Legends & Lore: Warlock Design

Given that the warlock is one of my favorite classes in Dungeons & Dragons of all time, it is comforting that at least this time I only see potential issues in today’s Legends & Lore.

I never played a warlock in 3rd Edition. It seemed like a two-trick pseudo-sorcerer that was created as a mechanical experiment to see if it would be possible to permit a character to cast a couple of spells whenever they wanted to. Of course given that magic does not have to let you circumvent the rules of the game the answer is yes, it was just a fairly lackluster execution.

4th Edition made them into a distinct, interesting concept: unlike wizards, who study magic, and sorcerers, who have magic in their blood, warlocks bargain for it. It also provided a variety of pacts to choose from; infernal, fey, star, and eventually vestige and gloom. Each pact had a separate benefit associated with it, and while you were not forced or limited to your spell selection, many received additional benefits if you had a specific pact. Plus there were also numerous feats and paragon paths to choose from, too.

For now Next‘s warlock will retain 4th Edition’s flavor, in which you choose a patron that gives you access to power in exchange for something else or ongoing “employment”. It would be nice to see the patron as a more involved force, but this will do for now. I am also liking the three types of suggested pacts: blade (4th Edition’s hexblade subclass), book (more spells than the rest), and chain (summoning/binding planar critters). They sound pretty evocative and diverse, as do some of the other things mentioned (summoned minion serving as a magical conduit), so what could go wrong?

Well, at least four things.

The first is execution. Summoning a weapon and casting spells is the easy part, it is summoning monsters and bossing them around that might cause issues. In 3rd Edition you could summon an army of monsters and basically play your own party, while 4th Edition made it so that it either cost you actions to command your “pets”, or gave them instinctive actions that they would do on their own if not told otherwise. While this might sound good in theory (hey, free action), this could include a giant spider munching down on whoever was unfortunate to be the closest at the time.

The second is patrons. The article only refers to the patron in regards to the book pact. The 4th Edition hexblade had access to a weapon thematic to your pact, and I think that summoning monsters could certainly benefit from a patron’s type (devils for infernal, tentacled horrors for star, etc). I am hoping that these two pacts are not relegated to “vanilla” capabilities, especially since 4th Edition pretty much does the work for them.

Then we have the pacts themselves. I know I said that they sound neat and distinct, but I am guessing that this means WotC will lazily construct three subclass packages with a handful of needlessly divided features, forcing you to isolate yourself to one category early on in your career. It would be great to see a talent tree structure that lets you customize your character as you progress instead of locking you in, but given all the limitations we have seen so far I am not holding my breath.

Finally, magic. Warlocks started out with all at-will magic, then they followed 4th Edition’s mostly unified power structure. I mostly-liked the warlock’s mechanics in the previous packets, but would not be surprised if they just give them daily spells limited by your patron. What I would love to see is if they actually sit down, think about how warlock magic works, and create mechanics that support that explanation.

If I were in charge, here is how I would do it:

• Your patron provides access to thematically appropriate spells and other features. It makes sense for a patron to only be able to dole out magic appropriate to its own capabilities.
• Each warlock starts with eldritch blast, flavored as a burst of raw, magical energy. They might look different and have different effects based on pact (like fire for infernal). 
• You would also start with access to a thematic spell or two, which would be usable at-will or burn some sort of point mechanic, flavored as the warlock’s body “burning out”. You could perform a ritual to get in touch with your patron to swap them.
• You would get a choice as to how to specialize your character at the start: if you choose blade, you can summon a weapon, book gets you another spell, while chain lets you conjure things. Each time you level you get to purchase a new talent, upgrade an older one, etc.
• You have a “sign” that starts small, but gets more obvious as you level up, potentially revealing your allegiance at a glance.
• You can contact your patron to ask questions or for favors. You might have to exchange something or do something later on, but the character is an investment after all.

With this players get to choose how they progress, and can determine their complexity as they go. None of that “per-day” leveled magic, forcing you to stick with a subclass, or barring off other options for no good reason.

