Legends & Lore: Meaty Feats

I have talked about feats a couple of times already, so to sum up my prior experience I will say that I felt 3rd Edition feats to be a pretty even mix of trap and boring choices, while 4th Edition did it one better with some very nice-yet-boring choices/feat taxes, very interesting and thematic ones, and a smaller-but-still-noticeable percentage of traps.

It was mentioned awhile back that as part of the design goal to make the game appealing to players with varying complexity needs, feats would be optional; if you waive them you instead would get to add +2 to an ability score. This approach would also have the added benefit of replacing the simple math boosters/feat taxes like Weapon Focus and Great Fortitude.

This caused a couple of concerns.

One was how they would balance classes that get more ability score boosts than the rest. Another was that thanks to racial and class bonuses it is very easy to hit the ability score cap early and often, meaning that you could feasibly waste half the bonus if you had a 19 in the stat. Finally, and this is a very big issue, if you can mix-and-match ability score boosts and feat-feats, would not most players just load up on some stat-boosts until they capped out and/or got high enough level to pick a really interesting feat, especially if the higher level feats provide better offerings?

This week’s Legends & Lore at least addresses the second point (you can choose either +2 or a +1 split), as well as showcases a pair of feats that, while maybe not being actual feats, still give us an idea of what we might expect to see:

• Great Weapon Master gives you proficiency in heavy weapons, lets you make an attack at -5 to deal double damage, and if you score a crit or drop an enemy you can make a free attack, while 
• Heavy Armor Master gives you proficiency with heavy armor, as well as a bonus to AC and damage reduction in anything but name.

Both are certainly meatier when compared to past editions, though they have their share of issues:

• Why are either suffixed with “Master”? Except for Heavy Armor Master it looks like anyone of any level can take them (including, say, a wizard), and that one just requires that you know how to put on any suit of Medium armor.
• Is anyone going to take a -5 to hit except under extremely favorable conditions? I am talking a combination of a low target AC, attack advantage, and/or magical bonuses to offset this. If you can reliably get this stuff, then it is awesome because it is just a flat double-damage. Otherwise…meh?
• Why is the damage resistance from Heavy Armor Master based on Constitution? It is insanely easy to top out at a +5 bonus (even at the start of the game), and at the rate monster damage scales I cannot see it being useful for very long. This is a very good combo for a dwarf, especially the mountain dwarf, which starts out proficient in medium armor regardless of class.

The last bullet is to me very problematic, as I do not think the designers intended to make a feat that at a glance seems appropriate for tanks, yet incredibly appealing to casters. This is another reason why I am starting to think that feats should mostly be scrapped in favor of just giving characters decision points based on a combination of class and level. If this was a fighter “talent” that required a couple levels to take, then your wizard would have to work at it to pick it up, making it a meaningful choice. As it stands it is a no brainer.

You could also restrict ability score boosts based on class, or even award automatic boosts if you get enough levels in a class. So every 4-5 fighter levels you get to increase your Strength or Constitution by 1. For wizards, pick from Intelligence or Wisdom, and so on. I think that by taking a 4th Edition approach and sticking all of your choices within your class that it would speed up leveling, as well as prevent decision paralysis as you try to pore through hundreds, eventually thousands of feats (which is still difficult with Character Builder).

I guess feats were an interesting idea back in 3rd Edition when they were fresh and new (for Dungeons & Dragons, anyway), and while 4th Edition made them better I think that there is plenty of room for better innovation, preferably one with better organization and balance, and less page-flipping.

Legends & Lore: Monsters and the World

Last week Mearls talked about their approach to planes, specifically mentioning that the relationship between Ravenloft and the Shadowfell is still up in the air. Personally I am still advocating a cosmological toolbox, that way everyone gets what they want without there needing to be any assumptions or “correct” layout. Just saying, why stop at giving Dungeons Masters the tools they need to build just one world?

Though it sounds like a topic more appropriate for a Wandering Monsters article, this week we get to see their current approach to 
monsters, which follows four goals:

• Invalidate as little of the monster’s past as possible. 
• The creature should have a place. 
• Make the monster as complex and deep as it “needs” to be; not every monster needs an elaborate backstory or flavor content. 
• Monsters should not just be things to fight.

