[Playtest 2] Playtest Report of a Necromancer

So, my group and I finally got together to play the second batch of the playtest. I was a player this time around, and our group was composed of the following characters:

- A Lightfood Halfling Fighter. He had the Thug background and the Survivor speciality, and the slayer fighting style.
- A Human Wizard (me!). I had the Sage background and the Necromancer speciality.
- A Wood Elf Rogue. He had the Soldier/Thief backgrounds and the Lurker speciality.
- A Human Sorcerer. He had the Knight background and the Jack of all Trades speciality.

All of the characters used the following array when determining stats: 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8.

If you're not looking to read through the whole thing, here's a few comments our group had on the mechanics we faced in the session:

- The wood elf rogue was mostly ranged, but he was adamant on not choosing the sharpshooter speciality as he didn't like the sound of the rapid shot ability. I explained to him that it could be useful against a large number of weaker enemies, but he simply told me that he didn't want to deal half damage on his attacks. He's not the type that dives too deep into mechanics and the reasoning behind them, but it didn't appeal to him at all which suggests a change might be in order. The same would go for the dual wielder speciality, I guess. The player ended up choosing the lurker speciality, which is almost too good to pass up as a rogue. It helped him get his sneak attacks in, which is always good.

- The halfling fighter was very happy with the combat superiority mechanic and enjoyed having to make decisions on how to use deadly strike and parry maneuvers tactically in combat. However, the glancing blow combat maneuver proved to be incredibly disappointing. With a dexterity stat of 16 and a base attack of +3, his attack bonus with his short sword came up to a total of +6. Glancing blow allows you to deal damage if you miss a target but roll a 10 or higher, but there is only one creature in the entire bestiary that this would ever work on, which has an AC of 17. The player was understandably frustrated and wished he had chosen another fighting style. Maybe this will start to work out at higher level fights, but why make it a 1st level option, then?

- The sorcerer did not overshadow the wizard as much as I feared when I first read through the guides. We both used the same array when deciding ability scores, but since he wanted to be viable in melee he had to allocate some of his stat bonuses to strength, ending up with a STR of 16 and CHA of 16. Meanwhile, I could focus entirely on INT and had a score of 18. His magic attack bonus was at a +5 while mine was at a +7, which is actually quite considerable at first level, and my spell DCs were higher. Sure, he had a higher AC and could go into melee, but his damage output was reliant on a finite amount of resources, just like mine was, and I had a more flexible spell selection. I think this might change at higher levels, but I won't comment on that yet. The sorcerer's melee attacks were also not as accurate or effective as that of the fighter which is understandably very good.

- The new opportunity attack mechanic felt too harsh. In the first playtest players could move around freely, maybe overly so, but provoking an attack and granting advantage made sure we didn't want to move around in combat at all. It felt very clunky and we didn't like it, especially since none of us had any abilities to prevent the attack.

- The HP threshold mechanic I spoke about in another thread confirmed my previous predictions: it encourages metagaming in a very bad way. I really had to mull over whether or not to use my Ray of Enfeeblement on a powerful enemy since I didn't want to use it if the enemy had more than 25 max HP since I wouldn't get full mileage out of it. I was pretty bummed.

- We did just fine without a designated healer which was great. Nobody felt like playing a cleric, so we just healed up using short rests and healing kits and everything worked out well. We didn't take a lot of damage though, so maybe we need more time to test things out.

- We felt as if player HP was a bit low. While the fighter had a ridiculous 17 HP thanks to the survivor speciality, the rest of us had 6-10 HP. A single hit of only 4 damage brought the rogue down to half HP, and without a healer he couldn't really have gone much further without dying. We felt as if this was a bit too fragile for first level characters and preferred the way HP was handled in the first batch of the playtest.

- Monsters had a pretty hard time hitting the more armored members of the party. The hardest monster we faced (a wight) had only a +2 bonus to attack rolls and didn't get a single hit off against our fighter. Maybe this is a good thing since he was decently defensively oriented, but I think that a higher chance of monsters hitting with less overall damage might be better.

- There was no mention of when the sorcerer would be able to use his dragon breath ability, but I guess that's been mentioned before. Still confusing.

- Our fighter and rogue complained about a lack of physical skills such as acrobatics, athletics and swim, and I agree with them. Shouldn't be too hard to implement!

The playtest report itself will continue in the next post.

We began our adventure at a tavern after heeding a call for adventurers (super original, but we'll cut the DM some slack since it's just a playtest). We began by some lofty introductions, and the very different characters were quick to get some good chemistry going. The human sorcerer had made his character in a rush, but something as simple as a knight background was enough to spice up his roleplay right away. After meeting up, the gang talked to the man in charge who was the guard captain of the city. He explained to us that he had a task for us that he didn't want to allocate his already occupied guards to, and enticed us with good pay.

