D&D 5E Thoughts on 6-7-13 Playtest Packet

[Majoru Oakheart]

Very easy you mean.

1. On your turn you Ready An Action
Trigger: When i yell ''GUNJA''
Action: I attack/cast a spell etc...

2. During the creature's turn preceeding your next turn, at some point you yell ''GUNJA'' and then use your Readied action as a Reaction. When the monsters turn ends, you next turn comes up and take an action again, which essentially equals to two in a row.

At first it may not look too bad, but i fear some abilities comboed by using actions back to back could give unexpected results.

I would not allow this. Mainly because I wouldn't allow people to react to their own actions. Nor would I allow what amounts to a workaround of the rules in order to react to things they can't perceive:

"I yell out GUNJA when it becomes his turn."
"You don't know it's his turn. People don't have 'turns' inside the game, just outside."
"Well, then I don't know it's his turn...but I yell out GUNJA anyways..."
"No..not allowing you to use metagame knowledge in order to get around a rule."

 

[Cyberen]

... And yelling such a crappy battle cry gives your enemies advantage for the remainder of the turn.

 

[howandwhy99]

Wisdom is still a mess. Listed as: a creature’s common sense, perception, self‐discipline, and empathy or situations that call for intuition, gut feelings, or sensitivity to the environment. However, when you look at the list of tasks it is a hodgepodge of unrelated stuff. Administer first aid, this should be intelligence. It has long been a wisdom related task but really come on, I think medical professionals would be happy to know that it is common sense and intuition and gut feelings is what is important. Handle Animal, yeah so this was moved from CHA to WIS because why exactly? So now gut-feelings will allow you to tame a monster or train them? Sense Motive, half of the sense motive stuff should fall under perception and the other half should be under CHA. Figure out who is a leader in a group CHA, read an attitude CHA, interpret hand signs SPOT, Sense something wrong with someones personalty (charmed) CHA, eavesdrop LISTEN, recognize a lie CHA, See through a disguise SPOT...

I don't care for skill systems, but I do think their description of Wisdom is very good. Wisdom is all of the things you list, but their connection could be spelled out more clearly. What those things are not are Charisma. Charisma score is a rating of relative expressionist ability. How likable you can be, not necessarily how nice you actually are. It covers adeptness at dealing with people and winning them over [plus a good bit more]. Wisdom scores are a rating of relative interpretive ability. It deals with common sense reasoning based upon past experiences, perceptive deciphering (even of social situations), and also interpretation on the emotional level. That last is the molding of self-restraint based upon the situation, emotional reading of others, your unconscious -gut feelings- having worked out issues, as well as receptivity via senses to the environment.

There is a valid argument for breaking these elements out and increasing the number of Ability Scores. Emotional feelings, conscious thought, sensory awareness, concentration ability, willpower, and plenty of others are aggregated in one or more or sometimes even across Ability Scores. But this is more about NPC stats now and not PC stats. A great deal of those elements are meant to be supplied by the Players, not the characters. Character specific fall into "to hit" and damage modifiers, AC modifiers, hit point bonuses/penalties, and the like. They are game mechanic related, not player performance elements.

 

[JamesonCourage]

I should have said legitimate complaints rather than "real issues", though I realise that most will see this as the same thing.

The wording of both phrases is incredibly dismissive, so, yeah, it sounds the same from where I'm sitting. Just doesn't sound like it'll make for a good discussion.

Complaints about this are futile and useless, and since those making posts most likely know this, the complaints are also quite pointless. Sound and Fury signifying nothing...except cluttering up the discussion.

I disagree with the "pointlessness" of the complaints. Especially with them being "futile" or "useless." At least, most complaints / compliments of the system are probably mostly "pointless" in that they probably won't affect the game's creation that much. As far as affecting other opinions here which might be passed on via feedback in playtest packets, I think those complaints / compliments are quite valid and useful.

Everyone interested in 5E would be much better served by feedback that's actually useful, rather than what was posted concerning this. Also, including feedback that WotC should make it clear that the DM can choose to ignore this or use their own interpretation, when the rules already say this and always have, is just plain silly.

Man, I just wish you could be less dismissive of other people's opinions about what they want in the game. Saying "I don't think complaining will change the game" is one thing; quoting four people and saying that their posts are pointless is just too dismissive to be productive, and that's all I was trying to say. I'm not trying to stretch this out, though, and don't feel the need to go on and on about it. Just giving you an outside view on how your posts look to me. As always, play what you like

 

[Hussar]

I think the inclusion of the statement that Animate Dead is an evil act is working exactly as intended in this playtest packet.

They WANT you to comment on it. That's the entire point.

They include a rule that has alignment implications... just like for instance the alignment rules they included for the paladins and the monks... purely so that we would see those rules and then give them our opinion on them. Positive *or* negative. They don't care. They just want to know how people feel about it. Now, they will receive feedback on whether people do or do not want alignment or moral judgments regarding certain aspects of the game, and thus whether or not to keep or discard them.

If they didn't highlight the issue by making it obvious, people might never comment on it, and thus they wouldn't know exactly how people felt.

I think this is a very good point.

