D&D 5E (2014) Living Dice Article: "Is It Really D&D Next?"

[herrozerro]

I agree on a few points and disagree on others.

I like the action + move. I think its elegant in someways. Minor things can just cost some movement and can be taken in the middle of moves. One of my first homerules for 4e was opening unlocked doors could be done as part of a move action.

Though i agree about hit dice, its just disguising healing surges in some kind of old school wrapper.

 

[Iosue]

Hit Dice are awesome. Play as written for some variability and simulating the vagaries of non-magic healing. Make them a set amount, max, 3/4, 1/2, 1/3, whatever makes it work for you. Tie them to healing magic for a 4e feel. Take them out altogether if that's how you want to play. Modularity at its best.

 

[TerraDave]

Hmm.

What I see in 5E is a better executed 4E Essentials.

They even have the knight and slayer. And better fluff text for the monsters. But they have flattened the math, and added both a few innovative mechanics a a little more old school flavour. Which is all good. I guess they have down-payed encounter powers (for now).

As a 4E (but not necessarily essentials) fan, yes, they could do more on the monsters, and it would be good to see some combat maneuvers. But they have already promised those.

 

[Kinak]

I read all the above posts and I must say that these reactions to the playtest are what I feared most :

No-one (whatever their favorite edition is) finds what he was expecting in this playtest. 4th edition fans find it too 3rd-like, 3.X fans consider D1D Next too similar to ADD.

To be fair, I think people who aren't finding what they want are just the most vocal. For my part, my favorite editions are OD&D and 3rd. It reminds me a lot of OD&D with some 3rd.

That said, if I'd only ever seen 3rd and 4th, I'd probably see it as a mix of 3rd and 4th.

This may be the major obstacle for the success of this new edition.

Good luck WotC !!

Totally agreed there.

I wouldn't want to be in their shoes. Which is saying something, because I love designing games.

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[CM]

Just wanted to go on the record as another 4e fan who is cautiously optimistic for 5e. I don't think the blogger is saying anything new that hasn't been debated here for months already.

We've all seen by now how drastically the game has changed since the F&F playtest, so griping about the state of things like monsters (which are basically placeholders at this point) seems pointless.

 

[grimslade]

Gott in Himmel! 5E contains almost no Dragon Dice

The initial playtest contains very little rules. It is lean and some things are still in early stages (weapons and armor, monsters) and some we don't see any of the underlining rules in character design. Claims of there is no XE in D&D Next are unfounded. You have to carry a lot of suspicion into this playtest to Chicken Little the edition.

Also this is a playtest. I'll say it again. This is a playtest. If you would like more BECMI-isms, 4gasms, 3.xcellence, or AD&Dor Dies participate in the play test and fill out the survey. The game has changed greatly from January with smaller playtest pools. The game will change greater still before a full set of rules will be decided on. Get your view point to the designers.

Eff nostalgic rules, why will a closer to 4e rule work better in 5E? What is gained by using fixed values for healing surge over the random roll of The current Hit Die mechanic. Spell it out in your comment how it affects play. Try it out in your playtest after playing by the RAW and note how it changed the feel of play.

The best stuff from 4E is still not cooked yet. Monster design and DM/ adventure prep are barely tested.
The best stuff from 3E is not in yet. Character Design and customization will be coming later.
Stay involved and make your case for the style of play you want to see. Dialgo will be making the case for OD&D- hat for d02 style isms while you stand on the side lines.

 

[Iosue]

To be fair, I think people who aren't finding what they want are just the most vocal. For my part, my favorite editions are OD&D and 3rd. It reminds me a lot of OD&D with some 3rd.

Yes, this. I'm a BD&D and 4e guy, and that's indeed what I see in the game. And I'm very happy with how the playtest looks. But I haven't been posting much because I think getting into internet arguments will harsh my 5e mellow.

 

[jsaving]

Is It Really D&D Next? | LivingDice.com

"My only remaining worry is that the pillars of this new system will never be changed even if fan response proves them unpopular. One of these ideological foundations is the apparent obsession in recreating the perfect storm churned up by 3rd Edition, effectively disregarding the contributions of 4th Edition. The common complaint I’ve been reading recently is the similarity between this new edition with 3rd Edition and the lack of any carryover from 4th, peculiar considering the apparent assumed consensus that 4th Edition was a disaster on the same scale of New Coke and Highlander 2."

