D&DNext: Playtest Review

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Wed Jun 12, 2013 7:59 pm

My entry is Mac5er. It's a play on MacGyver to indicate that 5e is cobbled together out of random crap and its functionality is implausible.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Thu Jun 13, 2013 12:00 am

The problem with that is MacGuyver is pretty cool.

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Thu Jun 13, 2013 1:42 am

fectin wrote:'fivers' is plenty good enough until they have a groupthink worth insulting properly.

I'm not actually convinced there will be enough people to back this horse. I have a feeling most will either be absorbed into the Paizo collective or take their ball and go home. And the 4e fans will be confused for a while, and eventually final realize that they are really never going to get any more love, not even the bad kinds (if that still hasn't sunk in yet).

At some point, someone will explain to me why WotC didn't bury the D&D license while they launched MtG the RPG, milked it heavily then turned and sold the D&D license to someone else in order undermine Paizo's attempts to become a real player. Instead they've spent two editions legitimizing Paizo as the 'true successor' to D&D.

I certainly think that reprinting 1e and 2e and selling them for nostalgia dolalrs is more successful than 5e is going to be at pulling old players back in. If that is still a goal they care about.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Thu Jun 13, 2013 5:43 am

Re5ed.

Because it's what's Next, after you've died, you become one of the re5ed. In need of BRAAAAINS. OK, it's overly complicated, and only flayers do that in D&D, but what do I win?

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Thu Jun 13, 2013 10:20 am

Voss wrote:At some point, someone will explain to me why WotC didn't bury the D&D license while they launched MtG the RPG, milked it heavily then turned and sold the D&D license to someone else in order undermine Paizo's attempts to become a real player. Instead they've spent two editions legitimizing Paizo as the 'true successor' to D&D.

Back in '97 they did some concept work on a MtG & D&D crossover but were already afraid they'd have to change too much and fuck up both games because both games are targeting different kind of players.

And after 4e, would you risk MtG your moneymaker by making an RPG, even though your RPG makers are already fucking up so badly working on stuff they have plenty of experience with?

Red_Rob · Post by **Red_Rob** » Thu Jun 13, 2013 2:30 pm

I don't get the 'risk' element. Do you think if they make a shitty RPG tie-in it will stop people playing MtG? Diablo had some D20 books of questionable quality and I don't think that hurt sales of the main game.

If they make an RPG that is bad people just won't play the RPG, I can't imagine they could make an RPG experience so toxic it would sour players on ever experiencing anything in that franchise again (insert obvious 4e joke here).

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Thu Jun 13, 2013 2:30 pm

Cough cough... er... isn't D&D 5E also commonly referred to as D&D "Next".

So... couldn't you run your pun/slur off the Next bit instead of the 5 bit?

Because ... Empty Nexters seems like a fairly awesome punslur to me.

infected slut princess · Fri Jun 14, 2013 6:30 am

Retards: The Next Generation

Tumbling Down · Post by **Tumbling Down** » Fri Jun 14, 2013 11:29 am

I always thought of stupid edition-fanboys as duodrones and quadrones, respecitvely. So I figure for 5e, I'll just go with... whatever the five sided modrons are called.

And anyway, if 5e gets unpopular on /tg/ (and I can't imagine how it could fail to do that; even on /tg/), the fanboys are just gonna end up being labeled as 5gots everywhere; other than possibly here.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Sat Jun 15, 2013 4:28 pm

since "next" will draw in those with more money than brains to keep chasing nothing on the edition treadmill, why not call them D$Ders? everything since 2008 has just been a money grab anyway.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Sun Jun 16, 2013 9:14 am

T$R shadz? Nah, I love the idea that D&D would sell well again and make the company a bunch of greenbacks. I would love Mearls to succeed and unite the fanbase behind a new juggernog. I just don't happen to think that's on track to happen.

It's what I like most about Pathfinder, that it's alive and still pushing product, even if it does have an ever-growing list of stinkers in it.

