We had our first experience with D&D Next this evening. I DM’ed a small group selected from my normal set of 9 players, with a number of whom had experience of more than one iteration of D&D. The five characters were randomly allocated (although two players swapped behind my back!) and names were picked:
Brother Dorkin of Pelor
Gash (Dwarf Fighter)
Sir Binwinn Ironbeard (Dwarf Cleric)
Taylendil (High Elf Wizard)
Ifford (Halfling Rogue)
After a brief look over the rules, and the casters reviewing the contents of their spell-books, we got going.
I started off by giving them a spot of background. They were from a village near the site of the Keep on the Borderlands, which was being raided by orcs busy stealing their livestock. The Keep had fallen 25 years earlier (after it had been betrayed from within) and now the humanoids were coming back.
After staking out the field, they spotted two orcs rustling livestock. The Human Cleric rolled a huge Survival score and tracked them to the Caves. From a distance, they saw the orcs bushwhacked and murdered, the stolen sheep carried off to feed another band of humanoids: they collected the orcs’ heads (worth 5gp bounty each!) and spotted something moving in the dark. Gash and Ifford headed off to the cave entrance: Gash spotted and jumped over a tripwire but Ifford didn’t and ended up entangled and restrained in a bola. As Gash cut him free, kobolds threw spears at Ifford (they had advantage), though Ironbeard’s Defender Feat came to the good here, and cancelled out the advantage on one attack. Anyway, the Kobolds couldn’t hit squat and retreated into the caves.
Ifford got cautious and checked the entrance for traps. There weren’t any, so the party continued into the cavern. Ifford forgot to check in the cave and triggered the Pit Trap at the T-Junction. He rolled a poor Dexterity Save, but used his Luck ability to re-roll and avoid falling. Gash, in the second rank, failed to beat the Dexterity Check (we role-played that he tripped over the Halfling avoiding the pit) and dropped 10 feet, taking a small amount of damage. The trap door snapped shut above his head.
All this noise alerted the rats from the garbage heap and the kobolds from the guard post. The rats squeaked into the pit, forcing Gash to take evasive action: quickly tying rope to the handle of his axe, he threw it into the edge of the trapdoor and was able to shimmy up the rope (all Strength-based activities, and with 16 Strength, I ruled that they should be no problem).
Meanwhile, the kobolds were swarming over the rest of the party, using Advantage where they could (Sir Ironbeard’s shield meant that at least one attack per turn was not at advantage!). Taylendil got double-teamed and daggered by a kobold, but kept going. Sir Ironbeard, however, swung his warhammer and connected, mightily (rolled 20, therefore maximum damage, which was several times more than the kobold had hit points. Result: kobold pizza.
Gash, down in the pit and hanging grimly onto a rope, pulled hard on the trap door and got it open. The dwarf then tried kicking off the wall and swinging out, but blew the Dexterity check and carried on swinging.
Back in the corridor, Ifford hid behind Sir Ironbeard, then used the Ambusher Feat to sidle up behind a Kobold, deliver an attack with Advantage and slit its scrawny throat. Taylendil managed to use Magic Missile to take down one attacker: Brother Dorkin’s Radiant Lance – which needs an attack roll – proved less effective headed off down the corridor. Sir Ironbeard took down another kobold, and just as Gash emerged from the pit, the last one fell.
Pausing only for a “Gazebo moment” with the planks the kobolds use to bridge the pit, they pressed on. They found the locked store-room full of fetid nastiness (Ifford auto-picks the lock, minimum roll of 16 with a DC15) before venturing down the corridor and spotting light coming from the elite kobold room (I ruled that they’d have a candle or two on the table). Ifford started to plan a stealthy take-down, but Gash charged in, waving the battleaxe and screaming Dwarven war-cries to intimidate the kobolds. It worked.
The last kobold fell at the top of initiative in Round 2. This was the round that the Kobold Chieftain and his minions were scheduled to appear. Initiative was rolled for them and sucked. He charged in, spotted an elf mage (no armour) and waded in, critting on one shot and taking her down to single figure hp. She stepped back out of axe-range and cast Sleep on the emerging minions (which, I now realise, she shouldn’t have been able to do – oops) and four of the six decided to have a brief snooze (they would awake to find their throats cut). Sir Ironbeard cast Crusader’s Strike which improved damage.
