D&D 5E Considering the D&D Next Playtest in Light of the WotC Seminars

[FitzTheRuke]

There's a big range between "Level 1 is dangerous if you're risky" and "A PC will die randomly from a single unfortunate roll".

I presume DDN uses the vast space in between.

 

[kiltedyaksman]

Magic-user at-wills give me a big rubbery one. Those would get house-ruled out.

 

[Blastin]

Great initial write up. As someone else mentioned, you had a very different experience than I did in either of the two playtests that I was in.
One note to clarify something in your write up: The half orc was a fighter and the cleric was a dwarf.
Edit to add: also, to address the comments someone had about first level character death: We had the half-orc fighter die to one attack series from a hobgoblin "boss". Fighter went from full hp to dead. No one felt it was a cheap death. As a matter of fact, we all thought it was pretty awesome as the fighter's player had just described how his character had spit in the hobgoblin's face!

 

[Connorsrpg]

Well, sorry for having a wrong opinion, but I do want a systme where a 1st level PC can be killed with a crit. In fact, higher level PCs too.

These have been some of the most memorable times of our games. Especially when one died killing the goblin leader as he critted said goblin leader simultaneously. Then, some crit fumbles...but I wouldn't dare go into those here.

I want my PC to fully realise the consequences of fighting the enemy. Dragons, heck, lizardmen should be fearsome foes. Going in expecting every fight to be balanced and knowing you will win (barring a run of bad luck) is not the game for our group. In my mind (which is clearly wrong Cadfan), this style limits the other 2 pillars. If it is easier to fight and the odds are clearly on your side, why explore for an advantage? Why bother talking to these guys?

Anyway, back to 1st level PCs. I am all for toning them down. The numbers do not have to be that high. Then you wont have to have 27hp level 1 kobolds to compensate. Yeah, I know about minions, and basically 'minionised' every kobold I used in the end, b/c to 'us' (in our wrong game) it did not 'feel' right for a fighter to thwack sid kobold for 20hp! (at first level) and then I tell him, "The kobold is hurt, but still stands".

Seems we have had too much fun with our badly-designed, wrong games.

What was this thread about again? Oh, yeah, the playtest report. Thanks for that - I found it quite informative.

 

[Cadfan]

If it is easier to fight and the odds are clearly on your side, why explore for an advantage?

You're setting up a false dichotomy between a game where critical hits kill fully healthy PCs and a game where all combats are clearly going to be victories for the PCs. There's space in between in a well designed game. Space where bad decisions kill PCs, instead of pure, unavoidable, bad luck.

If the game is designed so that it is presumed that you will occasionally enter combat, then single critical hit deaths for fully healthy PCs mean that your PC can die even when you have made no mistakes. That's bad design. And the quote I included illustrates it.

You're presuming, in the material I quoted, that the PCs can meaningfully affect the odds by doing things like exploring, negotiating, planning, etc. But unless they completely stop the enemy from making attack rolls, they can't actually eliminate the chance of a random crit death for a fully healthy PC. At best they can slightly mitigate it.

What actually happens in a system with random crit deaths for fully healthy PCs is that, instead of exploring and planning being things you do to improve your chances at combat, exploring and planning become things you do to AVOID combat. Combat becomes a punishment for having failed in the exploring/planning/negotiating stage.

And that's poor design in a game that presumes combat will happen with some regularity, and which gives PCs all kinds of abilities to do interesting things in battle.

 

[Fanaelialae]

I think that if the fighter is being one-shot by the boss (from full), something in the hp/damage math needs to be tweaked. Over the span of levels, a fighter is going to have to get in the face of numerous bosses, to the effect that if instant death is possible then it becomes probable.

I don't really care for the idea of punishing the fighter (with death) for properly doing his job (getting in the boss' face). Especially if the fighter did everything right.

