Or Linuspauling. #terrible
D&D 5E Thoughts on 6-7-13 Playtest Packet
Or Linuspauling. #terrible
Jester David
Hero
Gnome The one problem I see is that neither build has charisma, which makes the gnome bard of 3e-4e hard to do. I like the difference between the rock (read: tinker) gnome and forest gnome, so I imagine we could have a feywild or hill gnome that bumps Charisma instead. And having higher Dex & Int definitely won't hurt as a bard.
Half-elf We need subraces for the half-elf. Mostly because eventually they're going to want to have a half-drow. Or distinguish between a half-Silvanesti and half-Qualinesti. Or have a Dark Sun variant with slightly different traits. And that's easiest if you can just make those alternate sub-races.
This shouldn't be hard as the half-elf is kinda weak. It gets Low-Light and Keen Senses like an elf but while the elf gets immunity to charm and sleep the half-elf just gets advantage on saves. Elves also Trance, weapon training, and get their sub-race bonus. The ability to pick which ability score you bump is not equal to the halving resting times, full immunity to charm, weapon skill, and either an extra cantrip or being faster and hiding better.
Give them a minor bonus related to where they were raised, either in a human community or an elf community.
Half-orc Yawn. Okay, the +2 to Strength is kinda tough and makes the half-orc the only race that's better than a straight human. But they get so little else. They get Advantage on ability checks they're likely to be pretty lousy at, which really just means they have better odds of being average at Intimidation. I dislike Advantage in non-situational benefits. Give them a flat bonus.
Crits I dig being able to chose the crit die when you have multiple die types. The sneak attacking rogue with a dagger rejoices.
Dying Meh. It makes characters much more fragile at low levels, especially if they're already injured. But makes mid or even high level characters virtually immortal even if they're at 1hp and critted. It's worse than "minus bloodied". The three strikes method of bleeding out returns but with the added bonus of being able to stabilize rather than just rolling until you fail three times.
I was actually pretty happy with the method in the last package, where you went into negative hp and took damage with a failed save. The randomness of rolling death damage added some tension.
Prone Hey, the giant ogre with reach now has a harder time hitting you when you're prone. Fun.
Hinder I like this!
Short Rest It takes an hour now!? Why??
Half-elf We need subraces for the half-elf. Mostly because eventually they're going to want to have a half-drow. Or distinguish between a half-Silvanesti and half-Qualinesti. Or have a Dark Sun variant with slightly different traits. And that's easiest if you can just make those alternate sub-races.
This shouldn't be hard as the half-elf is kinda weak. It gets Low-Light and Keen Senses like an elf but while the elf gets immunity to charm and sleep the half-elf just gets advantage on saves. Elves also Trance, weapon training, and get their sub-race bonus. The ability to pick which ability score you bump is not equal to the halving resting times, full immunity to charm, weapon skill, and either an extra cantrip or being faster and hiding better.
Give them a minor bonus related to where they were raised, either in a human community or an elf community.
Half-orc Yawn. Okay, the +2 to Strength is kinda tough and makes the half-orc the only race that's better than a straight human. But they get so little else. They get Advantage on ability checks they're likely to be pretty lousy at, which really just means they have better odds of being average at Intimidation. I dislike Advantage in non-situational benefits. Give them a flat bonus.
Crits I dig being able to chose the crit die when you have multiple die types. The sneak attacking rogue with a dagger rejoices.
Dying Meh. It makes characters much more fragile at low levels, especially if they're already injured. But makes mid or even high level characters virtually immortal even if they're at 1hp and critted. It's worse than "minus bloodied". The three strikes method of bleeding out returns but with the added bonus of being able to stabilize rather than just rolling until you fail three times.
I was actually pretty happy with the method in the last package, where you went into negative hp and took damage with a failed save. The randomness of rolling death damage added some tension.
Prone Hey, the giant ogre with reach now has a harder time hitting you when you're prone. Fun.
Hinder I like this!
Short Rest It takes an hour now!? Why??
Kobold Avenger
Legend
I don't like the changes to crits, adding another die to weapon damage just doesn't make crits seem significant enough. I much prefer either the double (or more) damage of 3e, or 4e's maximized damage approach.
It's better they clarified more spells to be rituals, but frankly if a spell takes 10 or more minutes to cast, they shouldn't add 10 minutes to the casting time, since almost everyone is going to cast those spells as rituals anyways.
The Hinder action, I like that it's an option now, unfortunately they really need to specify how you do the hinder action.
I like that they reinstated the attack rolls on many ray and touch spells, it feels the way it should be. And they also fixed Scorching Ray to use an attack roll, which I like far more than the auto-hit the spell had before.
Thaumaturgy spell, it's interesting they've effectively given Clerics their own counterpart to Prestidigitation and Druidcraft, but I feel the spell should be expanded to include the description of invoking minor religious phenomena, spaltbooks later on could better elaborate things like how a cleric of Odin could create floating runestones and spectral ravens as an example.
Confusion is still the game slowing spell that it was before, I feel it needs something more streamlined then looking up that table every round for each affected created, as even with Pathfinder's evenly distributed chances of each result, it still slows things down.
While I feel it's neat that Rock Gnomes are effectively Tinker Gnomes, the Tinker ability needs some more versatility.
It's better they clarified more spells to be rituals, but frankly if a spell takes 10 or more minutes to cast, they shouldn't add 10 minutes to the casting time, since almost everyone is going to cast those spells as rituals anyways.
The Hinder action, I like that it's an option now, unfortunately they really need to specify how you do the hinder action.
I like that they reinstated the attack rolls on many ray and touch spells, it feels the way it should be. And they also fixed Scorching Ray to use an attack roll, which I like far more than the auto-hit the spell had before.
