The Gaming Den

sarcasmoverdose wrote: G) Equipment. All of 4e's "this weapon/armor is the one true weapon/armor". Nonsensical pricing (maul and greatsword are pretty much identical, greatsword costs 5x

I'm particularly fond of the glaive and halberd, which are identical.

The longsword and battleaxe aren't as rich, but it's 5GP more for the sword for an otherwise identical item (modulo 1 lbs). Same is true morningstar and flail. The last example I could find was scimitar and short sword (for 15GP difference), which are actually adjacent in the table.

There are a couple of other weapons that are pretty close to each other but actually offer different damage types.

I agree with your general thesis that I would have preferred book to have more condensed rules and less fluff overall, but I don't think the Den is anyone's target market and I can understand the series of marketing decisions which converge on "printing more good copy will sell more books."

I'd actually really like to see all RPG books agree on a standard of calling out rules information in a very condensed form separate from the longer descriptions. Seems like you can get the best of both worlds.

Mass Suggestion Page 97 wrote: ... The suggestion must be worded in such a manner as to make the course of action sound reasonable ...

That's maybe my least favorite line in the book so far. This is a recipe for too many fights at too many tables. I'd change it to "as to make the course of action not directly harmful to the targets."

nockermensch wrote: I was about to say that 5e was ruined forever for me just because that, but then again, concentration was changed so this is not as horrible as it seems: You can fight and even cast spells while concentrating without making any check or being at any disadvantage, it seems. Concentration now ends if you become unconscious or cast another spell requiring concentration. It also has a good chance to end if you take any damage.

The big thing about concentration is that is actually is some measure of game balance- the cleric can't just stack a fuckton of buffs on himself, almost all are concentration, so only one. I actually think this is a positive change, but still fairly abusable (party of spell casters, for the obvious one).



On the weapon costs- that is not a new thing (seriously, go look at the SRD see mace/morningstar or battleaxe/warhammer, or 1e/2e charts, especially the one each charts with fifty-eleven pole arms), and past first level, no one is going to give a shit about mundane weapons. Given the real systemic problems, adventuring pocket change is pretty much a non-issue.


Most offensive use of space in the entire document:
page 54 and 55. Thats right, a 2 page 1d100 chart of random shit you have in your pocket at character creation. Or monsters might have in their pocket.
#29 old socks
#55 a tiny cage with no door.
#87 an iron holy symbol devoted to an unknown god. [Commentary: how the fuck would you know?]

That its in the pdf is annoying because its a complete waste of space as far as basic rules go. That it might be in the starter set or PH that you pay actual money for is deeply offensive.

Voss wrote: Minor props, on the other hand, for actually having a paragraph about not needing to be defined by binary gender roles under the Sex heading. (though they seem unclear as to what the difference between sex and gender is). But they do mention transgender and sexual orientation. Though only minor props since one of the five short sentences is about elven hermaphrodites, and sexual orientation is just 'Eh, up to you'. Which is better, but rather overshadowed by elven chicks with dicks.

My first thought when reading that section was, Okay, so at what level does magic mean that trangendered/intersex PCs stop having an in-character reason to exist beyond being for the sake of a fetish? so I went to the magic section, only discover there are no shape changing/alter form spells what so ever. Not even of the fairly benign You don't get jack mechanical advantages beside a disguise bonus type.

That's just seems an oddly iconic type of spell to be missing.

Also, yeah, assuming they're as patch happy as they were with 4E, I foresee the spell scaling thing getting re-balanced yo-yo style for the entire life of the game. (not that that's going to be long...) Probably just upping the numbers in the first round of patching, then adding totally uneven scaling bonus effects (range, area, etc) on a per spell basis ala 3.5 psionic augments later on.

Scrivener wrote:You can't give a rigorous definition of Good in real life, hence philosophy.

It would be kind of hilarious to introduce a utility monster as the BBEG in a D&D game.

pragma wrote:

Mass Suggestion Page 97 wrote: ... The suggestion must be worded in such a manner as to make the course of action sound reasonable ...

That's maybe my least favorite line in the book so far. This is a recipe for too many fights at too many tables. I'd change it to "as to make the course of action not directly harmful to the targets."

3e text: The suggestion must be worded in such a manner as to make the activity sound reasonable.


3.5 text: The suggestion must be worded in such a manner as to make the activity sound reasonable.