The paragraph you quote is wrong on so many levels that I'm not sure where to begin. First, it seems clear WotC is petrified that they'll produce an unpopular edition and will do almost anything to avoid that. The real worry shouldn't be a lack of responsiveness, but rather that the 5e team will set their design and development talents to one side and "give the people what they want" even when it isn't good for the game.

Second, I'm not sure how one can look at 5e and conclude this is a carbon copy of 3e. At-wills, themes, backgrounds -- check. Feats that look like 4e's fighter exploits -- check. Skill points -- out. The real surpise in my view is not how much of 3e is being brought back, but how much of other editions is being reinvigorated/retained.

I like 4e and regret the "apparent assumed consensus" that it is faltering in the RPG marketplace. But every trip to my local gaming store tells me that more and more people are dropping 4e for Pathfinder and (to a lesser degree) other alternatives, necessitating some sort of move on WotC's part no matter how much 4e fans might wish it could be otherwise. At the same time, the 4e fan base is still a sizable chunk of the RPG marketplace, necessitating some retention of 4e innovations no matter how much ardent 3e fans might wish it could be otherwise. And there are also the ardent fans of other editions, who while quite small as a share of the marketplace deserve to have their voices heard as well.

And to me at least, WotC is doing a pretty good job balancing those views and producing something that can potentially have cross-edition appeal, at least so far.

 

[pemerton]

People keep saying "it's just like 3e!" but I'm just not seeing it. It has the same ability score bonuses (a uniform +/1 bonus per 2 points above or below 10), you roll against a DC with the higher the result the better (as opposed to THAC0 and countless percentile tables), it has feats and ... that's about it. The skills remind me much more of 2e's nonweapon proficiencies than 3e's skills, the spells are written in prose, the themes are alot like 2e kits, etc.

The similarities to 3E are there, in my view, but it's not identical.

The similarities include:

*a standard action resolution method (roll d20, add stat mod + skill mod, beat DC);
*a regularised action economy for combat;
*turn-by-turn initiative;
*PCs build out of race, class, skills (=background) & feats (=theme);
*buff spells are important;
*much of the flavour is AD&D-ish, but it's been made more mechanically standard and rigorous.​

There are differences too, obviously. Some - like the difference that flat maths should make to encounter design - aren't showing up in a low level playtest. Others, like at-will spells and "hit dice", owe something to 4e.

As a 4e GM I would say that it falls on the 3E (and AD&D) side of the great divide, because it has no mechanics that encourage any focus on the encounter as the site of play, and many mechanics (lots of daily spells, spell durations in minutes and hours, etc) that militate against this. Whereas everything in 4e pushes towards the encounter as the locus of play, with the day (and the extended rest it brings with it) as a secondary concern.

So far, I dislike the hidden math in the playtest (weapon damage dice changed by class) which is entirely, the return of x/minutes casting and combat buff spell (fully introduced in 3e and abandoned in 4e), the return of book referencing statblocks (abandoned in 4e) and the return of prose spells (abandoned in 3e).

The spell durations and buffs go to the substance of play and the differences from 4e. The style of monsters, statblocks and spells is not as deep an issue, but certainly goes to ease of use and elegance of presentation.

 

[an_idol_mind]

See, as a Pathfinder player, my complaints about the playtest are mostly about similarities to 4th edition I didn't like. But then, if I had just bought the game as-is and planned to run a campaign with it, I'd just houserule the stuff I don't like by subbing in rules from other editions.

I think everyone is going to have nitpicks where they say this version doesn't match their edition of choice. That's inevitable, and WotC will need to accept that they can't please everybody.

Personally, I'd kind of like to see 4th edition kept not in terms of rules but in terms of flavor, with stuff like dragonborn, primordials, and so on. I wasn't a big fan of the game, but a lot of the setting stuff was pretty cool. Too bad it's going to get mostly jettisoned.