Additionally, if the boss can one shot a fighter this way, what can he do to the rogue or wizard? It isn't unreasonable to assume that those other classes aren't as tough as the fighter (at the very least this has been true throughout the history of D&D), so if the fighter can be one shot by an attack series, that suggests that it might be possible anyone else to be one shot by an average blow. Meaning that the fighter needs to remain standing or the battle suddenly becomes one or two PCs dying every round, but if the fighter can be taken out by bad luck, this can become inevitable...

In all fairness though, there's a lot I don't know about this scenario. How many times did the boss crit during his attack series? Was the boss significantly higher level than the PCs? Are 1st level PCs intended to be more prone to random death than 3rd level PCs (meaning that those of us who prefer to forgo this play style could just start at 3rd level)?

Nonetheless, one of the traditionally toughest classes being one-shot by a boss says to me that the math could use a little more work. It doesn't seem unreasonable to me that on a lucky round the boss should be able to bring the fighter from full to critical or even unconsciousness, but full to death seems like overkill to me.

 

[Alaxk Knight of Galt]

You're setting up a false dichotomy between a game where critical hits kill fully healthy PCs and a game where all combats are clearly going to be victories for the PCs. There's space in between in a well designed game. Space where bad decisions kill PCs, instead of pure, unavoidable, bad luck.

If the game is designed so that it is presumed that you will occasionally enter combat, then single critical hit deaths for fully healthy PCs mean that your PC can die even when you have made no mistakes. That's bad design. And the quote I included illustrates it.

You're presuming, in the material I quoted, that the PCs can meaningfully affect the odds by doing things like exploring, negotiating, planning, etc. But unless they completely stop the enemy from making attack rolls, they can't actually eliminate the chance of a random crit death for a fully healthy PC. At best they can slightly mitigate it.

What actually happens in a system with random crit deaths for fully healthy PCs is that, instead of exploring and planning being things you do to improve your chances at combat, exploring and planning become things you do to AVOID combat. Combat becomes a punishment for having failed in the exploring/planning/negotiating stage.

And that's poor design in a game that presumes combat will happen with some regularity, and which gives PCs all kinds of abilities to do interesting things in battle.

You repeatedly say "bad/poor design" when what you really mean is "not what I enjoy." Lethality level is a preference.

 

[Cadfan]

Nope, its poor design. There's ways to objectively quantify what is or is not poor design. And its not even difficult.

Step 1: Write up the goals of the game's design.
Step 2: Analyze whether those goals are being achieved.

If your goals are deep characters that exist across a lengthy campaign with many levels and many hours of play, and if your goals are that characters will engage in combat a fair amount over the course of those many hours of play, AND if your goals are to avoid frequent resurrection, then rules that arbitrarily kill properly played characters are badly designed rules.

If you want rules that arbitrarily kill properly played characters, then you need to pick something out of that list to give up.

 

[Hassassin]

Nope, its poor design. There's ways to objectively quantify what is or is not poor design. And its not even difficult.

Step 1: Write up the goals of the game's design.
Step 2: Analyze whether those goals are being achieved.

What you list below aren't the goals of the game's design, but those of individual campaigns. The game isn't poorly designed just because it doesn't achieve the goals of every group of RPG players out there.

If your goals are deep characters that exist across a lengthy campaign with many levels and many hours of play, and if your goals are that characters will engage in combat a fair amount over the course of those many hours of play, AND if your goals are to avoid frequent resurrection, then rules that arbitrarily kill properly played characters are badly designed rules.

If you want rules that arbitrarily kill properly played characters, then you need to pick something out of that list to give up.

 

[JonWake]

I think that if the fighter is being one-shot by the boss (from full), something in the hp/damage math needs to be tweaked. Over the span of levels, a fighter is going to have to get in the face of numerous bosses, to the effect that if instant death is possible then it becomes probable.

I don't really care for the idea of punishing the fighter (with death) for properly doing his job (getting in the boss' face). Especially if the fighter did everything right.

