Something Awful leak.

[Ratinyourwalls]

Given that no one in the friends and family playtest has jumped in to debunk this leak as they did last time, it's probably real, though based on very preliminary play test stuff that will probably have huge differences with what comes out in the open playtest and even larger differences with what's eventually released in the finished product. And as I said before, I'm not even looking at the content of it! I'm just curious about whether it's real or not.

Either that or the order came down from up high to "stop doing that" when it came to confirming the truth/untruth of leaks after the last big one.

 

[Zireael]

That's an interesting take. The 4E people are seeing things they hated in 3E, while the 3E people are seeing little of what they liked about it.

My thoughts too about the leak.

And it looks like it's a pre-pre-pre-alpha. I hope the version the playtesters are playing is much better.

 

[OnlineDM]

Either that or the order came down from up high to "stop doing that" when it came to confirming the truth/untruth of leaks after the last big one.

Yes, I should have reiterated that point, which I made in my original reply to PirateCat.

It's entirely possible that WotC has told everyone involved in the closed playtest not to comment on any "leaks" to confirm or deny them any more; however, they should TELL the community that they've made that declaration or else the community thinks that every non-denied "leak" is true.

Debunking one "leak" and then not debunking others without telling the community about the policy change is a recipe for getting people to believe every rumor that purports to be a leak. If this is the new policy, it needs to be announced broadly in order to be effective. I'd be fine with that policy, by the way.

 

[Reflex]

It's entirely possible that WotC has told everyone involved in the closed playtest not to comment on any "leaks" to confirm or deny them any more; however, they should TELL the community that they've made that declaration or else the community thinks that every non-denied "leak" is true.

There's some serious cognitive dissonance in effect in this thread. Let's be frank. This is not a prank. This is no more a prank than SomethingAwful's Mass Effect 3 leak was. The same bitter denials bubbled up on the official Bioware forums as have here. The same subset of posters tried to confidently portray themselves as unflappably sure that everyone else was foolish for taking such an obvious troll literally.

They were dead wrong.

Discussion of the veracity of the leaked details is a lost cause. They are the real deal relevant Holyfield.

What is arguably valid is the notion that they are subject to radical changes before release. I'm not sure how much time is left for dramatic revisions, particularly with the addition of the promised modules and the thorough testing of all those pieces not yet forthcoming, but there's certainly a chance that all of those things can happen. But this is an accurate snapshot of the way the rules were at one point and the playtesters know it.

 

[TwinBahamut]

Dear God, 13 pages of debate over an early April Fool's prank. I promised someone I wouldn't troll people here anymore but man, you guys make it SO easy it's hard to resist.

If this is a prank, it is a very elaborate one. If you actually go look at the thread involved, you will quickly see this isn't a case of one random guy showing up and saying "oh hey I've got a leak". This is a case where a whole group of people who were already involved in a discussion for weeks somehow got started on talking about the 1.0 playtest and one admitting they saw the rules caused a cascade of 2-4 other posters admitting they saw the rules too. The info on that pastebin link from the first page was slowly spelled out by several different people in the midst of normal conversation between them.

So, I guess it could be a hoax, but it would be a very, very difficult one to pull off. It would also be rather pointless, since most of the people involved in the leak were already the central figures of that conversation and made their opinions about D&D clear long before they started giving out some information. If it was a leak designed to get people riled up, that is a very weird time and place for it.

 

[Thraug]

I'm VERY concerned about the number of conditions mentioned in this quote (2 more than 4e???):

-*Twenty* different conditions that can negatively affect a character. 20. What's the difference between Blinded, Dazzled, and Dazed? Between Enervated, Sickened, Frightened, Shaken, and Panicked? Buy 5e and find out

Haven't they learned from 4e that too many conditions drag encounters to a screeching halt? Whether you're tracking them on grid or not playing on a grid this many conditions is about 5x too many. I haven't played or run a 4e Paragon or Epic encounter where condition tracking (and non-condition boon/penalty state tracking) hasn't directly resulted in adding a significant amount of (unnecessary) time to the encounter, usually doubling or tripling the time.

This alone is a deal breaker for me. I won't play another RPG that requires as much tracking during an 4e encounters. 1/5 or less than 4e is what I'll settle on. No more 2+ hour combats for me.

 

[gloomhound]

From what I've read this is much ado about nothing. Provided that it is real it's date and lack of detail render it useless in viewing what 5e is going to look like as a product.

 

[mkill]

I don't mind having 20 conditions IF they are all distinct and interesting. "drunk", "distracted", "confused", "frozen", "petrified", "zombified", "panicked"... Hey, a hero's life is no cakewalk.

What I don't like is 20 conditions which are all just slight variations of "-1 to attack, save, skill checks". Roll all of these into one and be done with it.

By the way: A lot of the stuff that the SA posters are musing about are straight cut&paste from 3E. 20 conditions, variable armor donning time, monsters lacking ability scores... Seems like they discuss an early version where things that the dev team didn't get to yet were just stripped from the d20 SRD or whatever. No surprises, really.

The part I was wondering about was why this playtest didn't have minor actions. They are already in 3.5, just called "swift action". And they're somewhere around 94 on the Top 100 complaints about 4E. Makes no sense to cut them.

 

[Meophist]

And later he says skeletons have no Charisma. Something's not right here.

Something just came to mind: I'm thinking it might be possible that the person misread and what the undead lack is Constitution, not Charisma? If not the person leaking, but perhaps Wizards themselves made that mistake. I don't think Wizards would intend on making the undead immune to one of its weaknesses.

 

[GX.Sigma]

The 20 conditions thing, as well as the undead being immune to turn undead thing, are just examples of how unpolished the system is. The designers have been indecisive about conditions:

Currently we're in the area that the effect should be relevant to the spell or power. For example there might be a power word stun spell that explains what stun is and goes from there. But we're probably not going to have too many abilities or spells that would do something like that. We've pared down and increased the list of status effects, back and forth.

Also, I think it makes more sense for skeletons to lack CHA. CHA measures force of personality, and lesser undead have no personality. I'm positive the turn undead thing was a lack of communication or a case where the systems came in at different times and didn't know what was going on with the other systems.