and defence are mediocre.
Overall Conclusions

We're bored with the playtest, and we're going back to our Dresden Files game instead.

The biggest positive thing that can be said of this new ruleset is that it's fast. We got through many, many encounters each session. Unfortunately, the reason we were getting through combats so fast is that the characters didn't really have many decisions to make. With no AoOs or flanking there was little reason to care about positioning, and with so few attack modes you usually ended up doing the same thing every combat. Every turn came down to "roll d20, see if you hit".

Caves of Chaos is boring, boring, BORING. I'm not an old-school gamer and this has been my first experience running a 1970s module, and quite frankly if all 70s adventures were like this then I'm surprised the game survived to the 80s. The module's a neverending series of encounters against a neverending stream of near-identical monstrous humanoids divided among near-identical rooms. Guard room, guard room, chief's room, common room, guard room, chief's room, guard room, guard room, common room, guard room, guard room, chief's room, guard room, common room, go to start and repeat. Every now and then you get a bigger, more unusual monster to kill, and that's the most variety you get.

Our group did our best to make the session fun with RPing and jokes, and it worked – but ALL the fun came from the RPing and jokes. Maybe I've got a different philosophy as far as adventure design goes, but shouldn't the PCs be given some reason to care about a dungeon crawl? Mindless combat is fine as an occasional side dish, but it shouldn't be the starter, main course, dessert, and everything in between!

No-one in our group could really see any reason to use the 5e rules as they stand. If you want to play 4e-style, 4e does it better. If you want to play 3.5-style, 3.5 does it better. And comparing 5e to our group's current favourite d20 system (which is Pathfinder) we couldn't see how 5e did ANYTHING better.

It's possible our group'll try the later versions of the playtest, but quite frankly we're sufficiently unimpressed with the system as it stands that I don't think it's likely. So 5e gets a resounding "meh" from us, and we're going to drop the system and go back to our other campaigns.

HeadlessMermaid
2012-06-10, 10:23 AM
Thanks for the update!

What's "DPS"?

Fatebreaker
2012-06-10, 01:35 PM
Playtest Journal

Saph, I've found your journals to be delightfully honest and informative. Thank you for taking the time to do them.


What's "DPS"?

DPS -- Damage Per Second. May also be described as DPR, or Damage Per Round. An acronym referring to how much damage a class or character can reliably do within a given span of time.

Saph
2012-06-10, 05:24 PM
Saph, I've found your journals to be delightfully honest and informative. Thank you for taking the time to do them.

Cool, glad you like them!

To be honest I find I have much less time to do them these days - I spend more and more of my time on my own books and associated stuff.

erikun
2012-06-10, 11:28 PM
And then, if we restrict who can roll against who based on how far their stats are from each other, you're essentially mandating a "you have to be this tall in order to ride" barrier between a 100% success rate on the favored actor to something like a 60% success rate based on whatever single unit of closeness you judge is the point where they can reasonably contest. There is no middle ground between essentially totally up in the air and "You can't even try". So saying that you can just only allow rolls when there's a reasonable chance of failure / a reasonable expectation of a real contest, you still return unfavorable results from the system.
There is also another unusual result of this system, which I just realized.

Even if you say the 8 DEX character automatically loses to the 18 DEX character in a contest (despite it only being a 25% difference), things break down when you throw in a 13 DEX character. Suddenly, 18 DEX is now competing with 13 DEX and 8 DEX, and the 8 DEX character (who was previously incapable of winning) can come out the victor just by adding a third character.

Trying to limit it to "18 DEX can compete with 13 DEX but still automatically succeeds against 8 DEX" ends up producing absurd situations. If we're talking about a footrace, then you could have 18 DEX lose to 13 DEX, 13 DEX lose to 8 DEX, but 8 DEX losing to 18 DEX. Who, exactly, would be the winner in such a situation?

[Edit]


Class Power Rankings

Having played at both level 1 and level 3, the party's opinion on the rankings of the relative power levels of the classes was as follows:

1. Human Cleric: Does everything. High accuracy, good damage, best healing, good versatility, and area nukes.
2. Dwarven Cleric: Best defence. Versatile with decent healing and makes a good front-liner.
I'm a big fan of Clerics, but let me just voice my disappointment here. I liked how versatile and varied you could make 3e Clerics, but the power level and options were just a bit absurd. From what little bit I've seen of D&D5, it looks like they are (unfortunately) making Clerics better than most other choices. Again.


