D&D 5E June 17 Legend & Lore - Playtesting Dragons

[Chris_Nightwing]

I am so sorry that my standard for "legendary creature" is a bit more than 4d6 damage and heal 20hp a round which sits passively sits in its lair waiting for the PCs to slay it.
Motivation? Its a start but basically just says that it is the biggest challenge in the area and the lair is hardly a big exploration point with just a 10 mile effect of bad water and darker skies.

This entire entry describes the dragon as passive, entirely focussed on its lair and surrounding area with. The lair actions makes sitting passively in its lair waiting for the PCs even more attractive.
The dragon has no ability to actively influence except providing a nuisance for the PCs through regional effects. Anything else is claw/claw/bite. No skills, no utility spells or rituals etc.
Besides, without DR the dragon is still archer fodder for every mid sized city and upwards. If thats specific for black dragons, fine. But when this is the example of how WotC sees the role of monsters, well, its another reason not to buy 5E.

A little bit of DR or non-lair healing might be nice - but I think it's quite scary against a town. It can fly 150ft in, breathe acid everywhere, then immediately fly 75ft at the start of the first archer's turn, and another 75ft at the start of the next until range penalties (do they still exist?) become problematic - not to mention that those archers will mostly be screaming and running for their lives.

 

[delericho]

Honestly, I never saw a problem with 4e's approach to elites and solos. Some of the specific examples probably needed work, but the concepts were fine. And it certainly feels more appropriate that the end boss of an adventure be tagged 'solo', meaning "this guy fights the entire party himself", rather then having to twist the in-game fiction to make that same end boss somehow "legendary".

Give it 5 Fate Points that can be used to pass saves, or negate an attack, providing resistance against both casters and warriors.

A few years back, one of the "Design & Development" columns talked about how it sucks to see your PC's cool power be negated. That's why 4e removed the percentage miss chance from concealment, and the confirmation roll for critical hits, and other similar effects. (Sadly, I can't now find the article - I forget whether they called those rolls 'gotchas', or 'spoilers' or something else.)

That column was pretty much right - that does suck. And it sucks especially if you have horrendous luck with dice (as I have), and consequently only very rarely actually manage to land a blow. To see your one and only good attack in the entire session be casually negated by the DM's dragon just because... yeah, that can be unpleasant.

I think I might prefer an "imperfect defence" mechanic - give the creature 5 fate points (or whatever), that can turn any attack into a glancing blow - automatically reducing the damage down to a minimum. As an added bonus, if 5e retains the "crits do max damage" rule from 4e, that means that a critical hit cannot be affected by a fate point (because no dice are rolled)... and that's a good thing too, because crits are rare and should be worthwhile.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Why is it necessary that he do this?

I don't see anyone giving an edition attribution to each and every mechanic in Next; in fact I see almost no edition attribution for anything...whether inspired by, derived from, or "uses the lessons learned from..." any edition, whether OD&D through 4E.

So why is it that you require this of him when it's something from 4E? And why have you not asked for the same type of attribution for things from other editions?

Because Mearls doesn't carp and criticise other editions in that post. If he were to say "This is what we are doing" he'd be fine. If he were to say "Here's what 4e did well and what it did badly, let's build on that" he'd be fine. But to just grumble about 4e (when he personally was in charge of the first thing to break the rule he indicated) and to claim things about the action economy and solos that just aren't so for late 4e monsters (even the 4e dragons break the action economy at least as hard as that thing - and the beholder practically ignores it) is unjustified carping. And he is the one singling out 4e - were he to have mentioned previous editions all in critical terms I wouldn't have this problem. He was the one that chose to single out 4e for criticism.

Okay, I'm guessing a lot of folks are commenting without actually reading the stat block? It's clearly spelled out. You can't use the same legendary action consecutively.

Um...

LEGENDARY ACTIONS
The dragon gains four legendary actions at the end of each of its turns. It can use these actions at any time between then and the start of its next turn, when any unused legendary actions are lost.
The dragon can use the actions in the following ways, each of which expends a number of the actions:

I've rechecked and don't see where it's spelled out.

 

[Sage Genesis]

I've rechecked and don't see where it's spelled out.

You can use the same action multiple times, it's just the lair-heal that is limited to once per round. All others can be used multiple times per round, even consecutively if you want.

