D&D 5E Considering the D&D Next Playtest in Light of the WotC Seminars

[FitzTheRuke]

There's a big range between "Level 1 is dangerous if you're risky" and "A PC will die randomly from a single unfortunate roll".

I presume DDN uses the vast space in between.

 

[kiltedyaksman]

Magic-user at-wills give me a big rubbery one. Those would get house-ruled out.

 

[Blastin]

Great initial write up. As someone else mentioned, you had a very different experience than I did in either of the two playtests that I was in.
One note to clarify something in your write up: The half orc was a fighter and the cleric was a dwarf.
Edit to add: also, to address the comments someone had about first level character death: We had the half-orc fighter die to one attack series from a hobgoblin "boss". Fighter went from full hp to dead. No one felt it was a cheap death. As a matter of fact, we all thought it was pretty awesome as the fighter's player had just described how his character had spit in the hobgoblin's face!

 

[Connorsrpg]

Well, sorry for having a wrong opinion, but I do want a systme where a 1st level PC can be killed with a crit. In fact, higher level PCs too.

These have been some of the most memorable times of our games. Especially when one died killing the goblin leader as he critted said goblin leader simultaneously. Then, some crit fumbles...but I wouldn't dare go into those here.

I want my PC to fully realise the consequences of fighting the enemy. Dragons, heck, lizardmen should be fearsome foes. Going in expecting every fight to be balanced and knowing you will win (barring a run of bad luck) is not the game for our group. In my mind (which is clearly wrong Cadfan), this style limits the other 2 pillars. If it is easier to fight and the odds are clearly on your side, why explore for an advantage? Why bother talking to these guys?

Anyway, back to 1st level PCs. I am all for toning them down. The numbers do not have to be that high. Then you wont have to have 27hp level 1 kobolds to compensate. Yeah, I know about minions, and basically 'minionised' every kobold I used in the end, b/c to 'us' (in our wrong game) it did not 'feel' right for a fighter to thwack sid kobold for 20hp! (at first level) and then I tell him, "The kobold is hurt, but still stands".

Seems we have had too much fun with our badly-designed, wrong games.

What was this thread about again? Oh, yeah, the playtest report. Thanks for that - I found it quite informative.

 

[Cadfan]

If it is easier to fight and the odds are clearly on your side, why explore for an advantage?

You're setting up a false dichotomy between a game where critical hits kill fully healthy PCs and a game where all combats are clearly going to be victories for the PCs. There's space in between in a well designed game. Space where bad decisions kill PCs, instead of pure, unavoidable, bad luck.

If the game is designed so that it is presumed that you will occasionally enter combat, then single critical hit deaths for fully healthy PCs mean that your PC can die even when you have made no mistakes. That's bad design. And the quote I included illustrates it.

You're presuming, in the material I quoted, that the PCs can meaningfully affect the odds by doing things like exploring, negotiating, planning, etc. But unless they completely stop the enemy from making attack rolls, they can't actually eliminate the chance of a random crit death for a fully healthy PC. At best they can slightly mitigate it.

What actually happens in a system with random crit deaths for fully healthy PCs is that, instead of exploring and planning being things you do to improve your chances at combat, exploring and planning become things you do to AVOID combat. Combat becomes a punishment for having failed in the exploring/planning/negotiating stage.

And that's poor design in a game that presumes combat will happen with some regularity, and which gives PCs all kinds of abilities to do interesting things in battle.

 

[Fanaelialae]

I think that if the fighter is being one-shot by the boss (from full), something in the hp/damage math needs to be tweaked. Over the span of levels, a fighter is going to have to get in the face of numerous bosses, to the effect that if instant death is possible then it becomes probable.

I don't really care for the idea of punishing the fighter (with death) for properly doing his job (getting in the boss' face). Especially if the fighter did everything right.

