5e isnt even D&D....

ModelCitizen · Post by **ModelCitizen** » Tue May 22, 2012 6:25 pm

I also got the impression that the regular rule was supposed to replace your total modified check result. This thing just replaces the d20 part like taking 10 in 3e.

Edit: We'll know more on Thursday but I'm calling this now because I'm psychic: in 5e, rogue is the new monk. They're not allowed to be good at physical combat because "the fighter is the best at fighting." You pay wizard spell slots to use magical devices, so that's out. You get skills from background so rogues don't get extra skills; instead they get higher skill numbers which don't mean shit because skills are supposed to be more MTP than ever. Plus Mearls started the 5e L&Ls with an article about how cool it was to be a thief who had no good abilities and sucked at life.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Tue May 22, 2012 6:41 pm

FrankTrollman wrote: That rule is still referenced in that column, so I'm guessing it's still in there.

It's couched in enough weasel words (e.g. "recommend", "in many cases") that it's hard to say.

Another way we can handle this is, on the DM's side of things, is to recommend that in many cases the DM allow a character to succeed on certain tasks if the character's ability score is higher than the DC, representing the idea that the character's natural talent makes the task easy.

CapnTthePirateG · Post by **CapnTthePirateG** » Tue May 22, 2012 11:45 pm

ModelCitizen wrote:I also got the impression that the regular rule was supposed to replace your total modified check result. This thing just replaces the d20 part like taking 10 in 3e.

Edit: We'll know more on Thursday but I'm calling this now because I'm psychic: in 5e, rogue is the new monk. They're not allowed to be good at physical combat because "the fighter is the best at fighting." You pay wizard spell slots to use magical devices, so that's out. You get skills from background so rogues don't get extra skills; instead they get higher skill numbers which don't mean shit because skills are supposed to be more MTP than ever. Plus Mearls started the 5e L&Ls with an article about how cool it was to be a thief who had no good abilities and sucked at life.

Corollary: Much like the monk made a good 2-level dip to loot shit for a fighter (if barbarian wasn't so much better), 1 level in rogue will give the fighter types all their skill awesomeness (I believe they were supposed to get extra skills as of L&L) and not hurt the fighters much at all.

Wrathzog · Post by **Wrathzog** » Wed May 23, 2012 12:21 am

shadzar wrote:hidden paladin blog

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

Paladin Design Goals

This one is pretty boring. It's all like... duh.

At least paladins aren't forced into being LG, even though it looks like they're assuming that most paladins will be LG.

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Wed May 23, 2012 6:52 pm

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

This blog contains some of the best 5e news I've read so far:

Looking ahead, I can safely say that we’re retreating from how magic items are presented in 4th Edition(...)

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Wed May 23, 2012 7:11 pm

ishy wrote:http://community.wizards.com/dndnext/bl ... ame_tongue

This blog contains some of the best 5e news I've read so far:

Looking ahead, I can safely say that we’re retreating from how magic items are presented in 4th Edition(...)

All of the wanking about "I wish we could go back to the days when only DMs read the DMG and a Sling of Seeking was truly magical, whine, whine" made me want to barf.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Wed May 23, 2012 7:13 pm

Wrathzog wrote:
shadzar wrote:hidden paladin blog

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

Paladin Design Goals
This one is pretty boring. It's all like... duh.

"Paladins can be any alignment" and "paladins should be able to call a mount" are not "duh" statements, if you're judging based on previous editions.

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Wed May 23, 2012 7:18 pm

Wrathzog wrote:
shadzar wrote:hidden paladin blog

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

Paladin Design Goals
This one is pretty boring. It's all like... duh.

At least paladins aren't forced into being LG, even though it looks like they're assuming that most paladins will be LG.

There is actually some pretty significant shit in there, though it is mostly a confirmation that design by committee leads to a clusterfuck.

Examples: Trade not-always LG for Lawful only. Detect evil as handwaved bullshit so it can't detect on specific creatures, but you can smite anything.

Someone on the committee seemed to want to do interesting things, but was constantly overridden, apparently largely on the basis on traditions and feelings.

The big seems to be that they are dicking around with the alignment system again. So far they seem to have various combinations of good, evil, lawful and presumably chaotic, plus... non-good. Including, from what is presented there, 'lawful non-good'. There is no way that can't end in disaster.

