Just got around to looking at the latest UA

[Spectre9000]

Are they just trolling us now? It was bad enough they cut down to once a month, but they haven't released anything substantial that could see real play in months now. I can't believe they've run out of ideas. 3.5, Pathfinder, and all the Homebrew material should be more than enough to draw new ideas from.

[Easy_Lee]

If I'm being open minded, I would assume they're working on D&D Beyond right now. Whatever team they dedicated to that is not doing UA with that time, and I doubt they hired a team of contractors to do Beyond without any internal management.

[Spectre9000]

If I'm being open minded, I would assume they're working on D&D Beyond right now. Whatever team they dedicated to that is not doing UA with that time, and I doubt they hired a team of contractors to do Beyond without any internal management.

I don't see what the hype is about D&D Beyond... I have no interest in ever using it. Partly due to just not seeing a need for it, but mainly because it requires I have a twitch account to sign up. Who thought that was a good idea? Roll20 is beyond adequate for online D&D gaming and I use it every week.

[Easy_Lee]

I don't see what the hype is about D&D Beyond... I have no interest in ever using it. Partly due to just not seeing a need for it, but mainly because it requires I have a twitch account to sign up. Who thought that was a good idea? Roll20 is beyond adequate for online D&D gaming and I use it every week.

I haven't seen any hype. It seems as though WotC dropped the ball with beyond. It could have been cool, but sadly isn't due to required Twitch integration, ads, and having to purchase materials twice.

[Anonymouswizard]

If I'm being open minded, I would assume they're working on D&D Beyond right now. Whatever team they dedicated to that is not doing UA with that time, and I doubt they hired a team of contractors to do Beyond without any internal management.

You're kinder than I am. I assumed it was to lower our expectations so that we won't react negatively to anything in XGtE (joke's on them, I'm not buying the book until they release official pdfs). We might complain about how bad 'detailed exploration for unimaginative people' is, but we'll still be saying 'at least it isn't greyhawk experience or three pillars initiative'.

Plus don't remind me of beyond. That character creation program disguised as a pdf replacement *shudders*.

[Finieous]

Are they just trolling us now? It was bad enough they cut down to once a month, but they haven't released anything substantial that could see real play in months now.


It's free content for you to playtest and provide feedback on if you want. It's not a magazine for which you paid a subscription. What makes you feel entitled to a certain quantity and quality of this material?



I can't believe they've run out of ideas. 3.5, Pathfinder, and all the Homebrew material should be more than enough to draw new ideas from.

Perhaps they're specifically trying not to emulate the profusion of 3.5, Pathfinder and Homebrew material with their official content. Maybe they got what they needed for their expansion book, and the volume of new playtest material will decline now. Maybe they're just busy with a big new release coming up and the convention season underway.

You must really like playtesting to get upset about the amount of playtest material being released!

[jaappleton]

For clarity:

They went back to once a month. That's what it was before.

[Gorgo]

One theory is that they've finalized the content of XGtE and don't want to release anything significant until that book ships in November and resets what's official content and what's experimental.

[Maxilian]

I like to think that they are play testing some of the XGtE material just to make sure it comes out as balanced as they can.

[Beelzebubba]

Are they just trolling us now? It was bad enough they cut down to once a month, but they haven't released anything substantial that could see real play in months now. I can't believe they've run out of ideas. 3.5, Pathfinder, and all the Homebrew material should be more than enough to draw new ideas from.

If you just want ideas, there is literally 40 years of D&D material to draw upon.

There is no reason to put that kind of pressure on the current team.

[Kite474]

If you just want ideas, there is literally 40 years of D&D material to draw upon.

There is no reason to put that kind of pressure on the current team.

Yeah "pressure" im sure the team is utterly busy working on a system everyone stopped caring about when they announced prices, a book in which the community did all the hard work, or maybe another adventure that takes all the good parts from a previous one that no one except the really old folks remembers.


Look I want to be on Wizards side. But unless you somehow cant get enough of adventures then they have basically told you to scram and things like the new XP system and initiative do not inspire confidence.

[Finieous]

a book in which the community did all the hard work

Wow, what book is this? I know I'm a slacker, but I haven't done ****!

[Anonymouswizard]

Just for fun, lists of UA I'd like to see.
-Planescape, random tieflings, outlines for portals, advanced planar adventuring.
-Mystic v4.
-Dark Sun, defiling, elemental clerics, psionic subclasses for most core classes.
-Spelljamming rules, I'd never use them but it would be cool for Spelljammer fans.
-A bunch of new races. Don't really care what.
-More feats, maybe in the theme of backgrounds.
-Detailed outdoor adventuring rules.

I know it's insanely player focused, but it gives the idea of what I want, crunchy stuff that adds instead of replaces.

[Kite474]

Just for fun, lists of UA I'd like to see.
-Planescape, random tieflings, outlines for portals, advanced planar adventuring.
-Mystic v4.
-Dark Sun, defiling, elemental clerics, psionic subclasses for most core classes.
-Spelljamming rules, I'd never use them but it would be cool for Spelljammer fans.
-A bunch of new races. Don't really care what.
-More feats, maybe in the theme of backgrounds.
-Detailed outdoor adventuring rules.

I know it's insanely player focused, but it gives the idea of what I want, crunchy stuff that adds instead of replaces.

I doubt we will get 1,3, and 4 anytime soon. Mainly because Wizards seems to stay as far away from other settings unless they can be conected to The Realms

In terms of races well get the rest of the FR hogepoge

For outdoor rules I have no idea. Wizards could do with it though considering how much they want to support "Three Pillars" but only support combat.

Background ish feats we kind of got with the skill feats

Mystic will probably get published before a V4

[Tetrasodium]

Just for fun, lists of UA I'd like to see.
-Planescape, random tieflings, outlines for portals, advanced planar adventuring.
-Mystic v4.
-Dark Sun, defiling, elemental clerics, psionic subclasses for most core classes.
-Spelljamming rules, I'd never use them but it would be cool for Spelljammer fans.
-A bunch of new races. Don't really care what.
-More feats, maybe in the theme of backgrounds.
-Detailed outdoor adventuring rules.

