D&D 5E D&D Podcast 3/20/2013

[GX.Sigma]

http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4pod/20130320

Highlights:

• Martial Damage Dice (and Martial Damage Bonus) are no more; damage scales based on your weapon damage die
  • Reasons cited: complexity, unhappiness with TWF, irrelevance of weapon damage, "popping orcs like blood sausages"
• Rodney correctly pronounces "blackguard," Mike chuckles
• Favored Enemy: They want to remove the "too strong against [x], too weak against everything else" problem; emphasize the roleplaying hook
  • Dragon slayer: immune to fear
  • Humanoid slayer: good at fighting mobs of guys ("the Drizzt option")
• Design insight: They're not making narrower abilities more powerful; they're balancing as though you're always using them
  • Just because you're the best at fighting the dragon, that doesn't mean fighting the dragon is easy.
• Mike puts Rodney on the spot about building your own Favored Enemy. His response: "Ask again later."
• This leads to a discussion about enabling DMs to create character options for their campaign. Mike considers it a core feature of D&D for DMs.
• Mike's Chaotic Neutral character likes to instigate things, turn invisible.
• Fighter: You don't have to spend damage dice to get cool stuff; expertise dice are a separate bucket of toys.
• Rogue: You can be tricky when you want to be; you can choose to be the damage-dealing machine when you get the drop on someone
• The DMG is going to look the most different from previous editions, service the "tinker aspect."

 

[RangerWickett]

Thanks for the shortened version. I'm intrigued.

 

[Bow_Seat]

I must tell someone else that they are awesome before I can tell you that you are awesome

 

[dd.stevenson]

Awesome; thanks!

I like literally every single thing mentioned.

 

[Connorsrpg]

All sounds interesting. thanks for summarising.

 

[Li Shenron]

[*]Fighter: You don't have to spend damage dice to get cool stuff; expertise dice are a separate bucket of toys.

Sounds good for the expert player, but what happened to the "those who want a simple Fighter can just focus on using MDD for Deadly Strike" concept?

 

[Zardnaar]

Basic stuff seems to be going out the window.

 

[Falling Icicle]

Sounds good for the expert player, but what happened to the "those who want a simple Fighter can just focus on using MDD for Deadly Strike" concept?

The way I understand it, MDD and expertise dice are separate. MDD are automatic, while expertise dice are limited. They don't want you to have to trade damage for maneuvers anymore. Expertise dice are an extra bonus and a limited resource, so you won't be using those all the time.

 

[Iosue]

Since Martial Damage Dice are gone, but Expertise Dice remain, I surmise the Basic Fighter will have his pre-selected maneuvers (or perhaps no maneuvers), and will be able to use his Expertise Dice for extra damage. Other extra stuff he can do with the Dice will be either limited, or only in the Standard game. Basically, a return to what the Expertise Dice were originally meant to be.

 

[Li Shenron]

The way I understand it, MDD and expertise dice are separate. MDD are automatic, while expertise dice are limited. They don't want you to have to trade damage for maneuvers anymore. Expertise dice are an extra bonus and a limited resource, so you won't be using those all the time.

Yes, this is how it sounds to me too.

As usual, when designers "silo" something into 2 separate things because someone doesn't like having to trade-off, the downside is... that you cannot trade-off anymore! Now you have to use MDD for one thing and ED for another, also keeping track of 2 things instead of one.

It's an impossible design loop to solve. There is always someone complaining about "it's not fair I have to use my cleric spells for healing! make healing separate!", and then someone else complaining about "my character concept does not include healing! you must give me something else instead!".

I favor trade-offs usually. I also favor simplicity, because there is always room to complicate things later, but to simplify later is more difficult. As a rule of thumb, I would try to have each class have the same (small) number of mechanical choices during combat, e.g. Wizard has spells, Cleric has spells and channeling, Fighter has MDD and ED, Rogue has tricks. Not that different, but if I had to choose, I'd remove the channeling mechanic and keep the previous single MDD mechanic, so that everyone have basically 1 thing to worry about.

EDIT: uhm... now I re-read the OP, and I am confused. How can these two sentence fit together?

1) Martial Damage Dice (and Martial Damage Bonus) are no more

2) Fighter: You don't have to spend damage dice to get cool stuff; expertise dice are a separate bucket of toys.

So now it sounds to me like there aren't really two separate mechanics, a round-based MDD and an encounter-based ED, but still only one? Maybe it's just best to wait until the playtest package tonight