D&D General Dmg previews up

[DarkCrisis]

I hope the bastion system is good. As a DM, and as a player, having campaign immersion options like this that work right of the box is a huge boon.

The "video game" criticism is bizarre to me, since the rest of the game - adventures leveling up, adding equipment numbers, activating abilities, killing things - is a vastly more common video game paradigm than stronghold management. It's adding a niche video game genre on top of a base system that's already a super popular and overly saturated video game genre.

The thing that I really want out of a DMG, and I'm sure I won't get, is a huge section on traps, hazards, and the mechanical knobs to tweak them quickly and easily. I'd like a resource that allows me to slap an exploration challenge together as easily as you can pick monsters out of the MM and just have a fight.

Video games took "leveling up" and a ton of other things from D&D. Modern D&D has in turn taken things from video games.

 

[Greg Benage]

I'm sorry (I assume you're talking about me). I like to talk about D&D and it's relatives (still very much a 5e player) and engage with the community. The new books are what just about everyone is talking about, and many of the topics apply equally well to other 5e games, and other D&D-style games in general. If I ignored everything with a 2024 tag I'd have very few places here in which to engage.

Start your own threads about subjects you are interested in. Engage with the Level Up forum. Your ongoing commentary on the new books is not what I would call "engaging with the community." Whatever is new, you're not interested in it. Whatever is in the book in question, you dislike. Whatever is not in the book, you can't live without. If there's a preview, you're ready with the negative commentary, despite, near as I can tell, having never actually read or watched any of the previews. On and on, every other post in every thread--and that's only a slight exaggeration!

This is not "engagement." I'm not a mod and it's not my place to say what constitutes threadcrapping, but I find it so mind-numbingly tiresome I'm about to block you even though I generally enjoy your discussions on (all) other topics.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Like others, I'd be thrilled if the bastion system were good and useful... But the playtest version was so far from even usable that I'd need a lot more than "we made some changes" or whatever the phrasing they used was. It does not speak well for those changes that we don't even have the types of DDB rules previews we got for weapon masteries and such when they were trying to sell deliberate power creep as a feature.

From the sounds of it, they made major changes, not minor, not sure how much it will resemble the UA version.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Start your own threads about subjects you are interested in. Engage with the Level Up forum. Your ongoing commentary on the new books is not what I would call "engaging with the community." Whatever is new, you're not interested in it. Whatever is in the book in question, you dislike. Whatever is not in the book, you can't live without. If there's a preview, you're ready with the negative commentary, despite, near as I can tell, having never actually read or watched any of the previews. On and on, every other post in every thread--and that's only a slight exaggeration!

This is not "engagement." I'm not a mod and it's not my place to say what constitutes threadcrapping, but I find it so mind-numbingly tiresome I'm about to block you even though I generally enjoy your discussions on (all) other topics.

That sounds like you're telling me to suck it up. Not a very charitable view. I've always been clear about what I like and don't like, but I also don't tell people that disagree with me that I don't want to hear from them. I can try to curb my lack of enthusiasm if it's bothering you that much, but 5.5 is what everyone cares about. You're asking me not to engage with 80% of the discussions, or at least posts, on this forum (made up statistic).

Additionally, there are many threads labeled 2024 that have valid discussion beyond 5.5 specifically, like the half-elf thread. I don't want to miss out on something interesting to talk about because someone smacked a 5.5 tag on it.

 

[Mirrorrorrim]

I want a clean break so the community can move on to 6e (which they inevitably would) and all the 5e talk, much of which remains relevant to my interests as a 5e player, would continue on separately (albeit probably with a smaller base). As it is, every conversation about the 5e system, unless explicitly labeled otherwise) will assume WotC's current version of the 5e ruleset as a baseline, and I find that messy and annoying.

I know there's nothing I can do about it. I understand it's a selfish desire. It's still what I want. Feel free to judge me over it.

Ok. cool.

But that wouldn't be a clean break. The alternative darkest timeline is a flaming dumpster fire of an edition war on ENWorld, where people pissed off at Wizards for abandoning a great ruleset for something new and incompatible. (Do you really refer a 4e-era-style edition war to take over this side of ENWorld just so you can ignore it?)

Any way you slice it, I prefer this timeline.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Ok. cool.

But that wouldn't be a clean break. The alternative darkest timeline is a flaming dumpster fire of an edition war on ENWorld, where people pissed off at Wizards for abandoning a great ruleset for something new and incompatible. (Do you really refer a 4e-era-style edition war to take over this side of ENWorld just so you can ignore it?)

Any way you slice it, I prefer this timeline.

Fair enough. It could certainly be worse. But I expect the 4e fans would rather there be an edition war than that 4e never existed.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

for large N yes, for N <= 3 not so much

Okay...? I'm not sure why tripled dice matter. You don't triple dice for crits.

Pardon, misread the thing. No, it really doesn't make any difference.

The maximum of 1d10+3 is 13. The average roll of 2d10+3 is 14. A difference of one point, or (almost exactly) +7.7%. If we raise that to 4d10+3, the maximum is 43, while the average of 8d10+3 is 47, aka about +9.3%.

The maximum of 1d4+1 is 5. The average of 2d4+1 is 6, or (exactly) +20%. It will of course get bigger if you add more dice, not smaller.

Maximum of 1dN is (always, exactly) one point less than the average of 2dN. Yet it's dramatically faster than rolling, and guarantees you never have the "crit and got snake eyes" problem.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Fair enough. It could certainly be worse. But I expect the 4e fans would rather there be an edition war than that 4e never existed.

While that is true, at least for me...I can't say I'd be happy with either situation.

 

[TravDoc42]

As an aside, I see that, based on the image they show of the Raven Queen's page of the Lore Glossary, there's lore on some Archfey, like Titania the Summer Queen, and the Queen of Air and Darkness!! I'm excited to see that fleshed out!

(Also, hoping that the Queen of Air and Darkness' Pandemonium base is still a thing! If not, I'm definitely adding it in my campaigns!)

 

[Micah Sweet]

As an aside, I see that, based on the image they show of the Raven Queen's page of the Lore Glossary, there's lore on some Archfey, like Titania the Summer Queen, and the Queen of Air and Darkness!! I'm excited to see that fleshed out!

(Also, hoping that the Queen of Air and Darkness' Pandemonium base is still a thing! If not, I'm definitely adding it in my campaigns!)

I do like the Feywild as an addition to the Great Wheel cosmology, if only to have somewhere for the Fey to be and come from.