The first point concerns me because I am worried that “as little as possible” translates to “keep it as-is because that is how it was before”. There is a huge opportunity here to start from scratch, clean things up, tie some of it together, give a long though as to whether some monsters can be presented better than they have before, or if they even need to be in the game at all.

Take the nagpa for instance: why does their curse give them a magical staff and spell-like abilities? Would it not make more sense to curse them so that they can no longer use magic, or simply unable to learn more? Why were the gith originally a race of universally evil humans, and why did the mind flayers–despite possessing by default insanely high Intelligence and Wisdom scores–not notice what was going on?

The second point I mostly agree with. On one hand I think that monsters should have a place in the world, especially ones that we are paying for. On the other hand gods, wizards, curses, the Far Realm, and more could be responsible for the creation of one or more random critters that have no true place in the world, but I think that they could let us handle “a wizard did it” monsters. Well, maybe a random table.

Now the third point I really agree with, but I think that virtually none of the monsters in Next are there, yet. Another thing is that while the example purple worm might not need a complex back story, it should have more interesting mechanics than just hitting things and having lots of hit points, especially if it is intended to be encountered alone.

Check out the differences between 3rd and 4th Edition’s purple worms (especially the Monster Vault revamp); the former can bite and grab, and if you are still stuck there when it goes again it can try to swallow you, while the latter can take multiple actions (making it more of a threat to a party), still take some actions while stun-locked, swallow on the same action, spit you out at an ally, and attack as a reaction (allowing it to hit up to three characters at a time).

I also agree with the fourth point, but think that ultimately what monsters are used for is up to the Dungeon Master. It would be nice to see monsters that have specific effects on the Interaction and Exploration pillars, so that, for example, a purple worm encountered underground might cause a tunnel collapse (causing you to become lost), frighten off enemies, or even be tricked into tunneling an entrance into a sealed dungeon.

I like that they are using the Monster Vault for a guideline, as I think it is one of the best monster supplements ever written. I am a bit wary of their goal to make basic stats not so dependent on story, especially if it results in things like 3rd Edition elves enjoying demonstrating their prowess with swords and bows, but end up just being on par with anyone with a warrior level, or being allegedly adept at magic despite having absolutely no mechanical benefits to back it up.

The example flavor for the ettercap has a strong-if-predictable start: they get along well with spiders, live in forests, and can shoot webbing. The bit about them capturing pixies so that they can sell to hags is interesting, if not something I can see everyone subscribing to (especially if they live in forests without pixies or hags). Still it only eats up a couple sentences and is pretty harmless.

As for the bullet point on transforming into araneas after eating enough faeries? I really dig that, though it also makes me think of alternate ettercaps that transform from eating the flesh of other things, like dragons and demons. Kind of like how 4th Edition minotaurs can transform from eating specific hearts. The downside is the implication that all araneas come from ettercaps, and why they can cast shocking grasp and magic missile from eating pixies of all things; illusions and charms would make more sense (and also be good for luring prey into their traps).

Legends & Lore: System vs. Content

I hated adventure design in 3rd Edition at any level. Early on it was because of limited hit points, reliance on certain class features (like trapfinding) and magical healing, and magic in general required me to pay particularly close attention to what I was using, how much I was using, what the players might have or try to do, and so on. At higher levels I not only had to worry more about what spells the characters had, but I also had to juggle spellcasting monsters, flight, save-or-die effects, and more.

4th Edition made adventure design exceedingly easy and straightforward. Characters had some staying power right from the start. They were not super human by any stretch, but could manage without a “healer” class or magic items. While magic never fully ran out, it also did not outright ignore mechanics like hit points or skill checks, and the more problematic spells like teleport were throttled to a more manageable level. You also did not need a rogue (or one of the other four classes with trapfinding) to find traps.

To sum it up I always felt that I could write almost any adventure I wanted without having to consider what everyone else was going to play. Heck, even the players did not have to concern themselves much with what everyone else was going to do. Though virtually every group had at least one defender and leader, there was enough variety to keep things from getting stale. We did not have to frequently stop to head back to town and wait for the cleric to heal us, or rely on magic to keep everyone going. In other words it felt very open and free.

Obviously not everyone shares these issues, otherwise I do not think that 3rd Edition would have lasted as long as it did (and in fact there are those that would label my 4th Edition praises as issues). Mearls thinks that Next will be big and flexible enough to accommodate a variety of play styles, and despite observations to the contrary I have seen quite a few 4th Edition elements in the playtest (no racial penalties, something like healing surges, at-will magic, etc), so I think there is room for me in there somewhere.