Still think WotC should've stumped up the cash to buy Paizo (everyone has a price), sacked the 4e team, and got the new crew to gain 4ron trust by putting out a good AP or two for 4e and one good rulebook for it, including skill challenges that work. Then they'd have the zeitgeist to unite the editions. "Best of both worlds. Compatible with the Pathfinder RPG and 4th edition character powers!" A marketing dream. D&D UNITED.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Sun Jun 16, 2013 9:21 am

5uckers

Like Blade Runner's "give me more like F___er!", it is up to you what sound the '5' makes.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Sun Jun 16, 2013 10:34 am

tussock wrote:T$R shadz? Nah, I love the idea that D&D would sell well again and make the company a bunch of greenbacks. I would love Mearls to succeed and unite the fanbase behind a new juggernog. I just don't happen to think that's on track to happen.

well HASBRO is like LW, in that both care only about money and not gamers. Who else has put credit cards into a board game about buying property? Electronic edition Monopoly anyone?

like i said somewhere, D&D died in the early to mid 90s, when it went from being a game to just a label the put a price tag on. there is no vision of what D&D should be anymore, only a way to attract more people with more money, and D&D really doesnt need that. sadly to those that think they DESERVE D&D to come to a new age, or are OWED D&D to be made for them. Such children need to grow up and learn that not everything is made for everyone, nor is it equal opportunity. that doesn't stop them from being allowed to make something else like 4th, but it doesn't give them the right to the name.

ERGO: D&D has long been dead as a game.

I don't hope Mearls succeeds at anything. he is a buffoon. he has no design skills, nor understanding of the game and should go back to video games and leave them out of TTRPGs.

as far as unifying all D&D players, or so-called D&D players, i think this should NOT be done, and those since 2.5 should be ousted. when finally getting away from the overly complex gibberish as the "gygaxian prose" it did enough in second to fix the problems of the game where you CAN understand it without digging through all the poorly laid out pages trying to find something.

another reason for getting rid of those players again lies at the fault of WotC, not for their design, but their failure to notice that still they are trying to copy a name for a product that previously existed like: Rules Cyclopedia, the red box artwork, etc...

OD&D: 1st D&D
Holmes: 2nd D&D
Moldvay: 3rd D&D (the 2000 edition cannot be called 3rd when a 3rd previously existed)
Mentzer: 4th D&D
Rules Cyclopedia: 5th D&D

so 3rd-5th/DDN cannot exist as they are reusing names. aside from the fact 3rd was built off a different engine called AD&D

AD&D: 1st
AD&D 2nd: 2nd

they are enumerating from AD&D but calling is something that existed in the 80s/90s.

while most not see these as such, just looking at them tells you that the enumeration i present here is correct. thus EVERYTHING that WotC has created is a lie, and therefore doesn't exist as D&D. therefore its players don't exist as D&D players.

MAYBE if they STOP build off AD&D and go back to RC and build off that for 6th edition, it will be D&D. 4th wasnt built off the same engine, but still off AD&D.

D&D has been bastardized as if a Ford motor was put into a Chevy pickup.

i am sure i have said this before and many people were gobsmacked by it, but the facts remain. WotC has only recycled names for earlier product designations and associated them with an incorrect product, thus proving they never understood the difference between D&D and AD&D as 2 distinct game systems sharing, well to borrow from GProse, a milieu. this is the same mistake LW made when cancelling D&D in the mid 90s, effectively. so D&D and AD&D are long gone for the sake of money and only their carcass remains and this new wolf at the gate is wearing their wool.

T$R seems apropos in regards to DDN being called D$D. as NOTHING WotC has made before or after HASBRO has had anything to do with its previous rendition save for its namesake only. no compatibility, which only EVER is an attempt to gain more money. (see iPhone5 port forcing replacement of ALL accessory devices)

echoVanguard · Post by **echoVanguard** » Sun Jun 16, 2013 2:36 pm

OgreBattle wrote:5uckers

Winner.

echo

CCarter · Post by **CCarter** » Mon Jun 17, 2013 12:25 am

I thought better of posting this elsewhere, but I don't want to let a good meme go to waste, so...

Wiseman · Post by **Wiseman** » Mon Jun 17, 2013 2:00 am

Tumbling Down wrote:I always thought of stupid edition-fanboys as duodrones and quadrones, respecitvely. So I figure for 5e, I'll just go with... whatever the five sided modrons are called.