Legends & Lore: Class Roles…I Mean Groups

3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons introduced the sorcerer as a kind of wizard that, like pretty much every wizard in fiction that was not based specifically on Dungeons & Dragons, was not forced to memorize/prepare her spells in advance prior to using them.

The bit of flavor on them suggested that they carried the blood of dragons, but pretty much nothing about the class backed that claim up: they were basically wizards that just managed their spells in a slightly different way, material spell components and all.

Eventually articles in various Dragon magazines and I think Unearthed Arcana allowed you to burn one or more feats in order to gain minor benefits and access to additional spells, both on a per-day basis and to your list in general. On one hand it was something, but on the other 3rd Edition characters were incredibly feat-starved: picking up the entire tree would eat up about half your feats and levels.

Thematic bloodline features were something that should have been part of the class from the get-go…which is what they did when the sorcerer made its debut in 4th Edition: each spell source gave you an assortment of class features, they had a list of spells separate from the wizard, and your spell source could affect what various spells did (meaning that you were not forced to choose certain spells, but there were benefits to sticking with a theme).

Next‘s short-lived sorcerer was actually surprising in a very good way in that, unlike many other parts of the game, it did not bear a bunch of 3rd Edition mechanics seemingly just for the sake of it. In fact I think it was way cooler than 4th Edition’s take, in particular how you would transform as you used magic. It got pulled a packet or two later, and after awhile of hoping that they were simply going to refine it discovered that it was getting rolled in with the warlock (which suffered a similar fate) as a mage subclass.

Yay…

Thankfully it sounds like that, despite some benefits, this direction was not well received.

YAY!

For some reason one of 4th Edition’s controversial additions was explicitly stating a class’s general role and, perhaps, actually enabling a class to do what it was supposed to do.

That and giving fighter’s nice things.

Some people took this to mean that they were pidgeon-holing a class, but all it really did was let you know at a glance that the class would have a marking mechanic, encounter-heal, some sort of bonus damage, or probably access to more area-effect and/or condition-afflicting powers than the rest. Many classes not only had an implied secondary role, but there were enough options—especially through subclasses, variant class features, multiclassing, hybrids, and skills powers—to really shake things up if you wanted to.

It is because of this that I like that they are going to start grouping classes in categories in concept, but their method leaves a lot to be desired:

• Warriors are masters of arms and are tougher than other characters.
• Tricksters are experts in a variety of fields.
• Mages specialize in arcane magic.
• Priests specialize in divine magic.

So in this model are paladins warriors or priests? Are rangers warriors or tricksters? Are bards tricksters or mages? Illusionists sound like they would take to the trickster label pretty well. Since for some reason the primal category is gone, where do druids fit in? Same goes for psionics.

This sounds a lot clunkier than 4th Edition’s role/power source combo, even before dual-source/role classes became a thing, so much that the only reason that I can think as to why they would ignore it is because it was a 4th Edition thing. Think about it: if each class and class feature had a set of associated keywords, aspects, or tags they could easily design magic items, feats, and other options to be applicable to precisely what they want. When new stuff comes out, just attach the appropriate keywords, or add more as necessary.

In this system paladins would be martial and divine, rangers would be martial and maybe primal if you wanted to add in some nature magic, and bards would be martial and arcane. Bard spells might have a “song” keyword, but you could also make divine songs that evoke the feel of a chant or hymn, or even primal shouts for barbarians (or just make shout its own thing). Then you could make a magical lute that works with either arcane songs, or just songs in general.

Ultimately this development has got me…tentatively intrigued by Next, because even if it is clunky and shortsighted it looks like they are taking steps to making a good game, instead of one largely shackled to legacy mechanics, just with better art.

Legends & Lore: Subpar Classes

I am not a fan of 5th Edition’s approach to classes, even with the introduction of subclasses: you pick a class, then a few levels in pick a subclass, and aside from some stat boosts/feat choices your character is effectively on rails for the rest of the campaign.

The rationalization is that it allows a player to manage complexity in the game: if you want to play a complex fighter then you go with gladiator, and if you want to play a simple one then you go with warrior. The problem is that you cannot change your path after you choose it, and you cannot play a fighter that can use maneuvers and defend your allies.

