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D&D 5E What are the things in D&D Next you don't like?

Tortoise

First Post
Humans getting +1 to all abilities and other races only get +1 to stats that are supposed to represent a defining aspect of the race. It makes them seem like lesser beings instead of exceptional in a given area. Why not give humans +1 to any two ability scores to show the adaptability/flexibility of humans and stick the +1s for other races in specific spots. That way all are exceptional in varied ways.

Magic Missile doing 3d4+3 at 1st level. Way over-powered. Why not just give 1st level wizards Fireball if they require a big boom spell at level one? Wizards these days seem to lack creative uses for their spells because they can lean on the crutch of heavy or unlimited firepower from the start.

(to clarify that last point, I deliberately took no combat spells for a low level 1e/Labyrinth Lord wizard and made good use of Enlarge/Reduce, even in combat where it killed a handful of enemies.)

I'm sure I can find other things I would prefer work differently, but don't have time right now to look them up.
 

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Big Things:

A lack of mechanical rigor.

Lame monsters. By lame I mean uninteresting. A battle with an orc chief and a bunch of orcs is only interesting because the orc chief is an interesting monster. The generic orc isn't... and they're basically all the same too. You could create an interesting scenario, but said scenario would be even more interesting with more interesting monsters.

Unbalanced monsters. I don't necessarily mean monsters that are overpowered or underpowered. Sometimes a monster can even be both! There's a problem with mechanical rigor. A monster might look interesting on paper, but in play you find a monster (say a ghoul) is far more powerful than other monsters of the same level. Playtesting obviously helps fix this, but there's such a lack of rigor that these problems aren't instantly detected.

I don't like human stats or ability score boosts versus feats.

I don't like a lack of roles. Once again, the fighter, wizard and maybe thief are all competing to see who can do more damage in a fight.

Certain elements of spellcasting. Rituals are nothing like 4e rituals, which I saw as "long term cast for long term gain". In fact, I'm not a fan of any non-4e-style buffing spells. On the plus side, Vancian magic has been fixed to an extent. Wizards get at-wills, and they no longer have a tremendous number of spells per day at high-level, helping empower low-level wizards and hit high-level wizards with a desperately-needed nerf stick.

Save DC/saving throws/bounded accuracy. It's not working, and I don't think WotC talks about it anymore. To me, bounded accuracy means your poor saves will always be weak, and your AC will not increase (along with attack bonuses, which actually scale a bit) unless you're a Dex-class. So we'll have high-level rogues, rangers and monks that are untouchable by the monsters, as WotC cannot really predict what a high-level PC's AC score is likely to be. I especially do not like the monk's AC system. It's exactly like in 3e, and you have a class that starts off with terrible AC and ends up untouchable. This is bad exactly the way a weakling level 1 mage becoming an incredibly powerful level 9 mage is bad.

This works in reverse too. Monster ACs don't really scale, and there's nothing they can do about poor saves. A hill giant is never going to logically have a high Dex score, leaving it incredible vulnerable to Dex-attack spells... which will scale, because casters get to scale their save DCs in two manners (a level bonus, plus always boosting their key stat). Sometimes that's warranted (an extremely clumsy zombie or a blob of protoplasm shouldn't be dodging anything) but not here. (Is it worse if hill giants get an unrealistically high Dexterity score? IMO, yes.)

Magic item guidance: WotC is probably stuck in an impossible position here. Required amounts of magic items results in a "must collect and save loot" scenarios like in 3e (and 4e without inherent bonuses). But if you don't have guidelines, you get a Monty Haul 2e scenario instead. No matter which way WotC goes, they'll tick someone off. Personally I'd like to see number-boosting items die in a fire, and then far less guidance would be needed, but that's a sacred cow, and 5e is bringing back a lot of that.

Healing: There's a "Healing Word" spell, but it's really weak. Instead, you need to rely on crafting, or Cure Light Wounds, which is again ye olde boring "spend a full turn to spend a standard action to heal plus move up to the healee" which makes clerics incredibly boring to play. While there's non-magical healing, and faster than in most versions of D&D, it's still really slow. You still need Saint Bandaid in your party.

There's a bunch of minor things I didn't like: rangers still casting (WotC can never get the ranger class right, as it's not really even a class), weird wildshape rules, kender in the core rules (that's a big thing for me but a minor thing overall), and multiattacks. One thing I was happy about in 4e is you don't get multiple attacks due to levels, so your (much more complex game) can avoid at least one element of gumming up the works.
 

landovers

First Post
Big Things:

A lack of mechanical rigor.

[...]

There's a bunch of minor things I didn't like: rangers still casting (WotC can never get the ranger class right, as it's not really even a class), weird wildshape rules, kender in the core rules (that's a big thing for me but a minor thing overall), and multiattacks. One thing I was happy about in 4e is you don't get multiple attacks due to levels, so your (much more complex game) can avoid at least one element of gumming up the works.