What concerns me is how easy it will be to get what you want out of the rules, and how smoothly the game responds to your needs and wants. Personally I want something very much like 4th Edition, just without the needless scaling and number of immediately available powers; the number of things to choose from was great, but having to juggle like, six things at 1st-level is a bit much for most players I run with (I would also like a magic system that makes sense, but Dungeons & Dragons has yet to address that).

So how does this work? Are they going to be packaged into something like styles or genres, so if you want to match a previous edition it will tell you where you should set the dials, as it were? Will each rules module reference an edition, or have sidebars that tell you the pros and cons like the variants in 3rd Edition’s Unearthed Arcana? Will various setting require you to go back through everything else and modify it, like inflating/reducing monster hit points, changing save-or-die effects to less punishing effects, turning resistances into values, changing/removing spells, etc?

What also concerns me is where Mearls states that despite a “good number” of DMs leaving alignment at the door that it is part of the game’s identity, so it is considered a default element even though they are “committed to severing its ties to any mechanics” if you do not want to use it. Personally I would replace alignment with something else entirely, like FATE’s aspects or Exalted‘s virtues and intimacies, but I guess being responsible for the existence of ridiculous things like magic items that mask your alignment, or make it appear as another alignment is deserving of page space.

(Seriously though, it would be nice to have a rules module that better emphasizes a character’s personality. morals, and motivations.)

At least you can apparently completely ignore alignment, but what about classes? Will there be an option to make them “meatier”, or more flexible, or interesting? I have blogged a couple times already about how boring and needlessly rigid they are. It would be nice to give them the breadth of 4th Edition, just without the depth (at 1st-level anyway), or give us enough options to actually realize some key concepts. Like, you know, a wind monk that can do more wind-things than fly a short distance once per day.

Legends & Lore: Hit Points, Take 3

Another Legends & Lore about hit points?

The short of it is that for the “entry point” at least, hit points will largely represent physical trauma that you can recover with either magic or extensive periods of rest, the latter of which can only get you to the halfway mark unless you rest in a “comfortable” area. Dungeons & Dragons has an extensive history with plenty of takes on hit points both official and optional, so I am curious as to why they are settling on this as the default benchmark.

For starters, why does resting in a “dungeon” locale cap you at half? It makes no sense that you heal up to a certain point, after which there is just no benefit whatsoever. It reminds me of Final Fantasy, where tents restored a set amount of hit points, but houses and inns healed you to full.

“ZOMG, D&D Next is like a video game!”

The strangest part about this is that I always assumed that a good chunk of hit points were near misses, or minor scratches at worst. The real damage occurred the closer you got to zero, after which you were pretty badly wounded. So, what? You can heal enough to get back on your feet and fight without any penalties, just not enough to recover the last few cuts and bruises? If I rest in a dungeon for a couple of days, why do I still see absolutely no improvement?

Another issue is that it needlessly stresses the importance of magical healing, which itself operates needlessly on a largely per-day magic system. Short tangent: Dungeons & Dragons has plenty of magic systems to choose from or use as a foundation, so as with hit points I have to ask why we need to use basically the worst in terms of resource management and sense I have seen as the basis?

At any rate I think that both forcing people to rely on clerics and the like, and changing the rules to accommodate parties without one, are both terrible ideas. Why not just make the game work by default, and then add rules modules to tweak them after the fact? What if a group lacks a cleric, but then picks one up later? Do we change the rules again?

As strange as the first two bullet points are to me, I get it because that is pretty much how D&D operated pre-4th Edition (not that I think it is a sufficient reason to roll things back, mind you). The third point? I have no idea. I guess Mearls thinks that if you have to go back to town more often to get back the last half of your hit points that time apparently forgot, you might interact more with the population.

Personally if your group is the type that likes social interaction, they are going to do that anyway. Otherwise I think no matter how many times they sum up their trip to town, that they are suddenly going to start chatting it up with the blacksmith just to, I dunno, break up the repetition? If you want to get your players to interact with the population, there are more interesting and compelling ways to do so than making a pseudo-functional, passive-aggressive hit point system.

