D&D 5E Player's Handbook Alpha *Spoilers*

[Ruin Explorer]

Well this was surprisingly easy to find. Not really liking what they did with Barbarians. They nerfed their ability to kill people quite a bit whilst buffing their defenses to the point where they seem a lot harder to kill than Fighters (but leaving Unarmoured Defense fairly crummy), which doesn't seem right to me. More later maybe.

 

[jadrax]

That's the February alpha draft, right?

Remember how Greg Bilsland said they'd made over 800 changes to the PHB since February?

I believe so, yes.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Good god this is awful. The Feats are absolutely terrible 3E (not even 3.5E!) style stuff, quite different to the Feats in a lot of playtests.

Gone, for example is the deal where a feat that requires Weapon X gives Proficiency in Weapon X, which was a really nice little thing (only the armour ones do this). Athlete doesn't give (nor requires) the Athletics skill, either... (and is terribad)

What is present instead is the horrible, horrible 3E trend of "You can't do this thing you could obviously do UNLESS you have this Feat!".

For example - Healer's Kit - we now know why it's worthless in Basic - you can only actually heal with it with a Feat!

Or Dual-Wielding - Obviously a PC could normally draw both his weapons to attack right? No DM would enforce him drawing one one round, and one the next? Right? Yet unless you have this Feat, your PC literally cannot draw both his weapons in one round. To hell with, y'know, both real life and every movie with swords in ever, eh?

Or grappling - You'd think that anyone grappling could potentially try to restrain the target by dragging them to the floor (becoming restrained themselves in the process), if the DM agreed? But no! Not unless you have the Feat!

Many of the Feats are just boring bonuses or minor benefits. Some are wackily OP. Some near worthless.

Some are fine, to be fair, but good god, I hope a lot of these got adjusted, because this awful, much worse than any playtest implementation of the Feats. They should NOT be gating basic stuff like using a Healer's Kit to heal behind a FEAT, especially when there's a bloody Medicine skill!

EDIT - The fact that Basic still has Healer's Kits as near-useless suggests that they DIDN'T change these, though, which is super-worrying. Roll on PHB release, I guess.

EDIT - Lest I be a huge downer, I will say that broadly, the classes and so on look BETTER than the playtest. Some are less interesting than others and there are some bizarre decisions (c.f. "tough but not very damaging Barbarian" above - he will get some hilarious crits at least), it's only the Feats that are broadly awful/crap. I note that most of the Feats which aren't kind of horrible were the ones which people had spoiled previously. So much worse than the playtest here.

 

[sidonunspa]

I note that most of the Feats which aren't kind of horrible were the ones which people had spoiled previously. So much worse than the playtest here.

I had a chance to look them over and I feel the same way... I pray that they changed the feats from this "alpha" version...

It would be grand if someone from WoTC would come out and out our fears to rest.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I had a chance to look them over and I feel the same way... I pray that they changed the feats from this "alpha" version...

It would be grand if someone from WoTC would come out and out our fears to rest.

Why? What would possibly be the need for them to do that?

"Hey folks! That copy of the Player's Handbook that you shouldn't even be able to be reading is six months old, and believe it or not, we've actually still been working on the game since then and thus what is in the book was not and is not the finished product."

No one needs to be told that... because of, you know... common sense. And if someone is lacking a little bit of that... then even telling that person straight away that things have changed in the last six months is probably not going to do a whole lot of good, cause the person probably won't believe what WotC tells them anyway.

 

[sidonunspa]

No one needs to be told that... because of, you know... common sense. And if someone is lacking a little bit of that... then even telling that person straight away that things have changed in the last six months is probably not going to do a whole lot of good, cause the person probably won't believe what WotC tells them anyway.

ok, fine, fair enough

 

[variant]

Good god this is awful. The Feats are absolutely terrible 3E (not even 3.5E!) style stuff, quite different to the Feats in a lot of playtests.

Gone, for example is the deal where a feat that requires Weapon X gives Proficiency in Weapon X, which was a really nice little thing (only the armour ones do this). Athlete doesn't give (nor requires) the Athletics skill, either... (and is terribad)

What is present instead is the horrible, horrible 3E trend of "You can't do this thing you could obviously do UNLESS you have this Feat!".

For example - Healer's Kit - we now know why it's worthless in Basic - you can only actually heal with it with a Feat!

Or Dual-Wielding - Obviously a PC could normally draw both his weapons to attack right? No DM would enforce him drawing one one round, and one the next? Right? Yet unless you have this Feat, your PC literally cannot draw both his weapons in one round. To hell with, y'know, both real life and every movie with swords in ever, eh?

Or grappling - You'd think that anyone grappling could potentially try to restrain the target by dragging them to the floor (becoming restrained themselves in the process), if the DM agreed? But no! Not unless you have the Feat!

Many of the Feats are just boring bonuses or minor benefits. Some are wackily OP. Some near worthless.

Some are fine, to be fair, but good god, I hope a lot of these got adjusted, because this awful, much worse than any playtest implementation of the Feats. They should NOT be gating basic stuff like using a Healer's Kit to heal behind a FEAT, especially when there's a bloody Medicine skill!

EDIT - The fact that Basic still has Healer's Kits as near-useless suggests that they DIDN'T change these, though, which is super-worrying. Roll on PHB release, I guess.

EDIT - Lest I be a huge downer, I will say that broadly, the classes and so on look BETTER than the playtest. Some are less interesting than others and there are some bizarre decisions (c.f. "tough but not very damaging Barbarian" above - he will get some hilarious crits at least), it's only the Feats that are broadly awful/crap. I note that most of the Feats which aren't kind of horrible were the ones which people had spoiled previously. So much worse than the playtest here.

Have you even playtested D&D Next? The Healer feat and Healer's kit for example has been like this since the playest. Healing via mundane methods has been extremely controversial throughout the playest.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

No one needs to be told that... because of, you know... common sense.

Common sense actually dictates that we shouldn't believe they've changed them much, DEFCON, because we can see that the setup of Basic makes assumptions that would not be made unless at least some of the Feats are very similar - the Healer one for starters.

Whether a WotC comment would help is debatable, but...

Also, given it went to print what, four months after this, and indeed has been printed now, it's not been "worked on for six months".

 

[FadedC]

The biggest thing I'm looking to see change is the barbarian. As Ruin Explorer said he's ridiculously defensive and hard to kill, but much more of a problem is that he gets that ability at lvl 1 meaning every non caster would probably multiclass into 1 lvl of barbarian.

Feats didn't bother me quite as much, I still saw plenty of interesting choices even if there were plenty that will be rarely taken. I disagree that the healing ability from the healer's kit should be possible without the feat, that's a lot of potential healing that the feat provides, much more efficient than a low level cleric.

Classes were the most interesting part, especially the massive number of sub classes some classes had.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Have you even playtested D&D Next? The Healer feat and Healer's kit for example has been like this since the playest.

I have actually, and no, it hasn't, it changed a huge amount through the playtests. It's not dissimilar in the last two playtests (which were also bad), but it's also not the same. I don't think many people believe it would be untouched, but it was.