D&D Next is released today!

Started by Skynet, July 03, 2014, 07:01:26 PM

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Revelation

I don't really like 5e rests, though the only thing they really did was change how long a 'short' rest is, making it not really a short rest.

Inkidu

Quote from: Changingsaint on September 17, 2014, 03:14:50 PM
I don't really like 5e rests, though the only thing they really did was change how long a 'short' rest is, making it not really a short rest.
I'd call 1 hour a short rest. when compared to a full night's sleep being 8 hrs. :\
If you're searching the lines for a point, well you've probably missed it; there was never anything there in the first place.

Dhi

1 hour is not a rest you can take during a dungeon crawl or in an otherwise hostile situation, which was how short rests were used- very elegantly- in 4E. The new 1 hour rest strikes me as arbitrary, especially since the new non-dependence on magic items means healing will either come from short rests or from the limited spell slots of your friendly party healing battery. There will be no more wands of CLW to top parties off.

This may be something we need to change. It's hard to tell on first reading.

Inkidu

Quote from: Dhi on September 17, 2014, 03:24:33 PM
1 hour is not a rest you can take during a dungeon crawl or in an otherwise hostile situation, which was how short rests were used- very elegantly- in 4E. The new 1 hour rest strikes me as arbitrary, especially since the new non-dependence on magic items means healing will either come from short rests or from the limited spell slots of your friendly party healing battery. There will be no more wands of CLW to top parties off.

This may be something we need to change. It's hard to tell on first reading.
Maybe, I'm not too worried about it because many classes can't take advantage of the short rest for at least a couple of levels, especially the heavy magic users. I agree finding one hour to rest in a hostile situation is difficult, but that's the point. :|
If you're searching the lines for a point, well you've probably missed it; there was never anything there in the first place.

Dhi

Why is it the point, though, since the 15 minute adventuring day was universally regarded as horrible?

Inkidu

Quote from: Dhi on September 17, 2014, 03:59:51 PM
Why is it the point, though, since the 15 minute adventuring day was universally regarded as horrible?
I'm sorry I'm not aware of that. :|
If you're searching the lines for a point, well you've probably missed it; there was never anything there in the first place.

Revelation

The 15 minute workday is usually one of the biggest issues I see regarding 3.X edition, and it's one of the ones I agree with the most.

Inkidu

Quote from: Changingsaint on September 17, 2014, 04:09:22 PM
The 15 minute workday is usually one of the biggest issues I see regarding 3.X edition, and it's one of the ones I agree with the most.
I guess I ignored it out of hand. I'm a fairly common-sense DM and fifteen minutes isn't good enough to do a good search of a single room let alone dungeon crawl. If I'm understanding the... concept correctly.

My players often spend four hours going through a dungeon, and that's a modest dungeon. The bigger ones take days.
If you're searching the lines for a point, well you've probably missed it; there was never anything there in the first place.

Skynet

Quote from: Dhi on September 17, 2014, 03:24:33 PM
1 hour is not a rest you can take during a dungeon crawl or in an otherwise hostile situation, which was how short rests were used- very elegantly- in 4E. The new 1 hour rest strikes me as arbitrary, especially since the new non-dependence on magic items means healing will either come from short rests or from the limited spell slots of your friendly party healing battery. There will be no more wands of CLW to top parties off.

This may be something we need to change. It's hard to tell on first reading.

I've heard that there's still quite a bit of monsters with outright immunity to non-magic weapons especially at high levels.  I don't own the Monster Manual, so I don't know how prevalent they are.

Dhi

The 15 minute adventuring day refers to the heavy incentive players have to retire for the day after going through their limited resources, wait for a time to rest, then go back to adventuring. It isn't something I just made up. I invite you to Google it, and see hundred page threads, spanning a decade of discussion and thousands of GMs, on how to deal with the problem.

But why solve the problem by breaking up the narrative flow,

by placing artificial constraints on players,

by altering encounters to compensate,

by changing the way adventures take place,

when all we must do is make short rests a five minute affair?

The sense of danger is not removed by changing some resources from "gone for the course of this dungeon" to "gone for the course of this encounter." It is only stretched from a 15 minute period to something of actual dramatic scale.

Inkidu

I didn't say you made it up.

I also don't think tiny five minute rests are sufficient either and invite a lot of abuse of the magic system, or in the case of 5th ed, come down from some special abilities. I find an hour much better.
If you're searching the lines for a point, well you've probably missed it; there was never anything there in the first place.

Dhi

That's fine. I intend to run it as written and see how it works out. My instinct, which seems to be different from WotC's own, is to not ignore the feedback of the last decade. We'll see, I guess.

