5e isnt even D&D....

[tussock]

If you're already making a check like an attack roll, just penalise it. More rolls does not a better simulation make.

The problem is that then you have to have two AoO mechanics: one for ranged weapons and attack spells, and another for movement and no-roll spells. Trying to figure out which to use will eat at least as much time in the long run as just rolling the damn d20.

Wut? No. Your attack-type things don't say you suffer an AoO, they say they're rolled at -5. Your not-attack-type things don't say you suffer an AoO, they say you have to make some sort of check to do it in melee, like Combat Casting or Tumble already work in 3e.

And yes, sometimes that is going to be confusing or ambiguous. Say you cast Call Lightning. In one action you give yourself the ability to make lightning bolt attacks for the next several rounds, and also roll your first attack. Is that a no-roll spell to put up a buff, or an attack spell, or both?

Yeh, but spells should almost never make attack rolls, that's just a stupid idea from 3e that required everything in the game to get another AC value to roll them against. We already have Ref saves to dodge magic, make use of them.

But yes, it's possible to write up some ambiguous situations, but it's also possible not to, this being theorycraft time again. Spellcaster casts and chooses target, requiring casting check if in melee or taking damage. Target gets a save.

[deaddmwalking]

I usually just come by the boards to see what Frank has been saying. Just thought I'd throw in some divining from this article by Mike Mearls.

Clearly he says, 'Hit Dice aren't part of 4E'. Then he introduces a healing mechanic using the name.

I get the feeling that Hit Dice are probably still a part of the game. Obviously hit points come from somewhere, and in the first part of the article he makes it clear that a 1st level character has fewer hit points than a high level character.

Based on that, I get the impression that your Hit Dice are also your 'daily healing pool'. So, if a 2nd level fighter has 2d10 hit points (plus Con mod, presumably) he might have 20 hit points. If he's reduced to 2 hit points after a fight, he rests for the day and gains 2d10 ht points (let's say 10) and is up to 10 hit points.

This would mean a fighter could recover from near death in approximately 2 days, but the actual number could be variable.

Compare to 3rd edition where a character gains 1 hit point/level per day of rest (double with a heal check). It would take our erstwhile fighter at least 5 days to recover to full under the 3.5 rules.

Of course, this is all extrapolation, and I'm probably not seeing how Wizards ignored this bit and fucked it up.

Since this is my first post here, let me say that I like it that you can tell someone to 'suck a load of cocks' and you're still more welcoming than the RPG Forums.

[tussock]

They probably do need some "no defence", "no offence", "stay put", and "-2" terms of art, keywords. But they can still use them like regular words in proper sentences.

26 conditions like 3e is bullshit anyway. 3 or 4, tops. Write out the rest in full as they're needed. The arguments happen either way, does free action protect you from paralytic poisons if they're cast as a spell? The answer is no one cares. Flip a coin.

That's idiotic reasoning. "It's dumb to arbitrarily define condition X and write it down in the rulebook, but it's smart to arbitrarily define condition X and write it down in your house rules."

I mean they shouldn't have a keyword-lookup step for anything other than a small handful of the most common conditions, so normal people can remember them. Everything else should be explained in full in the rulebook every time it's used.

Then no one's tempted to write obscenely detailed conditions for anything rare. Because we aren't computers, it's easier to use if Incorporeal Undead just explain all that shit about walking through walls and taking damage from special sources and making touch attacks in their entry.

It even helps avoid things like the 'paralytic poison spell' shell game where you're immune to action denial from spells but not poison and the spell says it's a real poison that denies your actions. Because it can just say if free action applies rather than dropping you in a mess of nested conditions.

[tussock]

Oh, and the mearls thing is your level 2 Fighter has 20 hit points (or whatever) like every other level 2 Fighter, but he also gets 2d10 "hit dice" with a long rest that he can spend to heal any time he takes a short rest.

Or, instant house rule, they'll be healing in bunches of d6+4, because then you can roll a couple of 1s and not cry. Yes, I just gave everyone more healing without knowing anything about it. You're welcome.

Hey deaddmwalking, GSABOC.

[shadzar]

half hit points shows signs of "HEAL ME" to the party healer. why does this seem like video game graphics?

