The Role Playing Public Radio Forums
General Category => Role Playing Public Radio Podcast => : QuintaryStarDM May 25, 2012, 09:55:09 AM
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I just got my playtest materials and I'm printing it all out right now. I'm really looking forward to running this.
I'm also very interested in what Ross and Tom have to say about it. I hope you guys do an episode about 5th edition, or on edition wars in general (I don't remember, have you done an episode like that?)
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I've read a little myself and the analysis going on over on Something Awful, and it looks fucking awful. :-[ Back to the days of Dungeon Vietnam and fighters being put back in their "rightful place" as shitfarmers while wizards do the real work with their no-save stunlock cantrips.
When the NDA drops on the 13th Age playtest and I can say more than "I am enjoying that playtest" I'll throw up a thread on here showing the cool new successor to D&D.
Edit:
"If a stirge starts its round attached to you, you get disadvantage on constitution checks until a long rest, unless you have that effect already, in which case you just fall unconscious, unless you are in which case you instantly die.
They come in a pack of 13 and fly."
"A melee Fighter against a Medusa can choose to hit about less than half the time or eat a 50% SoD. If he takes the former: The Medusa gets two ranged attacks a round against him that each hit the Fighter 50% of the time while the Fighter moves into range. Once he finally gets there, he's getting hit for 1d10 + 1d4 damage each turn before the Medusa makes any attacks (well, it's a Dex save but still). The Medusa is faster than the Fighter and can keep running away, firing arrows, while the Fighter moves forward and chooses to avert his gaze.
If you are surprised by the Medusa, you don't get to choose to avert your gaze. That means a SoD that you will fail 50-60% of the time.
The Medusa is not the biggest Fuck You Fighter monster in the playtest."
Fighters are straight-up 1e fighters again. No class features other than "know how to use all weapons" (by the way, we're back to requiring a golf-bag of weapons) and basic attack. Wizards are 3e wizards + 4e wizards and ray of frost is a +6 at-will that drops a target's movespeed to 0, no save.
Ugh.
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seriously? Fighters don't have any class powers anymore? That's lame.
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As much as I dislike D&DRetro (and I do), the game is made to be modular, so there is suppose to be plug-ins for the fighter so he has more options.
Overall D&Dnext sucks a$$. Everything bad about D&D is back (really). You name something you hated about 1 - 3.5 eds and chances are its in there.
Assuming no big turn around, I will be disappointed and a little shocked if this game isn't an epic fail at launch or soon after (when people realize what they bought).
If you like pathfinder. There isn't a good reason to change. You can just bring over some of the ideas of DNext, why spend money on what you all ready have.
If you liked 4e... Well your game just went under the bus. There aren't enough of you to matter so blame yourselves for this change (Wizard loves screwing its fans I guess). "Two birds in the bush is worth more than one in the hand".
Everyone that's left.... This is the game for you!!! There must be more of you than the other two groups, otherwise this would be a huge blunder on Wizard's part.
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All I will say is that there *is* a better game coming out, but I can't talk about it right now due to an NDA. After June 6th there will be a new thread, and I hope I can show why I feel this other system succeeds where D&D Next fails.
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I think its a little early to completely trash the game. They clearly haven't released everything yet. And undoubted are going to be tweaking stuff based on our feedback.
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(http://i.imgur.com/uvVtXl.jpg?1)
The game that they are playtesting right now is *exactly* what they have been threatening promising to release since they started blogging about it. The 5E design team is like 5 dudes and an intern, and between them they have played... D&D. Only ever D&D. Wizards got rid of everyone of the more progressive bent over the last few years, and it's telling that they had Monte 'Been remaking 3e for years' Cook as their lead designer for a while. Getting rid of him might have helped the game progress a little bit, but god, man, read this shit. They go literally and absurdly out of their way to admit 4E advances even exist, in some ways rewording things to a comic and tragic level. For your consideration:
"Healing Word: 1st level Conjuration
You whisper a brief word of healing for a creature in need. As a shimmering light dapples the creature's wounds, you launch into action.
