Has anyone broken down Races and Classes?

[TerraDave]

Pink, thanks!

Do you want to put the stuff in from the sheets (or I guess paraprhase or summarize), for completeness?

 

[Mengu]

Dwarves might get a HD bump, which is how they explained the d12 hit points for the fighter, instead of d10. But the dwarf cleric of Moradin has HD d8, so there is no consistency there.

The fighter has a mysterious +2 damage, aside from weapon focus. Maybe he gets +Con to damage. Maybe that's an unattributed slayer theme feature. Maybe it's a dwarf thing, and was missed for the cleric of Moradin. Who knows...

I don't think dwarves get +1 AC, unless they missed it for the fighter, which is possible. The fighter is wearing chain, and is sitting at AC 15, which is the listed amount. The cleric of Moradin has the +1 AC, which might again be an unattributed feature of the Guardian theme.

The elf wizard's +1 to hit might be coming from the magic user theme, and not from elf.

The halfing rogue's damage dice bump may be coming from the lurker theme. Or they could both be halfling features. Or one could be a halfling feature, one could be a rogue feature or lurker feature in any combination.

It's difficult to reverse engineer at this point because the character sheets have mistakes, and we simply don't have sufficient data. We probably have the most data about the dwarf and the cleric, since we have two of each to look at. And even finding consistencies there, seems to be challenging. Too many variables, not enough equations.

 

[Redbadge]

I'm pretty sure that each Theme is giving something besides the listed feat. The guardian theme seems to automatically give shield proficiency, for example. Also, each background seems to give some amount of equipment.

 

[Gianni_the_Mystic]

These are helpful, thanks for summarizing!

Has anyone tried to "remix" any of the existing pregen characters? In my upcoming playtest, I will probably have five players. If any of the PCs dies, it would be nice to have a new PC to bring in, as opposed to just resurrecting the same character sheet under a different name.

 

[PinkRose]

Gianni, that was the reason I started this thread.
We've playtested level 1 and level 3 last weekend, so we wanted to do something a bit different this weekend.
So, I'm working on splitting the races and classes and backgrounds and themes.
What I've noticed so far, if you want a really different feel for a character, SWAP THEMES.

A Fighter is a fighter, but the difference between a slayer fighter and a lurker fighter is a Big difference, especially from an RP perspective.
A Wizard with Herbalism comes across as a hermit, hedge-wizard type and plays different from the Magic-User wizard.

And it's really easy to swap 2 feats per character around.
Try it.

 

[Abstruse]

I tried cracking this nut a few days ago to engineer a human rogue (one of my players always plays rogues but hates playing halflings due to a bad experience of the group constantly lifting him up by his feet and shaking him to make sure he's not hiding treasure from them even though he never once gave any indication either in character or out that he was doing so), but I didn't get near this far. I did want to point out some things that might help, though.

Races and Classes give attribute bonuses, typically +1 each. This looks to be fixed by subrace for the races, but not sure if it's variable for classes (like getting +1 Dex for a duelist or archer build rather than +1 Str)

Races also give various bonuses to specific weapons and attack types, but I'm not sure if it's tied to the race or the subrace.

Themes give feats and bonuses to attack/damage/etc. I'm betting the Slayer theme is what gives the fighter the extra +2 damage. I also agree with Mengu that the +1 to hit for magic attacks for the wizard is more likely the magic user theme than the race.

Backgrounds seem to be giving skills, but I wouldn't bet the farm on it giving equipment just yet.

Really, we just don't have enough information at this point to tell what bonuses are causing what until we either get more pregens to dissect or someone from WotC spills the beans.

 

[Steely_Dan]

Do certain characters/monsters gain Str modifier +1/2 Str modifier to damage when wielding a two-handed weapons (ala 3rd Ed)?

 

[PinkRose]

Yes, I think so.
I might have to wait until we have one more round of characters so we can compare.
But I think it's pretty close.

 

[Campbell]

Do certain characters/monsters gain Str modifier +1/2 Str modifier to damage when wielding a two-handed weapons (ala 3rd Ed)?

Doesn't look like it. The fighter does 2d6+7 damage with his greataxe, which is weapon damage + Ability Mod + 4.

Brian: Can you explain where the extra +2 damage for the fighter comes from (beyond Weapon Focus)? Will we get an explanation of the racial benefits to damage and hit dice soon so we can understand what to do as characters change equipment?

Jeremy Crawford: The fighter's bonus comes from the class's advancement table. It's a class feature. As for the racial benefits, there will more explanation when we release the information on building your own character.