D&DNext: Playtest Review

[hogarth]

Basically, the cleric has some impressive buffs and great armor and the Wizard has impressive crowd control and sketchy armor (Mirror Image is great, but wasting an action every combat of a 2nd level slot sucks).

Where do you get the "great armor" for a cleric? Medium armor sucks.

Well, the difference between the best medium armor and no armor is 5-7 points on a D20 before magic bonuses and depending on your Dex bonus.

The point is that they have worse armor than a fighter (who can use heavy armor) and worse armor than a rogue (who can use light armor with a good Dex modifier). Having the third-best armor out of four classes is probably pushing the definition of `good` or `great`.

[ishy]

So apparently skeletons have both necrotic resistance and immunity.
Will there be a way to bypass immunities or something?

I've been looking a bit at weapon damage and attack rolls, and many builds just look wrong.

Base appears to be: proficiency + strength + any features and str + features as damage
This is the same if you attack twice with a weapon, natural attacks and single attacks.
Ranged attacks appear to just be, proficiency + dex as attack, and dex as damage

Two Handers are weird.
The fighter and the Ogre gain a +2 damage but the minotaur doesn't. Though the minotaur has a bite attack in addition to the 2H attack.
The Ogre also has a weapon that is not listed anywhere else.
The fighter has a +1 attack for some reason too (might be the 'Scar' she picked up as treasure)

And then we have the creatures where the attack stats don't make sense:
      Berserker, has a +1 to attack from somewhere
      Gnoll, has +1 damage from somewhere
      Goblin king: melee attack: +1 attack & damage from somewhere
      Ranged: -1 attack & damage for some reason (copy paste error from goblin?)
      Kobold: Ranged: -3 attack and -4 damage for some reason
      Elite Kobold: melee: +1 attack & + 2 damage from somewhere
      Special attack: Divert attack to Dragon Shield (what does this even do?)
      Kobold Chieftain: +1 damage for some reason
      Medusa: -2 damage on the second ranged attack only for some reason
      Ogre: +5 ranged damage (did they mix up strength / Dex for ranged damage?)
      Stirge: +7 melee attack and +4 melee damage for some reason
      Troll: -1 attack for some reason
      Wight: +1 attack on longsword only for some reason

And this is just from the bestiary.
Edit: oh and ~75% of all weapon damage numbers don't match up with the table.

- Edit: Didn't realise Quarterstaffs were finesse weapons. This means that the Attack and Dmg stats for the wizard / cleric with these are wrong too.
I do wonder why the rogue for example has a positive strength score even though Dex gives her damage and not Strength. So why not put that 10 in Wisdom?

[ishy]

The human in the bestiary has 9 int, 8 wisdom, 9 cha
Yet he playthrough rules say that a score of 10 or 11 is average for a human.

So I guess adventurers really pump up the average on mental scores ey?

Alignement appears to be back to, lawful - neutral - chaotic & good - neutral - evil again.

- Edit: and mindless skeletons & zombies are neutral again

[Voss]

Where do you get the "great armor" for a cleric? Medium armor sucks.

Well, the difference between the best medium armor and no armor is 5-7 points on a D20 before magic bonuses and depending on your Dex bonus.

The point is that they have worse armor than a fighter (who can use heavy armor) and worse armor than a rogue (who can use light armor with a good Dex modifier). Having the third-best armor out of four classes is probably pushing the definition of `good` or `great`.

Except they have medium AND light armor, and the sample cleric could easily be optimized to push that dex up another point, and probably scrounged for another 25 gold to get a chain shirt, and so could easily sit comfortably at a 17 AC. Given how low all the numbers are (that AC beats everything in bestiary except the boss monsters), that is a very solid starting place for a first level 5e character (from the info available).

As built, the cleric of pelor is still the most effective character in the game. Good to great at combat, good on defense, meaningful spells that can affect entire fights, actually has stuff to do during down time, and has bonuses on the kind of checks that an adventurer actually cares about.

The rogue still drives me nuts. Only sporadically effective in combat, and only useful at all because of the fiat on locks and traps (via thieves tools)

Anyone done the math on the boss fights? It looks fairly problematic- suddenly high ACs coupled with suddenly high hit points doesn't make for a great first impression.

[ishy]

Anyone done the math on the boss fights? It looks fairly problematic- suddenly high ACs coupled with suddenly high hit points doesn't make for a great first impression.