Also, I guess all fighters capable of using maneuvers are gladiators?

Why does it have to be like that? Why let players only make a few decisions? What about a new player who starts out taking simple options, but as she becomes more used to the system wants to branch out into maneuvers? What if the character concept shifts over the course of play, like a rogue that decides later on to become a shadowdancer? Are you just supposed to just roll up a new character?

Why not give each race, class, and maybe even race/class combination access to a list of class features? You could even rank them by complexity (something that 13th Age does with classes), so that if players want to stick with the easy stuff they can without having to sift through a bunch of options. You could also provide sample archetypes with recommended features. This would make it a lot easier to accommodate organic character growth, and sounds ultimately much more satisfying than locking a concept in very early on in the character’s career.

One of the things I love about 4th Edition was how powers made classes feel and play very differently from each other: fighters did not feel like warlords, who did not feel like rogues, who did not feel like rangers (despite sharing the same power source/role combination). It is because of this that I am concerned about the warlock and sorcerer being relegated to mage subclasses: 4th Edition made them conceptually and mechanically distinct, things that 5th Edition lacks (mostly within a class, but even outside to a point). The bit about sharing spells and feats does not help.

While the article specifically mentions focusing on what makes them unique and interesting, I have not seen anything unique or interesting about magic in Next ever since they culled the sorcerer and warlock. Yeah there is probably a year or so before the game gets released, but from what we have seen I am fully expecting each subclass to have its own spellcasting mechanic, none of which will make any sense, be interesting, or really evoke the concept of the class it is being used for.

On the plus side it is good to hear that warlords will have non-magical healing. I wish the game did not require access to constant, adventure pace-destroying healing, but it is something.

No, I am not entertained.

The Barbarian Horde (Throughout Editions)

One of my criticisms about Next is the lack of being able to make meaningful decisions both when building a character and during level up, as most levels of most classes have predetermined class features.

Sure at 2nd- or 3rd-level you get to pick a kind of theme (which you may not agree with), but this one choice predetermines everything else you get for the rest of the game. This is not only boring, but limits a class to one interpretation of a concept and makes it needlessly more difficult–if not impossible–for a player to build the character that they want.

To better illustrate my point I decided to compare the barbarian class in 3rd Edition, 4th Edition, 5th Edition, and 13th Age.

3RD EDITION
You get fast movement (+10 ft. speed when not in heavy armor) and can rage once per day (bonus to attack, damage, and Will saves). For some reason you cannot read or write unless you spend two skill points. The only thing you can customize here is how you distribute your skill points and where to spend a feat.

An example of several half-orc barbarians.

4TH EDITION

All barbarians gain a scaling bonus to AC and Reflex when not in heavy armor, rage strike (which lets you keep using daily attacks without losing the benefits of a previously activated one if you do not want to), and Rampage (if you score a critical hit, you get to make a free attack).

From there you choose from one of four Feral Might options: Rageblood is your more straightforward beat ’em up type, Thaneborn is if you want to be a leader, Thunderborn have strong ties to thunder-based primal spirits, and Whirling is for dual-wielders. Each class feature gives you a unique ability, and can potentially grant bonuses to certain thematically appropriate evocations.

You also get to choose four evocations at the start: two can be used at any time, one can be used once per battle, and one–the “rage” powers–can be used each day. Rages tend to deal a lot of damage and grant continuous effects for the remainder of the battle.

Like 3rd Edition you still get to choose skills and a feat. Unlike 3rd Edition feats can give you both skills and limited access to features from another class (further expanding customization).

5TH EDITION

Speaking of 3rd Edition, the 5th Edition version is much the same in that you do not get to choose anything, at least at the start: at 3rd-level you get to choose from one of two features that lock a group of five options for the rest of the game (you cannot pick from both trees). Feats are optional, but can add some much needed customization if you use them, and skills are throttled into two “fields of lore”.

More half-orc barbarians.

