D&DNext: Playtest Review

[Foxwarrior]

Your Halfling and Quickling look really awkward when playing with a 5' grid.

Making Cheetahs and Monks be faster at everything is dissimilar from reality, but not in a totally unbalanced way.

[Sashi]

Not really. They both just move their max ground speed and have MP left over for loading slings or drinking potions or something.

[Grek]

And I still don't know a way to describe a speed 30 dude on a speed 60 horse other than to say "it costs the rider five feet of movement for every ten feet of movement his horse spends". Or he gets the horse's speed, which means he can suddenly drink twice as many potions in a round.

The rider is automatically moved to where ever the mount uses its movement points to move. This does not cost the rider movement points. The rider may not spend movement points to move but can spend movement points for any non-movement action that costs them.

[MfA]

Something like "Unless otherwise stated, a character has 6 Move Points (MP) and may spend one MP to move five feet up to their maximum ground speed".

Too gamey and complex, better to just destroy verisimilitude.

[Quantumboost]

Now there's a monk, guys! According to Mearls, it has expertise dice, skill training (guess what, you don't care because all skills are "argue with the DM") and doesn't scale unarmed. Let's look at the packet, shall we?

We've got our trusty monk alignment requirements. Good to know that shit's important.

They get a small pool of ki moves, including stunning and healing, that can be used a very limited amount of times per day. They also get Wis to AC to compensate for the lack of armor and shield, which I don't think it does.

They also have fixed unarmed damage so it can be improved with ki strikes, and get some mental immunities at 7th level. Overall not very interesting, just like the rest of 5e.

I'm currently playing pre-curse Ranma in a campaign that recently switched to D&D Next from Castles & Crusades. Not a Ranma expy, my character sheet literally says "Saotome Ranma" on it. I implemented it as Rogue when there wasn't a Monk class.

My DM offered to let me convert him to a Monk now that the class is out.

I said no.

'nuff said.

[Sashi]

The rider is automatically moved to where ever the mount uses its movement points to move. This does not cost the rider movement points. The rider may not spend movement points to move but can spend movement points for any non-movement action that costs them.

That could work. I don't think it's the best way, since it locks you into keeping the move-point action economy trivial, and I think that hurts mobility-oriented classes (monks, rogues, and ironically mounted chargers).

The only problem is that in 5E you do not have movement points you have "feet of movement" that you sacrifice to do non-movement things. So your rule written in 5E speak goes something like:

The rider is automatically moved to where ever the mount moves. This does not cost the rider feet of movement. The rider may not spend feet of movement to move but can use movement for any non-movement action that costs feet of movement, up to his maximum movement.

[shadzar]

I am still missing the point of all these excess classes like the monk when they shouldnt be needed, and it even fit the wrong flavor as it has often done. I am waiting for the Friar Tuck clergy kind of monks, not the silly shoalin wuxai monks. but i guess the problem is the cleric can already cover that type of monk. which bring me back to questions like, why even have a thief/rogue class when ALL adventures are in fact thieves, and the abilities should be available to anyone. Why do they continue to carry on Gary's mistake, and not just cut the classes, and make multiclassing work?

expertise dice? what is this Hero Quest and you are rolling skulls v shields on the dice to see who takes a hit? why add some stupid new element of rules nonsense for a single class?

[ModelCitizen]

The rider is automatically moved to where ever the mount moves. This does not cost the rider feet of movement. The rider may not spend feet of movement to move but can use movement for any non-movement action that costs feet of movement, up to his maximum movement.

Under that rule you can't make a mounted move and then dismount. This would make basically every mounted-combat fight I've ever run in 3e impossible, but more importantly I think people will resent being told you they have to end their turn before (say) leaping off a flying mount into melee. I think the better rule is:

When the mount moves, the rider loses an equal number of feet of movement if she has any remaining. If either the mount or the rider wants to perform a non-movement action that costs feet of movement, both the mount and the rider must spend feet of movement.

