NEW ENTRIES
• Dying [Condition]
• Knocking a Creature Out
• Short Rest
• Telepathy
• Unconscious [Condition]
REVISED ENTRIES
• D20 Test (rolling a 1 on a d20 no longer awards
Inspiration, which is now called Heroic
Advantage)
• Difficult Terrain (your allies are no longer Difficult
Terrain for you, and furniture is Difficult Terrain
if it’s one size smaller than you or larger)
• Equipping Weapons [subsection of Attack]
(clarified how equipping and unequipping work)
• Fly Speed (changed what causes you to fall)
• Grappled [Condition] (“Movable” and “Escape”
sections changed)
• Help [Action] (now works with tool proficiencies)
• Heroic Advantage (name changed from Heroic
Inspiration, which is no longer gained from
rolling a 1 on a d20)
• Incapacitated [Condition] (clarified that it still
blocks Bonus Actions)
• Long Rest (changes have been made to every
section of the rule)
• Move (“Moving Around Other Creatures” and
“Changes to Your Speeds” sections changed; the
latter was formerly called “Speed of 0”)
• Unarmed Strike (grappling and shoving are no
longer delivered by an attack roll)
REMOVED ENTRIES
• Ability Check
• Attack Roll
• Climbing and Swimming [subsection of Move]
• Dash [Action]
• Hidden [Condition]
• Jump [Action]
• Slowed [Condition]
• Special Speeds [subsection of Move]
• Dying [Condition]
• Knocking a Creature Out
• Short Rest
• Telepathy
• Unconscious [Condition]
REVISED ENTRIES
• D20 Test (rolling a 1 on a d20 no longer awards
Inspiration, which is now called Heroic
Advantage)
• Difficult Terrain (your allies are no longer Difficult
Terrain for you, and furniture is Difficult Terrain
if it’s one size smaller than you or larger)
• Equipping Weapons [subsection of Attack]
(clarified how equipping and unequipping work)
• Fly Speed (changed what causes you to fall)
• Grappled [Condition] (“Movable” and “Escape”
sections changed)
• Help [Action] (now works with tool proficiencies)
• Heroic Advantage (name changed from Heroic
Inspiration, which is no longer gained from
rolling a 1 on a d20)
• Incapacitated [Condition] (clarified that it still
blocks Bonus Actions)
• Long Rest (changes have been made to every
section of the rule)
• Move (“Moving Around Other Creatures” and
“Changes to Your Speeds” sections changed; the
latter was formerly called “Speed of 0”)
• Unarmed Strike (grappling and shoving are no
longer delivered by an attack roll)
REMOVED ENTRIES
• Ability Check
• Attack Roll
• Climbing and Swimming [subsection of Move]
• Dash [Action]
• Hidden [Condition]
• Jump [Action]
• Slowed [Condition]
• Special Speeds [subsection of Move]
- D20 test
- No longer gives inspiration on a 1 & not much to say about that. I thought it was a nice solution to bob having a bad night with the dice not pressuring me so much as a GM to somehow find some ray of sunshine to help him feel better/less bad about rolling yet another one.
- Difficult terrain: Best I can tell the difference is that it went from "Creature that isn't tiny" to "Creature that isn't tint or your ally"
- This is a subtle change that fixes some problems with things like a mount that decides it no longer likes you or decided to stop pretending & the moving around other creatures entry seems to have gotten similar treatment
- Dying: drop to 0 hp & you have the unconscious condition till you regain anyhitpoints or make some death saves
- Better but still fails at justifying itself as anything other than enshrining death by GM fiat as the only real risk. Lets be honest, as long as the "ends after recovering any HP" remains wackamole healing is still the norm after the very early levels.
- Unconscious condition: You are incapacitated & prone. You drop whatever you are holding. You remain prone when this ends Speed zero & can't change. attacks against you have advantage. You fail strength & dex saves but not con/int/wis/cha saves. attackers within 5ft of you get advantage & atacks are crits. You are unaware
- There's a lot to like in this but it's still relying on teeth from past editions to be scary even though those teeth were pulled in 5e.
- You drop whatever you were holding is a pointless risk because you no longer have things like the 3.5 provoke an AoO to pick it up & if the GM "steals" bob's treasured weapon while he's down it's going to trigger a bad case of player resentment rather often.