I know people used to claim that 4th Edition came across as a video game, but this system of half-way healing, potion-popping, cure-spamming hit point management screams video game to me more than healing surges and encounter powers ever did.

“Human Cleric (Lightbringer) 15 LFG!”

If anything good has come out of this article, is that it has inspired me to add some more to my ideal hit point system, namely a healing rate:

A character’s healing rate would be determined by her level, Constitution, class, and/or situational modifiers like location or class features. For example as a baseline barbarians would heal faster than fighters, who heal faster than rogues, who heal faster than wizards. A particularly durable wizard might heal faster than a rogue, especially if that rogue has a low Constitution. You could make things more complex by giving classes a healing rate bonus, maybe even make it a talent, so that if you stick around in fighter long enough you could eventually heal faster than, say, a multiclass barbarian/sorcerer.

As for class features, clerics might have some kind of healing prayer ability that boost everyone’s healing rate, druids could heal faster in the wilderness, and rangers might be able to boost the location-based healing effect in specific terrain. Since exploration turns are based on 10 minute/1 hour units, I could even give characters an hourly healing rate, or make it so that clerics have a healing aura that gives everyone a 10-minute/hour recovery time, which if coupled with rapidly-refreshing vitality points would make healing magic less necessary.

Legends & Lore: Feats AND Skills

This is a pretty lengthy article, so I am going to start out by condensing the already condensed list of the current design goals featured at the end:

• Every class gets ability score increases, though the frequency may vary by class, and you can swap them out for feats (which are optional).
• Skills are also optional (which means that I have to adjust the character sheet I am making for the contest again).
• Backgrounds now give various benefits–of which one category is called benefits–instead of skills.

I mentioned last week that I was not a fan of feats being able to increase your ability scores because it is already incredibly easy to hit the cap: the druid in my playtest campaign already has a Wisdom of 20, and pretty much everyone else has a key ability score in the 18-19 range. If characters no longer gain both ability score bonuses and feats that can also be ability score bonuses, well, that changes things somewhat.

As I also mentioned last week I am not opposed to simplicity (I am definitely a player that prefers lots of complexity), except where the simplest options are also the best. Previous editions saw feats that granted the equivalent of a focused +2 to an ability score, plus something extra. By shifting them so that it takes two to gain a similar bonus to a wider spread, I think it will be easier to balance feats with that are more complex, maybe more focused, but provide more immediate benefits.

Which is a concern: can they design feats that can coexist, without either side of the complexity camp becoming the “correct” choice? I know they intend to design the game so that it is not assumed you are taking ability score boosts, but then players might pile them on anyway to help guarantee success. Technically you might not need another +1 to your attack rolls to hit that dragon, but that still improves your odds by 5%, and your investment provides even greater returns when it is also linked to your ability to climb, jump, and break things.

Another concern is how many feats characters will get; 3rd Edition had many trees, but few opportunities to see any of them grow to fruition, while 4th Edition gave you many more feats, shorter trees, and built-in retraining from the start, which made it a legally safer edition to dabble in. Currently 5th Edition tops you off at four (about half of what you got in 3rd Edition), but I expect that to change since in addition to ability score bonuses, they are also going to be prestige class/paragon path currency.

While the opener on feats got me interested, even a bit excited, the followup on skills did not. When it comes to skills I am a fan of the skill die, because it provides a variable bonus that helps make the d20 roll remain relevant. In 3rd Edition the static bonus could gradually eclipse the by-the-book DCs around mid-level, while in 4th Edition it was incredibly easy to start out with a +12 to +14 to a skill. When the 1st-level DCs run the range from 5 to 15, is there even really a reason to bother rolling?

When you couple this with the goal to rein in the bonus, it makes their reason to step back to a static-bonus model both confusing and a bit disappointing (though I am fully aware that this can change in the future, maybe even before the next packet is released). What I also found confusing was that despite people being really happy with skills that they are making them optional, and if you want to use them you will need to keep in mind how it can affect the DC’s (ideally they will tell you straight up).

What was more silly than confusing was that one of the “challenges” is apparently players incorrectly calling for skills, with the example being Spot instead of Perception. A lot of us have been through two editions of the game at this point, one of which condensed and renamed skills at the midway point, and some of us play more than one edition. I think some initial confusion is to be expected and should not be a factor in determining if/how you implement a skill system.