CapnTthePirateG · Post by **CapnTthePirateG** » Wed May 23, 2012 8:59 pm

I don't think we've seen the REAL design by committee yet...

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Wed May 23, 2012 9:49 pm

CapnTthePirateG wrote:I don't think we've seen the REAL design by committee yet...

It explains a lot of the bizarre shit that they are tossing against the wall in these blog posts, and Monte taking his ball and going home (reading between the lines, I suspect he got tired of people saying no to the 1/day or 2/day bullshit that he filled Arcana Evolved with).

There are some good ideas and goals getting tossed about (like running through mook fights in a matter of minutes, rather than the 2 hour slogs of 4e or the 'and the wizard's initiative comes up' of 3e. But its being overwritten a with layer of pure shit that seems to be coming from half a dozen different voices inside the walls of WotC. The fan 'voting' is pretty much completely meaningless, since it is such a disparate cacophony unrelated opinions. They'll honestly get the most use of that after release when they can point to the pile of shit that results from their efforts and say 'but this is what you told us you wanted.'

I am looking forward to the playtest docs, because that is when the design by committee will be in full view. It will be entertaining to rip that garbage apart.

CapnTthePirateG · Post by **CapnTthePirateG** » Wed May 23, 2012 10:26 pm

6 more hours...

MisterDee · Post by **MisterDee** » Thu May 24, 2012 3:53 am

http://www.montecook.com/cgi-bin/page.cgi?montejournal

I post this mostly for the "Ego Management" posting, scroll down a bit to see it.¸

I really dig Cook's assholish, passive-aggressive approach to explaining why he left the 5e design team. Man - he probably has some sort of termination agreement where he can't say why he left, but still...

Taishan · Post by **Taishan** » Thu May 24, 2012 4:51 am

MisterDee wrote:http://www.montecook.com/cgi-bin/page.cgi?montejournal

I post this mostly for the "Ego Management" posting, scroll down a bit to see it.¸

I really dig Cook's assholish, passive-aggressive approach to explaining why he left the 5e design team. Man - he probably has some sort of termination agreement where he can't say why he left, but still...

The more I read of his blog, the more I get irritated. Like his post on character creation- there's a seed of a good thought there, the difference between sandbox games and set-character storylines, and the types of gaming skills the players and GM need to bring to the table to make each successful. But instead, whiny self-indulgent shit just pours out of his mouth. Don't like complex character generation? Then why is 3rd ed full of ridiculously unhelpful tables about feats, skills and spells?

K · Post by K » Thu May 24, 2012 4:55 am

Taishan wrote:
MisterDee wrote:http://www.montecook.com/cgi-bin/page.cgi?montejournal

I post this mostly for the "Ego Management" posting, scroll down a bit to see it.¸

I really dig Cook's assholish, passive-aggressive approach to explaining why he left the 5e design team. Man - he probably has some sort of termination agreement where he can't say why he left, but still...
The more I read of his blog, the more I get irritated. Like his post on character creation- there's a seed of a good thought there, the difference between sandbox games and set-character storylines, and the types of gaming skills the players and GM need to bring to the table to make each successful. But instead, whiny self-indulgent shit just pours out of his mouth. Don't like complex character generation? Then why is 3rd ed full of ridiculously unhelpful tables about feats, skills and spells?

To be fair, he does seem to have changed his mind a lot on 3e and recognize that he made mistakes.

That being said, he doesn't seem to have the ability to blog without coming off as a douche. I honestly think most blogs are that way.

malak · Post by **malak** » Thu May 24, 2012 7:50 am

from the wired interview: http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2012/05/d- ... ike-mearls

Mike Mearls wrote: We want to have a solid set of rules, but at the same time I think D&D is at its best when the game is about the DM’s rulings rather than the actual rules.

No.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu May 24, 2012 8:44 am

K wrote:To be fair, he does seem to have changed his mind a lot on 3e and recognize that he made mistakes.

That being said, he doesn't seem to have the ability to blog without coming off as a douche. I honestly think most blogs are that way.