- As long as wackamole healing remains almost all of the other things are nearly a waste of ink or precious bits because they usually only matter if the GM creates a scenario in combat that is effectively "rocks fall" or "lightning strikes". For that reason I'm making this change as a failed attempt bordering on change for the sake of change that deliberately avoids the problem just to say "something was done" & sweep the problem under the rug.
- The "unaware" bit is interesting but "bob you need to leave the room because you are unaware" is a bit silly when he's going to be immediately returned by any healing before his next turn. The number of times this will matter even if that's a reasonable step seem vanishingly small & more of a "wouldn't it be cool.. if..." thought experiment type hypothetical
- Knocking a creature out: Choose to do it instead of kill when you drop a creature to zero & the KO'd unconscious creature starts a short rest till anyHP recovery someone does a medicine check
- I don't like that this does not include any penalty for the attacker & can be done as a retcon. For example... GM:"with that smite the evil dragon's throat is slashed through to the bone & it dies a well deserved death after your long battle">Bob:"no He's only KO'd I think we should tie him up & force it to tell us $stuff">GM:"again? I'm starting to feel like my BBEGs need to start walking around with contingent self targeting disintegrate spells that trigger when they get KO'd or something". I'm going to go with an attempt was made.
- Short rest: an hour period of where you can be standing watch& can spend hit dice plus some features might recover
- We don't have any of the short rest classes yet so can't really rate this for anything because "downtime" is undefined. Does it count if the players are crammed in a closet? What if they are squeezed into a crack in a cave wall or an empty crate? As has been pointed out many times over the years, one hour is both too long to be a quick breather & too short to give the GM any real say without running tuckers kobolds or some kind of warzone packed with foes. If this required a glamping level of prep or something it might give the GM some say but shoehorning that hurdle into "downtime" is just an adversarial way for the GM to deny a rest by fiat. If this required the consumption of some meaningful amount of resources it might limit players who needed to carry those resources but again such a thing would be blocked by overly generous carry capacity rules.
- Telepathy: Some basic rules for telepathic communication
I kinda like that there is a baseline rather than every spell & ability needing to spell out how communication is done & what it grants because I want to scream every time I hear a player tell a second player that they can respond to the message cantrip or sending spell rather than needing a different & maybe higher level spell for two way back & forth communication.
- Fly speed: the wording changes are subtle & mechanically I'm not sure how one differs from the other in actual play.
- Something disappointing is the ability to hover just by choosing not to move while flying remains because it says "fly speed is reduced to 0" not something like "you fly less than X feet without hover"
- Grappled minor changes
- Still meh... You can still grapple a mount who doesn't like you to fairly trivially halt them or drag them around because it's only if the grappled target is two sizes larger when you can't. A larger creature who is grappled can try to escape with a strength check but can't just drag the smaller creature with them.
- Help: Now works with tool proficiencies too...
- Tool proficiencies are kind of an afterthought at best already but to some degree it makes sense that Alice could use her proficiency with x tools to help bob use Y skill for a thematically linked thing. This is a good change.
- Heroic Advantage: Inspiration under a new name, not much to say.
- Long rest changes: The big ones I notice are that while doing the mandated 6 hours of sleep you have the unconscious condition & that the interrupt has gone from combat to rolling initiative.
- It still fixes everything to a degree of farce & players can still just repeat a fail rest until the GM invokes fiat to deny the rest or trolls their players.
- 6 hours of sleep with 2 hours that can be spent on watch... That means a group of 4 or more has the trivial ability to maintain full coverage during this kind of nonsense. Worse, they can do it with no cost to anyone keeping watch. Without a watch action or similar that negatively impacts those keeping watch the GM can only be bluffing if they say "it's not safe to rest here" because the gains are so huge & there can almost never be any opportunity cost worth considering with a failed rest. Giving the long rest changes a seemingly deliberate failed by design.
- Moving around other creatures: Fixed some edge cases by adding "or your ally" to "unless that creature is tiny or your ally ". This is a good change that fixes a lot of bone headed edge cases that had no reason to exist & I mentioned them in the difficult terrain thing up there. Not much to say otherwise
- Unarmed Strike: Most of this was there previously but the grapple/shove went from being automatic to automatic pending a failed save made when successfully attacked. this was a much needed change.