When the rider first mounts, the mount loses a number of feet of movement equal to the number of feet of movement the rider has spent already during the current turn. When the rider dismounts, both the mount and the rider are free to spend their remaining movement independently.

Yes, I know that's confusing and I agree that having to type "feet of movement" over and over is awful. At hypothetical alternate-universe WotC, they don't pay us rules guys to write final copy. We just come up with rules and then some other dude with an English degree has to restate them for clarity. One time I yelled at him for thirty minutes in the parking lot because he changed "grasping appendage" to "hand" and broke grappling for mind flayers. He still says it beats working at Subway.

Oh, speaking of grappling: the Mounted Combat rules and the rules for going all Shadow of the Colossus on larger creatures need to be written in tandem. (I think it's called Grab On in Tome? That thing.) The rules for climbing on a bigger creature should be reducible to the mounted combat rules by having the bigger creature voluntarily fail all its checks and waive penalties for the rider and such. Effectively, riding a creature is a special more permissive case of Grab On. Granted 5e isn't going to have Grab On rules or grappling rules at all, because everyone working on 5e is incompetent and/or lazy. But a game that actually wanted to improve on AD&D / 3e would.

[Grek]

Under that rule you can't make a mounted move and then dismount. This would make basically every mounted-combat fight I've ever run in 3e impossible, but more importantly I think people will resent being told you they have to end their turn before (say) leaping off a flying mount into melee. I think the better rule is:

The stated rule is actually neutral on this topic. It all depends on what sort of action you make dismounting. If mounting/dismounting has a cost other than "All of your remaining movement points." then you can ride as far as the horse will take you, dismount (possibly spending some fixed number or fraction of your movement points to do so) and then spend whatever movement you have left to move because you are no longer riding anything and lose the restriction on moving independently of your mount.

[ModelCitizen]

Alright, but then you've got another problem where you can temporarily outpace another rider by dismounting and running at the end of your turn. You shouldn't be able to move faster by getting off your horse (unless you're actually faster than the horse).

[Whatever]

Chase rules are always going to fall apart when people take turns moving. You really need a different movement mechanic then the one you use for the tactical positioning minigame.

[ModelCitizen]

Chase rules are always going to fall apart when people take turns moving. You really need a different movement mechanic then the one you use for the tactical positioning minigame.

Chase scene tangent:

Not really; just attaching some kind of die roll for extra movement when you double-move or run could make chases workable. As for different resolution methods, people are going to shoot arrows at each other during chase scenes. If you can't run a chase in the combat engine you can't run a chase at all.

However, I'm not worried about chase scenes as much as in-combat situations where you need to close a fixed distance in a single round. For example, your horse can't get to an enemy 80' away in a single move action, but you can ride it 50', dismount, and cross the remaining 30' on foot. That shouldn't work.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Alright, but then you've got another problem where you can temporarily outpace another rider by dismounting and running at the end of your turn. You shouldn't be able to move faster by getting off your horse (unless you're actually faster than the horse).

Jumping off of the horse for an immediate boost to distance seems like a cool thing to do, though, so...

[ModelCitizen]

Just because you can come up with one contrived case where an exploit seems cool doesn't mean it isn't overall bad for the game. Keep in mind that this isn't something that only agile/athletic characters could do; the scrawny wizard with no Ride skill can use the exploit just as easily as the barbarian with the Boots of Jumping. Also keep in mind that it rewards this silliness for a cavalier-type who's actually good at fighting from horseback:

Round 1:
Mount moves toward enemy but can't get all the way to melee.
Cavalier dismounts and closes the remaining distance.
Cavalier attacks.

Round 2:
Mount moves next to cavalier.
Cavalier remounts the mount he just got off of for mounted combat bonuses and the like.
Cavalier attacks.


What the fuck?

[tussock]

They should really just tell us how many "seconds" it takes to open a door or dismount your lion-dragon, and provide a little table for how many paces you move in your remaining time. Then we can spend ten years arguing about how wrong their "seconds" are, and everyone can house-rule pointless shit like that and leave the real rules alone.

