D&D Next Playtest

[Phaezen]

To get the ball rolling while I am waiting for my second email,

What are peoples initial impressions?

[flashedarling]

My impression is... disappointment. Mixed with a little bit of frustration. I think they have some good ideas in here, having everything derive from your ability scores is a neat trick. Less numbers to keep track of is a good thing. Removing skill lists for free form situation skills? I like that too, it's less numbers to keep track of. It even makes me ok with things that deal stat-damage, because it doesn't lead to a cascade of changes that need to be made on your character sheet.

Unfortunately they just haven't put enough effort yet into making things run well. Advantage and Disadvantage sound good at first, extra d20? Cool! Until you realize that they are either crippling or overpowered, completely blowing anything else out of the water. Perhaps they should had left Advantages as a -2/+2 then incorporated the roll 2d20 as Major Advantages. Armor is completely messed up in terms of the protection it provides and the amount it costs.

The frustration comes in with the philosophy of not defining things for the sake of "DM Empowerment". For example Sneak Attack. Rogues are going to have a really hard time generating sneak attack if the only ways Advantage can be gained are by spending a turn hiding or by DM discretion. It might sound good at first "Why give a codified list of what does and doesn't give Advantage when you can just spout stuff that sounds cool?" until you look at how things play out at the table. It either becomes a game of "Mother May I?" where you never know for sure if you can get Advantage or not, or DM's let you use a trick once or twice but then start saying "You can't do that again" because watching the same thing over and over again gets tiresome. Even if it is a different set of enemies who have never seen your rogues tricks before the DM running them has. Finally it is hard to keep coming up with creative ways to describe things for every attack, sometimes you just want to say "I stab him, 23 vs AC" without having to come up with a flowery description so the DM will let you use your class feature. I know that in my playtests of the earlier versions I was trying to stay fun and roleplay every attack a little bit but after a couple rounds of combat I just started feeling repetative and wanted to move on.

There need to be codified rules for things like the rogue getting advantage for two reasons. A) So that there are shared expectations at all tables, which is important for things like convention play. B) So that there is a convenient shorthand between the DM and the Player so that there doesn't have to be a discussion every time he wants to gain sneak attack. He can just make the attack and they both know he has Advantage. This isn't to say it needs to be an exhaustive list that covers every situation and says "You have Advantage when this happens and no other time", DM should be able to adjudicate situations appropriate.

This kind of thing comes up in a variety of places, the stated goal of DM empowerment. Which for some reason they don't think existed in 4E. Which is horsefeathers. DM's have always been empowered to make, break, and bend rules as they saw fit in every edition. Players need to be able to know how a class will work just be reading the book, not by having to do a character study on a DM to figure out if they will be allowed to use their class features.

There is a lot of sloppy stuff in the playtest document, inconsistancies, bad math, etc. Those are the kinds of things I have faith can be fixed with more editing. The things I have issue are with the core of the philosphy of DM power and legacy elements that have left some things intentionally vague when they should be specific, and specific when things should be left vague.

[Matt James]

Make sure you turn this over with your playtest feedback. Great write-up.

[Scrivener of Doom]

It feels like a fantasy heartbreaker posted on some dim, dark corner of the internet rather than the latest offering from the official brand owners.

Honestly, if I want the old school vibe I will go with Swords & Wizardry. Unless the next playtest document is absolutely amazing I will simply stick with 4E which I am growing to really love (especially by sticking to Heroic Tier campaigns).

[gaming tonic]

The playtest material is so early on that I think we should all be very careful to steer clear of knee-jerk reactions. So far I have seen some very clever elements. The advantage/disadvantage mechanic shocked me as a radical change from what we had seen during the Friends & Family Playtest, but I think we need to really playtest it before we can rule on it from reading it. Does it work? I am not sold either way yet. It is definitely new and sometimes people always treat the new thing like Frankenstein's Monster so we all need to be cautious in not doing that. The feedback is really important but we must frame it in a way that furthers the design goals and doesn't allow for ranting. As each playtest version is released I think we will see a few of the errors cleared up.

[Matt James]

Exactly. It's very early in the process and you can't really critique anything other than the concepts provided. I hope people are turning over their playtest feedback!