Additionally, if the boss can one shot a fighter this way, what can he do to the rogue or wizard? It isn't unreasonable to assume that those other classes aren't as tough as the fighter (at the very least this has been true throughout the history of D&D), so if the fighter can be one shot by an attack series, that suggests that it might be possible anyone else to be one shot by an average blow. Meaning that the fighter needs to remain standing or the battle suddenly becomes one or two PCs dying every round, but if the fighter can be taken out by bad luck, this can become inevitable...

In all fairness though, there's a lot I don't know about this scenario. How many times did the boss crit during his attack series? Was the boss significantly higher level than the PCs? Are 1st level PCs intended to be more prone to random death than 3rd level PCs (meaning that those of us who prefer to forgo this play style could just start at 3rd level)?

Nonetheless, one of the traditionally toughest classes being one-shot by a boss says to me that the math could use a little more work. It doesn't seem unreasonable to me that on a lucky round the boss should be able to bring the fighter from full to critical or even unconsciousness, but full to death seems like overkill to me.

 

[Alaxk Knight of Galt]

You're setting up a false dichotomy between a game where critical hits kill fully healthy PCs and a game where all combats are clearly going to be victories for the PCs. There's space in between in a well designed game. Space where bad decisions kill PCs, instead of pure, unavoidable, bad luck.

If the game is designed so that it is presumed that you will occasionally enter combat, then single critical hit deaths for fully healthy PCs mean that your PC can die even when you have made no mistakes. That's bad design. And the quote I included illustrates it.

You're presuming, in the material I quoted, that the PCs can meaningfully affect the odds by doing things like exploring, negotiating, planning, etc. But unless they completely stop the enemy from making attack rolls, they can't actually eliminate the chance of a random crit death for a fully healthy PC. At best they can slightly mitigate it.

What actually happens in a system with random crit deaths for fully healthy PCs is that, instead of exploring and planning being things you do to improve your chances at combat, exploring and planning become things you do to AVOID combat. Combat becomes a punishment for having failed in the exploring/planning/negotiating stage.

And that's poor design in a game that presumes combat will happen with some regularity, and which gives PCs all kinds of abilities to do interesting things in battle.

You repeatedly say "bad/poor design" when what you really mean is "not what I enjoy." Lethality level is a preference.

 

[Cadfan]

Nope, its poor design. There's ways to objectively quantify what is or is not poor design. And its not even difficult.

Step 1: Write up the goals of the game's design.
Step 2: Analyze whether those goals are being achieved.

If your goals are deep characters that exist across a lengthy campaign with many levels and many hours of play, and if your goals are that characters will engage in combat a fair amount over the course of those many hours of play, AND if your goals are to avoid frequent resurrection, then rules that arbitrarily kill properly played characters are badly designed rules.

If you want rules that arbitrarily kill properly played characters, then you need to pick something out of that list to give up.

 

[Hassassin]

Nope, its poor design. There's ways to objectively quantify what is or is not poor design. And its not even difficult.

Step 1: Write up the goals of the game's design.
Step 2: Analyze whether those goals are being achieved.

What you list below aren't the goals of the game's design, but those of individual campaigns. The game isn't poorly designed just because it doesn't achieve the goals of every group of RPG players out there.

If your goals are deep characters that exist across a lengthy campaign with many levels and many hours of play, and if your goals are that characters will engage in combat a fair amount over the course of those many hours of play, AND if your goals are to avoid frequent resurrection, then rules that arbitrarily kill properly played characters are badly designed rules.

If you want rules that arbitrarily kill properly played characters, then you need to pick something out of that list to give up.

 

[JonWake]

I think that if the fighter is being one-shot by the boss (from full), something in the hp/damage math needs to be tweaked. Over the span of levels, a fighter is going to have to get in the face of numerous bosses, to the effect that if instant death is possible then it becomes probable.

I don't really care for the idea of punishing the fighter (with death) for properly doing his job (getting in the boss' face). Especially if the fighter did everything right.

Point the First: Hit Points scale faster than damage does. Especially for a fighter. By 3rd or 4th level, a nasty crit can hurt, but likely won't kill you. This is a feature, not a bug.

Point the Second: To paraphrase Patton, the goal of combat is not to get hit for your team, its to make the other poor sucker get hit for his.