The only trick to remember is that "actions" don't take seconds, they just overlap where ever you like (dismount-and-attack should probably be an action so you can add it to movement). But yeh, I can't really imagine that anyone will accept using seconds to measure how much of your six seconds you waste, not when they can measure it in "5 feet of movement" instead.

Maybe they need to read some more 1st edition, when everything was segments and it took 2-4 to find a potion and 1 to drink it and 1-6 for the potion to kick in and 1 to close 10' and if it's not next round yet you might get an attack too.

[rasmuswagner]

What a retarded discussion.

I posit that:
1. Movement rules can be written that allow you to spend movement to drink potions and open doors and ride horses, without said rules being retarded. It's not even hard.
2. This will not happen in D&D Next because Mearls is a hack-of-all-trades, a true renaissance man of fail. Or maybe he just sucks at game design, dunno.

[tussock]

What a retarded discussion.

Welcome to the internet, rasmuswagner. Enjoy your stay.

[shadzar]

. http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx ... e/20121121 .

Jon answers his own questions halfway and fails to see it..

Dryad and Nymph as similar, but NOT the same thing nor does it make a "nymph" hierarchical to all other beautiful fey.

it is simple, folklore talks of beautiful women and to beware them when found out and alone. part of this is infidelity connections. while away hunting or such, dont cheat on your wife.

with this does it mean that a nymph, dryad, mermaid are all really the same thing? yes, it can easily mean that.

also you are in a time where polytheism was rampant, so two gods having similar creatures that were each different was not unheard of. also beginnings of science held the elements a power or even gods themselves: fire, earth, air, wood, and water.

this is D&D, it has various locations for which you can travel and see things so having a wood beauty and a water beauty isnt that hard to figure out. why no earth beauty? earth was man itself, so human women were earth beauty (if you were lucky). so how about air and fire beauties? well when you look to the sky you dont really see the wind, you can feel it but not see it, so IF one existed it was never seen, and likely never written about, or looking to the sky was like looking to the heavens and the "air" beauty would then be angels. as for fire.. it represents a hell, so easily then fire beauties would be devils or demons (succubus). not likely you would see a female sitting in a fire either unless you placed her there, you know as some sort of sacrifice. so an air and fire beauty was not something you would want to see or probably speak of lest you wanted to be thought of as crazy, cursed, or the like, on top of seeing them would pose as hard to do.

(A)D&D was based on myth and history, and under those 5 elements of alchemy and ancient the nymph and dryad as easily understood why two, and why so similar, and why no more. there are TONS of other beauties of feminine visage in D&D amongst the fey, faeries, pixies, sprites (don't get started on them all being the same thing until the idiot Jon S brings it up, but maybe he will think if this post ever comes to his attention before he asks).

again this artist should just shut up and paint the pretty pictures, or direct someone else to paint the pretty pictures he is told to rather than stick his nose into the design of it. it is really sad with his art background, he knows so little of the game to understand what it is and where it came from. i question him to have ever played an edition prior to WotC, let alone playing a TSR edition when it came out.

it is just that simple Jon:
-polytheism
-medieval fears
-locale

people in the woods saw dryads, females covered in leaves and sticks.
people near oceans and rivers saw myphs, females covered in kelps and scales.

this is the "clothes" they wore from their habitat, not unlike someone in Africa might have worn elephant hide instead of grizzly bear hide, i dont know, because that was the animal available in his area!

Jon, just shut up, get out your crayons and draw the pretty pictures you are told to draw, and let the adults design the game.

seriously, how did this person get a job working with D&D, when he clearly doesnt understand the genre, mythology, folklore, and such. Good thing Gary had a background in some of those things and others related, or else we wouldnt have the game at all, we MIGHT have had Blackmoor to play or Forgotten Realms, but never in the way it came out as D&D.