Yeah, while it's a bit petulant, most of that article seems pretty much right-on. The idea that you should be able to:

Make three or four choices and jump in and start playing (ex.: Race: Elf, Class: Rogue, Background: Cobbler, Name: Alyndra).
Rip the class apart to customize a character to exactly what you want given time and splat books.
Make major character growth choices later on when it comes time for your character to grow.

Seems like a no-brainer, right? That's because it's a really good idea. But it's not the direction that D&D has gone for the last fifteen years. 2nd edition was trying to deliver on the first two with Kits and Powers, and 3e was supposed to deliver on the last one with Feats and Prestige Classes (but of course Prerequisites and Synergy doomed that effort).

When 3e tried to give us growth customization, it did so at the cost of setting pick-up-and-playability on fire. When 4e tried to give us out-of-the-box playability, it did so by throwing customizability under the bus.

But it's a needle you could thread just by:

Making classes be composed of default feat selections that are out-of-the-box playable.
Removing 1st level prereqs for 6th level character choices.

And Monte petulantly saying that he wants to work on future games that do that (don't we all) is basically him backhandedly saying that D&DNext is fuxxored in its chargen or character advancement - which of course we already knew just from Mearls' description of it.

Honestly, while there are bits of that blog post that make me think he might be an asshole (note that the person overwhelmed by choices in his example happens to be a girl), it does a fair bit to restore my assessment of his competence. He does actually set the borders of the problem of chargen and advancement in ways that actually elucidate them and suggest solutions. Very different from the stuff he was churning out when he was working for Mearls a few months back. Those pieces actually seemed like boiler plate turd polishing attempts on themes and subsystems that Mike Mearls had already mentioned wanting to use.

-Username17

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Thu May 24, 2012 8:46 am

MisterDee wrote:http://www.montecook.com/cgi-bin/page.cgi?montejournal

I post this mostly for the "Ego Management" posting, scroll down a bit to see it.¸

I really dig Cook's assholish, passive-aggressive approach to explaining why he left the 5e design team. Man - he probably has some sort of termination agreement where he can't say why he left, but still...

I actually found the comment from mearls at EN world quite telling :

On which areas of D&D Next will the departure of Monte from the design team have the most immediate effect?
(Mearls:)
The core concept and direction remains the same, so really nothing has changed in terms of our big picture ideas.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Thu May 24, 2012 9:57 am

ishy wrote:http://community.wizards.com/dndnext/bl ... ame_tongue

This blog contains some of the best 5e news I've read so far:

Looking ahead, I can safely say that we’re retreating from how magic items are presented in 4th Edition(...)

to much new shit today being playtest day...

this has me worried, especially with people voting every magic item should be unique. well people are asking for 30 splatbooks full of magic items, so when they get crap magic items because the unique ideas run out, its their own fault.

DM should. have total control over the magic items, including the ones the players can make. it should NOT be limited to the douchebags at WotCs imagination.

Monte's Ego....everybody wants to change D&D in their own image.... EVERYBODY does. what do you expect when you got ego's clashing?

the sad thing is the people trying to make a game for ALL D&D players past and present, and one of their own team doesnt agree with how its working for ANY reason, means the product has already failed. Monte isnt as dumb as he looks, and could have planned this contingent the moment he was asked back. which is a bit of an asshole thing to do, but might be needed. the over-protected and surrounded by yes-men designers at WotC might have need a metaphorical slap in the face to really understand the context they have been spewing for a while on "uniting all editions", and whether that is even possible or just another "Ze game will remain ze same".

@malak, there are games out there that have heavily codified rules. D&D never was meant to be one, and was created solely to get away from the rules are the law of the Judge Dredd universe. go play one, or find a group to play D&D your way. would you like a sporting event where the players have all the ref power, and the ref just watches? how much of the actual game do you think will be played? if you had bad DMs, then just stop playing with shitty people. you have only yourself to blame for that. so accept responsibility for your own actions.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Thu May 24, 2012 1:13 pm

FrankTrollman wrote: is basically him backhandedly saying that D&DNext is fuxxored in its chargen or character advancement - which of course we already knew just from Mearls' description of it.

