Here are my initial thoughts on the play test packet:
You pick a background, which includes a trait and 2 fields of lore +10 to lore checks in your field of lore. Looks like they kicked bounded accuracy to the curb...
One of the fields of lore is "Hobbyist" and examples include "Dragonchess" or "cormyrian drama"...interest dropping
Artisan background "pay 5gp per month to be in good standing with the irrelevant to 99% of campaigns artisan guild"
Bounty Hunter: "Skip RP and go right to the bounty board" the rest are equally as pointless.
Rolling for scores is the standard method. point buy is optional
The basic four races and classes are core, everything else is up to the DM. Hope you have a generous DM...
Barbarian
Feral Reflexes: You can act during a surprise round as long as you rage on your turn.
Barbarians don't die when they hit 0 hit points. They instead make a DC 10 con save. They can do this every time they get hit, but the DC goes up by 5 each time. So if you have a bunch of Con save feats you basically can't die or have the equivalent of 30x the hit points of everyone else
Oh at 12th you make all saves with advantage, so you just doubled your hp from the not dying part and tt 20th, you don't die at 0 with no save, but make death saves as normal and die after 6 of them.
At 17th you cause creatures hit by your attacks to be frightened (with a failed save), so they get a level 1 Wizard spell at 17th level they can cast at-will
Oh look, auto-advantage on all attacks while raging with the Hawk totem. Well you can never have disadvantage with that build...
At 10th you get regeneration 5 when raging while bloodied
Oh look at 17th advantage on death saves. The Barbarian is simply unkillable past 17th level then. Auto-win a save at 17th and drop out of a rage...
Cleric
When you are out of Cleric spells you can call upon divine intervention and get a free spell effect but you only have a % chance based on your level, so don't bother unless you are totally out of options. You can only try it once every day. In other words it will almost never be used.
Druid
Wild Shape is worthless after a few levels. You will be doing more damage with your spells and regular attacks than you will with wild shape, so it will be relegated to passive bonuses to skill checks.
At 15th level you can do the equivalent of a low level Wizard spell a couple times per day (change appearance to another humanoid form).
At 10th you get battle forms, that are worse than your normal form at that level. Again more acceptable for utility than for anything else.
At 14th and 16th level your shapes almost equal your normal shape, but without the ability to cast spells, you are much weaker than other martial types (since you basically turn into a martial character at that point). In other words not worth shape changing. Behemoth is almost worth it, maybe.
Fighter
Get 1.5 their effective hp with second wind. 2nd level you can do 2 actions once per encounter, kinda nice, but in 4E any class can do that every other encounter, so no biggie. Fighters get Defy Death which is like the Barbarian feature that keeps them from dying except its a higher DC, but it doesn't go up.
13th level they get advantage on all saves, so the above feature gets much better.
Dirty Trick is worthless unless fighting low Wisdom creatures. You have to beat their Wisdom modifier with it so your chances are really low unless they have no modifier or a low modifier.
It seems like all of the maneuvers rely on beating ability modifiers which puts their usefulness at a minimum past low level.
Awareness must be a joke. Minimum 10 on checks while standing watch? Seriously?
An improved critical range is nice, but an extra damage dice is not really that inspiring, especially as its a single die, so if you deal 2d6 with your weapon you don't roll an additional 2d6, you roll an additional 1d6. In other words, ok, but not anything really special.
Effects on critical hits are very unreliable. Even at level 20 you only have a 15% chance of a critical even with advantage it only happens 36.5% of the time, and that's only if you pick the right Fighter sub-class (path).
Overall not impressed. Feats seem to be more powerful than most of the Fighter features.
Wizard (Mage)
Since saves are just as hard to pass as ever and supposedly the monster abilities went down, this means Wizards er... Mages are even more powerful than before.
Arcane recovery is about equivalent to an extra level 1,2, and 3 spell slot. So nothing much to write home about.
You can't scribe scrolls to use until 6th level and when you do, you have to pick a spell of 3rd or lower and you can't have more than a few spells scribed total.
At 18th level you can cast one 1st and one 2nd level spell at-will.
A lot of the features for the Mage seem overpowered like 24 hour duration on charm, recovering your suggestion spell slot if they make the save. Very overpowered. At 8th they get auto charm and force attacks on others when attacked. Way overpowered. At 12th creatures don't remember being charmed, which was the only drawback to the charm spells. Another overpowered ability.
At 16th you can charm anything. "Hey Asmodeus, bud, help me out here..."
At 20th level you can make charms permanent. So you basically charm the Gods and then have them follow you around doing stuff for you. Hmm... that won't be broken will it?
The rest seem equally overpowered.
Over-channeling can be abused horribly. If you have advantage on saves or other bonuses you can potentially get 4-5 over channels before dropping to 0 hp. In other words its better than pretty much any attack.
