D&D 5E Game jargon causing unwanted consequences

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

But it does mean you can get from directly in front of a fighter to directly behind him, and attack the wizard with impunity. To be safe, the wizard has to be a minimum of 15 feet away from the fighter, which doesn't really make sense.

In 4e, the wizard pretty much had to be right behind the fighter, so the fighter could counterattack anyone hitting them. Different rules, different tactics. That wouldn't bother me too much.

But now imagine if that game also had somewhere a rule saying that "Long" ranged spells require "Focus", then somewhere else that while Focused you have Disadvantage to attacks... it's not so nice to have such chain of rules lead back to your "Long" spell having disadvantage on the attack roll (if the spell has one) when the spell description could have said so directly.

I've got a better idea of what you mean now. I'm not too familiar with D&DN now (too many revisions since I playtested) but I don't think that amount of "excessive jargon" has come up.

I would rather (in that example) the spell mention when you get advantage and when you get disadvantage directly... but of course, advantage is a piece of jargon

 

[Sunseeker]

Does it make sense that a raging barbarian can think straight enough to ready an action?

I think it depends entirely on our conception of barbarians and rage.

If a barbarian is little more than a brainless brute in concept, how do we reconcile the high int-score barbarian? If a rage is so powerful as to overcome ALL rationality, regardless of int score, wisdom or anything else, how does a raging barbarian tell friend from foe? Is rage one-size fits all? No different types of rage?

If a barbarian is anything else, then we could consider the reasoning behind this, because right now it seems like an obnoxiously complex rules technicality. Well you're raging so you can't take a reaction, but since readying an action uses your reaction, you can't ready an action. Why not simply state that: "While raging, a barbarian cannot ready actions."? It seems needlessly convoluted. I honestly don't see the reasoning behind being unable to take reactions as a barbarian, I would think that while raging, you would both be more focused, and be more easily annoyed by someone running by you. In my conception, rage is more of a heightened physical and battle stance. Yeah you're not gonna use it to win any chess matches, but you're going to react faster, hit harder and so on. I don't like the conception of a "rage" turning the barbarian into a mindless bloodthirsty beast...because again, how then do we reconcile the high int/wis barbarian?

 

[Li Shenron]

I've got a better idea of what you mean now. I'm not too familiar with D&DN now (too many revisions since I playtested) but I don't think that amount of "excessive jargon" has come up.

Yes I agree with this, so far it's not excessive, I just hope it stays this way

 

[pemerton]

Does it make sense that a raging barbarian can think straight enough to ready an action?

That seems like very much a feature rather than a bug to me. It's exactly the sort of restriction I would expect from being enraged.

Sounds fine to me.
The limiting factor on barbarian rage is being able to attack someone every turn.

Just wanted to chime in here that I prefer Jester Canuck's take on this particular issue. That is, when they're deciding how a barbarian's rage interacts with action economy rules like "readying" and "reactions", I want them to approach the issue from the point of view of the action economy first, rather than from the in-fiction point of view "does it make sense for a raging barbarian to ready an action"?

Of course, if that approach leads to absurdities like the barbarian only being able to strike every second round, then the whole thing needs to be revisited (eg tone back the benefits of raging so being more generous with the action economy won't break the game). But approaching all these issues "fiction first" rather than mechanics first is what helps cause problems like some of the imbalance in the classic wizard spells.

 

[Plaguescarred]

I agree they must be vigilant when using or referencing game jargon and i think they are doing a good job so far. I also like how the jargon is very close to natural language and how it all blends well togheter making game talk more fluent and easy to grasp overall.

Players must also make the effort of remembering that same named game elements may differ from previous editions in how they work or come into play. An Opportunity Attack doesn't trigger nearly as easily than it used to be for exemple.

 

[Weather Report]

One thing I noticed is that the language for opportunity attacks specifically mentions the trigger being "a hostile creature that you can see moves out of your reach". That means that a creature can literally dance around opponents at-will without triggering an opportunity attack. Not sure if intended.

Absolutely intended, you can circle your opponent, just fine, but once you take off, thwack.

 

[Weather Report]

Here's something I caught in the latest packet:

- they changed the mechanics of "Ready an Action" so that instead of changing your initiative, your triggered action uses your reaction

Sounds good, however, you only have one 1 reaction per round, so if you have already used your reaction, you cannot ready an action.

Your Reaction refreshes at the beginning of your turn, so what's the problem?

 

[Li Shenron]

Your Reaction refreshes at the beginning of your turn, so what's the problem?

No problem with that. Rather it is unclear if you cannot take reactions at all after readying and while waiting for the trigger, or (my guess) you can take that reaction but then lose the readied action.

 

[Weather Report]

No problem with that. Rather it is unclear if you cannot take reactions at all after readying and while waiting for the trigger, or (my guess) you can take that reaction but then lose the readied action.

If you take the Readied Action/Reaction, you cannot take another Reaction until the beginning of your next turn.

If you take a a Reaction before your Readied Action, you blew your Readied Action (distracted yourself from being ready).

 

[billd91]

The group fights. The cleric says he'll turn undead.

3.x: The table groans. The cleric player needs to look up how to Turn Undead in the PH. He asks the DM how many Hit Dice they have. The DM hems and haws, because he's not sure he wants to give out that number. Meanwhile the cleric says he'll just roll, but he doesn't know how many d20s and d6s he's supposed to roll, so he starts fumbling with the dice...

What's so hard about 3e turning compared PF's channeling? On the character sheet, you just need to write

Turn undead: x times/day, turning check d20+y, damage 2d6+z.

The DM, in turn, looks up the Turning Undead table based on the cleric's turning check and compares the damage done to the number of undead adn their hit dice. And aside from that table lookup, I never understood why people whine about turning being confusing in 3e.