Caves of Chaos is boring, boring, BORING. I'm not an old-school gamer and this has been my first experience running a 1970s module, and quite frankly if all 70s adventures were like this then I'm surprised the game survived to the 80s. The module's a neverending series of encounters against a neverending stream of near-identical monstrous humanoids divided among near-identical rooms.
Older modules were more interesting due to having more varied monsters, traps, settings, and in general things to do. I wouldn't put it against the system yet - the intent is no doubt to just see how combat plays out, and so you're just seeing roomfulls of combat.

Although I wonder how accurately they mirror the old-school modules. Perhaps they are more boring than what I remember.

Oracle_Hunter
2012-06-10, 11:46 PM
Question to the Playtesters: Has anyone actually liked playing the Fighter?

I've been having a debate with my gamers regarding Mundanes v. Casters in which I echo the issues enunciated on this forum (e.g. Classes shouldn't require DM Fiat to function, Magical Tea Time is prejudiced against Mundanes) while my fellow gamers are more of the "eh, it's not so bad" school.

So... any DMs or Fighter Players want to speak to this question? Is the Fighter fun for anyone?

Saph
2012-06-11, 04:16 AM
Oh, the Fighter isn't terrible by any means, and there are plenty of players out there who like it. The thing is, the class is really good at doing damage. If you're going up against any encounter that can't be AoE-nuked, then the Fighter will out-damage all the other classes, easy. So for the beer-and-pretzels types who just want to hit things, the Fighter's the best class.

The problem is that the class doesn't do anything but hit things. It would be fine as one potential fighter build, but not as the only fighter build.

WitchSlayer
2012-06-11, 04:56 AM
Oh, the Fighter isn't terrible by any means, and there are plenty of players out there who like it. The thing is, the class is really good at doing damage. If you're going up against any encounter that can't be AoE-nuked, then the Fighter will out-damage all the other classes, easy. So for the beer-and-pretzels types who just want to hit things, the Fighter's the best class.

The problem is that the class doesn't do anything but hit things. It would be fine as one potential fighter build, but not as the only fighter build.

I dunno, I've seen some maths that show, depending on the AC, a level 3 wizard will be doing about as much damage with magic missile as a level 3 fighter. Sometimes more.

obryn
2012-06-11, 10:05 AM
Great write-up, Saph.

I had considered re-running the first playtest with L3 characters to see what - if anything - was different. My impression was "not much, mostly more of the same" and it looks like that's about right.

Thanks for taking the time to do that.

-O

holywhippet
2012-06-11, 11:45 PM
Not sure if it has been mentioned, but anyone else notice the difference between kobolds in the bestiary and those on the module? The former have a 1d4-2 damage ranged attack while the latter have a 1d4+2 damage ranged attack. That's a really freaking big difference to a level 1 party. With enough kobolds lobbing daggers at you, even with cover from the front line kobolds, since they just about always have advantage on their attacks they are going to do some serious damage over time.

Thing is, the former makes sense for a weak, low level party to handle. But the latter makes sense since the rules say the damage bonus is determined by the stat used to make the attack.

DigoDragon
2012-06-12, 07:23 AM
[We're bored with the playtest, and we're going back to our Dresden Files game instead.

That was pretty much my group's conclusion.
The playtest does run quickly through the combats, but the funny thing is that my group actually doesn't like "quick" for battles. Their style is having just a hand full of fights that last many rounds, where there's time to employ longe-scale tactics.

Unfortunately the lack of AoOs have taken out one of the more interesting tactical aspects of the game. I guess we just need to see more of the edition to get a better feel of how it'll play out.

Saph
2012-06-12, 07:41 AM
Great write-up, Saph.

I had considered re-running the first playtest with L3 characters to see what - if anything - was different. My impression was "not much, mostly more of the same" and it looks like that's about right.

Thanks for taking the time to do that.

No problem, glad you liked it!


Not sure if it has been mentioned, but anyone else notice the difference between kobolds in the bestiary and those on the module?

Yeah, the kobolds are statted in at least three different ways in at least three different places. They're not the only ones either. Very confusing for the DM – in the end I just picked the one that looked closest and stuck with that.

Person_Man
2012-06-12, 08:07 AM
Caves of Chaos is boring, boring, BORING. I'm not an old-school gamer and this has been my first experience running a 1970s module, and quite frankly if all 70s adventures were like this then I'm surprised the game survived to the 80s.

In defense of old school gaming and my childhood, please keep in mind that videogames, the internet, cable television, DVR, and other games more complex then Axis and Allies didn't really exist (or were prohibitively expensive for a kid). If your options are 1st edition Dungeons and Dragons, sports, board games, or fight with your four siblings and your parents for control over which of 4 stations you will watch on TV (NBC, CBS, ABC, or PBS), then 1st ed D&D with your buddies was an amazing game.