I honestly don't know why this feels like that to you, because it shouldn't. I've seen fighters take 2/3rds of their hitpoints in damage in one round because they're doing their job right, and then die because the healer isn't. Maybe they're low level, still. Maybe they are fighting the end boss, or maybe the bad guys got a string of lucky criticals. Whatever. At 50% hit points, the fighter should be saying to the party healer "I'm getting pretty rough, could you throw me some healing?". The last thing you need to hear at that point is some mealy mouthed bullshit about how "hitpoints are abstract, man, and I don't know if you've got 1 hitpoint or a hundred left." Why don't you take the reasonable assumption that the fighter has one or two obviously serious wounds and get in there and do your goddamned job. Your soliloquy about the evils of monster hunting in a world where even 1 in a million orcs can choose to not be evil can wait until after the fight is over.

here we go again someone perpetuating the walking med-kit.

the problem isnt the fighter doesnt speak up, in this it is that it forces superficial wounds onto people that might prefer more abstract.

A casual inspection or quick look reveals that the creature has taken a few hits, so it is noticeably injured.

there might as well be a life bar above each PCs head at this rate showing their health meter.

there should be conversation amongst the characters, else you will have the healer guessing during battle and wasting spells on the wrong person. or just dont try to advance from battle to battle.

the problem lies within the graphical component mentioned.

[ishy]

Weapon specialization has moved into themes. Again, based on feedback, we moved the fighter away from picking one type of weapon to be good at.

This part of the article makes me feel weird. The fact that they changed it upon feedback is good, the part where they considered this in the first place makes me feel terrible.

[hogarth]

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx ... l/20120521

Mearls on hit points. In which hit points to physical damage is specifically laid out, and a bizarre system of natural healing is introduced.

The bizarre system is just "reserve hit points" like from Unearthed Arcana. I have no idea why he is calling the reserve hit points "hit dice", because that is extremely confusing for everyone who has ever read or played any edition of D&D.

I agree it's confusing, but I think he's saying that a 5th level cleric gets 5 healing surges, each worth 1d8 healing. And you recover them after an extended rest.

By the way, I notice they're borrowing quite a few things from Pathfinder (unlimited cantrips! d8 hit dice for rogue and d6 hit dice for wizards!). I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

*Sigh* This is what I get for engaging Shadzar.

here we go again someone perpetuating the walking med-kit.

What the fuck does the tendency to treat clerics as defacto healers have to do with jack shit? I don't care what class you are, if you are the party healer and are withholding healing from someone who needs it, you are doing it wrong.

the problem isnt the fighter doesnt speak up, in this it is that it forces superficial wounds onto people that might prefer more abstract.

A casual inspection or quick look reveals that the creature has taken a few hits, so it is noticeably injured.

there might as well be a life bar above each PCs head at this rate showing their health meter.

there should be conversation amongst the characters, else you will have the healer guessing during battle and wasting spells on the wrong person. or just dont try to advance from battle to battle.

the problem lies within the graphical component mentioned.

Shad, I hate to break this to you, but there are no "graphics" in D&D. There's art meant to inspire you, art meant to depict things that you encounter, but there is no continuously updated bit of graphics that represents the game during a session. The 'health meter' you speak of has existed in every version of the game, ever. It's called your Hit Points. If your maximum hit points is 50 and you've been knocked down to 25, guess what? Your health meter is at 50%, regardless if you're playing 4e or Chainmail. All this is is a landmark intended to tell people who otherwise weren't paying attention "You should seek healing now". Yes, it's pointless at the best of times, but it has jack-all to do with the dreaded taint of video games creeping into your hobby (For whatever fucking reason you have for THAT).

[hogarth]

I mean they shouldn't have a keyword-lookup step for anything other than a small handful of the most common conditions, so normal people can remember them. Everything else should be explained in full in the rulebook every time it's used.

Then no one's tempted to write obscenely detailed conditions for anything rare. Because we aren't computers, it's easier to use if Incorporeal Undead just explain all that shit about walking through walls and taking damage from special sources and making touch attacks in their entry.

I agree that they shouldn't bother messing around with rare conditions, especially if they're minor (e.g. "dazzled", "sickened" and "fatigued" could easily be consolidated into a single "-2 to everything" condition).

But what I don't want is for the same wording to be repeated in 5 different places in 5 slightly different ways. I HATE that.

[Wrathzog]

healing rate should not really be tied to HP. obviously any second grader knows that if you have lost 2 of something it will take twice as long to recover than 1 of something, if time is a factor at a standard rate. so DUH it takes longer to recover more... healing rate should be tied to races, as it, if non-magical, is a feature of biology. non-magical healing makes no sense any other way than that.

So, I'm just curious, dude... if a Wizard and a Fighter (of the same race) are both brought down to Zero hit points, you want the Wizard to be able to naturally heal up to 100% faster than the Fighter?

[CapnTthePirateG]

Oh, look, from the Mearls interview, weapon specialization is back!

