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OK, so the fourth level spell Death Ward makes you immune to save-or-die spells for eight hours. It's always a sign of a good, fun game mechanic that there's a spell that just straight-up nullifies it. (EG: 3e grapple rules, Freedom of Movement spell)
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Jul 3, 2014 21:34
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Laphroaig posted:Also, Death Ward is, the first time you would go to 0 HP, or the first time a spell would kill you outright, instead you are at 1 HP or the spell is negated. No, it's not. The "go to 1 HP instead of dying" thing only affects HP damage. The "save-or-die effects" part is outright immunity, not "survive on 1 HP". You touch a creature and grant it a measure of protection from death. The first time the target would drop to 0 hit points as a result of taking damage, the target instead drops to 1 hit point, and the spell ends. If the spell is still in effect when the target is subjected to an effect that would kill it instantaneously without dealing damage, that effect is instead negated against the target, and the spell ends.
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Jul 3, 2014 22:01
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I'm still stunned by them making casting a cleric heal basically your entire go. That's pretty much worse on its own that anything they did to the fighter. Clerics - real ultimate power you'll never use because all your turns will be "OK - who's hurt? I cast an appropriate size of heal spell on them". Gort fucked around with this message at 23:45 on Jul 3, 2014 |
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Jul 3, 2014 23:41
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Stormgale posted:There are extra actions heals (at 60% effectiveness If I remember correctly). Where are those? Edit: Oh yeah, Healing Word for example. Trouble is, the best one of those is a level 3 spell, and it'll do like six HP healing. Later you've got spells like Heal which heal for 70 but do take your entire go. The cleric's going to end up a healbot. Gort fucked around with this message at 00:05 on Jul 4, 2014 |
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Jul 3, 2014 23:57
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Stormgale posted:Yeah it's basically cut rate versions of Cure light and mass cure, rolling 1 dice size or one dice lower Trouble is, those spells do like 6 HP healing, which is fine at low level. Then later on you've got Heal which is 70 HP healing, and there's no "bonus action" equivalent version you could use to heal without an action, so the problem's just delayed until later on. It's like they recognised a problem but didn't realise there were more than five levels in the game.
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Jul 4, 2014 00:08
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DalaranJ posted:Yes. I roll for wandering monsters whenever I'm running a system and adventure designed to support it. To be clear, no version of D&D released by Wizards, apparently including Next, has done this. What systems and adventures are designed to support wandering monster rolls?
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Jul 4, 2014 18:08
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Ferrinus posted:Who cares about Knock? Knock should be a ritual - it's exactly the kind of spell the ritual rules were made for. You might as well charge a fighter hit dice each time they kick a door down. And somewhere a 5e designer slaps his forehead and thinks, "Why didn't I think of that?!"
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Jul 6, 2014 00:42
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Comstar posted:I should join the 21st Century and get a laptop or ipad program to organize and run my 5th ed D&D campaign. Any one have some suggestions on what a good tool would be? I just use a plain old text editor, but I've seen lots of people recommend Masterplan.
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Jul 7, 2014 11:41
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Amethyst posted:i really hate how all of the preist and wizard spells are lumped together in a giant alphabetical list. they don't even have page reference numbers on the master list. absolutely shoddy work. I actually think the best way to do wizards and clerics now is to make a deck of power cards out of all the spells and just draw the ones you memorised for the day. Then have poker chips to represent your spell slots. Saves marking anything down, and you don't have to flip through a PHB or PDF to find your spell descriptions.
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Jul 8, 2014 21:45
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Thalantos posted:A medusa does need to petrify to feel like a medusa. That's like, it's defining characteristic. You know you can have both, right? A fight with a medusa that petrifies people AND is a satisfying encounter that's not just "you see a medusa and die" or "you saved, it dies". The trick is in removing instant save-or-die type effects and replacing them with effects that do the same over a few rounds and have counter-tactics you can employ to get out of it. Fighting a giant slug whose slime is making you slower round-on-round until it sticks you in place and the slug eats you? Luckily the ranger knows strong alcohol dissolves the slime thanks to his knowledge check and frees the party to win the battle! Or I guess you could have, "There's a slug. Make a poison save. Failed? You're dead."
