D&DNext: Playtest Review

[rasmuswagner]

So no experience until the adventure has been completed? If I was to play the Red Hand of Doom, no one would get to advance or get any XP until the entire 128 page adventure was done?

Yes, that is exactly what everyone means. The only way to level up during a 128 page adventure is to physically cut the book into smaller pieces, bind them seperately, and number them sequentially, so they count as multiple connected adventures.

Retard.

[Previn]

So no experience until the adventure has been completed? If I was to play the Red Hand of Doom, no one would get to advance or get any XP until the entire 128 page adventure was done?

Yes, that is exactly what everyone means. The only way to level up during a 128 page adventure is to physically cut the book into smaller pieces, bind them seperately, and number them sequentially, so they count as multiple connected adventures.

Retard.

I can see you entirely missed the point, by a lot. Maybe this will help:

Rather than "completing an adventure", you could probably generalize it a bit more and say "advancing the story", because that can consist of anything from murdering an outpost of kobolds to sleuthing out the betrayer in the king's court."Completing an adventure" carries an implication associated with it, and a lot of people will assume things that aren't correct.

[Cyberzombie]

the problem is NOT the numbers that they chose, but the fact they think they SHOULD choose a number, rather than letting people decide for themselves what high or low is. Ye Olde Magick Shoppe, should NOT exist, but it should also not be prevented in the core of the game. something about letting the people that play the game play it how they want rather than the ONETRUEWOTCWAY just seems best.

Magic item creation is difficult because it's strongly linked with the rules for verisimilitude reasons. Back in 2E when magic items were brutal to create, you could see why there wouldn't be a magic item shop. In 3E/4E, when magic items just requires the expenditure of gold, it's hard to imagine not having magic shops around.

They'd need two different magic item creation systems depending on if you wanted to play low or high magic, and I think they ditched the idea of modularity quite a while back in the development.

[shadzar]

that is the 1e method, did RHoD follow 1e adventure structure? you would likely have to break it into section if it is not already done and at the end of a section or plot point give XP.

WHEN to give it is not nearly as important in scope as what to give it for. you will get it sometime, the question then comes is WHEN can you level? is it a DING, or some sort of training that means you cannot gain a level in the middle of an adventure?

which brings the question, what happens in the middle of an adventure with sessions based XP and the adventure isnt over at the end of this session? why does the wizard get a new spell for the next room when he never left the dungeon to go find one? this is a problem MANY have with the DING style of play. it works for video games because people know the computer is stupid and can only do what the programmers tell it and it is simple to jsut level when you get the XP and things magically appear on your character like a new skill, etc. some games actually work like 1e though where you stop gaining XP and actually have to go get stuff for a new level so the things gained from the level actually make sense, and you do not end up getting a new spells in the middle of a combat.

[malak]

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx ... l/20140210


Words of wis...err....no.

[Mask_De_H]

Motherfuckers should just go full metagame with it and level up every couple of sessions. Possibly with a Black Forest-style partial advancement in the interim.

[infected slut princess]

Giving XP should be entirely arbitrary. That will always be the best way.

[Seerow]

Giving XP should be entirely arbitrary. That will always be the best way.

Anything is better than whipping out a calculator to divide exp rewards for 3.5.

[Aharon]

I haven't really followed the playtest, and admit to laziness - this thread has grown quite long and I don't want to trudge through it to find the relevant information. So, what is the current status of the edition? I mean, the playtest has been going on for quite some time, when do they plan to release the final product?

[Korwin]

google search claims this summer...

[Ferret]

GenCon 2014 is the debut if I recall correctly.

[Aharon]

Thank you

[infected slut princess]

Oh so we don't even have to wait that much longer to see how savagely the final version blows donkey dicks.

[Ghremdal]

If I got my facts straight, the first print run should start right about now if they want the books to be available in 6 months?

Also my opinion on the amount of donkey dick suckery scale:

Would not even torrent.

[FatR]

Go ahead and fucking read what call woodland being actually does.