I'm sure it will be handled well.

[echoVanguard]

The idea that healing spells heal fixed amounts of hit points has never integrated well with the idea that hit points are some kind of nebulous meat-luck-expertise hybrid. Why does a single CLW from a level 5 cleric practically reattach a first-level character's head, but 10 of them apparently have no visible effect on a 10th-level character? What the heck kind of sense does that make?

echo

[Username17]

The idea that healing spells heal fixed amounts of hit points has never integrated well with the idea that hit points are some kind of nebulous meat-luck-expertise hybrid. Why does a single CLW from a level 5 cleric practically reattach a first-level character's head, but 10 of them apparently have no visible effect on a 10th-level character? What the heck kind of sense does that make?

echo

4th edition actually handled that moderately OK. Healing activated a Healing Surge, and your Healing Surge Value was based on your Total Hit Points. I mean, they crapped all over it by giving out bonuses to healing surges that were fixed or random numbers or non-surge healing or all kinds of other shit, but they did in fact have a workable solution.

Switching everyone over to healing reserve dice doesn't help at all.

-Username17

[shadzar]

healing rate should not really be tied to HP. obviously any second grader knows that if you have lost 2 of something it will take twice as long to recover than 1 of something, if time is a factor at a standard rate. so DUH it takes longer to recover more... healing rate should be tied to races, as it, if non-magical, is a feature of biology. non-magical healing makes no sense any other way than that.

So, I'm just curious, dude... if a Wizard and a Fighter (of the same race) are both brought down to Zero hit points, you want the Wizard to be able to naturally heal up to 100% faster than the Fighter?

IF the fighter has more hitpoints, and the natural healing rate is such that the amount of HP is far enough apart, then yes. the one with the least HP will recover faster.

otherwise just rid yourself of the arbitrary numbers, and use a full-on 100% scale, and damage is done in percents of 100, and everyone only has 100% Health max.

but that would be flat HP across all PCs with no variation for class, race, magic items, etc, whatever.

[ModelCitizen]

Yeh, but spells should almost never make attack rolls, that's just a stupid idea from 3e that required everything in the game to get another AC value to roll them against. We already have Ref saves to dodge magic, make use of them.

Fine, spells always use the Concentration/Saving Throw mechanic and never the penalty. So the penalty rule is... just for firing a bow in melee? Why make a special case rule trying to save a single d20 roll once or twice per campaign?

(Oh and not that matters, but Call Lightning is Reflex Half in 3e. I was assuming conversion to some new thing with 4e-like core mechanics.)

[OgreBattle]

I mean, they crapped all over it by giving out bonuses to healing surges that were fixed or random numbers or non-surge healing or all kinds of other shit, but they did in fact have a workable solution.

Isn't that true of almost everything in D&D though? "I have +X to hit/AC/saves/movement except for when this condition/item/spell modifies it"

But yeah, remembering the Bard adds +charisma or something to my healing is a drag, we forget that stuff most the time. It's one of those 'feels good to have on your character sheet' things that honestly doesn't affect the playing experience much in execution.

[ishy]

Isn't that true of almost everything in D&D though? "I have +X to hit/AC/saves/movement except for when this condition/item/spell modifies it"

But yeah, remembering the Bard adds +charisma or something to my healing is a drag, we forget that stuff most the time. It's one of those 'feels good to have on your character sheet' things that honestly doesn't affect the playing experience much in execution.

I feel one of the worst mechanics in D&D is something like the 3.5 dwarf racial. You gain a bonus to saves vs poisons, SLA's and spells etc. So have fun asking your DM everytime if the creature used a SLA or a SU.

Though shit like Force of personality where you have to ask vs every will save if it is mind-affecting or not is even worse .

[ishy]

http://wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ro3/20120522

As for the rogue, we're looking at more reliability for the class, rather than automatic success. For example, right now, when a 1st-level rogue makes an ability check and applies the bonus from one of his or her skills, the rogue can take either the die roll or 10, whichever is higher. We think this is a good expression of an increase in reliability in the arena of skills.

Didn't they describe this exact system for how skills work in general?

[Username17]

http://wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ro3/20120522

Isn't this the exact same system that they described skills to work for everyone?

Basically yes. The only difference is that they can use essentially the standard "autopass" system for opposed rolls or open ended rolls.

But there's actually a lot of failure in there.

There are a couple of ways to address automatic successes, some of which you may have already heard about. Of course, the most obvious is that there will be many things that simply don't require checks because there's no risk of failure; for example, we might not include any DCs below 10, simply because if a task would have a DC that low, it isn't something the heroes should fail to achieve.