At 16th you bypass resistances to damage spells you cast. So you are dealing max damage, extra damage from ability modifiers, and nothing can resist your damage.
At 20th you get free lightning bolt and fireball spells at their minimum level at-will. I guess they have no real plans for epic play then.
Mostly all I see is quadratic casters and linear martials. Not a game I would like to play.
What do you think?
I like it but I have been playing ACKS lately. Best packet since the Sorcerer/Warlock one. Its BECMI with bits of 3rd and 4th on it atm.
lokiare wrote: What do you think? It is a play test. There bounds to ber things that don't work...
Did you send this to them...or fill out the questionaire? I am sure your keen insights will help them develope something you will like.
Well I have been kinda of meh on D&D Next playtests of late...it is not the finished product...keep a open mind.
Also depends if you like simple or not. If you do not like the lack of feats etc or build options one can understand that you may not like D&DN so far.
Mostly its the broken builds you can make.
You can make a Barbarian that by level 12 can't be downed in a Fight or has about 10x the effective HP of any other character at the same level.
Wizards (mages) are super over powered, they get to choose from auto-permanent charms that aren't remembered, max damage most of the time and at-will fireballs and lightning bolts, or other overpowered options. Not to mention saves are way more reliable than attacks because they lowered monster ability scores. So Mages are going to be really powerful.
Fighters are overshadowed by Barbarians. There is nothing a Fighter can't do that a Barbarian with a few feats can't do better.
In other words its just generally broken...
Have they given any hints as to when the game will be ready to launch?
Any chance of an equivalent treatise without the hate goggles on?
I understand you were attempting a critical review, but all that comes across is the critical part.
I agree with Zardnaar, they are keeping with the idiom of old school simple and new mechanics. Old school wasn't overly balanced and I'm not crying a river if there exists the odd 'Cavalier' (1e) class.
What would make me less interested in D&DN would be specific rules in combat that require miniatures and 3.5e/PF's complexity.
S.
If you have a look at the fighter it actually resembles a 2nd ed one. 2nd ed fighter have great saves and in D&DN fighters get advantage on saves at higher levels. They more or less get an encounter power a'la 4th ed that grants them an extra attack and they get second wind as well. They also get multiple attacks like a 2nd ed fighter.
Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
So, skills are definitely gone? Then, my prediction that 5E will be a 1E/2E love letter is coming true. Rejoice, OSR'ers!
Gone in this packet, I think they will turn up again and be optional a'la 2nd ed.
I haven't had a chance to look at this iteration, but of the three prior releases, I was disappointed with the middle release. It sounds like the game, however, is making some strides. I'm tentatively hopeful for this iteration, especially if the claims of an adventure taking about two hours is realized.
Not that I expect this to be known right now (less than 12 hours after the release) but how are play times for the game? Something along the lines of a PFS Scenario played in about two hours?
Negative: skills are gone. Feats are pushed away as alternate option to increasing scores.
lokiare wrote: Barbarians don't die when they hit 0 hit points. They instead make a DC 10 con save. They can do this every time they get hit, but the DC goes up by 5 each time. So if you have a bunch of Con save feats you basically can't die or have the equivalent of 30x the hit points of everyone else
Oh at 12th you make all saves with advantage, so you just doubled your hp from the not dying part and tt 20th, you don't die at 0 with no save, but make death saves as normal and die after 6 of them.
What Con save feats? Where did you saw Con save feats? Because I want to take them for my 13th level Fighter who can stay at 1 hp with a successful DC 15 Constitution check that always has advantage, without increasing DC.
It seems like 20th level is Epic play! The OP mentioning potentially charming Asmodeus, that sound very epic. Of course it does chew up 3 of your 4 1st level slots.
In the old Dragonlance Adventure 18th was the highest level then your character was retired from play. Perhaps in a minority, but I do not mind limits on the game. The free for all of 3.5e/PF makes it at higher level, in my experience, quite un-fun to DM/GM.
Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
If they end up optional, they'll share the fate of Paizo's Words of Power - "it's here, sure you can use it, but we're not supporting it anywhere else, so you're kinda frocked if you go for it.".
Gorbacz wrote: If they end up optional, they'll share the fate of Paizo's Words of Power - "it's here, sure you can use it, but we're not supporting it anywhere else, so you're kinda frocked if you go for it.". Which is my basic problem with the whole "modular" idea.
Skills will be back though. I wouldn't take their presence or absence in any one playtest packet to be meaningful. They're playing around with different ideas, not nailing anything down yet.
Fig wrote: I haven't had a chance to look at this iteration, but of the three prior releases, I was disappointed with the middle release. It sounds like the game, however, is making some strides. I'm tentatively hopeful for this iteration, especially if the claims of an adventure taking about two hours is realized.
Not that I expect this to be known right now (less than 12 hours after the release) but how are play times for the game? Something along the lines of a PFS Scenario played in about two hours?
