D&DNext: Playtest Review

K · Post by K » Fri Aug 16, 2013 8:23 am

It's very weird to see a second whole edition go by that is not better than 3.X in any way.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Fri Aug 16, 2013 12:36 pm

infected slut princess wrote: SIDE NOTE:
I really, really, really hate how only demons and not devils can use at-will teleport. To me, it is a defining characteristic of D&D that demons and devils can teleport anywhere they want (within the plane) whenever they want.

Even more shitty, however, is that the demons who can teleport can only go... a whopping 500 feet. GOOD GRIEF THAT IS SHITTY AND STUPID.

I've always hated teleporting outsiders, so I have no problem with this.

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Sat Aug 17, 2013 3:41 am

K wrote:It's very weird to see a second whole edition go by that is not better than 3.X in any way.

It must be what shadzar feels like all the time. Only justified.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Sat Aug 17, 2013 5:40 am

if by that you mean WotC cant make an RPG to save its life, then yes?

3rd would have failed if not for the OGL, just like 4th did. D&D was a thing of the past, and without mass support on the scale the OGL offered, 3rd wouldnt have taken off good until maybe 2005. MtG was way too popular and those other games like Vampire and such were filling the other niches for things people liked.

so it is not wierd at all to see a WotC not able to make a working edition of D&D, because it cut off the hands that fed it: pre-WotC edition players and OGL support. now like a galeb-duhr, WotC just waddles around with no arms throwing stones at people in fury.

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Sat Aug 17, 2013 5:58 am

3.0 did just fine on release, on its own, well before the OGL geared up into crazy town and continued well after the OGL proliferation and crash of the fly-by-night market.

Corsair114 wrote: But, really, I don't think there's much to expect from D'n'D as a tabletop game other than WotC keeping it on lifesupport so it can collect royalties from whoring out its trademark.

The novels, maybe. It took longer than the lifespan of 4e to get a real 4e videogame, and it sucks ass. That kind of incompetence isn't going to do anyone any good.

Seerow wrote:So according to one of the devs on twitter, we're getting one more playtest packet in September, and then they're done with the open playtest.

Discuss.

Kind of a relief. I took the time with the first few surveys, and actually poked at weak points and things that needed adjusting. And then they tossed out the entire structure and replaced it with something else. After the third time, I gave up, and they kept tossing babies out with the bathwater. There were a couple good ideas here and there, but none of the stuck, because they didn't take the time to actually test the ideas they had, adjust, test again and return, but kept looking for new fundamental subsystems every damn time.

It made the whole process a joke, because clearly no outside playtesting mattered, because they swept the board clean every damn time.

And the main system rules are still fuzzy as fuck. No clear delineation, and so many areas where everyone has to throw their hands in the air and make shit up.

Huh. Staring at the How to Play document, I just realized you can make a full plate and shield(bash) wizard. All spellcasting in armor takes is proficiency. Mind you, it is a pretty big trap, as you're either doing it at really late levels, or pushing back maxing your int (and therefor attack rolls and save dcs), neither of which is exactly optimal.

I also realized there is heavy armor master which gives proficiency and bonuses with heavy armor, but nothing for light or medium.

Anyone can strap on full plate, but no one who doesn't already know how can learn how to carry the burden of a mithral shirt (something you can explicitly wear under normal clothes) without being effectively crippled by the burden (disadvantage on effectively everything str and dex related). Of course there isn't anything for one-handed non-finesse weapons either, because no one ever wants to master 'swords.'

infected slut princess wrote: I wonder if, by some miracle, they will realize how shitty their game is when a mighty red dragon cannot break down a sturdy door. I mean, even if you are the strongest thing in the 5e universe (Str 30), you need to roll a 20 to break down a sturdy door with a masterwork lock. Is that lame or what.

I can't actually care about the dragon. It seems more important that this is an utterly insurmountable barrier to the party

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Sun Aug 18, 2013 9:22 am

So, how does this look like it's going to compare to 2e?

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Sun Aug 18, 2013 9:34 am

RadiantPhoenix wrote:So, how does this look like it's going to compare to 2e?

