Errors

[DogBackward]

The Wizard doesn't have too many spells prepared. That section says Spells Known/Prepared. It's listing your spells known, then you can mark off which ones you've prepared instead of having to write them in. It's common practice on paper character sheets. Yes, that makes the Spellbook section in the back a little redundant, but it's not always bad to have things listed down in multiple places.

 

[Andor]

I just finished building the ElfWizard in detail and the math is full of contradictions and errors. So is the fighter, so is the halfling. This is just not good play-test material. It's not ready.

You can cast only 3 spells per day and then you have to use the quarterstaff.
ShockingGrasp damage is listed as 1d8+3 lightning but under the Magical Attacks section it says that you add your intelligence modifier +2 to the attack. That is 1d20+5 not 1d20+6

I'm starting to get very angry because this entire packet looks like it was put together by an intoxicated dwarf in under a week who doesn't play the game. I feel like we're being punked and trolled.

Odd. It's possible that your spell book counts as an implement. That would be good for a +1 to hit. Of course it should also bump up his save numbers, and they don't say anything about that. (Implement rules are on page 28 of the adventure, in the treasure index.)

I thnk Drakhar is right however. The fighter gets a +1 to hit with steel and the wizard gets a +1 to hit with special effects. We are NOT seeing everything that goes into making these sheets. And nor should we, yet. It's still an alpha playtest.

And once out of vancian you are still chock full of magic missiles and shocking grasps. I notice they took out the bit about shocking grasp stacking with (conducting along) metal weapons. And no wonder! If it still did, it would be a no brainer to make a fighter with the magic user theme and to stack an extra 1d8 damage onto all your weapon strikes while screaming "I am Raiden! (Or Haihachi.)"

 

[Andor]

Did we find out where the fighter's +2 extra damage comes from? STR + Weapon Focus = +5, but he's got a +7.

He has an extra 2 damage to his crossbow too. I'm gonna guess it's a bennie from the Slayer Theme. Or maybe just "It's a playtest."

 

[jadrax]

He has an extra 2 damage to his crossbow too. I'm gonna guess it's a bennie from the Slayer Theme. Or maybe just "It's a playtest."

According to some of the earlier play testers:

All weapons give a +2 proficiency bonus to hit.

Fighters get a basic class feature that gives them +1 to hit and +2 to damage that stacks with everything.

This is in addition to the +2 Damage ability on the sheet, which presumably can be swapped for other Fighter Class features.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Anyone who is trying to reverse engineer the character sheets are testing the wrong parts of the game.

They said quite specifically they are testing how the game itself currently plays. That's it. They could give you a single character sheet with no fluff and nothing but numbers and tell you to use it five times and that wouldn't matter. Because it ain't the characters you should be worrying about. It's the math of the game mechanics.

 

[jadrax]

Anyone who is trying to reverse engineer the character sheets are testing the wrong parts of the game.

I pretty much agree. Although as soon as your character loots one of the Magic Weapons they put in the game as treasure, you do kind of need to back work through the math to work out how you use it.

The problem is, currently there is less rules than the play test scenario actually requires to be run.

 

[DogBackward]

Anyone who is trying to reverse engineer the character sheets are testing the wrong parts of the game.

They said quite specifically they are testing how the game itself currently plays. That's it. They could give you a single character sheet with no fluff and nothing but numbers and tell you to use it five times and that wouldn't matter. Because it ain't the characters you should be worrying about. It's the math of the game mechanics.

Yeah, like they didn't know this was going to happen. We're gamers. We are, by nature, tinkerers. We get a new system, and of course we're going to tear it apart to see how it works. That's how we work.

 

[Andor]

Because it ain't the characters you should be worrying about. It's the math of the game mechanics.

Really? Because my playtest packet said this round is about feel. Which does not derive from math, it is merely influenced by it. D&D is about characters, so your post seems nonsensical to me. In fact doubly so as how can we test the math of game mechanics if we don't understand what lies behind it? Tell ya what, you go test what you think best, I'll go test what I think best and we'll both give our feedback. Which will be washed out in a stream of tens of thousands of other playtesters, so don't get your shorts in too tight a twist.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Yeah, like they didn't know this was going to happen. We're gamers. We are, by nature, tinkerers. We get a new system, and of course we're going to tear it apart to see how it works. That's how we work.

True. But the way they work is to pretty much ignore any playtest reports that do nothing but rant about how the character sheet has greataxes at 2d6, while the How To Play lists them as 1d12. Because it doesn't sound as though that's the kind of feedback they give two figs about right now. So getting worked up about it is pointless. Playtest the game... don't playtest the editing.

 

[I'm A Banana]

They said quite specifically they are testing how the game itself currently plays. That's it.

Part of how the game actually plays is that if the fighter picks up a sword and swaps in a shield for some reason, we don't know how to calculate his new attack and damage bonuses.