Taylendil got targeted again, the kobold minion managed to reduce her to 1 hp. Ifford sneak-attacked the Chieftain and got his attention: he was also briefly double-teamed with another kobold, attacking with advantage, but the kobold didn’t last long. Gash waded in with the trusty axe, dealing significant damage, Sir Ironbeard cast Healing Word (and restored 1hp on Taylendil) before bringing the warhammer into play and smiting. Taylendil stepped out of the fight and cast Magic Missile at the Chieftains: reliable damage, round after round, which wore him out.
After he fell, they checked out his quarters, finding treasure and a tapestry with the insignia of the Elder Elemental God on it…
Having run out of time, we left it there.
First Impressions:
The system seems clean and easy to run, player actions can easily be adjudicated by determining which ability check is required rather than trying to work out which skill from a long list applies. One player commented that taking away the skill lists gives more freedom to imagine an action, rather than being constrained by a skill set from which to pick.
Advantage/ Disadvantage seems to work well in play. It’s easy to remember, doesn’t fiddle with numbers or maths and can be worked in as things change (e.g I’d rolled an attack on Taylendil when Sir Ironbeard said he was using Guardian to interpose his shield – I then had to roll disadvantage – and missed – without having to remember what the first roll had been).
Everyone was able to contribute, although Brother Dorkin rolled really poor dice all night and didn’t hit squat. There were significant differences between the two clerics: Sir Ironbeard is a definite heavy hitter, not afraid to wade into battle, with buff spells available to support his strong arm. Brother Dorkin is set up as a spell casting cleric, though there seem to be more “damage enemy” spells in his arsenal than normal for a cleric.
There were a couple of areas of concern – the character sheets showed no consistency in layout and design, the fact that a poor set of stats could create a disparity between characters, the Rogue with Wisdom as a dump stat meaning that Searching (for traps or treasure) has become very tricky (no Skill Mastery and minimum die roll here!). It suddenly makes a Cleric the trap-finder general!
As a first pass it worked well, we’ll play again in a couple of weeks and see how the next set of caves tests them…
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There were a couple of areas of concern – the character sheets showed no consistency in layout and design, the fact that a poor set of stats could create a disparity between characters, the Rogue with Wisdom as a dump stat meaning that Searching (for traps or treasure) has become very tricky (no Skill Mastery and minimum die roll here!). It suddenly makes a Cleric the trap-finder general!
This jumped at me. Do you mean to say that you ran the game without Skill Mastery and the minimum die roll mechanic in use for the Rogue?
That seems disingenuous, given that the entire point of the playtest is to test out the rules as they are written at the moment.
EDIT: Whoops, sorry, apparently you did use the minimum die roll mechanic. Given that, I'm actually at a loss as to what you are saying in the quoted part.
That, although the Rogue has Skill Mastery, he doesn't have a trained skill for Searching so it doesn't apply. And he has a wisdom penalty I don't recall offhand if anyone has a Search skill.
The Rogue does have Find/Remove Traps, so he gets his bonus there.If it's just a straight perception check, then the Cleric's Wisdom bonus makes him the obvious one to search for loot, which seems weird to me.
More generally, it's kind of frustrating to have the skills and their bonuses given, but no information beyond the names about what they can be used for. Obviously, that'll come in a later playtest round, but it makes it awkward now.
That's exactly the point. The Rogue couldn't find his own feet in the shower, but give him a lock to pick and he can do it blindfolded.
It seems to me that the Rogue needs MORE skills with Skill Mastery: in the playtest pack, he gets six, of which three (Open Lock, F/R Trap and Stealth) are Rogue-oriented. 2E Rogues had loads of skills in which to allocate points (Listen, Climb Wall, etc.), and 3E/ Pathfinder rogues get nine or ten (assuming a good INT score).
It's a point to include in my report on the Playtest forum at WotC.