Inkidu

Honestly, I think people just think of it too gamey.

If someone needs an hour to recover in real life they slump down and other go off and to explore or pick around, do some other stuff, but people often want to "game" over role play and so they don't want to leave unless they're at full party strength mostly because they're thinking in meta terms, not realistic ones.
If you're searching the lines for a point, well you've probably missed it; there was never anything there in the first place.

Dhi

I believe my posts here on E speak for themselves when it comes to my desire to roleplay and my ability to think of things outside of meta terms.

Inkidu

Quote from: Dhi on September 17, 2014, 04:58:44 PM
I believe my posts here on E speak for themselves when it comes to my desire to roleplay and my ability to think of things outside of meta terms.
I wasn't talking specifically about you. I'm saying in my experience you'd be surprised how quickly the neutral evil rogue hiding among the good players would give up the opportunity to absolutely fleece the party when they even think there might be a trap or monster anywhere nearby. I'm just saying I've seen a lot of meta behavior in that regard. 
If you're searching the lines for a point, well you've probably missed it; there was never anything there in the first place.

Zekromnomnom

I remember liking the idea from the playtest that during a short rest, someone could use a healer's kit to restore some hit points by the person expending a hit die or whatever. I like the idea of the healing skill being used for something other than stabilizations and the idea of patching people up and like...non magical healing and whatnot.

Now...how well it was implemented...

Dhi

I've been running a 5E game for two months now. All of the core books are out, so we now have all the information. I'm getting a feel now for what the designers were going for, and why it was not to Monte Cook's liking. But I was never a fan of Monte Cook's design philosophy.

In adopting BECMI material to the new edition I'm also seeing what was originally said, way back when, about this being an edition to bridge previous editions... it's got some truth to it. I'm looking at crunch that hasn't been relevant for 20 years and realizing that with the way ability checks now work, it could be layered effortlessly on top. The DMG gives a fantastic section on converting or building monsters. The DMG is just a fantastic book all over, taking the best lessons that Gygax and Robin Laws had to teach to heart.

For the Monster Manual, I'm mixed. The hooks for each monster take the old 2E Ecologies and build on them with an actual understanding of themes and narrative importance. Some have said that the new monster writeups aren't as thorough as they were in 2E, but I invite anybody to go back and actually look at the formulaic Habitat/Society and Ecology entries during that era. It was largely filler. Where the new book stumbles, I think, is that all of the monsters are significantly the same in terms of mechanics. There isn't the variety of actions there were in 4E, and bonus actions are rarely given. These creatures will claw/claw/bite until they've had it, or, on a good day, slam.

But maybe it isn't such a bad thing to leave monsters uncomplicated. Maybe I shouldn't be in love with my monsters' statblocks and wanting to show off all of their interesting abilities. If you look at the monsters through the lenses of storytelling, then this is an amazing toolkit. And by leaving the combat action simple, combat encounters are sped up enormously. It isn't chess anymore.

I'm pleased. I thought it would be a retread of 3.x with tacked-on retro elements and a saving throw system just waiting to spiral out of control, but I was wrong. I have to hand it to Mike Mearls and Jeremy Crawford for doing a pretty good job of living up to their campaign promises. I think we all expected them to be bollocks.

Zekromnomnom

Still haven't gotten to play it because I'm the only one who could DM and I'm pretty inexperienced at it. Wish my friends were more willing to take that initiative.

ofDelusions

Bought my books on tuesday and I am loving them even if I haven't gotten the time to play yet.

I think the biggest thing for me about the books is that while looking at all the classes I could imagine playing and having fun with everyone one of them. This simply wasn't the case in 3.5 or 4e.

Dhi

The classes are interesting, and I like the way multiclassing works now. I'm mainly looking at things from a DM perspective, since I'm running and not able to play (probably for the foreseeable future).

So I'm seeing that conversions and even designing new monsters, spells, and magic items are a breeze. I'm seeing that math is no longer going to grow exponentially. I'm seeing that rewards are designed to be flexible without breaking the game. I'm seeing that a significant amount of character customization comes from character-developing downtime activities, and that is how gold is spent.

I'm seeing treasure tables. I genuinely missed those.

Over the holiday break I need to brush up on some rules that I've been fudging in play, make some cheat sheets for myself, expunge those old 4E concepts that're still tripping me up. I'm not leaving 4E with the same distaste that I left 3.5, but I am leaving it. This is my system now.