So that maybe sucks, but the section on backgrounds sounds probably good. Instead of skills and a trait, they will now provide up to three categories of features, though I am not sure if they will provide just one, one of each, or some combination of them.

Areas of knowledge are something that I kind of used in 3rd and 4th Edition, where I always assumed that characters with a Knowledge skill knew everything with a DC equal to 10 + their skill bonus (in essence “taking 10” on the check). It made things go a lot faster and helped avoid player speculation based off of what skill check I might ask for (similar to how players might go on guard if you ask them for a Listen/Spot/Perception check).

I am not sure how to feel about proficiencies. From the sounds of it they will serve as prerequisites to doing things using ability checks that you otherwise could not. The examples include forging a sword or sailing a ship, but I think that these could easily extend to things like crafting magic items or access to things like 4th Edition’s rituals, Martial Practices from Martial Power 2, and expanded capabilities with weapons, implements, etc.

Benefits sound like background traits by another name, which I have liked from the start, and I am looking forward to seeing how they change and grow.

Finally, I am so, so happy to hear that classes are being designed with the assumption that you are not using feats and skills, especially where the fighter and rogue are concerned. Though Mearls again mentions them getting the lion’s share of feats, I am hoping that with this in mind the classes will still be evocative and flexible enough without them.

Legends & Lore: Feats

I remember first reading about feats during the 3rd Edition previews that ran in Dragon magazine, where they were touted as another layer of character customization. Having come from 2nd Edition, where unless you were a spellcaster there was not much in the way of mechanical deviation, I found this to be a welcome addition.

When we actually sat down to play however, I noticed that most of my players tended to stick to feats that just boosted your numbers, like Improved Initiative, Skill Focus, Weapon Focus, Iron Will, etc. This really came as no surprise, as they were simple-yet-solid choices that you just add to your other numbers and forget about.

Which is why I considered many of them to be pretty boring.

This is just one reason why I consider 3rd Edition’s treatment of feats largely to be a mess; you only got a handful over twenty levels, many were severely under-powered (Weapon Specialization) if not outright traps (Cooperative Casting), and by the time you wrapped up a feat tree the capstone benefit was likely not worth it. 4th Edition was not nearly as bad, providing plenty of interesting feats that shook up what your race and/or class could do, but it still had its share of static number-boosters even before Essentials introduced the auto-scaling revamps.

When it comes to 5th Edition I like what it has to offer, or rather I like what I think it is trying to offer, which are more interesting options. As an example Arcane Dabbler lets you pick two cantrips at 1st-level. Granted it is a small list, and I do not think it needs to be, but it is still meatier than a lot of the initial offerings that we saw from past editions. This complexity is understandably not something that everyone wants, and is something that the designers are aiming to address along with a few other changes.

While simplicity is not necessarily bad, I am not a fan of feats boosting ability scores. Already I find it incredibly easy for at least one character in the bunch to hit the cap, oftentimes before they get around to purchasing equipment. Given that some feats are also going to have level requirements–which is nothing new, as a minimum level was kind of passive-aggressively enforced even in 3rd Edition–depending on what the rest do I think that a lot of players are just going to ignore the low-level stuff until they either max out their key stats, or something down the road catches their eye.

I am also not a fan of classes gaining access to feats at different rates, especially when the rationale is that rogues and fighters “will gain more feats than other classes to reflect their versatility”. Why are they more versatile than other classes? Why do their features need to be delivered via feats? Why not take a page from Star Wars: Saga Edition or Dungeon World by giving each class a batch of talents/moves to pick from at set levels, and then adding in feats that lets you pick up a feature/talent/move from another class?

This way every class–all of them, but particularly the barbarian, druid, monk, paladin, and ranger–gets some much need flexibility, but you can also expand on them later by simply adding new features, instead of having to introduce entirely new classes. Kind of like 4th Edition, but without having each and every new decision adding yet one more card to the deck. Well, unless a player wants to.

Ultimately the more I think about feats, the more I am starting to feel like this is just what they should be doing (and may be slowly driving towards): make a list of general feats that allow characters to bend or break the rules, or to just gain access to an entirely new option–which 5th Edition already has, with feats like Superior Footwork and Seize the Advantage–then make focused lists that you gain access to by virtue of taking enough class levels.

