D&D 5E (2014) New Rule of Three is up for 31 Jan. 2014

[tuxgeo]

Link here.

1. Group stealth - built to encourage and reward engaged play
2. Medium armors - incentives for use
3. Reduction of stacking of extra actions - not aimed explicitly at rogues.

Are these examples and explanations persuasive enough? What others might be more appropriate?

 

[Halivar]

TWF is one of those areas where I would like to see optional rules baked in that allow for legacy TWF (two attacks for one, at a penalty), just because it works better for our group and it doesn't seem to bog us down appreciably.

 

[Warbringer]

1. The issue is the mechanic ... The more dice, the higher the chance of failure ... There needs to be a way to offset failures
2. did he answer he question?
3. I like they are trying to control add-on, "bonus" actions" but I'm perturbed that we are seeing such relatively large rules changes this late in the game design

 

[Zaran]

It sounds to me like a character will not be able to dual wield until their class gets an extra action. I do not like this one bit. They need to go into more detail about how different styles work if they are going to drop a bomb like that. There should be some kind of benefit for having an offhand weapon over a shield. They should have the same damage output as a two handed weapon. Whether this utilizes two attack rolls or not doesn't matter so much to me. BUT if I need to use my bonus attack roll for using my often smaller offhand weapon then how balanced is that when someone without the offhand weapon can attack with a bigger weapon twice at the same level?

 

[Lokiare]

1. Group stealth which the current rules makes nearly impossible (4-6 rolls means a really high margin of failure, even if you have high modifiers) is a feature and not a bug, because Ranger spells.

Uh....no...That's not an acceptable answer. lets say each individual character has a 20% chance of failure on the dice (meaning they have extremely high modifiers). Lets say we have the average of 5 characters. This means the chance of one member of the party failing is 1 - (.8 * .8 * .8 * .8 * .8) (multiply together the chances of succeeding at a roll to get the chance of not making it) or 67.232%. So if the entire party has an 80% of success individually, they have a 67.232% chance of being detected anyway as a group. I'm sorry, but it appears the team at WotC didn't run the math, or they have a desire to make the group reliant on magic. Just for fun a party that has members that have 20%, 20%, 20%, 40%, 60% chance of failure would give us 1-(.8 * .8 * .8 *.6 *.4) = 87.712% chance of failure. So if you have even one member that has a low chance you might as well not even try.

2. There are features of medium armor that make it worthwhile.

Sure, especially that near 100% chance of failure of group stealth checks from above. If you have disadvantage on stealth checks that means your party is probably going to fall into that 87% or more chance of failure so no one should take heavy armor, unless you have a Ranger with the right spell, in which case everyone should take heavy armor.

3. Yes, the changes in bonus actions are meant to completely nerf the usefulness of rogues two weapon fighting, we just can't tell you straight up.

What did you think would happen? Someone pointed out a broken combination and they nerfed the system to accommodate it. So now it has the trickle down effect of nerfing everything it comes into contact with. This is what happens when you don't test everything (that is every combination of features, feats, and spells that can come up in the game) that you design. Were you expecting anything less?

 

[Lokiare]

1. The issue is the mechanic ... The more dice, the higher the chance of failure ... There needs to be a way to offset failures

Exactly. We'd have a better chance of stealth if we allowed the character with the lowest modifiers to roll for everyone. That's the sad part. Personally I'd make it where you take the average of the modifiers of the party (add them together then divide by the number of party members) and have someone roll one time for it adding the average. You could justify this by saying the stealthy members help the unstealthy members out by pointing where to move and muffling the items and gear of the unstealthy members.

2. did he answer he question?

Yeah, the question was "is there any reason to wear medium armor" and the answer is "to reduce the near 100% failure rate of moving stealthily as a party to a more reasonable 87%+ chance of failure."

3. I like they are trying to control add-on, "bonus" actions" but I'm perturbed that we are seeing such relatively large rules changes this late in the game design

Exactly. This thing should be at the printers now if they are going to hit their release date...

 

[Halivar]

Exactly. This thing should be at the printers now if they are going to hit their release date...

You mean that nebulous "Summer 2014" that could mean anywhere from March to October? There is no hard date, so I'm not exactly worried about this.

 

[Mistwell]

1. Group stealth which the current rules makes nearly impossible (4-6 rolls means a really high margin of failure, even if you have high modifiers) is a feature and not a bug, because Ranger spells.

What they said was the rules encourage splitting the party, with the stealthy group leading the way. The rest was sort of an, "in the alternative, here are some other things built in to help...".

Exactly. This thing should be at the printers now if they are going to hit their release date...

I know you have a minor in business and so this qualifies you to run the entire company, but I don't recall you expressing expertise in the publishing industry as well. What makes you think they would need to be at the printers now if they are going to hit their release date, and what was that release date again?

 

[Halivar]

What they said was the rules encourage splitting the party, with the stealthy group leading the way. The rest was sort of an, "in the alternative, here are some other things built in to help...".

IOW, how my group has played D&D always​.

No, The Mighty Grishnak in his platemail and five axes strapped to his back does not help scout for the party.

 

[Mistwell]

IOW, how my group has played D&D always​.

No, The Mighty Grishnak in his platemail and five axes strapped to his back does not help scout for the party.

Same here. In out playtest, the rogue is constantly leading the way, well ahead of the group. Then the ranger is between the rogue and the rest of the group, with the fighter, cleric, and mage in the rear. Once the mage gets his familiar, he's going to send the familiar with the rogue.

Of course this, on rare occasion, causes the rogue to get in trouble and needs the ranger to run to back him up...but that's also often some of the funniest parts of the evening.