This jumped out at me as well. I harks back to earlier editions of Shadowrun where a sniper character would have a hard time seeing anything because there was no perception skill and spot checks based straight off the Intelligence stat.
Most shooty characters took high Quickness and Body and didn't invest in Intelligence resulting in every sniper requiring a Mage spotter to locate targets for them because the greatest shots in the world were chronically short-sighted.
The lack of skills in D&D Next is going to cause the same thing. aging priests who spent their whole life in a temple will be inherently better at spotting ambushes than trained military scouts. Hopefully there will be a skill system added later to balance this out.
The lack of skills in D&D Next is going to cause the same thing. aging priests who spent their whole life in a temple will be inherently better at spotting ambushes than trained military scouts. Hopefully there will be a skill system added later to balance this out.
Why is this such a bad thing? Why not just let task resolution be handled by the ability checks as stated, with bonuses applied from backgrounds as written?
[EDIT: Additionally, this statement is just not true. The way the game looks right now, ability scores and skill bonuses aren't going to jump up too much over the course of a game as levels are accrued. But yes, overall, PCs with higher Wisdom scores will be better at Wisdom-based tasks. If that bothers you, then your scout needs to get himself a high Wis and/or pick a background that grants him bonuses to spotting ambushes and the like. Or, ask your GM if you could make it part of your background that you use Int instead of Wis for spotting weirdness.]
I hate hate hate hate skill systems in 3.x and its offspring. There's too damn many of them. The dearth of options is very frustrating for new players trying to learn the game. The ridiculous number of skill points people get as they level up only adds to numerical inflation across levels of play, so GMs have to constantly readjust the continuum of DCs when they create new content for their games.
I'm just about to the point of houseruling skills out of my games anyway from this point forward. I hope D&D Next keeps the skill applications as simple in the core rules as they are in the current playtest and then simply provides an add-on module for the people who really want this added in.
At the risk of sounding like a total heel, I'm so tired of a small and overly vocal group of gamers wanting to make fun games more complicated than they really need to be. If you really need a system that covers every little thing in verisimilitude, then please, just go play FATAL and stop ruining everyone else's fun.
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At the risk of sounding like a total heel, I'm so tired of a small and overly vocal group of gamers wanting to make fun games more complicated than they really need to be. If you really need a system that covers every little thing in verisimilitude, then please, just go play FATAL and stop ruining everyone else's fun.
I don't think there's any need to suggest that anyone EVER even look at FATAL, beyond reading one particularly good review of it on RPG.net.
Besides, I hear HârnMaster is very crunchy and verisimilar without being a crime againts humanity.
I have no idea how anyone survived this module back in the old days. It's very hard, as a GM, to preserve any realism and still keep any of these caves from turning into a massive battle with the whole tribe.
I think the "preserving realism" bit is what's changed in the last thirty years. In my experience, it was relatively common to encounter dragons at the end of dungeons who couldnt actually get to the room they were in.
Really? Wow. When did you play?
We used to laugh at (but still loved) the assumptions or 'logic' behind the modules. The S series in particular seemed quite hard to justify and the G-D-Q series seemed like it would always turn into an impossible fight if the monsters didnt lie around all day sleeping and/or with cotton wool in their ears.
I suspect a lot of the easy was just because you were fighting kobold, pretty much the weakest things around. Think of them all (except the chief) as 4E minions and that fight as the intro round.Actually, we went much farther than that in the module. The Kobolds took about 30-45 minutes of game time to get through. The players decided to try a different area pretty quick.
They hit the Hobgoblin Lair. That was better, but still not much of a challenge to players used to fighting as a team, even with unfamiliar characters. Again, there was never a sense of a real threat--they took some damage, but the monters took a LOT more, and the PCs didn't even bother to rest until they got past the hobs.
The gnolls gave them more trouble, and after that is where we ended the night, but only because we ran out of time. At the end of the night, they'd used their short rests, some magical healing, and were leveling up to second level. After the long rest, they'll be second level and more powerful, and I can't see the run getting any harder.
I'm tempted to throw in a few extra (read "different") monsters to make things more challenging.
