D&D 5E Starter Set Character Sheet Revealed!

[Doctor Futurity]

Mmm, ok, we are used to indulge into variety and just 4 flavors feel bland?

We're only stuck with four classes and three races from July 3rd to August 7th (assuming we all live near early-access FLGSes).

"Entitlement" at best might be the appropriate word for people annoyed that they have to suffer with basic D&D for roughly a full month before the full PHB is out. But honestly, I think Basic D&D is aimed at people who are happy with the core elements (and there are many in the OSR universe that fit the bill) while whetting the appetite for those who want the full enchilada. And we will be getting the full enchilada, so worrying about limited class and race options for a whole month seems a bit silly.

 

[Agamon]

I'm also surprised they added that on a character sheet for Basic D&D, you can put those rare coins in your treasure section anyway, where you write gems and tapestries and other trinkets of value but not easily tradeable. Most inns do not accept such coins anyway.

Heh, the eccentricities of D&D. "A gold coin from some dead empire stamped with a face of some guy I don't know? Of course we accept that! But none of that other rare and valuable metal! How dare you try to pay with that!"

 

[Mistwell]

To be fair, for every X people certain they know how it will turn out, there are Y (where Y is usually a value smaller than X!) people who are dead right, and such was the case with Monk.

Second Wind's power is tricky to guess at without knowing the default non-class-assisted healing rules. In the context of "Long rest = full HP" it is definitely not OP (but is that the context?).

And everyone thinks they will be that minority, because everyone thinks they're great at doing this here, and everyone experiences confirmation bias where they forget or spin the times they were wrong and overemphasize the times they were right to conform to that image they have of themselves of being really good at reading something and imagining how it will play out.

Even though even the best of the best at this, the smartest, the wisest, the most experienced, the professionals paid big bucks to design games for decades, even they come to realize that sometimes it just doesn't work that way, and sometimes you won't know that until you actually play it, and sometimes there is simply no way to know if this will be one of those times.

But no - gamers will be gamers, and will always tell you they do know better. That they're really smart people and really talented and skilled at doing this and if you're not as good as them at doing it that's no surprise to them because they're just naturally so good at it because they know from experience how good they are at it.

 

[jadrax]

Anybody have an idea on how you get these things? /

Basically, anything that requires a bonus action to use, can be used in addition to your normal action. However, you may only use one thing that requires a bonus action a round.

Or you can look at it that you automatically get 1 bonus action a round, but very few abilities actually can be used in that action so you probably cannot use it.

 

[DDNFan]

I don't see an issue with taking multiple short rests in a row, if they stay at 1 hour long.

I plan on running through ToD playing very close to the core rules as possible, but I already know that I will eventually use 15 minute short rests, if I do I will have to change a few abilities like this to only work say when under half hit points.

If anything, taking multiple short rests in a row is less optimal, because you don't get to actually use all your refreshed abilities in between. Aside from healing up or getting back a few spell slots.

All the healing up portion of Second Wind does is throw the middle finger to the cleric's role in D&D.

I hope Cybit's right and you can't take multiple short rests in a row as per RAW. It would further force any cleric characters to act like healbots, since out of combat healing spells are wasted on the fighter, if he can just regenerate the same amount shortly. If gives way too strong an incentive for the fighter to say, let's rest for another two hours, even if the rest of the group has run out of hit dice and is just sitting there.

Same problem as people complained about the 5 minute workday. Instead it would be something like a 30 second work afternoon. It's a waste of cure spells to cast them out of combat, meaning the best and only time they should be cast is during combat, on the fighter. Fighter is definitely the tank role, sponge up all the damage while the cleric heals you, so is now an in-combat healbot thanks to Second Wind not relying on hit dice and having no limits except finding a safe space to rest or some story timer which will put the players at odds with the DM.

I don't understand why they just didn't let the fighter spend a hit dice on a reaction to taking damage. Total, unadulterated facepalm.

If a 20th level fighter has effectively ~140 HP base, Second Wind probably doubles it, if not more, since Second Wind will be 30 HP per shot. If you can rest ten times in a day, and that's tripling your HP. But then you still have 20(d10 +con) HP left in your hit dice.

 

[thunktanker]

As a person who loves old school flavor, we never really used electrum or platinum pieces. Copper, silver, gold is more than enough.

I'm also surprised they added that on a character sheet for Basic D&D, you can put those rare coins in your treasure section anyway, where you write gems and tapestries and other trinkets of value but not easily tradeable. Most inns do not accept such coins anyway.

I think I will institute a system where I beef up penalties for having a lot of loose change (weight, initiative penalty, ect), but at the same time include a probability that coins fall out of your pocket.

Examples:

Player: "My character tries to sneak up on the troll." Me: "How much loose change do you have?" Player: "5 silver pieces." Me: "Sorry, your loose change jingles, the troll hears you, whirls around, and chops your head off. You're dead." Player: "That sucks." Me: "You should have traded in your loose silver for 1 electrum piece. What were you thinking?"