 

[Jack99]

I am so sorry that my standard for "legendary creature" is a bit more than 4d6 damage and heal 20hp a round which sits passively sits in its lair waiting for the PCs to slay it.
Motivation? Its a start but basically just says that it is the biggest challenge in the area and the lair is hardly a big exploration point with just a 10 mile effect of bad water and darker skies.

This entire entry describes the dragon as passive, entirely focussed on its lair and surrounding area with. The lair actions makes sitting passively in its lair waiting for the PCs even more attractive.
The dragon has no ability to actively influence except providing a nuisance for the PCs through regional effects. Anything else is claw/claw/bite. No skills, no utility spells or rituals etc.
Besides, without DR the dragon is still archer fodder for every mid sized city and upwards. If thats specific for black dragons, fine. But when this is the example of how WotC sees the role of monsters, well, its another reason not to buy 5E.

Actually, my comment didn't mean to imply that I disagree with you regarding the 5e dragon, merely that you seem to have some extremely precise idea when it comes to D&D dragons, and you never seem quite happy with what WotC comes up with. Which is totally okay of course, to each his own, but you seem so determined that anything but your vision is stupid and silly. Of course, I might have misunderstood your gazillion posts on the (very touchy) subject. It's a bit like discussing devils and demons with Shemeska - Unless you agree with him, it's fairly pointless (although very educating).

 

[Warbringer]

LEGENDARY LAIR ACTIONS
While in its lair and submerged in water, the dragon gains additional ways to use its legendary actions.
1 action—Regain 20 hit points. The dragon can use this ability only once per round, up to five times per day.
1 action—Regain the use of Acid Breath.

 

[El Mahdi]

deleted

 

[Blackwarder]

The man worked on 4E. As well as "carping and criticizing" 4E, he's basically "carping and criticizing" his own mistakes. Yet you keep choosing to take it as some personal slight (something which Morrus and the Mods have explicitly said not to do), and twisting everything he says (spinning) into accusations of being anti-4E.

You've been barraging the man with mentions following or preceding incessant statements of complaint or accusation (rather than legitimate questions that you're trying to bring to his attention). Doing so to any other poster on ENWorld, or making the accusations and assumptions (i.e.: mind reading) that you do concerning Mearls, would be considered harrasment and clearly against the rules of ENWorld.

So why do you feel it's okay for you to do this to Mearls?

He's as much of a poster here as anyone else, and even if you don't consider him an equal poster, he's still a person that deserves the same consideration and courtesy as anyone else. Not to mention you're poisoning the well for anyone who legitimately does want to get Mearls or any other WotC representative to come here and engage.

I know that if I was being bombarded with mentions and accusations like what you've leveled at Mearls, there's no way in hell I'd ever show up here. It's a lose-lose; an attempt at trying to prove a negative (proving that he's not anti-4E or anti-Warlord, or anti-anything else...)

Would you please just leave the man alone. What you're doing is very uncool.

QFT
10char

Warder

 

[Warbringer]

[MENTION=697]mearls[/MENTION] bashing/venerating aside

The more I've thought about this the more i've been thinking "Why 4" legendary actions. Is this 1 extra action per "balanced party of 4", or is it possible that non-legendary, but important story arc NPCs may have 1 or 2?

If so, cool, though I can be this being an issue for some

 

[Derren]

Actually, my comment didn't mean to imply that I disagree with you regarding the 5e dragon, merely that you seem to have some extremely precise idea when it comes to D&D dragons, and you never seem quite happy with what WotC comes up with. Which is totally okay of course, to each his own, but you seem so determined that anything but your vision is stupid and silly. Of course, I might have misunderstood your gazillion posts on the (very touchy) subject. It's a bit like discussing devils and demons with Shemeska - Unless you agree with him, it's fairly pointless (although very educating).

The problem here is more with the execution of the "Legendary" trait. That its a dragon as example is a coincidence.
WotCs idea of what defines a legendary creature shows to me that, again, its all about combat. A creature is legendary because it moves outside its turn?

This dragon has no ability to affect the outside besides combat, not even skills. Its writeup suggests that it exists purely to combat the PCs. The regional effects go into the right direction but I hardly call it a step. A small shuffle at most because it is a giant rule0 with no explanation how this happens and the effects are minor at best.
The small section about the personality also isn't much when you compare the writeup of dragons in previous editions, but that is a dragon thing.

You can of course say that for a playtest they limit the examples to the relevant information and you might be right (although, then why have they published the personality entry?) but to me this example shows that with 5E WotC again has very different priorities than I have.