13TH AGE
You start with rage, because all barbarians must rage, but get to pick three barbarian talents from a list of six. The amount of talents you know increases as you level, with levels 5 and 8 adding two more to the list. Instead of skills you spend 8 background points on aspects of your character that make the most sense to you (up to a +5 bonus). They are not linked to ability scores. You get to spend a feat, and while there are general ones race and class talents can also be boosted with them, too.

FINAL VERDICT

3rd and 5th Edition come in miles behind 4th Edition and 13th Age, which are both about the same in my book: I love the amount of options and flexibility that 4th Edition gives you, but the sheer number that you start with and the amount you will end up with can make it cumbersome for some players to keep track of. 13th Age slims down character options, while still giving you almost complete control of the reins, making it ideal for players that want control without all the content.

If you wanted to make things even simpler you could take a page from Dungeon World, having most classes start with the same stuff, but you get to pick what you gain as you level up. We just played our first session of Numenera last night, and building characters was a snap despite being able to actually pick some things. I do not think it is as difficult or cumbersome as it sounds. Why not at least give it a shot?

Legends & Lore: Classic Complexity

Some people like the 3rd Edition fighter because it is simple to the point where it is often used as an introductory class (you do not do much besides roll to hit, and roll damage if you do), while others dislike it for that very same reason (well, that and it is horrendously underpowered mid- to late-game).

Gamers have different tastes, and those tastes can change over time, so if a game get lets you determine–among other things–character complexity on the fly then you are just increasing the odds that they will not only like your game, but stick with it when they feel like switching up the amount of book keeping they want to do.

If you have not checked out the most recent playtest, one of the big changes to fighters is that they choose a Martial Path at 3rd-level. The idea is that if managing abilities on a round-by-round basis will entertain you, go gladiator. If, when you come out to play, you do not want to deal with lots of decisions on a round-by-round basis, then warriors are a good choice. I think it is a good goal, but that they are also executing it poorly.

In 3rd Edition if you rolled a fighter you started with a bonus feat. Not much, but you could spend it to boost your attack bonus (usually my first choice), initiative, or saving throws, give yourself to increase your damage output or Armor Class, and more. There were several feat threes that you could go down that ultimatly let you do stuff like move, attack, and keep moving, attack every adjacent enemy, use various combat tricks without getting hit first, and more.

4th Edition really ramped up the level of customization by letting you choose from several class features at the start, as well as over four-hundred martial exploits.

In Next? You get Second Wind. Period. At 2nd-level you get Action Surge. It is not until 3rd-level that you get to choose from three Martial Paths. Three options is not much, but it is still something, except that this choice locks in five class features that you will get down the road. From then on you just get what the game decides you should have. The article mentions being able to build your own subclass with DM permission, but there is still a hefty chunk of the class that you get no say in.

I guess this is better than nothing, as the current subclasses do not make much sense. Why are maneuvers limited to gladiators? Why do you only get six of them, and stop getting them at 7th-level? Since you have to meet or beat the monster’s ability score modifier on a d6 for a maneuver to work, does this not mean that as you get higher level and fight bigger/smarter monsters that the odds of them working go down? How come only knights can call someone out? This seems like something that a gladiator would be good at doing, too.

Why not let the fighter pick from a variety of options at 1st-level, trusting that players who want simple options to pick simple things, and let players that want more complexity do that? What if a player would rather start with a maneuver, or a d4 on Charisma checks? Both of those sound infinitely more interesting and about as simple (especially the Charisma bonus) than being able to regain half your hit points once per day. The subclasses would work just fine for builds/archetypes, but you can still let players choose.

Another thing I dislike is the statement “both race and background have more complexity early on but don’t add anymore at higher levels”. Umm…why not? I miss how in 4th Edition you had the option of making your race matter more if you wanted to, such as by taking Dwarven Weapon Training if you wanted to deal more damage with iconic dwarf weapons, Hellfire Blood for tieflings that wanted to add more oomph to their fire-power, and Fey Trickster if you wanted your gnome of any class to have a pair of neat wizard cantrips. Again, let players make the call as to how much their race affects their character.