- Banishing smite: Lots of small changes & one bigone. If the target is a subset of creatures instead of not native to current plane & fails all the saves they don't come back to be immediately ganked by a prepared party who spent the last few mounds mopping up any allies of the banished target who might make such a thing difficult.
- This is a good thing but doesn't go far enough because now any target other than those creature types is subject to being helplessly slaughtered & looted once they return. returning them to a random location within xxx or yyyy feet/miles would improve how this plays out in an interesting fight a lot by moving it from GM:"and.. you slaughter it, I'm not going to waste the time making you chop it down when it has no chance to do anything" to GM:"He's.... back.... somewhere...
"
- This is a good thing but doesn't go far enough because now any target other than those creature types is subject to being helplessly slaughtered & looted once they return. returning them to a random location within xxx or yyyy feet/miles would improve how this plays out in an interesting fight a lot by moving it from GM:"and.. you slaughter it, I'm not going to waste the time making you chop it down when it has no chance to do anything" to GM:"He's.... back.... somewhere...
- Blinding searing & other various smite spells :Minor changes to activation conditions not involving a bonus action taken when you hit a target that banishing smite also had , these were changes very much needed years ago.
- Find familiar: Lots of small things to like.
- Instead of using a creature from the GM's pool of monsters it now uses a specific statblock built into the spell so no more objectively best choice familiar
- it now takes a Magic Action to see through the familiar's eyes & ears while the telepathic drone control aspect of the old 2014 version is gone so it can't be used for real time micromanaged scouting anymore
- It now shares initiative instead of having a second initiative
- Find Steed: Similar to find familiar it bakes in the creature & shares initiative
- This is a great change but mounted combat is really a thing that depended on elements no longer [resent in 5e. Specifically movement penalties for some heavier armors made mounted combat matter in the past because the mount usually had as much or more speed as anyone else & allowed a player to switch that opportunity cost to having a (usually) easy to target mount. We don't have enough of oned&d to know if that changed.
- Spare the dying: If someone has the dying condition it restores then to 1hp as a touch range cantrip.
- Wackamole healing by familiar or in person is now available at an even lower cost now, this is bad.
- L1 martial weapons armor training & choose 2 from athletics insight intimidation medicine persuade religion.
- L1 Lay on Hands: Instead of a generic untyped action this is now a Magic Action & you can remove the poisoned condition by burning 5 points worth of healing
- It's good that action types are being used but using an unknown black box of unmentioned size & shape & purpose provides very little room to comment on because there's no way to guess how or if it might matter yet.
- L1 spellcasting: 2 level 1 spell slots & 2 cantrip
- It's worth noting that this is only one cantrip behind a /l1 cleric & the same number of L1 slots. Likewise it's the same as the bard & ranger. Mage group classes are still unknown but the classes we know are in mage group tend to get much fewer class abilities & that might be something worth raising when we see them.
- L2 Divine Smite: it costs a bonus action & can't be used if you cast a spell. Much needed change to prevent smite spam
- Channel divinity & Divine Sense: One powers the other.
- It's worth noting that channel divinity mentions that it has a save DC if a CD option requires a save but divine sense just automatically works successfully with no mention of saves so f/ex the trickster fiend of disguise is automatically revealed without even a chance of succeeding. That lack of save is bad.
- L3 Subclass feature : Oath spells. Some solid spells are considered always prepared w/o counting against your prepped spell limits solid feature
- L3 subclass feature: Sacred Weapon burn a CD charge to add your charisma mod to attack & damage rolls with a particular weapon for one minute or until you go unconscious/drop it.
- Solid feature but we still don't have bonus types so we've destroyed bounded accuracy for strength or dex+cha+weapon mods+bless+this+proficiency+whatever else .. That might not seem like much at level 3 but at higher levels like late tier2 or even tier 3 it makes a mockery of something that might still be a core design goal of 5e& possibly one d&d. As a GM I'm weary of having to fix monsters built for a goal PCs themselves are built to ignore .
- L4 8 12 16 & 19 Feat
- oh ffs.... if the ability score improvement is just a specific feat as it was in past packets we don't need to have PCs granted class features run through the circular department of redundancy department with wording like "you gain the ability score improvement feat or another feat for which you qualify for."
- L5: Extra attack
- The multiplicative effects & table time consumption of extra attack on modifiers were not well considered in the math of 2014. Here's to hoping that things are better this time when we see more.
