D&D Next final playtest review: Other Stuff

So we've covered the main dish, now the miscellaneous appetizers

Equipment

Equipment is still pretty familiar. It's clear they've simplified some things.

Armor: armor is simpler. Light armor gets you a dex bonus, medium armor has a max dex bonus of +2 and Heavy Armor doesn't allow a dex bonus. Armor also does or does not penalize your Stealth abilities (giving you disadvantage). Oddly, rather than armor being its own bonus it changes your Base AC. Plate Mail is oddly expensive (5,000 gp) vs Splint Mail which is identical other than being one point of AC lower (500 gp).

Weapons: It's good to see that my original issue with weapon classes has been dealt with. Now there are merely simple and martial weapons, not even exotic weapons anymore. Most weapons won't seem much different from earlier editions.

Gear: I'm still unclear if it's possible to add your class's proficiency bonus multiple times to the same roll, but I'm getting the impression that it must be. Several tools specifically let you add your proficiency bonus to skills, which you could likewise have proficiency. It seems somewhat odd...I can understand climbing better if you have a climbing kit...but why doesn't someone proficient in the climbing skill know how to use a climbing kit already. Likewise for someone with Medicine using a Healer's Kit or a the Perform Skill and a musical instrument. It seems like these tools should just be granting a flat bonus to the rolls of those with the skill (or anyone really. I'm sure that having a medical bag will make improvised first aid easier). A simple bonus, or granting Advantage seems far more sensible.

Spells

Spells are going to be fairly familiar 3rd edition powers. Many of them do slightly more damage or otherwise have somewhat more intense effects. The main difference is that the spell's level is now merely it's minimum level. It's possible to use a higher level spell slot to increase a spell's potency. In fact, this is the only way to increase spell potency as they no longer scale with level. The only exception seems to be cantrips, making them one of the best ways for spellcasters to inflict damage oddly enough. Compare Ray of frost which inflicts 1d8 damage, increasing by 1d8 every 5th level (so 5d8 at 20th) with Magic Missile which fires one 1d4+1 missile and increases by one for everyone spell level above 1. So that means a spellcasting using one of their only 9th level spell slots to cast magic missile will produce 9 missiles or they can cast a 5d8 missile at will without using any spell slots. For damaging spells there doesn't ever seem to be much motivation to "power up" the spell with a higher level slot, unless you just have no spells prepared already for the higher level. Other than an increased DC the boost to damage or other effects is pretty minor, especially when you consider how few high level spell slots a spellcaster has available in a day.
   Still, when you consider how few spells most spellcasters can memorize it might make for an interesting tactical choice...you can prepare one of your big, level 8 or 9 spells but you'll only be able to use it once or twice. Or you can prepare a broad selection of low-level spells that an be cast repeatedly at different levels of effect.

Not much else that needs addressing. I'll chew things over and probably give a final evaluation soon.

D&D NExt final playtest review: More Classes

Mages

Wizards and Sorcerers seem to be no more, now there are only Mages. They are the sole primary arcane spellcaster in the playtest packet. They are, as usual, the simplest of the classes in terms of unique mechanics. Their big power is obviously their spellcasting.

Because of that I finally began to read the spell mechanics in a bit more detail. I'll still wait until I reach the Spells section for a full evaluation but there are some interesting differences. First, high level spells seem like they're going to be extremely valuable. Any spells above 6th level seem to be limited to once per day. 5th level and lower spells seem to be more common and it's relatively easy for a wizard to regain them between encounters. It's an interesting method of "balancing" wizards, limiting them to a small number of really powerful effects but making their low level effects much more accessible. The same seems to go for the cleric and the druid, although they don't get as many low-level effects.

Wizards use a school specialty as a "path", much like Pathfinder. They seem like pretty useful, and distinct specializations but some of them also seem a little bit too focused. For instance at 20th level the evoker gets to basically cast fireball and lightning bolt at will. Obviously those two spells are classics but that doesn't mean every evoker necessarily wants to make those his go-to spells. There's lots of fun ways to blow things up and it's nice to be able to define your own style. Overall I like the wizard but I'll have to see the spells to find out more. Seems like some effort is being made to limit their ability to dominate the game.

Monks

I'm currently playing a monk, so I'm definitely interested in seeing what's going on in the new edition. Monks have always had the problem that they spend a lot of their "powers" on being able to do what everyone else can do with a bit of easily available equipment. Sure, they're awesome when everyone else is forced to give up their equipment but that's perhaps 5% of the time in a normal game, at best.

D&D Next Monks seem like they're a bit more impressive than 3e's. The biggest problem they had originally was although they got lots of attacks their low BAB and general multiple-ability-score reliance meant that many of them would miss. In Next it seems like most people will have pretty similar levels of accuracy, using their proficiency bonus, and Supreme Flurry means that they can turn Advantage on for all of their attacks in a round.

The monk traditions are interesting but they don't seem to be that impressive. They're not bad but they certainly don't match the power of many other class paths. The elemental path is particularly underwhelming since many of them just give you some variety of elemental attack which just doesn't compare very well to spellcasters. The Way of the Open Hand basically duplicates most of the abilities of the standard 3e monk, done better but still unlikely to be amazing. All told, probably going to be better than 3e but it still doesn't compare well to most other combat classes, especially when you consider just how impressive the fighter can be.

Paladin

Looking over the Paladin entry its good to see that they got rid of a lot of the more useless or problematic class abilities. There are no mounts, and the paladin can sense demons and celestials (and similar phenomena) but not evil in general. Divine Smite and Lay On Hands is also extremely potent compared to the standard. Paladin spellcasting has also been beefed up. Since they are no longer limited solely to Lawful Good they are essentially a highly militant priest variant. Likewise Paladin auras are significantly more potent.

Well, I say they're not limited to good...but honestly I don't see how their theme fits anything but. They heal, do extra damage to undead/fiends and protect their allies. It seems like standard paladin through and through, especially the Oath of Devotion (which is the only one that they have). Of course, the thing about paladins is they're awesome in the right game but much less so in the wrong one. Fortunately it seems like the paladins are much more "generally" effective than before, their smite isn't limited to evil and many of their most impressive powers are defensive or support-based.

Ranger

The ranger was always kind of odd. Even more than the bard they never quite seemed to know what they were doing. They were generalists who were also oddly specific with their nature-focus and their two-weapon fighting. 3e expanded that to archery, but it was still a pretty bizarre requirement.

Next rangers do not have a hard-coded fighting style anymore (although like fighters and paladins they can select a general style). Instead they focus more on terrain advantages, stealth, spellcasting (which like paladins is improved over 3e). Their favored enemies are also more significant, becoming their class "path". They're also more generalized, rather than picking specific species or categories they are focused on broad categories such as hordes of weak monsters or killing big, giant monsters. These broader definitions make favored enemy more applicable.

Overall, rangers are decent. I'm not amazed or anything but there's definitely work that has been done to make them more useful rather than cripplingly specialized.

Rogue

Finally we have rogues. These guys are all about success on rolls. They minimize bad rolls, have plenty of bonuses and lots of defensive abilities. Honestly though, they haven't changed much. They've still got their sneak attack. They still have plenty of skills and bonuses to skills and they're going to be good sneak-attackers and skill monkeys

So, not much to say about them, but they're still pretty good.


Overall I like all the classes, even the ones that aren't too different from the original. The druid is the exception and the monk still seems fairly underwhelming. But overall still good. I'll be interested in seeing if there are any more coming for the core books like Sorcerers.