What kind of math do you want?

It sounds like a bit of fun though, so I'll put a 3th level fighter vs minotaur.
Since you know we got someone saying that in the playtest (probably a different one though) fighters could take down minotaurs in a charge.
Using straight out of the bestiary and dwarfen fighter pdf (so not using poisons or anything like that)

Fighter lvl 3:
     Init +1
     HP: 32
     AC: 15
     Greatax: +6 || 2d6+8 (3 dmg on a miss)
     Twice per day: 2 actions.
     Don't care about anything else.

Minotaur:
     Init +1
     hp: 132
     AC:14
     Reach 10 (reach is unlikely to make a any difference ever though)
     Greatax: +6 | 1d12 +4 & bite: +6 | 1d6+4
     Charging gore: +6 | 3d6 +6 (+some other stuff you don't care about for this example, the +6 bonus could be a bonus on top of the regular attack though, not really sure)

So yeah, lets put ac, hp, and average dmg next to each other
fighter:      Minotaur:
AC: 15       AC 14
HP: 32       HP 132
DMG: 15      DMG:10,5 + 7,5 OR 16,5

Fighter does dmg on a miss though and has a greater chance of hitting, but with average damage goes below 0 in 2 rounds if hit.
If the fighter always crits he needs 7 rounds to put the minotaur below 0.

- Edit:
Average dmg for a fighter appears to be 10,45 a round if I count in hit chance and crit chance.
Average dmg for the minotaur appears to be 10,3 a round if I count in hit chance and crit chance.

So the minotaur needs ~3.1 rounds (round up to 4) to take out the fighter on average.
And the fighter needs ~12.6 attacks(round up to 13) to take out the minotaur on average. Since the fighter gains 2 attacks a round /day twice, She takes out the minotaur on average in 11 rounds.

[hogarth]

Except they have medium AND light armor, and the sample cleric could easily be optimized to push that dex up another point, and probably scrounged for another 25 gold to get a chain shirt, and so could easily sit comfortably at a 17 AC.

So...he's still in third place behind an optimized rogue and fighter?

[tussock]

All should probably note that the docs are full of disclaimers saying they really don't give two shits about the numbers yet, at all (clearly, they're all over the place), they just want to know if it feels at all like "D&D" to you when you play the Caves of Chaos with it.

They don't care that the Rogue doesn't work, just if you can feel like a Rogue when you're playing one.

The fighter? Nice damage, even if it is impossible by the book in three different ways, feels kind of weird that the mook battles don't care if I hit or miss because everything dies anyway.

Spears and Kobolds? Charles Darwin says no. But, yeh, obviously not supposed to care about the numbers yet.

EDIT: It's pretty clear the Minotaur can take down the Fighter with a charge, not the other way around. Whisper chains and all that.

[Username17]

Anyone done the math on the boss fights? It looks fairly problematic- suddenly high ACs coupled with suddenly high hit points doesn't make for a great first impression.

It's not really clear what is supposed to be a boss fight. The Medusa in the Caves of Chaos makes everyone make a Con Save DC 12 at the start of battle (there is specifically DM Fiat that you don't get to choose to not look at her) or turn to stone. So she basically kills half the party on turn zero. Thereafter, not looking at her just gives her advantage and you disadvantage, so you'll just do that. Then you don't have to do any more death saves. You still have to make a Dex save (DC 13) or take ~8 points of damage from snake hair every round, but this is pretty minor (and disadvantage doesn't apply to that, because it's not an attack roll).

Her actual attacks are kind of bullshit - 2 attacks at +3 (with advantage) for d6+1 each and the snake damage. It'll take her an average of about four turns (3.6 turns) to take out a 3rd level Fighter and in that time, the Fighter alone should be able to burst out with about 53 damage even if he can't figure out how to negate the disadvantage (albeit by popping both of his extra actions for the day), and the Medusa only has 66 hit points. So if the Medusa takes out two or less player characters with her "death forever, also fuck you" attack on turn zero, she is going down in a big way. Probably without taking out any other players. If player characters decide to risk looking at her, they are fucking morons and they are going to be losing an extra party member almost every round.

