D&D 5E Starter Set Character Sheet Revealed!

[VengerSatanis]

Except that's not how it works with most game maters... you may be an exception, but most are not...

you look at everything a fighter can do in 1e, and you see.. well.. attacking.. they later included rules for disarming in unearthed arcana.. but there is not much on your character sheet...

you get a "by the book" GM and you quickly have a "why bother" scenario.

My current GM is one of those GMs..... I'm playing a Cleric/Magic-User because of the way he GMs.... the fighters just roll their attacks and deal damage... now I have seen the players attempt what you outline above; but it never ends well.. Ex, the Drow Fighter didn't want to kill two attackers so he wanted to slash at their hands and ask them to yield... GM had him roll damage after which the GM informed him that he rolled to high on damage and killed them both...

Now I always load 2 speak with dead spells.... always...

Some GMs (you, for example) seem to encourage out of the box thinking and hand out bonus... heck when I run even even hand wave and grant "instant success/kills" when acts are well thought out or damn cool (foe example: sneaking up behind a guard, roll a successful attack without Advantage.. I''l just say you dropped them.. no need to roll damage)

but that's not the vast majority of GMs.. sadly

Maybe I am one of the exceptions to the rule. If that's the case, then that is sad.

5e should have been old school rules for helping the DM do those kinds of things with a few modern things thrown in like ascending AC, advantage, Warlord, Tiefling, and maybe some skills. Well, in my view.

VS

 

[jodyjohnson]

Ex, the Drow Fighter didn't want to kill two attackers so he wanted to slash at their hands and ask them to yield... GM had him roll damage after which the GM informed him that he rolled to high on damage and killed them both...

I had this happen in Cyberpunk with my overly strong Solo. I accidently broke someone's neck by rolling well on an attempt to subdue.

Classic Gotcha DMing.

 

[VengerSatanis]

Alternately, the players and DM can act logically and have a gentleman's agreement that loopholes and edge cases are run in the way that is best for the story.

Sure. They can. But why engineer the game in such a way that a gentleman's agreement is necessary?

VS

 

[VengerSatanis]

You sure can, can't you. Great contribution.

Ok, you're going to single me out without bothering to mention the other guy's smug nonsense? Fine. Ignore my other posts in this thread, too. Why not.

VS

 

[Phaezen]

Sure. They can. But why engineer the game in such a way that a gentleman's agreement is necessary?

VS

I don't think you will find any game where the rules are tight enough to avoid all loopholes and edge cases. Besides, it is human nature to look for and manufacture them.

 

[jbear]

Can't speak for anyone else, but the reason I'm ignoring it is that it doesn't address my problem. In fact, it is the direct cause of my problem. Which is:

If I rest for 2 hours*, and nothing happens, I get to heal 1d10 hit points.
If I rest for 2 hours, and halfway through that time a goblin attacks me, I get to heal 2d10 hit points.

A 2-hour rest that gets interrupted halfway through is twice as restful as one in which nothing happens. This is absurd and makes no sense.

[SIZE=-2]*Or 10 minutes, or whatever "twice the length of a short rest" is.[/SIZE]

A two hour rest would not be interrupted half way through; the party would have successfully rested for an hour. Abilities restored. There is no point resting any longer because the length of the short rest is not an hour. It is an hour or more. So why would you sit around for any longer? You wouldn't, you move on.

So no, you can't just ignore this because it DOES address the problem raised by many people and is being roundly ignored when it ends MUCH of their arguments. Multiple short rests = not possible. Full stop.

If the rest has come to an end then the fighter can use his ability again. If he gets through the next fight unscathed all power to him ... he is on fire. Adrenaline from his slaughtering frenzing restoring his ability to push on through his/her fatigue and ignore the minor wounds suffered.

But what are the chances of getting through a battle unscathed? Don't know haven't played personally. But I doubt that this will happen regularly enough to warrant an issue. Like I said again, seems like much ado about nothing.

And in any case, I don't know how other people run their games, but certainly in my games players do not just get to rest in the middle of an adventure willy nilly for an hour. Something like that is not easy, it has to be earned... so these abilities are not like encounter powers from where I am standing.

 

[Blueace]

I'm super annoyed at what seems to be the Human racial stat modifiers, +1 to everything. Is no one as upset about this as me? Argh!!!

Why not +2 to one score? Even +1 to two of your choice. Something. Else.

+1 to every score seems crazy (though I get not necessarily unbalancing).

Back on that. Don't be annoyed, it's not so sure.

We know that final scores are 16, 15, 14, 13, 11, 9.

If it was +1 to all, it means that original is : 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8. That is 27 points. Not the basic 30 points nobody said they will change. So it doesn't match.

Now, imagine the following :
Original is 15, 14, 13, 13, 11, 9. That is 30 points. So far so good.
Than add +1 to only 3 abilities, the highest of course. You got : 16, 15, 14, 13, 11, 9. It matchs perfectly.

And I guess that giving +1 to 3 instead of 6 abilites is a good hit according to the different point of view on this forum regarding humain abilities bonus.

What do you think ?

 

[Dausuul]

So no, you can't just ignore this because it DOES address the problem raised by many people and is being roundly ignored when it ends MUCH of their arguments. Multiple short rests = not possible. Full stop.

If the party rests for two hours uneventfully: They get one short rest. The fighter gets to Second Wind once.

If the party rests for two hours, but there's a fight in the middle: They get two short rests. The fighter gets to Second Wind twice.