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Jul 9, 2014 21:09
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Not to mention there were monsters with insta-kill effects like the Bodak that basically leave no obvious signs like statues all over the place but will still kill you dead just by looking at you.
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Jul 9, 2014 22:21
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Why are you guys arguing about including or excluding broken high level stuff when the option is there to address the mechanical problems of the high level game instead? People don't stop playing at level 10+ because there's a hard limit on how often people can meet with their friends, it's because the game becomes bloated and unplayable. I have concerns that 5e will have the same problems - clerics will become healbots at high levels because there aren't any effective healing spells that don't take your entire action to cast, hit point damage becomes a worse and worse way of dealing with threats since HP inflates far faster than weapon damage does, and spells targeting your bad saves become impossible to resist.
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Jul 10, 2014 20:42
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Jack the Lad posted:A level 20 Fighter does just over 5 times more damage than a level 1 Fighter to equal CR enemies How many times more damage does a level 20 fighter do with the best-damaging magic sword in the game, though? People have mentioned that a flametongue does 2D6 fire damage on top of your normal damage. Assuming swords cap at +5, you'll be hitting 25% more often for 12 more damage per hit, which has got to invalidate your numbers somewhat. Your numbers are based on the idea that magic items are optional, right? That idea's clearly rubbish due to the enemies with vast damage reduction against non-magic weapons.
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Jul 14, 2014 13:27
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Jack the Lad posted:Right. Tofu enemies (no DR/regen/etc) and no magic items. I guess the most basic would be getting a +1 sword at level 2, +2 at 6th, +3 at 10th, +4 at 14th and +5 at 18th. Let's say d6 elemental damage at level 6, increasing to 2d6 at 14th? Someone who has the starter set or latest playtest might have better suggestions.
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Jul 14, 2014 16:42
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MonsterEnvy posted:Besides there won't be nearly as many monsters with spells in the statblock as their used to be. What do you base this statement on?
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Jul 16, 2014 00:44
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I don't find that lots of +1 and -1 modifiers here and there are much of a slowdown problem in 4e - if you rolled like five over the defense who cares, if you rolled a 2, who cares? You only have to worry about small bonuses if the roll could go either way. It also helps that my players pick their powers with at least some thought as to how much of a pain in the butt they'll be to track. Aura 5 which gives +1 to diplomacy when bloodied? gently caress that.
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Jul 18, 2014 17:32
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I also didn't like the way many of the magic items were very situational and often pretty much useless outside of one particular build for one class. I would've preferred some more "out there" stuff to throw in.
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Jul 18, 2014 18:11
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P.d0t posted:That's the thing about 4e; when you get rid of Vance's Magical I-Win Button spells, you (shockingly) have to actually fight ALL the encounters rather than just skipping the ones you don't like. So yeah, 4e combat takes longer, shock and surprise! The trouble is that when combats are that long and you still need to fight four of them in a day or the adventuring day design gets squiffy, sessions get longer or squiffier than I would like.
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Jul 18, 2014 21:00
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Echophonic posted:the Battle Master seems like it could be enjoyable It's a pretty bad class design. As others have said, you take the powers you like the most at level 1, and from that point onwards each power you get is one you wanted less than the last, since they were all available right from the start. A better design would be to have better powers become available as you gain levels.
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Jul 19, 2014 01:44
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Jack the Lad posted:Combined with the way that monster HP quickly and increasingly outscales Fighter DPR, it's a huge issue. While I do agree with pretty much all of the rest of your post, this is based on numbers where the fighter gets no magic items, correct? I think that's a flawed assumption. If this is anything like previous games the fighter will end up with a +5 sword that's on fire for 2d6 extra damage a hit (at the very least, this is just an item I know is in the game) as well as strength-boosting items. What do the fighter DPR vs monster HP numbers look like with magical items assumed?