D&DN Q&A: Modular Features, Paladin Alignment & Legendary Creatures

I have blogged numerous times about why I do not like wizards, ways I might do magic, and how to make some of the existing classes more interesting, so it was nice to see a positive response in this week’s Question & Answers column as to whether modular features will change the core abilities of a class. Though the answer specifically mentions a “robust point-and-bonus based skill system module”, maybe that means that we will see rules for a magic system that will approach some semblance of sense.

I can dream. After all, they did feature a variety of alternate rules for magic in 3rd Edition’s Unearthed Arcana (hint hint).

The next question asks about decoupling alignment from the rules, something that was mentioned near the tail-end of this week’s Legends & Lore article, despite the paladin still requiring a Lawful alignment. The answer is yes, but they just have not gotten around to it yet because they are working on some “major changes across all classes” in an upcoming packet. Maybe some alternative, understandable, thematic spellcasting systems based on class?

WHAT?

Seriously, as I also mentioned earlier this week I think it would be a lot cooler to have class features tied to something like FATE’s aspects or Exalted‘s virtues and intimacies. Giving paladins class features based on these would go a long way to separating them conceptually from clerics, though this could be great for any character.

Finally more about Legendary status, specifically if an army of peasants can defeat a Legendary creature. The answer uses the tarrasque as an example, which is an iconic unique creature that is virtually impossible to defeat in most editions without a handful of wishes on hand. The part that rubs me the wrong way is when Rodney specifically mentions building in a safe guard that renders it immune to attacks from creatures of a certain level or lower.

Huh? That makes about as much sense as pseudo-Vancian magic.

Sorry, sorry, I will stop. Well, I will try to at any rate. In this article, anyway.

I just have this vision of peasants trying to push boulders on top of it, only to have them harmlessly bounce off. Then a high-level fighter walks up, does the same thing, and crushes its skull. Why not just re-introduce a more granular weapon resistance, like we had in 3rd and 4th Edition? This way the tarrasque can have something like DR 10, making it virtually impossible for a peasant to even damage it, but high-level fighters, what with their scaling damage output suffer a minor inconvenience. Makes much more sense than some arbitrary level-based threshold.

Legends & Lore: Class Design Concepts

Mearls gives us another update on survey results and class direction.

Cleric
While I like the idea of clerics having a flexible reserve of energy to use for healing and repelling undead, I hate the idea of all clerics having a reserve of energy to use for healing and repelling undead.

I think it would be more interesting to have channel divinity allow clerics to activate deity-related powers, but conceptually it just all sounds like divine magic by another name. It is like having both spell slots and power points, just without the trouble of multiclassing.

I guess the only real difference besides a point-based resource is that channel divinity stuff would not be things that the cleric can just swap out, unlike prepped spells. Anyway, I really hope that they end up adding armor proficiencies to deities. It makes way more sense than giving everyone default access to chainmail. I also dig giving each deity multiple facets. Kind of reminds me of 3rd Edition’s domains and 2nd Edition’s spheres.

Fighter
I agree that fighters are pretty badass, and like that people are not complaining that they have nice things. I disagree that they all need some kind of parry mechanic baked in, as I think it kind of clashes with people wanting to do an archer build, though this is a minor nitpick.

Rogue
I never felt that the rogue was a “lame” fighter, not that I felt that fighting–fairly, at least–was supposed to be its strong suit. I suppose if I wanted to try and do what the fighter does that I would play a fighter or take Sneak Attack. Depending on how things unfold, down the line I might just multiclass into fighter or take whatever weapon feats invariably manifest (Weapon Specialist?).

In Kamon’s Skyrim mini-campaign the party right now consists of a fighter and a rogue, and while I feel more useful in combat Melissa’s character has access to twice as many skills and can add in a variable bonus to them. So while I am good at hitting things with an axe (and getting hit by them), she is good at scouting, picking locks, fast-talking her way past the bad guys, and more.