It won't be quite that shitty. But considering how the industry (and more importantly, the lion's share of the audience) has changed since 1989, there isn't any excuse for how shitty it will be.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sun Aug 18, 2013 10:52 am

I think that's unfair to 2E D&D. That game has a few things going for it. I mean, I consider that game to be the bare minimum of what it takes to have a game that's worth playng, but I can see someone who's not shadzar making a positive case for it.

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Sun Aug 18, 2013 4:51 pm

It was useful for the creation of some good single-player computer games, where the problems with the ruleset didn't matter so much, and the general DM dickery was overridden by the different needs and tropes of the new medium.

Other than that, it was a pretty poor minor conversion of the same basic bullshit as 1e, and never really addressed all the issues that ~15 years of RPG development had brought to light. Hmm. Maybe 5e has more in common with it than I thought. A few too many parallels, there.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Sun Aug 18, 2013 11:38 pm

only BAulder Gate series was really 2e video games. the rest were still 1e including the original NWN and ALL other SSI gold box series games.

Lago, you hit on a key factor of the real 2nd edition, that it lets you play it, it is a framework, not some hardcoded shit that forces you to have things like dragonbewbs, warfoged, and nonsense thrown into 3rd for no reason.

DDN has everything thrown in to appease the masses, and that will be WORSE than the 2e non-campaign-specific bloat, but DDN will have it in the core rules as its "modules".

compare the optimal in 2e with the options in DDN at core, and DDN is a nightmare. also consider how close tied to other things the "modules" in DDN will still be to see how "optional" they really are in the grand scheme of things.

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Mon Aug 19, 2013 1:54 am

At the moment, there _are_ no modules. None. The 'less complex' classes are in by default and there is no way to make them complex. There is also no evidence that they will make any special rules sections at this point-- they are apparently straining just to get the basics done.

As to computer games, yeah. BG, IWD, PS:T. Those are things people remember and want back (to the point that they're willing to throw millions of dollars at people (twice) to have a chance to get something like them again. That is a legacy. The pen and paper version doesn't have that kind of pull. When people make legacy D&D clones they imitate 1st, BECMI or third, depending on what fetish they are fapping to.

The gold box games weren't all that impressive, even by the standards of their time. They were basically Wizardry with a D&D ruleset attached, which is a little ironic, but nothing impressive

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Mon Aug 19, 2013 1:59 am

K wrote:It's very weird to see a second whole edition go by that is not better than 3.X in any way.

Well, "make some shit up" is a much simpler system...

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Mon Aug 19, 2013 2:10 am

Voss wrote:The gold box games weren't all that impressive, even by the standards of their time. They were basically Wizardry with a D&D ruleset attached, which is a little ironic, but nothing impressive

This is simply not true. I played both Wizardry and the Gold Box well into my teens, past the point where nostalgia is a thing for me by a huge margin, and the Gold Box was better by a huge margin. Likewise with Bard's Tale, there's no competition. Now the Ultima series I could see an argument for being superior to the Gold Box even though I personally don't think so, but seriously, Wizardry? No competition. Wizardry was a giant dungeon full of grind with a paper-thin plot attached who didn't update their graphics 8 years after the first game came out, Gold Box games had a plot that mattered, awesome manuals, significantly more interesting combat (which was, yes, mostly just a port of 1e AD&D rules but that is still way better than what contemporary RPGs were offering), and the battle sprites were customizable.

Now, granted, the Gold Box mostly stands out for being actually fun in an era when primitive video games were for the most part tolerable timewasters and doesn't hold a candle to Infinity Engine games. But it's still better than its contemporaries by an enormous margin.

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Mon Aug 19, 2013 2:23 am

I guess if you think the battlemap and crude animations were worth something. I don't, really.

The plots, however, were asinine. Kill monsters in ruins until you find out at the end that some magical thing is doing magical things with some sort of magical thing. And kill it, then the magical thing will no longer be a threat. Because magic. Hurrah.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Mon Aug 19, 2013 2:48 am

As opposed to "go kill monsters in the countryside until you find out at the end that it was all a conspiracy by a magical thing who wants to kill things to become a magical thing. And then kill it, and then the magical thing will no longer be a threat. Hurrah."

Describing things in vague, disinterested terms typically makes them sound vague and uninteresting, yes. Good job on puzzling that out, Shakespeare. It doesn't change the fact that Pool of Radiance does in fact have a plot and Wizardry doesn't.