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Jul 19, 2014 10:56
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kingcom posted:Problem is that the game has been stated to be magic item optional. GMs are often going to bypass giving the fighter his required +number weapons. That statement is really stupid. You can have the fighter have decent DPR without magic items, in which case the game breaks the moment a magic sword enters it, or you can have the fighter have bad DPR without magic items, in which case the game breaks if a magic sword doesn't enter it. I am interested in the outcome that makes Next the better game and would like to test the hypothesis that fighter DPR balances well against monster HP if the fighter is given appropriately-levelled magic items. Jack the Lad posted:With a +2 magic weapon at level 8, it takes 5 rounds for a Fighter to kill the dragon - approximately twice as long as it takes a Necromancer Wizard's skeleton minions, even if the Wizard is just sitting in a lounge chair drinking a martini. Leaving other classes out of it for the moment, do magic items fix the fighters problem with monster HP inflating faster than his DPR as levels increase?
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Jul 19, 2014 11:20
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I was always a big fan of the "this spell hits d3 nearby enemies" and "make a save to pass through an area crowded with enemies without getting a sword swung at you" methods.
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Jul 19, 2014 19:12
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Generic Octopus posted:Why pay for a system you have to ignore to make function? Exactly. The whole point of the polymorph spell is to trivialise an encounter with one high-value target. If the DM just rules that any worthwhile enemy saves, the spell is a waste of page space.
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Jul 19, 2014 21:40
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MonsterEnvy posted:I Honestly don't see how they are a mess. Stuff like the Ogre has a high hp but low ac and nothing to strengthen it other then hitting hard. You see an ogre! Roll initiative! You are dead.
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Jul 20, 2014 12:34
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Doubtless there's a magic item you can get that gives you night-vision.
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Jul 20, 2014 14:43
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Was this guy even involved in the design of the game he's talking about, or did he just read the Basic PDF once?
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Jul 21, 2014 17:45
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Yeah, games with a bunch of maths in them should probably have some thought given to maths by their designers. It's a bit like how you don't need to know mechanical engineering to drive a car, but the guy who designed it sure as hell should, or you're most likely going to get a lovely car, or at best you're leaving it up to luck. Mearl's tweets all just sound like, "I'd drive the car sideways with two wheels missing - drivers choice!" 
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Jul 22, 2014 02:01
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MonsterEnvy posted:I don't even bother bringing up his tweets. One of my big issues on the complaints was just because somthings stats are based on how the creature should feel does not mean the math does not work for it. Though I just want Augaust 8th to come. Basic will be updated then and people will have the PHB. This way people can complain about the final product instead of using outdated stuff to make their complaints. Thing about this is that we've all heard the "just wait until X happens!" argument before. When people complained about the playtests, it was "Wait for the next playtest!" then when those weren't any better and they stopped even releasing them, it was "Wait for when the maths team has overhauled it!" and now we've seen the results of that and there doesn't seem to be a great deal of maths in the system and monster stats are still just plucked from the air at random it's "Wait for the full release!". They've had loads of chances to wow us with good design but it hasn't happened the last three times, why would you expect it to happen now? quote:The biggest issue I think I am having with some of the other people here is that I don't see how this is a bad game and I don't get their complaints here especially. On other sites were there are complaints I tend to understand it, but here I honestly don't get what people are actually complaining about. * Extremely limited options for the non-magical classes to contribute in or out of combat * Suggestions of randomness in character generation (rolling for stats and/or HP which can leave you unable to actually fulfill your class role and/or negate one of the things your class is supposed to be good at) * "Gridless" combat that has stuff like "this spell affects a 15-foot cone" which is bound to cause arguments at the game table when the DM tells you your fireball can only hit one orc without hitting your friends when you were sure he described them as being on the other side of the cavern a moment ago * Monsters with spells that aren't described in their stat block, meaning you have to trawl the PHB for those spells one-by-one to see what their options are, not to mention that the spells will not be next to each other in the book so you'll have to wrench the PHB away from the Wizard and Cleric players who are also trying to look up their spells so they can see what their options are * Damage swings wildly compared to monster HP - at level 1 you'll kill an equal-level enemy in two rounds, later on it will take four times as long * Monster powers and spells can kill you in one hit before you have a go if you fail a save, and if you don't have proficiency in a save since your class doesn't get one, you have very little chance of making the save, and less and less as you gain levels * Healing spells start out with weaker options that allow the cleric to still act in a round and cast a healing spell, allowing them to contribute to other parts of the combat than replenishing other characters hit points, but later on the Heal spell is by far the most effective healing spell, and it can't be cast quickly, meaning the cleric's turn becomes a choice of who to cast their Heal spells on * Halflings don't get a strength penalty despite weighing 40 pounds and being 3 feet tall (where's that article that 3rd ed designer wrote about how ridiculously small that is) but let's give them disadvantage when they use heavy weapons just to gently caress with them because Those enough to get you started?