I ran a playtest session with this packet last night. I had four players and they chose pregens. 2 of the players had never played D&D or any tabletop dog, and 2 were experienced players but had not played any D&D Next. This was my first time running any of the Next stuff.
Newbie #1- ran the dwarf fighter
Newbie #2- ran the half orc barbarian
Verteran #1- ran the elf mage
Verteran #2- ran the human cleric
I ran a loosely based Keep on the Borderlands style adventure that I did very minimal prep for (compared to the amount I usually do). In about 4 hours of play the characters spent some time at the keep, picked up some rumours. They had a combat with a band of kobolds that ambushed them on their way to the Caves of Chaos. They interrogated 1 and took him as their guide. The fighter climbed up to a little known cave that was rumoured to provide a back entrance to the Caves of Chaos. It was guarded by a Spined devil, which he fought with little help from the party (since they were still down below). The group rested for the night in the cave. They then climbed down a shaft in the back of the cave and entered a hobgoblin lair. They fought a few guards. Then they raided a chapel of Asmodeus, where they fought another spined devil and a few zombies. After that they had to deal with some hobgoblin reinforcements that were alerted by the mage's use of thunder wave. Among the reinforcements was a hobgoblin warchief.
In the last part of the session they did some looting and a short rest before having to deal with yet another band of reinforcements, who had heard from an escaped hobgoblin that the chief was dead. Lastly, they search the temple, found that the altar slid to the side and revealed a trap door in the floor that led to a treasure room. After dealing with a couple of traps they looted the treasure and fled.
All in all there was a bit of rp, some exploration and 5-6 combats in the four hour session.
I used minis for the combats (because I have a lot and am used to it from running 4e and Pathfinder). It probably wasn't absolutely necessary, but since most of the fights featured multiple enemies it still made it a lot easier to track the action.
I found the rules pretty flexible, but that was partially because I hadn't had a chance to fully read them, so I was winging certain parts- (for instance I hadn't read up on whether there was a penalty for firing into melee or it standing up from prone provoked an attack of opportunity etc.) I used the advantage and disadvantage mechanic a lot, and I thought that it worked well. It felt more like a rules lite version of Pathfinder/3.5 than 4e D&D.
The newbies found the mechanics for the fighter and the barbarian pretty easy to grasp, and got the hang of things pretty quick. The two classes seemed comparable. The barbarian did more damage, but had a much lower AC and was taking more hits than the fighter. The veterans liked the cantrips for the casters since they gave some good options that were useful. The cantrips feel a bit more like 4e at will spells than 0 level pathfinder spells since they are powerful enough to make a viable combat option. I think the player running the mage liked that he got 3 magic missiles at first level, and the cleric enjoyed the healing word spell, which lets you do healing at range, but not as effectively as a cure light wounds. He also made a lot of use of sacred flame, which let him fight from a distance.
We had a couple times where characters were KOed and forced to make death saves (both the fighter and the barbarian had this happen). I like the death save mechanic better than the pathfinder mechanic for death since it is harder to predict how long your character has left, and it is harder to stabilize.
I found the monsters fast and easy to run, but they were just simple humanoids for the most part, so they would have been pretty easy to run in Pathfinder or 4e as well. It was also very fast for me to whip up an improvised stat block, which I liked. I noticed that light weapons like daggers and shortswords let one use dex to hit and damage, which made kobolds and the mage more dangerous in melee than they would be in pathfinder.
Anyhow it was a fun session. However, I'm not sure that I found it anymore or less fun than any other version of the game I've played- but one session of first level play isn't near enough to judge such a thing.
P.H. Dungeon wrote: Session Recap That does sound like it would have been pretty good as an introductory game (perhaps even introductory edition), and you managed to get a good bit done in 4 or so hours. I remain tentatively hopeful for this edition/iteration.
I would review it without the negative comments, but then all that would be left would be the positive comments and that would imply that I liked the way it was turning out. I don't want to give people that mistaken impression.
As to the feats comment above. I haven't reviewed the feats yet. You are correct though. The Fighter and Barbarian will be nearly unkillable. It would be ok if they had high saves or had the no death at 0 hp thing. Together they just make the game not very fun because there is very little risk. Combine that with Cleric healing and you have immortal characters. As the poster above demonstrated, in play the Fighter literally took out an encounter that was above their level by themselves.
Then you end up with casters that can really destroy encounters with a single spell or two and by mid level they have enough of those spells that they never run out. So we are back to linear Fighters and Quadratic wizards. Something a lot of players don't like.
I'm wondering for those that have bothered to play it, how does (dis)advantage affect the game? Mathematically in the long run it is sometimes worth more than any other bonuses in the game and others its almost not worth bothering with. Did ludicrous situations come up like the blinded, dazed, prone, attacking Fighter that rolled normally because they had a feature or feat that granted them advantage come up and did the players have problems swallowing that situation?
