The (Non-)Playtest Experience, or How the Hit Die Mechanic was a Non-Starter

[innerdude]

Last night our game group got together, with the intent to try the D&D 5e Playtest. One of our regular players was out of town, so the GM who's been running our GURPS campaign wanted to take the night off, and get in a "one shot" as a player just for fun.

Obviously, this was the perfect setup for doing something like the playtest--short, pre-gen characters, self-contained--so I volunteered to GM the playtest scenario.

So I printed out the "How to Play" PDF, studied up on the mechanics and Caves of Chaos, and was all set to go.

I show up at the appointed time, people are there, hanging out and eating food, and what not. I start handing out the pre-gen character sheets, and start going over some of the basic changes compared to other editions (all of the players have played Pathfinder, 2 of the 5 regularly played 1e and 2e in the past).

Everything's going fine; they like the "Advantage" and "Disadvantage" thing, they like being able to base checks off any attribute . . .

But as soon as I explain the hit die / healing mechanics, the GURPS GM (who was going to be a PC for the playtest), hands back the character sheet, and says, "I won't play a game where your hit points are LITERALLY guaranteed to be returned to you every night. Period. If this is how the game works, it's a waste of time to even play it. Let's do something else."

And to be honest, I didn't necessarily disagree with him. I was willing to give it a shot in the playtest, but the basic premise of the mechanic hadn't been sitting right with me all week.

Now, in some sense, this was a "knee jerk" reaction on his part, but he also gave a very succinct reason for his opinion--"I get that they want to not force players to be a cleric, but how do you simulate a wilderness survival scenario, or an extended mission scenario using this mechanic?"

I suppose I should report this in the WotC survey, but so far, the sum total of our playtest experience is---"Hit Die Mechanic is a Non-Starter. Not terribly enthused about what we've seen so far. Interest in actually buying product in the future is sinking even further."

 

[Dragoslav]

And?? Don't keep us in suspense!

 

[FireLance]

Didn't you read the thread title? It was a non-starter.

 

[Andor]

That's a pretty ridiculous attitude to take during a playtest. The whole point of a playtest is to see what works and what doesn't.

Personally I would have tried to point out that this is an Alpha-version playtest, and everything is still very much up in the air, especially including the healing rules.

Trying it and then giving detailed feedback can result in a new and better mechanism. Throwing up your hands and walking away is ... less helpfull.

Also since healing all your HP damage overnight is not going to stop you from starving to death I don't see how a wilderness survival scenario is impacted in the least by the current healing rules in 5e. And extended mission scenarios usually hinge on logistics so tracking arrows and rations is more imprtant than HP, which any party with a cleric is usually going to do ok on.

 

[billd91]

That's a pretty ridiculous attitude to take during a playtest. The whole point of a playtest is to see what works and what doesn't.

Personally I would have tried to point out that this is an Alpha-version playtest, and everything is still very much up in the air, especially including the healing rules.

Trying it and then giving detailed feedback can result in a new and better mechanism. Throwing up your hands and walking away is ... less helpfull.

A play test is also done to see what will fly with the prospective customers and what doesn't. While WotC may not be able to get any feedback on the way the mechanic behaves, assuming this is reported through WotC's review channels, at least they have some information about whether or not it will fly with some prospective customers.

That said, in this position, I'd still have play tested the rest and hand waved off the healing if I had to. I'd treat it more as a unit test rather than a broad regression test, to use some software testing terminology.

 

[Sir Brennen]

Well, I wouldn't criticize the play testing approach too much since it was more of a pickup game than a planned playtest. However, not even trying a game because of not liking one mechanic? Especially when the point is to give feedback on what you don't like? If I took that attitude, I'd never play any role playing games.

Especially in this case, when the mechanic has no real bearing on 99% of he rest of the game, and is obviously something easily modifiable, likely even to be addressed in rules modules put out by WotC themselves.

 

[77IM]

Missing the point of 5e

The whole idea behind this next edition is to make it easy for DMs to adjust the rules to suit their group's game play preferences!

If nightly full healing is your group's only complaint, just replace it with something simple (like, you heal 10% of your max HP per day, minimum 1 point).

-- 77IM

 

[Dragoslav]

I suppose I should report this in the WotC survey, but so far, the sum total of our playtest experience is---"Hit Die Mechanic is a Non-Starter. Not terribly enthused about what we've seen so far. Interest in actually buying product in the future is sinking even further."

This is exactly why companies are so reluctant to give public beta tests. Keep in mind that this is the very first playtest packet available to the public, so literally everything is on the chopping block.

I mean this with all sincerity: You guys would probably have a better time just waiting for 5e to come out late next year, rather than going into the playtest with the wrong attitude and becoming disenchanted with the final product.

Here's a way you can turn your experience into productive feedback: 1) Identify what you don't like and why (you've got that part). 2) Articulate an alternative that you would accept. Saying "I won't play a game with this in it" isn't helpful, but adding "... but I WOULD play a game that did THIS instead" is much moreso.

For what it's worth, notice that the rules currently say that you only recover all of your hit points during an extended rest if you have at least 1 hp to start off with. If a character is unconscious (which, by the way the designers define it, is the only time a character has taken a serious hit in combat), then they need additional time to regain 1 hit point (several hours, at least), and THEN can take an extended rest to get back into fighting shape.

 

[Remathilis]

Wow, so your group was so closed minded that one thing killed the whole playtest for you before you even rolled dice?

D&D Next won't be for you. Go play something else.

 

[Alarian]

I'm also not a fan of the free full healing rule and would never use it in my campaign. But for this playtest, I would have at least played the game. If people really didn't like the rule, I would have just removed it for the playtest and then noted it in my feedback to Wotc.