Effect: You bestow a blessing onto a creature within 50 feet of you that can hear you. The target regains 1d6 hit points.
You can then make a melee attack, a ranged attack, or cast a minor spell you know."
This can be simply worded as: Minor Action. But noooooo, that would be bullshit narrativist abstract nonsense, that can't happen in my Dungeon Vietnam! Instead, you have to use an Action and then you get to take another Action, and since every spell that uses this action economy will require them to type this out and all the spells are in bigass alphabetical lists independent of class again, the spell chapter will once again be ridiculous to navigate.
There is no good excuse for adding needless complexity to something, and the playtest is full of it.
Mathematical analysis made over on the SA forums:
"The playtest material goes to level 3. At level 3, the fighter is doing an average of 15 damage per hit, 3 on a miss, and hits approximately enough that that comes out to about 11 damage per round. Meanwhile, the wizard does 7 damage average, in an area that he is supposed to be weak. So apparently 2/3 the capability of the class that is supposed to be the best at fighting, while being at range, is enough to qualify you for six encounter dominating spells per day."
Also, with no attacks of opportunity or charge attacks and when literally every monster in the playtest has a higher move speed than the fighter, he will never be in melee unless the monster wants him to be. Unlike the wizard who can just autoping every round and can do it from anywhere on the map.
I know this seems a bit much, but as you might be able to tell based on the fact that I regularly listen to a podcast featuring *other people* playing D&D the system change means a fair bit to me. It took me a while to get past the system shock of 4E but I've learned that new is not necessarily bad, in large part because of this podcast. Going back to something purely based on nostalgia is not a viable business move for a company responsible in large part for the success or failure of our hobby as a whole.
The best thing I've heard thus far is Mike Mearls saying on his twitter (http://twitter.com/#!/mikemearls) (ctrl-f Sarx) that if the feedback is overwhelmingly negative they could start over, but the chances of that are realistically slim. This is what they have been working on and promising from the start - a different game would require a different team and a different mindset. More on that Thursday after next.
Fake Edit: Also, 36d20 rats! (http://almostpopculture.com/5e-playtest-log/)
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I think its a little early to completely trash the game. They clearly haven't released everything yet. And undoubted are going to be tweaking stuff based on our feedback.
That's true, but this isn't an alpha release and it may need more than tweaks.
I was honestly hoping they would do a 4.5E and give D&D Next a longer gestation period to mature. Plus, I think Pathfinder hasn't crested yet. I'd wait until there was a "need" for a new fantasy game.
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I think its a little early to completely trash the game. They clearly haven't released everything yet. And undoubted are going to be tweaking stuff based on our feedback.
The defense rests, your honor. (http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20120528)
They are not going to be fixing a damned thing of what's wrong, and now they've said as much. Now we can move on and the healing process can begin. ;D
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I'm not sure I see what you saw in that article. It struck me that they were presponive to concerns in the cleric and the treatment of wizards echoes what I've head from a lot of people about wizard at wills.
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(http://i.imgur.com/ZqTpP.jpg?1)
This is not getting fixed.
On the wizard side,
(http://i.imgur.com/ordyD.jpg?1)
This is being built on further.
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If you liked 4e... Well your game just went under the bus.
I'm still trying to figure out what this means.
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It means going forward 4e doesn't exist anymore and never exist. Like Highlander 2. It means if you like 4e, Wizards doesn't want/need you as their customer.
After having played DNext I can say it feel like the team exist to support the Wizard. The Tank Cleric's (why wasn't it a fighter?) best move to to guard the wizard while using dodge. This means the player has nothing to do round after round.
Also the length the game goes to to distance itself from 4e is ridiculous. I can easily hate the game for no other reason than this, but it gives many other options for hating.