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Jul 22, 2014 02:42
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We had CR in 3rd ed. There were many examples of it not working at all, where creatures would need to roll 20s to hit adventurers who they were supposed to be challenging, where high-level monsters were entirely reliant on mechanics that adventurers had long been immune to (EG: Grapple). "Eh, just eyeball it, this looks like it belongs against level 2 adventurers" is a poor design philosophy. You should start from a set of guidelines like these ones and then modify from there. If you don't have an idea what "normal for level 15" is supposed to look like, you're going to have a hard time when you're called upon to make a particularly deadly melee combatant, or what another designer thinks is a particularly deadly melee combatant. I found the "proud nails" article about the mistakes 3rd ed designers felt they'd made on that edition. Check out the sections entitled "Seemingly Random Spell-Like Ability Lists" and "Gnome and Halfling Height and Weight" in particular - these are both problems they fixed in 4th ed but have actively backpedalled away from for 5th ed, and the many examples of this behaviour (another of which is how the fighter went from very dull in 3rd ed, to arguably the best-designed class in 4th ed back to being very dull in 5th ed again) are some of the reasons you might find disgruntled D&D fans in this thread.
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Jul 22, 2014 03:02
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MonsterEnvy posted:Then play 4e. This stuff does not bug me. I don't want to play 4e, and I'll thank you not to try and frame this as an edition war. I would like to play 5e, but one that builds on the successes of 4e and at least attempts to fix the problems with it, rather than backpedalling away from the entire edition with their fingers in their ears. quote:*Rogues will be doing most stuff out of combat the casters don't have that many utility spells that are useful out of it. Casters get tons of utility spells that are useful out of combat. Rogues can climb and swim. Casters can fly and teleport. Rogues can pick locks, casters can cast knock. Rogues can sneak, casters can turn invisible. The big difference here is that rogues have to roll dice to make their stuff happen and can fail, while casters just say it's so and it is. Not to mention that this is all stuff casters can do that's supposed to be what the rogue is for. The casters also have enormous all-encompassing niches that rogues can't even enter, let alone hope to compete in, such as save-or-die spells, turning people into toads, teleporting to the next country, healing someone from nearly dead to full health, and so on. Making the rogue optional is just a bonus. quote:*Then don't use the random generation it's just one of the three options they put forward. There shouldn't be any trap options in character generation, especially not when it's the primary option they present. "You generate your character's six ability scores randomly", says the Basic PDF. If you end up with Bob's Cleric having 12 Wisdom and Bill's Cleric having 18, how on earth is that a desirable outcome? What does Bob do, get his character killed for better rolls next time? Or do you give him a reroll until he gets "better" scores, invalidating the entire system? quote:*If you don't like theater of the mind or Gridless combat then don't use it. I use a grid and there is nothing in that rules that say you should not use a grid. Using the grid is listed as a variant rule. The default is gridless. The game doesn't support its default rule nearly as well as other, already released in full games do. quote:*This does not bug me and there is not going to be a lot of them anyway. Caster Monsters are matter of opinion. I seem to recall you saying that there won't be many caster monsters before. What on earth gave you that idea? As you levelled up in 3e nigh-on every monster had some kind of spells or spell-like-ability to fling at you. In any case, having a few rotten apples in the barrel is fine? There shouldn't be any - especially when previous editions had this problem solved. quote:*Thats because monsters are much stronger at that point. I highly doubt you want level 20 characters taking down things like Balors in two rounds. The adventurers are supposed to be much stronger at that point as well, and the ones who express themselves in manners that aren't hitpoint damage are. Save-or-die spells, remember? Meanwhile the non-magic plebs get to slog through more and more doughy hitpoints as they gain levels, with attacks that don't keep step. quote:*This also does not bug me. Just means those monsters are theats. "If you encounter it you may die instantly before you get to act" isn't what I'd call a "threat". I'd call it "a good chance of a lovely encounter". quote:*Then do more then heal and use different tactics. If the monsters are putting out lots of HP damage, the cleric has to heal it. He doesn't have much of a choice in the matter, since people will start dying if he doesn't. quote:*People don't like penalties and the lack of heavy weapons helps make a clear difference between small and medium creatures. No, people don't like penalties, and having no penalties on races is a good step. Which is why you excusing a penalty to halflings (inability to use heavy weapons effectively despite having equal strength to other races) is completely inconsistent, and a step backwards in game design.
