Playtest Thoughts

[Dausuul]

Well, I ran part of the Caves of Chaos adventure tonight. General sentiment in my group was neutral-to-negative. Everyone loved the advantage/disadvantage mechanic, and people liked theater-of-the-mind play, but those were the only two positives I heard called out. Negatives included rogues not being able to sneak attack with flanking, the presence of Vancian casting, the reversion to saving throws rolled by the defender, the lack of interesting combat options, and a bunch of stuff unrelated to D&DN (some longstanding issues boiled to the surface and we spent a while hashing those out).

My own feeling was that there wasn't enough of a system to get much out of it. There weren't any sparkling new mechanics that really made me sit up and take notice, though I agree that advantage is clever. The main thing I will say for D&DN is that when I wanted to reward creative play and make stuff up on the fly, it got the hell out of my way, and that is no small virtue in an RPG. It was very easy to "say yes" without crashing into the game mechanics.

I do have one major complaint: The skill system. Specifically, there isn't nearly enough difference between the superstar and the klutz. The random element overwhelmed people's modifiers. If I hadn't known what was on their character sheets, I could never have guessed by watching their performance who was good at a skill and who was bad at it.

 

[Blackwarder]

Did you let your player auto succeed if their ability was high enough?
If I'm not mistaken if the ability score is 5 points higher tha the task than the character should auto succeed.

Warder

 

[Dausuul]

Did you let your player auto succeed if their ability was high enough?
If I'm not mistaken if the ability score is 5 points higher tha the task than the character should auto succeed.

Warder

Most of the rolls were Perception or Stealth checks, which are opposed rolls and as far as I know not subject to auto-success.

 

[Raith5]

I do have one major complaint: The skill system. Specifically, there isn't nearly enough difference between the superstar and the klutz. The random element overwhelmed people's modifiers. If I hadn't known what was on their character sheets, I could never have guessed by watching their performance who was good at a skill and who was bad at it.

Thanks for this outline.

But wasnt a too big gap between superstars and klutzs an issue with 4th (and a little bit with 3rd) editions? I am hoping that training in the skill enables the PC to be able to special things not just have a higher number when the system is fleshed out.

 

[LordGraz'zt]

As the DM you can allow flanking to give Rogue's advantage - it makes sense.

 

[FATDRAGONGAMES]

I'm really liking how magic is handled. I love Vancian magic, but giving the caster some at-will offensive spells (magic missile, etc.) is a great improvement and keeps them in the game and interested in playing.