Ow.

That displays a shocking lack of understanding of how rulebooks work. See, if the DM looks in the rulebook and all the sample DCs are above 10, then when they are setting a DC even for a trivial mundane task, they will set it... above 10. By removing all the examples of easy tasks, they haven't made easy tasks so trivial that you succeed without rolling, they've made them so hard that people fail frequently.

-Username17

[shadzar]

hidden paladin blog

http://community.wizards.com/dndnext/bl ... sign_goals

Paladin Design Goals

[tussock]

Yeh, but spells should almost never make attack rolls, that's just a stupid idea from 3e that required everything in the game to get another AC value to roll them against. We already have Ref saves to dodge magic, make use of them.

Fine, spells always use the Concentration/Saving Throw mechanic and never the penalty. So the penalty rule is... just for firing a bow in melee? Why make a special case rule trying to save a single d20 roll once or twice per campaign?

From 3e I can think of trip, grapple, bullrush, disarm, etc., other things you're already rolling for like climbs or jumps, .... OK, not many, but the advantage of one-rolling is you're not asking permission to do stuff on your turn. You just go, roll your dice, and it either works or it doesn't, then it's someone else's turn.

I do prefer defender rolling saves against the nastier effects, rather than them being 4e-style simple attacks, false sense of control over my own fate and all that, but they don't cock-block the active character's turn anyway for the most part.

[erik]

There are a couple of ways to address automatic successes, some of which you may have already heard about. Of course, the most obvious is that there will be many things that simply don't require checks because there's no risk of failure; for example, we might not include any DCs below 10, simply because if a task would have a DC that low, it isn't something the heroes should fail to achieve.

Ow.

That displays a shocking lack of understanding of how rulebooks work. See, if the DM looks in the rulebook and all the sample DCs are above 10, then when they are setting a DC even for a trivial mundane task, they will set it... above 10. By removing all the examples of easy tasks, they haven't made easy tasks so trivial that you succeed without rolling, they've made them so hard that people fail frequently.

Additionally those lower DC checks are not guaranteed for people with penalties. I suspect the design conceit isn't to have a positive bonus at everything always for any character.

[Stubbazubba]

Isn't this the exact same system that they described skills to work for everyone?

It sounds like the Rogue can choose after they see the die roll to either go with that or take 10, whichever is higher. Is that how they've been describing it? Maybe I missed an update, but the last time I remember skills being discussed, they were talking about non-numerical ranks of mastery which gave you autopass/autofail results for anything outside of your current rank, and within your rank it was just an ability check.

That displays a shocking lack of understanding of how rulebooks work. See, if the DM looks in the rulebook and all the sample DCs are above 10, then when they are setting a DC even for a trivial mundane task, they will set it... above 10. By removing all the examples of easy tasks, they haven't made easy tasks so trivial that you succeed without rolling, they've made them so hard that people fail frequently.

Well, just because they remove all DCs below 10 doesn't mean they have to remove all examples of easy tasks. They could list <10 on the Skill DC chart, and list a few trivial tasks like climbing a sturdy ladder or what-not, and just say "Anything less challenging than the examples of DC 10 checks should automatically succeed without a die roll to speed up play." They may or may not have the good sense to spell it out right there in the chart with the other sample DCs, but it's not a given that trivial task resolution will be that ambiguous.

[hogarth]

It sounds like the Rogue can choose after they see the die roll to either go with that or take 10, whichever is higher. Is that how they've been describing it? Maybe I missed an update, but the last time I remember skills being discussed, they were talking about non-numerical ranks of mastery which gave you autopass/autofail results for anything outside of your current rank, and within your rank it was just an ability check.

Right. So if your character has to jump over a pit (say), you either autopass(=take 10) or you roll, whichever is better. Which is the same as the rogue ability.

Of course, they could have changed all sorts of things since they wrote those columns.

[Username17]

Right. So if your character has to jump over a pit (say), you either autopass(=take 10) or you roll, whichever is better. Which is the same as the rogue ability.

Of course, they could have changed all sorts of things since they wrote those columns.

That rule is still referenced in that column, so I'm guessing it's still in there. For binary actions like jumping over a pit, there's no difference. The only time it matters is for opposed rolls and open-ended tests. Because those don't have a "pass mark", so the auto-pass rules do not and cannot kick in. The Take 10 + Roll is strictly better therefore, because in essence it extends the skill mastery everyone has to your skills like Stealth and Diplomancy that are normally made without reference to a fixed DC.

-Username17