D&D (2024) Bard Playtest discussion

[Yaarel]

You can't get a broken arm, or any other debilitating injury, in 5e without an optional rule.

I know. It is humorous that broken bones dont exist in D&D.

Still if there would be a doable (interesting, flexible, adaptable, balanced) way to implement a wound system, it would appeal to me. I am less interested in "rolling on a Wounds table". But if there are basic parameters (like Exhaustion), that the DM can easily interpret on a case by case basis, based on the circumstance and damage that caused the 0 hit points, it might work well.

 

[Yaarel]

Vitality And Wound Points :: d20srd.org

tl;dr: you have wound points equal to your Constitution score, the rest of your health pool is vitality, which represents your ability to not get hit.

When you take damage, it comes off vitality first, only dipping into wounds if you run out... Unless it's a critical hit, in which case it does no additional damage but comes straight off your wounds.

At 0 wounds, you fall unconscious and start dying.

I like that system. Except. It only works well, if it is impossible to deal damage to Constitution unless the vitality is zero. The shortcuts are what make the system work less well. To have "vitality" means the ability to avoid a deadly injury.

So, a critical hit might eat up lots of the vitality, but the Constitution would remain unscathed unless vitality ran out.

 

[Haplo781]

I like that system. Except. It only works well, if it is impossible to deal damage to Constitution unless the vitality is zero. The shortcuts are what make the system work less well. To have "vitality" means the ability to avoid a deadly injury.

So, a critical hit might eat up lots of the vitality, but the Constitution would remain unscathed unless vitality ran out.

You don't take Constitution damage. You take damage to your wound points, which are equal to your Constitution score.

 

[Yaarel]

You don't take Constitution damage. You take damage to your wound points, which are equal to your Constitution score.

I did mean damage to the points from Consitution.

It was odd to refer to "vitality" and "wounds". I wasnt exactly sure the terminology.

I would have expected two positives, like "vitality" and "robustness", or two negatives like "fatigue" and "wounds". Mismatch made me uncertain.

 

[Yaarel]

One thing I already do now is. If the character makes death saves, it leaves a PERMANENT scar of some kind. (The player can choose how to describe it, based on the nature of the damage dealt at zero.)

Only a high level spell, like Heal or Regeneration, can remove the mark! Heh, any wackamole activity leaves a mark.

 

[Remathilis]

The Dirge Singer agrees with you.

I can easily see subclasses giving access to an additional school of magic as a feature.

 

[Remathilis]

Vitality And Wound Points :: d20srd.org

tl;dr: you have wound points equal to your Constitution score, the rest of your health pool is vitality, which represents your ability to not get hit.

When you take damage, it comes off vitality first, only dipping into wounds if you run out... Unless it's a critical hit, in which case it does no additional damage but comes straight off your wounds.

At 0 wounds, you fall unconscious and start dying.

I always liked that system.

It worked fine on paper, but combat after 5th level basically amounted to crit-fishing. Especially in Star Wars, where combat often was a race to see who crits first.

 

[Haplo781]

It worked fine on paper, but combat after 5th level basically amounted to crit-fishing. Especially in Star Wars, where combat often was a race to see who crits first.

Yeah it wasn't super well developed but I like the concept.

 

[Mistwell]

So you think the Lore bard should have access to all three lists of spells, while other bards only get access to two?

Yes. And they should get it earlier than the core ability.

Because Lore Bards are still getting additional magical secrets, it is just that EVERY bard is getting additional magical secrets.

As for why you might use the Lore Bard, does rolling every single use of bardic inspiration, bardic healing, and cutting words with advantage not sound like a pretty good ability? It is hard to say if that is "lore-based" or not, because that depends on how it is flavored, but it is a pretty decent ability to have.

It is a fine ability which doesn't say "Lore" to me at all.

 

[Yaarel]

It is a fine ability which doesn't say "Lore" to me at all.

Despite the MAD-ness,

I want to see certain Bard concepts and certain Druid concepts benefit meaningfully from Intelligence.

For the Lore Bard, they are literary, in a sense bookish, even if primarily memorizing oral traditions. They are likely to know verses from a song or poem that relate to History and other topics. They are likely to compose such verses themselves.

For the Druid, I have a notion of a kind of Druid that is protoscientific, relating to the convoluted potion-making in Celtic traditions. In D&D contexts, a Druid can make an excellent alchemist. Reallife alchemy traditions include healing and medical applications, even immortality. The themes of the D&D Druid can represent the Celtic potion-brewing, Hellenist substances (earth, water, air, fire, and ether) and Daoist motions (metal, water, tree, fire, and soil). This kind of Druid needs to be more comfortable with metal (including Islamic alchemy of metallurgy) for weapons and armor, as well as the famous Euro lead-to-gold formulas. But metal is an aspect of earth magic anyway. Alchemy is a ur-form where scientific chemistry and dreamlike symbolism havent diverged yet. The flavor of Intelligence makes sense here too.

Maybe the Bard and Druid can at least use Charisma and Wisdom intuitively for certain kinds of Intelligence knowledge checks, like History and Nature?