D&DNext: Playtest Review

[Rawbeard]

It's enough for this to just be over. RIP D&D or something is better than this corpseraping Mearls is doing.

[ishy]

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx ... l/20130422

There is no way in hell this can possibly work.

So feats are supposed to be worth a +1 to an ability score.

It is actually worse than that.

We don't want to make any assumptions about increased ability scores with leveling. There are two reasons for this. First, that would turn the ability increases into another tax. Second, we're mindful that not everyone who wants to make an attack will max out Strength or Dexterity. A melee character should feel comfortable about boosting Charisma or Constitution for story reasons or personal preference. A choice isn't a choice if there's only one assumed, correct answer.

So feats are balanced against +1 ability score bonuses that are useful for you and +1 ability score bonuses that aren't useful for you at all.
I don't even .....

[Juton]

We don't want to make any assumptions about increased ability scores with leveling. There are two reasons for this. First, that would turn the ability increases into another tax. Second, we're mindful that not everyone who wants to make an attack will max out Strength or Dexterity. A melee character should feel comfortable about boosting Charisma or Constitution for story reasons or personal preference. A choice isn't a choice if there's only one assumed, correct answer.

This is jaw dropping. Mearls is supposed to be the designer, shouldn't he at least try and design how PCs can increase their ability scores when leveling? Instead of making a mechanic that will encourage players to put resources into dump stats he will just not make a mechanic.

Actually thinking about it, that might not be to bad. An RPG without any rules is just MTP, MTP can be enjoyable, so every rule that Mearls doesn't write will bring the game closer to something someone could actually enjoy.

[Voss]

Non-weapon proficiencies. You have to be fucking kidding. All the shit they threw at the wall for skills, and they arrived at second fucking edition? I am entirely filled with rage and disbelief. The combination tastes rather like vomit.

The shit about feats and ability scores is almost funny in comparison.

On top of that, adding +1 to an even ability score doesn't have an actual effect on a character but still gives a player a sense of progress.

One half, you stupid son of a bunch. Fractions are things that exist. And even if it is temporarily rounded to zero, half of the way to +1 is a fuck ton better than the ability to push people 5 feet when the total bonus is expected to be less than +15 over the course of 20 levels.

I can't even grasp this. No amount of bullshit abilities that are explicitly overshadowed by class abilities and spells is going to be worth giving up the ability to make successful attacks and successful saves. Unless they're bullshit broken good in their own right. Not in a system that is explicitly going to be designed to almost never hand out bonuses because 'math ams too hardz.' And certainly not with the current math that already lets you tell the random number generator to go fuck itself.

Benefits: ... A merchant speaks several languages and can find cheap, mundane goods.

Fuck, in some games, that is a win right there. As is the 'access to powerful people' that nobles get. Its magical tea party bullshit win and money into real ultimate power type wins, which may be explicitly disallowed, but it fucks the game in several important ways... if nothing else because the merchant is going to be the only guy who can talk to dragons, giants and shit.

[Username17]

Non-weapon proficiencies. You have to be fucking kidding. All the shit they threw at the wall for skills, and they arrived at second fucking edition? I am entirely filled with rage and disbelief. The combination tastes rather like vomit.

I find it rather amusing how much failure they are throwing up, but to be honest if you were an actually competent designer you'd end up with a D&D skill system that looked more like 2nd edition NWP than it did like 3e skill ranks. The RNG is only 20 numbers long, and you just can't maintain 23 different levels of "having a skill". Not only is the gradation meaningless (how can you describe someone with 7 ranks in a way that makes them meaningfully distinct from someone who has 6 or 8?), but it fucks the RNG sideways.

You need a small number of skill levels which are experientially different because they unlock distinct abilities and have noticeably different chances of success for different task. I don't see how that could possibly be closer to 23 skill ranks than it is to have-it-or-not Non-Weapon-Proficiencies. Really, having more than 5 levels of skilledness seems patently absurd and you'd probably want something more like 3 (with maybe a 4th one that gets unlocked at some later tier that lets you do "Epic Stuff").

-Username17

[infected slut princess]

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx ... l/20130422

There is no way in hell this can possibly work.

Wow. I must be sleeping and this is a twisted nightmare.