D&D Next final Playtest review. Part 2, Classes

So, Classes are of course the meat of D&D, so this may get long. I'll go in order and give my evaluations as we go down the list.

Barbarian
So, we'll start with Mister Angry. Looking over the class abilities I notice a few things. First, it seems like they are taking every effort to simplify things, cutting down abilities to their bare essential functions compared to 3e. For example, barbarian rage no longer gives a bonus to strength, con and will saves and a penalty to AC. Instead you get advantage on any Strength rolls and temporary hp equal to twice your level and a bonus to damage based on level (starting a +2).
   In addition to simplicity it seems like the philosophy behind the racial design is still holding true: the character abilities seem like they're meant to be something that are functional at any character level. Many are designed to give your character Advantage (I still really like that mechanic) and function without needing to be "scaled up" or recalculated at higher levels. I definitely approve of this change.
  I'm also seeing what looks like some pretty clear inspiration from Pathfinder. Classes seem like they'll have specific "paths" which function a lot like class-specific "feat trees" or Pathfinder's Archetypes. The barbarian for instance gets the "Berserker" path which focuses on ignoring negative effects and inflicting more damage and the "Totem Warrior" path which focuses on quasi-magical bonuses. Presumably they'll be more available in the final product and I'm certain there will be plenty of expansion books which will include lots and lots of extra paths.
  Overall barbarians seem like solid bad-asses. We'll see how they compare to the other classes.


Bard

Like always the Bard is focused on doing a little bit of everything. Still a bit roguey, a bit fighty, a bit casty and of course musical. One of the first things I notice is their spell list is much smaller. At 20th level they know 11 spells. Compared to 30ish at 20 for 4th edition.
   The bard's performances seem serviceable. it's a little odd that they've replaced a flat bonus to damage with a dice-based bonus. But rolling extra dice can always be fun and I can see it easier to just hand out an extra d4 to everyone rather than trying to keep track of an extra bonus among all the others. Inspire competence might be really powerful or fairly meh, depending on whether the bard's proficiency bonus would stack with the other characters.
   I also notice that spell DCs are quite low, unless the bard is holding an instrument to give themselves their proficiency bonus to the DC. Which seems to indicate singing/chanting/speech-based bards aren't really viable anymore. It could also really hamper combat bards since I don't know that there are many instruments that are "one-handed" so to speak. Expect to see a lot of bards with a sword in one hand and a maraca in the other.
  One of their early abilities is Expertise which grants a whopping +5 bonus to 4 of the Bard's skills and/or instruments. This is impressive but it brings up some questions...a bard's tool proficiencies are all musical instrument and skipping a bit to the equipment section I can see that if you're proficient with an instrument you add your proficiency bonus to ability checks with it. If you're proficient with a skill you add your proficiency bonus to your ability check...so what does that mean if you're proficient with both a skill and a tool...double dipping? Do you get both? Then what about expertise with both a tool and a relevant skill. Does a bard with the performance skill, a proficient instrument and expertise in both get twice his proficiency bonus and a +10 bonus on top? If not then why bother with proficiency in an instrument at all when you can just be proficient in Perform? Of course, not that a massive Perform skill is going to ruin any games...it's just a curious situation.
   Despite their small spell selection bards end up with an impressive set of magical abilities...at 11th they automatically Quicken their spells and they are apparently masters of dispelling magic for some reason at 16th level. They actually remind me a bit of the Pathfinder's Magus.
   The bard is one of the classes that never seemed to have enough going for it to appeal to me, but I could see myself playing one of these guys. Definitely good.

Cleric

reading through the cleric description at first they seem pretty unchanged...then I notice at 10th level they have a % chance equal to their level to successfully call upon divine intervention. Well, that's a hell of a thing.
   Although the cleric is still primarily a spellcaster I do notice that their domain powers are now, very, very significant parts of their class as opposed to just a source of bonus spells. A "life" domain cleric is very different from a "War" domain for instance. I quite like this. It's not quite the sort of miracle-casting I've talked about in the past but it's much closer. For example, Life gets quite a few significant healing feats (channeling divinity to heal level x5 hp divided as you choose among multiple allies) or at 20th maximizing all healing rolls. War on the other hand gets extra attacks a round, or channel to add +10 to an attack roll. At 20th you halve all bashing/slashing/piercing damage against you. Daaaamn.
  At this point I'm just hoping the clerics don't come out too powerful. I haven't gotten a chance to look at spellcasting yet but the domain abilities alone make a War cleric pretty damn powerful...adding spellcasting on top of that is going to make them a pretty amazing fighter.
  Speaking of spells they seem to be doing something new with spell preparation. You prepare a list of spells for yourself at the start of the day and then cast freely from the list...some kind of hybrid between spontaneous casting and memorization.

Druid

Next we have druids. Frankly I've always found druids a little odd. They never quite seemed to fit into the D&D theme and they always seemed to have the least reason to take up the "adventuring" lifestyle. Shapeshifting has also always been one of "those" abilities. The kind where you can pick two out of three: simple, useful, or balanced. It'll be interesting to see how they turn out.
   They seem to be handling shapechanging by giving the druid a set of generic "shapes" they can assume as they rise in level. So for instance, at 2nd levels druids can assume the shape of the Hound, which seems to include all dogs, wolves, coyotes, dingos, foxes, etc. While in most shapes you keep your own ability score, but some include modifications or replacements of ability scores.
   Frankly, looking over the shapes most of them seem...pretty lame. The Hound for instance has your exact same attributes, an attack that inflicts 1d8 damage and you lose any armor while in the shape. The one advantage is a high speed and good senses. I guess it's helpful if you want to run away or find someone hidden but otherwise there's not much reason not to stay human. At 5th level you can change to the Steed (basically any Large, herbivorous quadruped). The steed has the same high land speed and low-light vision. They also get a +2 to Strength, but their only attack is a 1d6 + strength slam/gore attack. I guess it's a slight improvement on the Hound but only just barely. Then you can turn into a Strength 5 Fish at 7th level (a creature with zero offensive or defensive capability) or a Rodent which only boasts a Stealth bonus, or a bird which can fly.
   I know the druid was often criticized as overpowered in 3e, but honestly if this is the shapechanging options then I don't know why anyone would ever want to be a druid. The "baseline" druid has a very limited selection of shapes and frankly they're only useful in very specific situations (none of which are combat). Now, druids do have paths (or circles) one of which is the circle of the Moon which gives access to "battle" forms like Bear or Cat and finally the Behemoth shape. Now, that's cool...however that means that you're only going to be changing to those shapes if you pick that one, specific Circle. At that point why even give baseline druids shapechanging at all? The limitations are also fairly arbitrary. A 7th level druid can become a dog, bird, fish, rat or horse...but can't become a housecat, snake, monkey, or a turtle.
  Other than that the druid seems to be a slightly more martially focused cleric. The Circle effectively replaces their Domain and their other abilities aren't worth much mention. Frankly this version of the druid is pretty disappointing and I'd probably just write them out of the system at this point. But at least no one needs to worry about them being overpowered anymore.


