Since there is no thread on the glossary. It's disappointing to see there are still some things hard to not call deliberate misses intended only give the appearance of making an improvement or the regression regression(s).
- Armor training: if not proficient in worn armor.. can't cast spells & disadvantage on d20 test that uses strength or dex. No AC from shields if nonproficient
- Good but I think the same as before
- attack action: weapon juggling & no opportunity cost clown show dance between swings for extra attack PCs remains.
- This needs to die. Just lay the inner munchkin out ion the table & make every wqeapon have a 30 foot range so the rest of us can slap this off our tabl;es without resistance or fix it. Treantmonk had a good example of how obnoxious this is in his recent playtest of packet5.
- Climb speed: F minus minusThis is not climbing, it's gravity manipulation. There's no mention of what is being climbed or the need for hands, sheer marble walls granite cliff faces treacherous moss covered cave walls.. walk right up
- This is unfair to GMs and wotc's own adventure design proves that. I'm tired of players declaring that they are going to walk along the walls/ceilings in games I GM . The fact that wptc's adventures don't habve much if any mention of wall/ceilings and as written this just becomes "choose to ignore terrain and get to complain that the GM is singling you out when there is terrain on the wall/ceiling that makes it less optimal than the ground or equally bad".
- d20 tests are back... good
- Dazed: move or take one action not both & no reaction or bonus action either. Also good.
- Death Saving Throws: it appears wotc is choosing to go back to no longer die at zero & the return of page 197. This is unworthy of discussion on it's merits. There are people (or at least one poster) in this forum who will occasionally admit that "death is not on the table unless the player agrees". There is no reason for the rules to enshrine this as the defacto standard while pretending that it's still possible. It's not fair to take away risk of failure or death and go behind the curtain to throw the duty of making it seem possible onto the gm.
- Fly speed: mechanical changes with zero impact on play F minus
- the addition of needing hover to have a "fly speed" of zero & adding incap to the or fall to what was previously only prone looks good on the surface, but does nothing in play. Players still can move zero feet stand in the sky or treat any form of flight like the most convenient of being in zero G space or standing on a planet as the situation dictates. Flight makes a PC out of range from most things that could regularly set their speed to zero and without any form of maneuverability like 2e/3/x had it becomes trivial to simply walk around anything that might hamper their "flight" in ways that might impose difficulties.
- Grapple: Still the TTRPG equivalent of star trek's inertial dampeners. The most optimal & skill efficient way to control an unruly mount of any form no matter the reason it became unruly is to simply grapple it. I don't know what they are trying to accomplish with grapple changes and don't feel like doing a word for word comparison to prior packets.
- Help Action: D Minus There is no mention of actually needing to make any sort of check or the GM having any say whatsoever over any part of the process. Alice the player simply chooses a skill or tool proficiency of her choice and bob automatically gets advantage on his next check with it or Dave automatically gets advantage on the next attack against an opponent no matter the opponent. Is the goal here to remove the GM?
- Heroic advantage: As long as you have a single point of it you have advantage on any and all d20 tests until you notice a poor roll and retroactively choose to use it on that d20 test by rolling the second die
- Hide: I feel like we've seen this version before.
- Incap: You can't speak take (bonus) actions reaction concentrate & have disadvantage on initiative . However it appears that you no longer autofail any type of save and can use your movement speed to walk away on the wall/ceiling with a climb speed if you choose. Given that death saves & phb197 are back there's not even a risk in doing so provided anyone can heal you at least one hp after you take the opportunity attack walking away from literally any monster after it dropped you to incap.
- Influence action: I feel like we've seen this version, it's the one where the GM has some actual say & it takes more than expertise in persuade to make 3.x diplomancer builds green with envy. This is a jarringly start contrast to the help action.
- Invisible: There are some ok things here but I dislike advantage on initiative because it relays information the player has no way of knowing such as if an opponent can see them. Alternately it invites situations like the old meme of gaining advantage in firing an arrow at a barrel because you are invisible
- Knocking a creature out: F minus minus Remember that scene in predator where the hero killed the predator but reversed some of the bullets after impact so it could be captured for interrogation & technology trade with the other predators?.. Or that scene where Trinity got that crit on agent Smith & said "dodge this" just before teleporting the bullet to his kneecap & taking him hostage to negotiate with the machines?
- Yea neither does anyone else & that's because this shouldn't be a retcon that takes affect after the attack is completed and the GM declares the result.
- Long rest: F minus minus still pretty much guaranteed. There's a call to the old days of someone keeping watch with a carveout for 3 hours free but everything else is designed to ensure that a long rest will automatically succeed unless fiat or the GM putting their half minute hero game on pause to troll their players.
- Can we please end the half minute hero gameplay?
- Ritual casting: Prep it and you can ritually vcast with your sorcerer/bard/warlock/cleric/etc. Can't wait to see a video from wotc about the wizard's "class identity" like we saw on warlock & sorcerer.
- Magic action: still a good thing but we are missing a move action
- Move: This is not an action like some of the other new actions & that should be changed if it's going to be called out like this. Calling it out is almost pointless as long as players can pause and continue an action in progress to move around between rolls.
- Search action: It's good that this is an action but it still suffers from the lack of scale given six second rounds where actions are taken. Back in 2e there were ten minute turns and some guidance in the text, 3.x started getting fuzzy as the turn length shortened. As a GM I face wayy too much friction from players wanting their PC to search things too large for immediate searches to have immediate results. If you aren't going to go back then use a card from the influence action & include note of the GM getting to decide how long or if it's possible
- Short rest: F minus The characters don't actually need to do anything, no study no prayer, no first aid, etc... just quietly hole up in a closet & try not to breathe too loud in the hopes that there are no closet checking patrols & complain that it's not believable that there would be patrols checking the closets or whatever so often. Dresign forcing Half minute hero on the GM needs to die
- Study action: This needs the same addition to time duration possibility & so on that that the search action needs.
- Swim speed, telepathy, teleportation, tool proficiency, tremor sense, true sight: I think these are the same as we've seen before
- Unconscious: speed zerop, autofail some saves, no actions, advantage attacking you, etc... all the familiar things.