Didnt they say somewhere or other that the adventure was designed to be relatively easy? That they wanted people to be able to use lots of gadgets and not get bogged down in trying to stay alive and/or recuperating?
Didnt they say somewhere or other that the adventure was designed to be relatively easy? That they wanted people to be able to use lots of gadgets and not get bogged down in trying to stay alive and/or recuperating?
If there's no chance of death, the game's not worth playing. "Easy" means a battered and bruised party huffing into a secure area to lick its wounds, not standing around knee deep in a pile of bodies comparing scratches.
this is a basic mechanics playtest, it might take time to fine-tune it.
Didnt they say somewhere or other that the adventure was designed to be relatively easy? That they wanted people to be able to use lots of gadgets and not get bogged down in trying to stay alive and/or recuperating?If there's no chance of death, the game's not worth playing. "Easy" means a battered and bruised party huffing into a secure area to lick its wounds, not standing around knee deep in a pile of bodies comparing scratches.
There's always a chance of death. Players can do some pretty silly things (and roll some pretty awful numbers). :p
.Part of the playtest survey includes comments on how tough the monsters are, how easy the healing is, etcetera. They're presumably going to tweak it somewhat.
I think the monsters in the Bestiary need redone, completely. Ability Scores need to be in the Adventure blocks. Strip all the PC Building Blocks from them concerning Spells. Give them a few options that are spammable. Make Swarm rules. Implement Swarm rules.
Those were my biggest gripes with Monsters. I don't want to cross-reference Monster stat blocks with the PHB ever again. And I want the most important aspects of a monster to be in his description when running a published adventure. A small line of: S 14/+2, D 11/0, Cn 9/-1, I 11/0, W 13/+1, Ch 8/-1 is great for letting me know how to roll his saving throws, thanks!
The latest Legends and Lore article comments on the fact that they havent really put much thought into monsters yet. It seemed pretty clear that, however the 5E statblocks turn out, they wont be the way they currently appear in the playtest materials.
I have to preface this by saying that overall, I really liked the playtest. The rules are simple and direct, combat went very quickly and the system encourages creativity on the part of both DM and players.
However...
I couldn't get past the overwhelming hit points/healing mollycoddle to really enjoy combat. None of the combats were particularly challenging. At no time did any of the players feel threatened. It was mostly a cake-walk...
My suspicion is that they are following 4E in this element. Basically speaking if you played any edition 1st-3rd you'd have found the game started really hard and then significantly eased up as the players leveled up and got access to better goodies and became more durable.
4E reversed that by, among other things, increasing the amount of hps and healing surges a player had at 1st but then having it so that hps and healing surges did not scale up as quickly as monster damage did. The net result is a system that starts off pretty forgiving but increasingly gets more difficult as you rise in levels. This helps with bringing in newbs as they have more time to get used to the system before they start to loose characters. It also plays well with human psychology in terms of games where we generally prefer them to scale up in difficulty as time goes on.
All that said it'd not actually surprise me if they returned to the more traditional 'super hard at first - cake walk at 15th model' model since its it is more traditional.
I have to preface this by saying that overall, I really liked the playtest. The rules are simple and direct, combat went very quickly and the system encourages creativity on the part of both DM and players.
However...
I couldn't get past the overwhelming hit points/healing mollycoddle to really enjoy combat. None of the combats were particularly challenging. At no time did any of the players feel threatened. It was mostly a cake-walk...
My suspicion is that they are following 4E in this element. Basically speaking if you played any edition 1st-3rd you'd have found the game started really hard and then significantly eased up as the players leveled up and got access to better goodies and became more durable.
4E reversed that by, among other things, increasing the amount of hps and healing surges a player had at 1st but then having it so that hps and healing surges did not scale up as quickly as monster damage did. The net result is a system that starts off pretty forgiving but increasingly gets more difficult as you rise in levels. This helps with bringing in newbs as they have more time to get used to the system before they start to loose characters. It also plays well with human psychology in terms of games where we generally prefer them to scale up in difficulty as time goes on.
All that said it'd not actually surprise me if they returned to the more traditional 'super hard at first - cake walk at 15th model' model since its it is more traditional.
