Misc. Thoughts

[SLOTHmaster]

Fighters have expertise dice? I'm not sure I like this mechanic. In fact, I'm not sure I like the way they seem to be thinking about fighters. One of the large reasons fighters have always lagged so far behind casters is that fighters alter the mechanical world while casters alter the game world. Say what you will, I'd rather be able to control the weather than to have a +anything to hit.

Don't like the name of rogue schemes, but whatever.

Where did the thing that let the fighter deal damage on a miss go? It made my party's fighter seem useful since it let him steamroll through goblins.

I'd like to advocate a new status: vulnerable. When you're at low hp, helpless, intoxicated or the like, you are considered vulnerable. Spells like hold person (which previously in 5e relied on current hp and now on max hp) would have an increased effect on vulnerable targets.

In general, I much prefer the flavor of spells that describe the effect in the blurb than those that say "you do X," though sometimes, like how it's written in counterspell, the latter makes sense.

I liked the flavor of continual flame more than continual light. Being able to choose between the two when you cast the spell would be nice.

I love it that magic items are considered priceless.

I like the way dex and armor interact. Maybe make the table simpler by putting it next to armor type rather than armor, similar to what they do on the weapons table for what ability mod to use for attacks.

I like the way they notate range, makes it easy to remember range is not max range.

I absolutely love advantage/disadvantage. Helps stop bloat, and is easy to use.

I'm not sure what I think of contests.

In the original playtest, I started out DMing a group of 3, playing the wizard, rogue, and cleric or Moradin. We took the first half hour or so to read through the rules and get a feel for how things worked. Right off the bat, the wizard noticed that the cat familiar for some reason lacked low light vision, so I agreed to grant it, should it ever matter (it didn't). It was a little unclear how spell preparation works, but it seemed that wizards had to prepare and clerics cast spontaneously. They scouted around a little then decided to start by entering cave G (the gallery of death). They found and killed a few rats, then walked into the cavern with oozes. When it became quickly apparent that three oozes were too much to beat, they began operation "oozes have terrible speed" and high-tailed it out of there, right into the owlbear. At this point, the wizard realized that the cat was an expendable resource, threw it in the owlbears face, and the party ran. Why were familiars expendable? I don't know. Does the new 100 gp cost help? Only at lower levels.

 

[Bow_Seat]

I basically think of the fighter having CS dice as the fighter having everyone 4e maneuver that he can think of that he could use at his level. If in 4e you have a maneuver that was just X[W] damage, and you had some that were (X-1)[W] plus some special ability or effect. So once the fighter has access to more dice he can pick and choose how to customize it's usage so that he has access to whatever power he needs at that moment. This is way more fluid design than making him just choose from a strict set of powers.

In another thread on the fighter someone was talking to me about the fighter effectively not having any encounter or daily powers, so as a compromise I have suggested that fighter maneuvers that cost more than (some number) or CS die to implement be applicable less often. This could make those powers still fall in line with the "trading damage for effect" but the effect:damage lost ratio would be greater, and thusly justify the 1/encounter or 1/day usage.

Also the damage on a miss is just one of the fighters available maneuvers. It's called glancing blow, and it's not very good. The issue with the new one is that the damage on a miss only works if the fighter rolls > 10, but because of the math on the bounded accuracy system the fighter basically never misses if he rolls a 10 or above--this is just a small kink that the dev team needs to work out.

You shouldn't call it vulnerable, just because that is already a keyword for a condition. If you are vulnerable (subtype-damage) then you take double damage from that type of attack. This is really just a semantic thing, you could call your condition anything else and it would be fine.

DEX and armor are good, since it accurately rewards people who are in heavier armor with higher AC.

What was left out of the packet on contests but was talked about at gencon is that contests are for when two people are acting against one another based upon non-attack criteria and there is a considerable amount of variability brought upon by circumstance. This mostly occurs when things are happening fast in combat. For example, if two people arm wrestled the person with the higher strength would auto-win, but if two people were trying to wrestle each other to the floor because they didn't have weapons and it were a life or death situation then you would use opposed strength checks. I think its a very elegant system.

Ability checks are also now the norm for previous editions skill checks. Since most people are not trained in most skills, ability checks are now the primary go to check. If you have had specific training in a skill area, and that skill has categorical applicability to the ability check you are making, then you get to add 3 to your ability check result. Simple, fast, intuitive.

Adv/Dis is great because it doesn't shift the random distribution, but rather skews it and maintains the same minimum and maximum to avoid number bloat. This is all part of the new mathematical system they are using, which they are calling bounded accuracy.

Within bounded accuracy you are not going to see + attack modifiers adjusting too much from level 1 to 20, and if it does adjust it won't be anything to the extent that 3e or 4e were (+1 BAB to +20/+15/+10/+5 is not happening). Correspondingly armor values do not need to change much.

These more static values are what allow magic items to no longer be necessary to keep PC advancement at an appropriate pace with monster advancement.

I really like where all of this is headed.

 

[GX.Sigma]

Where did the thing that let the fighter deal damage on a miss go?

Page 5. Glancing Blow. It says your roll has to be 10+, but since that doesn't make sense, I'd houserule it to 5+ or no minimum.

 

[slobo777]

Fighters have expertise dice? I'm not sure I like this mechanic. In fact, I'm not sure I like the way they seem to be thinking about fighters. One of the large reasons fighters have always lagged so far behind casters is that fighters alter the mechanical world while casters alter the game world. Say what you will,

I'm going to say what I will then . . .

Yes, it is hard to have warrior characters who don't use magic, in a high-fantasy setting, to not fall behind spell casters. However, I think it is worthwhile for a game to attempt, for the people who want to play a warrior style of character.

I'd rather be able to control the weather than to have a +anything to hit.

Not sure if this is literally you, or your preferred character?

If literally you, then yes I'd have to agree. I generally don't go around hitting people, and controlling the weather would be fun.

If this is about your preferred character, then it does you little harm to let someone else bring a different sort of character, and to have it somehow work on a par with yours.

On the other hand, I'm not 100% certain about CS dice yet. They look a little fiddly to use. I'm hoping to test them, as I'm one of those people who's quite happy to leave the weather-controlling to other players whilst my character goes around hitting stuff!