Pentadrone?

And for nicknames how about the Bee5/Bee5s? Because a beehive's really a clusterfuck to stick your hand into and you're going to end up regretting it.

Dean · Post by **Dean** » Mon Jun 17, 2013 2:40 pm

Wiseman wrote:And for nicknames how about the Bee5/Bee5s?

Gob's not on board.

Foxwarrior · Post by **Foxwarrior** » Mon Jun 17, 2013 7:43 pm

5ucker is a pretty good term.

In other news, Mearls thinks Dragons should be really fast, and Necromancers should get to read the rulebook, all because elephants can crush goblins by stumbling: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx ... l/20130617

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Mon Jun 17, 2013 8:19 pm

Foxwarrior wrote:5ucker is a pretty good term.

In other news, Mearls thinks Dragons should be really fast, and Necromancers should get to read the rulebook, all because elephants can crush goblins by stumbling: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx ... l/20130617

I don't really have a problem with the idea that bad-ass creatures get a bunch of reaction abilities, but the way he phrased things is super-dumb.

Corsair114 · Post by **Corsair114** » Mon Jun 17, 2013 8:33 pm

All below is jm2c, take it with a grain of salt.

Mike Mearls wrote:For this week's Legends & Lore, I thought I'd do something a little different. As part of our internal playtesting, we often cobble together ideas and test them out before formalizing their design. If something flat-out doesn't work at the table, we can either modify it or toss it aside without putting a lot of work into it up front.

So they throw darts at a board and if something sticks they run with it, and if it doesn't they don't contemplate it further?

Mike Mearls wrote:Over the past few years, we've learned a lot about how single monster battles work and what it takes to make a truly legendary monster. To try out some things, I ran a playtest a few weeks ago using the black dragon given below. Here are the design principles I used.

You mean you've learned from 4E that a big, nasty, scary solo monster loses all its luster once you're 15 rounds in and just firing At-Will's 'cause it's a matter of time before it turns into a pile of goop at the hands of a party of inter-dimensional hobos it can't possibly hurt? Oh good, glad you were paying attention.

Mike Mearls wrote:Legendary Means Something: I was never quite happy with how the solo tag from previous editions transformed into a mechanical contrivance. The original concept in 4th Edition was that solos and elites were meant to be size Large and bigger creatures—massive foes that by their nature posed a constant threat. Imagine a group of goblins with spears and short swords attacking an elephant. Even as the beast shifts in place and moves, it can inadvertently trample and crush the goblins. You can see how a solo is dangerous even when it's not the creature's turn.

That definition didn't stick over time. In part, I think the definition didn't maintain consistency because I believe that elite and solo didn't clearly represent something within the world of the game. So, we've recast solo and elite as legendary, a description that applies to truly powerful, notable, and important creatures in the world of D&D. These are monsters whose very nature is tied to the fabric of the cosmos. Magic runs through their veins, and their mere appearance is a noteworthy event. Dragons, titans, most fiends, and elder elementals are a few examples of legendary creatures. Artifacts can also make creatures into legends. The orc king carrying the spear of Gruumsh is a legendary figure.

Big creatures that still pose a physical threat can simply have mechanics to reflect their abilities. They don't need to dip into the legendary mechanics to pose a threat.

So a Legendary creature... is a really powerful creature with extra sparkly bits. Gotcha. Need a Legendary Orc? Give him a nice shiny Legendary weapon. A nice improvement over 4E... I hope.

Mike Mearls wrote:Legendary Creatures Ignore Your Silly Action Economy: Legendary creatures are infused with such powerful magic and innate might that they move and think on a different level than other creatures. A dragon's mind is simply different, allowing it to move and react with supernatural speed. The necromancer armed with the wand of Orcus sees time and the cosmic order with a different eye. She peers into the source code that runs the universe and enters a higher state of being.

Legendary creatures have a set of bonus actions they can use between their turns. This is a bigger point of emphasis than in 4th Edition. We learned that creating a dynamic interaction between a solo monster and the characters goes a long way toward making such battles dramatic and tense.

