Mike Mearls Discusses the First Round of Public D&D Next Playtests

[Keldryn]

It's absurd because there is no story explanation for it in the game itself. I have never seen text that states that dwarves have a magical connection to stonework throughout the world that allows them to know the culture that created it without ever having been exposed to it. There is no explanation offered. If these things are written into their souls, and not just the result of their culture, it needs to be explicitly stated, as with thri-kreen and their racial memory. It would still be rather ham-fisted, but at least it would cease to be absurd.

I re-read the playtest materials and I acknowledge your point here; I missed that part of the Stonecunning ability and assumed that it was just a version of what previous editions had that didn't require a check. The abilities to determine approximate depth underground, to retrace a path, and even to determine the approximate age of stonework could all fall fit well with the dwarf's innate magical connection with stone.

If a player in my game wanted to play a dwarf that for some reason had no exposure to dwarven culture or to stonework, I'd apply some DM's common sense and say that he can't identify the culture but could do some other exploration-related task of approximately the same value. The dwarf as written is probably fine for 95% of the dwarf characters that my players want to make, and I'd rather not clutter up the rules for the sake of the other 5%. I do web development for a living, and one of my frustrations with content management systems (such as Drupal) is how the need for accommodating the marginal cases where perhaps maybe somebody somewhere might want to potentially do something possibly different makes the whole system bulkier than it needs to be to accomplish the vast majority of tasks.

There's a point of diminishing returns when it comes to this stuff, and I'd rather use my judgement to tweak a few abilities here and there when the situation calls for it than have another subset of rules to handle marginal cases. Maybe the desire of D&D players to be dwarves who can't identify the culture which created a stonework structure because it doesn't fit their life story is more prevalent than I think. What do I know?

So, you support an extended lifespan as a ranger ability, and shield surfing as an elf racial ability...?

Sure, that's exactly what I was saying.

Every Drizzt novel has been on the NYT Best Seller's list.

And yet still doesn't have the cultural resonance of Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter. I don't have any data, but my gut feeling is that the Drizzt novels have a much higher ratio of gamers to non-gamers in their readership than do LotR, Harry Potter, or any number of other non-D&D-franchised fantasy books.

The fixing is providing a culture-neutral race for people who like the physical concept but not the cultural one, or who want to work against it without being actively punished by the rules for daring to break the mold.

It doesn't need fixing, it just needs a reasonable DM. In case it needs to be said, I'm not in favor of designing the rules to reduce the impact of poor DMing. I find it just results in more rules to remember and the DM still sucks.

If I want to play a sword-using, seafaring dwarf from a jungle where she was raised to paint with all the colors of the wind, instead of a hammer-wielding ore jockey, I don't want for all of my racial abilities to be useless sheet filler.

Fair enough, and like I said, a reasonable DM would accommodate you and maybe even create a seafaring, jungle-dwelling dwarf culture for you to be from. At a certain point, however, I'd have to ask why you want to play a dwarf at all. If I want to play a dwarf who fights with swords and bows, dabbles in magic, is friends with the animals, and loves to frolic in the forest, one might ask why I don't just play an elf instead.

There are a variety of ways to deal with it, certainly. I just want to see a core game that's open enough that people don't have to wait for modules to start playing.

I'd like to see that too, and the modules which expand the came to include the most popular styles of play (i.e. emulating other editions) should be available on Day One, whether they are appendices in the core rulebooks or separate products.

But for me, the game can be open and flexible enough to allow this sort of thing without having explicit rules for it. A few guidelines should cover most situations. Substitute one exploration-focused ability for another that should apply with roughly the same frequency. Only give a combat-focused ability or bonus in exchange for another combat-focused ability.

 

[Incenjucar]

I consider it a system failure if a DM has to make a call about something as fundamental as race. Moreover, character building from WotC so far does not allow for houserules, and

Drizzt books are very popular with the general fantasy crowd. D&D players seem more likely to be revolted by the character than the average fantasy fan is. More people are familiar with dark elves in general than D&D's historically anti-magic dwarves. There are online communities devoted to the bloody things.