Fighter

When I last reviewed the playtest material way back when I found the Fighter the most intriguing. They seemed to focus on giving the fighter lots of choices as well as their own, fairly unique mechanic.
    The "meat" of the fighter seems to be in their "Paths" however lets look at how they stack up to the other classes in some more general ways first. Most other martial classes like the Barbarian or Druid get an extra attack per round at some point. The fighter gets that at 5th level, like the barbarian, however they continue to get more. A third attack at 11th, and a 4th at 20th. Keep in mind these aren't 3e's iterative attacks...all of these use your full attack bonus. So it's pretty clear that a high level fighter is going to have some significant advantages...the barbarian may hit harder but the fighter is going to be unloading a ton more attacks as time goes on. The fighter is also looking very tough to kill. They can give themselves temporary hp, and at 9th level they can make a DC 15 con save to avoid being reduced below zero hp from any attack that wouldn't kill them outright. And at 13th level they have Advantage on all saving throws.
   Clearly fighters have the "tank" role down, their offensive abilities (aside from a buttload of attacks) are handled mostly through their Paths. Two paths are presented. The first is the Path of the Weaponmaster which is where the "Expertise Dice" from the original playtest document went. You get a handful of dice (d6's at first, increasing to d10's at higher levels) and on a successful attack you can spend one to add an effect to the attack if you roll well enough on the dice. If you fail then you just get to add the dice result to damage. I really like that mechanic, it doesn't require you to worry about declaring the action before attacking or "wasting" attempts, and even if you fail to pull off your special move you have a nice damage bonus to compensate.
  The one issue is it seems like it's kind of awkward to have this unique and distinct mechanic used purely for just one of the fighter's paths. In comparison the Path of the Warrior is mostly about increasing the frequency and deadliness of your critical hits. No dice, no combat options. It's a little lopsided, but honestly I still find the fighters to be impressive battle-masters and so far they seem like they'll hold their own against other classes...in fact in comparison the Barbarian seems fairly unimpressive...hopefully the other martial classes will manage to make a decent showing compared to these gods of war.

 Well, that's enough for now. I'll go through the other classes soon.

D&D Next Final Playtest review

Been a good long while since I posted anything huh? Been having some family medical issues which haven't really given me time to do much outside of work and a very small amount of relaxation. I'm still planning on finishing CARDS, the Wizard has been sitting half-finished in my drafts for weeks. Speaking of wizards though...

The thing that brings me here is the final D&D playtest packet which has just been released. Now, I've mostly been too busy to investigate the playtesting material other than the thorough examination I gave a bit over a year ago.

So, I actually have very little idea of what the evolving game has looked like, but since this is the last playtest packet I figure this will be a good time for me to look it over so I can see the changes that have been wrought since I first flipped through it and share my opinions. I'll try and make things a bit more concise than last time.

I'll be going in no particular order here as I read through the packet...


Races
So, first we have the races. I mentioned last time that I liked that they seemed to be avoiding the "cultural baggage" of the different races (namely things like racial hatred/training bonuses, etc) and fortunately that still seems to be the case. There's still racial weapon proficiencies but that's about it. They're also making sure that the racial abilities are almost universally useful at any level. Halfling luck is an excellent example of this...rather than just a flat, +1 bonus to saves (something that will be less and less important as time goes on) halflings get to reroll any time they roll a 1 on a d20. Now, is that mathematically superior to the +1 bonus? Maybe, maybe not. But it is something that remains consistent throughout the halfling's career and it will be just as useful at level 20 as it was at level 1. Other racial abilities grant things like Advantage or resistances which will likewise be universally helpful, no matter what your level is.
  I do see the Dragonborn are sticking around from 4th edition. I've always been conflicted about them. On the one hand I find the idea of them as a "core" race somewhat silly and they always feel more tacked on. However, on the other I know from experience that half-dragons/dragon-kin/etc are very popular and frankly there are probably more people who've played a dragon-something than have played a gnome...even before 4e. 
  Overall, the races seem good. I like the fact that the difference between a dwarf and an elf is still significant no matter what level you are. The one exception seems to be humans sadly. Their racial ability is a +1 to all 6 ability scores rather than a +1 to two like most other races. One the one hand it's neat that humans are no longer just the baseline, but are actively superior in their ability scores to most races. On the other I've peeked at the class descriptions and...well ability score modifiers get handed out a lot. A human who starts the game with good rolls may actually be in a situation where they hit the maximum value (which seems to be 20) on all their relevant ability scores. Time will tell but human exceptionalism may not be as great as it seems. Oh, they also have half-elves in this one...sadly not too impressive. They're basically elves with a different ability bonus set up and less abilities. Half-orcs are much more impressive. 


Backgrounds

So, when I first reviewed the playtest packet I was pretty rough on backgrounds. I really liked what Wizards was going for, but I felt like it didn't live up to it's potential. I've had a chance to read over some of the refurbished background rules and I've got to say that I see improvement...but the Backgrounds are still somewhat unsatisfying. 

Let's start with the good. They've ditched things like the commoner's house. And a lot more of the backgrounds are focused on what you know and how you interact with others as opposed to the more generalized and harder to use "reputation". This means that for the most part your background can't be taken away or rendered irrelevant by your own actions. 

However, it quickly becomes clear that they could not come up with many new background ideas. For example, a good third of the backgrounds basically boil down to "you can get food and shelter from X" where "X" relates to your background. Some come with a few vaguely useful other aspects or limitations...but that's a lot of sameyness and frankly a pretty minor benefit. The thug notably is almost completely unchanged. 

But the changes have at least upgraded backgrounds to "acceptable" levels. I doubt most of them will be more than window dressing for your character (and a source of skills of course), but for the most part you at least can't claim it's not fairly even across the board. 

Specialities...I mean Feats

So, originally these were Themes then they became Specialties, only to be replaced with entirely optional Feats. You see as you level up you get the option to take 2 ability score points or take a feat. An interesting choice and it becomes more interesting as a flip through the Feats. Unlike previous editions these Feats are big deals. They're big, character-defining bonuses. For example, Alertness (more or less the poster child for the useless feat in other editions) makes you immune to surprise, grants +5 to initiative and gives you the perception skill (or another skill if you have that already). Nice. 

Other Feats are basically substitutes for prestige classes (Arcane Archer for instance). While I'm here I'll note that there's an important thing that makes Arcane Archer a bit...overpowered. First the spells imbued in an arrow last until you next rest...second they don't require you to be the one to shoot the arrow. A wizard with this feat could easily give a more combat-focused archer a huge arsenal of magical arrows to use throughout the day. 

Overall I quite like feats. It's nice to have big, chunky bonuses that grant significant abilities rather than gaining them piecemeal. Some are pretty darn weak (toughness is extremely unimpressive for instance as are the Arcane/Divine/Druid adept abilities), but for the most part they look like a lot of fun. 


I'll tackle the rest soon. 
 

More D&DNext playtest review: Everything else

At this point I'm sure that I'm boring non-D&D gamers to tears with all of this, and we're getting into some minutiae at this point so I'll just lump all the other important playtest material into one post.

Specialities (formerly "themes")

This is the second lens that helps define your character, along with Background. While your background focuses on your skill-set and some role-play based advantages your specialty is the stand-in for Feats and focuses entirely on mechanical benefits. Some specialties are fighting styles (such as Archer or Two-Weapon Fighter), while others are more like enhancers or minor multi-class bonuses (for instance anyone can be a Magic-User, it grants non-wizards a small number of cantrips while it expands the wizard's spell repertoire a bit). Since we're only allowed to see the 1st and 3rd level feats in the playtest it's hard to see how they'll play out long-term but it's clear that a character's class is a lot more important than their specialty. The benefits a Sharpshooting Fighter gets are still much stronger than any other class with the Archer Specialty, although of course the Sharpshooter will certainly want to consider the Archer specialty.
   Specialty's are pretty decent, they're focused primarily on providing clear cut "paths" characters can take with their abilities rather than the endlessly branching feat trees of older editions. That way you don't have to spend time optimizing and synergizing and just pick a theme you like and go and limits the chance for newbie traps. That said, specialties are not nearly as universal as Backgrounds. For instance, if you're the above Sharpshooting Fighter then you're practically obligated to pick up the Archer specialty. Hopefully that loosens up a bit when more Specialties are introduced. The Necromancer specialty is especially neat, a new way to handle the specialist wizard (although it's 3rd level ability to animate a single skeletal servant will become quickly useless at higher levels, hopefully later feats help it out).