By the way: there is no battlefield control. At all. Like, not even attacks of opportunity as far as I can tell. Reach doesn't really do anything except make a larger area where you give disadvantage to archers. But archers can just walk away with their full move before shooting. They don't seem to suffer any drawbacks from that. It's like the old crap about 5 foot step and shoot, only now it's a 30 foot step and shoot. Archery might as be completely usable in melee, because as long as there is more than 15 feet of space you can just walk away before taking your shot. On the flip side, melee also isn't much different from a bow for the same reason: if you want to walk over and stab a high value target you just do that.

-Username17

[Voss]

Except they have medium AND light armor, and the sample cleric could easily be optimized to push that dex up another point, and probably scrounged for another 25 gold to get a chain shirt, and so could easily sit comfortably at a 17 AC.

So...he's still in third place behind an optimized rogue and fighter?

By 1 and 2 points respectively, yeah, assuming he can't pick up a shield proficiency in some way, at which point he's tied with a fighter (who doesn't go for two handed) and 1 point behind a rogue who does the same thing. And that is assuming you ignore the utterly ridiculous costs for the top tier armors.

You're trying to make third place sound really awful, but the AC range for the material provided hits a hard cap really fast. If you optimize for AC, the hard cap before magic is 21 AC and that assumes an 18 dex, 2,500 gp for Mithril Chain and scrounging up a shield proficiency from as-yet-unseen rules. The fact that the cleric can walk out the door at first level at 17 AC if you tweak it just slightly isn't anywhere near bad. It really is firmly in the 'this is a good AC' camp. And realistically, a fighter is going to cap at 18 when starting at level 1- he isn't going to have 15000 gold for adamantine, or even 1500 for plate. And the rogue isn't any more likely than the cleric to have a shield proficiency, so realistically he is walking out the door at level 1 with an 18 AC as well. Though both the rogue and the cleric should probably pick up shield proficiency fairly quickly, because there just aren't that many ways to buff AC (so far).


But also, screw the rogue. Take a dex based fighter. 18 dex, chain shirt, heavy shield, and one of rapier/scimitar/shortsword. The minor difference between a 1d8 weapon and a 1d6 weapon quickly gets lost in your stat bonus and class bonuses to damage, and you've maxed out a save that is actually likely to come up, AC (20), and initiative. Pack a sling so you can keep your shield AC and still have a ranged attack. Strength is pretty much only worth it if you absolutely have to have a two hander.

@ishy & Frank-
that is a good place to start (and the kind of comparison I was thinking of), though I was thinking more along the lines of the party vs. the boss (cheiftan monster for each complex and the dark priest, for example, though the minotaur and medusa are good as well) encounters as written in the adventure doc, since they are a little more complex. Basically I was curious as to how long those fights are going to last and for the spellcasters, how quickly they are going to be reduced to spamming cantrips and orisons.

The medusa is another reminder that clerics win again. shield of faith helps negate the disadvantage, divine favor gives a shedload of small bonuses, including all saves.

I'm not very surprised that the medusa is a fuck-you encounter. The first 4e module (Keep of Shadows, or whatever) was done by Mearls and ended pretty much the same way- with a fight that should rip the party to shit, no matter what.

Also, Frank, reach doesn't even do that. Reach only exists during your turn, so you can't ever threaten archers with it that way. Hell, as written, reach doesn't even exist if you ready an action, because the reaction explicitly isn't your turn, just something you can do that also resets your place in the init round.

EDIT: It's pretty clear the Minotaur can take down the Fighter with a charge, not the other way around. Whisper chains and all that.

That wasn't a whisper chain. That was an exact quote from a published interview.

[MisterDee]

Fuck it. Why is this so hard to understand:

If wearing heavy armor is an advantage, then light armor + Dex bonus shouldn't be as good as wearing heavy armor + same Dex bonus.

That goddamn "heavy armor is so clumsy it penalizes your defense" meme should die a fiery death. Maybe it is realistic, maybe it isn't. Bottom line is I don't give a fuck in my fiction game in which wizards throw up gigantic wall of stones. Sure, OK, it penalizes your acrobatic checks and the full helm fucks your perception and you can't sneak. I'm OK with skill check penalties. But armor that fucking impedes your defense?

[Username17]

Also, Frank, reach doesn't even do that. Reach only exists during your turn, so you can't ever threaten archers with it that way.

That's just the reach property on weapons. If you're an Ogre or something, you have reach all the time. Not that it matters, since as previously noted your reach doesn't actually do anything.

