D&D 5E L&L: New Packet Hits This Wednesday

[GX.Sigma]

The Paladin "oath" feature looks like a sneaky way to do alignment restrictions. One could imagine an "oath of valor" and an "oath of freedom," and let the players/DMs decide whether that restricts you to a specific alignment, and how much that should affect the character's roleplaying.

N.B.: the Mines of Madness adventure will be added to the playtest packet just after PAX.

 

[Li Shenron]

Druid: I'm glad that they're giving wild shape at level 1. I'm also glad that they're getting specific forms instead of being told to look through the monster manual and recalculate your entire character.

I don't have a strong opinion on the first, but the second (specific forms) is a really good idea for at least two reasons:

- it is so much simpler to play a druid that knows ONE form, and then later get more, than to have access to plenty of forms, which anyway will most of the time mean that a clever player figures out the best combat form at every level, and maybe use a couple more for specific abilities

- it helps making different druids different: for my tastes, character variations within the same class is one of my most-wanted features from a RPG. If all druids have access to all forms, all druids are the same. I wish they would recognize the same problem in clerical spells... Wizards don't have this problem because the choose which spells to learn from a gigantic list.

Interesting concept for the Druid with the choice of a circle so you can focus on spells or wildshape

We've done this before and it's a great idea. In some campaigns it might be desirable to have all druids belong to the same "society", in which case you can refluff those circles to represent simply different specialization (or you can allow only one default circle). But this is both a great setting-shaping tool and character-differentiating to have, just like we have something similar in other classes.

 

[FireLance]

The idea of paladins drawing power from oaths pleases me. That might be the fourth thing I like about 5e, after expertise dice, hit dice, and the sorcerer characteristic of gaining constant benefits as they expend daily spell points.

Then again, if the design team changes its collective minds about expertise dice and hit dice, maybe it's going to be a case of one step forward, two steps back?

 

[Wednesday Boy]

I'm a bit leery of extra attacks, but as long as they keep them in check (say, no more than 3 attacks by level 20) and don't have any kind of confusing iterative attack and full attack action nonsense, it could work.

Ditto. One of my biggest complains in 3.x was how the full-attack action stagnated combats.

I like what he said about two-weapon wielders being as good as two-hander and sword-and-board users by default. But if they're including feats to make you better with two-weapon style (which they should), they should also be sure to include feats to make the other styles better as well.

And some feats for using a single weapon (and nothing in the other hand) wouldn't go amiss, too.

Excellent suggestions.

 

[avin]

I can deal with an encounter ability for Fighters, as long is something related do effort/exhaustion but, please Wotc, stay away from "Daily powers" for martial characters.

Overall this pack sounds interesting.

 

[Blackwarder]

Ranger: I love that favored enemy gives benefits that are broadly useful, so you no longer have to hope that a specific creature type will be in the adventure. I'm not fond of the spellcasting, however. I think spells should be optional. I also am not happy that TWF and Archery are being removed from the class. I hope this doesn't mean that my ranger can never use things like Rapid Shot without multiclassing as a Fighter! I think it would be better if they let you choose between a fighting style and spells.

IMO, the best TWF and Archer should be the fighter, and divorcing fighting styles from the ranger is the best way to go, that way I could play Aragorn without gimping my character...

As for spell casting rangers, as long as the ranger list is short and exclusive for the ranger I don't have much problems with it, I I again that rangers spell lists and Druids spells lists will have a lot of overlap.

Warder

 

[Kinak]

Let's see...
Druid - I like the specified forms and the choice of circles. Hound seems a bit weird, but it sounds like they're moving in a good direction here.

Paladin - I like how they split out alignments. It sounds like have a solution to the problems bringing your mount along that they failed to mention. Another promising class.

Ranger - This is exactly what I don't want for a ranger. Our group has always gone straight for spell-less rangers and the pseudo-favored-enemy thing sits wrong with me. I'd prefer something more along the lines of Quarry if we're going to represent that.

