Playtest Update

I quick addition. I just read the blog post about the Narrative Combat module. I stole a quote from there about Mike Mearls working on the tactical module:

If you like miniatures, on the other hand, I have heard Mike Mearls talking about a tactical miniatures combat module that might make you happy. I don’t know much about what’s in it yet, but I know you’ll find rules for cover, movement into and out of enemy threat areas, and other things that most miniatures games worry about. There are even rules for facing! Our goal with the subsystem isn’t to make miniatures rules for everyone—it’s to make miniatures rules for the people who really love miniatures.

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Does this really sound like something that's going to be included in the PHB? I don't think so. It sounds like a pretty dedicated book, filled with lots of diagrams and pictures. How many pages is this going to take to explain clearly? I think a lot of pages, and why are they going to dedicate page space to an optional system that only a fraction of their customers want.

From earlier in the blog post:

A rules module is an additional set of rules that can be laid on top of the core rules. Each module attempts to make the game feel different in a way that a subset of the audience would find satisfying. We expect that most players won’t use most rules modules, but groups can find the rules modules that work for them so that they can achieve the feel they want.

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Again, it seems like these modules are being designed that only a minority of players are interested in. I just don't see them wasting page space in their "core" product for systems that they don't expect the majority of their customers to use.

It's one thing for them to include races or classes that only a minority of players use because I think the majority of players expect them to be there out of completeness and diversity. Most people I know have never played a Bard, but they'd be upset if that option wasn't included as an option. It just wouldn't be D&D!

I'm not sure that same love is going to be felt for entire rule systems. So I go back to my earlier concern that the core D&D won't feel all the complete or interesting and that only by purchasing the rules modules will we be able to "make it our own".

Another game company does this with miniature combat rules. Games Workshop and their Warhammer 40k lines. Of course there is the basic rule book, but they sell whole supplements with new rules systems to add to the core game... Apocalypse allows for bigger games, Cities of Death has rules for dense urban combat, etc. These are great supplements, but they were too complex to fit in the core book (and were written some time afterwards, too).

El Mahdi said:

Personally, I like the idea of natural ability helping you accomplish things, but I can see "Training" nullifying negative natural ability...basically that's what training does in real life anyways.

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Theoretically I cannot argue against your proposal because it is probably realistic, but I think you also need to think in more practical terms:

- rarely a PC has a significantly (lower than -1) negative ability bonus, and even more rarely she will have it in an ability that is important for her class role; maybe some Rogues in the past editions had Wis as dump stat, but if 5e requires Wis for trapfinding then Wis will practically never be a dump stat for Rogues

- it may sound theoretically outrageous to realism that a PC cannot even try a check (although this is not what I proposed in case of noticing traps, I do propose it for other skills such as Craft), but if you allow everyone to try then this clutters the game a lot... everyone will demand to roll for noticing traps in a locale where they think there is a trap (if the players don't, then you don't need a rule to handle paradoxes); therefore I am even undecided whether a non-trained character really should be allowed to even try

- as a more general problem, the game works more smoothly if roles in the party are separated, even at the cost of realism (but is this kind of realism really so important?), see what happens to the game when someone has spells that automatically unlock doors, find traps, see what's in the next room etc.

Novem5er said:

Does this really sound like something that's going to be included in the PHB? I don't think so. It sounds like a pretty dedicated book, filled with lots of diagrams and pictures. How many pages is this going to take to explain clearly? I think a lot of pages, and why are they going to dedicate page space to an optional system that only a fraction of their customers want.

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They have repeatedly said that "modules" doesn't automatically mean separate products, and that the tactical module will be part of the core.

Li Shenron said:

Theoretically I cannot argue against your proposal because it is probably realistic, but I think you also need to think in more practical terms:

- rarely a PC has a significantly (lower than -1) negative ability bonus, and even more rarely she will have it in an ability that is important for her class role; maybe some Rogues in the past editions had Wis as dump stat, but if 5e requires Wis for trapfinding then Wis will practically never be a dump stat for Rogues

- it may sound theoretically outrageous to realism that a PC cannot even try a check (although this is not what I proposed in case of noticing traps, I do propose it for other skills such as Craft), but if you allow everyone to try then this clutters the game a lot... everyone will demand to roll for noticing traps in a locale where they think there is a trap (if the players don't, then you don't need a rule to handle paradoxes); therefore I am even undecided whether a non-trained character really should be allowed to even try

- as a more general problem, the game works more smoothly if roles in the party are separated, even at the cost of realism (but is this kind of realism really so important?), see what happens to the game when someone has spells that automatically unlock doors, find traps, see what's in the next room etc.

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Those are good points. Likely the only reason why it's an issue right now is because the characters were pregens (...we don't know what method, if any, they used for Ability Score Generation). More than likely, people are going to use a point buy build for Ability Scores, which means there really won't be any -1 modifiers unless somebody purposely goes with a low score. Those who want to use a dice rolling method for character generation will likely be more old school players anyways, and also probably won't mind the effect on skill checks (...actually, they'll probably prefer it). I know I'm speaking in generalities, and there will always be exceptions, but you're probably right in that it would just be a fringe problem. Maybe the only thing they need to do is just bump the bonus for training to +5, and that's it (kind of like they've been talking about).