Currently my group won't touch 5E so I can't test it, but with a lot of personal experience with TTRPGs and a B.S. in Game Software Development I kind of have a semi-educated perspective and I can tell just from running some numbers that the game will end up very unbalanced.
It looks like they took groups of feats from 3E and 4E and merged them into a single feat. So if you want an edge in getting initiative, you have to take Alert and get the no surprise, Advantage on all wisdom checks to listen or spot and give up an ability score bonus which in 5E is a huge difference. Its like going up 3-5 levels depending on whether your score is even or odd.
If you just want proficiency with a bow, you have to take Archery Master and give up a 5% increase in hitting targets for the entire game (of which you have the opportunity to increase your to hit chance by around 30% over the course of 20 levels) and get a bunch of stuff you may not want like the ability to ignore cover, and the ability to get an extra attack by lowering both attacks chance to hit by 25% (basically acting like 2 level 1 characters at level 20). For most people that would be pointless if all they wanted was to use a bow.
Charger is basically the rules for charging in other editions packaged as a feat, so you basically can't charge unless you have this feat or a nice DM.
With a few Armor feats and a high Constitution score a Wizard suddenly becomes extremely hard to take down. With bounded accuracy monsters will hit rarely and the ability to ignore damage from weapons equal to your Constitution modifier (up to +5) you literally won't be damaged by anything of 5th level or lower. You can obtain this if they put in the missing Medium Armor feat by level 8. Otherwise I see rogues and Monks taking the armor feats and becoming ridiculously overpowered.
Fencing Master breaks Bounded Accuracy in half. A decent Fighter in plate mail will have an AC of 18 with this feat they can use their reaction to increase their AC to 23 causing even high level creatures to have a really hard times hitting. Asmodeus for instance a level 20 monster has a +10 to attack meaning it would have to roll a 13 or higher to hit. That's a 40% chance to hit. Throw on disadvantage and you end up with a 16% chance which is easy to achieve at the levels you are going to meet up with a level 20 creature. On top of that if they have the Heavy Armor Mastery feat they will remove around 5 points from any damage they take, throw in their ability to not die at 0 hp and you end up with a very one sided fight in favor of the players.
The Lucky feat can be used to give yourself virtual advantage on any check, attack roll, or saving throw. In other words a Fighter with this becomes even harder to drop because Lucky stacks with advantage. Imagine rolling 3d20 and taking the highest for your DC 15 Constitution save to prevent yourself from dropping below 1 hp. You have a 65.7% chance without any bonuses (Con 10-11) using this method. If you have a high Con score (+5 mod) you have a 90.89% chance of succeeding. Yep, unkillable Fighters.
Charger + Mobile feats = unstoppable killing machine. +5 to damage, and no opportunity attacks from the target you last hit means you can charge with impunity from one target to another every round.
Tactical Warrior + Pole Arm Master means you can hit creatures twice before they can get to you. The first time you hit and mark the creature when it comes within 10 feet and stop its movement for that turn, then when they continue to move on their next turn to engage, you hit again.
Overall I can't see people not taking a few of these instead of an ability score increase especially the ones that grant advantage or negate disadvantage as these are worth more than a +5% chance to hit.
Mage save DC's are insane. By level 5 a Mage with a +5 ability bonus is going to have a DC of 17. A level 8 Succubus can only make Dex saves (one of their highest saves) 35% of the time. In other words they have more accuracy than other classes and usually have some lesser effect on a failed save (such as half damage). This means the martial classes just lost their ability to keep up. So if you wanted to play a martial damage dealing class, you are just out of luck in 5E...
Overall, I like most of what I am seeing, though I still think there is plenty of room to continue making adjustments. (And, I admit, I am quite impressed that the Playtest has been running for a year and is still going strong, with significant revisions and adjustments based on feedback!)
I like making feats *significant*, and making them legitimately worth a trade-off of ability points is a good way to go about that. Being able to spend a single feat to be a skilled archer, instead of half-a-dozen feats? That's fantastic. My only concern is having the multiclassing element tied to that - or, rather, that it currently looks like you will still need a bunch of feats to feel appropriately multiclassed, and that doing so means giving up stat bumps that are especially important to multiclassed characters.
I am a big fan of what we're seeing with the Fighter, and having several different builds each with their own approach. I do think the save to not fall below 0 mechanic needs work, though, for both the Fighter and the Barbarian. I feel like just about all the classes are starting to come into their own, and I like the way they are handling the different paths within each class.
I continue to like the advantage/disadvantage concept as a whole, but I think the rules need to be a bit more sparing with handing it out.
I think spells look effective, but I'm definitely not seeing some vast superiority of them trivializing the capabilities of non-spellcasting characters. Spells definitely feel potent, but they are also quite limited in how many you get, so it is important for them to be relevant when they get cast.
