D&D Next. What do you think?

[newfrickinshow]

I've just signed up for the playtest and have begun downloading the material and while I wait I figure it wouldn't be a bad idea to ask the community that beat me to it what they think. Since I've been cut off from the nerd community to some extent lately and haven't heard much about it I was just curious.

[Anderlith]

I've just signed up for the playtest and have begun downloading the material and while I wait I figure it wouldn't be a bad idea to ask the community that beat me to it what they think. Since I've been cut off from the nerd community to some extent lately and haven't heard much about it I was just curious.

It's just another flavor of D&D. Several parts of it are depressing, the other parts are okay-ish. No real eureka! improvement to it yet

[Water_Bear]

You know there is a thread about this already right? Granted it's a gigantic edition-war mess, but it still exists on this very subforum.

So far it seems like it has the potential to achieve it's goal and unify the fanbase, albeit through boredom.

[Dienekes]

You know there is a thread about this already right? Granted it's a gigantic edition-war mess, but it still exists on this very subforum.

So far it seems like it has the potential to achieve it's goal and unify the fanbase, albeit through boredom.

Ehh, to be fair if I just wanted a rough opinion of folks on 5e I wouldn't use the 5e thread either. That place is scary, annoying, and reminds me all too much of a kindergarten.

In any case, my opinion. Ehh. I prefer 3.5 to 4e so I like that they're returning a bit to that kind of model. However, they so far don't seem to be fixing any of the obvious problems that 3.5 did have. Also everything feels fairly dull, unpolished, and the math still seems to be wonky.

[ImperiousLeader]

I'm currently rather indifferent. Everything is still in such a state of flux that it's hard to get a clear notion of what the edition is about. There's a few things I like, some in need of polish, and some really bad ideas.

The main problem I'm seeing is the d20 and bounded accuracy is making PCs look less awesome. As in, your success or failure is purely a whim of the dice, I don't find a +1 vs a +3 WIS check to be all that interesting.

[newfrickinshow]

I apologize for the duplicate thread but of the ones that weren't about specific topics in 3.75, 5E, Next, NXT, etc. I looked for generic threads on the board and and the newest post was only 10 days old but I was looking for (for lack of a better term) fresher opinions. Sometimes on those longer threads you get opinions a bit prejudiced by other opinions and it can become a bit of a confusing fustercluck.

But anyway, it seems that the general opinion is that there is some promise and has some good potential to be pretty good if the kinks can be worked out. I'm reading the material now and just out of curiosity I'm going to ask about the one thing I felt the most neglected in 4E to see if it's been addressed. I've never done it myself but I've seen and heard so many tales about awesome characters using mounted combat. Anybody know if the new version has addressed that at all?

[russdm]

Ehh, to be fair if I just wanted a rough opinion of folks on 5e I wouldn't use the 5e thread either. That place is scary, annoying, and reminds me all too much of a kindergarten.

Didn't you know? The forums here is kindergarten and that facts amuses me so very much.

As for myself, I am adopting a wait and see approach to 5E. While I was willing to play 3.5, i was not impressed and found it rather too annoying. As for 4E, it had potential that it squandered in trying to be too new and different. I would rather mess around with the playtest, but pass judgement until the finished product came out.

A side note: One game system i am eagerly waiting for is Star Wars Edge of the Empire. It seems to be moving away from the standard sw game models of having heavy jedi involvement and rules balance and making it so you can have fun not playing a jedi as much. or atleast it looks like something new and fun to play.

[Morty]

My interest in D&D Next is mostly morbid curiosity. I don't think I've ever seen a design process as uninspired and lacking in any sort of vision as what the D&D Next playtests and articles are showing us. So far the only result I can imagine is that after it's released, everyone just shrugs and goes back to playing their preferred edition of D&D, or other system.

[tbok1992]

Well, I think some of the ideas it introduced are good (Exploration rules baked into classes, subraces-as-default, Fighter make-your-own-maneuvers) but they need a helluva lot more work.

Though, judging from Devteam comments, it seems as if they've finally found the actual direction/design goals they want to go for (Which I think seems to be relatively adjustable, light rules with an emphasis on Fluff and old-school style).

I think that's what they mean when they say they're nearly done, rather than talking about balance, which has gaping flaws in it (Like how far they Nerfed the fighter and the Skill system) and still needs waaaaaay more polish. I'm pretty sure that Peasant Vs. Asmodeus is going to be the new Cat Vs. Commoner for a while.

[Rhynn]

From the buzzwordy name (at least it's not "D&D U") to the original design goal ("Unify people under one edition by combining them all even though that is going to result in something no one likes better than their current edition), it's a great example of how to have corporate weasels ruin your project before it's even taken off. I expect a bland, uninnovative blend of multiple editions that has nothing to recommend it over any of the others, all of which will be more focused on some specific aspect halfheartedly integrated into 5E.

The few "new" things they've sorta done have already been done by games like Adventurer Conqueror King and Dungeon Crawl Classics, which aren't compromised by waffling and constantly rewriting everything based on randomly interpreting essentially random playtester feedback.

