One word that will fix what's wrong with DNDN

[FireLance]

And the kobolds and ratpack getting advantage are both really obnoxious mechanics. Advantage for outnumbering people means that you can't simply throw your D20s by the handful but need to throw them in pairs. If throwing more than 3 dice at a time you should never be using either advantage or disadvantage.

The whole "buckets of dice" approach to advantage and disadvantage for large numbers of monsters annoyed me in my playtest, too. What I might do in future is to rule that for the monsters, advantage and disadvantage translates to a +4 bonus or a -4 penalty instead.

 

[Stalker0]

As has been noted before, the fact that you can house rule a bad mechanic any number of ways doesn't mean it's not a bad mechanic.

The difference is that the majority of mechanics we are talking about aren't "bad", they just don't meet everyone's flavor expectations.

Take the current Hit Dice craze that is sweeping the forums. Roll for HP or not?


The answer is that both methods provide different benefits to different people, so much that we have an extremely passionate debate going on about it.

In this circumstance, neither side is "wrong". So WOTC would be in their best interest to provide both options.

 

[howandwhy99]

For me modularity means "genuine auto parts"

These will work for your car when parts of it wear out and break down.

I plan on tricking mine out heavily. A new engine, new seats, different console, completely custom paint job, and a big ass rear spoiler.

 

[Ratskinner]

The playtest rules appear to be much easier to houserule than the more recent systems, which were much more tightly integrated. At some point, too many house rules can be a problem. But to the extent that any individual house rule only impacts that specific rule and does not ripple throughout the entire ruleset, one can have more house rules and still keep them to a manageable level.

I absolutely agree, and its the thing that heartened me the most about this playtest. I mean, the HP and non-magical healing mechanic...even if you don't like it (and I'm not sure yet) you can easily see several ways to modify it to change the feel of the game with very simple changes. That's just awesome.

We can't be sure the final rules will be as easy to houserule as the playtest rules, but if they are, DDN has the potential to end up with the flexibility of OD&D. The difference would be that OD&D was flexible because it was an incomplete ruleset, while 5E will hopefully be flexible by design.

We can only hope.

 

[Rogue Agent]

I thought 'Modularity' was their great solution to the supplement bloat - that they'd sell us books of rules modules instead of endless splatbooks?

As far as I can tell from online forums, "modularity" refers to a magical fairy that will somehow divide by 0, rewrite your rulebooks based on a telepathic scan of your mind, and/or make house ruling suddenly possible again after a decade of gestapo thugs who would come by your house and murder your cats if you strayed from RAW.

 

[Phaezen]

Uh-uh.

The Cleric of Moradin is the one absorbing the attacks. 3 points higher AC and a defender theme as opposed to a striker one.

The fighter only does more damage than the cleric of Moradin because he has prioritised strength over wisdom (which given his wis is 14 doesn't mean much) and because he's wielding a two handed axe rather than carrying a large shield. Oh, and because of his theme.

If he had a warhammer and shield, and the knight theme, the cleric would do more damage with Crusader's Strike - and that's one long lasting buff.

This isn't about choice. It's about baseline competence. The fighter fakes it by putting everything into offence.

Replace Slayer with Guardian, give the fighter a shield and warhammer and suddenly he is absorbing damage instead of dealing (as much) of it. And given his higher hitdice and Hp he would be better at it than the cleric of Moradin.

The fighter that is being tested here is the most basic redbox style fighter available to create as that is what people have been indicating they want.

Personally, I'll wait till we can see the character creation rules to see if the fighter is as underpowered/overpowered as people say it is.