I do remain sad that they've returned to the older hp system where Con is so important and hp varies so widely from one character to the next.
lokiare wrote: A lot of the features for the Mage seem overpowered like 24 hour duration on charm, recovering your suggestion spell slot if they make the save. Very overpowered. At 8th they get auto charm and force attacks on others when attacked. Way overpowered. At 12th creatures don't remember being charmed, which was the only drawback to the charm spells. Another overpowered ability.
Keep in mind that Charm is not nearly as absolute as it used to be. Charmed means the creature thinks of you as a friend and won't attack you. There is no guarantee it won't kill your friends if it still sees them as enemies, and no guarantee that it will simply do what you tell it to.
Some of that, as always, does come down to how the DM runs things and how they handle social interaction, and how much they let you convince charmed enemies to help you. But it doesn't seem nearly as direct a compulsion as it was in the past.
Similarly, the Mage's 'renewed Suggestion' only works if they try and cast Suggestion *on someone they have already charmed*, which definitely implies that they expect the Charm simply to calm someone down and leave them open to a well-placed Suggestion. Making Suggestion reliable for an Enchanter doesn't seem too potent for me, especially if it is only when used on someone who has already been charmed (and thus the Mage has already invested resources and actions into.)
Really, none of the Mage abilities strike me as overpowered. Same goes for most spells in general, Overchannel, etc. I suspect that a lot of these are the sort of thing that looks good on paper, especially when based on experiences in other editions, but won't be unreasonable in the actual course of play.
lokiare wrote: Barbarians don't die when they hit 0 hit points. They instead make a DC 10 con save. They can do this every time they get hit, but the DC goes up by 5 each time. So if you have a bunch of Con save feats you basically can't die or have the equivalent of 30x the hit points of everyone else
Oh at 12th you make all saves with advantage, so you just doubled your hp from the not dying part and tt 20th, you don't die at 0 with no save, but make death saves as normal and die after 6 of them.
I think the 'save vs death' elements do need a close look, but I'm not sure they are quite as overwhelming as you might fear. The first save (DC10) should be trivial to make. Assuming a decent Con, you are likely to make the second save (DC 15). By DC 20, the odds aren't that great, even with Advantage - unless you have a Paladin around, I suppose. Assuming you do, you can probably even have an average chance at hitting DC 25. DC 30+ is going to be next to impossible, though you could use your Guardian Spirit feature at level 17 to auto-pass (but doing so turns off several class abilities for the rest of the day, and thus is only usable once.)
So, in effect, it means you can take an extra 1 or 2 hits a fight, or potentially 3 or 4 if really optimized for it. Of course, once you've survived the first hit, you do drop to 1 - so those extra hits you are surviving could be coming from very basic enemies and still using up your few bonus chances to stay standing. And once those run out, you are potentially in real trouble.
Now the Fighter, who has to make a DC 15 save and it never goes up? That is a real problem.
lokiare wrote: Cleric
When you are out of Cleric spells you can call upon divine intervention and get a free spell effect but you only have a % chance based on your level, so don't bother unless you are totally out of options. You can only try it once every day. In other words it will almost never be used.
It might not happen often, but I was really excited to see this in there. For years, I've wanted something along these lines - but I also wanted it to be something that only really crops up in extreme moments of desperation. So I think it is a very cool idea, even if it won't often be relevant.
Matthew Koelbl wrote: lokiare wrote: A lot of the features for the Mage seem overpowered like 24 hour duration on charm, recovering your suggestion spell slot if they make the save. Very overpowered. At 8th they get auto charm and force attacks on others when attacked. Way overpowered. At 12th creatures don't remember being charmed, which was the only drawback to the charm spells. Another overpowered ability.
Keep in mind that Charm is not nearly as absolute as it used to be. Charmed means the creature thinks of you as a friend and won't attack you. There is no guarantee it won't kill your friends if it still sees them as enemies, and no guarantee that it will simply do what you tell it to.
Some of that, as always, does come down to how the DM runs things and how they handle social interaction, and how much they let you convince charmed enemies to help you. But it doesn't seem nearly as direct a compulsion as it was in the past.
Similarly, the Mage's 'renewed Suggestion' only works if they try and cast Suggestion *on someone they have already charmed*, which definitely implies that they expect the Charm simply to calm someone down and leave them open to a well-placed Suggestion. Making Suggestion reliable for an Enchanter doesn't seem too potent for me, especially if it is only when used on someone who has already been charmed (and thus the Mage has already invested resources and actions into.)
Really, none of the Mage abilities strike me as overpowered. Same goes for most spells in general, Overchannel, etc. I suspect that a lot of these are the sort of thing that looks good on paper, especially when based on experiences in other editions, but won't be unreasonable in the actual course of play. Some people must have had really horrible best friends. To clarify a best friend would bend over backwards to help you out if you asked. Outside of combat auto-charm forever and reliable suggestion means broken plots everywhere or hard work for the DM to counter it with everyone having magical protection or insane stats.