Non-magical effects that allow her to trick or distract enemies sounds an awful lot like exploits by another name, though it sounds like there will not be a cooldown on them. Maybe this will be easier for people to understand or accept. Hopefully they are not just restricted to rogues. I am fine with them having an edge while doing it, but being able to trick an enemy should be something anyone can try, with a reasonable return for their action investment.

Using bonus dice for skills sounds different, and more importantly (to me, anyway) interesting.

Wizard
Spell damage and slots, and tradition choices are going up. I am surprised to see that they will be acting more like clerics, prepping spells and burning slots to cast them. In that regard it sounds like a cross between Vancian magic and spell points. For me that is a big step in the right direction, as it makes it more likely that the wizard will have a useful spell on hand, instead of potentially having to setup camp so that they can memorize the “right” one, and might make a bit more sense.

Spellcasting
I am more than happy to exchange my signature spell for scaling at-wills. Having actually useful magic all the time is better than having a spell that is only really useful for the first few levels.

As for creating separate categories, why not make at-will and daily versions of spells? Back when we used to play a lot of 4th Edition, Josh proposed a system where you could prepare a spell and cast at-will and encounter versions of it, losing access to them if you cast the “daily” version. I could also go for something like Reserve feats from 3rd Edition, where having fireball prepped lets you toss around bolts of fire.

I still do not like spell levels, partially because they are not needed, but mostly because they make no sense. If my wizard has a 5th-level slot and I cast a 1st-level spell it uses the last of my magical brain space, or what?

On another note, hooray for spellcasting in armor. It was nice in 4th Edition to play a fighter that dabbles in arcane magic without having to wait a bunch of levels and/or spend a bunch of feats.

Legends & Lore: Class Design

There is a lot on Mearls’s class design guidelines that I like.

Using what previously exists is an obvious start, and this is how I went about making my own class homebrews. What I really like about this is where they actually challenge their bullet list by determining what is absolutely critical about the class’s identity. Trying to find common ground between editions is a good start, but as lengthy ranger threads have shown, what makes a class for one person might not work–and might even break it–for someone else.

I also like that they are willing to move former class features into more generally available options. In the example of two-weapon fighting 3rd Edition required a feat tree, and while rangers could get the feats for free it was only arguably effective thanks to massive attack penalties. 4th Edition made two-weapon fighting the venue of specific classes, building powers that let you benefit from it (as well as ensuring that it worked).  While I originally praised this approach, I think that a middle-ground where characters can take it if they want, and it works, is best as it avoids having to build in exceptions to classes later on.

Even better is the fact that they are willing to try entirely new things. Bards have had daily spells since 2nd Edition at the least, but that does not mean that it is the best (or even ideal) method to represent how they access and use magic. Frankly a bard whose magic is more closely tied to music, and not limited to x times per day sounds a lot more interesting. I am eager to see other classes that deviate from “tradition”, not just wizards.

My only experience with animal companions (or companions in general), was in 3rd and 4th Edition. In 3rd Edition they tended to be virtually worthless…unless a player conjured something with a spell list, such as a cleric summoning an archon that has access to more cleric spells than she does. To be fair some class features and feats could lead to easily abusive results, such as dread necromancers and the Corpse Crafter tree. It also dragged the game down by giving one or more players the potential to take several turns at once.

4th Edition fixed all of these issues by giving companions continually scaling stats based on your level, and sustaining the action economy. This helped ensure that summons/companions were always useful, but you still were only taking one character worth of actions. Later they added in instinctive actions that kind of allowed a character to break this, but it was not always optimal (or beneficial, especially when it made a creature attack an ally).

It sounds like that this time around they are going to make companions a rules module that combines 3rd Edition’s complexity with 4th Edition’s efficacy; they basically act as a second character, being able to gain XP and everything, which helps make sure that they do not become obsolete after a few levels. Given that this is not ideal (or even enjoyable) for every group, they are designing classes without companions as a default option. Good for someone like me, who has always wanted to be able to play a wizard with a bound something-or-other, bad for groups that wanted something more simple to play with.

