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

[GX.Sigma]

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?

Pretty standard cover-our-asses legal mumbo-jumbo.

Basically, in the future, they will need to have forced us to agree not to reproduce the playtest materials.

It's not a great explanation, but law is weird.

 

[MortalPlague]

Sure everyone wants to have advantage but if you don't have disadvantage around almost as much it feels cheaty.

I don't think it'll come up as often. Look at your game now; how often are players getting a +2 to hit for favorable circumstances (flanking, prone, etc)? How often are they getting -2 to hit for unfavorable circumstances?

In most games, I expect the +2 comes up a fair bit more.

 

[Blackwarder]

Mearls: "Personally, I actually like meters because if you draw a map with one meter per square, the dimensions of rooms are more realistic."

Use 1 yard. also known as three feet. Its very close to 1 meter. And for many people, "close" to the distance from ground to hips (for those needing a visual).

1 meter = 1.0936133 yard. Also known as pretty darn similar. Most of us yanks can also visualize a yard because almost every elementary school in nation has a yard stick in the classroom somewhere...

This ten times over! Change feets to yards/meters, it's the biggest hindrance for non-US new players to visualize what the hell is happening.

Warder

 

[frankthedm]

Agreed. 1 square = 1 yard or 1 meter also reestablishes three medium creatures fighting side by side in the ubiquitous ten food corridor as called for by 1E AD&D.

Quoting the original AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide, regarding the use of miniatures in the game:

"Figure bases are necessarily broad in order to assure that the figure will stand... Because of this, it is usually necessary to use a ground scale twice that of the actual scale... squares of about one actual inch per side are suggested. Each ground scale inch can then be used to equal 3 1/2 linear feet, so a 10' wide scale corridor is three actual inches in width and shown as 3 separate squares. This allows depiction of the typical array of three figures abreast, and also enables easy handling of such figures when they are moved."​

In short, the corridors were drawn ten feet wide, but with the assumption that ten feet was enough for three people fighting side by side (three squares), not two.

 

[Fifth Element]

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.

Obviously I can't agree that they're one in the same since I'm digging the HD mechanic but dislike full hp recovery on a rest.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Obviously I can't agree that they're one in the same since I'm digging the HD mechanic but dislike full hp recovery on a rest.

No, they are not identical. HD is a bit more believable to me (though I still find it gamey) but the full HP in a day is a killer bad idea IMO. It is like they took the stuff from 4e heaing I hated and cranked it up to 11 (just a total handwaving of any realism). I guess from mybperspective the HD and the full heal and the HD seem to grow out of the same pot (placing the desire for smooth play over the needs of the setting). Howver I suppose with the revised definition of HP, there is a strong argument to made that HD is there to capture the mojo aspect.

Has anyone taken a good hard look at this though? I have to admit I haven't really broken it down yet and have mainly been focused on just gettin a hang on the new mechanics. But they have kind of committed to physical wounds happening at key intervals of hp loss, isn't this going to mean in pratice (if say fighter uses his hd to heal himself above that interval) that he is healing actual wounds on his own?