Matthew Koelbl wrote: lokiare wrote: Barbarians don't die when they hit 0 hit points. They instead make a DC 10 con save. They can do this every time they get hit, but the DC goes up by 5 each time. So if you have a bunch of Con save feats you basically can't die or have the equivalent of 30x the hit points of everyone else
Oh at 12th you make all saves with advantage, so you just doubled your hp from the not dying part and tt 20th, you don't die at 0 with no save, but make death saves as normal and die after 6 of them.
I think the 'save vs death' elements do need a close look, but I'm not sure they are quite as overwhelming as you might fear. The first save (DC10) should be trivial to make. Assuming a decent Con, you are likely to make the second save (DC 15). By DC 20, the odds aren't that great, even with Advantage - unless you have a Paladin around, I suppose. Assuming you do, you can probably even have an average chance at hitting DC 25. DC 30+ is going to be next to impossible, though you could use your Guardian Spirit feature at level 17 to auto-pass (but doing so turns off several class abilities for the rest of the day, and thus is only usable once.)
So, in effect, it means you can take an extra 1 or 2 hits a fight, or potentially 3 or 4 if really optimized for it. Of course, once you've survived the first hit, you do drop to 1 - so those extra hits you are surviving could be coming from very basic enemies and still using up your few bonus chances to stay standing. And once those run out, you are potentially in real trouble.
Now the Fighter, who has to make a DC 15 save and it never goes up? That is a real problem.
lokiare wrote: Cleric
When you are out of Cleric spells you can call upon divine intervention and get a free spell effect but you only have a % chance based on your level, so don't bother unless you are totally out of options. You can only try it once every day. In other words it will almost never be used.
It might not happen often, but I was really excited to see this in... You are correct an optimized Barbarian is going to make the save 2-4 times at most. The Fighter on the other hand can pretty much get up to a 90.89% chance up to 3 times per day with Lucky feat and auto-advantage on saves and a decent Con score. Then after that it drops to something like 60%+ so yeah, pretty much unkillable, throw a Cleric in the mix and you end up with the rare time the Fighter goes down it pops back up.
I would have been excited if there was any chance the Cleric feature would come into play, but you have such a small chance you might as well not use it unless you are weaponless, out of spells, near death, and captured or something. Really with those odds you are better off just attacking with your weapon...
lokiare wrote: Matthew Koelbl wrote:
Keep in mind that Charm is not nearly as absolute as it used to be. Charmed means the creature thinks of you as a friend and won't attack you. There is no guarantee it won't kill your friends if it still sees them as enemies, and no guarantee that it will simply do what you tell it to.
Some of that, as always, does come down to how the DM runs things and how they handle social interaction, and how much they let you convince charmed enemies to help you. But it doesn't seem nearly as direct a compulsion as it was in the past.
Similarly, the Mage's 'renewed Suggestion' only works if they try and cast Suggestion *on someone they have already charmed*, which definitely implies that they expect the Charm simply to calm someone down and leave them open to a well-placed Suggestion. Making Suggestion reliable for an Enchanter doesn't seem too potent for me, especially if it is only when used on someone who has already been charmed (and thus the Mage has already invested resources and actions into.)
Some people must have had really horrible best friends. To clarify a best friend would bend over backwards to help you out if you asked. Outside of combat auto-charm forever and reliable suggestion means broken plots everywhere or hard work for the DM to counter it with everyone having magical protection or insane stats. My first reaction was "A best friend will also stop you from doing stupid crap."
But then I checked and that's irrelevant. It doesn't make you "a best friend." The exact language is "regards you as a friendly acquaintance." Not quite the same.
Ok, well good then. Its not quite so bad, but still pretty powerful with the permanent duration and the ability to use suggestion.
On to other things:
Dwarven Mage with Heavy Armor feat and a Con score of 16 has an AC of 18+ and has the equivalent of DR4 all by level 4. The "+" on the AC is for anything else that makes them harder to hit like Mirror Image (about a 66% miss chance for the first image, 33% for the second and so on), shield, etc...etc...
thejeff wrote: Skills will be back though. I wouldn't take their presence or absence in any one playtest packet to be meaningful. They're playing around with different ideas, not nailing anything down yet. Not to be a naysayer ( I want D&D to succeed), but doesn't it seem like they should be further along?
bugleyman wrote: thejeff wrote: Skills will be back though. I wouldn't take their presence or absence in any one playtest packet to be meaningful. They're playing around with different ideas, not nailing anything down yet. Not to be a naysayer ( I want D&D to succeed), but doesn't it seem like they should be further along? I cant confirm this but I thought I read somewhere that the internal testers are two packets ahead of the public play test. I think the Gen con 2014 release date isn't going to happen. My money is on November '14. At any rate I dont think the playtest is "all of it" just a peak.
