D&D (2024) First playtest thread! One D&D Character Origins.

[GMforPowergamers]

I mean, we sat at the table with 3E and 3.5 books intermixed and didn't notice when I was in the primary target audience of the game in College.

okay, but do you understand that isn't the common story... not here, not at cons, not at stores, and definitely not with organized play... unless you mean you had the 3e book plus errata it to the 3.5 book.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I mean, we sat at the table with 3E and 3.5 books intermixed and didn't notice when I was in the primary target audience of the game in College.

I think unless the feedback on changes is harshly negative (which I doubt, as even here in grogland it's broadly positive with some concerns), we'll be looking at much larger changes than 3.5, overall, particularly in that I suspect more classes and subclasses will be tweaked/changed than 3.5, and they'll be changed more than most classes were in 3.5.

So I think the situation will be a bit different. It'll be more like the 1E/2E situation. In 2E you could pretty much just run 1E classes/races (like those in Oriental Adventures), with close to no work, but you did notice, and sometimes it did create issues, and they were only compatible with themselves. But because D&D uses this exception-based model that kind of doesn't matter unless you try do something like apply a 2E Kit to a 1E class. So like, I don't think we can necessarily expect a 1D&D Monk subclass to be possible to apply to a 5E Monk, or vice-versa, but a 5E Monk can probably play alongside a 1D&D Monk and whilst being somewhat different will likely be at a similar level of power (just as all 5E characters sort of cluster where if the strongest is 10/10 power, the weakest is like 6.8/10 power - so the 1D&D Monk might be 8.5 to the 7.0 of the 5E Monk, but that's still totally playable).

 

[HammerMan]

Exactly. So, we can easily support the idea that the population of dwarves or elves typically have some usual stats, without having every single individual follow that pattern.

100%

 

[Parmandur]

okay, but do you understand that isn't the common story... not here, not at cons, not at stores, and definitely not with organized play... unless you mean you had the 3e book plus errata it to the 3.5 book.

Convention and store play isn't normative, only a fraction of players interact with that. Loose goosey mixing is the norm from what I can see.

 

[Bill Zebub]

It seems completely inadequate for showing the difference in strength between a typical offensive lineman and typical jockey.

That's the paradox in the arguments for why fixed racial ASIs are so necessary. It amounts to "Goliaths are way stronger than Halflings, and that should be represented by a +1 on d20." You'd have to give them +10 strength for it to even begin to address the realism argument.

A colorful racial ability goes so much farther in portraying the strength of a Goliath than does an ASI.

 

[Parmandur]

I think unless the feedback on changes is harshly negative (which I doubt, as even here in grogland it's broadly positive with some concerns), we'll be looking at much larger changes than 3.5, overall, particularly in that I suspect more classes and subclasses will be tweaked/changed than 3.5, and they'll be changed more than most classes were in 3.5.

So I think the situation will be a bit different. It'll be more like the 1E/2E situation. In 2E you could pretty much just run 1E classes/races (like those in Oriental Adventures), with close to no work, but you did notice, and sometimes it did create issues, and they were only compatible with themselves. But because D&D uses this exception-based model that kind of doesn't matter unless you try do something like apply a 2E Kit to a 1E class.

Except this time they are designing to facilitate that mixing on purpose, which I'm not sure they did with 2E (though maybe theybdid?).

 

[Bill Zebub]

Proportion damage increase (damage increase / old average): R(N-R)/N(N+1)

And replace the R with 1 and you get...(N-1)/(N^2+N)

But in general I dislike "helpful formulas". We teach those in school, and test memorization of them, and people think that's how you're "supposed" to solve things, and wind up unable to solve anything for which they haven't memorized (or have forgotten) the formula.

 

[Micah Sweet]

That's the paradox in the arguments for why fixed racial ASIs are so necessary. It amounts to "Goliaths are way stronger than Halflings, and that should be represented by a +1 on d20." You'd have to give them +10 strength for it to even begin to address the realism argument.

A colorful racial ability goes so much farther in portraying the strength of a Goliath than does an ASI.

Sure, but what's colorful about Powerful Build?

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

Except this time they are designing to facilitate that mixing on purpose, which I'm not sure they did with 2E (though maybe theybdid?).

At least they are claiming to do so. Time will tell if they pull it off.

 

[TwoSix]

I think unless the feedback on changes is harshly negative (which I doubt, as even here in grogland it's broadly positive with some concerns), we'll be looking at much larger changes than 3.5, overall, particularly in that I suspect more classes and subclasses will be tweaked/changed than 3.5, and they'll be changed more than most classes were in 3.5.

So I think the situation will be a bit different. It'll be more like the 1E/2E situation. In 2E you could pretty much just run 1E classes/races (like those in Oriental Adventures), with close to no work, but you did notice, and sometimes it did create issues, and they were only compatible with themselves. But because D&D uses this exception-based model that kind of doesn't matter unless you try do something like apply a 2E Kit to a 1E class.

Personally, I think spells are going to be where a lot of the pain points might arise when you start to run pre and post revision material together at a table. Making an early judgment from feats, they're going to be quite willing to have the same named object (whether that be a feat name or a spell name) use very different rules. And what makes spells distinct is that they aren't personal to the character, they have an in-fiction existence that's shared among all the characters, and the NPCs as well.

So DMs are going to have to say "Ok, we're only going to use the revised version of the spells at this table, but we'll still use the old versions of spells X, Y, and Z because I like those versions better." It's not a case where the guy happily playing his half-elf wizard from 2014 can just use the spells from his 2014 book without causing some ripples at the table.