-Username17

[virgil]

As fun as it is to rant about what's written, any advice for running the playtest? Let's get it out of the way and assume "do not" and the equivalents are off the table.

[Voss]

Hmm, I actually like the fact that light and heavy armor are both viable build options. Something clearly went horrible wrong with medium armor, but if once you can deal with the horrible gold costs, light armor guys with high dex are in the same area as heavy armor guys with low dex, and that is a good thing. Particularly in view of staying on the RNG.



Also, I finally found the thing I was looking for with the cleric. Spiritual hammer really is d8+4, as I thought. But it isn't in the rules, its on the character sheet, page 2, under Magical Attacks: whenever you make an attack granted by a spell, you use your wisdom modifier for the attack roll and the damage roll. You gain an additional +2 to attack rolls.

As fun as it is to rant about what's written, any advice for running the playtest? Let's get it out of the way and assume "do not" and the equivalents are off the table.

Well, since it is a playtest, just get 3-5 other people together (or online-there is so little meat that this looks doable over chat) and just plow through it. If you have fewer people, keep the clerics at one per person, and stack up everything else (particularly the wizard and rogue).

I'd pretty much just run the thing as a pure combat experience, because that is really the only thing that there are rules for anyway. Use the stealth rules as written at first, then try ignoring various bits to see if they really make any difference.

Some things I'd really keep track of:
- are the clerics dominating the party
- is the rogue contributing at all
- does the wizard player enjoy his spells and how often does the concentration thing come up
- is the fact that monsters are going down without damage rolls a good thing or a bad thing
- boss fights- party failure or does it become of a circle jerk of spamming attack/orison/cantrip on the guy in the middle. In particular, are the AC and HP too high.
- are the lower 'level' monsters actually a threat, particularly, does the sheer number of them actually make up for the fact that they suck, and do their attacks actually threaten to drop party members.

- actually use some tactics (some of these are actually suggested in the module), particularly reinforcements and setting up ambushes once the party is detected in the area.

- the effect of just being able to walk away/around enemies. Does it turn combat into a joke? How do you keep the wizard alive (if he is even worth attacking)

[Seerow]

Fuck it. Why is this so hard to understand:

If wearing heavy armor is an advantage, then light armor + Dex bonus shouldn't be as good as wearing heavy armor + same Dex bonus.

That goddamn "heavy armor is so clumsy it penalizes your defense" meme should die a fiery death. Maybe it is realistic, maybe it isn't. Bottom line is I don't give a fuck in my fiction game in which wizards throw up gigantic wall of stones. Sure, OK, it penalizes your acrobatic checks and the full helm fucks your perception and you can't sneak. I'm OK with skill check penalties. But armor that fucking impedes your defense?

I agree for the most part. At the very least, armor should stop being categorized as light/medium/heavy if that's how they're going to keep running it. Why not use the Simple/Martial/Exotic that they use for weapons? Simple armor can be light or heavy, but all simple armors will be weak compared to their equivalent Martial armors, which will be weak compared to their Exotic armors. So a rogue would end up with basic armor proficiency, while a Fighter gets exotic proficiency. The rogue ends up with some basic leather armor for 2+dex in AC, while the Fighter gets his full plate and gets 8 AC, making himself strictly better unless the rogue has stats equivalent to a god.


Though honestly, the biggest issue I have isn't the weaker AC (it's annoying, but I could deal with it, especially if armor has any other sort of defensive value besides AC. Even if it's just Heavy Armor can be loaded with more defensive enchantments, or something more basic like DR), it's the movement speed penalty. It's not quite as bad as 3e, as the penalty is only -5 instead of -33% (has to specify 33% because higher movespeeds take heavier penalties). That has always been the most annoying thing about heavy armor for me. Why not just lump the armor movement speed reduction in with the encumbrance rules? Why is it if I can juggle cars, wearing 50lbs of metal slows me down?

[Voss]

I agree for the most part. At the very least, armor should stop being categorized as light/medium/heavy if that's how they're going to keep running it. Why not use the Simple/Martial/Exotic that they use for weapons? Simple armor can be light or heavy, but all simple armors will be weak compared to their equivalent Martial armors, which will be weak compared to their Exotic armors. So a rogue would end up with basic armor proficiency, while a Fighter gets exotic proficiency. The rogue ends up with some basic leather armor for 2+dex in AC, while the Fighter gets his full plate and gets 8 AC, making himself strictly better unless the rogue has stats equivalent to a god.

