So its all about combat again?

[jshaft37]

What this playtest needs is a friggin' town.

LETS GET SOME HUB-BASED DESIGN UP IN THIS JUNK.

here you go:

NPCs for the Caves of Chaos D&D Next Playtest

 

[I'm A Banana]

Hub-towns? What, and turn 5e into a MMO?

MMOs didn't invent the concept of "a safe place with interesting NPC's surrounded by wilderness and danger."

here you go:

Oh, if only it were part of the playtest and I could give WotC feedback on this directly!

 

[DDogwood]

MMOs didn't invent the concept of "a safe place with interesting NPC's surrounded by wilderness and danger."

Next you're going to claim that MMOs didn't invent classes, races, and levels, or suggest that WoW wasn't the first MMO.

 

[Herschel]

I come from 3E and, while still very combat heavy, this edition supported "other" parts of the game by having out of combat skills and spells which ,instead of being improved (which would have been necessary) were completely missing in 4E.

The fact is, 4E had a great base skill system that wasn't mired in minutia and supported many game types just fine. 5E will too. 1E and 2E did too. You don't need tons of rules for role playing to be interesting and "tactical" where combat needs a lot more structure due to its nature. As said above, the playtest adventure is also basically just a dungeon romp and if this edition is the one to "unite the clans" then going to the most bloated skill system and adding to it is a bad idea.

Heck, 4E's skill system IS the middle ground.

 

[Boggs]

Yes. I think the reason people are talking a lot about combat is that the Caves of Chaos is a very hack-and-slashy adventure.

The D&D team considers combat to be one of the three "pillars" of the game, the other two being exploration and interaction. Already in the playtest rules there's a lot of non-combat-related stuff:

The Rogue's "commoner" background says he knows a skilled profession and can make a decent living off it (my rogue chose "poison-brewer" just to be a butt). He also has animal handling, commerce, and folklore skills.

The Cleric's "knight" background gives him skills in animal handling, diplomacy, religious lore, and heraldic lore. It also says he gets a free place to stay when he's in the jurisdiction of nobility who recognize his station.

There are a bunch of spells like comprehend languages, charm person, silence, grease, and the venerable command.

They're putting the combat stuff into themes and the non-combat stuff into backgrounds so they can't contaminate each other. Some classes may focus more on a certain pillar (fighters, naturally, are all about combat).

This exactly.

We played our session RPlite simply because the CoC is the hack and slash dungeon crawl part of KotB. We knew it was a one-shot thing and although I gave the group a reason for going and they did some mild RP down in the caves, we didn't emphasize RP.

I think there will be plenty of chances to RP with DDN.

 

[GX.Sigma]

What this playtest needs is a friggin' town.

LETS GET SOME HUB-BASED DESIGN UP IN THIS JUNK.

I've been running the caves from the playtest doc, and the Keep from the original module. It's working quite well (I can't imagine why they didn't include the Keep in the playtest doc). The numbers are more or less compatible too--just convert AC and come up with a set of ability scores and you're good to go.

There are only 2 problems:

1. The Keep is more a barracks than a city--it's difficult to make cool, urban things happen in such a rigidly LG place.
2. The layout in the original module is difficult to run on the fly.

 

[Jack99]

The fact is, 4E had a great base skill system that wasn't mired in minutia and supported many game types just fine. 5E will too. 1E and 2E did too. You don't need tons of rules for role playing to be interesting and "tactical" where combat needs a lot more structure due to its nature. As said above, the playtest adventure is also basically just a dungeon romp and if this edition is the one to "unite the clans" then going to the most bloated skill system and adding to it is a bad idea.

Heck, 4E's skill system IS the middle ground.

Just wait thank god there is no dragons in the playtest...

 

[Eldomir]

Well, like several people have mentioned, this is just the first of (hopefully) many playtest documents that will explore other parts of the game.

However, if you haven't filled out the playtest survey, you can always mention that you are interested in interaction/exploration/whateverhaveyou so they know people want to see that stuff, and that we consider it an important part of the game. I know I mentioned it in one of the more open-ended questions.

 

[Arlough]

The fact is, 4E had a great base skill system that wasn't mired in minutia and supported many game types just fine.

Actually, I'm going to have to disagree. 4e had a functioning skill system, but it wasn't great. In fact, I feel pretty comfortable saying it was added on as an afterthought. This doesn't mean it was bad, either. But it wasn't great.

As for this playtest being about combat, I agree. But I get the feel that this was to test the combat system, not to test the whole system.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I'm sure the playtest adventure is very combat-heavy, and most online discussions center on combat because that's where the power gamers take over, but the substance of the game seems to be a better skill system than previous editions offered, and I see plenty of non-combat abilities on those character sheets. Certainly, shifting the focus towards combat was a problem with 4e, but they seem to have normalized it a bit with 5e. D&D is certainly always going to have a substantial combat element, though it isn't a wargame. I think we're okay here.