I know it's insanely player focused, but it gives the idea of what I want, crunchy stuff that adds instead of replaces.


I want some proper eberron books for 5e, but warforged/shifter/changelingartificer/etc that are actually good enough to play & are eberron themed would be a nice start. I'm tired of my players needing to say things like "shifter/warforged is beyond awful but I really want to play one, can I use $race & we just say it's a shifter/warforged?"

[MaxWilson]

Are they just trolling us now? It was bad enough they cut down to once a month, but they haven't released anything substantial that could see real play in months now. I can't believe they've run out of ideas. 3.5, Pathfinder, and all the Homebrew material should be more than enough to draw new ideas from.

Are you kidding? The recent UA isn't perfect, but exploring actual rules variants is exactly what UA should be--not just subclass bloat. It's nice to see Mearls put on his designer's hat and do stuff like this UA.

Leave the subclass bloat to the 3PP publishers and DM's Guild.

[Foxhound438]

One theory is that they've finalized the content of XGtE and don't want to release anything significant until that book ships in November and resets what's official content and what's experimental.

That's my bet. Probably more work on Mystic and Artificier after Xan's guide, and maybe some more classes as well. Think PHB2.

But in the mean time there are a lot of non-class related things that Unearthed Arcana can flesh out, like:

-crafting (even though we've had one, it was so vague it's basically worthless)
-falling speed per round without busting out the differential equations book
-more disease effects
-clarifying what's "magical" and what's not, so to make it clear what does and doesn't work in an anti-magic field (PF's ex, su, ma system worked well)
-character backstory guides... I know, this seems like something you shouldn't ever need, but god damn if my playgroup couldn't use some help developing a "character" to go with their "build"
-rules on choking, arm bars, and other ways to make grappling a viable plan of attack
-object statistics, and not the crappy generic stats based exclusively on size like in the DMG.
-situational bonuses+penalties that aren't just advantage or disadvantage. Something like a +2 to attacks for having high ground, or +1 when attacking a grappled target

Granted, I could generate all of those things myself and implement them in my own games, but I don't expect anything I come up with to be implemented by other DM's in my group. If it's WOTC content, it would at least be something that I could reference when a situation that a game I'm in brings doubt as to what should happen. Choking an enemy to unconsciousness has for certain come up in multiple campaigns that I've been in with new players, every time resulting in "there's not rules on that so you can't do it".

[MaxWilson]

That's my bet. Probably more work on Mystic and Artificier after Xan's guide, and maybe some more classes as well. Think PHB2.

But in the mean time there are a lot of non-class related things that Unearthed Arcana can flesh out, like:

-crafting (even though we've had one, it was so vague it's basically worthless)
-falling speed per round without busting out the differential equations book
-more disease effects
-clarifying what's "magical" and what's not, so to make it clear what does and doesn't work in an anti-magic field (PF's ex, su, ma system worked well)
-character backstory guides... I know, this seems like something you shouldn't ever need, but god damn if my playgroup couldn't use some help developing a "character" to go with their "build"
-rules on choking, arm bars, and other ways to make grappling a viable plan of attack
-object statistics, and not the crappy generic stats based exclusively on size like in the DMG.
-situational bonuses+penalties that aren't just advantage or disadvantage. Something like a +2 to attacks for having high ground, or +1 when attacking a grappled target

Granted, I could generate all of those things myself and implement them in my own games, but I don't expect anything I come up with to be implemented by other DM's in my group. If it's WOTC content, it would at least be something that I could reference when a situation that a game I'm in brings doubt as to what should happen. Choking an enemy to unconsciousness has for certain come up in multiple campaigns that I've been in with new players, every time resulting in "there's not rules on that so you can't do it".

+1, all of these are excellent ideas.

[Jama7301]

Alternate grapple rules would be incredibly fun.

[Zalabim]

a book in which the community did all the hard work,
Even if they printed a book consisting solely of direct quotes taken from various forum suggestions, it would still be hard work collecting the good ideas through all the internet noise and presenting them with an appealing layout instead of just grabbing whatever's popular and throwing it in a book.

That's my bet. Probably more work on Mystic and Artificier after Xan's guide, and maybe some more classes as well. Think PHB2.

But in the mean time there are a lot of non-class related things that Unearthed Arcana can flesh out, like:

-crafting (even though we've had one, it was so vague it's basically worthless)
-falling speed per round without busting out the differential equations book
-more disease effects
-clarifying what's "magical" and what's not, so to make it clear what does and doesn't work in an anti-magic field (PF's ex, su, ma system worked well)
-character backstory guides... I know, this seems like something you shouldn't ever need, but god damn if my playgroup couldn't use some help developing a "character" to go with their "build"
-rules on choking, arm bars, and other ways to make grappling a viable plan of attack
-object statistics, and not the crappy generic stats based exclusively on size like in the DMG.
-situational bonuses+penalties that aren't just advantage or disadvantage. Something like a +2 to attacks for having high ground, or +1 when attacking a grappled target

Granted, I could generate all of those things myself and implement them in my own games, but I don't expect anything I come up with to be implemented by other DM's in my group. If it's WOTC content, it would at least be something that I could reference when a situation that a game I'm in brings doubt as to what should happen. Choking an enemy to unconsciousness has for certain come up in multiple campaigns that I've been in with new players, every time resulting in "there's not rules on that so you can't do it".


+1, all of these are excellent ideas.

