D&D Next Chat Transcript (Mike Mearls & Jeremy Crawford)

[Gold Roger]

Everything sounds great to me, except that part of mechanically hardcoded cultures (high elf, wood elf) that's a lot of implied setting right there in the core rules.

My homebrew has elves, but no high elves and not exactly wood elves either. I don't want to houserule racial culture options.

I thought we had backgrounds to represent stuff like that?

 

[WotC_Trevor]

I don´t know. For everything that I like (conditions, at-will magic,etc.) there are at least one that I don´t (you need to take a specific theme to hold your enemies, unbalanced options are fine, thinking that the only problem with magic is damage, etc.).

I´ll still try the playtest, but this is the first D&D edition that doesn´t make me feel eager to play. Hope that changes until the final version.

So keep in mind that themes so far have been explained as feat delivery systems. If you can get tank-like holding an enemy from a theme, then it sounds like you can get it from a feat. Using a feat to get a sticky/tank like ability seems cool to me.

As to the magic thing, I know Mike and the team have talked about the challenges of balancing magic. At two of the seminars I think they used the example of a spell that mind controls an enemy, basically saying it takes the monster out of the fight and could have a lot of different uses from dealing more damage in the same fight to all sorts of utility outside the fight. From what I've heard, balancing numbers for them is easy, it's tackling spells like that and making sure that they end up with an option that's a cool spell, but doesn't trample over the other classes, the balance, or the power level they expect.

 

[Meophist]

From what was said about themes, I kinda want to see if it's possible to make a Wizard with the Defender theme, for example.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Mearls: Ha! Jeremy will love this question. I'm really not a fan of giving people extra turns in addition to their own turn. I think it really slows the game down. For movement and positioning, the goal is to focus more on terrain and interesting things to move to and around, rather than flanking and such.

There are off-turn actions in the game, but the philosophy now is to have them eat into your turn or have something you have to set up. For instance, instead of everyone automatically getting opportunity attacks, a character might need to take a feat or choose an ability that basically says, "If you make a melee attack on your turn, you get one opportunity attack for the next round."

A rogue might have this - you can move away from an enemy that moves next to you, but you lose your move on your next turn.

This was my favorite part. It indicates seriousness about keeping combat moving, while not merely grossly simplifying key interactions as a mushy compromise.

 

[Andor]

Mearls: I did a review of our weapon table, and I think the spear was the one weapon I didn't comment on. Probably the biggest things are rogue schemes and cleric domains.

Jeremy Crawford: Yeah, the rogue has really come into focus this week.

I'm surprised nobody pounced on this yet.

Rogues have schemes, possibly as a parallel to a clerics domains?

So is a scheme how a Rogue does things (again, like a Clerics Domain) so you might have a cat-burglar or a thief-acrobat or a conman, or is it a mechanic that allows the rogue to accomplish his schtick? So you might 'pull a scheme' to flim-flam some cash out of the yokels by selling snake oil, or organize a ring of child pickpockets, or try to inflitrate the society ball to snag her ladyships jewels and/or virtue. Each of those might be a seperate scheme, possibly analagous to a 4e skill challange, and thus giving the rogue his own design space akin to the fighters manuevers or a wizard or clerics magic.

 

[RangerWickett]

"There are off-turn actions in the game, but the philosophy now is to have them eat into your turn or have something you have to set up. For instance, instead of everyone automatically getting opportunity attacks, a character might need to take a feat or choose an ability that basically says, "If you make a melee attack on your turn, you get one opportunity attack for the next round."

I'm undecided on how this makes me feel.

What I'd prefer is something like:

Defend the Line
Move Action
Until the start of your next turn, you can make a melee basic attack against any enemy that tries to leave a space adjacent to you. You can take these 'opportunity attacks' a maximum number of times equal to your Dexterity modifier (minimum 1) between your turns.

(This assumes there are normally no rules for opportunity attacks.)


or

Out of Harm's Way
Move Action
One time before the start of your next turn, you can move 5 feet at any point, such as to duck behind cover from an incoming arrow or leap out of the blast of a fireball. You can increase the distance to 10 feet, but you fall prone afterward.

 

[ExploderWizard]

" It also means for a much faster game - characters contribute in each encounter, but we can let someone shine without feeling that everyone must have at least 4 or 5 turns to do their thing."

BOOYAH!! If this can become a reality there is yet hope.......

 

[grimslade]

Come on May 24! This is great I am jazzed even about the stuff I don't like. I want to take this for a test drive.

I would have loved to play test the character creation system at the start but that would be a lot of variables and the game would have to have a lot more concrete decisions made. Control the variables and change what needs to change before they impact the whole system.

 

[soulcatcher78]

It'll be nice to break out the caves of chaos in the new edition and see how it fares compared to the old version.

Having pregens at the beginning frees up more time to actually play with the rules and see what is/can be broken. If we're looking at a span of 4-8 weeks (round 2 this summer some time) then we should have plenty of time to disect what they're going to give us and be hungry for more when the time comes.

Another vote for Rogue "schemes"...tell us more!

 

[Argyle King]

What I'd prefer is something like:

Defend the Line
Move Action
Until the start of your next turn, you can make a melee basic attack against any enemy that tries to leave a space adjacent to you. You can take these 'opportunity attacks' a maximum number of times equal to your Dexterity modifier (minimum 1) between your turns.

(This assumes there are normally no rules for opportunity attacks.)


or

Out of Harm's Way
Move Action
One time before the start of your next turn, you can move 5 feet at any point, such as to duck behind cover from an incoming arrow or leap out of the blast of a fireball. You can increase the distance to 10 feet, but you fall prone afterward.

In a previous thread here on Enworld, I suggested the idea that you could opt into having OAs by taking a feat in a way similar to how 4E characters could opt into being able to use Rituals via a feat. Fighters would simply get the feat for free as part of their class; mirroring how 4E wizards got ritual casting for free.