- L6 subclass feature: smite of protection. Your smites give you or an ally 1d8+spell level temphp
- Lack of scaling seems a bit questionable given that paladins are half casters. 1d5 1d6 or1d8 times spell or level might be better
- Aura of protection: you and allies get to add your charisma mod to saves
- Bounded accuracy can't exist alongside this unless it's the expectation baked into BA. Please don't load oned&d up with features the GM needs to fix.
- L9: 4th channel divinity plus Abjure foes: present your holy symbol & as a magic action cause a number of foes equal to your charisma mod to be dazed & frightened
- No... just no. This ability is like turn undead & similar abilities that make making monsters run away worked great in early editions because those monsters were dangerous & often had a realistic chance of consuming significant resources or even killing one or more PC. in 5e & so far one d&d that's no longer true. This might as well suggest the player yell skip at their GM like so or present a speak to the hand gesture. PCs should probably not be given abilities that encourage the GM to end the campaign or cease putting in effort to think up interesting combats players will dismiss with a skip ability.
- 5e has this perverse conflict of design where GM's are pressured to just make better encounters in entirely unrealistic numbers for how we play while players are given a system that bends over backwards to encourage them to turn everyencounter into a no risk nova>rest>nova loop that bypasses & trivializes those higher GM investment encounters lacking GM tools like SR & flat DR/resist that once helped with thwarting certain types of trivialization. "Convince the GM to end the campaign or smite this PC" is probably an venue that abilities should avoid in their design.
- L10 Aura of devotion: you & allies in your aura are immune to charm.
- Charm is one of those things that is usually either a thing that generates memorable stories or horror stories, this assumes those memorable stories can't be interesting ones like the time a player across the table cast slow on the party to "protect" an NPC who ran from us in a recent adventure.
- L11 Radiant strikes: add a d8 to your damage rolls
- We don't have enough of the system to judge how paladins in aggregate with this might work out in comparison to other classes in aggregate or the monsters. so I'm not sure if there's anything I can say about it other than "I guess it's thematic". It also means that at this level a paladin might be doing 1d6+5+weapon mods+1d8 plus 1d6+5+weapon mods+1d8 plus 1d6+weapon mods+1d8, that might be a bit much & this is only an off the top of my head example with the new short sword/light weapon property.
- L12 Aura of courage Immune to fear
- Why not... who cares if the big scary dragon lich or whatever has a nasty attack & fear aura, yoyo & nova through baby.
- L14 Holy Nimbus No cost once/ long rest bonus action make your aura deal charisma mod radiant damage to enemies each turn for a minute andit counts as bright sunlight.
- I don't even know what to say
- L15 Restoring touch: Use 5 points from what is currently a 75 point pool of lay on hands energy to remove blind charmed dazed paralyzed deafened dazed or stunned condition from an ally
- Since death is clearly off the table & this hits just about everything else, are there plans for oned&d to provide any conditions to GMs that are worrisome to players?
- L17: Aura expansion: Your aura jumps from 10ft to 30ft
- L18 Divine conduit: "Whenever you roll initiative you regain one use of channel divinity."
- Bob the paladin round one of every fight: "Great I'm going to do the samething I did the first round of as every fight since I got this, I charge into the densest area of foes & use abjure foes..." What is the rest of the group supposed to do while watching bob win?
- L20 epic boon
- Light armor d8 hit die & simple weapons . choose two from arcana, animal handling, insight, medicine, nature, perception, religion, survival.
- Getting rid of the metal armor anachronism that was a throwback to mechanical reasons no longer present was long overdue
- L1 same number of cantrips & L1 spell slots as the paladin
- L1 Channel nature: wildhape
- Like find familiar & summon steed this now uses a reskinnable statblock for"animal of the land/sky/sea"
- Ac is rather pitiful at 8 or 10+wis mod & without the magical bonuses from weapons attack mod of d20+prof+wis mod might turn out problematic as levels advance. I see problems for the GM to solve as this is. With strength & dex being equal to wisdom the AC should probably be N+wis+wis or N+dex+wis if not a higher value for N as a light armor class. Even maxed out with 20 wis this is only reaching about what some classes probably have by the time they finish character creation.
