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I am not sure if I read the last packet well, but I miss the old version of sneak attack. With the changes to disadvantage and only 1d6 of damage to start with my players have unanimously decided not to ever play rogues of any color until it is fixed. The first iteration I remember of it was powerful, but at the time you sacrificed a turn more or less to set yourself up for an attack that could one shot the average mob. This seems okay to me. It certainly seems like more a class feature than the current rendition which seems more like an interesting side note. I also miss the old racial weapon advantages in damage, etc. I realize these are playtest packets, not final products, but we are getting closer to the next edition and the changes to the dice for most of the classes seem less interesting than they were before. Thoughts?

The first thing that clashed with me in this package was the "Tinker" feature of the rock gnome: How am I, as a DM, to forbid a player to have a fourth toy or whatever active? Which in-world rationale can possibly exist for something like that? "No, you can't wind up your music box because you have 3 toy animals moving out there" - "WHAT???!!" There are a few different ways to limit this feature that, at least, might make sense: Access to materials, cutting down the duration (if you want your toys to be better and last more, you can invest in a feat or skill)...

Here is my Question for the playtest. In the spell like Fog Cloud or maybe Darkness. Can the Cast still see in the Area of Affect? How about his Allies in that Area?. Seeing how Darkness is a Touch Spell. Would you have to blindly find your way out of the Area?

Some more thoughts on which the designers may chew: 1) If a trait such as Elf Weapon Training gives you a proficiency that doubles up with a class proficiency, maybe that should either step up the damage die (like race Weapon Training had in prior packets), give a static bonus to damage, or even give advantage with that weapon. 2) I have a player with a Giant-Slayer Ranger, and we both feel that there's not enough setting her apart from the other PCs when actually fighting giants. Particularly, she feels there should be a better benefit from 'Slayer of the Colossus'. (A cool name needs a cool effect.) For instance, she was missing fire giants a lot because of their high AC, so only got a d6 extra damage during an entire fight against her Favored Enemy. She also suggests that a Ranger either have advantage against their Favored Enemy, or a all-around bonus to damage while fighting them.

We started playtesting again, mainly because I like the current version so much, but it occurs to me that if someone critically fails on a CON save for a spell or something, the spell ought to maximize its damage. We had a Cleric use Maximize Spell when the monster critically failed, and I thought that she deserved what accounted to a "free use".

Meet up with the Green Dragon in last night's play test encounter. Group consisted of 3 fighters, 1 barbarian, 1 cleric and 1 wizard. Even with one of the fighters turning out to be a cowardly Lord-type, we were still able to seriously pound the dragon into fleeing for its' life pretty quickly. It seemed like the damage that the players were doling out made the dragon's hp value rather comical instead of scaring the bejebees out of us. I as the cleric didn't really need to heal anyone up before the dragon retreated. Only the wizard had been seriously clobbered via the dragon's breath weapon, but you expect that of wizards anyhow.