The task involved exploring an ancient and somewhat unknown underground complex beneath the city we were in and report to him on our findings. He was relatively new to his job, and didn't like the uncertainty factor the complex introduced to his work. What little he knew of it was that it was likely dwarven, as they had lived here in ages past, and that there was only one known entrance to it in the city. If we found more, he'd pay us a considerable amount. Of course we accepted, and went to speak to an old dwarven drunkard who might have some information on it. Before we left to talk to the dwarf, he handed us some city guard badges in case we needed help from the guard, although he didn't want us to speak to anyone else of our findings.

We went and found the old dwarf holed up in the kitchen of the tavern, drinking something foul from a bottle. When he proved reluctant to answer, I took away his bottle with my mage hand ability and threatened to pour it on the floor, which made him a bit more talkative. He rambled on about how they had been digging for something when they hit water and that they had found "something" down there, but that was a long time ago. Not very useful information, but at least we knew there was water down there, which had to count for something (it didn't).

We went to the entrance which was a staircase beneath a trap door in a ruined building close to the tavern. We descended down the stairs and came upon a series of rooms that looked as if they had been inhabited long ago. None of us were dwarves, so the dwarven language written in many place was completely unavailable to us. The party glared as me as the intelligence guy, but with no bonus languages I couldn't do much. Should have learned Comprehend Languages, I guess! We explored the rooms and ended up rustling up a nest of 7-8 giant centipedes that came scuttling out of the walls.

The fight against the centipedes was relatively easy, although both of our melee combatants got poisoned. It was more of an annoyance, and we quickly disposed of them and came upon an iron chest. Our rogue unknowingly failed his find traps check, and as soon as he opened the newly unlocked chest it slammed shut, clamping his fingers and dealt 4 damage to him thanks to an unlucky roll. Half his HP just gone! We decided to take a short rest and I gave him a use of my healer's kit to use his HD. He got a natural 1. Yikes. We decided that he'd stay in the back of the group and and kept going.

We traveled through some more of the dwarven ruins and came upon some prison cells as well as some sort of man (dwarf) made underground river, which we followed until we found another staircase that brought us even further down. After some even more trudging down and some simple skill checks to jump and climb, we found what appeared to be old dwarven catacombs, filled with skulls and other creepy stuff. We explored them for a while until we found a corpse hanging in some chains. Expecting an ambush, I used my ray of frost ability which roused the corpse, which an Undead Lore check revealed was a Wight. We dispatched of the Wight after a short fight and found another staircase, leading both up and down. Deciding that this was a good time to call it a night, both in game and out, we headed on up and reached a hidden entrance which led us to a drain in the streets of the city. We decided to head to the captain of the guard and report on our findings, which we will undoubtedly do next session.

It wasn't a fancy adventure, but we only had about 3-4 hours to create our characters and play through so it sufficed. Both the players and the DM had a good time. The DM, who was DMing his first 5E playtest game, commented on how easy it was to pick up and run from a DM's perspective. Some of our other criticisms can be found in my previous post, but if you have any specific questions, I'll answer them the best I can.

Well, we had another run tonight. Our elf rogue didn't show up, but thankfully another player did. He decided it would be fun to try out the warlock, and after a quick read over the playtest documents he decided to go for a high elf warlock with the spy background and the lurker speciality.

For those of you not interested in reading through the whole playthrough, I'll do a brief overview of some of our comments:

- Monsters feel wrong. Their attack bonus is too low and their damage is too high. They rarely hit us at all, but a single hit of 6 damage from a zombie brought our sorcerer of 14 HP (a melee character) down to 4 HP. Thankfully, there was just the one zombie, but we're not really digging the level 1 fragility. We'd prefer monsters that hit more often and characters that can take more of a beating. I'm sure this is highly subjective, though.

- After the last session and our discovery of how useless the glancing blow fighter maneuver was, we decided that instead of requiring a roll of 10 or higher, a 5 or higher would be enough. We didn't want to change the rules at all since this is a playtest, but this didn't prove to be a major change and actually made it useful. There was only one instance where it was used, but the fighter appreciated being able to deal some damage to a cultist instead of none.

- The fighter and the sorcerer had some comments on how little the difference between a two handed weapon and sword and board mattered. For them, it was a difference of +1 AC and +2 damage on hits. Maybe this will change with specialities in place, but it definitely doesn't seem as it makes much of a difference.

- The warlock was pretty damn awesome. We came upon some cultists in the tombs that had torches as their light source, so his breath of night invocation was perfect. With the lurker speciality and his temporary darkvision, he had advantage on all his eldritch blasts and made short work of them. Eldritch blast did feel a bit powerful, seeing as how it's usable at will. Maybe starting at 2d6 and scaling faster could help? He only had one lesser invocation so he didn't really outshine the wizard (me) in many instances, and everything felt nice and balanced.

- At one point in the adventure, we faced a blind minotaur roaming through a narrow labyrinth. At first we were really scared since we were level 1, but the blindness actually made it a really fun encounter. We had advantage on all of our rolls and the minotaur had disadvantage on his rolls against us, so we played it carefully and managed to take him down without him getting a single hit off against us (the DM told us afterwards that he'd one shot pretty much all of us). What was great about this was how simple it was for the DM to give a high level monster a drawback that made it a manageable threat for a low level party. It was a memorable encounter and we all liked it.