So instead of "it ignores the action economy," why not just have it taking turns as though it were three or so creatures. You have its Initiative, you can give it two floating turns it can take only after another creature has taken its turn. Get's to the same end and its still playing the same game as everyone else. sort of.

Mike Mearls wrote:Legendary Creatures Are Creatures of Destiny: The vagaries of the d20 can spell doom for a character, but powerful, notable creatures are made of sterner stuff. Due to their magical nature, dumb luck, or an innate resistance to magic, legendary creatures can mess with the dice and sometimes dictate outcomes. You can think of this as fate or the gods, in the form of the DM, intervening on the creature's behalf.

The specific mechanics can range from a free pass on saving throws to dictating outcomes of attack rolls or checks, but it does so in a limited manner. The deck is stacked in a legendary creature's favor, but the game is not completely rigged. You can eventually stun one, but only with a persistent effort.

PC Wiz: I cast Sleep.
GM: Go fuck your-oh, hah, the Dragon saves.
PC Wiz: You didn't have to roll?
GM: I could have, but nah, now time to take three-consecutive actions and focus fire your Wizard. The mighty dragon looks at the Wizard and says in a low, menacing voice, "Do you blush?"
PC Wiz: FFFFFFFFU-

Mike Mearls wrote:Legendary Creatures Change Their Environment: A legendary creature, due to the intensity of its magical nature, alters and changes the land around it. A dragon's lair is a daunting place of magic. The land around it shifts and changes. The power of a legendary creature is like a gravity well, pushing and altering the space around it.

A legendary creature's lair or abode is a key part of its existence. Orcus is a ferocious enemy if he manifests in the world, but he is nigh unstoppable within his Abyssal lair. Fight a legendary creature on its home turf only if you must. The land strives against you and the world itself becomes the legendary creature's weapon.

PC Wiz: Guys, we shouldn't fight that dragon out here in the open. Let's corner it in its lair, ambush it, and kill it.
PC Party: Yeah! Woo! Fighter likes!
---sometime later---
GM: Okay, you're about to reach the dragons lair. You feel the prescence of powerful magic, Wiz.
PC Wiz: Okay team, let's go!
PC Party: *charges into the cave*
GM: You suddenly find yourself in the middle of a flat wide-open plane, with clear-blue skies as far as the eye can see. There's no cover and you can no longer see the exit you came through. From above you echoes peals of guttural laughter.
PC Wiz:

Mike Mearls wrote:From a game mechanics perspective, this design concept is tied to the idea of making a solo monster's environment a key part of the battle. Creating a dynamic fight is more than putting a dragon at one end of the room and the characters at the other. The scenery and set pieces play a key role in how the battle plays out.

No shit. I mean, whether you're in a high-stakes game of craps for the lost Treasure Map to the Dragon's Hoard or exploring a city-turned-necropolis full of potential pitfalls and death traps waiting to happen, location matters.

Mike Mearls wrote:So what does a legendary creature look like? Here's the black dragon that we playtested. Note that I also included its interaction "stat block" in case the characters decided to talk to it. In our playtest, the characters defeated the dragon, though at one point the characters were within a die roll or two of a TPK (total party kill).

Please note that the black dragon is a work in progress. I added this material for a game I ran at the office. It isn't the final version.

"We fought a Black Dragon and narrowly defeated it, but we're not going to layout how optimized we were for actually fighting it so you're just gonna have to take it on faith that it'll be a solid challenge you could lose but probably won't" is what I'm getting from this bit.

As a person who got into D'n'D with 4E (which was hardly a decent RPG in its own right), what I've read and seen for 5E has left me pretty much cold on it. 5uckers, indeed. Hilariously enough, I think that really applies to Hasbro as much as anyone that buys into it, too.

nockermensch · Post by **nockermensch** » Mon Jun 17, 2013 8:45 pm

I can't help but to notice that they keep trying to capture the feel of a MMO dungeon boss fight for the solos legendaries.

Seerow · Post by **Seerow** » Mon Jun 17, 2013 9:00 pm

hogarth wrote:
Foxwarrior wrote:5ucker is a pretty good term.