Spells
  The spells introduce us to how magic works in the new edition as well as a taste of how wizards will work. Most of the spells are pretty familiar and while they no longer seem to scale damage with level they're still all working more or less how you expect them to. Damage for "focused" spells is significantly higher (melf's acid arrow has a base damage of 4d8 for instance, the third level Inflict Serious Wounds does 8d8). There are two big changes however:
   The first is the inclusion of "ritual" versions of spells, basically longer and costlier (in terms of material components) versions of normal spell which can be cast without preparation. It's a neat idea, and one that makes it easier for spellcasters to prepare their spells without having to worry as much about things like keeping the campsite secure or being ready to remove disease or blindness.
  The other big change is that many spells have different effects based on the target's hit points, most notably enchantments and other mind affecting spells. For instance, Charm Person only allows a saving throw if the target has 25 hit points or more, creatures with more than 40 hit points are immune to Bane and so on. Now, I can definitely see why these changes were made, but it has some effects I don't think the creator's accounted for.
  For example, due to their low hp totals and the fact that this edition doesn't grant class-based saving throw bonuses it means that wizards are the most easily affected by mind-control and other magic, while fighters and clerics are about tied as "most resistant". For example, a 3rd level fighter with Con of 14 would have an average of 30 hit points, giving them a save against Charm Person...a 3rd level wizard would have an average of 15 or less and would have to make a save. And since arcane spellcasting doesn't demand Wisdom they don't have great odds. Ironically this means wizards will likely duel one another with mind control before anything else. It seems like basing this off Hit Dice rather than maximum hit points would be more logical and fair.

Equipment
  Equipment will also be fairly familiar to long-time D&D players. Armor works very similar to 2nd edition...all armor, no matter how light, prevents magic-use and characters basically become unplayable when strapped into any non-proficient armor. It's a dumb rule...but at the same time I can see why they wanted to ditch the fiddly stuff like arcane spell-failure chances. So in the end I guess I don't care. They seem to have dealt with the issue that meant heavy armor is functionally less useful than lighter armor, so that's good, but this is forcing some ridiculous pricing decisions. For example, scale mail being 6 times the cost of chainmail.
  Weapons are likewise similar but simplified. For instance range increments have been ditched, there's just a short range and a long range which is four times the short. However, they've definitely gone overboard with the weapon classes. The division between simple, finesse, martial and heavy, aside from over-complicating things, makes for some ridiculous situations. For example, a cleric can use a spear or mace (simple weapons) but not a staff (finesse) or morningstar (martial). In fact, the war domain gives clerics access to martial weapons so you have someone who knows how to fight with a longsword, flail, warhammer, battleaxe, trident, handaxe or war-pick...but not how to use a dagger. A rogue can use a katana or spiked chain but wouldn't know how to use a longsword. There's really no reason why Finesse weapons need to have their own category when they could simply be a Property of the weapon like being Two Handed or having Reach.

Monsters:
I've only skimmed monsters but I'm definitely seeing a move back towards 3rd edition style monsters and away from 2e (they behave more like PCs than a separate type of character) or 4e (lots of weird, unique situational abilities). I'm kind of sad to see some of the weirder abilities go and be replaced by class levels...but ultimately it's an easier way for people to build and balance their own critters so I'll accept it as a necessary evil. So far it really seems to be six of one, half a dozen of the other. Some monsters are clearly just PCs in weird suits...others are more unique. Too soon to say really.
   One 4e feature that is showing up is in the style of encounter building, creatures are given "elite" or "solo" classifications to give an idea of how they should be slotted into encounters. Whether this will do any good remains to be seen...there's a reason why the vast majority of non-d20 RPGs don't bother much with things like challenge ratings. Notably the hit points of monsters have been drastically cut for the tougher ones, probably a good idea.

So...
Well, I've more or less looked through the whole thing and I'd have to say I'm still feeling fairly positive towards the new editions. There are a lot of places I can see things that look wobbly or incomplete but it is a playtest so I'm willing to have faith that many of these issues will be corrected. The changes between the last playtest and now show that they're at least open to the idea of change...here's hoping it'll all be good changes. 


 

D&D Next, more review: Races

Unlike classes I'm not going to go over the races individually, instead you get my general overview. In the first playtest packet I was pleased to see that they seemed to be ditching a lot of "cultural baggage" that races carried around with them. For instance the 3rd edition dwarves had their racial hatred bonuses, plus "special training" to deal with giants. These never really made a lot of sense as being universal traits in the first place, let alone racial features that would be possessed by the character regardless of where or how they were raised.

Well, I shouldn't say they've just now ditched it, 4th edition never had them either. However, considering how much D&D next is borrowing from 2nd and 3rd edition it's good to see that they aren't being readopted. The one exception is racial weapon preferences which seem like they're a feature for every non-human race, although it takes the form of a bonus to damage rather than an improved chance to hit.

One thing that is making a comeback from 2nd edition is subraces. Each race has two subraces that provide their own specific bonuses to a set of "core" racial traits. Dwarves have Hill Dwarves (the tough ones) and Mountain Dwarves (the wise, stoic ones) while elves have High Elves (the prancy magical ones) and Wood Elves (the sneaky, arrow-happy ones). I have no particular reaction to this. I never felt particularly strongly one way or the other about subraces and I can take or leave them. I do appreciate that they're more than just the same race with a new hat or a different place to live, each of the subraces are different enough to justify being worth mentioning.

The races also all get a pretty impressive write-up as far as culture and nature goes, all of them have about two pages of text in the playtesting document and there might be more by the time D&DNext is finished. On the one hand it's good to see the dedication to fleshing things out and making them interesting...on the other it seems somewhat pointless considering how different things can be for different settings. Perhaps Wizards is pushing to revive Oerth or create a new "standard" D&D setting rather than the sort of generic, wispy setting that they've had in the past few editions which gets tossed out as soon as they start releasing more popular campaigns. Either way I honestly haven't read this. I've played D&D for 15 years now, I know what dwarves, elves and halflings are.

Stat-wise things tend towards 4e's "advantages only" philosophy. There are no racial disadvantages (unless you count the halfling's Small size), only bonuses and there are a lot of them. Each race gets very significant bonuses such as immunity to poison, permanent advantage on certain rolls, AC bonuses or other significant advantages. The design philosophy seems to focus on "big" advantages that will be useful throughout an adventurer's whole career. By levels 15+ a +2 bonus to Spot and Listen don't mean much...but Advantage on any sense-based roll is a bonus that will be helpful for anyone levels 1-20. Likewise things like poison immunity or the ability to reroll any attack, save or check twice a day will always be useful.

So...if all the races are impressive how are humans handled? Basically they're proto-supermen. You know how normally humans are the "average" while all the other races are exceptional in some sense (and often weaker in another)? Well in D&DNext apparently humans are exceptional at everything and the other races are only equal to humans in one area...so long as the human isn't already trying to be great. Humans get +2 to one ability score of their choice (other races get +1 to a set ability score based on subrace) and then they get +1 to every other ability score. Taking away human's "everyman/underdog" status compared to the other races is new for D&D...but it does make a lot of settings make more sense. Humans are always the dominant race in any given setting and it sure isn't just because of high birth rates. Now there's a reason...dwarves might be tougher than the average human but on average the human will be stronger, faster, smarter and more charming.