This modular approach is going to be worked into a number of classes on a number of levels, and I am excited to see classes further develop with these design methods in mind. Hopefully this will prevent class bloat, where we have a class that is like a wizard with one or two differences, but make it easier to apply campaign setting-specific mechanics without simply adding on to a class to evoke flavor material (such as 4th Edition’s Dark Sun Campaign Setting and Arcane Defiling).

Legends & Lore: This Week in D&D

Mearls sheds some light on things that they are working on, namely classes, backgrounds, and specialties.

It sucks that the sorcerer and warlock are getting pulled back, as they were far more interesting than the pseduo-Vancian, fire-and-forget wizard (at-wills or no), though  I am hopeful that wizard traditions will close the gap…at least somewhat, anyway. While I like the added oomph of signature spells (aka 4th Edition encounter spells), they muddy the waters in terms of explaining how magic works.

The sorcerer tied with the warlock as my favorite class, and it sucks that they might rename the class and recycle it for a fighter/wizard archetype. I like the concept and mechanics quite a bit, as well as the ability to have a capable, interesting melee-spellcaster. Eh, I am least willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.

I am a bit iffier about the whole “magic-user” blanket class, mostly because I am not sure what it implies. Will the classes be packages of mechanics? Will each class have a variety of mechanics, or still have unique mechanics? I really liked where they were going with the sorcerer and warlock. I had heard that they were going to make various management systems that you could apply as desired, which sounds nice so long as classes still retain unique features.

Turn undead has been moved to a class feature (again), and channel divinity has been removed in favor of “special abilities based on your god” (which basically sounds like channel divinity by another name). The idea is that there will be generic deities that can be applied to archetypal gods. The given example is using the Trickster for Loki or Olidammara, which grants invisibility (and other illusion-based magic), training in Sneak, some ranged and Dexterity-based melee weapons. I love this because for the first time clerics will be able to more readily “act” like their gods–especially right out of the gate–instead of almost universally being heavily armed and armored melee-warriors.

Fighters went over well, but they are looking into making the fighter even more simple than simply stating that you add your Expertise Dice to damage rolls. Given how boring people thought the initial fighter was, I wonder if they can find a middle ground in there.

I am glad to hear that while rogues will get more skills, that they will be dialing down the chances of automatic success; they should be able to fail at least rarely.

Speaking of skills, backgrounds will now give four skills instead of three, and they are going back to the original floating bonus method; instead of linking skills to specific ability scores, you can add them to any relevant check. Personally I think that this encourages more clever thinking on the part of players. No mention of whether traits will remain, and the skill list might expand. Given how many Lore skills they are, I am not sure if this is a good thing.

Specialties are being more clearly defined as “something that your character has focused on and developed”, ideally something that is easy for other players to understand. No word on if/when other specialties come into play.

And now to wait for the next packet, which is thankfully coming soon.

Legend & Lore: Playtest Update

Mearls speaks about the bad, the good, and the etc of the playtest. I am going to address some of these things out of order, mostly so I can keep all the class stuff together.

Cleric
I dug the cleric quite a bit. I kept proposing a magic system in which the cleric would get “miracles” per day (instead of having to prep them), as well as weapon and armor proficiencies, and spells set by your god, and that is largely what we got. Does turn undead need to be a thing that all clerics get? Do all gods care about that sort of thing? I do not think so, so making it a spell or a function of your god makes more sense.

Why not go back to how it was handled in 4th Edition? You get Channel Divinity, and can use that on specific things, so clerics worshipping gods that hate undead can use it against them, while clerics of war gods can burn it to bolster allies in combat? On the other hand, is it even needed? It sounds like a cleric spell by another name, after all.

Fighter
The fighter is, I think, the best it has ever been. While I enjoyed the warblade from Tome of Battle because it gave melee fighters diverse and useful things to do, such things were couched in supernatural or semi-magical feats (not like Feat feats, but feats like exploits). 4th Edition made a purely non-magical fighter that worked. No prestige class, no non-functional feat chain. In a similar vein, 5th Edition’s fighter is purely mundane but still has a lot of useful and flexible things to do on a round-by-round basis.