Mearls does mention that issue though here:

"Wolfgang: What is really unique about D&D Next that sets it apart from other RPGs? Where is the sizzle, so to speak? (Modularity is neat, but doesn’t count as sizzle in my book.)
Mike: I think the playtest is pretty interesting in that it gives people a chance to guide D&D to where they want it to be. The big idea, to me, is bringing RPGs back to their roots. If you look at card games, board games, even video games, the trend is to get people playing as quickly as possible. With our Lords of Waterdeep and Castle Ravenloft board games, we wanted people playing within 15 minutes of opening the box.
My attitude is the same toward D&D. Open the game, and start playing. I think that RPGs have grown more and more complex over the years, and we’ve lost sight that the real fun of RPGs lies in experiencing a make-believe world through the eyes of a character who isn’t you. The first RPGs fit into 64 pages or less of text, with tons of that space given over to monsters and spells."

http://www.koboldquarterly.com/k/front-page12578.php

I wonder how much Chargen can we figure out from pregen characters in a few hours

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Thu May 24, 2012 1:22 pm

OgreBattle wrote: http://www.koboldquarterly.com/k/front-page12578.php

I liked this:

Wolfgang: Why should a Pathfinder RPG player pick up the D&D Next playtest rules and give them a spin? [..]

Mike: [..] If people who enjoy 3E are looking for deeper solutions to some of the issues that crop up in their games and are looking for something that stays true to what makes D&D intrinsically D&D, then they should definitely take a look at D&D Next. [..]

"Pathfinder? What's that?"

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Thu May 24, 2012 1:45 pm

Because it is the gaming den and we need more fighter vs wizard posts:

Wolfgang: wrote: The kobold playtesters found that D&D Next fighters kick a lot of ass. No, really, massive damage with that two-handed great flail, to the point where the 1st-level fighter is sort of scary on a charge, taking down minotaurs. Are you worried the fighter is (for once) overpowered?

I guess it is bad if the fighter can actually kill stuff? I mean the fighter can actually kill minotaurs on a charge! Overpowered!

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Thu May 24, 2012 1:58 pm

I've had a player claim his 6th level TWF fighter was overpowered and thought he might be overshadowing the party after he killed three orcs in a single charge followed by five more during his full attack.

For many people, the moment they see that fighter look like they're killing something well, then that class is powerful forevermore. Very selective confirmation bias.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Thu May 24, 2012 2:00 pm

ishy wrote:I guess it is bad if the fighter can actually kill stuff? I mean the fighter can actually kill minotaurs on a charge! Overpowered!

It's bad for balance if a fighter is supposed to fight minotaurs while a rogue is supposed to fight kobolds, yes.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Thu May 24, 2012 2:10 pm

<psychic> The Minotaur thing speaks to the lack of scaling in the game. They're just not that much tougher than Kobolds, because the 6th level Fighters they "challenge" just aren't that much tougher than 1st level Fighters. </psychic>

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Thu May 24, 2012 2:38 pm

ishy wrote:Because it is the gaming den and we need more fighter vs wizard posts:

Wolfgang: wrote: The kobold playtesters found that D&D Next fighters kick a lot of ass. No, really, massive damage with that two-handed great flail, to the point where the 1st-level fighter is sort of scary on a charge, taking down minotaurs. Are you worried the fighter is (for once) overpowered?
I guess it is bad if the fighter can actually kill stuff? I mean the fighter can actually kill minotaurs on a charge! Overpowered!

OK, but what was the response to the question? That seems actually important.

On another note, I got an email about the playtest materials. Which led me to a link to get to the materials, which led to a lot of forms with a final submission which gave me a message saying they would send me an email in a bit with instructions on how to download the playtest materials.

The confidentiality agreement is a similar exercise in bizarro world doublethink. Which I would quote, but trying to copy it puts a '!' between each and every word. Basically it boils down no copying or distributing, releasing or distributing, even in part, but you are free to publicly discuss your thoughts on the playtest. Which... I'm not even sure how that works

But you can also provide feedback on their forums, and that is kinda-sorta exempt from the confidentiality agreement. I think. I'm actually not sure if it is telling me that Feedback on their official forums will not violate the terms of use agreement, or that it can't. Or I can't. Or something.

It is a complete mystery, but at some point, there will theoretically be playtest materials. And as written in the playtest agreement, I... may not actually be able to run games for people in order to actually do a playtest, since that would actually involve copying and distributing the materials.