This is dumbest fucking article I have ever seen. Even for Mearls, I cannot believe... how bad it is. Anyone who reads this and thinks 5e will be anything but total shit is an idiot. It's as if Mearls is trying to make the shittiest game possible, because that is the least amount of work.

They are putting this up against Pathfinder? They are going to get killed.

They are trying to make a game that unites the players of different editions? Fuck, no one is going to play this game.

[Maxus]

I move we pool our money and hire Alan Moore and a team of experts.

The experts will enable Moore to sneak into Mearls' house during the night, so when Mearls wakes up, Alan Moore is staring at him. Moore will tell him, very calmly, to go back and do it properly, and not be afraid to ask for help.

Then he will calmly stand up and leave.

http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/i ... _Moore.jpg

[tussock]

How do you make the same game work for players and groups who might be very, very different?

Well, Mike, it would seem fairly obvious that you'd have a small number of simple classes without (many/any) feats and options; ones that just fucking work. They'd be handy for making NPCs out of. Then you'd have complex classes with feats and spell lists and other explosive-crazy options that work if you care enough to build them.

@DR And Quinch: typical RPG campaign to my eyes. If you didn't blow up the world at the end, it wasn't much of a campaign now was it. @Halo Jones: holy shit that's a good series, where are the next 6?

[Korwin]

They are trying to make a game that unites the players of different editions? Fuck, no one is going to play this game.

The player base will be united in not playing 5e.
Sounds like an attainable goal

[hogarth]

If it was really a choice between getting +2 to an ability and two interesting feats, I'd take the interesting feats in a heartbeat because the +2 to an ability is as boring as hell. I've never had a discussion with my buddies that went: "Remember how my character took Weapon Focus and after that he got one extra hit for every twenty attacks on average? That was awesome!!"

So feats are supposed to be worth a +1 to an ability score. Classes are designed around just getting straight up +1s, and not feats. Feats are explicitly NOT going to give numerical bonuses, because that's what the +1 ability score is for. So either:

a)Feats give a grab bag of abilities. These abilities suck, because they are measured against a bonus which Mearls admits is useless half the time. If you are dumb and take these you fall off the RNG as the monsters are all designed to you having these numbers.

b)Feats give a grab bag of abilities which are awesome, and the +1s are a noob trap.

Most likely there will be a mixture of each.

I guarantee you it will be (a) = "feats suck", except your comment about falling off the RNG is a gross exaggeration (+1 bonuses are almost unnoticeable and at any rate you supposedly can't raise a stat above 20).

[CapnTthePirateG]

If it was really a choice between getting +2 to an ability and two interesting feats, I'd take the interesting feats in a heartbeat because the +2 to an ability is as boring as hell. I've never had a discussion with my buddies that went: "Remember how my character took Weapon Focus and after that he got one extra hit for every twenty attacks on average? That was awesome!!"

So feats are supposed to be worth a +1 to an ability score. Classes are designed around just getting straight up +1s, and not feats. Feats are explicitly NOT going to give numerical bonuses, because that's what the +1 ability score is for. So either:

a)Feats give a grab bag of abilities. These abilities suck, because they are measured against a bonus which Mearls admits is useless half the time. If you are dumb and take these you fall off the RNG as the monsters are all designed to you having these numbers.

b)Feats give a grab bag of abilities which are awesome, and the +1s are a noob trap.

Most likely there will be a mixture of each.

I guarantee you it will be (a) = "feats suck", except your comment about falling off the RNG is a gross exaggeration (+1 bonuses are almost unnoticeable and at any rate you supposedly can't raise a stat above 20).

Weapon. Expertise. If they design it around having a 50% miss chance a la 4e, you will actually care about +1 bonuses.

[Voss]

Yep. It isn't just +1 to hit. It also affects saves, checks, magical tea party bullshit with NWP and 'optional' skills, and every other dice roll the game employs.

Not cranking your stats means you're vulnerable to any sort of bullshit spell or monster effect (surprise basilisk attack!) at rates as bad or worse than 50/50. If you never put points into Con, the DC 11 save from a level 3 basilisk has a 50% chance of one-shotting you for the entire duration of the fucking game, from level 1 to 20. And since there are strength saves, dex saves, wis saves and charisma saves, this bullshit will be happen all the fucking time. Int saves are rather rare, so that can be a dump stat. But regardless of what you do, going human, grabbing an 18, and then a bunch of odd numbered stats, and packing +1 bonuses in over feats seems the best fucking option. Especially given feat design from these people. Almost everything in 5e (and 4e before it) suggests that feats will suck ass. (The ability to make healing potions and kits stands out as an exception, because it directly affects survivability. Someone has to soak that kind of crap).

