D&D 5E My first look at D&D Next

[mkill]

In other thoughts: 4E gimped the exploration element of the game by removing resource management as a game play element. Exploration always has a timer attached. Wandering monsters. Lair reinforcements and new traps. Etc. By removing a timed element you gimp the Cause & effect play of explorations. Your actions no longer have consequences if you don't have to worry about resources.

Strange. I've played since the mid-90ies, across all kind of groups, systems and editions, and this never came up. You consider it an essential element of D&D, I've never seen it. And I've never considered it missing. It's kind of funny because you talked about houserules and optional systems, but then you complain about an element that you miss, and never thought of adding that yourself. (Especially since stuff like wandering monsters are easy to add without changing core rules)

I think that above all the niggly details of whether Paladins are LG and what not, this will be the core difficulty of uniting the player base. It's not that different groups play (and like) different editions, it's that groups play what boils down to essentially different games.

Some play an open world game, where the group explores a continent with wandering monsters and trap-filled dungeons. The next group plays a soap opera with occasional fights. The next group plays a tactical wargame. Another group reenacts the first Alien film with swords and spells instead of guns. Yet another group is in a gory shonen manga. And it's all D&D, and even the same edition.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

you roll a d20+bonus and try to roll higher than a d20+bonus. In some cases you can take 10 on the roll. That's amazing and I can't believe I just now picked up on it.

[ friendly tease ] Little slow, are you? [ /friendly tease ]

This overly regimented rule system extended to the character sheets, where you had page after page of powers, poorly laid out, with mountains of text for eve the most simple of things.

It is my opinion that 4e would have proved more popular if it had been better edited from the start. The formatting of the powers was terrible. I've never seen a character sheet (made by WotC) that's worth a damn when it comes to delivering the information you actually need to know in a clear, concise way.

(The closest they came were the pregens for game days, and those things were rife with errors, omissions, and were poorly made characters, which ruined the otherwise elegant design of the sheet.)

 

[pemerton]

I think 4E made at least one critical sin and maybe two or three. First: it put the game design RIGHT IN YOUR FACE.

<snip>

It looked like board game rules. The fluff surrounding the rules were terrible, or just ignored completely.

I like the presentation of 4e rules, but agree that it seems to have been very unpopular. I like the flavour of the default rules. The flavour text in powers etc is terrible, but I haven't read most of it. I rely on the keywords to tell me how the power works in the fiction, and if they're not enough use the title as a guide. (For some of the weird sorceror powers, like Slaad's Gambit and Winds of Change, I need the player to tell me what exactly is going on!)

Anyway, I think D&Dnext will look very different from 4e.

4E gimped the exploration element of the game by removing resource management as a game play element. Exploration always has a timer attached. Wandering monsters. Lair reinforcements and new traps. Etc. By removing a timed element you gimp the Cause & effect play of explorations. Your actions no longer have consequences if you don't have to worry about resources.

I agree with all of this, except that I would replace "consequences" with "operational/strategic consequences". I love 4e, but the game I GM emphasises other sorts of consequences.

I hope that D&Dnext doesn't mandate operational play. Even in Basic D&D, this was much less of a big deal than in AD&D (for example, in the Moldvay rulebooks, the passage of time outside the dungeon isn't very important), so even for a retro edition (which is how I'm thinking of 5e), there is precedent for deemphasising operational concerns.

But... But... This is Schroedinger's Saving Throws...

Well, for more than 3 years now I've been referring to that passage in Gygax's D&D as an example of fortune-in-the-middle resolution being part of D&D since forever. (Gygaxian hit points are the same, although I think by 3E the "hit points as meat" model had overtaken Gygax.)

I think that 4e was a lot more radical in relation to 3E than in relation to some aspects of AD&D and Basic - I don't think it's very good for Gygaxian play, but AD&D and Basic could be used for stuff other than Gygaxian play too.

 

[Number48]

I'm going to ask the same question I asked in the other thread. Without giving details, would you say looking at the character sheet that you had a good idea of what came from race, class or theme?

 

[bpauls]

I'm going to ask the same question I asked in the other thread. Without giving details, would you say looking at the character sheet that you had a good idea of what came from race, class or theme?

No, not really. Most of the numbers had been pre-calculated. I could see my scores, of course, but I don't know what modifiers went into producing them.

I know, from reading the transcript of the "Skills and Ability Scores" seminar, that the new system uses themes (yea!)--but I don't know that every PC in the playtest was built around a theme. If my character had a theme, I don't know what it was.

I had a couple of class abilities, which seemed pretty standard for the class I was playing--but it was not clear to me which modifiers, if any, came from race. My character was human, so I'm not sure there would even be modifiers.

 

[Gundark]

I love how this thread has 15 posts and the "negative" one has like 10 pages

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I've never seen a character sheet (made by WotC) that's worth a damn when it comes to delivering the information you actually need to know in a clear, concise way.

A trick I picked up several years, I forget from who exactly, on evaluating a game, was to examine the character sheet. This will tell you a lot about how well the game was done. Now, it matters less and less the bigger the organization is that produces the game, because a big group can happen to farm out the character sheet to an intern at the last minute -- or worse, design it by committee -- for a game that is better than the sheet. But I remember thinking when I first read that idea that it was a good thing for D&D that it had brand loyalty, because if it had to live and die by that standard, it wouldn't have made it for long.

 

[Number48]

No, not really. Most of the numbers had been pre-calculated. I could see my scores, of course, but I don't know what modifiers went into producing them.

I know, from reading the transcript of the "Skills and Ability Scores" seminar, that the new system uses themes (yea!)--but I don't know that every PC in the playtest was built around a theme. If my character had a theme, I don't know what it was.

I had a couple of class abilities, which seemed pretty standard for the class I was playing--but it was not clear to me which modifiers, if any, came from race. My character was human, so I'm not sure there would even be modifiers.

He confirmed that humans are in 5E! HEY, WOTC, WE GOT AN NDA BREAKER OVER HERE!

 

[bpauls]

He confirmed that humans are in 5E! HEY, WOTC, WE GOT AN NDA BREAKER OVER HERE!

Well, I figured I was safe on that one. The day WotC produces the 'demi-humans only' edition of D&D is the day we can all pack it in...

 

[Agamon]

I love how this thread has 15 posts and the "negative" one has like 10 pages

To be fair, the other thread had another playtester chime in, the two replied to each other and that kinda set the whole thing off on a clerics and healing tangent.