Diddly squat? That spell is a combination of Charm Monster, except less effective and more limited, and a very low-range cellphone that calls the charmed creature to you. If there are any within about a kilometer. If your GM lets charmed minions fly at all, Charm Monster is far more efficient in obtaning them. If he doesn't, Call Woodland Being is an inferior way to obtain them.

While I agree that AD&D 2 was the mother of all caster editions, you picked a shitty example to prove it.

[Username17]

2nd edition Call Woodland Creatures came with a percentage chance for the creatures to be in the area. If you cast it a couple of times, you'd get a Treant companion. And then any number of Fighters in the party were pretty much worthless.

It had some wiggle room, where the DM could just arbitrarily announce that the spell failed instead of using the chart. But it's 2nd edition AD&D, literally everything is like that, even your skills and weapon proficiencies.

-Username17

[OgreBattle]

2nd edition Call Woodland Creatures came with a percentage chance for the creatures to be in the area. If you cast it a couple of times, you'd get a Treant companion. And then any number of Fighters in the party were pretty much worthless.

Was a treant companion better than an 18/00 Dart fighter or an Archery kit Fighter though? I thought that was the edition where a Fighter could kill an adult red dragon in a single hail of ranged attacks.

[deaddmwalking]

2nd edition Call Woodland Creatures came with a percentage chance for the creatures to be in the area. If you cast it a couple of times, you'd get a Treant companion. And then any number of Fighters in the party were pretty much worthless.

Was a treant companion better than an 18/00 Dart fighter or an Archery kit Fighter though? I thought that was the edition where a Fighter could kill an adult red dragon in a single hail of ranged attacks.

You know, I think it's a shame that nobody ever tried to answer this question. I have a copy of The Monstrous Manual TSR 2140, so in case there are other versions of the Treant, that's what I'm looking at.

The standard Treant is a 7HD creature with AC 0, movement 12 and 2 attacks THAC0 of 13 dealing 2-16 damage per hit. But each Treant can animate 2 trees that fight as a 12 HD Treant with movement 3; THAC0 of 9 dealing 4-24 damage per hit. Other than a weakness to fire and never being surprised, that's what we have...

Now actually getting a Treant requires that you be in a Moderate Woodland (not available in Light Woods) and only has a 5% chance of appearing; that increases to 25% in Dense/Virgin. The spell description says it doesn't only work in woodland, but the table implies that it does. So this being AD&D, the spell is a little baroque. It appears that caster can specify up to 3 creature types to try to call. For Moderate Woods/Sylvan the creatures are brownies (20%), centaurs (30%), dryads (25%), pixies (20%), satyrs (30%), Sprites (5%), unicorn (15%). You'll note that those don't add up to 100% so it's not easy like 'roll a percentile and that creature shows up'. Instead my reading indicates you say you want a Treant, the DM rolls d% and if you roll a 01-05 it shows up; if you roll a 06-100 it doesn't. Each level you have in druid adds +1% (so a Treant is actually a 12% chance for a 7th level Druid). Failing to get your Treant, you then ask for centaurs and if your DM rolls 01-30 it shows up; finally you ask for Satyrs with the same deal. For what it's worth, I failed to summon any of my requested creatures in 3 die rolls. Assuming you get anything you make a loyalty reaction check to convince them to fight for you. Since it took 20 minutes to summon these creatures, you had to plan well in advance, and you have to convince the GM that they should follow you for long enough to actually get in a fight. So there's a whole lot of 'ifs' about getting them in the first place.

But if you get a Treant and it animates a couple of trees, how does that compare to the Fighter?

