D&D 5E D&D Next Blog: Beyond Class & Race

[El Mahdi]

Themes and backgrounds, seem more like the 2e idea of a kit.

I don't agree.

Kits allowed one to do things with characters that weren't allowed or didn't even exist in the base rules. Balance wise, it sometimes meant that if one person in the group used a kit, almost all had to use a kit (unless balance wasn't an issue with the group or player). And attempting to balance Kits against eachother was never even attempted in the design process either. It was entirely about flavor or cool mechanics, with no real concern for balance.

This doesn't sound the same at all. It sounds like one will not "have to" use customization to remain balanced or relevent with the rest of the group.

 

[BryonD]

If this goes where it suggests, then I'll really like it.

The way it looks to me is:
100% of the flexibility of 3E with a lot of prebuilt packages to hide that from people who don't want it.

Two possible downsides:
Trade off for the packages ends up being less overall flexibility
and
Simply less design room because of focus (and pure page count) dedicated that pre-builds.

But we will see. I'll certainly put this on the positive stack.

 

[Kaodi]

Wizard (Monk)(Martial Artist) = Z Warrior?

 

[El Mahdi]

Which can be accomplished without punishing people for not using packages.

I agree. I'm on the side of not providing bonuses or penalties for using either type of character building.

 

[WotC_Trevor]

Where does character complexity come into play with all of this?

To me the big benefit of the essentials fighter is ease of play. That means that some of it's class features work differently from the core fighter and open up new mechanical options (eg. Heavy Blade Strike feat). But it's not a power issue. It's a design issue.

Themes as presented in Rob's article don't seem to support ease of play (though they would support ease of character creation).

Does this mean that (sub)classes will be where you determine how complex/simple your character is to run?

It's a good question. I assume that there would be a theme/background selection suggestion for each class that would start the player off on the simpler side of the ease of play spectrum. If the player wants to get more compleximicated, they can mix and match themes and backgrounds or build their own to give them more complicated things to do in game. But that's only one aspect of the whole complexity thing - classes themselves should have some kind of abilities or options inherent to them that could conribute to how easy or complex they play out. And then there's optional rules modules that affect the whole of the game that the DM might use to change how the game plays (at least that's what I get from reading and listening to all the stuff out there).

Yeah, good question, but I don't have the answers. I'll pass it up to the designers and developers and maybe we'll see this in a future D&D Next conversation/article.

 

[Frostmarrow]

I hope the themes are shock full of interesting feats. If a theme has one good feat and two filler feats everybody will micromanage their characters. Not that's anything wrong with that,

I really like the setup so far. I was hoping for race, class and background but here I get theme too. It looks like a snug fit with puzzle pieces from all editions of D&D.

 

[WotC_Trevor]

The question that a couple of you have posed on what should the suggested backgrounds/themes for each class cover is an interesting one. I was running with the idea that the suggested theme and background (or maybe there are a few different suggested combinations based on different player choices or aspects of the game)for each class would be iconic and easy to understand and implement. I wasn't worried about optimization for those except to make sure that those suggestions when implemented still made the character fun and useful in the different game situations.

I don't think I would want a base suggestion like that to have all the best combat maneuvers for example, because some of those combat maneuvers might be more complicated. And what's best is hopefully subjective based on the kind of options available. Or that maybe optimizing for combat was bad because that's not what the player was looking for in a base, out of the box road-map.

So maybe in my perfect world, there are a handful or suggested theme/background suggestions for each class that fit different iconic ideas or different prominent play styles. Maybe some of them speak more to the optimizer type and other speak more to other styles (though to be honest, I'm certain the optimizers will likely mix and match build their own themes and backgrounds most of the time).

I definitely agree with the idea that if you can definitively say "These are the best options for X class" then something's gone wrong. There should be lots of cool, useful options to support different ideas and play styles.

 

[Minigiant]

Wizard (Monk)(Martial Artist) = Z Warrior?

No it's

Human Monk (idiot/thief/bandit/noble background) (magic theme)

 

[GX.Sigma]

at-will spell-like ability

While you're here: Can we please get rid of the term "spell-like abilities" and just call them spells?

3e had this thing where "spell" specifically meant "these hundred-or-so spells in the back of the PHB which are cast in a Vancian style by the PC spellcasting classes," and everything that didn't precisely match that definition had to be called something else, even though mechanically it was otherwise identical to a spell (cast like a spell, affected by anti-magic, etc.).

In D&D Next, though, one of the principles is that there are lots of different forms of magic, and lots of different kinds of spellcasters. So can't we use the term "spell" to encompass all of that?


Edit: On the actual subject of themes and backgrounds, I'm in two minds. On the one hand, I must admit it's disappointing that they'll just be 'suggested character builds,' rather than actually fun or interesting content. Why would I buy a book with new themes if "theme" just means "the 3 or so feats you choose at level 1"? New themes must include new feats, which only exacerbates the problem of too many feats.

On the other hand, build-your-own backgrounds and themes are freaking awesome. Not for any mechanical reason (since, as stated above, it's basically the same as the skill and feat systems), but just because I can take Thievery, Bluff, and Profession:Sailor, and say "my background is Pirate." Or Arcana, Dungeoneering, and Diplomacy, and say "my background is, I am a human magic user who was imprisoned under the earth and had to become friends with the drow in order to not die."

 

[Ahnehnois]

As long as you get 100% flexibility in being able to easily create your own backgrounds/themes, I'm cool with this.