Legends & Lore: Wednesday Packet

There is a new playtest packet coming out this week, and just in time for the debut of my sandbox playtest campaign, to boot. There will be new classes and spells, as well as some changes to the math, fighter, skills, two-weapon fighting, and more.

Druid
The druid sounds like a kitbash of 3rd and 4th Edition; you can wildshape at 1st-level (but it is a daily thing), you get to choose a circle that makes you better at either spellcasting or wildshaping, and it has healing on par with the cleric.

Having played a druid in 4th Edition and seen a druid in action in Dungeon World, I am not a fan of making wildshape (and most things, actually) a per-day ability. If it must be usable a specific number of times per day, it would be nice to explain why. I would also take a page from Dungeon World and restrict a druid to terrain types/animal forms that they are familiar with.

I like the non-combat forms, which was an issue in 4th Edition as they tried to balance it out by preventing you from having a fly or swim speed if you changed into a bird or fish. Even more bizarre was the inability to manipulate things, even if your form should have allowed it (such as a monkey or bird carrying things).

I dislike the healing, because I do not think that the game should assume someone is playing a healing class, and think that it would greatly benefit by foregoing that assumption, but at least according to them it will meet the threshold as established by the cleric.

Paladin
I am going with the more charitable interpretation of the statement that they are giving us paladins of various alignments “for the first time ever”, to mean that they are giving us a trio of more distinct classes from the start, instead of adding new things (like the warden and blackguard) down the line, because we could already make paladins of any alignment at the start of 4th Edition.

While I think it is nice that they are paring down detect evil to just undead and fiends, I think this is kind of odd for blackguards, and especially so for wardens (at least, if they are going to be as nature associated as their 8th-level mount implies). For blackguards I can at least get behind it insofar as it allows her to sense where the evil dead are hanging out, presumably so she can help them plot to swallow souls or defeat chainsaw-wielding protagonists.

For wardens I think that undead are still pretty good as affronts to nature go, but that aberrants/aberrations work better than fiends as symbols of all things unnatural. That, along with the 4th Edition warden’s pseudo-shapechanging dailies, would go a long way to help differentiate them.

Finally, I think that 8th-level is a bit much for a summoned mount, especially one that is “fairly weak” without specializing, and as seen in 4th Edition’s cavalier sub-class would be a lot better to grant early on, if the player even opts to choose it at all.

Ranger
1st-level spellcasting? Automatically part of the the class? Really? I am of the mind that spells should be one of several options that rangers can pick up, along with favored enemy and whatever it was that those terrain-based options that the hunter in one of the Essentials books were called.

Speaking of favored enemy, I like the idea of thematic bonuses that can be applied to various monster types. 3rd Edition’s favored enemy was too rigid, and often became obsolete as you leveled up and things like orcs were no longer viable threats. 4th Edition’s hunter’s quarry changed it into a hefty damage bonus, which made it effective all the time if maybe a bit boring. This could make for a more dynamic middle-ground.

Everything Else
Martial Damage Dice is getting changed back to Expertise Dice (yay), fighters (and other martial characters) are getting multiple attacks (yay?), and they have to spend actions to regain spent dice (again, yay?). It will be interested to see what fighters can do, especially given that they no longer have to decide between dealing more damage or doing something potentially more interesting.

I hope that rogues do not scale at the same rate, and that fighters will have ways of regaining spent dice in other ways, such as by landing a critical hit, defending an ally, watching a nearby ally drop, getting “bloodied”, and so on. I think those could make for interesting class feature choices.

Not sure what to make of skills, but I am glad to hear that two-weapon fighting is being changed to reflect a “options make you good, not competent” approach. I think it is interesting that they changed words of power to swift spells. Sounds like they are one step away from just re-creating 3rd Edition’s swift action, which I am totally okay with.

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).

D&D Next: October Playtest Packet

The new playtest packet went up yesterday, along with a Legend & Lore article on the same topic. Most of it concerns magic items, though some monster traits have been changed and XP values reduced. I guess the Caves of Chaos adventure got updated to reflect these changes, too.

Bestiary
When I say that the XP values have been reduced, I mean by 100 or more points. Goblins go from 120 to 10, bugbears from 480 to 140…the orc leader goes from a lofty 670 to 290. Admittedly I have not actually looked at the XP chart until now (well, since the first playtest release anyway), and it is nice to see that players will no longer level up after killing a gaggle of highly ineffectual of zombies (which are now worth a 10th as much).