- The necromancer's Aura of Souls ability takes some time to actually use. When in combat, you first need to kill the creature (usually an action), then take an action to drain the soul and then another action to cast a spell with the advantage it gives. This is probably easier to attain if we had worked as a team, but it might still be something to think about as many combats don't even last three rounds.

- The sorcerer never wanted to use his dragon strength ability as the action to "charge up" felt too much. He preferred to just whack a monster twice instead, dealing more damage. I think there are definitely situations where it might be useful, though, but I thought I'd just throw it out there.

- Saving throws as ability checks is really starting to appeal to my groups. It's so simple and quick to use. We were really iffy about it at first, but it's starting to grow on us. However, maybe it would be better if you could choose one of two abilities when making the saving throws, since having to maintain six saves at an acceptable level is pretty impossible. This hasn't been a problem as of yet, though.

I'm getting pretty sleepy so I'll post a detailed writeup of the adventure tomorrow, if you guys are interested. If there are any questions or you want me to elaborate on something, don't hesitate to ask

Ellington said:

- The new opportunity attack mechanic felt too harsh. In the first playtest players could move around freely, maybe overly so, but provoking an attack and granting advantage made sure we didn't want to move around in combat at all. It felt very clunky and we didn't like it, especially since none of us had any abilities to prevent the attack.

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Thanks for the post, but my players had to point something about the OA out to me. Note that it only occurs when you move out of a creature's reach. Thus, you can move around an opponent all you want without provoking. And, when you need to get away, and you can disengage (though it's an Action to do so).

The biggest question that came up with us was that flanking is effectively gone in this version.

@Infinit2000
Exactly - these rules actually PROMOTE moving around in combat. The rule is very much like Savage Worlds (which I love), and could go even further by introducing a 'Gang-Up' bonus of some sort. It is easier than flanking, though there needs to be something to encourage moving around a creature.

In all, we found the disengage okay (though need to test further).

Infiniti2000 said:

Note that it only occurs when you move out of a creature's reach.

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Its a great point that we should mention. I don't know if that was the intention of the playtest, they may have just meant move out of any square that the creature has reach.

But maybe they did mean it this way, which definitely promotes movement of a different kind.

Ellington, are you rolling for hp or just taking the average + Con? On your next playtest, it might be worth it to try max + Con and see how it plays. Let WotC know if that hits the hp sweet spot for your group. Personally, I'd like to see a number of hp options to modulate lethality in 5e.

Iosue said:

Ellington, are you rolling for hp or just taking the average + Con? On your next playtest, it might be worth it to try max + Con and see how it plays. Let WotC know if that hits the hp sweet spot for your group. Personally, I'd like to see a number of hp options to modulate lethality in 5e.

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We are using max HD + Con at first. I have 6 HP as the wizard, which may seem in line with earlier editions, but with characters dealing a lot more damage I think a HP increase is in order. But yeah, I definitely agree. Lethality should be up to the group!

Thanks for the comments on the OA, btw. It still is a bit annoying to give advantage when provoking them, however. I think the attack itself is punishment enough, but hey.

Ellington said:

- After the last session and our discovery of how useless the glancing blow fighter maneuver was, we decided that instead of requiring a roll of 10 or higher, a 5 or higher would be enough. We didn't want to change the rules at all since this is a playtest, but this didn't prove to be a major change and actually made it useful. There was only one instance where it was used, but the fighter appreciated being able to deal some damage to a cultist instead of none.

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You are not the first to bring this up! I'm starting to wonder if instead of a flat "if you roll more than a natural X" it might work better like "if you miss by Y or less". This way the feat is actually more evenly useful to everyone. What do you think?

Ellington said:

- Saving throws as ability checks is really starting to appeal to my groups. It's so simple and quick to use. We were really iffy about it at first, but it's starting to grow on us. However, maybe it would be better if you could choose one of two abilities when making the saving throws, since having to maintain six saves at an acceptable level is pretty impossible. This hasn't been a problem as of yet, though.

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I personally think this is a good feature! Yes, it's impossible to be good at all saving throws, and that's a good thing for the sake of variety. No more stat-dumping.

Li Shenron said:

You are not the first to bring this up! I'm starting to wonder if instead of a flat "if you roll more than a natural X" it might work better like "if you miss by Y or less". This way the feat is actually more evenly useful to everyone. What do you think?

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I think that's a great idea, actually, but it might bog things down with math. It seems as if WOTC are trying very hard to keep things fast nowadays.

Li Shenron said:

I personally think this is a good feature! Yes, it's impossible to be good at all saving throws, and that's a good thing for the sake of variety. No more stat-dumping.

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That's all well and good, but I can't escape the feeling that it leaves itself open to abuse later on. I guess this is not the time to worry about that!