They just copy it forward into each new edition. Whatever rule you used about Suggestion before can be the same in 5e.

Ugh. This layout. Why is there a section on roleplaying* sandwiched between travel and resting?

And why the fuck are the rules for foraging, tracking and navigation hidden away in the DMG? It seriously only mentions them to tell you the rules are not in this castle.


*bonus for two types of roleplaying: descriptive and active. One involves the characters actions, and the other involves speaking the character's dialogue. Guess which is which.

Voss wrote: And why the fuck are the rules for foraging, tracking and navigation hidden away in the DMG? It seriously only mentions them to tell you the rules are not in this castle.

Not that this stops them from including quasi-rules for foraging.

page 52 wrote:Self-Sufficiency
The expenses and lifestyles described in this chapter assume that you are spending your time between adventures in town, availing yourself of whatever services you can afford—paying for food and shelter, paying townspeople to sharpen your sword and repair your armor, and so on. Some characters, though, might prefer to spend their time away from civilization, sustaining themselves in the wild by hunting, foraging, and repairing their own gear.
Maintaining this kind of lifestyle doesn’t require you to spend any coin, but it is time-consuming. If you spend your time between adventures practicing a profession, as described in chapter 8, you can eke out the equivalent of a poor lifestyle. Proficiency in the Survival skill lets you live at the equivalent of a comfortable lifestyle.

Well, the best part of that is its once again splitting information. The foraging semi-not-rules in the travel section are 'make a survival check when the DM says to. See the DMG for real rules'





So, I'm thinking fighters are once again a two-level dip class. Or maybe not at all, since multi classing severely interferes with getting to the ability boosts.

They had a lot more abilities in the playtest, and beyond action surge and extra attacks, everything worthwhile comes at level 1... and a large part of that is just having access to real equipment.

The latter of which is the real problem with the rogue. Light armor sucks ass. Its passable at level 8 when you have a full 20 Dex, but you're ridiculously behind the AC curve for most of the game. (AC 15 vs AC 19, starting out, and anyone with heavy armor can push 21 with money, while the rogue requires ability increases, which is to say, levels.)

On the other hand, the rogue can kite like a mother fucker, and sneak attack (now that the progression is fixed from the playtest) actually does real scaling damage, and can be done every round. And a reaction to halve damage every round is a lot better than once per combat heal 1d10+level. And then there are all the other abilities they get, including cutting off the lower half the range for skill checks and getting a real bonus to skill checks. And eventually blindsight. And immunity to advantage.

Clerics get a pile of stuff in addition to spells. Including damage bonuses at higher levels (in lieu of extra attacks). Plus spells that give them extra attacks or AC bonuses or whatever. Essentially they can imitate one aspect of fighter for the length of a fight through spells. Or use hold person and just take out opponents. Or cast combat-long damaging spells.

Unlike clerics, wizards are just spells, and spell design suggest they really want blaster wizards again. But, due to the magic of bad design, you can cherry pick broken spells instead, and just run riot with 2 or 3 level appropriate abilities per day.


Mostly though, everything is just boring. Blindsight as an inherent ability is the most exciting thing that ever happens, and there isn't even any reason for it. Rogues jog around at hyper speed with a light crossbow a snipe people for extra damage because they happen to be standing next to whoever you suckered into playing the fighter the cleric. Wizards wait for something worthy of blowing their load on, or throw useless and not-level appropriate spells around just for something to do.


The main positive to the rules is that while the language is generally inelegant, it is mostly clear. Shit like suggestion aside. Most of the rules are X does Y. To do X, roll d20 and add stat+prof. The end. Next, to do Z, roll... and so on. It adds to the boredom factor, but does cut down on rules interpretation arguments, simply because it doesn't leave much to actually discuss. On the other hand, the layout is shit, nonsensical and they do the reference dance far too many times.



Though... there are some bits that are actively stupid.

Heavily obscured, p 65 wrote:A heavily obscured area, such as darkness, opaque fog or dense foliage, blocks vision entirely. A creature in a heavily obscured area effectively suffers from the blinded condition.

Blinded wrote:A blinded creature can't see and automatically fails any ability check that require sight. Attack rolls against the creature have advantage and the creature's attack rolls have disadvantage.

Hiding in the bushes to ambush someone is the worst decision you can ever make. You can't see your targets coming, and they get bonuses to attack you.
In lighter foliage, you just have disadvantage to see people (perception checks), and cover... is in another section.

