Rule of Three: 20/3/12

[dkyle]

Disarming, sundering, bull rushing, tripping and grappling are mundane everyday things any character can do with enough strength.

Those don't sound mundane to me at all. They sound like things that require significant training, above and beyond raw strength.

 

[GX.Sigma]

The last one has me confused. So you have casters who can cast a handful of spells for the day, that are not complex, they do some damage to a few creatures, like fireball, and then they are done. And you have fighters who can charge a goblin, take away his spear, kill him with it, and throw the spear at the next two goblins making shish kebab... and they can do this all day long? I sure hope spells can do some interesting stuff too, other than blow 'em up.

Trust me, spells will do a lot of interesting stuff, including but definitely not limited to "blow em up."

Fighters mixing-and-matching multiple attacks and combat maneuvers in a single round sounds awesome. I'm guessing that's the "4e-style powers" option for a more tactical fighter.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

scaling damagage instead of to hit is possible. It is a linear increase in power, as scaling only to-hit.
Scaling both is problematic, as you increase your power quadratic. If you are facing tougher opponents, not only do you hit less hard, but also less often, which results in dragged out combats.

I could however see classes that increase in accuracy instead of damage. Or even both a bit. In a system that does not assume increasing AC, you can tinker with it.

As funny as it may sound: 4e´s increasing AC, what most of us always believed to be a goood idea, was the main problem of scailing combats up or down.

 

[Minigiant]

1) No scaling attack and AC. Sounds like Minigiants and Molehills. Minigiant approves.

2) 9 alignments. meh.

3) Paladins get spells.

Martial classes either get martial maneuvers or multiple attacks.

 

[gweinel]

Sounds like they've set this one in stone.

Yes, seems interesting. I was wondering what is the math behind it.

 

[Fede]

I disliked this rule of 3:
Considering all we have seen so far, I do not think that fighter's and rogue's manouvers will be enough to "fill the gap" in difference of available options between martial and arcane classes. Admittedly, we do not know much so this is only my impression, nothing concrete.

For alignment, they talk about giving mechanical weight to it. One of the things that I really liked about 4E was the removal of (almost) all mechanical effects of alignment, and I see this as another step back in a direction that I do not like. Again, they are saying that there are options to remove it if the DM wants to, so we'll have to see.

What really worries me is the discussion about minions, because the solution proposed totally misses the point. It's not only about having monsters that die on one hit. That's only a part of it. The real core of the minion's concept is having monsters that are at the lowest complexity possible, so that the DM can use them to have encounters with a great number of enemies without slowing down the game.
That's why minions have fixed damage and abilities designed with their minion status in mind.
It's not enough to have a monster die in one hit because of the way damage scales to have a minion, you have to design it from the start.

 

[Hassassin]

Sounds like they've set this one in stone.

Within context, I read that as just saying enemies don't scale with your level: the orc has the same AC and to hit when you are level 10.

I.e. not about what happens to your stats.

 

[Hassassin]

So, minions are out as legit challenges, since anything 8 levels under you will have damage numbers from 8 levels ago (and will also involve rolling dice, slowing down combat).

No, they are saying the opposite. They will design the math so that 8 levels lower 5e creatures will still be threats, just easy to deal with like 4e minions of about your level.

 

[Connorsrpg]

This actually sounded good to me, especially the minion comment. Must be read with the fact that attack bonuses scale a lot slower so those lower level 'minions' can still hit. If worried about the rolling (or math?) then just use average damage for them...quite simple.

I loved 4E minions too. I used them a LOT, so I could cram a lot of creatures into a fight. However, the biggest problem was the fact they were called minions and it kind of wrecked the immersion when a player drops one and straight away goes, "These guys are minions". And they clearly are b/c other creatures, usually looking much the same lasted several hits.

If 5E works as sounded out in the article we can have a lot more creatures that drop with 1-3 hits, but you aren't sure which. The 2-3 often missing from 4E in our games.

 

[FireLance]

This actually sounded good to me, especially the minion comment. Must be read with the fact that attack bonuses scale a lot slower so those lower level 'minions' can still hit.

Minor nit-pick: it's the PCs' AC and other defenses that would be scaling more slowly so that lower-level monsters remain a threat for longer. If - when you're 20th level - a 1st-level orc could still hit you on a 16+ and deal 1d8+1 points of damage, four orcs attacking you can expect to deal around 5 points of damage per round. Even if you have 100 hit points and can kill four orcs per round, an army of 100 orcs will probably still get you in the end.