And yes, people who play off-type are fairly common. I've seen lolicon halfling vampires, gnoll bard lawyers, and luchador swordmages just in the last six months. There are a heck of a lot of people who don't like being stuck with the most basic form of an archetype; for them the archetype's value is strictly in that they can rebel against it. For others, they just like the aesthetic.

 

[underfoot007ct]

The wizards and clerics seem pretty 4e-ish: at wills, dailies, but no encounter powers that I noticed. The fighter seems 3E-ish to me - basic attacks but with a couple of feat riders.

The action resolution seems like a version of 4e but with non-combat resolution mostly stripped out. There doesn't seem to be any very special nod to exploration. The stealth rules struck me as a variant on 4e. And the interaction rules are pretty sparse.

I agree with you that the spell descriptions are hopeless.

4E actions were; standard, move, & minor actions. Don't remember seeing standard nor minor actions.

Yes the wizard has cantrips at-will, which you can remove the background & theme (for an old school feel), which removes the at-wills. As for wizards having daily spells, that goes back to 1974 OD&D.

 

[pemerton]

4E actions were; standard, move, & minor actions. Don't remember seeing standard nor minor actions.

The standard action is relabelled "action". The movement action is relabelled "the movement you can take in your turn", and the turning of standard into move actions is relabelled "hustle". Minor actions are buried either in particular spell descriptions, or in the notion of "incidental" or "incorporated" actions.

As the post I was replying to noted, the language is not that of 4e. But the basic action economy seems comparable.

The real change in action resolution is that movement can be broken up on either side of an action, and people are already discovering that in a system of turn-by-turn rather than continuous initiative, this can cause problems.

Yes the wizard has cantrips at-will, which you can remove the background & theme (for an old school feel), which removes the at-wills.

Background doesn't grant any cantrips. Theme grants two. The rest come from class. So stripping out background and theme won't strip out the at-wills.

As for wizards having daily spells, that goes back to 1974 OD&D.

I don't think anyone is unaware of that.

My point - in mostly agreeing with [MENTION=52734]Stormonu[/MENTION] - was that a system in which spellcasters have at-wills and dailies resembles 4e, though with encounter powers stripped out.

It is the absence of encounter powers in D&Dnext which is actually the biggest departure from 4e, not because of its consequences of the minutiae of action resolution, but because of its effect on pacing.

 

[underfoot007ct]

I'm not Stormonu, but I'll take a shot at a list of 4E influences on 5ENext so far:

- Self-healing during a short rest by everybody, which was introduced in 4E.

OK, Fine

- Backgrounds, which were introduced in 4E PHB2. (These are one of the basic pillars of character creation in 5ENext.)

- Themes, which were introduced in 4E Dark Sun. (These are another of the basic pillars of character creation in 5ENext.)

AD&D 2e had kits, which are themes & backgrounds but with different name. Themes & Backgrounds are much better names.

- At-Will attacks, which were conceptually based on 3.5E "Reserve Feats"; but those Reserve Feats required that the caster (1) have a higher-level spell of the same type prepared, and (2) not cast that higher-level spell or else lose the At-Will version until the higher-level spell was prepared again. (Actual "At-Will" attacks are new with 4E.)

So you say a 3.5e thing, then ONLY wizards in 5e get at-wills NOT ALL characters.

- Skill Training's contituting a static bonus instead of consisting of arbitrary additional skill points added per level. In 3.XE, you could keep on adding points to a skill each time you leveled up; 4E changed that to a flat numeric bonus.

I guess, but is that really a big difference?

- Skill Consolidation, with "Perception" subsuming Spot, Listen, and Search; and with "Stealth" subsuming Hide and Move Silently. (4E also had "Athletics" subsuming Climb, Jump, and Run, but we haven't seen that in the 5ENext playtest material yet as far as I have seen.)

I'll give you that but It sure cures skill bloat.

- Critical Hits being automatic full damage without confirmation.

Nope, AD&D 2E PLAYER HAND BOOK as an optional rule

- Rituals as a class of magic castable an unspecified number of times per day, limited mainly by the availability of time and material components, not by spell slots.