[Diffan]

Figured I'd throw in my 2-cents about the subject:

I felt the playtest was rather.......dull. I fully understand that it's a basic design meant to make sure nothing CORE is broken and about how some of the classes play together and what other aspects really needed changed. But there were so many........minor quibbles that it ended up not being fun and we decided to quit until the next packet came out. For some of our concerns-

• Rogues: Sneak Attack every other round just makes the "extra damage" dull and uninspirational. So I spike damage every other turn in lieu of doing moderate damage every turn which, to me, equals the same. Ergo, no reason to attempt Sneak Attack because it just pans out the same. Additionally, and this has more to do with the Halfling, what the heck is up with his "Hide behind big things" quality??? To me, that implies that if I'm a human and Medium-sized I could NOT hide behind a giant boulder or a huge wagon because only halflings can hide behind stuff bigger than they are.

• Fighter: Just 'bleh' all around. Sure, his slayer theme helps pop minions and crappy monsters left and right......but he's about as deep as a hard-wood floor. Nothing interesting besides swing, swing, swing, move, swing. Sure, I can improvise but so can everyone else.

• Cleric of Moradin: Ah, now here's a class that has a little more crunch to him, so things to go outside of hit, move, hit. BUT then I read up on the whole Guardian theme and his ability to grant Disadvantage....1/round. With no Opportuinity Attack mechanic, that ability to defend your more squisher allies is rather moot unless your hip-to-hip every single battle. Still, probably the most tactically minded PC of the bunch. Just wish it was better.

• Cleric of Pelor: So a staff-wielding cleric that shoots beams of light (ala Radiant Lance). And.....I heal extreamly limitedly. So back are the days of spending 1/round to negate a monster's attack and nothing else...........sad.

• Wizard: And back again is full Vancian spellcasting in all it's eternal glory. This was probably the part that really just made me *sigh* and think how greatful I am to have all my 4E books. The thing about the wizard isn't that it's a bad class or that it's not interesting or fun, it's just that your now back to either spamming your Magic Missiles every round to "save" that big BAD EXPLOSION spell at the right time. And when that time as passed and you're all empty of stuff to do, it's back to magic missile. At least in 4E you had 4 distinct options every battle (more with Themes) and THEN dailies on top of that. Just seems very vanilla.

• Human: What does this race get again? Because I found nothing

• General mechanics: I found Advantage and Disadvantage pretty cool concepts. They're real game changers that work well with this (or any other system). I just wish there were more ways of obtaining it in a codified measure. Skills not being tied to a specific Ability score is pretty awesome as I can see some great uses outside of what we've seen in D&D for forever. So that was a big plus for me.

• DM-Fiat/Empowerment: I think the biggest deal for me is how strongly the DM is encouraged to crank ALL the dials in the game. From what's allowed/not-allowed by PC actions to setting every single DC to doing everything on the fly via adjudication. Not only that, but there was no real "Guide" to handle stuff not covered. My favorite example is the Bull-Rush. Everyone can try it, you don't need a special ability, and most know it'll require Strength. But how does it work? Well, that's up for the DM to decide. And this can change as he sees fit. I'm not cool with that. A DM might treat it as a Str vs Str challenge or an Attack roll or a Saving Throw or a auto-success if your Strength score is above a specific DC/opposed Strength OR you get Advantage vs. smaller targets or Smaller targets get to use Dexterity instead of Strength or ......well you get the point. The idea that something so very basic isn't at least mentioned as a "hey, here's 100 ways to do it but we've found that the most standard way is a Strength vs. Strength check works best". So what I see this doing is making DM's keep giant spiral-bound notebooks that detail every single rule they lay as law for references or continunity just goes right down the tubes.

[Matt James]

• DM-Fiat/Empowerment: I think the biggest deal for me is how strongly the DM is encouraged to crank ALL the dials in the game. From what's allowed/not-allowed by PC actions to setting every single DC to doing everything on the fly via adjudication. Not only that, but there was no real "Guide" to handle stuff not covered. My favorite example is the Bull-Rush. Everyone can try it, you don't need a special ability, and most know it'll require Strength. But how does it work? Well, that's up for the DM to decide. And this can change as he sees fit. I'm not cool with that. A DM might treat it as a Str vs Str challenge or an Attack roll or a Saving Throw or a auto-success if your Strength score is above a specific DC/opposed Strength OR you get Advantage vs. smaller targets or Smaller targets get to use Dexterity instead of Strength or ......well you get the point. The idea that something so very basic isn't at least mentioned as a "hey, here's 100 ways to do it but we've found that the most standard way is a Strength vs. Strength check works best". So what I see this doing is making DM's keep giant spiral-bound notebooks that detail every single rule they lay as law for references or continunity just goes right down the tubes.

This is the biggest sell for me. I love it. In the final product, they will need to have a bigger focus on training DMs, as well as support in the form of articles and splatbooks.