Point the First: Hit Points scale faster than damage does. Especially for a fighter. By 3rd or 4th level, a nasty crit can hurt, but likely won't kill you. This is a feature, not a bug.

Point the Second: To paraphrase Patton, the goal of combat is not to get hit for your team, its to make the other poor sucker get hit for his.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Personally, I expect to see "DCs" for commonly attempted tasks. So a shoddy door might be an automatic success with Str 10, while a solid oak door is only automatic with Str 16 (or whatever). If they give us an assortment of good guidelines, we can have the best of both worlds. DMs have a bit of guidance when setting "DCs", which offers a reasonable basis of expectations regardless of whose table you sit at. Simultaneously, because they can't possibly cover every scenario, DMs will still be able to exercise their own discretion in determining those "DCs" (such as for a solid oak door of shoddy design).

Yes. Last year in the L&L series, did we not get, more than once, and from both Mike and Monte, that part of the art of game design and something that would be central moving foward, is finding when to provide relatively firm rulings, versus when to leave it up to judgment? That implies a range. Or did I just dream all that?

 

[Consonant Dude]

As for the rest of what's being discussed... if a first level character with full hit points can die from a single critical hit, that will be a deal breaker. I'm basically just treading water until I see that officially confirmed (one playtester confirmed it, but I'm hopeful that the designers aren't fools). If you design a game that (1) encourages deeply investing in characters with personality and back story, and (2) you make that game so that characters, played properly, will engage in combat with some regularity, and (3) you make that game so that dead characters can't be easily resurrected... then if you make it so that totally random events during inevitable gameplay moments can kill off a fully healthy character who was played without mistakes, you've designed a bad game. End. Of. Debate. If people like this sort of thing, their opinions are wrong.

Eeewww... what a weird and drastic way to see things. If having other preferences than yours is wrong as you claim, then maybe I don't want to be right after all.

If you're into such nonsense as "deeply investing" into a starting 1st level characters and "not dying unless you make a mistake", whatever that means, maybe you shouldn't play first level characters in an adventure game where chance is part of the mechanics.

Start campaigns at 3rd and play a diplomat, stay in town and hire bodyguards.

Or even better: play Nobilis.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

You guys haven't even touched the main reason why "smacked dead at 1st level is likely, but you'll grow out of it if you live," is a bad idea as a base:

The people that don't like that style don't want to play that way, but they can always start at 3rd or 5th or whatever. It's annoying, but not a huge problem. OTOH, some people want that style to last a heck of a lot longer than 3rd or 5th. You don't want to cut out 75%+ of the game for them. Sure, if you are hitting 10th or 15th or whatever and then escaping the lethalness, that is the same deal as with the other crowd skipping the early levels to avoid it early. But now we are just quibbling on scaling so that both groups can be equally "meh" in the middle levels.

Ideally, "lethalness" would be something that you deliberately pick, and would apply more or less equally at any level, unless you consciously choose to change it. Sure, in those settings, include a few that make sense, and produce the old standby of "1000 dog meat farm boys and girls can produce a few demi-gods." However, don't make that the base and expect anyone else to be happy.

Edit: Surely my group is not the only one that enjoys switching lethalness around between campaigns, instead of having it enforced upon us by progression in power?

 

[Fanaelialae]

Point the First: Hit Points scale faster than damage does. Especially for a fighter. By 3rd or 4th level, a nasty crit can hurt, but likely won't kill you. This is a feature, not a bug.

Isn't that an assumption, or do you know something that I don't? Because for all I know, every class and monster gain +1 hp and +1 damage every level after first (not that I think that likely).

I mentioned further down in the post you quoted that there were a number of things I didn't know which would factor into this discussion, such as whether 1st level characters are notably more prone to death than 3rd level characters.

As to whether it is a feature or a bug, that depends largely on personal preference. If my DM insists we start at level 1 (let's assume this is high lethality), but I prefer characters with deep backstories that I spend a week developing, then random instant character death is most certainly a bug, and not a feature.