Dont they have a big D&D Convention in February? Maybe they'll aim for January/February 2015 to get some clear air and not compete with other GenCon launches.
My inclination is that a winter holiday release (if at all possible). This may not be as useful if there isn't a worthwhile and reasonably priced introductory set.
All told, my very brief look over the packet again leaves me a good bit hopeful. Skills, as other have mentioned, will probably be back: perhaps tied to backgrounds again?
Have multiclass rules been established? Is it akin to 3.X and earlier iterations?
lokiare wrote: Ok, well good then. Its not quite so bad, but still pretty powerful with the permanent duration and the ability to use suggestion. Keep in mind, the permanent duration is only for a *single* creature at a time, at level 20, which is when they seem to be planning for epic powers to come into play. Combined with Charm making them helpful, but not subordinate to your will, and I don't think it is too much.
Suggestion being reliable on charmed creatures is useful, I think, but I don't imagine it will be too overwhelming. Keep in mind that in the past, you could usually compel charmed creatures to do what you want. I think Suggestion is simply taking the place of that here, with the benefit that if you have Charmed someone, you will *eventually* land the Suggestion successfully even if it takes a few tries.
lokiare wrote: You are correct an optimized Barbarian is going to make the save 2-4 times at most. The Fighter on the other hand can pretty much get up to a 90.89% chance up to 3 times per day with Lucky feat and auto-advantage on saves and a decent Con score. Then after that it drops to something like 60%+ so yeah, pretty much unkillable, throw a Cleric in the mix and you end up with the rare time the Fighter goes down it pops back up. Yeah, the Fighter definitely needs to have that ability fixed. The DC needs to scale or something. Personally, I'd prefer if both abilities required expending a reaction or something, as that would limit it to only being usable once per round.
lokiare wrote: I would have been excited if there was any chance the Cleric feature would come into play, but you have such a small chance you might as well not use it unless you are weaponless, out of spells, near death, and captured or something. Really with those odds you are better off just attacking with your weapon... Keep in mind, though, that running out of spells can happen pretty quickly - at level 10, when you get access to Divine Intervention, the cleric has 11 spells per day. If you use some spell slots to cast buffs (Death Ward, Aid, etc), and also make use of some of the swift cast spells, I imagine you could be out of spells within 1 or 2 encounters.
Now, at that point, you have either a 10% chance for the intervention, vs simply making some regular attacks. If you goal is just to kill the enemy, yeah, I imagine that just attacking will be the better choice. But what if an ally needs healing, or the group is trying to run away, etc? I imagine those situations will be where it will be worth at least making the divine intervention attempt - when you really need to do something that you simply can't otherwise do, and even a 1/10 chance of success is better than none at all.
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bugleyman wrote: thejeff wrote: Skills will be back though. I wouldn't take their presence or absence in any one playtest packet to be meaningful. They're playing around with different ideas, not nailing anything down yet. Not to be a naysayer ( I want D&D to succeed), but doesn't it seem like they should be further along? Honestly, I'm quite happy to see them just keep working at it until they get it right. We do continue to see big changes, but at least from my perspective, the product is getting more and more refined with every release.
This was the first playtest packet that looked refined enough that I actually wanted to (and did) run a session using it. I think it still has a ways to go, but its starting to get there.
After extensive review I'm willing to say that 5E is moving in the right direction. To be playable by me and those like me (4E fans) it will take another year or two of play testing though. If it were released right now. I certainly wouldn't buy it...
I am guessing its a year tops before they have to wrap. Basic game available at Gencon and launch of full game in November '14.
I think they said when they first started the testing that it would be about 2 years of playtesting. I don't remember exactly when it began, but about a year ago or so seems right.
I see some elements of this game that I enjoy and this could replace my desire of running 3E/E6 (the few often times I run it) but as it stands it's not going to replace my 4E games any time soon. There just isn't enough awesome-ness that I've grown accustomed to with playing 4E to warrent a complete reversal within our group.
Matthew Koelbl wrote: Honestly, I'm quite happy to see them just keep working at it until they get it right. Agreed, at least as long as WotC keeps paying the bills.
Matthew Koelbl wrote: We do continue to see big changes, but at least from my perspective, the product is getting more and more refined with every release. Well, that's good. I'll admit I've not been paying terribly close attention, but I would expect the changes to be smaller in nature if they're shooting for next Gen Con.
I'm probably in the minority here, but I think 4E had an outstanding chassis that was killed before its time. Hopefully some of it survives in 5e/Next.
bugleyman wrote:
I'm probably in the minority here, but I think 4E had an outstanding chassis that was killed before its time. Hopefully some of it survives in 5e/Next.
Depends on what you mean by "chassis"?
Pan wrote: bugleyman wrote:
I'm probably in the minority here, but I think 4E had an outstanding chassis that was killed before its time. Hopefully some of it survives in 5e/Next.