- Like find familiar & summon steed this now uses a reskinnable statblock for"animal of the land/sky/sea"
- Druidic: Same as always"
- this is just silly as a language & as a GM I grow weary of players trying to bring it up with "I know druidic!"as some kind of magical language that's somehow relevant because magic whenever there is magical mysteries going on. The mage group is a much better place for a language of magic that can't be learned by normal people & without such a thing this is even more ill fitting in the system.
- L2 Natures aid: Basically find familiar for druids & the ability to AOE heal wis mod d4's using a channel nature charge.
- Kinds neat to both but the healing is atrocious in its scaling.
- L3 subclass feature combat wildshape: You can cast abjuration spells in wildshape & use unarmed strike as a bonus action plus cast abjuration spells while wildshaped
- Primal list abjuration spells are: Resistance, cure wounds, lesser restoration healing word, pass without a trace, protection from poison, Dispel magic, mass healing word, nondetection, Protection from energy, freedom of movement, antilife shell, greater restoration, mass cure wounds, heal, power word heal.
- Factoring in the AC weaponless tohit & questionable damage from wildshape All I can say is that maybe the druid should have gotten a few more milkshakes & a few less pancakes to the bunny....
- Primal list abjuration spells are: Resistance, cure wounds, lesser restoration healing word, pass without a trace, protection from poison, Dispel magic, mass healing word, nondetection, Protection from energy, freedom of movement, antilife shell, greater restoration, mass cure wounds, heal, power word heal.
- L4 8 12 16 & 19 Feat
- oh ffs.... if the ability score improvement is just a specific feat as it was in past packets we don't need to have PCs granted class features run through the circular department of redundancy department with wording like "you gain the ability score improvement feat or another feat for which you qualify for."
- L5 Might of the land: Climb speed & multiattack while wildshaped
- L6 subclass feature Elemental wildshape: resistance to an energy type & your wildshape attacks deal that instead of the default.
- The energy resist is useful. At least with current monster design though the damage shift from physical to energy is entirely pointless . very few monsters have an energy vulnerability but lots have an energy resist. Not only is a wildshaped druid not using magic weapons they have a ribbon that may or may not actually have value with their attacks depending on future development of monsters.
- I hope that we just don't have enough detail to weigh in on this because using 2014 monsters it's bad.
- L7 & L9 Aquatic & sky form. These are bad, this is bad
- I feel like druid is being punished for the sins of 3.x CoDzilla thought experiments with these. The difference in glaring when compared to paladin
- L10 elemental strike: Similar to the L11 paladin radiant strike ability but d6 instead of d8 & almost certainly a smaller weapon die too...
- Did the designer of paladin & druid at any point look over the other's shoulder? We may not have weapons & armor yet but... these two classes seem to be targeting very different power levels. As a GM this concerns me.
- L11 Tiny critter: Size tiny wildshape, half speed, 10 minute duration
- Ok it's not April yet... Is this a joke? Where's the real druid?...
- L13 Alternating forms: You can rapidly switch between forms without expending channel nature charges
- Given the near identical wildshape forms It feels like this is more of an effort to provide a mechanical justification for a scene in the d&d movie than design something mechanically useful for PCs. I'm afraid to see what's next
- L14 subclass thousand forms: Alter self at will without using a spell slot.
- What? I imagine this expression is what I could expect to see on the faces of my players if I presented this as a class they could use.
- L15 Wild resurgence: You get to pop a free 5d4 nature's aid when you use a charge of channel nature to wildshape.
- I guess that's good because with that fresh out of chargen paladin-like AC the druid's going to be burning a lot of spell slots on self healing & might have trouble healing their allies
- L17 Beast spells: The druid can cast the rest of their spells aside from just abjuration ones while wildshaped.
- This is good because I get the distinct feeling that many if not most of the earlier features assumed it was granted at a much earlier level. Unfortunately it's probably too late to matter
- L18 Archdruid: You gain one charge of channel nature when you roll initiative
- This is almost identical to the paladin L18 divine conduit ability but the value of a paladin's channel divinity charge & druid's channel nature charge is miles apart. April first is over a month away & these two classes seem to be designed for completely different games, where's the real druid?
This is definitely aiming for a different power level & gm/player relationship than earlier packets but weirdly it seems to be aiming entirely different targets depending on where you look in this one too. 6e needs to do a much better job than this, especially with competition already placing such goals as part of their core plans.
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