AO forbid Jon ever learns of selkie legends and cant tell them apart from mermaids..but then he thinks mermaids are just nymphs. Jon just thinks everything is a nymph and all D&D monsters are trying to seduce him. he is too worried about his sword being attacked by a rust monster at his age.

[icyshadowlord]

So how bad is this edition in comparison to 4e ?

I have no fucking idea where D&D Next is at the moment.

[K]

So how bad is this edition in comparison to 4e ?

I have no fucking idea where D&D Next is at the moment.

Looks unplayable and boring at the moment.

At least 4e was just boring.

[Username17]

So how bad is this edition in comparison to 4e ?

I have no fucking idea where D&D Next is at the moment.

Looks unplayable and boring at the moment.

At least 4e was just boring.

Pretty much this. Right now the designers are plainly incapable of even formulating the question "How many orcs should a Fighter be able to cut up with a sword before he is in serious danger at level X?". It isn't just that they are unable to write down numbers that would actually deliver what they claim to want (although they are). They can't even wrap their tiny brains around the concept that you actually have to want something in the first place.

The D&DNext crap actually makes me want Gygax and Blume back. They wrote like incoherent fanboys, because that is what they were. But it was still more interesting than the shit Mearls is serving up.

-Username17

[shadzar]

So how bad is this edition in comparison to 4e ?

I have no fucking idea where D&D Next is at the moment.

take every sentence ever made for D&D, cut them apart and randomly draw a sentence out and put it into a paragraph until you fill the page, and continue the process with the next page.

This is how DDN is going to "capture the feel" of every existing edition. it is the Best Of... edition, without regards to the fact that none of the systems will work together and never intended to, and be kludged together with more complex rules than binds DNA to give chimps and humans a 2% variation.

at least there is 1st, 3rd, and in 2013 2nd edition reprints of the core books. this is what they should have been focusing on and done 10 years ago in order to gain lost old-school players back, but now it is likely too late, and 1st/2nd players have gone to clones, 3.x have gone to pathfinder, and 4th edition players just need to go ahead and play WoW or WoD. it is like what someone in an ENW thread said...

"If WotC doesn't really have TSR's D&D as their flagship product (they seem to be selling a few of the old stuff in reprint but that's hardly a large portion of their business model), then is it really the company of D&D?"

that thread can be read here

[icyshadowlord]

Sounds rather promising.

No, that sounds fucking terrible.

[Christ Figure]

So how bad is this edition in comparison to 4e ?

I have no fucking idea where D&D Next is at the moment.

take every sentence ever made for D&D, cut them apart and randomly draw a sentence out and put it into a paragraph until you fill the page, and continue the process with the next page.

This is how DDN is going to "capture the feel" of every existing edition. it is the Best Of... edition, without regards to the fact that none of the systems will work together and never intended to, and be kludged together with more complex rules than binds DNA to give chimps and humans a 2% variation.

at least there is 1st, 3rd, and in 2013 2nd edition reprints of the core books. this is what they should have been focusing on and done 10 years ago in order to gain lost old-school players back, but now it is likely too late, and 1st/2nd players have gone to clones, 3.x have gone to pathfinder, and 4th edition players just need to go ahead and play WoW or WoD. it is like what someone in an ENW thread said...

"If WotC doesn't really have TSR's D&D as their flagship product (they seem to be selling a few of the old stuff in reprint but that's hardly a large portion of their business model), then is it really the company of D&D?"

that thread can be read here

Old-schoolers would have migrated over to retroclones anyway, they are infinitely better than the 1e and 2e books they derive from. And as far as 3.5, I think WOTC still has a larger player base than Pathfinder.

Honestly couldn't care less about DnD though, the hobby needs to move on and stop trying to fix that which is irreparably broken. Class and level-based systems can only ever be slightly better than terrible.

[koz]

There is no particular reason why class-and-level-based systems are inherently worse in general as compared with non-class-and-level-based ones. They do different things, and suit different genres.