Beyond XP most monsters seem to have something new, even if that new thing is an altered trait. For example orcs get to stick around for another turn before dying, gnolls get reaction attacks when something dies nearby, goblins get advantage for a turn if they go first, Mob Tactics caps at +5, Bruiser (formerly Armor Piercing) now triggers on a 5+, etc.

Some things are a lot more dangerous in spite of reduced XP; the wight takes half damage from non-magical weapons (oh, and its attacks reduce your max hit points for a day), the troll has Skill Mastery for sensing hidden creatures, and the minotaur can take disadvantage on an attack to deal +10 damage…even the ogre loses its Dense trait (disadvantage on Intelligence saves.

Magic Items

The real treasure this time around is the magic item document, which runs a hefty 27 pages (beating out any other doc by about 10 pages).

The default assumption is that magic items are not assumed to be part of character advancement (so you do not need to include them) and that they are exceedingly rare (so there is no real market for them). Like 4th Edition there is a rarity system involved, but unlike 4E there are six categories: common, uncommon, rare, very rare, legendary, and artifact. Each category has a gold piece range instead of a fixed value, and there are random tables that vary by encounter difficulty (easy, average, or tough).

So far, so good.

Hrmm…identifying items, you say? Here is where I can see some disparity between players. In 2nd Edition I remember having to use an identify spell to get things done. 3rd Edition let you get away with detect magic and an educated guess…in some cases, at least. 4th Edition made things even easier by allowing a simple Arcana check (or skipping the middle man and just telling them what it was).

Next takes a more varied approach. You can require divination magic, trial and error, examination, allow certain skill checks, or whatever combination you want (to the point where in some cases the item might just reveal its properties). Basically all the bases are covered, so even if you do not like having characters doing the whole taste-test and jump routine, you have other options. Personally I like that more than a singular spell/skill being called out as being an option for analyzing magic items. 

Magic item attunement is a new thing. Some items require that you be attuned to them, which takes 10 minutes, and you can only be attuned to a set amount (either three or your Charisma modifier, depending on how the DM wants to play things). In particular I like the Test of Wills experimental rule

I really like the four tables of magic item details, which help you determine who made it, its nature, and minor properties and quirks. While some results are purely cosmetic–especially on the Creator and Nature tables–most provide some sort of mechanical impact; Draconic items grow warm when a dragon is within 100 feet, elven (and drow and air elemental) items weigh half as much, and slothful items impose a -2 to Initiative.

The next 19 pages are devoted to sample magic items. Nineteen pages. While there is a random table for the generic +1 fare, almost all of them are specific types. For example, efreeti chain is a rare suit of chainmail that gives you a +2 bonus to AC, fire resistance, allows you to walk on molten rock as if it were solid, and let you speak, read, and write Draconic and Primordial (oh hi 4E shout out).

Items with charges seem like a mix of 3rd and 4th Edition; most items have set charges by default, regain a variable amount each day, and have a 1 in d20 chance of crumbling if you use them all up. Personally I loved focus items from 4th Edition and would like to see them return, but this is a nice concession from the wand/staff-as-gun trope from 3rd Edition.

What else…oh, there is a potion miscibility optional rule for 2nd Edition fans, rings that grant small AC and save bonuses, scrolls (and a scroll mishap optional rule), gauntlets of ogre power that set your Strength to a set value (19 in this case), ioun stones that increase your stats, and more stuff from past editions. I was never a fan of stat-boosters in 3rd Edition given the reliance and assumptions about stats, but seeing as treasure is not assumed and just cannot be purchased I do not think it will bother me as much this time around.

There currently are no rules for creating magic items. I would not mind seeing something similar to 3rd Edition, which provided more flexibility and allowed you to lump item properties and powers together. Even some guidelines on general power levels so that I can have some sort of eyeballing foundation to work with. Yeah, it was prone to abuse, but I actually liked it more than 4th’s largely stripped down items (which was kind of fixed by the later run of books introducing Rare items).

Whelp, now to go update Keep on the Shadowfell…again.

Legends & Lore: Monster Creation in D&D Next

Well, at least we are kinda-sorta seeing some mechanics.