Depends on what you mean by "chassis"? Well they are taking bits and pieces of 4E and throwing them into 5E, but they seem to be doing it without understanding what those pieces did in 4E.
Take at-will spells for instance, in 4E they are based on your stats, they have nice impact on how your character plays. In 5E they are basically a replacement for a crossbow. No real purpose beyond keeping up damage with the other classes.
If you look at 5E Hit Dice, they miss the point of 4E Healing Surges. 4E healing surges were not there to heal between encounters (yes, they did that, but that's not their purpose). They were there to pace the day for everyone. It was a daily resource along with daily powers. It was meant to put the limit of healing not on a wand or bag of potions (basically gp), but to put the limit on the one being healed.
Any element of 4E that is in 5E is basically thrown in there without realizing its impact on 4E...
Pan wrote: Depends on what you mean by "chassis"? The refinement of the basic d20 mechanics. Action types, removal of full attacks, skills, types of attacks (burst, blast, melee, close, ranged), fully embracing keywords, etc.
I'd strip away powers (I liked them, but they really seemed to rub many folks the wrong way), healing surges (again, I liked them...others, not so much), rituals, etc.
Ah I agree with you on healing surges I have really come to like them despite a bad name and reputation. At-wills though I prefer to be less effective. I am big on vancian casting and resource attrition style. If cantrips are at all powerful then it really screws with my style. Crossbow replacement cantrips are there for the "I have to cast spells from sun up until sun down or I'm not a caster" crowd.
For sake of good discussion could you explain to me how at wills could be adjusted to fit your 4E style better?
Pan wrote: Ah I agree with you on healing surges I have really come to like them despite a bad name and reputation. At-wills though I prefer to be less effective. I am big on vancian casting and resource attrition style. If cantrips are at all powerful then it really screws with my style. Crossbow replacement cantrips are there for the "I have to cast spells from sun up until sun down or I'm not a caster" crowd.
For sake of good discussion could you explain to me how at wills could be adjusted to fit your 4E style better?
Not quite sure what you mean there...I largely liked 4E as it was. I personally don't mind a solid at-will attack spell (but then again, I'm probably a members of the "cast spells from sun up until sun down" crowd).
That aside, if I were WotC I think I'd take 4E, rip out AEDU, healing surges, and rituals, and put Vancian casting back in. I'd also return to traditional saving throws, and get rid of explicitly "gamey" stuff like short and extended rests. For the basic rules, cut out feats, skills, and Opportunity attacks. Frankly I think you'd be 90% of the way right there -- which is why I'm a little baffled by a multi-year design cycle.
Again, those changes don't reflect my personal preferences, but they would seem to be a fast, effective way to achieve the stated goal for 5E.
I guess I am in the camp of a casters being having a limited resource of spells (but their spells should put a sword to shame) and once they are gone they better like not hitting things very often with a stick... Some would argue, but that leads to the 15 minute adventuring day - I say that DM's lead to the 15 minute adventuring day NOT players.
S.
Stefan Hill wrote: I guess I am in the camp of a casters being having a limited resource of spells (but their spells should put a sword to shame) and once they are gone they better like not hitting things very often with a stick... Some would argue, but that leads to the 15 minute adventuring day - I say that DM's lead to the 15 minute adventuring day NOT players.
S.
I think that is the more popular position, and also a necessary design constraint from a backwards compatibility point-of-view.
Bugley, I was addressing Lokaire with my at-will cantrip question sorry about any confusion.
Let me ask you this though, with ADEU torn out what would you do with Martial classes?
Mr. Hill I agree with you on combat as war. However, 5MWD is a problem for a lot of people and they prefer to have the system bake in the avoidance than have to work around it themselves. I don't begrudge them that. Issue is when the system makes one style very difficult if not impossible. I'd like to think there is a compromise where for the first time in D&D history it caters to many if not all disparate styles. I wont say its not happening in Next but I cant really tell one way or another at this point.
Pan wrote: Bugley, I was addressing Lokaire with my at-will cantrip question sorry about any confusion.
Let me ask you this though, with ADEU torn out what would you do with Martial classes?
Whoops! Sorry.
As for what to do with martials with ADEU torn out -- I'd scale their damage with level (rather than introduce iterative attacks -- which carry a lot of baggage), pretty close to what 4E did by tier. I believe that could easily be explained in a way that didn't threaten most people's suspension of disbelief.
bugleyman wrote: Pan wrote: Bugley, I was addressing Lokaire with my at-will cantrip question sorry about any confusion.
Let me ask you this though, with ADEU torn out what would you do with Martial classes?
Whoops! Sorry.
As for what to do with martials with ADEU torn out -- I'd scale their damage with level (rather than introduce iterative attacks -- which carry a lot of baggage), pretty close to what 4E did by tier. I believe that could easily be explained in a way that didn't threaten most people's suspension of disbelief. So you are not down with Bounded Accuracy I take it?
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