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After having played DNext I can say it feel like the team exist to support the Wizard.
Well, let's be honest, DnD Next had Monte Cook for a lead designer for a while there, and he is well known for his opinion that the Wizard is the best class and the only one you should be playing.
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It's funny, you guys are saying they threw 4e under a bus, but the dinosaurs that still play AD&D and 2e (of which I'm one, but I haven't looked at Next) are all saying it's just a crappy new version of 4e that's trying to look more like 3.5.
Proving once again, you can't make everybody happy, but apparently you can piss everyone off.
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It means going forward 4e doesn't exist anymore and never exist. Like Highlander 2. It means if you like 4e, Wizards doesn't want/need you as their customer.
Doesn't exist? Are they going to come take your books? Will they demand RPPR takes down The New World (or re-does it in 5e?)
The last version of D&D I played with my friends (before leaving the country) was some kind of 1st edition with ugly Arduin bits bolted on. I think you'll just have to live with your favorite edition not being the current one. As for throwing under the bus, Wizards seems to get better and better at trash talking the last edition each time. I recall they printed 2nd edition sucks t-shirts when they got the property.
On a more serious note:
I'm also very interested in what Ross and Tom have to say about it. I hope you guys do an episode about 5th edition, or on edition wars in general (I don't remember, have you done an episode like that?)
It's two years away. That's a long time. That's longer than my god-son has been alive. While an episode about the reaction/playtesting methods etc might be interesting, it's two years away. There's so much going on in the world of RPGs that talking about something two years off seems silly. I mean, Greg Stolze was talking about a campaign or source book for A Dirty World dealing with Chicago and Cairo. I'd much rather hear about that. Or entirely new games.
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We will do an episode on D&D but not for a while.
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Is it two-years off from release? It seems strange they would have public play testing so early.
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It's PR. That's the only reason they're doing a public release at all - this isn't a playtest, in the same way that Pathfinder's 'playtests' only bring about community awareness of upcoming releases rather than actual gameplay tests.
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But aren't they getting a lot of bad PR?
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I never said it was a good idea. :P
Like I said before, D&D Team is like 5 guys and an intern. Hasbro makes $100 million a year off of MTG, so they keep WoTC around. D&D is an afterthought legacy brand at this point, more valuable for the intellectual properties it holds than for money off of sales.
They had a poll that made it through whatever marketing department should be reading this stuff that asked about returning to ability scores based on gender - I think we can be secure in the assumption that Corporate is not paying a great deal of attention.
Edit:
It means going forward 4e doesn't exist anymore and never exist. Like Highlander 2. It means if you like 4e, Wizards doesn't want/need you as their customer.
Doesn't exist? Are they going to come take your books? Will they demand RPPR takes down The New World (or re-does it in 5e?)
Well, they would cause the same problem they currently have with Pathfinder on a smaller scale if they split their brand by offering online support for both 4E and 5E, so when they pull the plug on the Character Builder that's pretty much all she wrote - the character builder is an amazing tool but anyone who tells you it's not mandatory for everything after the PHB and forward is lying.
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Sort of. Except the big difference is the problem is with a game called "Pathfinder" taking their customers. If it's in house then it's not so much taking customers as keeping people from switching to a 4e clone. Which will appear before 5e even hits shelves.
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After playing on thinking about 5e...I'm on the fence. I will say I am a much bigger fan of 4e than the prior additions. So I am biased against a nostalgic approach I'll admit. That being said, I don't think I've seen enough to say I wouldn't play it.
My group really liked the advantage/disadvantage. The GM said he had a few concerns about the potentional un-hitability when you stack defense abilities with it. But still really liked it on the whole.
As for wizard, the wizard player and myself was never fans of 'pick your spells for the day and hope you don't get any nasty surprise encounters.' We're considering house ruling it to a mana pool system, but I hear that was not uncommon in 3.5? Our wizard player prefers a more dps heavy spell caster and did not enjoy a more control focused caster. That's a character creation complaint however and not a mechanics issue.
