Something Awful leak.

[WarlockLord]

Yo:

SA leak of D&D 5e's playtest rules - Pastebin.com

 

[blalien]

Really cool if this is real. Is there any evidence behind it?

 

[mhensley]

hmmm... that's really negative... if true

 

[JoesephBear]

Curses, ya beat me to it.

Anyway, this came out of SA and has been floating around /tg/. Historically, such leaks have proven to be quite true.

It would seem that WotC, like Paizo, like TSR, like so many other game devs, is once again taking a stance that playtester & community feedback that doesn't agree with them is to be ignored.

Looks like 5e is off my radar for now. I'm not interested in "caster edition 2.0"

To be more positive, my hope is that I'm surprised next year. I think I will be, as this will probably cause some internal backpedaling at WotC.

 

[SeRiAlExPeRiMeNtS]

Really bad if true, nothing here is interesting to me.

 

[Sunseeker]

I'm not taking much issue with most of this stuff, it's really vague and obviously a significantly older edition of the playtest.

But this one really worries me:

Every PHB will contain a random selection of 7 common classes, 3 uncommons, and 1 rare.

Er, how exactly would this be accomplished? I can get how you can shove different trading cards into the same package, but these are pre-printed books with presumably, no loose parts. The amount of money Wizards would have to spend to produce a conceivably infinite number of books with random class allocations would make printing books entirely not cost effective. Sure this would work online, or as a trading-card game, but not as printed books. Buying several hundred $5 packs of cards is one thing, but buying a dozen PHB's to get all the classes? er.... that's just not realistic.

And breaking classes down into rarity? Shouldn't that be, I dunno, a campaign thing and not a pre-decided in the books thing? Taking from MTG, generally rarer things are more powerful for a lower cost, but once ONE person has the book with the information, EVERYONE can be that class. It doesn't work like a TCG, it uh, can't.

Not to mention, Wizards Points? That's a MT system and those don't usually get developed until the product is almost ready to ship.

 

[The Little Raven]

Er, how exactly would this be accomplished?

Pretty sure it's a joke in reference to class rarity (a meaningless distinction to appease people who complain that something they don't like shouldn't be common).

 

[Rune]

I'm not taking much issue with most of this stuff, it's really vague and obviously a significantly older edition of the playtest.

But this one really worries me:
Er, how exactly would this be accomplished? I can get how you can shove different trading cards into the same package, but these are pre-printed books with presumably, no loose parts. The amount of money Wizards would have to spend to produce a conceivably infinite number of books with random class allocations would make printing books entirely not cost effective. Sure this would work online, or as a trading-card game, but not as printed books. Buying several hundred $5 packs of cards is one thing, but buying a dozen PHB's to get all the classes? er.... that's just not realistic.

And breaking classes down into rarity? Shouldn't that be, I dunno, a campaign thing and not a pre-decided in the books thing? Taking from MTG, generally rarer things are more powerful for a lower cost, but once ONE person has the book with the information, EVERYONE can be that class. It doesn't work like a TCG, it uh, can't.

Not to mention, Wizards Points? That's a MT system and those don't usually get developed until the product is almost ready to ship.

Those parts read, to me, like typical WOTC-bashing. Well, it all read like WOTC-bashing, but those particular sections seemed like snark.

 

[Sunseeker]

Pretty sure it's a joke in reference to class rarity (a meaningless distinction to appease people who complain that something they don't like shouldn't be common).

Hopefully, I guess I didn't get the joke, huge page of text to read and all.

Those parts read, to me, like typical WOTC-bashing. Well, it all read like WOTC-bashing, but those particular sections seemed like snark.

For anything trading or collectible, it's a great strategy, people who don't understand that well, probably aren't TCG/CCG collectors. Anyway it appears the joke went over my head.

 

[whydirt]

That line about random classes was a joke.