[Just to Browse]

Semi-Related Question: Instead of writing Dungeons and Dragons 6th Edition (which will come after this terrible-ness ends), would you oppose/favor the new name being "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition"?

Maybe it's just because I liked third edition, but the number 6 seems so high.

[Water_Bear]

Semi-Related Question: Instead of writing Dungeons and Dragons 6th Edition (which will come after this terrible-ness ends), would you oppose/favor the new name being "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition"?

Maybe it's just because I liked third edition, but the number 6 seems so high.

Technically 3.X and 4e are AD&D; the Basic line got dragged out back and shot just before WotC took over, from what little gaming history I remember. And unless I'm very very lucky Next will also be Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.

[Anderlith]

Nah it'll be called "New" D&D or D&D Zero.

Most likely they will just call it D&D & 6th Edition will just be a small subtitle.

When I talk about D&D I'm talking about 3.5 but I don't say "3.5" every time I do. Though I do call 4th Edition "4E" Instead of D&D :/

[russdm]

Any advanced edition of 3.5 needs to correct its problems of which are many. There are times honestly that i feel that the 3rd/3.5 designers just copied stuff over without figuring out why it worked the way that it did.

When i usually talk about D&D, I find that i am mainly referring to 2nd Edition AD&D and need to add in the 3.5 otherwise i automatically assume anything i say is related to 2nd Edition.

I see 4th Edition being a part of D&D, so i will always call it D&D 4E or just 4E for short.

As for D&D Next, it feels like it is trying to bring back the bad sacred cows of 3.5 without figuring out why they didn't work as planned. And then adding in all of the 4th Edition material.

Even more pressing, why are nerfs appearing for skills and fighters and not for Tier 1s? How can justify nerfing fighters and skills when giving cheeseblocks to wizards/druids? Wasn't that 3.5's major fundamental flaw?

[newfrickinshow]

Nah it'll be called "New" D&D or D&D Zero.:/

How does D&D EXTREME! work for you?

[Felandria]

Didn't the fighters get those bonus dice, or were those taken away?

Also, NO SORCERER, NO PEACE!

[Anderlith]

How does D&D EXTREME! work for you?

No no, Marketing says that that will scare off the kids, & if we know anything, it's that WotC wants to get as many new people into the game as possible

[Rhynn]

Technically 3.X and 4e are AD&D; the Basic line got dragged out back and shot just before WotC took over, from what little gaming history I remember. And unless I'm very very lucky Next will also be Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.

Yup. The connection between AD&D 2E and D&D 3E is very strong (especially looking at Combat & Tactics and the rest of Player's Option for 2E).

When there's only one line of D&D, calling it "Advanced" doesn't make a lot of sense. It was Advanced to separate it from Basic (of B/X and later BECMI).

Maybe it's just because I liked third edition, but the number 6 seems so high.

RuneQuest has already beat D&D to sixth edition (and fourth publisher), my 1998 edition of Call of Cthulhu is 5.5 (Chaosium beat WotC to that one), and so on. Edition ain't nuthin' but a number.

Nah it'll be called "New" D&D or D&D Zero.

[Dienekes]

A side note: One game system i am eagerly waiting for is Star Wars Edge of the Empire. It seems to be moving away from the standard sw game models of having heavy jedi involvement and rules balance and making it so you can have fun not playing a jedi as much. or atleast it looks like something new and fun to play.

It may be the best game of all time, but I will never know. Because I refuse to pay for a game that had people pay to playtest it. That is ridiculous and turned me off the system.

Oh and so I return to talking about 5e.

What gets me, is for all that I didn't really enjoy playing 4e as a whole. I will admit they had some good ideas, giving fighters fun things to do is one of the big ones in my book. What happened? We're supposed to move ahead not backtrack.

[Scow2]

It may be the best game of all time, but I will never know. Because I refuse to pay for a game that had people pay to playtest it. That is ridiculous and turned me off the system.

Oh and so I return to talking about 5e.

What gets me, is for all that I didn't really enjoy playing 4e as a whole. I will admit they had some good ideas, giving fighters fun things to do is one of the big ones in my book. What happened? We're supposed to move ahead not backtrack.

4e put WAY too much emphasis on combat and made it too slow. When the average encounter's supposed to take an hour of play, something's wrong. D&D Next trims encounter speed to ~5-15 minutes, so you can focus on not fighting and get back to the important parts of exploring, loot-sorting, loot-stealing, trap-dodging, dungeon-delving, and political-shanghaing.

They've also cut down drastically on the number of spell slots casters can have, and restricted their options. Unfortunately, spells don't scale well.

[Dienekes]

4e put WAY too much emphasis on combat and made it too slow. When the average encounter's supposed to take an hour of play, something's wrong. D&D Next trims encounter speed to ~5-15 minutes, so you can focus on not fighting and get back to the important parts of exploring, loot-sorting, loot-stealing, trap-dodging, dungeon-delving, and political-shanghaing.