So it's an interesting tactic, and it makes me think that half-elves might actually have a shot at being useful (no details on them in the playtest doc) since now both their parents have an impressive ability set.

So races get a thumbs up from me. The design philosophy here is good and none of them scream "broken" or unbalanced.

D&DNext continuing playtest review: classes pt 2

This one won't be quite as long-winded as yesterday's, so let's jump right in.

Rogue

Remember how I was going over backgrounds last time and I talked about how they seemed to serve as "lenses"that allowed you to interpret the very basic classes in new ways? Well the rogue doesn't seem to want to have any of that. If you're a rogue then you're some kind of unlawful scoundrel and you'll damn well like it. Which is an odd step considering 3rd edition steered them away from that (switching from "thief" to the more generic "rogue" and providing lots of prestige classes and options to try and make the distinction) and 4e basically turned rogues into agility-based front line fighters with a couple of skills thrown in.

You see rogue's get a "Scheme" which basically means that you've got two backgrounds, one of which must be Thief or Thug. Now, I'm sure there are alternate schemes planned (Charlatan and Spy would seem obvious) but at the moment the rogue is very limited in terms of theme. The fact that they've brought back Thieves Cant from 2e and earlier doesn't help the situation.

Now, I know why they're doing this...the Rogue is meant to be a skill-focused classes and your skills come from your background, but your background only gives you 3 skills. That's not much for a skill-monkey to work with, and the two backgrounds double this while also ensuring that the rogue has skills from the appropriate "theme" (i.e. breaking and entering, sneaking around, etc).

However, this still makes the rogue's interaction with the Backgrounds very unusual compared to the other classes and comes off as an inelegant solution to the issue. It's exacerbated by the fact that Rogues seem to have a very different relationship with the Backgrounds than other classes, notably a Rogue Thief is far more "thiefy" than any other Thief and the thug is far more thuggish. They get a collection of progressive bonuses related to the background, which makes you wonder why a Soldier Fighter isn't somehow more Soldiery than others, or a Priest Cleric. Etc.

It seems like if they want to avoid this thematic confusion rogue schemes could easily be divorced from Backgrounds. Each scheme allows you to pick 3 extra skills from an appropriate set and gives you extra bonuses as you level up. Give them names unrelated to the backgrounds like Sneak or Brute. Sure, the difference is almost entirely cosmetic but it doesn't screw with the way the reader perceives things like Backgrounds and Specialties. In fact, this whole thing makes me wonder how things are meant to work if your GM isn't using backgrounds, they're listed as optional after all. Would a rogue be required to get a background while no one else does? Would they just lose their background-related abilities?

Well, issues of theme and coherency aside the Rogue has some potential. They're clearly returning to their roots as the premiere skill-using class and damn are they good at skills. Right from level 1 they are guaranteed to never roll lower than a 10 on a skill check and they have a minimum ability modifier of +3. That means that they're rolling at least 13 for any skill rolls at all and the minimum roll increases as they level up.

That's before you even get to their Knack which allows them to arbitrarily give themselves Advantage on a roll, which will probably be mostly used to take advantage of their impressive Sneak Attack damage. While Fighters are unmatched in general damage output and absorption the rogue's sneak attack packs a buttload of dice into their damage whenever they can take advantage of it.

Wizard

Oddly, I've got very little to say about the Wizards at the moment. That's mostly because I have yet to get to the spells and frankly there is absolutely nothing else here. Not even familiars or bonus "feats". They get a bonus knowledge skill, they get low hp and no armor and a spell list and that's about it.

The only thing worth mentioning at this time is that wizards are very squarely back in the camp of Vancian magic, good old "fire and forget" (literally) spells. I'm not much of a fan of that style of magic, but it does do a decent job of supporting the wizard's "crazy prepared" focus so it has its place in the game.

I'm assuming that the final version of D&D will include other classes, because frankly having only Vancian magic would be a little bit unbearable. So I'm betting at some point Sorcerers will make a reappearance but for now it's just that guy with robes and a spellbook. I'll return to these guys once the spells come around.


Final Thoughts

So, so far I'd say the classes are certainly more encouraging than the backgrounds. I'm a fan of what they're doing with fighters and the cleric and rogues are at least so far fairly inoffensive. Nothing shooting flames or leaking odd fluids.

The one thing this all makes me curious about is multi-classing. I'm a big fan of the ability to multiclass characters to create your own unique set of abilities. Specialties provide some small taste of it...but a couple of spells tacked onto a Fighter doesn't make a sword-mage. It looks like it'll be harder to multiclass effectively as well...each class has features that scale heavily with levels so coming in on a class at the ground floor is a great way to be worthless while also crippling your progression in your previous class.

But for now the whole thing looks fairly serviceable. We'll see where it goes from here.

D&D Next, continuing playtest review: Classes part 1

As I mentioned last time, I'm kind of reviewing each piece of the D&D Next packet separately as I come to them. So for all I know they could come together in some kind of glorious whole or some retching mass for all I know...I won't find out for sure until I finish reading. But for now here are my impressions of the classes, organized individually.

Clerics

This will sound weird, but reading through the cleric abilities made me realize exactly what I don't like about the standard D&D cleric...that sounds way more negative than I actually feel because the D&DNext cleric is perfectly serviceable so far and is strongly reminiscent of the 3.5 version.

The cleric is perhaps the class that suffers the most from being "generic". It's basically a class with a few abilities that reverse, or rotate 90 degrees, depending on the cleric's alignment. Their channel divinity ability is the perfect expression of this in many ways. The good cleric can channel divinity to heal his allies and harm undead...an evil cleric has the mirror image of that power. They can harm the living or heal undead. Now, there's a lot of problems with that if you think about, but first and foremost is why do evil clerics automatically have to hate being healthy and love undead? Why wouldn't an evil cleric want to heal his minions or allies from time to time and who says just because they're evil they have anything to do with undead. Sure clerics of necromantic or death-based gods might be all about having a bunch of skeletal friends...but what about all the other evil gods who could take or leave shambling corpses for all they care.

And why must good and evil be perfect mirror images of one another anyway? So a good cleric can heal his allies and cause unclean zombies to burst into flame. Fair enough. Why can't have the evil cleric do something along the same lines rather than just reversing. Clerics are classic support classes and making an evil cleric into a half-assed magical damage dealer just because they're wicked isn't very "support" and not every evil cleric has a bunch of undead minions around to keep alive. They should both be support classes but with different themes. Good can be about healing and protection and granting the tools to smite evil...the evil cleric should be about making their allies nastier and deadlier. Instead of healing them, give them damage boosters or berserk fury or something. 

I'm spending way too much mental energy ranting about why evil clerics (a class very few PCs ever pursue) are lame, but my point is that it helps to illustrate how clerics feel like the same guy in different colored robes shooting differently colored bolts of god-power around. Cleric X feels far too much like Cleric Y when in fact they should be the most unique, considering the massive diversity of gods in D&D. As it is they feel like a fairly generic support-based spellcaster with a few thematic tricks. Clerics shouldn't cast spells, clerics should call on miracles. 