Like this. -1, those aren't all good ideas: Crafting might be book-worthy already after the last round of feedback; falling speed per round is too minor for a UA; disease and disease-likes have some room to grow; defining what's non-magical would be huge, messy, and necessarily incomplete (while they already do define what is magical, which should be sufficient); someone actually wrote a really neat "previous adventures for characters starting at higher levels" pdf which is real fun so I'd have to +2 this one (to make up for my global -1); if I see a repeat of AD&D's unarmed combat table I might choke someone myself; expanded object statistics would go well with weapon and armor degradation for the Dark Sun setting though that may not be what you had in mind; and more minor combat bonuses would best be delivered as pretty much what you already wrote (just say, "you can do that").

So numbering them 1-8:
1, 3, 5, 6, 7 and 8 could fill a UA, but 1 already has, and 6 and 8 probably shouldn't. If a player wants to choke someone to death with their bare hands, you probably shouldn't have forced them to use that new initiative variant I'm inclined to call that unarmed strikes while grappling.

Sorry for making an example out of you. Agreeing on 3 or 4 out of 8 is actually pretty good.

[Anonymouswizard]

I doubt we will get 1,3, and 4 anytime soon. Mainly because Wizards seems to stay as far away from other settings unless they can be conected to The Realms

In terms of races well get the rest of the FR hogepoge

For outdoor rules I have no idea. Wizards could do with it though considering how much they want to support "Three Pillars" but only support combat.

Background ish feats we kind of got with the skill feats

Mystic will probably get published before a V4

Sure, it was more a list of example stuff I'd be more than happy with.

But can someone please inform WotC that, while there are many people who like the Remembered Realms, there's also people who dislike them and prefer other settings. I'm not annoyed at the support the FR are getting, it's good they're supporting one of their flagship settings, I just wish they'd also pump out some support for other settings. Even if it's just an unofficial UA of decent rules.


I want some proper eberron books for 5e, but warforged/shifter/changelingartificer/etc that are actually good enough to play & are eberron themed would be a nice start. I'm tired of my players needing to say things like "shifter/warforged is beyond awful but I really want to play one, can I use $race & we just say it's a shifter/warforged?"

Sure, and if they don't want to publish these books and won't open DMsGuild, UA is the place to put the rules stuff. As I said, Forgotten Realms isn't annoying, only FR is annoying.

[McNinja]

If I'm being open minded, I would assume they're working on D&D Beyond right now. Whatever team they dedicated to that is not doing UA with that time, and I doubt they hired a team of contractors to do Beyond without any internal management.
Beyond is being developed by Curse, not WotC. The only influence WotC has on beyond is the pricing, that's it. Curse has a license to use the D&D IP, so jeremy crawford, mike mearls, etc, have literally no input on what happens with DDB.

[McNinja]

I haven't seen any hype. It seems as though WotC dropped the ball with beyond. It could have been cool, but sadly isn't due to required Twitch integration, ads, and having to purchase materials twice.
WotC didn't drop anything except the foreknowledge to release official PDFs.

Beyond is developed by Curse, which is owned by Twitch.tv. That's why there's twitch integration, because using twitch's login system is infinitely easier than creating your own from scratch.

WotC allows Curse to use their IP and has say in the pricing of the books. That's all.

[EvilAnagram]

a book in which the community did all the hard work,

Oh, child, I know you feel that whiteboard theorycrafting and posting half-formed "fixes" on forums is the "hard work," but a hell of a lot more hoes into writing a book than that.

[Theodoxus]

It doesn't seem like it would be too difficult for the community to do most of these suggestions. Unless you're really only wanting the WotC seal of approval...

There are a lot of good DMs who've already converted a ton of 3.P modules and adventure paths to 5th Ed. 3.P is really easy to convert (it's less conversion and more direct import with slight corrections). I don't see why 2nd Ed material - Darksun, for instance, would be much harder. Converting the psionics would be a little messy, since it would be an entirely new mechanic, and 2nd Ed psionics were pretty horrid... But there's no reason elemental clerics, muls, half-giants, defiler and preserver magic, etc couldn't be incorporated with minor tweaks into the 5E framework.

Google 5E crafting, there's a crapton of options from the simple to the wholly complex and everything in between...

And then there's DM Guild... which I'm not a fan of, the price points are all over the place and the quality is damn near impossible to ascertain without buying the stuff (something I'm loathe to do). But the community at least has a place to consolidate their ideas and are kinda sanctioned by WotC, if that's the primary concern.

Really though, it just sounds like most of you want someone else to do the work, so you can use it or poopoo it all...

[Tanarii]

Are you kidding? The recent UA isn't perfect, but exploring actual rules variants is exactly what UA should be--not just subclass bloat. It's nice to see Mearls put on his designer's hat and do stuff like this UA.

Leave the subclass bloat to the 3PP publishers and DM's Guild.
Exactly my feelings. UA is actually going in a useful direction.

Not as useful as the average Angry DM article. But we can't expect Mearls to hold himself to a gold standard any time soon, given his history.

[Anonymouswizard]

Exactly my feelings. UA is actually going in a useful direction.

Not as useful as the average Angry DM article. But we can't expect Mearls to hold himself to a gold standard any time soon, given his history.

I think we should agree to disagree, I find Angry to be about the copper standard while Mearls doesn't even get into coinage. This is of course just opinion, I like different types of games to Angry but in his nonangry moments he's actually written well and I can see where he's coming from.

These last two seem poorly thought out, like Mearls didn't fully develop them fully and shoved them out the door as quickly as possible. This is unfair for Greyhawk Initiative, he did develop that and with a lot of tweaking it could be good, but TPE sets level 20 at the low low price of 950 rats (assuming rats are never counted at 5XP per kill). Even if you ignore that problem (most people won't kill 950 rats fast enough for it to matter) you can level up at least once an evening from talking to people at the royal ball.

Oh, and it's feasible to go from level 1 to level 20 by having two rogues in the party. Get a valuable item and just have them steal it from each other until you hit the level cap, it's 100% legitimate. I don't know why people say Wizards are the best at getting the party XP under the system.