Having said that, we now live in a world with many other options, and I'm not going to support a cruddy game out of nostalgia.


There is also another unusual result of this system, which I just realized.

Even if you say the 8 DEX character automatically loses to the 18 DEX character in a contest (despite it only being a 25% difference), things break down when you throw in a 13 DEX character. Suddenly, 18 DEX is now competing with 13 DEX and 8 DEX, and the 8 DEX character (who was previously incapable of winning) can come out the victor just by adding a third character.

Trying to limit it to "18 DEX can compete with 13 DEX but still automatically succeeds against 8 DEX" ends up producing absurd situations. If we're talking about a footrace, then you could have 18 DEX lose to 13 DEX, 13 DEX lose to 8 DEX, but 8 DEX losing to 18 DEX. Who, exactly, would be the winner in such a situation?

I agree, and posted on this problem (http://community.wizards.com/dndnext/go/thread/view/75882/29165105/ability_scores) over on the WotC feedback forum. The current ability scores do not have sufficient variance. It would make a lot more sense to have the Ability Scores provide a bonus equal to the actual ability score, and not some derived statistic.

Someone else also came up with the good idea of having the ability scores provide a bonus equal to the ability score -10, with passive Defenses/Saves equal to the ability (to cut down on the number of rolls a DM must make). Thus 18 Str vs 10 Str would be 1d20 + 8 vs 10 (95% chance of success).

Saph
2012-06-12, 09:21 AM
In defense of old school gaming and my childhood, please keep in mind that videogames, the internet, cable television, DVR, and other games more complex then Axis and Allies didn't really exist (or were prohibitively expensive for a kid). If your options are 1st edition Dungeons and Dragons, sports, board games, or fight with your four siblings and your parents for control over which of 4 stations you will watch on TV (NBC, CBS, ABC, or PBS), then 1st ed D&D with your buddies was an amazing game.

Fair point. We did really enjoy both sessions, so obviously it's possible to have fun with old-school combat-heavy modules. It just feels a bit weird to have nothing but sequential encounters with monstrous humanoids.

One thing that's occurred to me – if Caves of Chaos has been the standard playtest module for D&D, it explains a LOT about D&D's combat balance. D&D has tended to balance encounters around the assumption that a party will have a very high amount of combat encounters per day, generally 4. In more consistent settings this is weird – how realistic is it that you'll get into 4 separate life-or-death combats in 24 hours? But if you assume that every adventure is going to be like Caves of Chaos, then it makes sense.

The trouble is, this then breaks down when you start doing adventures which don't contain an enormous number of bloodthirsty monsters divided into spaced-out groups.

Zombimode
2012-06-12, 09:31 AM
Caves of Chaos has been the standard playtest module for D&D

*raaaaaage*
Sorry, I know its just a random nitpick but people in this and the other thread constantly get it wrong: Caves of Chaos is not the name of a module, dammit!
The module is called "Keep on the Borderlands", the dungeon featured in this module is called "The Caves of Chaos".
:smallwink:

Flawless
2012-06-12, 09:47 AM
Wizards use Vancian casting.

:D Now I wonder what will happen to Faerûn after the spell plague purged vancian casting there?

Nyes the Dark
2012-06-12, 04:38 PM
Our group recently (read: 5 minutes ago) got a chance to try out 5th Edition/Next. I played the Wizard, and we conveniently had exactly 5 people, one for each class. We just did a basic run with a basic objective, clear out the monsters. We went for the Kobolds (Cave A) and killed the outside guards. We went in,fought the rat swarm, killed the elites, and ended off (we've got a 2-hour time limit due to location) fighting the entire 40-kobold room with our rogue downed. We got 1975 XP in total.


Characters:
I enjoyed playing the Wizard. I found, however, that I was always using Magic Missile. Why make an attack roll when you auto-hit and one-hit kill? Plus, it was the only ranged damaging Cantrip. More due to circumstances than anything else, though Shocking Grasp would've been nice a couple times. I used up all three of my 1st levels (2 Burning Hands and a Sleep) at a terrible time, but that was moreso due to inexperience than a flaw with the class. I definitely liked it, and I found the lore powers very useful.

Our Fighter was effective. He survived quite well, and he killed everything easily with Slayer, which seems like a really good power, since he was guaranteed at least 3 Damage, which killed Rats and Kobolds in one shot.