In 3.5/PF, this kinda sounds like it is based on the effectiveness of the Wizard/Sorceror, the healers are parabolic; useful at first, less so later as healing doesn't really scale up with damage until later.
We had our second playtest session last week, and here's what happened...
The party took an extended rest and healed up all damage. During the night, they could hear some frightened voices in the area outside: in the morning, they find that the kobold chieftain’s body had gone. They followed a bloody trail outside and found that the tribe were holding a cremation out in the ravine, led by a shaman.
Whilst the tribe were holding their funeral, arrows started flying from another cave in the ravine wall, dropping some of the konolds. The rest of the tribe ran into the undergrowth, the party decided to investigate the cave which had perpetrated the crime.
Scouting ahead, Ifford managed to climb through a tangle of rope bridges leading to the cave mouth, then tied ropes down the ravine wall so that the others could get up easily. They spotted the trip-wire/ net trap (Gash the fighter did: the Rogue can’t find his butt with both hands) and re-jigged it so that they could drop it on the orcs. Ifford ran down the corridor and made noise similar to the alarm on the net: orcs started out of the rooms and the party started slaying.
They were unlucky: only one orc got tangled in the net, leaving five others looking to repel intruders. Gash and Sir Ironbeard manned the front line, with Ironbeard’s Defender ability coming to the fore more than once. Ifford was behind the lines, and managed to Sneak Attack, doing enough damage to see off a couple of orcs in different rounds.
Orcs from the common room joined those from the sleeping chamber: in total there were thirteen opponents facing off against the PC’s, some of the orcs shooting into melee with their crossbows, others charging in to use their additional damage capability to the fullest extent. Gash and Sir Ironbeard both had to absorb charging damage, and it took out a significant chunk of their capability.
Brother Dorkin was outstanding, with Radiant Lance cantrips flying into combat and hitting. Also, Taylendil the wizard hid behind Sir Ironbird, popping out to deliver a Shocking Grasp from cover. That alone saw off about three of them.
Waves one and two destroyed, and the rogue re-set the net trap – his background as a fisherman and thief abilities coming together to ensure that the new arrangement was hidden and would drop when required. Good job: more orcs came piling out. Lots got trapped under the net (with orc bodies from the previous fight), then Ifford set the lot on fire!
The remaining orcs were dispatched in short order: some due to burning damage, others who managed to wriggle out from under the net. This left the party out of healing spells and low on hp only a short time after their Extended rest. Holing up in the deserted orc sleeping chamber, they had a short rest (and regained some hit points by rolling hit dice), but without further healing available, they decided to hide there a while. Which is where we left them.
Positives:
Combat was fast and fluid, even with so many creatures in the first encounter. Even though PC’s didn’t get to 0hp or below, the fact that charging orcs could do so much damage meant that the players thought that the encounter might go against them.
Skill resolution is not limited by the list of skills on a character sheet, but by the imagination of participants. If you can think it, you can have a chance of doing it. Very Old-school, IMO, and all the better for it.
The Cleric of Moradin’s Defender ability was really cool, it was cinematic and mechanically felt fun to play. It offered another combat option than just smacking foes or casting spells.
Comments from Players (both as we finished and by e-mail after):
Rules organisation is a bit of a mess: the Disrupted condition – mentioned on the mage’s sheet as requiring a DC 10 Concentration check in order to cast anything other than an at-will – should be in the “How To Play” guide, but isn’t. Likewise, the clerics don’t seem to have such a prohibition on their spell use – why?
Cantrips seem too overpowered: both Radiant Lance and Burning Hands do 1d8 + Magic Ability damage. With a high Magic Ability modifier (and who wouldn’t have a high Magic stat?), a good roll can take out an Orc in one shot – Taylendil managed this a couple of times during the initial wave of Orcs.
The Healing Word spell, however, may be underpowered: twice in the first session, the Cleric of Moradin used the spell and rolled a 1. It may be better to change the spell so that it does a minimum amount of healing (e.g. Magic Ability score of the caster).
The Rogue seems dreadfully underpowered in terms of skills he can use with the Skill Mastery ability: six, of which three are typically rogue-like.