They've also cut down drastically on the number of spell slots casters can have, and restricted their options. Unfortunately, spells don't scale well.

This is true. Not entirely sure what it has to do with my post since giving fighters interesting things to do by no means means that all combat needs to be dragged out for hours.

[Scow2]

This is true. Not entirely sure what it has to do with my post since giving fighters interesting things to do by no means means that all combat needs to be dragged out for hours.

4e gave everyone too many actions in combat, making turns take a long time to resolve. I see this a lot in 3.X as well, when you have to resolve not just an attack and damage but rider effects as well, and multiple actions per round (And tracking the action economy), then having to ask "Done?" because it's hard to tell what actions they're interested in taking. I think the fighter expertise dice is a "good enough" thing for fighters, though I feel it should be a lot more flexible (Choose what your spending it on when you use the dice, not when you level up)

[Morty]

What gets me, is for all that I didn't really enjoy playing 4e as a whole. I will admit they had some good ideas, giving fighters fun things to do is one of the big ones in my book. What happened? We're supposed to move ahead not backtrack.

I honestly don't see a lot of fourth edition in D&D Next. It's mostly the d20 chassis with some things glued on.

Also, apparently, giving fighters nice things means making them too complicated. Which doesn't stop them from filling pages with wizard, cleric and druid spells... it's amazing to see that they've learned absolutely nothing.

[TuggyNE]

I honestly don't see a lot of fourth edition in D&D Next. It's mostly the d20 chassis with some things glued on.

So far, %E seems to unite the fanbase chiefly in noticing things in it that appear to be borrowed from their least-favorite editions.

[Dienekes]

4e gave everyone too many actions in combat, making turns take a long time to resolve. I see this a lot in 3.X as well, when you have to resolve not just an attack and damage but rider effects as well, and multiple actions per round (And tracking the action economy), then having to ask "Done?" because it's hard to tell what actions they're interested in taking. I think the fighter expertise dice is a "good enough" thing for fighters, though I feel it should be a lot more flexible (Choose what your spending it on when you use the dice, not when you level up)

Yes, things can go overboard. But interesting things does not make things take too long. Hell in 3.5 I can generally resolve a combat in under 20 minutes, and that had extensive spell lists and I always throw in ToB just so fighter types get interesting things to do. Now whether you like that book or not it did give the melee types interesting and useful abilities and combat still resolves fast.

And if you don't like that example, you can look at Saga Edition. Where every class gets more cool things as they level up and combat still goes by very fast. Or for the same genre, FantasyCraft where fighter types have tricks they can add as riders to their melee attacks that also resolve things pretty fast.

Expertise Dice could be good enough, if they actually did anything interesting. They really don't, a lot of them are just things that a fighter could do for free in 3.5 (bull rush, trip, disarm, ect.), and all of them are simply pathetically weak.

[Emmerask]

My interest in D&D Next is mostly morbid curiosity. I don't think I've ever seen a design process as uninspired and lacking in any sort of vision as what the D&D Next playtests and articles are showing us. So far the only result I can imagine is that after it's released, everyone just shrugs and goes back to playing their preferred edition of D&D, or other system.

sadly I agree.

[EvanWaters]

I'd be okay with it being nothing like 4e if I had a feeling that there was a really strong, coherent vision for it, and it provided something I hadn't been able to do with D&D before.

Instead it's looking like a crazy quilt of random legacy mechanics patched together with some new stuff.

Also it's been over a year and they still haven't solved the problem of what the fighter gets that makes them balanced with casters but isn't AEDU. This should have been job #1.

[archaeo]

Certainly, if you're focused on the rules minutiae as they exist today, there are problems; one only has to skim the eight billion forum threads across the Internet to get a good idea that everybody takes issue with one thing or another, though a lot of that is inevitable anyway. The playtest as it exists right now is not a very polished RPG, by most accounts.But I still feel really optimistic about it. If you take the designers at their word, they're looking for something that has scalable granularity, a system that allows for players to do the things they want to do while maintaining a solid framework of balanced core rules. Since very few/none of the "modules" or "dials" have been released, I think it's safe to say that a lot of the things that will make this an exciting version of the game are still being perfected. That's the hope, anyway.

Honestly, I don't get why the playtests have drawn so much negativity, both here and elsewhere. Even though the game's still pretty wonky, I appreciate the rigorous playtesting. Of course, I haven't followed it from its inception; has so little changed since the playtest started that people have just despaired?

[Kurald Galain]

5E's main "feature" is that by design, level-20 characters are not a lot better at anything (attacks, skills, saving throws) than level-1 characters. Other than this premise, it doesn't contain anything that's not found in earlier editions. Frankly I have found zero reason so far to recommend it over other versions of D&D.

[Zerter]

I am just going to try it out when it is released with the group I play with. Hopefully it will also lead to people coming back or new people being interested. I can not take all the negative stuff seriously, a lot of people seem to be looking for stuff to hate about it. It might be good, it might be bad, no way to know at this point.