In other news, Mearls thinks Dragons should be really fast, and Necromancers should get to read the rulebook, all because elephants can crush goblins by stumbling: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx ... l/20130617
I don't really have a problem with the idea that bad-ass creatures get a bunch of reaction abilities, but the way he phrased things is super-dumb.

The article is typical Mearls, but the statblock itself wasn't horrible. Big complaints being weak defenses (HP fairly typical for a creature of its level, which is compounded by bounded accuracy and an AC that is moderate at best even for bounded accuracy), bland attacks, and our first glimpse at their interaction rules being really dumb.

But if you ignore that the attacks themselves are bland, the ability to make random off turn movements or attacks, or exchange those to recharge a more powerful ability, isn't a bad mechanic. I also actually kind of like the Lair/Territory rules where the creature warps the area it lives in and an area of several miles around it, and that fighting the Dragon in its lair is a much harder task, and this comes with its statblock, rather than trusting the DM to think of suitable things to make the lair more formidable.

Basically this is one of the first things in a long time that I can see being made into something workable, or at least be worth adapting.

Leress · Post by **Leress** » Mon Jun 17, 2013 9:21 pm

shadzar wrote:well HASBRO is like LW, in that both care only about money and not gamers. Who else has put credit cards into a board game about buying property? Electronic edition Monopoly anyone?

It's debit not credit cards.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Jun 17, 2013 10:27 pm

Seerow wrote:But if you ignore that the attacks themselves are bland, the ability to make random off turn movements or attacks, or exchange those to recharge a more powerful ability, isn't a bad mechanic.

Are you kidding me? That was absolutely the worst idea in that whole pile of shit. When Mike Mearls pukes out that post-hoc bullshit it makes me want to puke, too. Aside from being fourth-wall breaking, metagamey bullshit of the absolute worst caliber it doesn't even make thematic sense. That shit is just there to make boss fights feel like an MMORPG, which shows me that Mearls didn't learn a goddamn thing from 4E D&D.

It's not a new insight, either. They tried that shit for Dark Sun and the MM3 in 4E. And yes, it completely fucking broke the way combat was supposed to be ran. It made save-ends abilities weaker than effects that start/ended at a player's turn. Even though the former is prized more heavily than the latter.

Seerow · Post by **Seerow** » Mon Jun 17, 2013 11:47 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:
Seerow wrote:But if you ignore that the attacks themselves are bland, the ability to make random off turn movements or attacks, or exchange those to recharge a more powerful ability, isn't a bad mechanic.
Are you kidding me? That was absolutely the worst idea in that whole pile of shit. When Mike Mearls pukes out that post-hoc bullshit it makes me want to puke, too. Aside from being fourth-wall breaking, metagamey bullshit of the absolute worst caliber it doesn't even make thematic sense. That shit is just there to make boss fights feel like an MMORPG, which shows me that Mearls didn't learn a goddamn thing from 4E D&D.

If you want a single enemy capable of taking on a group of player characters, you need to break the action economy in half to make it feasible. Why is it bad when you give a class of monsters the capability to do this just cause, but perfectly okay when you accomplish it by having a caster with action economy breaking spells instead?

Also, claiming that this is to make it feel like an MMO makes me doubt you've ever played an MMO seriously. Most MMO Bosses (in fact any one I can think of) use far fewer abilities than their player character counterparts. Trust me, trying to convert MMO boss design philosophy to tabletops would result in something a lot more boring than what we have here, because most MMO boss design boils down to "pound the tank hard enough to need two dedicated healers to keep him up, deal random damage to everyone in the group, make stuff appear on the ground for dps/healers to move out of and/or spawn adds for the players to kill". There's more to it, but that sums up most boss mechanics, and it doesn't matter how you look at it, it doesn't translate into "Give this boss enough actions to match the whole PC group action to action". That is a tabletop solution to the problem.

It's not a new insight, either. They tried that shit for Dark Sun and the MM3 in 4E. And yes, it completely fucking broke the way combat was supposed to be ran. It made save-ends abilities weaker than effects that start/ended at a player's turn. Even though the former is prized more heavily than the latter.

You mean powerful monsters disrupt normally effective strategies, encouraging players to use other tactics? You don't say!