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Shameless plug for my Gen Con Countdown facebook project: We put up fictional collectible game card #91: D&D Next Visit www.facebook.com/CountdownToGenCon (note: you do not need a facebook account to visit the page)

I'm honestly quite pleased with this current iteration of the play-test. It has a sort of elegant throwback to the fonder editions while maintaining some modern flair. A lot of what I disliked in previous editions has seemed to disappear, and on my initial run (party of 4)everything as written went over astoundingly well. The skill system is something in particular I would like to focus on, and I feel it made the characters exude heroism in a more classic sense. The attribute resolve system also tends to streamline game play and prevent skill overload (where as in previous editions, quite literally I've had rogues stop every 5' to do 5-6 skill checks...) The class flavor is something I also quite enjoy (especially the paladin, great job!), the party I ran contained a fighter, paladin, cleric and rogue. Each character had their slice of the action, and I think, felt encouraged to actually premeditate some of their choices and think outside the box - sometimes doing things they might not have been able to do in a more rules heavy system, i.e. a fighter, being virtually skill-less in other editions, managed to make a few atypical attribute checks that scooted the party along. The A/C system was also a hit with both the group and myself, interesting concept I have to say. Overall, some of the best fun I've had with RPG's in years! Really great job WotC, I'm looking forward to seeing how the rest of the play-test goes; it's been far too long since I've gotten this giddy for a TT rpg release.

I am happy too report I ran our first NEXT session last night. We had some seasoned and some totally new players in the party. I converted the ole B3 Palace of The Silver Princess. The game went along smoothly with the new rules. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and even asked to go further and run another encounter before quitting for the evening. I will be running it once a week for now so I will keep you posted and post any issues or questions that arise. So Far, So Good, So What!

I like what I see up until now, but I did not try it yet. I just hope they're going to find a better way to represent the human race. In 3/3.5, most of the races were, according to me, undervalued statistically compared to humans. Now, Elves, Dwarves and Halflings have nice perks to go with. On the contrary, humans, though balanced, lack the capacity to choose (subraces) that other races provide and become totally uninteresting.

I've always felt that there should be a strong down side to things like the Barbarian's rage. I.E., even if there are no enemies left, it should take a will roll to voluntarily end the rage It could end after a round if there are no more enemies. That way, if the barbarian doesn't drop the last enemy, his rage would end before his turn would have come around again in initiative. Otherwise, there's a risk that the barbarian attacks the party.

I have noticed a couple of things. First of all: Wall of Stone appears to be immune to acid, cold, fire, necrotic, psychic and radiant damage. However, it is not immune to lightning damage, which would be the most ineffectual of all of the elemental types. I assume this wasn't intended. Secondly: Barbarians. Rage appears to be countered simply by means of temporarily disabling a target. And if the rage falls, that's it. No more. I would first question why you must only be attacking a hostile target. It they give up, and you kill them anyway, but their brother in arms keeps on killing people, does your rage end because you didn't switch targets? What if you have friendly targets blocking your attacks? It seems that you should be able to maintain a rage so long as you are doing everything possible to engage. Do you get less mad if your target manages to run away from you? You cant stop them from double moving away when you cannot enforce AoOs. Then rage is Very strong. Maybe too strong. In at least one case rage makes you 99% immune to death (that 1% is caused only by death spells). The level 20 Endless rage has it's own caveat on how you can be killed. However... It is impossible to realize. Since you cannot die from negatives and don't bleed, you will always be triggering your barbarian regeneration. If you start your turn at - 2000 hp, your regen heals you +5, giving you a new total of 5 hp. Now even if you have no targets, your rage cannot end until the end of your turn. Meaning you cannot be killed unless they kick you out of your rage or spell end you. Fighter vs Barbarian level 20, fighter loses. Period, no matter what. I think this is a bad way to plan out the classes. When we look over the class, almost all of their potential comes from the rage. Since they can only rage once, having it be so strong means they have a significant advantage over others-- while at the same negating much of them if the other side has an efficient way to hamper / control/ or end the barbarians movement. This is one of those, too strong and too many eggs in one basket. It will either be too much, or too much is negated. I would far more appreciate seeing options within the barbarian class that gave it interesting flavor over this one bullet of pure power.