That is actually pretty horrible, to be honest. Strictly better is pretty much awful when it comes to equipment, because it quickly comes down to: the few things you actually take and a long list of complete shit that everyone with a brain ignores.

I should say at best it is ignored, at worst it becomes a trap option.

[Seerow]

I agree for the most part. At the very least, armor should stop being categorized as light/medium/heavy if that's how they're going to keep running it. Why not use the Simple/Martial/Exotic that they use for weapons? Simple armor can be light or heavy, but all simple armors will be weak compared to their equivalent Martial armors, which will be weak compared to their Exotic armors. So a rogue would end up with basic armor proficiency, while a Fighter gets exotic proficiency. The rogue ends up with some basic leather armor for 2+dex in AC, while the Fighter gets his full plate and gets 8 AC, making himself strictly better unless the rogue has stats equivalent to a god.

That is actually pretty horrible, to be honest. Strictly better is pretty much awful when it comes to equipment, because it quickly comes down to: the few things you actually take and a long list of complete shit that everyone with a brain ignores.

I should say at best it is ignored, at worst it becomes a trap option.

Except we're talking about proficiencies. You know, where higher proficiencies are supposed to be a benefit for the class? Heavy Armor is described as a benefit of being a Fighter, because Fighters are supposed to have better armor. But in truth, their armor gets outdone by a guy with decent dex wearing some leather.

Yes, when you have Exotic Armor proficiency, you will ignore martial and simple armors. This makes sense, because the exotic armor is better. However not everybody will have the exotic armor proficiency, so those other options still have a reason for existing. Those people will have weaker armor, but that's just the way things work. If they really want, they can blow a feat to get the better quality of gear.

[ishy]

ps. Is it me, or do the races only mention their positive parts?
For example if I look at the dwarf, she only has 25 movement even though her racial says her movement isn't restricted. I'm guessing dwarfs have a lower movement speed or something?

[Voss]

It can easily not make any difference, as was demonstrated in some cases in 3e, and all the time in 4th. For some 3e fighter builds, a feat is barely a cost. In 4e, a feat isn't a real cost for anyone, because the feats are so terrible. So taking a good weapon rather than sticking to the shittier ones is still a no brainer, and it still leaves the giant pile of shit that no one ever took, even if they didn't take the 'higher' proficiency.

As far as proficiencies go, that is a nice idea in theory, but in practice it isn't a benefit so much as a flavor.

Also, you really need to show some examples, because I can't think of a situation in any edition of D&D ever, where leather + 'decent' dex surpasses plate. (And that is before you toss in mithril and shit, which skews the thing even further).

You also still need to explain why light armor + a really heavy investment in dex being roughly equal to plate is a bad thing. Having different builds ending up in the same area on the RNG seems like a good thing to me.

[Seerow]

It can easily not make any difference, as was demonstrated in some cases in 3e, and all the time in 4th. For some 3e fighter builds, a feat is barely a cost. In 4e, a feat isn't a real cost for anyone, because the feats are so terrible. So taking a good weapon rather than sticking to the shittier ones is still a no brainer, and it still leaves the giant pile of shit that no one ever took, even if they didn't take the 'higher' proficiency.

As far as proficiencies go, that is a nice idea in theory, but in practice it isn't a benefit so much as a flavor.

Also, you really need to show some examples, because I can't think of a situation in any edition of D&D ever, where leather + 'decent' dex surpasses plate. (And that is before you toss in mithril and shit, which skews the thing even further).

You also still need to explain why light armor + a really heavy investment in dex being roughly equal to plate is a bad thing. Having different builds ending up in the same area on the RNG seems like a good thing to me.

1) You're right, some people can justify spending the feat for the better quality armor. Most people probably won't and will stick with what they get from their class though. It's more likely we'd see people taking a dip into a class with better proficiencies for the proficiency they want.

What you miss however though is just because people CAN get the better proficiencies, doesn't mean they will.

2) Proficiencies being flavor rather than benefit has been because they have been in the past designed such that the benefit isn't significant enough to be noteworthy. Heavy Armor gives the same or worse AC vs Light Armor, with penalties on top of it to boot. Exotic Weapons get an extra damage die size vs Martial Weapons.