The Fighter, I don't know about other people's experiences but it tore the hell out of mobs. Spine out the back ala Predator, I will paint my face with your blood.
Rogue we didn't play right. There was a hard time remembering the new rules for it so it ended up feeling under powered. Also the way the dungeon was laied out we did not find a lot of good situations for using him as an ambusher/skirmisher. That's a more situational complaint though. If we generated our own landscape/encounter that wouldn't be an issue.
Clerics...eh? I was never a fan of the class in 3.5 and 4e so I'm not sure how I feel about them. They seemed to play fine from what people said.
The Background & Theme feels like it has a lot of potential. A Fighter can be a beserker, tank, pitfighter, brawler, instead of making 4 seperate classes that are essentially a re-dressing of the fighter.
Healing is a big concern, at least for my group. We never have 5 players and no one likes to play cleric. One of the things our group really loved about 4e is class flexibility, you could have two players that had some healing abilities and you could move right along without too much trouble. Since we haven't seen character creation options or stuff beyond lvl 3, I'll have to wait and see how it pans out.
There's a few other minor things, like we're going to house rule potions to be 4+1d4 hp and get rid of electrum?
On the whole, on the fence. A lot of my groups concerns are character creation related and whats beyond lvl 3. Looking forward to the next phase of the playtest.
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Background & Theme and advantage/disadvantage are the best thing to comes out of 5e.
Sure the fighter is great now, but when the cleric and cast some long buffs that raise his to-hit, hp, saves, plus cast spells like heal and blade barrier. When the wizard is fireballing rooms, stoneskin, etc. The fighter isn't going to seem so powerful. Even in the adventure the fighter would easily start having problems with disadvantages. My fighter missed a few times of taking the lower dice.
I don't mind only being good at doing damage, but when the cast classes and do that and everything else. Higher levels fighters...What's the point?
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I'm an old gamer, though not a grognard by any means. I've embraced lots of new games and enjoyed the development of some of my old favorites. With D&D I've been around long enough to have played:
1979 Basic and Expert boxed sets
AD&D (1st edition)
AD&D (2nd Edition)
skipped 2.5
D&D 3rd
D&D 3.5
D&D 4th
I thought 3rd was a great improvement over the older editions, and tolerated the quick change to 3.5. I was pretty happy with 3.5, though higher levels things broke down. I played some 4th and thought it was well balanced, but the combats seemed to take a long time and the feel of some of the rules didn't really appeal to me. I never bought into 4th beyond the Player's Handbook and Monster Manual as they were on sale for 66% off at a local book store that closed. I'm still playing and running 3.5 and deal with it's warts as necessary.
My feeling on 5th or whatever is that it's kind of a big fuck you to the fan base. I know they need to make money, but it won't be from me this time. If I want advantages or Disadvantages I'll play GURPS. If I want D&D I'll play 3.5 or 4th. This is just personal opinion though. If people like the new edition then that's cool. If someone asks me to play 5th I
'll give it a whirl, but I'm not buying it. They are just to smug and arrogant with their fan base for me. To sum up my view
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eGJOqMHsDI
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Its not as bad as F.A.T.A.L
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Its not as bad as F.A.T.A.L
Both better love stories than Twilight
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I know it's been two weeks but I didn't see anyone address this directly:
seriously? Fighters don't have any class powers anymore? That's lame.
From the sounds of things, Fighters will have class powers, only they won't be called "Martial Powers", they'll be called "Combat Maneuvers" and they'll have OPTIONAL stamped on them. It looks like 5e will have a lot of 4e in it, only those bits will be renamed and made optional "modules".
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(http://i.imgur.com/ZqTpP.jpg?1)
This is not getting fixed.
On the wizard side,
(http://i.imgur.com/ordyD.jpg?1)
This is being built on further.