And yes the battlemap was worth a lot, it turned combat from spamming your best spells and hoping your pile of numbers was bigger than the other team's (which is how Wizardry plays out) to actually targeting and maneuvering and having to think about what you're doing depending on who your enemy is and how they're positioned relative to each other and your own guys.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Mon Aug 19, 2013 3:35 am

@Cham:

Voss wouldnt know a Hercules graphics card if it bit him on the ass, not could he understand then transfer from 8 to 16 bit graphics. Sprite are what made Atari and Nintendo and the SSI series games had sprites just as good as Contra had until that other company came along.

comapre Gold Box to rogue-likes and you will see the vast difference that Gold Box was superior to much that had come before.

Voss wrote:As to computer games, yeah. BG, IWD, PS:T. Those are things people remember and want back (to the point that they're willing to throw millions of dollars at people (twice) to have a chance to get something like them again. That is a legacy. The pen and paper version doesn't have that kind of pull. When people make legacy D&D clones they imitate 1st, BECMI or third, depending on what fetish they are fapping to.

The gold box games weren't all that impressive, even by the standards of their time. They were basically Wizardry with a D&D ruleset attached, which is a little ironic, but nothing impressive

i only know of Baulder's Gate from hearing about it so often, but it was pretty much crap from a game standpoint even for its time. it came out around the time of Everquest if i remember correctly, so it is a good few years too late. the others i have no fucking clue what they even stand for.

the gold box series used the engine designed from D&D concepts to make a D&D game. it also predated Everquest as the first MMO of any consequence with graphics since NWN appeared on AOL at $11.95 per month for 5 free hours, and $5.95 for each additional hour of AOL use. it was what Zynga is to Facebook for AOL. the engine wasnt about being impressive like the Aurora Engine that later was used for NWN, it was about getting the game to work for a dozen games, and an online multi-player game. it worked just like 1st edition for the most part. getting 1st edition to work without churning through pages to find hidden content on a poorly indexed and over verbose set of books, was a vast triumph for AD&D.

also as far as your claim to P&P being mostly dead, then let it die. D&D isnt something that belongs in the same field as WoW and such shit. thus why there has NEVER been a generic world D&D game, but EVERY game is based on some setting like Stormreach the eBerron game, because D&D isnt set in one place. there is ZERO need to use D&D at all to make video games unless you want to make games based on a specific setting, and i dont think anyone needs another Freelancer game to play a mock Spelljammer, Ravenloft is out because there are better vampire/zombie type games that can be made without D&D... there is really no setting that people want from D&D for a video game, except to bitch about kender in Dragonlance or bitch about yet another fuck-over to Forgotten Realms. Planescape isnt a real setting which i think one of those initials you provide is for. the only real setting that could stand a good chance of being better in a video game than P&P TTRPG would honestly be Birthright.

but WoitC agrees with you such that that NAthan person said in Forbes interview.. that the future of D&D doesnt lie in the P&P game; yet that is what D&D is, not some fucking brand logo; because without the P&P TTRPG, you dont need D&D to do ANYTHING D&D does, and you can do it better without using D&D in fact.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Mon Aug 19, 2013 3:55 am

Is it just me or is Shadzar slowly developing the ability to use the shift key? I mean he capitalizes a few odd bits, he refuses to capitalize the start of sentences or the word "I" but... I'm seeing capital letters in there, the beginnings of punctuation, even some paragraphs.

I think whoever writes Shadzar's code is definitely working on new features, not sure if he passes the Turing test yet though.

andreww · Post by **andreww** » Mon Aug 19, 2013 8:35 am

Voss wrote:Huh. Staring at the How to Play document, I just realized you can make a full plate and shield(bash) wizard. All spellcasting in armor takes is proficiency. Mind you, it is a pretty big trap, as you're either doing it at really late levels, or pushing back maxing your int (and therefor attack rolls and save dcs), neither of which is exactly optimal.

I also realized there is heavy armor master which gives proficiency and bonuses with heavy armor, but nothing for light or medium. Anyone can strap on full plate, but no one who doesn't already know how can learn how to carry the burden of a mithral shirt (something you can explicitly wear under normal clothes) without being effectively crippled by the burden (disadvantage on effectively everything str and dex related). Of course there isn't anything for one-handed non-finesse weapons either, because no one ever wants to master 'swords.'