The problem is that the game values these proficiencies as important, because it makes a big deal out of some classes having higher proficiencies than others. You see it in the talks about design coming out of WotC all the time, the Fighter may not have special abilities, but he has the best weapons and the best armor. But that isn't really the case.

3) A character with good dex and a chain shirt has basically the same armor as a character with no dex and full plate. The guy with full plate had to spend about 15x more on his armor, get slapped with a hefty move speed penalty, a hefty penalty to all physical skills. Sorry, but why do I need to have a higher proficiency and pay all this extra gold just to take all of these penalties on myself? For flavor? Fuck that shit.


4) As for the high dex guy deserving to be on the same RNG, sure. That's why I suggested making armor proficiencies follow weapon proficiencies. A dex guy with exotic light armor will be pretty much on par with the non-dex guy with exotic heavy armor. But both of them are going to be better than the guy who has simple armor. It could just be a difference of 2-3 points, which would mean staying on the same RNG, but one being noticeably better.



And like I said, earlier, I'm even okay with light armor yielding a higher AC value, as long as heavy armor has some other defensive benefit. Like in my games I have armor grant quasi-DR(basically DR that goes by turn rather than by attack) dependent on Armor Value and BAB. So a Rogue might have +17 AC and 27 points of reduction, while a Fighter is going to have more like +13 AC 52 points of reduction. The fighter gets hit more often, but can shrug off a greater amount of damage.

[Username17]

As fun as it is to rant about what's written, any advice for running the playtest? Let's get it out of the way and assume "do not" and the equivalents are off the table.

Most of the game is MTP. Hell, almost all of the game is MTP. The game bothers to spend an entire paragraph explaining that the DM may choose to make hours pass, but it doesn't list travel times or action benchmarks for anything at all. The kindly folks at WotC have stated explicitly that they don't give a rat fuck whether the numbers are horribly broken or not and that you can take your fancy schmancy "arithmetic" and shove it up your ass sideways. So what rules there actually are aren't even worth testing for numerical functionality.

About all there is to test is:

• Whether the MTP gives enough hand holds for players to interact with. I submit that it does not.
• Whether the class abilities feel useful and distinct. I submit that they do not.
• Whether the procedures (rather than the outputs) of the game are actually fun. I submit that they are not.

So if you were genuinely interested in playtesting the game, I'd run a mystery. You know, mansion is rumored to be haunted, yadda yadda legendary treasure, yadda yadda missing villagers, secret rooms, ancient messages, various suspects, some deadly traps, and maybe a monster or two in the basement and/or attic plus at least one villager in league with monsters who can be a half assed boss.

And then you'd have something. See, the Rogue is fucking useless because he has to roll to find any trap better than a pit covered with leaves. And his "find" bonus only applies to traps, so his chances of finding a hidden compartment or something could literally be zero. Even on finding specifically traps, the Wizard simply by being an Elf has a better chance of finding them in almost all cases.

The entire "mother may I" system of finding shit is almost inevitably going to result in the players standing around the proverbial (or actual) kitchen table stuck on where they should search next, certain that they've missed something important (and correct). So the game would hang repeatedly.

The social rules don't exist for the most part, and except for "discovering that people are lying" (also Wisdom based), there is nothing that your actual abilities or die rolls help you with. Whichever player is the most sociable is going to share the top billing with the resident Wisdom monster. Unless those are the same person, in which case it'll be one guy running roughshod over the other players.

And that is a Playtest.

-Username17

[Voss]

Actually, everyone in the party has an equal or better chance of finding traps. The rogue is at +2 with the wisdom penalty, the fighter just has a +2 wisdom, the clerics are better, and the elf has his racial wackiness. So the halfling is around solely because he is the only one allowed to fiddle the tools in the actual object, once someone else finds it.

The skills are bothering me anyway, since they are pure MTP. And some of them I don't even know what they do Magical lore I get (though I don't have any idea what the specific uses are). But when you start stacking up religious, natural, forbidden and fucking heraldric, the lines begin to blur. Forbidden is actually the worst, since it can potentially overlap with anything. 'The gods don't want you to know that the solar system is actually heliocentric' falls under 4 different categories (magical, religious, natural and forbidden), and its not even clear that it is actually in the realm of things a character could actually know in generic D&D land, so how do you even make a check for that?

And should we even get into the 'Trade' background? You can earn wages to support a standard of living appropriate to a list of professions that inherently don't have the same standard of living. And you are explicitly allowed to... gossip... with people in the same trade. What?


