Community

June 12 is the next scheduled meeting for our monthly Blacktown Games Day, where we run LFR and Pathfinder Society. Several of the group are keen to have a go at D&D Next. Is the May 24 release date for the public playtest still looking likely? And is there any information on what will be available? Just the rules, or perhaps an adventure and pregen characters as well?

I didnt like the wizard design goals,
it sems that you triyng to use the 4E wizard, if you wat to do the classic wizard of fantasy histories you need to create the in game world rules to magic, then start the mechanic from there. The fun of vencian system is the resource managment, it's the wizard´s power and also his weakness.
I think in these goals for wizard:
1) Wizard prepare spells - wizards every day use their spellbooks to prepare spells, they need also a magic lab to prepare it. if they cant find one lab, he can spend time and money to improvise a lab. like 10 Gp by level, and 1 day/2 levels.
2) Arcane spellcasters use body energy to cast spells - A wizard without spells is tired, and in any moment a wizard can rest a while ( 15 min )to recover
a certain amount of spells, and certain potions and magic items can restore some spells.
And should have talents to convert hit points in spells or to recover a single spell after a battle.

4) Magic is dangerous and misterious - when tou craft a magic item you have the chance to fail,
giving curses to the item, or YOU can have decisive sucess and give new habilities to the magic item.

about magic i think the matter is more the in games limit, magic is wild and imprevisible. And an high level skill is more reliable than a spell, and lasts longer.
is the staff use bigger dices like d12 for timing or damage.
second, a table roll for critical failure, because magic is dangerous.
third, magic drain energy in almost every single tale. If the magic user is out of spell he can use hit points to do spells he know.
fouth - rules of resting, if you use the vencian system, avoiding the 5 minute day.

just watched your PAX East seminar video. Thanks for putting that out there for those of us that missed it. Excellent material and Q&A discussion. First of all I want to say that I really appreciate your openess and honesty about this process. Change is frequently uncomfortable and you guys being up front about it all adds a transparency to this that personally makes me feel a lot better about it. I'm excited to learn more!
Secondly, I am a very big fan of 4th ed. But I am extremely excited that combat may become less dependent on miniatures and 'the grid'. Eager to learn more as you are able to release it.

How about this next D&D version being modular?

It's been touted as serving a large crowd because it offers something for everyone. By making it modular! But we haven't been given any details on this. Do we really get a basic set of rules with additional modules? It was announced that way. But what have we been told about it's real life execution? Did I miss something?

To my knowledge we were promised D&D Next would satisfy all players. One game to bind us all. Well, I like D&D 4e with it's powers and all. How is that implemented? Is it implemented at all? What kind of modules can we expect?! I've seen much guessing but what are the official specifics?

All these thought experiments on essential class types and such is great. But what does it all mean for the game? Are the designers trying to decide on what goes basic and what goes modular?

It brings me back to the first discussions when D&D Next was announced. If it doesn't offer me an easy transition from my own game (D&D 4e) it fails!

So what is happening with skills and such? Earlier on, it was stated that they were going to be an add-on to the system (or that micro-skills would be used), but recent articles such as the discussion of backgrounds and the rogue have suggested otherwise. I'm curious as to what's going on there, because I really liked some of the early ideas that were thrown out about how to deal with skills.