This is a great analysis. I agree they are not paying enough attention to the math, overall. A game like 4e was made from scratch with the math in mind. D&D Next is going for defining "realism" first, and then they make up the mechanics that fit that realism. Not a bad idea, but badly implemented you end up with uber-wizards at high levels, mandatory Cleric, amazing vs. awful builds, lots of other clunky mechanics and possible exploits.

4e had many flaws and a big one (it was a 'blessing and a curse' situation) was their fear of going all out with classes, spells and monsters and risk unbalancing the game. Take the iconic Sleep spell, it was pretty tame for a daily because of the original's encounter breaking potential. They started to loosen up a bit after Essentials came out and I wish Next would take this evolution forward. Doesn't look like that's happening.

I think the game should sacrifice their perceived realism and the old sacred cows a bit for the sake of better gameplay, but that's not what they seem to be going for.
 

Li Shenron

Legend
I don't like...

  • The human race, because the ability bonuses just feels wrong compare to other classes. It is also very inflexible, since there is nearly nothing to choose.
  • The lack of a traditional Vancian caster from the whole game.
  • The spells saving throws being nearly all Dex/Con/Wis again, like in 3e, instead of being more spread to all the 6 abilities.
  • The mega-feats, because they invalidate a legitimate playstyle, and carry a series of problems that wouldn't be there if feats were as small as a single proficiency and a single +1 stat.
  • The starting of subclasses at different levels for different classes, because it would be more fair if they all started at level 3, and also would better represent the concept of "apprentice levels".
  • Subclasses in general being a bit too small (too few features compared with number of class features), because this will make it hard to represent more subclass concepts later.
  • A bunch of excessively gamist features, such as damage on a miss.
  • Magic weapons still nearly always having +s.

I can easily house rule some of these, e.g. come up with an alternative human race, ban the most offensive gamist features, and exercise DM's control over magic items.

Maybe I can even rule-in a traditional vancian option for each spellcaster: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?340467-True-Vancian-spellcasters

But the subclasses and the feats are much harder to house rule.
 
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Dausuul

Legend
The big thing for me is derived ability score mods (10-11 grants no modifier, 12-13 grants +1, 14-15 grants +2, etc.). I have come to dislike this mechanic, for two reasons. First, the modifiers are too small compared to the size of a d20. If you take an average person (Int 10) and Einstein (Int 20), and have them both make Intelligence checks, the average person will beat Einstein slightly more than 1 out of 4 times. That's way too big a variance. Second, derived mods are confusing to newbies. I would much prefer to have ability checks be "roll 1d20 and add the ability score." So if you have Int 14, your Int check is 1d20+14. It's simpler, it solves the odd stat issue, and it means high stats really mean something. But it's rather too late for this now, I'm afraid.

I'm not a fan of James Wyatt's approach to the lore of the game. He still seems to be stuck on the "one true way" approach that made 4E so divisive. However, I haven't seen too much of that attitude seep into the playtests, so we'll see.

Dexterity is too strong and Intelligence is too weak.

I have a variety of issues with specific playtest elements, but it all changes so much from one playtest to the next; I don't feel like criticism of those elements can be justifiably applied to D&D Next as a whole. I sure hope they ditch the proficiency bonus, though.

It wasn't always that way. The first open playtest was pretty much a freeform roleplaying storytelling system with some combat rules. When the playtester revolted, saying they want some real game elements in their D&D, the designers kind of overdid it. And the dicelovers of the fandom fed them more and more.
I think the biggest thing about D&D Next is how the diversity of the fandom took them by surprise. The evolution of the playtest packets shows this.

I think you're making a mistake in assuming the public playtests reflect the evolution of the game design. Mearls has been pretty clear that the public playtests are aimed at assessing the general popularity of various elements and approaches. The game was never going to be as simple as the first playtest version. On the other hand, many elements of the most recent playtests are likely to be optional in the final game (e.g., skills).
 
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Minigiant

Legend
Supporter

I think you're making a mistake in assuming the public playtests reflect the evolution of the game design. Mearls has been pretty clear that the public playtests are aimed at assessing the general popularity of various elements and approaches. The game was never going to be as simple as the first playtest version. On the other hand, many elements of the most recent playtests are likely to be optional in the final game (e.g., skills).

My assumptions are actually based more on the articles and interviews of the game designers, not the playtests alone. You can see where the design team was coming from and how they reacted to the results. They knew the simple style of the first playtest was not going to fly with all groups but you can see the surprise of blowback to some of the things they assumed the majority would like.
 

Dausuul

Legend
My assumptions are actually based more on the articles and interviews of the game designers, not the playtests alone. You can see where the design team was coming from and how they reacted to the results. They knew the simple style of the first playtest was not going to fly with all groups but you can see the surprise of blowback to some of the things they assumed the majority would like.

Oh, sure. But that was the whole point of the public playtest! They had a bunch of ideas about what the fans would want; they did a public playtest because they knew some of those ideas would turn out to be wrong, and they needed to know which.
 

ren1999

First Post
I don't like the fact that Wizards of the Coast is mostly a game mechanics company. I think this time it should really focus equal resources on reference material and adventure material. Just like TSR did.

kira3696.tripod.com <-- a free 5th edition game tracker, suggestions always welcome
 


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