RubySlippers

I played this its okay but see two weak spots as a role-playing focused DM. First I can't envision running a political social focused game with these rules if combat is not a focus although I could come up with enough house rules it would be a lot of work over say 3.5 or Pathfinder. Second issue is the focus on ability die rolls to do things seems bit overly simple not that is bad but does promote min/max tactics more.

And for me the rest breaks seem to encourage action heavy games and I tend to run ones where you have to do other things with a low magic focus, which means any fight could be your last, if you have only modest access to healing. This game tends to be opposite of that.

Maybe its just me but seems to me still ,er, to much like a computer game and not a table top game.


Dhi

Hiya Ruby, have you had a chance to look in the DMG yet? There's in-depth advice on how to change the feel of your game from the default assumptions, and how it will affect things if you do. For rests, one of the variant rules is exactly what you describe- rests take much longer, and the rule mentions "It's a good option for campaigns that emphasize intrigue, politics, and interactions among other NPCs, and in which combat is rare or something to be avoided rather than rushed into."

For a sociopolitical oriented game I'd recommend something like the Honor ability score proposed in the DMG, or something like it. It seems especially tailored for a Legend of the Five Rings style game, but I could see dropping it in elsewhere. There are instructions on how to add a new ability score, and how to use it for checks and saves.

But, if it's not your thing, it's not your thing.

MdG

I just started playing Next a few days ago, and, for what it's worth, I think it's a good deal faster and more flexible compared with 3E and especially 4E. I don't 'roll-play', but there is a sense in which combat has an important dramatic and narrative role, so the mechanics governing it have to be sensible and internally consistent. I think Next delivers here, and my bard is actually proving remarkably effective in battle in a support / ranged role. My last TRPG game was Pathfinder and, between the two, Next has the advantage of being streamlined, accessible, and burdened with less bloat. Still not much of a setting, although the DMG is the best WoTC book I've seen recently.

I now think Next needs something like the Faces of Sigil supplement for 2E Planescapes, which I picked up once in the bargain bin and found to be one of the best RPG supplements I've ever read. Until then, it seems a lot of players who would otherwise like to try Next may still remain drawn to Pathfinder because of the latter's thorough world-building efforts (though Golarion can be a bit banal at times) and unparalleled Adventure Path Campaigns: I played through Curse of the Crimson Throne with a paladin PC and it was truly outstanding.

We shall see how this pans out, but for now, I'm really enjoying Next and feel like I have both a good PC and an enjoyable game.     

ShadowFox89

Quote from: RubySlippers on December 31, 2014, 01:09:26 PM
I played this its okay but see two weak spots as a role-playing focused DM. First I can't envision running a political social focused game with these rules if combat is not a focus although I could come up with enough house rules it would be a lot of work over say 3.5 or Pathfinder. Second issue is the focus on ability die rolls to do things seems bit overly simple not that is bad but does promote min/max tactics more.

And for me the rest breaks seem to encourage action heavy games and I tend to run ones where you have to do other things with a low magic focus, which means any fight could be your last, if you have only modest access to healing. This game tends to be opposite of that.

Maybe its just me but seems to me still ,er, to much like a computer game and not a table top game.

I'm actually in the midst of starting up a sociopolitical focused 5e game [/shamelessplug]

But in all seriousness, you don't need stats to roleplay. The rest breaks, too, don't seem to me to be the same as encouraging heavy action. Magic items are rare and the PCs have no option to craft. Which means a low supply of healing potions. Clerics can no long say screw you to the rest of the party, every healing spell is precious. I very nearly killed my entire party because they were being scrougy with heals and didn't want to heal each other.
Call me Shadow
My A/A

RubySlippers

Quote from: Dhi on December 31, 2014, 02:43:17 PM
Hiya Ruby, have you had a chance to look in the DMG yet? There's in-depth advice on how to change the feel of your game from the default assumptions, and how it will affect things if you do. For rests, one of the variant rules is exactly what you describe- rests take much longer, and the rule mentions "It's a good option for campaigns that emphasize intrigue, politics, and interactions among other NPCs, and in which combat is rare or something to be avoided rather than rushed into."

For a sociopolitical oriented game I'd recommend something like the Honor ability score proposed in the DMG, or something like it. It seems especially tailored for a Legend of the Five Rings style game, but I could see dropping it in elsewhere. There are instructions on how to add a new ability score, and how to use it for checks and saves.

But, if it's not your thing, it's not your thing.

No, I get SSI I will not use that for my hobby just holiday money which was there but my game store ran out of copies on the day after Christmas.

I would rather eliminate the rest rule and its not a bad game but there are still RULES LAWYERS who deserve a special place in HELL where they freeform game for all time. They don't seem to get the GM decides what rules to use in the game even in early DnD.