Point the Second: To paraphrase Patton, the goal of combat is not to get hit for your team, its to make the other poor sucker get hit for his.

That works a lot better in real life than in D&D. Unless you're suggesting that melee combat go the way of the dodo, this is much easier to say than to actually implement.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

If you're into such nonsense as "deeply investing" into a starting 1st level characters and "not dying unless you make a mistake"...

Wouldn't it count as a "mistake" to fight the monster that's tough enough to kill you with one shot?

In other words, if you're that worried about it, play a coward. It's not the game designer's fault if it's possible to have a monster kill you with a crit. It's yours for choosing to fight it (or your DM's for throwing it at you if he knows you're the kind of player who will allow it to ruin your fun.)

It's very likely the playtest example was a monster that obviously posed a strong threat - and therefore getting killed by it has to count as a "mistake" by the player, assuming the player didn't find it fun to risk the possibility of death (personally, I'd have more fun that way, myself).

 

[samursus]

My 2 cp:

First of all, I get that there are many different things that players of D&D want from their D&D.

The whole point of DDN seems to be to try and hit a sweet spot where as many of these varied desires can be realized in one ruleset as possible.

This why I agree with Cadfan that having a system with one-hit kills doesn't make sense. The objection (in my case) is not that 1st level characters should "not die unless you make a mistake" so much as you shouldn't die in a part of the game that is assumed to be a large part of play, from 1 roll of the dice... and not even your own roll.

Really, D&D is assumed to be a persistent game, with characters possibly reaching level 20 or higher.

Like any game, I think most Players like to believe they have very good chance to "win"... in this case... play their character with their friends on many adventures. I don't think death is an issue for most, but unavoidable random death of a character at full health is poor design, for the baseline D&D game.

Remember that most MMORPGS are based off of D&D; and they attracts HUGE player bases, and as much, one can assume that the successful design elements in those GAMES reflect what a majority want. Unless you wander outside the sandbox elements you are NEVER one-shotted. You can die easily if you make bad decisions... or over an extended battle...

I know D&D isn't an MMO, and the players are not necessarily the same group, but I think a certain amount of gamer preference can be ported over. Yes, some prefer a lethal game, but I honestly feel that they are a small minority, and therefore their preferences should not be the baseline.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Despite previous statements, I'm not terribly bothered by relatively high lethalness in a convention game, using a set of prototype rules. I'd expect that outcome more than not. The rules aren't finished, and you've only got so much time to make people sweat? Sounds like a recipe for character death to me.

 

[Fanaelialae]

You guys haven't even touched the main reason why "smacked dead at 1st level is likely, but you'll grow out of it if you live," is a bad idea as a base:

The people that don't like that style don't want to play that way, but they can always start at 3rd or 5th or whatever. It's annoying, but not a huge problem. OTOH, some people want that style to last a heck of a lot longer than 3rd or 5th. You don't want to cut out 75%+ of the game for them. Sure, if you are hitting 10th or 15th or whatever and then escaping the lethalness, that is the same deal as with the other crowd skipping the early levels to avoid it early. But now we are just quibbling on scaling so that both groups can be equally "meh" in the middle levels.

Ideally, "lethalness" would be something that you deliberately pick, and would apply more or less equally at any level, unless you consciously choose to change it. Sure, in those settings, include a few that make sense, and produce the old standby of "1000 dog meat farm boys and girls can produce a few demi-gods." However, don't make that the base and expect anyone else to be happy.

Edit: Surely my group is not the only one that enjoys switching lethalness around between campaigns, instead of having it enforced upon us by progression in power?

I think it's tricky. Different groups want different curves of lethality (while others prefer linear lethality) and it will be difficult to cater to the variety of preferences.