[DanyBallon]

I think we should agree to disagree, I find Angry to be about the copper standard while Mearls doesn't even get into coinage. This is of course just opinion, I like different types of games to Angry but in his nonangry moments he's actually written well and I can see where he's coming from.

These last two seem poorly thought out, like Mearls didn't fully develop them fully and shoved them out the door as quickly as possible. This is unfair for Greyhawk Initiative, he did develop that and with a lot of tweaking it could be good, but TPE sets level 20 at the low low price of 950 rats (assuming rats are never counted at 5XP per kill). Even if you ignore that problem (most people won't kill 950 rats fast enough for it to matter) you can level up at least once an evening from talking to people at the royal ball.

Oh, and it's feasible to go from level 1 to level 20 by having two rogues in the party. Get a valuable item and just have them steal it from each other until you hit the level cap, it's 100% legitimate. I don't know why people say Wizards are the best at getting the party XP under the system.

You realize that no sane DM would allow for such shenanigans as you talk about? Also that no game is designed to prevent such abuse? It may work for theorycrafting, but we are not playing theoretical game, we are playing a game with other humans that wants to have fun and will point out that such tricks, while feasible, are not fun at all to pull in a game.

Three Pillar Experience and Greyhawk Initiative are both alternate system that are worth to read. They are flawed, and highly perfectible, but at least they offer an interesting twist on initiative and experience, and may help new ideas to emerge. That's the whole point of UA articles.

[Tanarii]

These last two seem poorly thought out, like Mearls didn't fully develop them fully and shoved them out the door as quickly as possible.
Agreed. What I meant is thinking about these things, as opposed to subclass bloat, or worse, new classes, spells, or feats, is a vast improvement. All of those things I consider either generally unnecessary, or actively harmful to the game. Ways to improve running the game are helpful and useful, so I like that they're thinking in those terms.

[Jama7301]

Even if the UA is Bad, it at least lets people think about ways they'd implement their own version of whatever it was. After Greyhawk Initiative, there was a rush of people posting potential fixes, or their own Initiative rules. In the past week, we've seen an influx of people discussing XP distribution methods. I feel like the rules ones prompt more of this sort of discussion, compared to the subclass and feat UAs.

[Zorku]

Are you kidding? The recent UA isn't perfect, but exploring actual rules variants is exactly what UA should be--not just subclass bloat. It's nice to see Mearls put on his designer's hat and do stuff like this UA.

Leave the subclass bloat to the 3PP publishers and DM's Guild.
I think the big problem people have with this UA becomes apparent when you reduce it to bullet points.


Level up at 100 xp
Don't divide between players, but divide in half for 6+ players.
Exploration: Finding something is worth 10xp
Social: Converting someone into an ally or denying them to an enemy is worth 10xp
Combat: Solo mobs are worth 5xp, group mobs are worth 2
These rewards double/triple for tasks that were above your pay grade
If you take 33% of the pie away make the remaining slices grow to 50% each.


I'm struggling to find a way to do this with more bullet points, but I just can't bring myself to count the tiers break down in each category. Even if I do it's just

town, 100g
city/kingdom, 1000g
kingdom/continent, 5000g
world/planes, 50000g

And +/- 2CR from character level, none of which isn't already basically said in the opening chapter of the PHB and the items section of the DMG.

If you look at something like feats for races (which wasn't really the kind of thing that caught my eye,) you've got 27 little entries that save various things about the standard races from the PHB, even if they're just a +1 to a stat and some skill proficiencies. It's also 4 pages long, but if we just cut it in half that's 13 elements to the 7(11) bullet points I could wring out of 3 pillars. Because these are feats they don't really have to remove an old system and justify why you would want to do so, and they basically just present themselves in a compact way.

I only even read 2 pages of the way into the downtime UA before I had reason to compare it to other material, but the bullet points are roughly

This going from level 1 to 20 in less than a month situation is kind of silly, so there should be some downtime between exciting adventures
It would be boring and sucky to just announce that you spend a week making chairs, so throw in complications to make this worth paying closer attention to.
It's hard to live in town/the city without stepping on some toes, so you should also have rivals/social-opponents.
13 entries for general activities to engage in (Consider each as its own bullet point as with the feats.)

This one is way less dense but it also spans 13.1 pages with a bunch of tables and 1d6 roll charts that tie back into the other bullet points, and the whole thing is kind of bloated with the text that explains why we're doing any of this like the 3 pillars had, but this is excusable for length. I could probably expand on the social opponent bullet point since they needed 7 headers and 2 examples before the idea was sufficiently conveyed.

The bullet points method I've used here doesn't really reflect how many mathematical equations the UA taps into. I don't think that's actually a great way to measure the quality of UA material, but it does seem to be partially responsible for the response UA articles get (and is the sort of thing I think of when I talk about complexity, though greyhawk initiative made it clear that other people mean something very different when they use that term.)

So, looking at these, 3 pillars feels like it should have devoted the same 2 pages to basic 3 pillar xp, and then had 3 more pages for tracking xp in a more involved way, or even just padded for length with fictional excerpts of play. "Alright, you made your way to the clearing with the step pyramid and found the secret entrance into the sacrificial altar, then talked the snake cult's high priest out of sacrificing the blacksmith's daughter. Everyone mark 20xp," except that they write that in 3 paragraphs and act like it needs to be that long.

When so few bullet points give you the entire idea (not so much something I pulled off in my summary of the other two articles,) and nobody bothered to fill the thing with game play prose, it comes off like they aren't even acknowledging that it's supposed to look like they worked on this. Maybe they actually tried to write seven different articles that were all terrible and finally posted this because it at least made sense, but we can't see any of that so we just assume that somebody scrawled this on the back of a napkin and told an intern to make it into two pages, then had the editor do two quick passes over it. This looks like a violation of trust, and also like a lack of respect (I mean that in a reductionist kind of way. These words are more about the quality than the magnitude of said behavior.)