Almost every roll is bracketed by a stat. Why give a shit about the special stuff if you're failing at the basics all the fucking time?

[hogarth]

If they design it around having a 50% miss chance a la 4e, you will actually care about +1 bonuses.

I don't know what to tell you. After a campaign is over, I seriously wouldn't care if 11 out of every 20 attacks ended up hitting or if 10 out of every 20 attacks did. If I didn't have a character sheet in front of me saying I had a +1 to hit, I probably couldn't even tell the difference between those two rates unless I did some elementary statistics.

The reason "+1 to hit" feats are popular in 4E is because 99.9% of the other feat options are boring and useless, so you might as well take a feat that's as boring as shit but still useful. The stuff I "care" about is the stuff that makes interesting stories afterwards.

When I talk about interesting feats, I'm thinking more along the lines of alchemist discoveries, witch hexes and oracle revelations in Pathfinder (and to a lesser extent, rogue talents and barbarian rage abilities). So at least Pathfinder has a few interesting feats, namely Extra Discovery, Extra Hex, Extra Revelation, etc.

[Voss]

No, those are boring feats (and, actually, badly balanced feats). You're talking about specific instances of a generic feat called 'bonus class abilities.' That isn't interesting feat design, that is Paizo caving into the same design flaw that mearls likes so much- class abilities are the only things that matter.
With the added bonus that the bad classes never get anything cool ever.


They don't tell better stories either, frankly. If you got the cool abilities from your basic class features or your 'extra' class features, how would even know? What difference does it make? An interesting story can come from a character actually being competent, much more so than just having 'more rage juice' or 'icy bombs,' or whatever.

[hogarth]

No, those are boring feats (and, actually, badly balanced feats). You're talking about specific instances of a generic feat called 'bonus class abilities.' That isn't interesting feat design, that is Paizo caving into the same design flaw that mearls likes so much- class abilities are the only things that matter.

With the added bonus that the bad classes never get anything cool ever.

I guess I was being too subtle when making my point. I'm saying that if feats don't let you do things that are as cool and interesting as class abilities, then they can go fuck off and die. If my alchemist/oracle/witch is taking the feat Extra Discovery/Revelation/Hex over and over again, then Pathfinder's feat selection sucks.

[nockermensch]

By this point I confess I'm reading this thread for pure schadenfreude. All the stock of cares I had to give about official D&D products was consumed in the short time it took for 4e to properly sink with me.

Once the talks about a "next edition" started, I even paid attention to the news and releases to see if I could start caring again, but this edition is shaping up to be such a espetacular clusterfuck that my lack of care is now dead and cauterized.

But hey, some people still rage about it, on the Internet! Anybody who said D&D Next can't be fun still didn't realize how fun is to point at it and laugh.

[Voss]

No, those are boring feats (and, actually, badly balanced feats). You're talking about specific instances of a generic feat called 'bonus class abilities.' That isn't interesting feat design, that is Paizo caving into the same design flaw that mearls likes so much- class abilities are the only things that matter.

With the added bonus that the bad classes never get anything cool ever.

I guess I was being too subtle when making my point. I'm saying that if feats don't let you do things that are as cool and interesting as class abilities, then they can go fuck off and die. If my alchemist/oracle/witch is taking the feat Extra Discovery/Revelation/Hex over and over again, then Pathfinder's feat selection sucks.

If by 'too subtle' you mean 'self-contradictory', then I guess you are, because you specifically called those feats out as being interesting.

When I talk about interesting feats, I'm thinking more along the lines of

[hogarth]

If by 'too subtle' you mean 'self-contradictory' [..]

Sorry, I should have used a smiley for the irony-impaired.

[Previn]

Ok, new playtest up. About half the documents are still from the last playtest, updated ones being Classes, Additional Races, Bestiary, Equipment, How to Play, Specialties and Feats and Spells.

I honestly have no idea what changed about the Classes document. A quick glance doesn't show any changes in the class charts, so I can only assume some minor updates to specific abilities. Don't really feel like comparing 49 pages to another 49 pages since a quick eyeball shows everything lining up the same. Maybe they just fixed some typos?