OR

Player: "My character chooses to buy the magic maul of garden gnome bashing." Me: "I'm sorry, but while you were riding your horse, one of your coins fell out of your pocket." Player: "But I only had one coin, 1 electrum, after that fiasco where my last character died sneaking up on a troll and my loose change jingled." Me: "Sorry, you lost your 1 coin." Player: "Are you kidding me?" Me: "Nope. You should have exchanged your 1 electrum for 5 silver instead." Player: "This is dumb." Me: "Who's the dummy that put all their eggs in one electrum basket?"

Take that stupid players. Now you have to choose between the disadvantages of having too much change and the disadvantages of having too little. You lose either way! And when players lose, DM's win. brahahahahaha.

Yes, I'm kidding.

 

[Dausuul]

Looking at what I currently see (which I know has been changed in the final PH), you cannot take more than one short rest in a row.

Huh. If you can comment, what event "resets" your short rest counter, so that you can take another one? That seems like a tricky rule to write. Do they just lean on DM judgement to prevent "We fought a squirrel! Short rests for everybody!" shenanigans?

My own solution would be to put a hard cap on the number of short rests you get--e.g., you get three short rests, then you can't take any more until you take a long rest. If you want to take all three in a row, go for it, but you're almost always better to spread them out.

MC'ing in 5E to me is similar to hybrid characters in 4E / gestalt characters in 3E. They exist, but they're not expected to be part of the core rules, because they are (probably) more powerful than straight characters in the optimized cases. There's a reason that MC'ing is a DM opting-in thing, and not a "DM must choose to ban it". The core 5E rules do not have multiclassing.

By this, do you simply mean that multiclassing is opt-in for the DM? Or are you saying that 5E multiclassing is actually following a hybrid/gestalt approach (a 5th-level fighter/wizard combines abilities from a 5th-level fighter and a 5th-level wizard), rather than build-as-you-go (a 5th-level fighter/wizard has 5 total levels to distribute among the fighter and wizard classes)?

 

[Cybit]

Huh. If you can comment, what event "resets" your short rest counter, so that you can take another one? That seems like a tricky rule to write. Do they just lean on DM judgement to prevent "We fought a squirrel! Short rests for everybody!" shenanigans?

My own solution would be to put a hard cap on the number of short rests you get--e.g., you get three short rests, then you can't take any more until you take a long rest. If you want to take all three in a row, go for it, but you're almost always better to spread them out.

I think they are leaning on DM judgment as well a bit of wording to convey the intent of the rule. No amount of testing and wordsmithing gets around people trying to willfully mis-interpret the intent and argue. I think if they intend to use short rests in the future as a way to convert the game to 4E, they have to leave it sufficiently vague in order to allow that. Can anyone quote me what the public playtest rules were for short rest? (Don't have them on me)

By this, do you simply mean that multi-classing is opt-in? Or are you saying that 5E multiclassing is actually following a hybrid/gestalt approach (a 5th-level fighter/wizard melds the abilities of a 5th-level fighter and a 5th-level wizard), rather than build-as-you-go (a 5th-level fighter/wizard has 5 total levels to distribute among the fighter and wizard classes)?

No no, it is similar to 3E where it is build-as-you-go, I'm just simply meaning that multi-classing is opt-in as stated by Mearls previously. (I'm being careful to state things that have already been tweeted or stated by Mearls & co already).

I think they know that they had to choose between balance and flexibility, and they chose the latter while trying to do as much of the former as possible. But it's hard to make everyone's class defining abilities take hold at higher levels, just because it makes low level D&D not very fun. So I think the best option is to leave MC'ing as an option, and say "look, this is something the DM can choose to allow, and here are the consequences of doing so."

 

[Ruin Explorer]

And everyone thinks they will be that minority, because everyone thinks they're great at doing this here, and everyone experiences confirmation bias where they forget or spin the times they were wrong and overemphasize the times they were right to conform to that image they have of themselves of being really good at reading something and imagining how it will play out.

Even though even the best of the best at this, the smartest, the wisest, the most experienced, the professionals paid big bucks to design games for decades, even they come to realize that sometimes it just doesn't work that way, and sometimes you won't know that until you actually play it, and sometimes there is simply no way to know if this will be one of those times.

But no - gamers will be gamers, and will always tell you they do know better. That they're really smart people and really talented and skilled at doing this and if you're not as good as them at doing it that's no surprise to them because they're just naturally so good at it because they know from experience how good they are at it.

I totally get what you're saying, but I think you're yourself taking it to an extreme which is no longer reasonable or logically sound.

There's a middle ground, where some things can be reasoned out, and some things can't, and where some things can but take a lot of thought. Stuff that is completely contrary to genuinely reasoned expectations is the exception, not the norm.

I don't agree that the people designing big-name RPGs are necessarily the best of the best, or the smartest, or the wisest. In fact, it's clear that that isn't the case, and I don't mean that in a nasty way - it's a natural product of the low salaries and low long-term job security in the industry, but's a discussion for another thread.

 

[tuxgeo]

< snip > . . . they have to leave it sufficiently vague in order to allow that. Can anyone quote me what the public playtest rules were for short rest? (Don't have them on me) . . .

It's two paragraphs. The first one says, "A short rest is a period of downtime, at least 1 hour long, during which you catch your breath, eat, drink, and clean and bind wounds."
(The second paragraph only describes the spending of Hit Dice.)