The same rest period (not short rest, the game term, but rest period, the in-world concept of the party sitting and relaxing for two hours) provides more benefit if it's interrupted. This is a silly rule. Full stop.

Fortunately, we have no confirmation yet that there is such a rule. I'm hoping that, as Cybit said, we will instead have a cap on number of short rests per day, which makes a lot more sense all around.

 

[Cybit]

Maybe I am one of the exceptions to the rule. If that's the case, then that is sad.

5e should have been old school rules for helping the DM do those kinds of things with a few modern things thrown in like ascending AC, advantage, Warlord, Tiefling, and maybe some skills. Well, in my view.

VS

I think the good news is that post DMG, you'll be able to have that game.

I think the bad news is that won't be the "base" game, because the "base" game is something that is much less pushed as the "right way" compared to previous editions. That's part of the modularity that they've been trying to push, that, hey, rather than us (WotC) trying to dictate what playstyle is best, we're going to create options that allow people to customize the game to those playstyles by full ruleset or even by individual characters, and we're going to explain what those tradeoffs are, and educate people.

For those who are new to the genre, WOTC has picked elements of all editions of D&D and sort of combined them into what WOTC believes is a good newbie system, and hopefully these new players will get into the system, and then they'll start figuring out what they like, and then move forward. Personally, even as an experienced D&D player, I really like (overall) their more "base" system than I did PF/4E, but that's just me. (Still play PFS about once a week, maybe twice, but rocking 3 weekly 5E groups)

Part of WotC's strategy has to take into account what brand new players are going to want in a game; rather than those of us who already play the game. In the Anecdata realm, two of the three groups I play with have new to D&D players; one being a group of kids, the other being fellow coworkers. They really seem to like the blend of editions (although none of them know it is a blend of editions) approach. The kids also like being able to play as the Predator and as a Titan from Titanfall along side their friends who are rocking more traditional classes.

But in doing so, that "catch-all" game is going to have elements from all editions; so there are going to be things we really like and things we dislike.

Just my two cents.

 

[jbear]

Pretty much exactly what I'd expect a rules-lawyer to say! I've rarely heard any rules-lawyer-y argument that didn't involve an appeal to "but it's just what the rules say!" (i.e. "reading-and-understanding").

The idea that such a power can only be used in "combat" seems real sketchy, frankly. Very 4E-esque, some might say, even.



A group can - it's just likely to be violently different from that of another groups, because that's some vague stuff. I mean, you wouldn't even be arguing this if there was a question about it, so let's not pretend that everyone agrees.

This is all very rules-lawyer-y stuff - by your logic, it'd be fine to rest for an hour, go argue with a friendly NPC for a few minutes and try to convince him of something requiring a check, then rest for another hour, and that'd be two short rests, but if you just rested for the same period of time, it'd be one.

Oy vey.

Yes you need better definition on this than that, if you are going to balance around it. It'd be much easier to just balance around an assumption that every hour resting counted as a "short rest".

You are very dismissive of other people when their argument clearly leaves your own without a valid leg to stand on, something I find highly irritating.

If you tried to pull nonsense like that at my table in an attempt to abuse the rules you would find that it would back fire in your face on a regular basis.

Player: Ok, after we are done resting we leave the dungeon to talk to Jimmy ... the ... umm ... the Keeper of Library ... to ... uh ... to ask him about the stones ... in ... the dungeon. Then we rest again. Then we go to the market to have err... Tim the swordsmith take a look at the knives we took off the goblins. Then we rest again. Oh and during each rest my fighter will use second wind.

DM (option 1): Ok, as you enter the library you find that Jimmy is not actually there, which is strange because, as you know the old fellow practically lives in that Library. The library seems oddly silent... even for a library. When you look around for the section of books dedicated to stones you round a corner and bump straight into a gaunt looking man wearing dark robes, who is staring straight into space. He doesn't seem to react to your presence. What do you do?

Translation: Turn the banal attempt at extracting more undeserved short rests into new and interesting (possibly dangerous) events that sends the adventure in new and unexpected directions.

DM (option 2): Ok, upon your return to the dungeon many hours after you have left to talk shop with Tim and get Jimmy's expert opinion on the stones used to construct it, something seems to have changed at the etrance of the cave. Where it was clear before long sharp sticks with jagged thorns dripping with some dark substance now criss cross the entrance, jammed into the ground and the side walls, bound together with rope to form a rather nasty looking barricade. You have no idea what lies in the darkness beyond ... but you doubt that this barricade got here by itself.

Translation: When you leave a part of the world to try and get more undeserved short rests the world doesn't stop and simply wait for you to get back. Pressing on and clearing a dungeon (for example) has an advantage: the dangers within do not have time to properly organise themselves against you. If you leave for 5 hours ... then they do and they will. So when you return things are much harder and more dangerous than before because now they are ready for you.

DM (Option 3): Err... no you don't. In that time you talk to both Jimmy and Tim. They give you the information that you need. When you are ready to return to the dungeon your short rest ends and your abilities that require a short rest are available once again. If you left the dungeoun to try and get more rests and free healing, next time don't bother. That is not going to work. Do you have and issue with that?

Player (option 1): Yes ... blah blah blah...
DM: Then you can leave.

Player (option 2): No that's fine.
DM: Great, then let's continue.

Translation: DM rules rule. Fullstop.

Oh and reading the rules and applying them is not rules lawyer-y. Don't be so dismissive and rude.
Going all hyperbolic over rules-issues and supposed flaws in a game not yet released from readings of a character sheet ... I wonder what we could define someone as who did that?

Oh wait ... let's not, that might be rude.