I do agree that being able to pick your lethality, and how it changes, would be ideal. Linear progressions shouldn't even be too difficult to accomplish in this respect. PCs get X hp if high lethality, 2X if moderate, and 3X if low.

Making it curve, on the other hand, would be a little tricky. Lets assume that 10 hp + 1/level is high lethality, while 20 hp + 2/level is moderate lethality. If you want PCs to start in a high lethality campaign but shift to moderate lethality by level 5, you can't just change them to +2 hp/level at level 5. You'd have to grant +5 hp/level for levels 2-5, and +2 hp thereafter. It's a bit inelegant, because you change how many hp you gain. While it's certainly feasible, but I don't know... it seems to me as though it may be too clunky to actually implement (outside a house rule).

Starting with a curve and offering rules to make that linear seems like it would be no less inelegant.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Making it curve, on the other hand, would be a little tricky. Lets assume that 10 hp + 1/level is high lethality, while 20 hp + 2/level is moderate lethality. If you want PCs to start in a high lethality campaign but shift to moderate lethality by level 5, you can't just change them to +2 hp/level at level 5. You'd have to grant +5 hp/level for levels 2-5, and +2 hp thereafter. It's a bit inelegant, because you change how many hp you gain. While it's certainly feasible, but I don't know... it seems to me as though it may be too clunky to actually implement (outside a house rule).

Well, it isn't easy as pie, but I don't think it is as bad as all that. For one thing, you can do it in more ways than merely changing the hit point/expected damage ratio directly:

RC weapon mastery style, a bit of a genre emulation method - throw in some parries and other such active defenses that are practically non-existent at low levels, but get better as you go.

Indie metagaming - those "fate" points start at zero but go up steadily as you level.

Magic will do it, kind of a mid to high fantasy trope - provide a few extra spell options at higher levels that can really cut out the danger for a time.

The old standby, magic items - get more generous with damage mitigation items.

Naturally, all of those can also be set on a more steady scale, whether you want a lot of lethalness or not.

The more consistent lethalness is in the base, the easier it is to make all those flexible. Maybe some people want "moderate lethal" at a given point, then you get the right spells to hold it off, and when you run out of those spells on a particular high level adventure, you are just as much at risk as you were at 1st level.

 

[Consonant Dude]

You guys haven't even touched the main reason why "smacked dead at 1st level is likely, but you'll grow out of it if you live," is a bad idea as a base:

The people that don't like that style don't want to play that way, but they can always start at 3rd or 5th or whatever. It's annoying, but not a huge problem. OTOH, some people want that style to last a heck of a lot longer than 3rd or 5th. You don't want to cut out 75%+ of the game for them. Sure, if you are hitting 10th or 15th or whatever and then escaping the lethalness, that is the same deal as with the other crowd skipping the early levels to avoid it early. But now we are just quibbling on scaling so that both groups can be equally "meh" in the middle levels.

Ideally, "lethalness" would be something that you deliberately pick, and would apply more or less equally at any level, unless you consciously choose to change it. Sure, in those settings, include a few that make sense, and produce the old standby of "1000 dog meat farm boys and girls can produce a few demi-gods." However, don't make that the base and expect anyone else to be happy.

Edit: Surely my group is not the only one that enjoys switching lethalness around between campaigns, instead of having it enforced upon us by progression in power?

I dunno. Lethality is a matter of many factors. It's not just about character level and mechanics but what a DM throws at players and how they react. Some players will jump headfirst in the worse danger no matter what edition.

A "lethality dial" is hard to devise. I think FATE points could work but nobody seems to care for them around here. I think past 3rd level, most editions of DnD are past dumb deaths but if I don't scale opposition appropriately or my players insist on charging a bunch of hill giants, there's not much I can do.

I would like to see 1st level as "baseline average person" (0=level is inelegant at best). 2nd level as above average. Starting at 3rd level, you're a fledgling hero and should be above unheroic deaths. Doesn't sound too drastic, IMO.