And despite this rant I think so far D&D Next is actually the version of clerics that get closest to this ideal. At least based on what small amount of info we have from the Domains. The sun domain is a good example, They get a powerful set of static bonuses (fire and radiant resistance) and at second level they can call upon an impressive (for 2nd level) sunburst ability with their Channel Divinity. In fact, they make the War domain clerics look positively lame in comparison.

So if I had my way that's more what clerics would focus on. Powerful, dramatic abilities fueled by their Channel Divinity power and themed around their god's domain. Ditch spells and focus on these powers and give them some good inspiration/defensive abilities say a non-magical ability to grant bonuses to allies similar to a bard. Or perhaps they get impressive bonuses to saves sort of like a 3.5 Paladin.

EDIT: I just noticed that the cleric is actually quite terrible at fighting. They've still got decent hp and okay armor (based on domain)...but their attack bonus is just as bad as the wizard's...in fact it's bad for both their weapon and magic attacks. It makes one wonder what the War Domain cleric is supposed to do with himself...especially considering his subpar domain abilities. 

Fighter

I don't know about the rest of you but more information on the Fighter is something I've definitely been curious about. The fighter's had kind of a rough history with D&D. In early editions they were incredibly dull classes. A big sack of hp with a few extra attacks, hardly impressive. 3rd edition gave them sackloads of feats which certainly made them more useful but their utility was based on the feats (most of which were available to anyone), not the class itself and unfortunately 3.5 made the barbarian, ranger and paladin much more interesting warrior alternatives. 4th edition certainly gave them loads and loads of tricks, some of which were very cool, but they did that for everyone and everyone's tricks basically worked the same way. Fighters still didn't feel very unique. Even worse, they were loaded down with many abilities that I personally found the most repulsive (namely the ability to move enemies around the battlefield through some kind of martial mind control). Still the 4th edition fighter was by far the best and they finally managed to make it cool and effective to swing a sword. 

So, how does D&DNext handle this most generic of classes? They're obviously moving back towards third edition's design philosophy but does that mean that fighters become just another sack of feats? 

Thankfully if this playtest document is anything to go by then the answer is no. The fighter is actually the most unique and mechanically intriguing of all the four playtestable classes. It's hard to say too much for sure until I see what options fighters get at higher level and how quickly their powers advance but even with the abilities they get in the first couple of levels they get terrifying pretty quick. Even their most basic abilities "Parry" and "Deadly Blow" are very impressive and look to make the fighter the undisputed king of the battlefield. No one is going to be able to dish out or absorb as much damage as the fighter. In fact, it would be impressively hard for anything other than a fighter (or a sneak attacking rogue) to even seriously harm a high level fighter. Fighters seem like they'll also make very effective defenders. They may not be able to protect every single party member at once, but there's going to be plenty of characters who will be very grateful for their fighter bodyguard. Fans of 3.5's Book of Nine Swords will be pleased to see some of that influence in the new edition's fighters.

Rather than getting a sack of feats to do with as they wish each fighter is given a fighting style which grants them new ways to use their special "expertise dice" as they level up. While this means you have less choice in your progression I feel like it's a good compromise. After all, fighters in earlier editions were only really effective if they focused on a specific style anyway...so why provide players the opportunity to accidentally screw over their character with poor feat synergy or lack of focus? Just give them a list of fighter archetypes and say "pick the one you like. He'll do fine!" 

The biggest concern I have for fighters is that at the moment they may actually be the class with the most choices and I see a lot of opportunity for bloat from splatbooks and the like. I'm hoping the designers resist the desire to create tons of minor variations "this guy is a defender, but at level 3 and 9 he gets slightly different abilities!" 

So, while clerics make me a bit exasperated with how generic they are, fighters on the other hand are an impressive breath of creativity and unique design. I look forward to see what they'll do with them.

So far, 1 out of 2 for classes. The Rogue and the Wizard will follow tomorrow.

D&D Next Playtest Review...THE SEQUEL...Part 1: Backgrounds

So, earlier today the next playtest packet dropped and I've been going over it. I'll provide my thoughts on it piecemeal. I'll just start with the very first thing I pulled up:

Backgrounds

So, I mentioned in the last review that D&D Next was doing something interesting beyond the usual class/race combo. Basically they're providing a set of generic "lenses" to adjust your character. Backgrounds were one and they're basically a set of semi-generic "pasts" that you can tack onto your character which is what determines their starting skills and grants some secondary ability or trait. Basically ways to show that a "Sage" Wizard is different from a "Charlatan" or a "Noble" Wizard and backgrounds are in no way class-restricted so you could easily have a "Sage" Fighter or a "Bounty Hunter" cleric.

Now, I'll start off by saying that going into this I very much wanted to like Backgrounds, they're great ideas. I also can totally see where Wizards is going with them and it's a truly laudable thing they're attempting. You see, aside from providing some starting skills each Background also has a Trait representing some special benefit associated with the background. Traits are not like your traditional Feats or Kits or anything, they aren't a set of bonuses to X skill or ability to ignore Y penalty or whatever. They're abilities that are meant to aid in roleplaying a character and encourage it, rather than being strict mechanical bonuses. It's a very cool idea and it's something that's very refreshing to see after the...let's say heavily systemized...4th edition. So definite karma points for good intentions. 

Sadly Backgrounds fall short in execution...the biggest problem is that they're ignoring what the word "background" implies...that is something from your character's past, how they were raised or trained or shaped by their past. Most backgrounds want to remain firmly in the present and that's a problem when they're still technically mechanical abilities in a living, breathing narrative like D&D or any other roleplaying game. 

So what exactly is wrong, well the "starting skills" work fine. They make perfect sense. A "Bounty Hunter" gets  Spot and Stealth and so on. Works fine. It's the Traits where the pooch starts to get nervous about it's prospects. For example, the Knight background means you get recognition for your rank and station and free lodging and food from nobility and the like. Okay, well that's all well and good but...what happens if you stop being a Knight? You commit a crime or you're framed or you just decide you don't like the direction your king is taking the country and decide to set off on your own (like some sort of ...adventurer or something.) Then you end up with one less ability than your friends have. Likewise...what happens if a Soldier acquits himself exceptionally well and is raised to the station of a Knight or a Noble...well shouldn't he logically get their Background abilities? After all, they're based on your place in society not your upbringing...so what does that mean? Do you lose your current background? do you now have two? What about your skills?

The Commoner is probably the worst offender in this regard. Their special Trait is...they have a house. Basically they get a house and a small amount of land and the service of an NPC apprentice or servant to tend it while they're away. So...what happens if you go wandering and never return (how many adventurers do you know who are likely to stick in one place for that long)...what if it gets burned down when a vengeful dragon shows up or you piss off the wizard next door? What if you just don't want to live in the little podunk village you grew up in anymore and say "screw it, I'm going to be an adventurer!". And it's pretty sad too...because a Background like commoner has a lot of potential...a simple farmer who is forced into a dangerous life or who is called upon by king, god or fate to go forth into the dangerous world. Frodo and Bilbo, Rand Al'Thor, Richard Rahl, Shea Ohmsford. I could go on naming fantasy protagonists pretty much all day. And what does that mean for everyone else if the Commoner needs a Trait to have a house...is the craftsman homeless? What about the Noble?

And that brings me to the second problem with Traits is that they are wildly unequal. There are some that have abilities that are damn useful for the entire lifetime of their character. A Sage's ability is a great Trait it not only is extremely useful it's basically an endless plot-hook generator. But others don't age nearly as well. For example, the Noble gets a collection of three minor, non-combat servants with no discernible skills or abilities. Now sure, an extra pair of hands and eyes could be helpful and having someone to deliver messages is moderately useful for the lazy adventurer...but really when you've got 10 or 15 levels under your belt it's not very impressive. The Commoner may be lording his oh-so-fancy cottage over the heads of his homeless Knight and Noble friends but after a few adventures I'm pretty sure any PC worth their salt can afford to buy themselves a house.