Voss wrote: So, I'm thinking fighters are once again a two-level dip class. Or maybe not at all, since multi classing severely interferes with getting to the ability boosts.

Sadly, the best use for the fighter's action surge is probably going to be casting spells for a wizard or cleric. Since the rogue sneak attack is 1/turn and you get cunning action anyway, it's kind of useless for a rogue.

quote tags- unfuck them.

I don't know if anyone else noticed this, but shitmuffin himself is credited for "additional consultation" with 5e. Which could help to explain a lot, I guess.

Blicero wrote:I don't know if anyone else noticed this, but shitmuffin himself is credited for "additional consultation" with 5e. Which could help to explain a lot, I guess.

Oh this is just too perfect. It's as though Mearls set out to build an unholy alliance of everyone the Den doesn't like - shadzar, the RPGPundit, himself, and the Shifter of Goalposts, all with the goal of spreading overpriced Magical Tea Party o'er the land.

As a special extra bonus it also has a quantum bears clause in skill checks, though just on failure.

Yeah, it turns out I'm still on the mailing list for a roleplaying club I was part of around... 7 years ago. And after more than a year of silence other than a helpful "Here is how people can unregister from this list" thing, just yesterday I saw one that was warning people not to buy it because it involved RPGpundit and Shitmuffin, explaining that they are terrible people.

That's fantastic. It's like... whatever you would call the literal opposite of an all-star lineup.

Well, we've known for a long time that shitmuffin and Pundit were “consulted" but it now appears that they were actually listened to. As a pure marketing thing, it makes sense to consult a bunch of people with blogs to produce cheap internet buzz. However, actually listening to people whose stated design ideas are that they hold people who play and enjoy the game's most popular edition in total contempt is simply incomprehensible.

-Username17

Yeah, but remember that Mearls himself basically invented "shitting all over the most popular edition as a marketing trick". Hearing that there are other people who hate it must have been music to his ears. The fact that Shitmuffin hates rules (or at least people knowing and using the rules) is a plus, given just looking at Next you can see that they didn't really want to write rules and they hate players knowing rules and stuff.

Am I supposed to know who shitmuffin and RPGpundit are? Are these internet handles or are they denisms I am not aware of?

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/
and
http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=2650

edit: better link for RPGPundit:
http://therpgpundit.blogspot.com/

In the case of Shitmuffin, it's to get around Google Alerts. And it's funny whenever he answers to the name.

shau wrote:Am I supposed to know who shitmuffin and RPGpundit are? Are these internet handles or are they denisms I am not aware of?

Zakass has recently been dubbed Shitmuffin. Or Justin Bieber. Or Zakass.

He's a self-centered asshole who has his name (Z-A-K_S) on Google Alerts so he comes when he's called. Check the first page of the thread.

Nooo, not Google Alerts. It was the increased traffic that was not to be called "a spike", but significant enough that it warranted a visit. I don't know how that isn't a spike, but that is not for me to know. (i.e. yes, it probably was google alerts or a script to alert him when the den links him traffic)

I prefer to think of him as just "muffin" and that is how I will refer to him should the need arise. He and we both know what kind of muffin he is, and that's good enough for me.

I don't know who RPG Pundit is, and after reading his blog aforelinked, I still have no idea. The first page of posts are largely either about him or him complaining about people complaining about him. Hints about the state of his RPG savvy could be found in a stream of gibberish about Arrows of Indra that tells gives me a sample size of 1 shite review/shilling post. The dumb contained therein does not give me hope that he is a valuable source of insights.

If I wasn't so fond of my sig, I'd give him 6632 things to look at, and two or three more a day. It's tempting...

Pundit is a one-true-wayer to the degree that most people only invoke when attempting to insult someone for being unreasonable. He has categorised gamers into various insulting groups. Most are one variety or another of 'swine.'

His greatest hatred is for 'story gamers' but has only slightly less contempt for 3e players. I honestly forget what he calls us, and don't especially care. The long and the short of it is that he is forever in 1992 - he likes, Amber Dice less, and thinks that 2nd edition AD&D has somewhat lost its way from Gygaxian purity.

In short, he is a bitter old man yelling at clouds. The only thing he has to contribute to anew edition is hatred of people who play popular games.

-Username17