Since the Moradin cleric has 18 AC, he never got hit. This was good. Defender wasn't too broken, but it was very powerful, since usually at least one dice rolls low. Healing Word was used once, as was that power which gives
+1d6 damage. He was great.

Pelor Cleric was interesting, but good. He did decent damage (enough to kill stuff, at least) and had Cure Light Wounds, which he had to use twice. Definitely a laser cleric, but not bad.

My one character issue was the Rogue, since he didn't do a whole lot. He killed stuff, but not as easily as anyone else. He didn't do well at checks, and he got KOed twice. It just seems like he was kind of ineffective.

Other:
The battles went quickly and easily (3 and 1/2 fights in 2 hours? Quick by our standards!). The enemies provided a good amount of challenge, but weren't too lethal. Apparently our DM didn't read everything exactly or something, because we didn't get Hit Dice as a healing power like the front page says, nor did I ever get Disrupted.

I think, from what we did, it went very well. I liked it a lot, and it was a lot of fun.

holywhippet
2012-06-12, 05:24 PM
Well, our party consisted of the fighter, cleric of Pelor, rogue and wizard. Picking at random we first started out at the orc cave entrance. In the first round of combat the orcs took the fighter to negative HP - he didn't even get a chance to attack.

We managed to take some of them out but finally ended up running (the DM allowed us, even though the halfling technically couldn't have outrun them).

So with a replacement fighter we then set out for the kobold caves (after the DM gave us a hint). We took out the initial lot, killed the rats using deployed oil then got into a brawl with the kobolds coming down the hallway. Two problems were against us at this point a) the DM didn't realize, until I pointed it out, that their ranged attacks would have a -2 penalty because they had allies in the way (he thought allies didn't provide cover). b) the module said they do 1d4+2 damage with their daggers.

As a result, we took a fair number out but they eventually took out the fighter and wizard so the rogue and cleric had to run again. Note with the fighter though, because he does 3 damage even on a miss - that means every round he is going to kill a kobold provided it isn't an elite. That's kind of dull since he doesn't even need to bother rolling. It's also a problem since their chieftain can call in a replacement kobold each round.

Our DM levelled us up to level 2 at this point so back to the kobold tunnels we went. They'd pile up the dead bodies as a barricade. Almost as a whim I told the DM I was searching it for traps. Doing so revealed two sentries peering through the holes. The wizard magic missiled one and we pushed over the wall and took out the other.

The kobolds we all gathered into a big room. We had a plan involving throwing in the oil flasks we'd bought in town. But the wizard managed to take all of the kobolds (except their chieftain) out with a sleep spell (the DM only rolled 4 saves for each quadrant of the room. The chieftain didn't last long with the fighter and rogue flanking him.

Small note - by RAW there was probably more money to be made from selling the kobold equipment than there was from the regular loot.

We then went back to the orc lair (we'd been upped to level 3 by the DM). Knowing about their spyhole we silenced and blasted the orc on watch then took it and it's buddies out without them raising the alarm. For the orcs in the common room we deployed grease then the cleric used sunburst to kill just about all of them. The remainder didn't last long.

IMO the fighter has too low an AC - it's equal to the rogue who is not supposed to be a front line fighter. The rogue comes with a dagger for a melee weapon for some bizarre reason. Quarterstaffs are cheaper, do more damage and are also finesse weapons. Being two handed isn't a problem since the rogue doesn't use a shield. Spell casters are glass cannons - the correct use of spells can be very effective. But when they run out they aren't much use. It didn't help that the module was set up so you just about had to engage an entire part of the dungeon once you'd entered - attrition will set in sooner or later.

Madara
2012-07-09, 10:59 AM
This weekend(yesterday, to be more precise), while at a convention, I had the privilege to play test 5e with a Wizards of the Coast rep.

Our game included:
1. A village with too much cheese
2. One wizard (me) managing to cast "fireball" at level 1
3. The elves getting to try this so-called "bread" the humans speak of
4. Crowning Moments of awesome, including jumping off the bridge into an Ooze to use shocking hands on it from the inside. Luckily it cushioned my fall, and I managed not to get electrocuted.
5. The Dwarven fighter was a master trap-finder
6. The priestess obviously did it.
7. "I was an Elf scout, and I got my Tree Badge in Bird Calls"
8. "Wait. You have 18 AC? That's pretty high..."- The Wizard Rep GM obviously having difficulty killing us.
9. Our rogue becoming a "Cleric"
10. And according to the Wizards of the Coast rep, acting in her full authority, I won D&D.