 The very worst is the Thug. You know what their special ability is? A bad reputation. First off, even ignore the problem that A) a reputation is meaningless outside of the area it's established in and D&D characters are often wide-ranging folks and B) a reputation for being "a bit of a dick" is rather easily supplanted by a reputation for "killing dragons" or "saving kingdoms" it's still terrible. The Trait basically boils down to this "you can commit minor crimes and get away with them...because people are frightened of you". Sure, at level 1 maybe you can afford some extra healing potions because you bullied some free meals out of the local inn or broke into someone's barn to nap...but even in the most lean and frugal D&D campaigns I can't imagine characters above level 3 or so needing to save the extra half-gold piece by dicking over a shopkeeper on 50 foot rope.

Here's a quick summary of the good vs. the bad. 

The Good: Sage (probably the best), Spy, Soldier, Thief and Priest.

The Bad: Artisan, Knight, Bounty Hunt, Charlatan, Noble. 

The Worst: Thug, Commoner

Obviously I doubt anyone from Wizards is going to be reading this, let alone heeding my words, but nevertheless these are my opinions:

1) The ideas of backgrounds as both a means of making a character unique and providing plot and roleplaying opportunities is a great idea. HOWEVER

2) Backgrounds should not restrict the GM or players. The GM shouldn't have to worry that plot events are going to actually remove a character's abilities (by burning his house, taking his title or even giving them a new one) and players shouldn't feel like they're now tied permanently to "who they were". A 1st level fighter who was a brute and a bastard and is defined by his "Thug" background is fine...but as that fighter's story moves on he should be able to move past that and change as a person. 

3) Traits should definitely not be something that any other PC can duplicate with nothing but a fistful of cash. anyone can buy a house. Only someone who has spent years in study could be considered a sage. 

That is all. I see a lot of potential in D&D Next, but here's hoping the rest of the game works better than Backgrounds do, especially the other "lense": your Specialty.

D&D Next review, finale

So, we've looked at monsters, peeked at the GMing tips and thoroughly dissected the "how to play" packet. Let's take a look at the characters.

We've got two clerics, a wizard, a rogue and a fighter of various races. Each character has 4 primary "aspects" their Race, their Class, their Background and their Theme.

Races: The races are interesting, although completely traditional. There's no sign of dragonborn or tieflings here. Probably a good thing, I was pretty ambivalent when they were first introduced as a player race but when they started getting shoehorned into every single setting it got fairly ridiculous. The racial abilities are all familiar to those who played D&D before: elves have keen senses, dwarves are hardy, etc. They make good use of the "advantage" mechanics here.

The first thing one notices upon examining races is that racial abilities are significantly more powerful here. Dwarves for instance, are straight up immune to poison (but how do they get drunk!?) for instance and elves are likewise immune to charm and always have advantage when making perception rolls. there's no indication of what benefits a human receives, but their ability scores are notably much higher than the other races.

They seem to be reintroducing the "subraces" from 2e. We've got a hill and mountain dwarf, and the elf is a "high elf" and halfling is a "lightfoot halfling". There's no sign of what exactly the differences are however.

Class: The classes presented so far are the 4 classics: fighter, cleric, wizard and rogue. I think we're all familiar with them. There's no sign of what other classes will eventually be available but the playing guide notes charisma can serve as a magical ability so presumably we'll at least be seeing some sort of sorcerer/bard thing. The class abilities are all very generic and familiar and we can definitely see the return of vancian magic and almost no sign of 4e's powers (although there's a few holdovers here and there like the cleric's Channel Divinity ability)

It's worth noting that Rogues seem to have had the biggest facelift. They've got a load of abilities, some of them very impressive, like the fact that for any skill they're trained in the minimum result is going to be 10...that's the minimum die result. Meaning that if that halfling rogue wants to make a Stealth check he's rolling a minimum of 16. That's impressive to say the least. They seem to be really trying to push the rogue as the skill monkey again (rather than the "slayer" it was in 4e), although it's worth noting that sneak attacking is much easier than 2e and 3e (all you need is some form of Advantage. At second level the rogue gets the ability to give himself advantage on rolls 2 times a day. The fighter deserves mention as well for the Fighter Surge ability which grants the ability to take extra actions a few times a day at 2nd level. Hopefully this indicates that they'll manage to keep fighters and rogues interesting in comparison to spellcasters.

The rogue and cleric seem to have "subclasses", the cleric is based on the god they worship and the rogue has a "scheme" (in this case thief) which seems to indicate what "kind" of rogue they'll be.

Background: Now here's something new. Your Background is an aspect which is independent of class/race and provides you with your skill training. In the playtest we've got Soldier, Commoner, Sage, Priest and Knight. Theoretically these can be swapped to any class so if you had a wizard who serves the god of magic then you might have a Wizard + Priest, or if a hedge witch you might go Wizard + Commoner. Each background comes with skill training in a selection of skills and a special ability. These abilities range from pretty weak to pretty nice. The Commoner is probably the worst, you get training in 3 skills (where most others get 4) and the "Trade" ability is not at all impressive. This could indicate a serious balance problem (especially since backgrounds are available equally to everyone...why take anything but the best?) but it's far too earlier to say. There could be plenty of things that help to balance stuff out.

That aside I'm very impressed with some of the ideas in backgrounds, most of them seem designed to serve as interesting plot and roleplaying hooks rather than just + X bonuses. They're geared towards social effects and the Sage ability Researcher is an incredible piece of work for just two sentences. Researcher means that if you fail a knowledge roll to recall or learn a fact then you automatically know where you can find the answer (such as the great library of XX or the sage of YY) it's a great idea and something I plan to try and work into other games

However, I'm also concerned with the fact that many of these abilities are so socially based that it "locks you in" to a single ability. For instance, you've got a commoner...what happens if later on you accomplish a major mission for the king and are knighted...do you gain the Knight background and lose all your commoner abilities? What about a Knight or a Priest who (in the course of the game) is cast out from their order or is otherwise prevented from taking advantage of their abilities...can they change backgrounds? what happens to their skills? These are questions that I hope will be answered in time.

Theme: Theme, like background, is a general trait that can be added to any class. They seem to fill the "character role" niche. For instance you've got the Guardian theme which is the shield-toting defender type who can protect others, the slayer is good at killing folks, etc. Again these range from relatively weak (the Slayer theme, which means that if you miss you inflict a small amount of damage anyway) to really powerful (the Healer theme, which maximizes all healing rolls you make, lets you make cheap healing potions and maximizes recovery for your allies). However, it's far too early to say for sure since the themes seem designed to increase in power as you level up.


Overall: I like a lot of what I'm seeing. It actually resembles a fusion of 2e and 3e so far, with a dab or two of 4e here and there. Time will tell if this is good or not. Looking through the classes I have only one big concern and that is in regard to multiclassing and flexibility. The theme and background should let you customize your individual fighter or wizard easily...but I'm not sure how they'll be handling multiclassing or the ability to start gaining new skills or abilities later in play. This is one of the things I really liked about 3e. If, after playing for several levels, you decide you'd like your fighter to invest a little bit in a side ability like stealth or even spellcasting, you can just pop a level into another class or even just pick up a different feat or set of skills. We'll see.