I am a bit wary about the adventuring day being balanced against a sum of XP that you disperse over a number of encounters that are expected to last a number of combat rounds. I found 3rd Edition difficult to pace, especially in early levels where hit points and healing magic were fairly scarce (though later levels were made likewise difficult when the party could essentually evacuate a dungeon whenever they pleased). 4th Edition made it a lot easier to throw encounters of a varying difficulty at the party, as healing surges provided a reliable barometer of performance.

My concern is how “hard” the XP cap is, especially when zoomed in to the per-fight level; I would like to avoid having to shoehorn a set number of fights in a day, pacing be damned. I would also like it to be very easy for players to make an informed choice on whether they should keep going (which ideally will not be largely reliant on remaining spells).  On the plus side, elites and solos are still in–which I hope are not as grindy as they were in pre-Monster Manual 3 4th Edition–as are minions by virtue of non-auto-leveling monsters.

The actual process for creating a monster looks like an in-between of 3rd and 4th Edition, with a dash of FantasyCraft; while it lacks the player character-degree of attention to detail that 3rd Edition required, it also looks less streamlined and easy-to-wing as 4th Edition’s method, and uses stats and abilities to arrive at a XP total as opposed to level.

What I really like about this is the (mostly) lack of scaling, so we will (hopefully) not see 4th Edition’s issue of monsters with–sometimes extreme–level ranges for monsters, or monsters with ridiculously high ability scores that inconsistently exist to justify its attack and damage modifier. We will also (again, hopefully) not see 3rd Edition’s issue where monsters gradually just fall off the map unless they have a likewise insane number of class levels or use advancement rules (that can also oddly beef up their size).

What I am confused about is how you arrive at the monster’s level. In the example Mearls states that in a “generic dungeon”, the level where he would expect the minotaur to “show up” is 5th. I recall reading some 1st Edition stuff where it was implied that dungeons were actually divided into levels, I guess with monsters implied to be present on certain levels (I do not recall if monsters actually had levels, but I do not think so).

So…is this how we are expected to make new monsters? Build them based on the abstract notion of when the party is expected to find/fight it? My process has always been to imagine a degree of relative power based on existing monsters. For example, I would not make a minotaur as strong and tough as it is because I expect it to be fought by 5th level characters; I would consider if it should be stronger and tougher than a human, then an orc, and so on until I arrive at an existing baseline–probably ogre–and go from there.

I am not sure where I stand with the assumption of size equating to whether the monster is a mook, elite, or solo, though on some level it makes sense. So long as monster generation is simple, this should be easy enough to work around, though I guess depending on how the whole XP-combat-round formula works you might just be able to throw a lot of lower-level elites at a party and still have it work out.

I do like having recommended stats based on level, along with a list of pre-fabbed abilities. The formulas and damage-by-level table in 4th Edition made it a breeze to make functional monsters on the fly, and as difficult as I wanted.

I also like the idea of ability mods actually impacting a monster, which I hated in 3rd Edition because you could get some really wonky variables if you had to inflate one or more ability score mods high enough to make it a viable threat (often making it impossible for one or more other characters to do anything about it). Again, this is where the lack of scaling will make this work a lot better.

The example stuff gives me mixed reactions; the idea of a hill giant with “only” a +3 to hit seems bizarre, but only because we have had two editions where they had +16 or more to hit. The idea that they are pretty clumsy, but hit hard when they do I can get behind.

What I do not like is that a minotaur wearing armor sees no benefit. Well, no benefit most of the time. Since its “natural AC is +6”, on par with chainmail, it gets no benefit unless it wears armor better than chainmail. This does not make any sense. I would instead do some kind of abstract rule where you can still get something out of the deal, even if it is just a +1 or 2 (kind of like how barding works in 4th Edition).

Rage +5/5 could be abbreviated to just Rage 5, which the assumption that you deal +x damage on a hit, or x damage on a miss. Actually, I think a lot of monsters (like our hill giant friend there) could benefit from some kind of mechanic where they still do x damage on a miss.

Goring charge seems needlessly wordy and pretty powerful. I could see it being used basically all the time, given that it is better than the axe attack and there is really no “sticky” mechanic for defending characters. This is also a prime example of using codified language: prone should be a condition, instead of something referenced in every power with a prone kicker effect. Also, why would this be something unique to minotaurs?

Keen senses looks nice enough, but to save space there could always be a keyword for a skill that makes it so that you get a bonus to doing something, and can only roll a minimum number.