Actually not quite. In some ways it is worse than this, in some better.

As a Wizard you are never going to wear plate as Heavy Armour Mastery requires you to already have Medium Armour Proficiency. That is, unless you are a mountain dwarf who gets Medium Armour Proficiency as standard and gets a +1 bonus to AC in medium or heavy armour.

At level 1 you are looking at AC17 in scale mail with a 14Dex. By level 4 when you can probably afford some decent armour you can up that to AC20 with Dragon Scale and Shield Proficiency feat. Asmodeus now needs a 10 to hit you. At level 4. Level 4 monsters attack at about +5 and need a 15 to touch you. You are also a Dwarf so probably have a decent Con so enough HP to happily run around in melee if you need to.

You delay boosting your Int to 20 for 4 levels but your survivability increases significantly. You could take the Heavy Armour feat but all it will get you is +1AC and a small damage reduction.

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Mon Aug 19, 2013 11:45 am

Chamomile wrote:As opposed to "go kill monsters in the countryside until you find out at the end that it was all a conspiracy by a magical thing who wants to kill things to become a magical thing. And then kill it, and then the magical thing will no longer be a threat. Hurrah."

Describing things in vague, disinterested terms typically makes them sound vague and uninteresting, yes. Good job on puzzling that out, Shakespeare. It doesn't change the fact that Pool of Radiance does in fact have a plot and Wizardry doesn't.

They have the same plot, actually. There is an evil guy at the end of the game organizing the monsters. Go kill him. Pool of Radiance has more dressing, but not more plot - it just hides the end plot for a while, under the guise of just go in the ruins and kill stuff.

Those 'generalities' are the point. A magical being (Big T) has a magical Pool (of radiance) which is going to do unspecified evil magical shit because maniacal villain laughter. Not exactly top-notch writing.

And yes the battlemap was worth a lot, it turned combat from spamming your best spells and hoping your pile of numbers was bigger than the other team's (which is how Wizardry plays out) to actually targeting and maneuvering and having to think about what you're doing depending on who your enemy is and how they're positioned relative to each other and your own guys.

Mostly its 'spam fireball' (or sleep early on) and then send the fighters at the big ones, since the enemies generally start clustered. Even as a kid I could sleepwalk through the encounters.

@ andreww huh. missed the prereq. Ah well, so much for options, even bad ones.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Mon Aug 19, 2013 12:07 pm

Voss wrote:Those 'generalities' are the point. A magical being (Big T) has a magical Pool (of radiance) which is going to do unspecified evil magical shit because maniacal villain laughter. Not exactly top-notch writing.

I guess my earlier example was too subtle for you, so let me spell it out for you: That is also the plot of Baldur's Gate. Having a traitorous councilor who tries to have you killed by the Zhentarim and the ghost of a cleric who tried and failed to lay the dead to rest on the island fortress and a paladin/cleric duo who went out and got killed by the vampire in the graveyard and a mercenary hiding in Kuto's Well negotiating with the big bad for his services and a cleric ally who wants to go and restore a desecrated temple, those are all interesting in a way that "welcome to level 5, which is exactly like level 4: A giant maze filled with monsters in arbitrary groups who wander around trying to murder everyone they see" is not. For serious, you are trying to claim that a plotless Gygaxian dungeon crawl is exactly as interesting as an actual campaign, and that's got to be the stupidest thing I've heard in ages.

EDIT: Oh, yes, and concerning tactical difficulty, yes it is possible to do things in a certain order such that you always arrive with enough firepower to pretty much flatten the opposition, if you're playing with a walkthrough or something. If you're playing the game straight, the troll fight in the old rope guild, the big kobold fight in their lair, and a few of the optional fights can be really difficult. Especially the optional battle with the temple of clerics in the docks area if you turn the town against you. An entire room full of enemies packing SoDs requires a proper strategy to defeat. Fireballs are involved, yes, but it will avail you little just to have them, you need to also know where to target them to interrupt enemy spellcasting. That's a level of tactical depth Wizardry did not have.