I can agree that this is the kind of thing I want the devs to explore, but there's nothing in this to convince me that they explored alternative experience systems.

[Anonymouswizard]

You realize that no sane DM would allow for such shenanigans as you talk about? Also that no game is designed to prevent such abuse? It may work for theorycrafting, but we are not playing theoretical game, we are playing a game with other humans that wants to have fun and will point out that such tricks, while feasible, are not fun at all to pull in a game.

Three Pillar Experience and Greyhawk Initiative are both alternate system that are worth to read. They are flawed, and highly perfectible, but at least they offer an interesting twist on initiative and experience, and may help new ideas to emerge. That's the whole point of UA articles.

Just because the GM can fix it doesn't mean it isn't a problem. A competent designer would have had someone else look at this, and once the rat or two thieves loopholes were noticed closed them.

Also, these extremes won't come up in a game, but others will. Let's imagine a bandit camp, 100 bandits plus like 5 leader folk to keep it simple. In theory by convincing the leaders to ally with me I get 1050XP, enough to gain ten levels. If it's a smaller group, say 50 bandits, it's even possible the party can convince all the lesser bandits to leave individually, boom five levels. This is a situation that could come up easily and breaks the system in two.

Or you can level up by accident because you turned 10 people into allies while trying to find the inn. We come up with these extreme cases to show that it's not hard for the system to break down.


Agreed. What I meant is thinking about these things, as opposed to subclass bloat, or worse, new classes, spells, or feats, is a vast improvement. All of those things I consider either generally unnecessary, or actively harmful to the game. Ways to improve running the game are helpful and useful, so I like that they're thinking in those terms.

That's fine, I don't really care either way. I mean it costs me nothing, I'll just ignore what I don't like.

[DanyBallon]

Just because the GM can fix it doesn't mean it isn't a problem. A competent designer would have had someone else look at this, and once the rat or two thieves loopholes were noticed closed them.

Also, these extremes won't come up in a game, but others will. Let's imagine a bandit camp, 100 bandits plus like 5 leader folk to keep it simple. In theory by convincing the leaders to ally with me I get 1050XP, enough to gain ten levels. If it's a smaller group, say 50 bandits, it's even possible the party can convince all the lesser bandits to leave individually, boom five levels. This is a situation that could come up easily and breaks the system in two.

Or you can level up by accident because you turned 10 people into allies while trying to find the inn. We come up with these extreme cases to show that it's not hard for the system to break down.



That's fine, I don't really care either way. I mean it costs me nothing, I'll just ignore what I don't like.


Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to focus too much on the actual mechanics proposed in the UA, than on the concept, which is the reason why UA are released. UA are not new material ready to use or to be playtested as is, but conceptual ideas to take the game in different direction, or that offer a different view on existing mechanics. As long as you get the general idea, and begin to think on your own way to make it happen, then the UA was a success. The presented mechanics, are just an example for you to have a base of discussion with your friends, or over the internet.

[KorvinStarmast]

If I may.

-falling speed per round without busting out the differential equations book

No need. Don't need to be that simulationist.

-more disease effects

Maybe. Perhaps in the next release?

-clarifying what's "magical" and what's not, so to make it clear what does and doesn't work in an anti-magic field (PF's ex, su, ma system worked well)

Be specific? I don't have a hard time with that, though I understand where some reading and re-reading of the rules is sometimes required. Clarity was not the strongest point in some of the editing decisions.

-character backstory guides... I know, this seems like something you shouldn't ever need, but god damn if my playgroup couldn't use some help developing a "character" to go with their "build"

They need a DM to engage with them during character creation. Character creation is up to the character's player. Heck, even in my group of veterans of this and many other games, we vary from me writing five page backgrounds and my friend (J) who uses about three paragraphs when he's feeling overly verbose. Usually a paragraph suffices. And in between. Nurture and coach, if you are the DM, or a fellow player. More stuff in a book won't inspire spontaneous creative writing. Personal interaction and idea sharing? Yeah.

- rules on choking, arm bars, and other ways to make grappling a viable plan of attack

Nope, too granular, they aren't trying to be that simulationist. There are game systems that do that, and they can be very cool.

- object statistics, and not the crappy generic stats based exclusively on size like in the DMG.

Examples? Not sure what the complaint is.

- situational bonuses+penalties that aren't just advantage or disadvantage. Something like a +2 to attacks for having high ground, or +1 when attacking a grappled target

No, it was a deliberate design decision to not do that. Too fiddly. Adv/Dis for most adjustments.

=====================

While I appreciate your putting your ideas down, I disagree that most of those need any attention, and some are very much not what is needed in this attempt at a less clunky edition.

Think: Low Barrier To Entry, less book keeping, but ... the stuff that really makes stuff weird is of course magic, so you really need to dig into it to see what makes it tick. Look at how much of the PHB is devoted to just spells.

It's like putting in golf: easy to learn, hard to master. I think that was the idea behind D&D 5e. Introduce play with something like mini golf, so they aren't sprayhing the land scape with golf balls, but have that driving range over there and a teacher in case they want to get a little deeper. Then get them hooked. Then sell them the new set of Pings. :smallbiggrin:

For Max Wilson

Leave the subclass bloat to the 3PP publishers and DM's Guild.
Yeah.

[Anonymouswizard]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to focus too much on the actual mechanics proposed in the UA, than on the concept, which is the reason why UA are released. UA are not new material ready to use or to be playtested as is, but conceptual ideas to take the game in different direction, or that offer a different view on existing mechanics. As long as you get the general idea, and begin to think on your own way to make it happen, then the UA was a success. The presented mechanics, are just an example for you to have a base of discussion with your friends, or over the internet.

We run out of concept pretty quickly, and turn to the actual mechanics to have the discussion actually last. Also I specifically remember UA being sold as a 'what we're working on' thing, not a 'let's spark discussion thing'.