Rogues are turning out to be underpowered fighters, rather than stealthy, shadowy types. They lack the skills for lurking effectively, and need to strike with Advantage to get the best of a situation. They can only strike every other round, at best, in order to be able to Hide on the battlefield. If they can’t hide, they are going to get pasted. They can only use a limited array of weapons which limits their effectiveness unless they can gain advantage.
Quoted from the Legends and Lore column on Rogue Design Goals: “ask yourself if the new rogue feels like the class you've played and loved.” From feedback of our group, we’d say “NO!” The pre-gen rogue misses some skills and abilities iconic rogues from previous editions have had.
The 15-minute workday is back (oh noes!)! The players fought off 21 orcs, using up all the healing magic available to them during this phase. They had completed an Extended Rest only just before entering the fight. Even with Healing Kit use allowing them to regain hit dice, it meant that they were underpowered and out of healing magic, and wanted another extended rest. And they wouldn’t get that for another twenty-three-and-a-half hours!
D&D Next is perfectly balanced, perfectly dull and perfectly restrictive. It is to role-playing what minimalism is to the visual arts. There is zero flavor and even less creativity or care in D&D Next. Honestly, it reads like something a Ritalin-addicted sixth grader might have come up with during middle school class, when he was supposed to be paying attention, but wasn't.
Overall, my impression of the game is infinite sterility and laziness. For example: only four totem choices for the Barbarian. Really? Are Barbarians in D&D only familiar with four types of animals? Or can they for some reason only acquire power associated with four types of animals? Also, the rest of the Barbarian's abilities are all about rage. In D&D Next, all Barbarians are alike: raging, angry, vicious warriors with a few token animal-related abilities. What about the possibility of noble savages, loving caretakers of the earth, shamanistic barbarians, seafaring barbarians, and so on? Because all Barbarians are assigned abilities which absolutely shape the flavor of characters in a single direction, all Barbarians in D&D Next are basically the same. And this is bad. Very bad.
Likewise, Druids only have five animal shapes to choose from. All of them have zero flavor - they all have name like Shape of the Steed, Shape of the Fish, Shape of the Hound, etc. More laziness. How about names like Canine Shapechange, or Avian Metamorphosis? See how easy it is to be creative? But the idiots at the D&D department of WoTC are unwilling to make any kind of mental effort to come up with good abilities and good names for them.
Also, Druids gain an ability called Evergreen, which is supposedly the plant ability that allows evergreen trees great longevity. This is one of the dumbest and lamest things I've ever heard of, because it isn't within a larger context of a Druid subtype that specifically acquires plant-related abilities.
I've heard alot of people say that D&D Next is a return to old-school gaming. This is false....
It is a playtest designed to provide them with information to improve the development. I'm sure the real game will have many more options to choose from, especially over time as additional non-core material is released, published in Dragon articles, etc. I think it's a little too early to write it off completely.
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D&D Next is perfectly balanced, perfectly dull and perfectly restrictive. It is to role-playing what minimalism is to the visual arts. There is zero flavor and even less creativity or care in D&D Next. Honestly, it reads like something a Ritalin-addicted sixth grader might have come up with during middle school class, when he was supposed to be paying attention, but wasn't.
Overall, my impression of the game is infinite sterility and laziness. For example: only four totem choices for the Barbarian. Really? Are Barbarians in D&D only familiar with four types of animals? Or can they for some reason only acquire power associated with four types of animals? Also, the rest of the Barbarian's abilities are all about rage. In D&D Next, all Barbarians are alike: raging, angry, vicious warriors with a few token animal-related abilities. What about the possibility of noble savages, loving caretakers of the earth, shamanistic barbarians, seafaring barbarians, and so on? Because all Barbarians are assigned abilities which absolutely shape the flavor of characters in a single direction, all Barbarians in D&D Next are basically the same. And this is bad. Very bad.
Likewise, Druids only have five animal shapes to choose from. All of them have zero flavor - they all have name like Shape of the Steed, Shape of the Fish, Shape of the Hound, etc. More laziness. How about names like Canine Shapechange, or Avian Metamorphosis? See how easy it is to be creative? But the idiots at the D&D department of WoTC are unwilling to make any kind of mental effort to come up with good abilities and good names for them.