Final Thoughts

So, there's not a huge amount to go on but my first impression is cautiously optimistic. I'm not seeing a lot of the flags that turned me off of 4e and I'm seeing a lot of really impressive new ideas and little tricks to make things interesting. I can definitely say I plan on buying it when it comes out, but I can't say for sure if I'll invest in it as a primary system. That said, I think we'll need to see a lot more unique stuff before 5e becomes really successful, there's a lot of markets right now. So far here's what I think you'll think: 

If you don't like D&D: This product is not for you. This is still D&D to the core and if it didn't appeal to you already then you won't find anything new to love here.

If you're a die-hard 4e fan: I don't think you'll like 5e very much. It's got a few trappings stolen from 4e, but overall it rejects the previous edition pretty heavily. I doubt you'll want to switch.

If you're a 3e hold-out: Then you'll probably want to give this edition a try. It's resemblance to 3e is very strong and it looks like there's a definite effort to try and fix some of 3e's issues. 

If you're an old-schooler: You might want to give this a look. It definitely looks like wizards noticed the Old School revival going on and there's a lot of things that indicate that they're trying to appeal to the old guard, 2e and before grognards. I certainly can't say for sure until the game is actually released but it seems like they're trying to recapture the feel of the old-school with some more modern mechanics. The playtest character sheets even mention dropping Background and Theme for an "old-school" feel. Whether this is really worthy or just pandering only time will tell. 

If you're one of the many D&D fans taken by Pathfinder: This is me right now, D&D isn't necessarily my go-to game but when I play I pull out my gigantic Pathfinder book. Is 5e going to displace pathfinder as my game-of-choice...I don't know and I don't think I'll be able to say until I actually get a look at the full book...but I think there's a solid chance it might do the job.

D&D Next playtest review, continued

So, before I jump into the classes themselves let me take a look at the DM packet. It's much shorter than the player version and mostly covers the same material, just from the DM's perspective. So I'll just comment on the things that stand out:

First we've got the DC List of different difficulty classes ranked by how hard they are. Right off the bat I see an issue with the fact that DC 10 is "trivial" and it says "An adventurer can almost always succeed automatically on a trivial task". Now, that's just not true. DC 10 is certainly low but (especially with the smaller modifiers) it's harder near-automatic. It's about a 50/50 chance of success for someone with an average ability score and it's still around a 30% failure chance for someone with a good (+2 or +3) bonus. Seems like DC 5 should be "trivial".

There's also a standard set of rules for hazards (if you fail a check by 10 or more and there's a chance of something bad happening, it happens) and for when checks can be "automatic successes", which seems pretty rare unless there's a lot of modifiers floating around that we're not seeing yet (it requires a bonus of 5 higher than the DC).

Next we've got some generic advice on when to roll dice, how to engage players, etc.

A few rules on what constitutes an "action" in combat (notably things like drawing weapons are no longer actions, not a bad choice) and letting us know that you should always round down.

A few notes on creature sizes. There's an odd mechanic called "fills" which represents how many medium size creatures a large creature counts as for purposes of surrounding another creature. likewise there is an entry for how many medium sized creatures can surround a larger creature. This seems like it's meant to allow players to play easier without a grid, but ultimately it seems pretty unnecessary and certainly more fiddly than needed. I don't think we really need to calculate exactly how many collossal creatures can surround a single medium sized creature. Isn't anything more than 2 overkill at that point anyway? Not to mention that it neglects things like reach and the myriad of bizarre body structures available to D&D monsters. Makes me realize that there's no "flanking" or "back attack" rules so far. Of course I can guess what they would do...give you advantage of course.

Now there's a bit about lighting levels. It mentions being "lightly obscured" and "heavily obscured" but beyond a mention in the player's guide about how you normally have to have "heavy obscurement" to hide there's no indication of what effect these two conditions really have. Perhaps that's all there is?

Next we get a big list of common tasks. This definitely supports the idea that bonuses are going to be smaller. In 3e/4e most DCs were measured in increments of 5's but here it seems like increments of 2. I definitely feel that cluttering things up less with loads of modifiers is a good thing, although I note that this seems like it'll definitely make things a bit more random. Someone with a +5 bonus is capable of some very impressive feats...but is also extremely capable of failing even the "trivial" tasks.

Notably missing from the playtest document is how to handle falling damage. It's a very minor thing obviously (and probably going to be the same 1d6 per 10' it's always been) but it's something that's likely to come up in just about any game.


I'll get to the classes on my next post, but before that I'll skim this bestiary included as well. Let's see...

First impression is that this reads like a hybrid of the 2e and 3e beastiary...with just a smattering of 4e in some of the critter's unique abilities.

Just to dissect one completely:

Creature types: We've got 3e's beasts, humanoids, oozes, etc. That's a good thing, they provided an easy way to "sum up" common critter attributes, and I approve of their continued existence. It also looks like we're seeing the return of the "3x3" alignment grid. I could take that or leave it. I know it leads to endless flamewars but personally I've never found it impossible to ignore. No sign of 4e's "critter roles" like Brute, probably for the best.

HP: We've got just a generic hp entry, no HD. Huh, even 2e had more info than that. I'm not sure how I feel about that. We'll see, could just be a simplified-for-playtest thing. Noting that while many of the minor, yappy monsters have tiny hp amounts some of the big guys do have loads (ogres have 88 hp and minotaurs have 130. wow!)

Ability Scores: A full set of ability scores. This I definitely approve of, it was the best thing 3e ever did to monsters. I'd be very disappointed if they stepped backwards here.

Space, attacks, reach and all the rest seem totally standard for 3e. One difference, a static XP value rather than a CR. Hmm...on the one hand CR was almost completely useless when it came to calculating actual challenges...on the other hand XP is almost certainly not going to be any better and it seems to preclude useful things like templates.

Final impressions:

I'm overall ambivalent here. On the one hand I'm seeing a lot of good stuff, but that good stuff was mostly taking whole from 3e and doesn't involve anything new. On the other hand the lack of HD and the static XP value seem like they're going to make customizing monsters very difficult. Easily customized monsters were a huge benefit in 3e. If you wanted to make an ogre shaman or a crazy goblin alchemist all you had to do was slap on a few class levels or if you wanted something weird just lay on a few templates. One thing I definitely didn't like about 4e was the way that every single creature seemed to have 5 different variations, bloating the monster manuals with needless extra versions of the same damn thing. Just give me one, generic monster and the tools to make it unique if I need to.

That said, I do like some of the abilities I'm seeing in these creatures and some are fairly unique. I especially like the evil cultist's ability to summon tentacles of darkness when they're near an evil altar. That's a legitimately neat ability and one that only makes sense in the hands of a monster (rather than just taking abilities available to players and applying them to a monster). So for now I'll reserve judgement.

I will say that from what I've seen so far that I definitely prefer 3e's poison rules, represented mostly by ability score damage. Generic "poison damage" isn't as interesting or useful, although I can certainly understand that it's more complex.

D&D Next Playtest Review

It's been a little quiet around here you may notice. That'll be because I'm getting geared up to move out of my current place over the next month. So you might not hear much from me until I'm settled in. In the meantime I just downloaded the playtest documents for the latest generation of D&D and I've been giving it a look over and thought I'd share my thoughts. Before I start I should mention that I know there's a lot more info out there than just what is contained in the playtest documents...but at the same time that's obviously all still up in the air and the playtest document is what Wizards is currently using to represent the state of the game as it stands now so I'll stick to it for the purposes of this review.