Rogue
Personally I do not mind a rogue doing the whole hide, attack, etc routine. It makes sense in the narrative, with the rogue hanging back and waiting for an opportune moment to strike. I talked about this before, where at higher levels even a rogue attacking every other round can still out-damage plenty of other classes. I also think that it is a nice middle ground between 2nd Edition and 3rd and 4th Editions; instead of making it very difficult or easy (and frequent), you have to set yourself up.

Even so that type of tactic is not for everyone, so Sneak Attack becoming an option could be great for those that want to make a highly skill character that is also not good at randomly spiking damage. The idea of a smooth-talking con artist being able to distract or confuse enemies has merit, so long as it does not become a dialogue spam-fest most of the time.

Sorcerer
While I can understand the warlock getting a nerf, the bit about the sorcerer straying too far from its identity confuses and concerns me. The only issue I took with the sorcerer was its twin soul flavor. As I said before I do not like the sorcerer having one of the sorcerer’s souls taking over when it casts lots of magic, but rather having its origin manifest (again, I will use Howl from Howl’s Moving Castle as an example of this). I really hope this is what Mearls is referring to, and not going back to 3rd Edition’s largely hands off approach to the sorcerer.

Warlock
3d6 damage for a ranged attack with no restrictions is pretty heavy. Rogue’s have to work for their d6s, and even fighters pouring all of their Expertise Die cannot reliably match that damage…well, unless you got a particularly good Strength score and/or use a two-handed weapon. I can see it being dropped to 2d6 or 2d8, especially if they provide favor-fueled invocations that allow a warlock to boost it.

Wizard
I…guess wizards could use more hit points? Personally I do not mind them being the iconic 4-sided wonder, if for no other reason than to give it something to do besides dagger duty. At any rate I am happy to see wizards getting more magic system types, instead of players having to settle on a magic system at the cost of concept and flavor.

Healing
Healing in 3rd Edition either demanded the use of magic or a lengthy recuperation time. This lead to somewhat silly moments where the cleric would heal the party, rest, heal some more, then rest again. In 4th Edition healing became much easier to come by (multiple classes offered healing or temp hit points), especially when out of combat (healing surges).

While healing surges made it easy to cope with time sensitive adventures, in hindsight I feel that it removed tension in the long term: in a fight as healing resources dwindled, it spiked, but once combat ended you could just top your hit points off. The only part where it started to matter was when you started to run out of healing surges.

Having recently started up a 3rd Edition Age of Worms campaign, the lack of a dedicated healer predictably makes the game more tense and dangerous. It is unfortunate that the solution is to spend lots of money on a wand of cure light wounds (or multiclass into cleric, or to roll a cleric when someone dies/becomes bored).

Ideally I would like a system where magical healing is not mandatory, and while Hit Dice (and do a point, Parry) help alleviate it somewhat (it certainly helped in both Blingdenstone sessions), my experience with 3rd Edition tells me that it will not be sufficient in the long run. Hit points are given more elaboration, in that the first half represent largely harmless scrapes and the like; divying up hit points and making it so that the first half are easily restored (or are automatically restored after combat) could help reflect this and increase survivability.

Monsters
I felt that the monsters were not threatening enough because they could not really hit anything. I do not think that PC damage needs to take a dive, and I am not sure how you would go about doing this: decouple it from ability scores? Reduce weapon damage overall (make it a flat number)?

I would reintroduce 4th Edition’s proficiency bonuses. It would reduce accuracy for characters using heavy weapons like axes and hammers (which could also reduce damage), and give lots of monsters an accuracy boost. I guess it ultimately depends on how close monsters cleave to character generation rules.

Ease of DMing
If “new monsters”, opportunity attacks, and adventure creation is too much, then I suspect that person should not be a DM in the first place. The monsters are largely follow a “roll to hit, roll damage” routine with a few exceptions such as the stirge’s attach, the gelatinous cube’s slam, and the kobold trap smith’s alchemical bombs . The rules for opportunity attacks are dirt simple, and I hope that Mearls is not considering removing them (or really even making them optional).