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Jul 22, 2014 03:22
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The art looks good so far. I didn't much like the poser-esque stuff in the 4e PHB and thought it was often a step backwards from 3rd ed artwork. Especially this stuff.
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Jul 22, 2014 03:34
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Nihilarian posted:Does the artist do independent work? Because I like his art but don't want to support DnDNext. Sure looks like it. They've a shop here - looks like they've also done Legend of the Five Rings stuff.
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Jul 22, 2014 04:19
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Mexican Deathgasm posted:5E has been super fun, I've been running a game since the first playtest was released, we play 6-8 hours every Saturday. That's cool. What do you like about it?
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Jul 22, 2014 13:29
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I think a lot of the "HP are actual wounds" thoughts come from editions where the only way to get HP back was to sleep for a ridiculous amount of time (which nobody did) or use spells with names like "Cure Light Wounds" (which everyone did). Both of those methods emphasise that you're healing up wounds. That said, I'm pretty sure there's a definition of hitpoints in 3e somewhere that says that they're not measuring actual wounds but all your ways of getting HP back approximated healing your wounds, so I guess that's where people got the idea from. Of course, the whole "lost HP = wounds" thing falls apart when you consider that there are no wound penalties in D&D. You fight as well with 200 HP as you do with 1 HP, so they obviously can't be actual wounds. But there are spells that cure your wounds that give you HP back... so... It's almost as though a new edition would be a good chance to clear up stuff like this forever, but that didn't happen.
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Jul 23, 2014 13:44
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A hero in a fantasy story or movie wouldn't need fifteen minutes to recover between fight scenes. I'd go with the amount of time it takes an athlete to go from sprinting heart-rate to normal again. Or better still, disconnect it from being a numerical value of time entirely. If your GM says "and you get a moment to catch your breath" you get a short rest.
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Jul 23, 2014 14:44
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If you have encounter powers then you might be tempted to do something other than a basic attack, and who wants that?
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Jul 24, 2014 17:28
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Rannos22 posted:The 6th edition is just gonna be Magic the Gathering isn't it? A roleplaying game with that much thought, investment and success would be a first.
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Jul 25, 2014 07:40
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OtspIII posted:I think we really just need to accept that TotM and non-mandatory magic weapons are both bullshit and stop complaining that the game breaks when you use them. They're both pretty bald-faced lies (well, kind of--I think the game supports eyeballing mini placement and is less reliant on having the exactly correct tier of magic item at the correct level than 4e did, but those aren't TotM or NMMW), and nobody (definitely nobody here) is going to play that way. I'm still not convinced that magic weapons add enough damage to keep time-to-kill consistent across all twenty levels. Without them, it goes from two rounds to kill your equal-levelled opponent to seven rounds. Do magic weapons make up for the difference? I guess we won't know for sure until we've seen all the ways to boost your damage.
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Jul 25, 2014 19:57
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As much as I hate to be Mearls right now, houseruling in inherent magic item bonuses would be the work of minutes. I'd certainly do it were I to run Next. I'd also print out all the spells onto playing cards with the spell level and class on the back.
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Jul 25, 2014 23:35
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cbirdsong posted:Inherent bonuses won't be nearly as useful without a robust mathematical framework backing character progression and monster design. It might be reasonably easy to come up with formulae for things like monster HP and AC once we know what an optimised martial character looks like. The magic side of the game would still be its own special clusterfuck, of course.
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Jul 26, 2014 14:07
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