Thaumaturgy spell, it's interesting they've effectively given Clerics their own counterpart to Prestidigitation and Druidcraft, but I feel the spell should be expanded to include the description of invoking minor religious phenomena, spaltbooks later on could better elaborate things like how a cleric of Odin could create floating runestones and spectral ravens as an example.
Confusion is still the game slowing spell that it was before, I feel it needs something more streamlined then looking up that table every round for each affected created, as even with Pathfinder's evenly distributed chances of each result, it still slows things down.
While I feel it's neat that Rock Gnomes are effectively Tinker Gnomes, the Tinker ability needs some more versatility.
Sadrik
First Post
Wisdom is still a mess. Listed as: a creature’s common sense, perception, self‐discipline, and empathy or situations that call for intuition, gut feelings, or sensitivity to the environment. However, when you look at the list of tasks it is a hodgepodge of unrelated stuff. Administer first aid, this should be intelligence. It has long been a wisdom related task but really come on, I think medical professionals would be happy to know that it is common sense and intuition and gut feelings is what is important. Handle Animal, yeah so this was moved from CHA to WIS because why exactly? So now gut-feelings will allow you to tame a monster or train them? Sense Motive, half of the sense motive stuff should fall under perception and the other half should be under CHA. Figure out who is a leader in a group CHA, read an attitude CHA, interpret hand signs SPOT, Sense something wrong with someones personalty (charmed) CHA, eavesdrop LISTEN, recognize a lie CHA, See through a disguise SPOT...
Then Charisma, under interaction it says that contests should be used rarely, however under tasks and skills Charisma is filled with them. All of the effects are opposed WIS, Bluff, Intimidate and Persuade should be treated as mind-effecting compulsion effects and go against a willpower save (CHA or WIS whatever they decide is appropriate). The skill system needs to incorporate saves in cases like this. If a person has a magic item that gives him a bonus to save against compulsions, it should also protect him from Persuade, bonus vs. fear intimidate etc.
Broken contests are still in the game, though much language is used to lessen their use. Though they are still in several key areas. Stealth...
Much to my chagrin the spellcasting bonus is still there.
Also I would like to see the class features toned down and moved more to the selection of optional abilities. I know this runs counter to current design but for me this would be a better game. More feats and spells and less class features. This would balance out but allow for more customization. Examples: channel divity = spells, wacky barbarian abilities = feats.
What happened to the concept of Novice levels 1-3, did I just miss that? and were the feats supposed to be more powerful?
Then Charisma, under interaction it says that contests should be used rarely, however under tasks and skills Charisma is filled with them. All of the effects are opposed WIS, Bluff, Intimidate and Persuade should be treated as mind-effecting compulsion effects and go against a willpower save (CHA or WIS whatever they decide is appropriate). The skill system needs to incorporate saves in cases like this. If a person has a magic item that gives him a bonus to save against compulsions, it should also protect him from Persuade, bonus vs. fear intimidate etc.
Broken contests are still in the game, though much language is used to lessen their use. Though they are still in several key areas. Stealth...
Much to my chagrin the spellcasting bonus is still there.
Also I would like to see the class features toned down and moved more to the selection of optional abilities. I know this runs counter to current design but for me this would be a better game. More feats and spells and less class features. This would balance out but allow for more customization. Examples: channel divity = spells, wacky barbarian abilities = feats.
What happened to the concept of Novice levels 1-3, did I just miss that? and were the feats supposed to be more powerful?
Yeah, a crit granting at best an extra 12 damage (and an at-best average of 6.5) is pretty underwhelming. Maximized damage feels better except when you roll high damage and the crit gives almost no marginal improvement.
What about the following rule: A crit grants extra damage equal to the maximum possible sum of rolled damage dice. For example, a crit on an attack that normally deals 3d6+4 damage will do 18 extra damage.
1) The worst critical hit is always better than the best non-critical hit that could have occurred. I think that's generally a virtue.
2) No additional rolling required.
3) The marginal increase in damage is fixed. No one ever feels like they wasted a good damage roll with a crit.
4) The effective multiplier to damage is larger for low damage rolls, and lower for high damage rolls, but high damage rolls are always better in terms of damage done. A 1 on a d12 turns into a 13, so essentially a x13 (considering only the die, not static bonuses to damage). Rolling maximum damage on any die effectively turns it into a x2 crit. The average effective multiplier is about 2.75.
5) Independent of static modifiers to damage such as from ability scores, which I consider a virtue so crits don't magnify differences in ability score. The actual multipliers will be smaller than those listed above unless the total static modifiers to damage are 0 or less. For example, on a 3d6+4 roll the maximum multiplier is (7+18)/7~3.6, the maximum is (22+18)/22~1.8, and the average is (14.5+18)/14.5~2.2.
6) Overall damage and danger of crits is clearly increased vs the current rules. I'd want to tighten up the contribution of random rolls to total damage to avoid the most extreme spikes.
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Warbringer
Explorer
Not sure why they even released this ... Doesn't feel like 10 weeks work since last full revision, nor close to the new ideas discussed.
Pretty underwhelming effort
Pretty underwhelming effort
My guess is that they wanted to test a couple of specific things in this packet. The major changes will come in the next one. From the legends and lore column, the changes they're contemplating are pretty substantial so it doesn't surprise me that it's taking awhile for that full packet to come out.
AD
GX.Sigma
Adventurer
It's just a minor content patch. It wasn't meant to be a full revision.
If anything, this shows that the public playtest is very very different from what they're doing internally.
Warbringer
Explorer
Yeah, I think you hit in the head what I've been getting frustrated with re entry, that the playtest has turned i to a bit of a PR stunt and that the "real game" is at a very different place.
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