But, on the topic, I would prefer if they left alignment out of the spells. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense when you start scratching below the surface even a little bit. Animating something as evil presumes the whole "The dead are inviolate" taboo of the real world. There's no particular reason why a fantasy world would have this taboo, particularly in a D&D world where you can actually ASK if it's okay to animate the corpse - Speak with the Dead. Never mind that priests can literally know what happened to the spirit of the dead and know that the corpse is potentially a lump of meat (depends on the campaign setting of course).

And, it begs the question, why is Animate Dead always evil, but, various killing spells are not. Poison spells carry at least as many social taboos as animate dead. So, is Poison an evil spell? Never mind that if I want to do a Voodoo sort of tribal set-up, now all my shamans are evil by default?

Yes, I can change the rules. That's fine and dandy as the DM. But, the players can't. The players look at the rules and see, Animate Dead (Necromancy, Evil) and reasonably assume that it is, in fact, an evil act to cast. They can't change the rules. At best, they can petition the DM, but, once something is in the rules, it becomes that much more difficult to change.

I would much prefer a sidebar conversation in the Alignment section regarding magic. Tell DM's to be clear where they come down on the issue in their own campaigns. Be consistent and off you go. It is not required to mandate alignment and playstyle in the rules.

Basic/Expert survived without aligning Animate Dead (a wizard only spell in that edition). It's not like it's unprecedented.

 

[the Jester]

Very easy you mean.

1. On your turn you Ready An Action
Trigger: When i yell ''GUNJA''
Action: I attack/cast a spell etc...

2. During the creature's turn preceeding your next turn, at some point you yell ''GUNJA'' and then use your Readied action as a Reaction. When the monsters turn ends, you next turn comes up and take an action again, which essentially equals to two in a row.

Yeah, but meanwhile, you gave up your turn in order to ready in the first place.

So instead of going on (let's say) your normal initiative of 17, you wait... wait... until the monster going at 3 goes, take your readied action and then take your normal action on the next round. You've taken two actions, the same as you would have had you not readied, and you gave all the monsters between initiative 17 and 3 a chance to go first.

I don't have a problem with that part of your scenario.

HOWEVER...

Would you allow that as a DM?

Sure its legit.

No way, not in my campaign. You can't ready an action to respond to yourself. I recognize that the current packet isn't specific about this, but let's face it- this is a perfect example of a place where dm rulings belong.

 

[Falling Icicle]

Don't we have better things, and real issues to discuss instead...

Obviously we think it's a "real" issue to discuss, or we wouldn't be discussing it. Nobody is forcing you to participate in the conversation if you aren't interested.

 

[gyor]

The its not a good act in animate dead has no actual mechanics to it, its just part of the description and a suggestion\rp warning that most lawful good characters won't like it, which makes sense for the majority of lawful good characters and societies although a few exceptions exist such as the Dustmen may have Lawful Good memebers who tolerate the undead. It doesn't even say its evil, just not good, which for most people is common sense. It doesn't mean you can't be a good necromancer, but truth be told in most setting you are unlikely to be popular with Lawful Good Authorities.

Anyways I like the new cleric cantrips, animate undead needs work, but its cool, I think they just don't want intelligent undead to steal the spotlight from characters.

My favourite though is hunter's quarry from 4e is back, abit in spell form for the ranger. I wouldn't mind seeing a few Paladin Prayers from 4e added to the Paladin's spell list as well, such as Avatar of Virtue and Avatar of Vice.

The HalfElf is the weakest race in the game and needs a subrace. Halforcs need a subrace as well, but are otherwise fine and ironically make good Paladins who can take advantage of both +2 strength, +1 con and Menace class feature.

Still Rock Gnomes are the first small race that really sounds fun. They get +1 con which makes me think a Rock Gnome Barbarian would be funny and cool.

 

[GX.Sigma]

My favourite though is hunter's quarry from 4e is back, abit in spell form for the ranger.

That is a nice touch. You could play a Ranger as almost non-magical if that's the only spell you ever cast (though it needs to scale with spell level, or have some higher-level spells that can plausibly be narrated as nonmagical).

 

[Gargoyle]

I think the inclusion of the statement that Animate Dead is an evil act is working exactly as intended in this playtest packet.

They WANT you to comment on it. That's the entire point.

They include a rule that has alignment implications... just like for instance the alignment rules they included for the paladins and the monks... purely so that we would see those rules and then give them our opinion on them. Positive *or* negative. They don't care. They just want to know how people feel about it. Now, they will receive feedback on whether people do or do not want alignment or moral judgments regarding certain aspects of the game, and thus whether or not to keep or discard them.

If they didn't highlight the issue by making it obvious, people might never comment on it, and thus they wouldn't know exactly how people felt.

I would like to think this is their intention. Or maybe they just feel this is the way it should be, but regardless, I do believe they listen to feedback so it's all fine.

It's worth noting that it's not an evil act to cast animate dead, technically it's a "non-good action", and of course a good character need not be perfect in behavior all the time. So a good character could cast it and not necessarily turn to the dark side, so to speak. So that's kind of cool, I admit, that a good aligned wizard might find an animate dead spell and be tempted to cast it to solve a particular problem.

But I would still prefer no alignment restrictions on spells. It's just too limiting for no good reason. If we had an option to be unaligned, and those with alignment were defined as having a tangible connection to forces of their alignment (beings like angels are truly Good in alignment, and demons irrevocably Evil in alignment but the unaligned wizard is merely good or evil as a description of his behavior, not alignment) I think alignment restrictions in spells would make more sense.