There are some things I like about this, I could see making this into an actual game, but there is soooo much work to do it is absurd.

-The rogue needs to be tossed out entirely or completely redesigned.

-The wizard needs spells that are interesting, and needs to not be arbitrarily punished for wanting to do his actual job.

- The skills need an actual system, descriptions, target numbers, associated stats and a list of things they can and can't do.

- Combat numbers need to be consistent, clear, and easily derived from actual bonuses. At this point, they are either typos, hiding actual numbers, or purely made up, and none of those situations makes for an acceptable playtest. And the equipment list needs to be consistent with the sample characters and monsters. Not only are the numbers usually different, but the character sheets have several finesse weapons treated as basic weapons, and the characters aren't even proficient in them. [notably shield on the cleric of moradin, and the fucking quarterstaff being carried by the cleric of pelor]


Sadly, I suspect skills will remain purely MTP bullshit, and while real numbers will eventually emerge for things, Mearls and company will insist just using what is printed on the sheets is fine for now. Especially the beginning on the bestiary actually says that. The best potential result of the playtest will be half a game (combat, naturally) and maybe the AC and hit points of the tougher monsters will change, and possibly things will happen to the wizard and rogue to make people care about their existence.

But the combat is probably going to stay a weird 1e/2e hybrid where people wander around at random and poke sticks at people. With a fairly reasonable chance that spells will get progressively godlike at higher levels (which will probably never get added to the playtest) and able to nuke people from orbit.


And Monte Cook style 2/day abilities need to go the fuck away. Especially since they are things that other races/classes can just _do_.

[CapnTthePirateG]

Why are you complaining about the trade background when all the backgrounds (save healer) are MTP bullshit that hasn't been quantified? Researcher is basically "the DM might give you shit". I mean, come on.

Also, I'm sick of Mearls and his belief in DM judgement. We need to make him play with this one guy I know. Or shadzar.

[RobbyPants]

Most of the game is MTP. Hell, almost all of the game is MTP. The game bothers to spend an entire paragraph explaining that the DM may choose to make hours pass, but it doesn't list travel times or action benchmarks for anything at all. The kindly folks at WotC have stated explicitly that they don't give a rat fuck whether the numbers are horribly broken or not and that you can take your fancy schmancy "arithmetic" and shove it up your ass sideways. So what rules there actually are aren't even worth testing for numerical functionality.

So what, they're absolving themselves of making a bad game by saying it wasn't designed for the mathematically inclined? Interesting.

"The math on your game doesn't work."

"Of course not. We didn't design it for you."

[virgil]

I've seen this as such a common mindset in players and designers alike. If the numbers aren't intended to be balanced, or even do what you say, letting "common sense" and roleplaying handle bumps in the system; then why the hell do even even use numbers?

[Voss]

Why are you complaining about the trade background when all the backgrounds (save healer) are MTP bullshit that hasn't been quantified? Researcher is basically "the DM might give you shit". I mean, come on.

Mostly because I can sort of see how most of them are vaguely supposed to work- the knight goes to a garrison or nobleman and no one says 'give us 5 silver pieces for room and board for the night.' Trader can vary between spending a day fishing and selling fish and earning 5 cp, and being a smith and making a suit of adamantine plate, and demanding 15,000 gold. Or selling a couple of swords and making 100 gp. Or... whatever. It just stands out more because the other backgrounds are pure MTP that yield pure MTP handwaving or DM provided clues. Trader is supposed to yield actual money in an amount that isn't specified but is tied to things like healing, which you actually need.

[quote="RobbyPants]So what, they're absolving themselves of making a bad game by saying it wasn't designed for the mathematically inclined? Interesting.

"The math on your game doesn't work."

"Of course not. We didn't design it for you."[/quote]

Yep. Paizo is still using this exact approach (to the point that James Jacobs actually said something very similar earlier this week), and their message boards are full of people who will happily die to defend that attitude. I have a feeling this playtest is going to mirror the Paizo playtest exactly, down to the complete dismissal of a lot critique as something unimportant to the vast majority of players.

To the point that a detailed breakdown of the math of stealth will yield precisely nothing, but if you can persuade enough people that the rogue 'doesn't _feel_ like a rogue,' they might change something. In fact the best approach is probably to say that the rogue has to worry too much about numbers.