Overall, I had to say it felt right to me. Cheese is underpowered though, she needs to get on that :smallwink:

Skill mastery was very effective when you use your skills a lot. I would see builds taking a rogue dip for Skill Mastery since it applies to all the skills you have trained in.

One problem, maybe just because of the pre-made sheets, but it seemed that ranged combat was very limited. For example, the Rogue doesn't have a ranged weapon, so if the enemies are shooting at us and she needs to attack them, there is nothing the Rogue could do. Our rogue tried to spam the hide skill so as to get Advantage repeatedly, but found the Sneak Attack Damage doesn't seem as useful.

Response to the above

Spell casters are glass cannons - the correct use of spells can be very effective. But when they run out they aren't much use. It didn't help that the module was set up so you just about had to engage an entire part of the dungeon once you'd entered - attrition will set in sooner or later.
They don't run out. They can cast minor spells an infinite amount of times each day.

tommhans
2013-03-21, 03:49 AM
So far i find 5e more fast paced, more skill based and more stripped down(but guess that is because its a beta and not everything is in it yet)

Our group has a elf cleric that heals, a dwarf monk, a pretty low stat wizard which doesnt do that much good yet cept almost dying(same with the monk, he makes everytinh personal and almost managed to die 3 times last session, one time by almost hanging himself by a mistake) we also have a dwarf barbarian and me a human fighter. With only 17 in ac i am vulnerable to attacks as the groups tank but i do a lot of damage, i love the maneuver system its brilliant! just gotta love this martial dice system, makes a lot of tactics and i have to sometimes save the dice ^^

Our dm is cool, first time he is DMing, but he has a great story so far and so far its a very enjoyable quest, where one guy is allready scared to his pants by monkeys for some reasons, so the Dm is gonna play on that today he told me, so its gonna be exciting :D

I do feel some of the maneuvers can be overpowered, the whirlwind is just insane if you have f.eks a maul or a sword that does good damage and you use it f.eks twice or three times if your that level.

I like how the AC isnt insane like in 4e where one in our group (the guy that is now dm) had 26 in ac, he basically couldnt be hit, wasnt even fun anymore then :o

Kurald Galain
2013-03-21, 04:42 AM
i love the maneuver system its brilliant! just gotta love this martial dice system, makes a lot of tactics and i have to sometimes save the dice ^^

This is a good point. The maneuver system from two or three playtests ago is pretty interesting. Unfortunately they took it out :smallmad:

tommhans
2013-03-21, 05:08 AM
This is a good point. The maneuver system from two or three playtests ago is pretty interesting. Unfortunately they took it out :smallmad:

what :o damn, didnt know there was a new version out allready, not gonna play that this session though as there is to much to change for everyone, but i guess next session, but didnt look to bad those things the fighter had now either, nor the other stuff i quickly glanced at, but im at work so its limited how much time i will use on looking over that hehe :p

tommhans
2013-03-30, 07:07 AM
I have a question regarding cleric healing, is he supposed to throw a dc check or concentration check when he casts those spells? it feels wrong that he can magically hit every healing, it really takes some fun out of it when he can just stand half a city from you and still heal you(exaggerated but yes thats how it feels like)

the way we do it now is that he has to hit over 10 to hit, as thats just what the dm came up with.

also got a question regarding deadly strike, do we spend an expert dice roll on it or is it just like that every round? :p feels overpowered :p

Jiminimonka
2013-06-14, 11:50 AM
How was I condescending?

Your assertion that my statement is a fallacy is simply not true. You will always have more options if you are not constrained by the rules, than if you have to have every option included in the rules. Yes, you need to have a DM who understands this, and your play experience will vary depending on the DM. There's no way around that, and some people obviously don't like that. It's a different mindset.

However, being able to have your character do things that are outside the rules, and having a DM to adjudicate them so as not to automatically be auto-fails, is the one thing tabletop rpg's have going over video games in my opinion (aside from the social aspect). If the rules are going to cover every single action, you start to approach the point where a DM is no longer neccessary, and at that point, why not play a video game instead?

For this very reason I have got back into D&D after playing video games for 20 years, they are just too restricted no matter what the game makers promise. D&D is ALL about imagination, you can play it with very few rules and the DM just needs to be able to keep the game moving.

Complicated rules slow down the game and restrict the imagination of the players, it also supports "rules lawyers" who quote pages from books and slow and hinder the game even more. Less is more makes a ton of sense in D&D, and I like the way D&D Next is going.

Also, in D&D with no miniatures, just a piece of graph paper and a set of dice, even if you have the very latest game with the best graphics card available... "the pictures are better" in D&D.