Because the concept doesn't matter, the implementation matters. When people say 'you can reach level 20 by killing 950 rats' that isn't us saying that it's a problem because of this specific exploitation, we're saying you can exploit it and here's a way, how do we fix it.

Because the concept of three pillars experience isn't bad, but the implementation is complete and utter rubbish.

Here's the thing, if we don't say 'like in theory, but the mechanics are rubbish, here's the reasons' then WotC can't make changes to solve your problems. I did see a good implementation on this forum (you have six boxes, two per pillar, and can tick one per encounter of that type you complete, level once you've ticked four boxes).

I never got the 'you can't complain about UA' arguments. We certainly can, and we can complain about what we want. If you cut all unsatisfied voices out of your discussion how will you improve the mechanics?

[GlenSmash!]

Are you kidding? The recent UA isn't perfect, but exploring actual rules variants is exactly what UA should be--not just subclass bloat. It's nice to see Mearls put on his designer's hat and do stuff like this UA.

Leave the subclass bloat to the 3PP publishers and DM's Guild.

Preach it, brother.

Subclass and class bloat is what intimidated me about getting into previous editions of the game. I prefer the measured approach to crunch releases.

There's certainly a few options from UA that I would like to see in a book, but a lot of them would never see any time at my table. I much prefer these alternate rules UAs.

[DanyBallon]

I never got the 'you can't complain about UA' arguments. We certainly can, and we can complain about what we want. If you cut all unsatisfied voices out of your discussion how will you improve the mechanics?

It's not about that no one can complain against UA, but that it's getting tiring that every tumes a new UA hit the street, all we hear is that "it's rubbish" "complete garbage" "have de dev smoked too much" just because, it was not exactly what they were expecting. If people were at least able to keep an open mind and just think about the UA concept before criticizing then there might be less people asking you to stop complaining. Because as it stand, it often feels like complains against UA material, are being done by spoiled kids that didn't get what they were asking and not actual constructive arguments.

In example: Saying that the last UA is garbage because you can kill X rats in order to reach level 20 is not useful as it will never happen. While the box solution is useful as it address the problem of focussing only on a single pillar, and instead enforce the use of all three in order to level.

[Zorku]

Just because the GM can fix it doesn't mean it isn't a problem. A competent designer would have had someone else look at this, and once the rat or two thieves loopholes were noticed closed them.

Also, these extremes won't come up in a game, but others will. Let's imagine a bandit camp, 100 bandits plus like 5 leader folk to keep it simple. In theory by convincing the leaders to ally with me I get 1050XP, enough to gain ten levels. If it's a smaller group, say 50 bandits, it's even possible the party can convince all the lesser bandits to leave individually, boom five levels. This is a situation that could come up easily and breaks the system in two.

Or you can level up by accident because you turned 10 people into allies while trying to find the inn. We come up with these extreme cases to show that it's not hard for the system to break down.



That's fine, I don't really care either way. I mean it costs me nothing, I'll just ignore what I don't like.
This UA never says that you get xp for convincing individual bandits to ally you. Tier 1 is "An NPC with influence over a small town or village, or the equivalent" That's not influence in a town, but influence OVER it.

If you've got 5 bandit leaders and a town's worth of bandits, none of them has influence over enough bandits to count, but that "or the equivalent" clause means that convincing all 5 bandits to ally you counts as 10xp. The sentence is ambiguous enough that you can read it the way that you did, but as you've pointed out this leads to stupid results. The meaning I have just pointed out is right in the words, leads to sensible results, and is much more context appropriate, as the designers have expressed the intention that all 3 pillars be a part of your game, as per the final section detailing what you might do if you remove one of the pillars altogether.



-character backstory guides

They need a DM to engage with them during character creation. Character creation is up to the character's player. Heck, even in my group of veterans of this and many other games, we vary from me writing five page backgrounds and my friend (J) who uses about three paragraphs when he's feeling overly verbose. Usually a paragraph suffices. And in between. Nurture and coach, if you are the DM, or a fellow player. More stuff in a book won't inspire spontaneous creative writing. Personal interaction and idea sharing? Yeah.

Having the player detail where their characters parents are (or last known whereabouts,) 1-3 rivals/contacts from their previous occupation/upbringing, and somebody they've got power over and somebody that has power over them; gives the dm enough moving parts to monkey with, and gives the players enough established facts that they've got some basis for the decisions they start making. Whether you do that with minimal effort or you think up a bunch of extra detail for ever person listed, it's a good amount to work with.

If you limit the scope of what kinds of characters somebody is going to play then you can structure this a little bit more than that, but for the broad open options the game normally has, you probably don't really want anything more specific than that. I mean sure, they could create a longer version of the PHB background section, or put up some companion background thing that's the same deal but in parallel with the profession stuff, but... yuck. I don't want something like that, and I don't really think you do either.


It's not about that no one can complain against UA, but that it's getting tiring that every tumes a new UA hit the street, all we hear is that "it's rubbish" "complete garbage" "have de dev smoked too much" just because, it was not exactly what they were expecting. If people were at least able to keep an open mind and just think about the UA concept before criticizing then there might be less people asking you to stop complaining. Because as it stand, it often feels like complains against UA material, are being done by spoiled kids that didn't get what they were asking and not actual constructive arguments.

In example: Saying that the last UA is garbage because you can kill X rats in order to reach level 20 is not useful as it will never happen. While the box solution is useful as it address the problem of focussing only on a single pillar, and instead enforce the use of all three in order to level.
My post was kind of large, so I don't blame you for skipping it, but I did a little break down on what I think is actually upsetting people this week. There's a little more context in that post if you want it, but the condensed version is that this article is really short when you trim away the fluff and don't count the part where they basically restate the tiers of play over and over. The master formula behind this is really brief and by not even padding this with some game play examples or whatnot, they're not even acknowledging that it is supposed to look like they worked on this.

[Anonymouswizard]

This UA never says that you get xp for convincing individual bandits to ally you. Tier 1 is "An NPC with influence over a small town or village, or the equivalent" That's not influence in a town, but influence OVER it.