Also, Druids gain an ability called Evergreen, which is supposedly the plant ability that allows evergreen trees great longevity. This is one of the dumbest and lamest things I've ever heard of, because it isn't within a larger context of a Druid subtype that specifically acquires plant-related abilities.
I've heard alot of people say that D&D Next is a return to old-school gaming. This is false....
Wow...you went through all the trouble of signing up on Pazio just so you could tell us this.
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Overall, my impression of the game is infinite sterility and laziness. For example: only four totem choices for the Barbarian. Really? Are Barbarians in D&D only familiar with four types of animals? Or can they for some reason only acquire power associated with four types of animals?
I've heard alot of people say that D&D Next is a return to old-school gaming. This is false....
Never played 1e with Unearthed Arcana I see. Darn Gygax & Arneson and their sterility! The difference in any class under 1e was whatever imagination the player choose to inject. I gather you prefer the type of RPG where unless there is a mechanical rule advantage to something it shouldn't be in the game?
Riverwind of Dragonlance fame was a noble barbarian (Que-Shu tribe) - class = ranger. Tanis was a fighter who seemed be very ranger like. How does that work then?
The only thing I can agree with you is D&DN has too many options available to truly be old school. So D&DN is old school like but not old school.
S.
Wow...you went through all the trouble of signing up on Pazio just so you could tell us this.
And necro'd a year old thread to do it. >:/
Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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Wow...you went through all the trouble of signing up on Pazio just so you could tell us this.And necro'd a year old thread to do it. >:/
Maybe he misses the 4e edition wars and thought it'd be fun to play that game again. Other than calling it an MMO, he basically hit every other note of the Generic Very Angry Rant Against 4e that was de rigeur back in the day.
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D&D Next is...perfectly dull and perfectly restrictive.
There is zero flavor and even less creativity or care in D&D Next. Honestly, it reads like something a Ritalin-addicted sixth grader might have come up with during middle school class, when he was supposed to be paying attention, but wasn't.
...my impression of the game is infinite sterility and laziness.
But the idiots at the D&D department of WoTC are unwilling to make any kind of mental effort to come up with good abilities and good names for them.
I've heard alot (sic) of people say that D&D Next is a return to old-school gaming. This is false. 1st and 2nd edition had flavor, creativity and nuance. D&D Next has none of these.
Also, D&D Next kicked me.
But the idiots at the D&D department of WoTC are unwilling to make any kind of mental effort to come up with good abilities and good names for them.
Oh. You're one of those.
Maybe he misses the 4e edition wars and thought it'd be fun to play that game again. Other than calling it an MMO, he basically hit every other note of the Generic Very Angry Rant Against 4e that was de rigeur back in the day.Wow...you went through all the trouble of signing up on Pazio just so you could tell us this.And necro'd a year old thread to do it. >:/
I can't wait to see who decides to call D&D Next a MOBA-on-paper first.
But the idiots at the D&D department of WoTC are unwilling to make any kind of mental effort to come up with good abilities and good names for them.
This seems a pretty direct breach of the forum rules in general and this subforum in particular.
I think that D&DN plays like a MUD... Thoughts? :)
Definitely text-based at this point; here's hoping the last packet has ansi colors. :P
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I think that D&DN plays like a MUD... Thoughts? :)Definitely text-based at this point; here's hoping the last packet has ansi colors. :P
The back-and-forth nature of D&D Next combat betrays a clear intention to appeal to Pong players.
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The back-and-forth nature of D&D Next combat betrays a clear intention to appeal to Pong players.I think that D&DN plays like a MUD... Thoughts? :)Definitely text-based at this point; here's hoping the last packet has ansi colors. :P
Really? Come on, with the idea of a boss creature at the end of most adventures it is obvious that D&DN is basically a remake of Donkey Kong using the underpinning mechanics of Pong I grant you.
Cloudy, care to weigh in again with some insight?
This seems a pretty direct breach of the forum rules in general and this subforum in particular.
Yes, yes it does.