A 7th level Fighter has a THAC0 of 14 (not as good as the Treant). But an 18/00 gives you a +3 Hit Probability and +6 Damage. At 7th level a Fighter with Weapon Specialization can throw 5 darts per round (5/1). It appears that specializing in darts gives you more attacks but no bonus to attack or damage (unlike melee weapon specialization or how it is handled in 3rd edition). So a dart fighter gets 5 dart attacks with an effective THAC0 of 11; the dart does 1d3 damage to S-M creatures or 1d2 to larger creatures. So our Fighter has 5 attacks per round, each dealing 1d2+6. Against the Treant with an AC of 0 the Fighter should hit 1/2 the time, dealing 18.75 damage per round. The Treant with 7 HD has 31.5 hit points on average. If the Treant is killed, any animated trees cease to function. The Fighter probably doesn't know this, but since animating the trees takes 1 round before they can jump in the fight, it makes sense that the Fighter will probably focus on the Treant first.

If the Fighter has a 15 Con, he gets +1 hit point per level, so on average we might expect him to have 45.5 hit points. Those 12-HD animated trees are going to do 14 damage average per hit, and will probably hit about half the time. But they're really slow, so the Fighter can kite them without actually being smart. The regular Treant won't hit as easily (maybe 25% of the time) and the average damage (~9 per hit) isn't going to slow the fighter down.

So, if the druid lets his called Treant and the animated trees fight the Fighter and doesn't do anything else, the Fighter will probably win pretty handily and feel big in the pants. There are some things that the druid might do like summon an insect swarm to deal some extra damage and give the Fighter some minor penalties to attack/damage, but by itself probably not enough to change the result.

Of course, a Fighter with an 18/00 STR never actually exists. A character with an 18 would have only +2 damage; a Fighter that was able to put an 18 in STR would qualify for an exceptional STR roll but would typically have a +3 damage (01-75). The last 25% chance is divided between +4 (15%), +5 (9%) or +6 (1%). So basically if your GM is giving you the equivalent of an artifact sword at character creation you'll feel alright. Without that relatively large static bonus for high STR even a dart-specialist isn't going to do well. You have to have at least a 16 STR to get a +1 damage, so having two fighters that varied by +5 to damage at 1st level is totally a thing.

There is a magic item gauntlets of ogre power that gives a character STR 18/00, so that's the only non-cheating way to actually get that STR. You can also get a Girdle of Giant Strength that could potentially give you a +12 damage.

So there are definitely a few ways to make Fighters feel like they're contributing with Hit Point Damage, and pity items can certainly help. Since the monsters have highly variable damage, a couple of lucky hits for near max damage could swing the fight. Though common house rules like always getting Max Hit Points would shift things further into the Fighter's favor. I'm not sure if Attacks of Opportunity were standardized in AD&D, but I know that DMs would allow a 'free swing' if people tried to run past you, for instance. If the treant gets in your face and dart throwing in melee caused problems and/or trying to move out of melee was an issue and the animated trees closed, it could get ugly quickly, but things are laid out so poorly I'm not feeling like trying to work that part out.

[Kaelik]

Can you not do "Orc to get 19 Str" to bypass the whole percentile system?

I mean obviously, you still have to roll an 18 or whatever.

[deaddmwalking]

Can you not do "Orc to get 19 Str" to bypass the whole percentile system?

I mean obviously, you still have to roll an 18 or whatever.

I'm away from my books but I don’t think half-orcs were in the Players Handbook. They were in the Complete Book of Humanoids and they do give you a +1 Str, so you could get a 19. But because this is 2nd edition the DM is encouraged to punish you for being a monstrous race. 90% of half-orcs look like orcs, the other 10% are ugly humans. So don't plan on taking to the Dwarf King!

Half-orcs (like other humanoids and demi-humans have level restrictions. If you take no other classes and have a high enough Strength you could get to 17th level as a Fighter. If you had any other classes you were limited to 11th.

The Strength boosting magic items are really the way to go because they raised you to a fixed stat. If you have a Strength of 20 and find a Girdle of Giant Strength 22 you got an effective +2. If you had a Strength of 6 you got an equivalent +16. Functionally it meant that everyone gets a 25 eventually but you needed stats good enough to survive to the mid- to high-levels.

[Kaelik]

Making a new Fighter as soon as we find the girdle and my character dies.