Additional Races is just Gnome, Half-Elf and Half-Orc. I guess it was too much work to update the Races PDF instead?

Not even going to look at the Bestiary, so no idea.

Equipment document... the healer's kit changed, number of uses cut in half, and you can't use it during a rest to heal. Not a single other change to the document.

Spells, actually some changes here, both adding of spells and cutting. I don't see anything particularly worth noting.

Specialties and Feats! At first I thought there were changes here, but it looks like the only actual change is the spacing of the document. I had to re-read a page 4 times to see if I missed a change and couldn't find anything.

Ok, the How to Play has to have had some noticeable updates, right? Well, they updated the formatting... and... they tweaked 15 minor things. Some highlights include:

- Standing up from prone is now just 5' of movement instead of all of it {Edit: this is backwards, it's now all of your movement rather than just 5'}
-The change crits from maximum damage to adding an extra dice to the attack. So a 2d6+2 attach would deal 3d6+2 on a crit. How 12.5 average damage is better than simply getting 14 damage I don't know. Anyways...
- Ethereal is now Incorporeal! Genius!
-You can now preform a 'hinder' action to something within 5' giving it disadvantage on it's next relevant ability check or save. Ignore that I have no idea how to hinder something, and it doesn't seem to take an action or a check.
- They removed all references to how to set DCs. They didn't actually change that in an opposed roll a dirt farmer can still beat Asmedous in an opposed charisma check, but since no one now has any idea what that actually means! MAGIC! SOLVED!

Congrats! You're now basically up to date on the work that took them 3 months to do!

[CapnTthePirateG]

Wow.

I only read the spells part and was feeling like that was getting kinda better. Evoc damaged raised, more out-of-combat spells, animate dead...and then I read your post.

I guess it's a good thing that I didn't read the rest.

[Seerow]

-The change crits from maximum damage to adding an extra dice to the attack. So a 2d6+2 attach would deal 3d6+2 on a crit. How 12.5 average damage is better than simply getting 14 damage I don't know. Anyways...

Last packet was maximize + 1 extra die. So they just dropped the maximization. I guess they thought crit damage was too spiky.

[Previn]

-The change crits from maximum damage to adding an extra dice to the attack. So a 2d6+2 attach would deal 3d6+2 on a crit. How 12.5 average damage is better than simply getting 14 damage I don't know. Anyways...

Last packet was maximize + 1 extra die. So they just dropped the maximization. I guess they thought crit damage was too spiky.

Whoops, you're right. If you're using a weapon and deal a critical, it's maximum normal damage +1 dice o the type the weapon does. I have no idea how something wouldn't be a weapon but would be getting a crit, but maybe it's just me.

Ok, it took me a bit to figure out the new dying rules. Basically if you are 4th level and have 38hp, (10+3d10+12 from con) once you drop to 0, unless a hit deals 38 damage in a single attack, it will not kill you. A Balor could totally kill you in 1 round with it's 3 multiattacks, but only because it gets 3 attacks, not because it could deal 2d6+6d8+24 damage to your unconscious body.

Ironically, a cloud giant (12th level) totally could off the 4th level dying fighter in 1 hit if it rolled basically maximum damage on it's attack. Of course, 3 kobolds punching you in the butt once each in a round would be more effective at killing you than said cloud giant.

[Prak]

Single attack or single round?

[Previn]

Single attack or single round?

When you are at 0 or less HP, you are 'dying.' Not amount of negative hp will kill you, but a blow that is more than your total HP will totally kill you. To determine if you die or not, you make a DC 10 con save each round. If you rack up 3 failures before 3 successes, you die. If you roll a 1 it's 2 failures, if you roll a 20, you regain 1 hp (i.e. stabilize). Any hit that causes damage while you are dying, but isn't more than your HP (and thus can't kill you) instead gives you 1 failure on the saves.

So if you have 38 hp, there's like a handful of creatures that can do enough damage in a single hit to kill you. But 3 kids poking you with sticks is 3 failures and instant death. So in the Balor example, his damage is worthless since no single attack can deal 38 damage, but since he gets 3 attacks in a round, you have 3 failed saves and thus die.

[Prak]

Ah, now I see.