Math - Less player damage is good. Also thank goodness for getting rid of martial damage dice.

Fighter - Switching back to expertise dice is a good step. I'm not a big fan of adding them to attack or AC. Resting a round to restore one die also seems pretty useless, but at least we're heading back towards what worked.

Races - Simpler is better.

Exploration Rules - Actually including them is good

Overall, things sound mixed, but there's enough meat there to make it worth exploring and seeing what's up. Looking forward to seeing them Wednesday.

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[Falling Icicle]

IMO, the best TWF and Archer should be the fighter, and divorcing fighting styles from the ranger is the best way to go, that way I could play Aragorn without gimping my character...

Getting your fighting style with feats could work. I'm only worried because they weren't exactly generous with feats in the previous packets and some of the feats that were available to everyone in 3.x were turned into fighter-only maneuvers. Fighters should be the best at such things, I agree, but I shouldn't have to play a fighter to play an expert archer, either. That, and not everyone is going to use feats, since they're optional.

As for spell casting rangers, as long as the ranger list is short and exclusive for the ranger I don't have much problems with it, I I again that rangers spell lists and Druids spells lists will have a lot of overlap.

Just to be clear, I'm not opposed to some Rangers having spells. I just want the option to exchange them for something else, as I don't see them as something that every Ranger must have.

 

[Li Shenron]

Ditto. One of my biggest complains in 3.x was how the full-attack action stagnated combats.

I think the problem there was rather with the cumulative -5, not so much because of the calculation but because after the second attack it became really unlikely to score unless on a natural 20. I dont really think this will happen again in 5e! If there are multiple attacks in 5e they most probably will all be equal, and that will make them much much more acceptable. Personally I am a lot in favor of this, since I like the idea that Fighters (and maybe it's best if it's only Fighters) can try to drop multiple enemies in the same round. If someone finds this too time-consuming, it is also always still possible to focus all attacks on the same foe and maybe even roll all the multiple d20s at once.

IMO, the best TWF and Archer should be the fighter, and divorcing fighting styles from the ranger is the best way to go, that way I could play Aragorn without gimping my character...

As for spell casting rangers, as long as the ranger list is short and exclusive for the ranger I don't have much problems with it

I agree with both. I really think it's best for a Ranger class to have something special and unique, otherwise I'd rather have no Ranger class at all. To downgrade the Ranger to a mere scout or wilderness archer for my tastes is a huge turn off... you can have that concept covered with a Fighter that takes archery-oriented feats and/or maneuvers and wilderness-based skills and/or feats.

IMO trying to design Ranger-only archery or 2WF abilities tend to dry out the pool of similar options available to everybody else. While this in principle could be true also for spells, that other design pool is much bigger, so there is no significant problem in choosing to design Ranger-only spells, and that actually would make the Ranger class even more interesting.

However I acknowledge that there are a lot of people who really want non-spellcasting Rangers, and in some campaign settings they are really out-of-place, so WotC should keep a door open for this option.

 

[Wednesday Boy]

I think the problem there was rather with the cumulative -5, not so much because of the calculation but because after the second attack it became really unlikely to score unless on a natural 20. I dont really think this will happen again in 5e! If there are multiple attacks in 5e they most probably will all be equal, and that will make them much much more acceptable. Personally I am a lot in favor of this, since I like the idea that Fighters (and maybe it's best if it's only Fighters) can try to drop multiple enemies in the same round. If someone finds this too time-consuming, it is also always still possible to focus all attacks on the same foe and maybe even roll all the multiple d20s at once.

The multiple rolls did slow down combat too much but the stagnation that I disliked was caused by the five foot step. Our 3.x combats would reach a point where there was next to no maneuvering. The PCs and NPCs with multiple attacks would take the first round or two to get in place and from then on they would park and full-attack. It made combats very boring to me.