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Mon Aug 19, 2013 12:12 pm

Chamomile wrote:
Voss wrote:Those 'generalities' are the point. A magical being (Big T) has a magical Pool (of radiance) which is going to do unspecified evil magical shit because maniacal villain laughter. Not exactly top-notch writing.
I guess my earlier example was too subtle for you, so let me spell it out for you: That is also the plot of Baldur's Gate. Having a traitorous councilor who tries to have you killed by the Zhentarim and the ghost of a cleric who tried and failed to lay the dead to rest on the island fortress and a paladin/cleric duo who went out and got killed by the vampire in the graveyard and a mercenary hiding in Kuto's Well negotiating with the big bad for his services and a cleric ally who wants to go and restore a desecrated temple, those are all interesting in a way that "welcome to level 5, which is exactly like level 4: A giant maze filled with monsters in arbitrary groups who wander around trying to murder everyone they see" is not. For serious, you are trying to claim that a plotless Gygaxian dungeon crawl is exactly as interesting as an actual campaign, and that's got to be the stupidest thing I've heard in ages.

Since all those do is frame more combat encounters, it isn't particularly interesting. You can't interact with them in meaningful ways, so no, I don't fucking care. After flipping through the bare snippets of text, it is still combat music and battlemap time, which the Ultimas had already been doing for several years.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Mon Aug 19, 2013 12:18 pm

Voss wrote:
Since all those do is frame more combat encounters, it isn't particularly interesting. You can't interact with them in meaningful ways, so no, I don't fucking care. After flipping through the bare snippets of text, it is still combat music and battlemap time, which the Ultimas had already been doing for several years.

We aren't talking about Gold Box vs. Ultima. We're talking about Gold Box vs. Wizardry. Gold Box had setting detail and story, and yes it was linear (well, most of it: Curse of the Azure Bonds didn't have a lot of player choice but you could complete the bulk of the story in any order), but so was Wizardry, except Wizardry was way more sparse with plot and setting detail, to the point where it wasn't even really there to begin with. And for that matter, in terms of roleplaying choices Gold Box still has Wizardry beat, because there are times when you can avoid combats with roleplaying choices, for example, when you're sent to spy on the auction in Podol Plaza, when you run into the one wizard hiding out in the Slums, when you're sneaking into the one desecrated Temple place with your Cleric friend, Tyranthraxus' wizard underling who is not only a skippable battle but can be recruited to your side for the final confrontation, the nomad camp where you can either befriend or attack the nomads, the mad wizard pyramid where you can attack the lizardfolk or befriend them (and if you befriend them it makes a future quest at the lizardfolk castle much easier) and so on, and so forth.

EDIT: And note that in all that list at the end I am talking about Pool of Radiance alone.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Mon Aug 19, 2013 12:20 pm

Dark Sun: Shattered Lands was rad as heck, but I never got past the ifnal battle, then we got a windows computer and I lost track of it...

CCarter · Post by **CCarter** » Tue Aug 20, 2013 1:10 am

RadiantPhoenix wrote:So, how does this look like it's going to compare to 2e?

Pluses: no THAC0
Minuses: more extensive power lists that are going to create lots of weird exploits and power combos beyond Mearls' ability to balance.

In some ways its looking reminiscent of 2E (rulings not rules, likely optimizers being told to go eat some dicks because they failed to built a balanced ruleset).

On the Magical Tea Party front we have:

*Slightly better GM-advice-to-rules ratio in that instead of telling the GM to flat out fudge the dice roll to save the good roleplayers, they get a free roleplaying point to spend on advantage so its all legal, instead of being illusionism.
*lots more useless numbers/complexity in 5E since instead of arbitrary check modifiers vs. arbitrary difficulty (e.g. the GM can assign whatever check or modifiers they want, like giving you an autosuccess on a proficiency check if they want) its defined numbers for stats/skills floating in a vacuum where the GM can set any target number and is encouraged to do so after the roll.
I like to think there's a remote chance they will be able to at least get tightrope walking DCs that make sense, but I suppose 'bounded accuracy' is directly at odds with this so we'll see.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Tue Aug 20, 2013 2:34 am

To be fair to Wizardry, when the license moved from weird German people to weird Japanese people the property got way the hell better. Tales of the Forsaken Land has a pretty damn good plot for a cRPG-derived jRPG.