If you've got 5 bandit leaders and a town's worth of bandits, none of them has influence over enough bandits to count, but that "or the equivalent" clause means that convincing all 5 bandits to ally you counts as 10xp. The sentence is ambiguous enough that you can read it the way that you did, but as you've pointed out this leads to stupid results. The meaning I have just pointed out is right in the words, leads to sensible results, and is much more context appropriate, as the designers have expressed the intention that all 3 pillars be a part of your game, as per the final section detailing what you might do if you remove one of the pillars altogether.

Never make forum posts when tired or hungry, lesson learnt.

[Tanarii]

My post was kind of large, so I don't blame you for skipping it, but I did a little break down on what I think is actually upsetting people this week. There's a little more context in that post if you want it, but the condensed version is that this article is really short when you trim away the fluff and don't count the part where they basically restate the tiers of play over and over. The master formula behind this is really brief and by not even padding this with some game play examples or whatnot, they're not even acknowledging that it is supposed to look like they worked on this.
For the record, as someone that was saying they like the direction the Devs are thinking, but not the specifics ... I read your post, and thought it was well thought out and highlights the problem with the UA pretty well. (We all tend to only respond to things we're counter-pointing.)

[Saeviomage]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to focus too much on the actual mechanics proposed in the UA, than on the concept, which is the reason why UA are released. UA are not new material ready to use or to be playtested as is, but conceptual ideas to take the game in different direction, or that offer a different view on existing mechanics. As long as you get the general idea, and begin to think on your own way to make it happen, then the UA was a success. The presented mechanics, are just an example for you to have a base of discussion with your friends, or over the internet.

I'll correct you. You're wrong. If UA just wanted to get people thinking on a topic, it would consist of an article that facilitated that, perhaps contrasting the various existing experience systems and pointing out where they fall short. Perhaps elaborating on the virtues of a nice whole number to level, but detailing how there isn't a catch up mechanic. Perhaps detailing some alternatives that have nicer numbers, but better features etc.

But it's not. It's spending most of it's page space detailing a single system. Systems that are garbage. Systems that haven't had any introspection. Systems that don't break down the effect they're going to have on a game. Systems that don't work with the normal game assumptions.

It's the same low bar that the DMG had for much of it's pagecount: game design that consists of writing down the first mechanic that pops into your head, then moving on.

[Foxhound438]

Sorry for making an example out of you. Agreeing on 3 or 4 out of 8 is actually pretty good.

no hard feelings, it was more or less spitballing.



It's like putting in golf: easy to learn, hard to master. I think that was the idea behind D&D 5e. Introduce play with something like mini golf, so they aren't sprayhing the land scape with golf balls, but have that driving range over there and a teacher in case they want to get a little deeper. Then get them hooked. Then sell them the new set of Pings. :smallbiggrin:


This is probably a fair assessment of the game in general, but for UA specifically I would prefer to see mechanically untouched things fleshed out over variants on existing, functional rules.

[Anonymouswizard]

This is probably a fair assessment of the game in general, but for UA specifically I would prefer to see mechanically untouched things fleshed out over variants on existing, functional rules.

Please, that takes actual work.

What annoys me about this UA and last months is that they attempt to replace functional with clunky. They could be good, much easier for TPE, with more refinement. Heck, TPE just needs maybe another page of rules, or even a paragraph clarifying you don't get XP unless it was difficult.

And a clause so attended the royal ball and convincing people to send their armies to fight the dark lord doesn't level up quite so fast. That's why I like the 'check per encounter' system.

[DanyBallon]

I'll correct you. You're wrong. If UA just wanted to get people thinking on a topic, it would consist of an article that facilitated that, perhaps contrasting the various existing experience systems and pointing out where they fall short. Perhaps elaborating on the virtues of a nice whole number to level, but detailing how there isn't a catch up mechanic. Perhaps detailing some alternatives that have nicer numbers, but better features etc.

But it's not. It's spending most of it's page space detailing a single system. Systems that are garbage. Systems that haven't had any introspection. Systems that don't break down the effect they're going to have on a game. Systems that don't work with the normal game assumptions.

It's the same low bar that the DMG had for much of it's pagecount: game design that consists of writing down the first mechanic that pops into your head, then moving on.

Then will have to disagree. I don't want fully fleshed new rules that are perfectly balance in UA articles, those I want in new rulebooks and I want those far and between. When I think about UA, I want ideas, new concepts, alternative to existing rules. I want the dev to throw a pitch, that will spark my imagination into thinking how I would do it. I see UA being geared toward DM that like to homebrew, over players that want new material. Then again, my assumptions may be wrong, as UA also served as playtest for the upcoming rulebook. Yet I feel these specifics UA were still useful to DM that like to homebrew as they offered example of new class design.

[DanyBallon]

My post was kind of large, so I don't blame you for skipping it, but I did a little break down on what I think is actually upsetting people this week. There's a little more context in that post if you want it, but the condensed version is that this article is really short when you trim away the fluff and don't count the part where they basically restate the tiers of play over and over. The master formula behind this is really brief and by not even padding this with some game play examples or whatnot, they're not even acknowledging that it is supposed to look like they worked on this.

I have to admit that I skipped your post at first...

You have good point on why the mechanics are not solid, but like I already said, the mechanics doesn't need to be sound and proof, as long as they convey the general idea, and allow DM, a base to work on in order to create something better, the UA then served it's purpose.

[Rogerdodger557]

One theory is that they've finalized the content of XGtE and don't want to release anything significant until that book ships in November and resets what's official content and what's experimental.

That...is a actually a good theory.

