D&D Next Playtest Package Questions Answered! (Mike Mearls, Jeremy Crawford)

[tuxgeo]

Forgive my ignorance, but was this chat on the Wizards website? I looked for a recap there and didn't see anything being announced.

It was a live event on the Wizards website, that anyone could watch while it happened; but Wizards is typically quite slow to post transcripts of those sessions.

That's one of the reasons for the great popularity of Russ' "EN World" website, here: transcripts get put up for view within hours, not weeks. (This is a significant service to the gaming population.)

 

[Swick]

And, they also like that "Guest" guy too!

I was wondering, where were the Cleric Domains? Were they hidden in the character sheet somewhere? And, what was the difference between Hill and Mountain Dwarves?

 

[FitzTheRuke]

But that's not what Ambusher does. Without Ambusher, you wouldn't usually get advantage with an attack from hiding, because the attack itself would reveal you (barring a sneak-friendly setup, typically out of combat, like attacking a distracted guard from behind). With Ambusher, it doesn't matter if the attack (or a prior move) reveals you, you get advantage on the first attack anyway.

The unclear wording is in the description of getting advantage on attacks while hiding (p.7 of How to Play), not in the Ambusher feat.

I'm not sure what you think is unclear about the "Advantage on Attacks" benefit of being hidden. If you attack from hidden, you have advantage, and then you are revealed.

But if you feel that way, perhaps a better wording would be:

Benefit: If you start your turn hidden from a creature, you remain hidden from that creature until your first attack against it is resolved, even if you move to a position where the creature would normally spot you before attacking.

Or whatever. Makes it only useful in a direct combat sense, though. Sometimes "ambushing" requires one to be able to move from one position to another, which is why I prefer the other wording. At any rate I meant that my other wording did the same thing story-wise, not quite mechanically.

Depends on what they really mean for ambusher to do exactly.

 

[Alukane]

I didn't really get the 5-feet question. Whether he calls a square a 'square' or '5-feet', why is he converting it to anything? Or does he mean dividing by five to make squares presents a difficulty?

Being also European, I simply don't share his difficulty. It's never even occurred to me. Is he converting GP to Euros and speed to km/hr, too?

Colour me confused. Just call it a square it it makes you happier; I prefer 5' myself as it feels more real.

In the european versions of d&d books all unit of measurement are converted. An "european" square is 1.5 meters. I'd rather prefer not converting at all and go with feet and pounds...

 

[Fifth Element]

Glad to hear they may dial back the full heal with 8 hour rest. I really don't likt the HD mechanic as written now. Too much healing, too fast.

Full hp recovery overnight has nothing to do with the HD mechanic.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Full hp recovery overnight has nothing to do with the HD mechanic.

It is tied into the whole healing package and is becoming the shorthand for the playtest's approach to healing. I dont like the 8 hour recovery and not a fan of the HD mechanic itself.

 

[Balesir]

I didn't really get the 5-feet question. Whether he calls a square a 'square' or '5-feet', why is he converting it to anything? Or does he mean dividing by five to make squares presents a difficulty?

Being also European, I simply don't share his difficulty. It's never even occurred to me. Is he converting GP to Euros and speed to km/hr, too?

Colour me confused. Just call it a square it it makes you happier; I prefer 5' myself as it feels more real.

I think I know just what he's getting at - the conversion from feet to squares. It's not difficult, it's just irritating and an unnecessary obfuscation as I find it. Every time I come upon something in (multiples of five) feet my brain is asking "what the heck is that in Christian money?"

It has also led to some very odd wording in the "How to Play"/rules documant, such as "every 5 feet you swim/climb/whatever costs an extra 5 feet of movement". So, if you swim or climb 4 feet, what happens? Does it "cost" you an extra 5 feet? An extra 4 feet? Nothing extra at all? This needs to either say "swimming/climbing/etc. movement counts against your move distance as if you had moved twice the distance you actually did" or to just admit that it's a game we're playing and say "each square of swimming/climbing movement costs 2 movement points".

Given the other changes in there, I'm thinking "movement points" would be a useful concept, since it's clear that standing up and such like cost movement to perform. I'm really pretty sceptical that this is going to end up simpler than having 3-4 separate action types, but we'll see.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I really like the hd mechanic. A heal check (or as in the playtest an application of the healing kit) should heal an amount determinded by class. Because Class HD more or less define how griveous a 5hp wound is.
Mike feels that healing to full is off. And I really would expect the heal all HD but no HP mechanic would really make the game ver gritty.

You have 17hp or so at level 1 if you have high con and a hig hit die. The most you can heal is one HD + con per night, which is about half as much on average. So you need some more than a single night of sleep to proper heal and then have some HD remaining.
When you level up, it gets better. But limiting the number of HD you gain back in some way could limit that.

All in all, a neat mechanic.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

I didn't really get the 5-feet question. Whether he calls a square a 'square' or '5-feet', why is he converting it to anything? Or does he mean dividing by five to make squares presents a difficulty?

Being also European, I simply don't share his difficulty. It's never even occurred to me. Is he converting GP to Euros and speed to km/hr, too?

Colour me confused. Just call it a square it it makes you happier; I prefer 5' myself as it feels more real.

That also struck me as a little odd. Is it possible the person was just being snide about the use of Imperial units? I've seen some scorching reviews by Europeans of cookbooks written in the US that use Imperial units. Regardless, as you point out, it seems like a non-issue and a waste of a question.

 

[Warunsun]

?

So my main question is why did they make people agree to an NDA web page (even if it was never legally signed) if they actually want people to post about the play-test in their blogs and on forums?

And...

Am I the only person that thinks that disadvantage sucks? Heck, I am the DM. And I still don't want to see my player's 18's or 20's turned into a 5. I cringe on the idea of disadvantage coming up a lot as a pretty un-fun mechanic. Sure everyone wants to have advantage but if you don't have disadvantage around almost as much it feels cheaty.