OK, Fine again

- Carrying Capacity is straight out of 4E. (3.XE had a table instead; and that table included a column for Medium Load, which 5ENext doesn't mention.)

Sure there are parts of 4e, but 3e, 2e, etc. The point of this is the claim that the playtest is just like 4e. It looks like a blend of 2e & 3e, with some 4e added. Not can you locate more 3 parts of 4e in the playtest.

So please be honest, do you really still think that the D&D next playtest is a modified 4e skeleton?

 

[El Mahdi]

So you say a 3.5e thing, then ONLY wizards in 5e get at-wills NOT ALL characters.

That's not true. Clerics also have at-wills in the playtest document, and they've repeatedly said that Fighters and others will have some also...they just haven't gotten to them YET (combat maneuvers for Fighters, "Dirty Tricks" for Rogues, etc.)

Sure there are parts of 4e, but 3e, 2e, etc. The point of this is the claim that the playtest is just like 4e. It looks like a blend of 2e & 3e, with some 4e added. Not can you locate more 3 parts of 4e in the playtest.

So please be honest, do you really still think that the D&D next playtest is a modified 4e skeleton?

I'm not tuxgeo or stormanu, but I have an opinion/answer to that question.

I think it's changed significantly from a 4E skeleton, but it did start that way with parts of other editions added on. As the first playtests progressed (the Public Playtests...not the Open Playtests...and the Friends and Families Playtests), they distilled down which elements of 4E they wanted to keep and morphed them into forms that worked well with the other concepts they added (and those other concepts morphed also to work together). (...as seen here with the early playtest character sheets: http://www.enworld.org/forum/news/323976-early-versions-d-d-next-character-sheets.html#post5925766 ) However, I can still see that 4E skeleton in the background...but that is not a bad thing. I also see some 3E skeleton in there also, as well as mechanics that give it a 1E, 2E, and even BD&D vibe at times. Even though 4E wasn't my preferred edition, it had some brilliant innovations that I'm glad to see carried forward to 5E...even if it's just mostly in "concept" now, rather than mirrored mechanics. But overall, It definitely feels to me (for the most part) that they've definitely got a handle on the spirit of what was best in each edition, and are making a game that encompasses all of those concepts into a wonderfully workable whole.

So far, I'm very impressed.

 

[tuxgeo]

< . . . massive snippage . . . >
So please be honest, do you really still think that the D&D next playtest is a modified 4e skeleton?

Inasmuch as I'm not [MENTION=52734]Stormonu[/MENTION], I'll let him respond to that one.
(I never said the playtest was a "modified 4e skeleton.")

 

[Stormonu]

Inasmuch as I'm not [MENTION=52734]Stormonu[/MENTION], I'll let him respond to that one.
(I never said the playtest was a "modified 4e skeleton.")

Yes, I do, and not that it is a bad thing.

Thanks, tuxgeo.

 

[underfoot007ct]

Inasmuch as I'm not <!-- BEGIN TEMPLATE: dbtech_usertag_mention --> @Stormonu <!-- END TEMPLATE: dbtech_usertag_mention -->, I'll let him respond to that one.
(I never said the playtest was a "modified 4e skeleton.")

Was a "modified 4e skeleton" was the point, not if you see any bits of edition X in the playtest. Stormonu has said what he thinks.

You jumping in to this, so now answer, what do you think?
Do you think the playtest is a "modified 4e skeleton" ?

 

[underfoot007ct]

That's not true. Clerics also have at-wills in the playtest document, and they've repeatedly said that Fighters and others will have some also...they just haven't gotten to them YET (combat maneuvers for Fighters, "Dirty Tricks" for Rogues, etc.)
<snip>
However, I can still see that 4E skeleton in the background...but that is not a bad thing. I also see some 3E skeleton in there also, as well as mechanics that give it a 1E, 2E, and even BD&D vibe at times.

I am unsure If the definition of "skeleton" is the same for all of us here. In my def, like a person the playtest can have ONLY a SINGLE skeleton.

But yes I see parts of all editions, I see bits of 4e changed a tad, then reworded to appeal to the Grognard old school fans.</snip>