[Anonymouswizard]

Then will have to disagree. I don't want fully fleshed new rules that are perfectly balance in UA articles, those I want in new rulebooks and I want those far and between. When I think about UA, I want ideas, new concepts, alternative to existing rules. I want the dev to throw a pitch, that will spark my imagination into thinking how I would do it. I see UA being geared toward DM that like to homebrew, over players that want new material. Then again, my assumptions may be wrong, as UA also served as playtest for the upcoming rulebook. Yet I feel these specifics UA were still useful to DM that like to homebrew as they offered example of new class design.

There is a difference between giving me roast beef with all the trimmings, giving me a tuna sandwich, and giving me flour, eggs, and milk. All I asked for is a tuna sandwich, and you're telling me that flour, eggs, and milk is roast beef with all the trimmings.

I'm not asking for perfect balance, I'm asking for the following: 1) no glaring holes (level 20 is 950 rats) 2) doesn't unfairly penalise some builds (looking at you Greyhawk Initiative). Heck, I don't care if it's new stuff or remixed old stuff.

And just to prove it's not meant to spark discussion, and is closer to an early playtest (emphasis mine).Source (http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/unearthed-arcana/unearthed-arcana-eberron)


Welcome to the first installment of Unearthed Arcana, a monthly workshop where D&D R&D shows off a variety of new and interesting pieces of RPG design for use at your gaming table.

You can think of the material presented in this series as similar to the first wave of the fifth edition playtest. These game mechanics are in draft form, usable in your campaign but not fully tempered by playtests and design iterations. They are highly volatile and might be unstable; if you use them, be ready to rule on any issues that come up. They’re written in pencil, not ink.

The material presented in Unearthed Arcana will range from mechanics that we expect one day to publish in a supplement to house rules from our home campaigns that we want to share, from core system options such as mass combat to setting-specific material such as the Eberron update included in this article. Once it’s out there, you can expect us to check in with you to see how it’s working out and what we can do to improve it.

So even they admit the discussion is supposed to help them improve it. Although with that in mind, where's the video of all known physical copies of Greyhawk Initiative being burnt and the UA being removed from the site?

[DanyBallon]

And just to prove it's not meant to spark discussion, and is closer to an early playtest (emphasis mine).Source (http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/unearthed-arcana/unearthed-arcana-eberron)




And here's the description from the latest UA (emphasis is mine)


This Is Playest Material

The material in Unearthed Arcana is presented for playtesting and to spark your imagination. These game mechanics are in draft form, usable in your campaign but not refined by final game development and editing. They are not officially part of the game. For these reasons, material in this column is not legal in D&D Adventurers League events.

[Zorku]

Never make forum posts when tired or hungry, lesson learnt.
Pfft, as if any of us has that much self control.


I have to admit that I skipped your post at first...

You have good point on why the mechanics are not solid, but like I already said, the mechanics doesn't need to be sound and proof, as long as they convey the general idea, and allow DM, a base to work on in order to create something better, the UA then served it's purpose.Although I like that kind of thing, I find that blogs are far superior for finding alternative systems for running the game. With UA material that presents races and feats and classes, I don't so much see it the way you have described here. I'm happy to see the devs work on other elements of the game, but I really don't think that that's the source of the outrage this week.

And hey, I'm primed to think exactly that, after how people reacted to greyhawk initiative. I do see a little bit of that kind of thing with this UA, but for the few complaints crying that this system is stupid and clunky, there are like five that focus on how this was disappointing or that the devs aren't even trying. We've got a huge number of people saying that the devs aren't just bad at this, but that they're not doing their job with it at all. When else has that been the biggest complaint?


And here's the description from the latest UA (emphasis is mine)
Are you saying that the change in wording represents a change in purpose? It seems more likely that they decided they had said that enough times that it was safe to condense the introduction.

[DanyBallon]

Are you saying that the change in wording represents a change in purpose? It seems more likely that they decided they had said that enough times that it was safe to condense the introduction.

I was just pointing out that the UA disclaimer changes based on the content of a given UA

...and also that the latest one, fits my view of what UA should be about :smallwink:

[Tanarii]

And just to prove it's not meant to spark discussion, and is closer to an early playtest (emphasis mine).Source (http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/unearthed-arcana/unearthed-arcana-eberron)Probably should have emphasized the sentence right before it:
"The material presented in Unearthed Arcana will range from mechanics that we expect one day to publish in a supplement to house rules from our home campaigns that we want to share, from core system options such as mass combat to setting-specific material such as the Eberron update included in this article."

This stuff is whatever they want to put out. Some of it's playtest material. Some of it's house rules from their home campaigns. Some of it's optional rules.

Speaking of 'house-rules', the UAs for Weapon Feats & Greyhawk Initiative, plus this XP mess fit Mike Mearls to a T. He's okay at big picture stuff, e.g. 'Make D&D feel old-school again' & 'Give the DM tools to run the game instead of restricting & burdening him with unnecessarily complex rules'. But he absolutely sucks at nuts-and-bolts rules.

[GlenSmash!]

Speaking of 'house-rules', the UAs for Weapon Feats & Greyhawk Initiative, plus this XP mess fit Mike Mearls to a T. He's okay at big picture stuff, e.g. 'Make D&D feel old-school again' & 'Give the DM tools to run the game instead of restricting & burdening him with unnecessarily complex rules'. But he absolutely sucks at nuts-and-bolts rules.

In my experience it's very difficult to be good at both the big picture and the details.

I vastly prefer the big picture of a concept I find interesting rather than a bunch and nuts and bolts that work perfectly but I will never use in my game. Which for me was most of the subclasses we got in the recent UA.

[Saeviomage]

Then will have to disagree. I don't want fully fleshed new rules that are perfectly balance in UA articles, those I want in new rulebooks and I want those far and between. When I think about UA, I want ideas, new concepts, alternative to existing rules. I want the dev to throw a pitch, that will spark my imagination into thinking how I would do it. I see UA being geared toward DM that like to homebrew, over players that want new material.

IF that's the goal, then like I said above: it's missing all the things that might make that approach useful, like discussion of why decisions were made, what effects they have etc.