(http://i.imgur.com/kvyRJ.gif)
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Background & Theme and advantage/disadvantage are the best thing to comes out of 5e.
Sure the fighter is great now, but when the cleric and cast some long buffs that raise his to-hit, hp, saves, plus cast spells like heal and blade barrier. When the wizard is fireballing rooms, stoneskin, etc. The fighter isn't going to seem so powerful. Even in the adventure the fighter would easily start having problems with disadvantages. My fighter missed a few times of taking the lower dice.
I don't mind only being good at doing damage, but when the cast classes and do that and everything else. Higher levels fighters...What's the point?
Welcome to every edition of D&D past like 1st (wherein the Fighters were good because except for Asmodeus and other god-like things, they hit EVERYTHING IN THE GAME on a roll of 2 or higher come 10th level). =P
I love D&D, grew up playing it, still play it, and run it every Friday. But the Fighter issue drives me up a wall. =<<<<
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Oooh! Oooh! My turn! Pick me!
When Ross reads my PM, I will probably have some interesting news on this front. ;D
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On this note of D&D Next, has anybody looked at Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG?
Looks interesting.
http://www.goodman-games.com/5070preview.html (http://www.goodman-games.com/5070preview.html)
#somewhatshamelessplug
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We finally did some playtesting of D&Dnext and I enjoyed it. Our DM is playing through the included adventure in another campaign, so he made one up for us. It primarily consisted of getting us into as many battles as possible and I was really impressed with how quickly combat went. I enjoyed it immensely and I was really expecting to hate it.
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I know it's been two weeks but I didn't see anyone address this directly:
seriously? Fighters don't have any class powers anymore? That's lame.
From the sounds of things, Fighters will have class powers, only they won't be called "Martial Powers", they'll be called "Combat Maneuvers" and they'll have OPTIONAL stamped on them. It looks like 5e will have a lot of 4e in it, only those bits will be renamed and made optional "modules".
http://community.wizards.com/dndnext/blog/2012/06/27/modularity_and_combat_subsystems
Apparently, I lied.
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Gotta love the degree of mathematical analysis (i.e. none) they put into their product when their entire product is just a series of mathematical expressions with descriptions attached. ;D
"Let's use bounded attack rolls! Let's minimize modifiers! Let's include a -10 modifier! Wooo!"
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So a fighter can get a bonus to damage or a knockdown without a to-hit penalty. Well that sure makes them on even footing with wizards.
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I know, fuck jocks man, amirite? My verisimilitude does not allow for a fighter to actually attack more than once per round.
Don't they know that's a job for ~wizards~
Gosh
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I was hoping "Combat Maneuvers" would be more than trip, sunder and disarm. I don't want a game where wizards are the stars and every other class is support. At this point it seems like wizards will have a ton of options, dps, buffs, control, debuffs and the fighter has..trip?
What was the point of WotC even showing this? What class is going to take a -5 or -10 to try one of these maneuvers?
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So what's the deal with the next Iteration with AD&D? Are they getting away from the Bridge Wargamer Orgy of 3rd & 4th ed?
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So what's the deal with the next Iteration with AD&D? Are they getting away from the Bridge Wargamer Orgy of 3rd & 4th ed?
...beg pardon? Not familiar with the turn of phrase.
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SageNytell,
*chuckle* Sorry for the neologisms.
It's just that, for me, after 2nd ed AD&D seemed to be getting more and more arcane, like Contract Bridge and wargameporn.
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So what's the deal with the next Iteration with AD&D? Are they getting away from the Bridge Wargamer Orgy of 3rd & 4th ed?
What's the deal with airplane food...?
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a PSA on the dangers (joys for furries?) of some airline food
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fRQ4aODF44 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fRQ4aODF44)
a PSA on the joys of some airline food
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpeiTnTaZ_8 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpeiTnTaZ_8)
Trust the quantum computer, the quantum computer is/isn't/maybe your friend
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpeiTnTaZ_8