Community

There are certain business and legal questions we can't answer (for business and legal reasons). And if you have a specific rules question, we'd rather point you toCustomer Service, where representatives are ready and waiting to help guide you through the rules of the game. That said, our goal is provide you with as much information we can—in this and other venues.

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  Does the downtime thing somewhat replace the Legacy system?

No, but it does provide a mechanical framework that the rules modules and subsystems collectively referred to as the Legacy system will plug into. Just as combat is a relatively narrow system that more complicated things (like class features and spells) can plug into, the downtime system has a mechanical frame that covers the basics of what we can safely assume anyone can do during downtime. Then, class features, backgrounds, and so forth can unlock new things to do during downtime.

Likewise, many of the rules modules we refer to as Legacy systems will almost certainly make extensive use of the downtime framework. For example, if a wizard wants to research a new spell, our spell research subsystem is probably going to refer directly to the downtime system for its mechanics, modifying them or introducing new mechanics as necessary. 

  Will healing utilize the downtime system? Or is the intent that healing just happens simultaneously alongside other tasks during downtime?

Healing is not something that, by default, interacts with the downtime system. Most of the time, you’re going to be healing up in just a few days’ time at worst anyways, and the time scale for downtime is going to be longer for that (weeks and months, instead of days). We also assume that, when you choose what you’re doing during downtime, that represents about half of your time, and the other half is spent on tasks such as eating, sleeping, socializing, and recuperating.

Of course, as mentioned above, other rules modules could plug into the downtime system. A rules module for grievous wounds, or a particularly nasty disease, might say that you must spend so much downtime doing nothing but recuperating in order to remove its effect. This would effectively create a new downtime action—recuperating—that would then just be a standard part of the downtime system if you were using that module.

 Will there be a mechanic to change background, or add background? Basically will there be ways to represent that a character has gained the perks of a certain background, and/or can take new actions during downtime?

Part of the downtime system’s goal is to make it so that your character can learn new proficiencies, languages, fields of lore, and similar things during the time between adventures. You put in the time, spend gold to have someone mentor you, and soon you obtain new knowledge that can help you on adventures. Think of it like the D&D equivalent of a training montage from a movie. This might also include the ability to obtain other backgrounds’ traits; so, if your character spends his or her downtime training with the blacksmith, your character might be able to pick up a trait from the Artisan background for blacksmithing. Of course, traits can also make good rewards that aren’t treasure-oriented (especially for things like completing quests), so that’s another avenue for getting them out there.

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How can I submit a question to the D&D Next Q&A?

Instead of a single venue to submit questions, our Community Manager will be selecting questions from our message boards, Twitter feed, and Facebook account. You can also submit questions directly to dndinsider@wizards.com. So, if you’d like to have your question answered in the D&D Next Q&A, just continue to participate in our online community—and we may select yours!

There are certain business and legal questions we can't answer (for business and legal reasons). And if you have a specific rules question, we'd rather point you toCustomer Service, where representatives are ready and waiting to help guide you through the rules of the game. That said, our goal is provide you with as much information we can—in this and other venues.

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 Could a safe rest location, as discussed in Legends & Lore: Hit My Points, also include areas outside of towns—hidden groves for a druid or ranger perhaps? Could a campsite be made safe enough to restore full hit points during a rest?

Absolutely. Additionally, we might have other ways for characters to create a safe environment. For example, a character with the right background, feat, or class feature might be able to make a camp in the wilderness that provides the same comforts (regarding hit point recovery) as resting in town; a good example might be the ranger finding a secluded area sheltered from the weather, and then finding supplies for the camp to transform it into something far more comfortable than your typical campsite.

 Do you plan on having differences in how spell slots are restored while resting based on the safety and comfort of the area where you are resting?

Not right now. If there is any need for a spellcaster to use spells for healing, as is likely in a scenario where natural resting doesn’t restore everyone to full hit points, that puts even more pressure on the healer’s spellcasting, leaving fewer spell slots for other uses. Perhaps more importantly, though, is that hit points are a universal resource that all classes have, and the differences in resting affect all classes more or less the same way. While it’s true that some classes rely on their hit points more than others, we’re going to try to give those classes more ways to mitigate damage to offset this difference.

Furthermore, if we aren’t going to have resting quality affect spell recovery, we likewise will not have resting quality affect things like the number of times a barbarian can rage, or the number of times a rogue can sneak attack, or the number of times a paladin can channel divinity. Hit points measure durability and adventuring staying power, and the mechanics surrounding quality of rest are meant to affect those aspects of a character alone, not other areas of effectiveness.

 How powerful should cantrips and/or at-will effects be? How powerful can they be before balance becomes an issue?

For offensive cantrips, we generally try and put them at about 2/3rds to 3/4ths as effective as what the fighter is doing on a round-by-round basis; we want the wizard casting ray of frost to feel like he or she is contributing, but not to outshine the fighter. For utility cantrips, it’s a bit trickier, but we generally aim for the power level that could be replicated by a piece of equipment (light), minor effort (prestidigitation), or having someone else there to help you with a minor task (mage hand).

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How can I submit a question to the D&D Next Q&A?

Instead of a single venue to submit questions, our Community Manager will be selecting questions from our message boards, Twitter feed, and Facebook account. You can also submit questions directly to dndinsider@wizards.com. So, if you’d like to have your question answered in the D&D Next Q&A, just continue to participate in our online community—and we may select yours!

There are certain business and legal questions we can't answer (for business and legal reasons). And if you have a specific rules question, we'd rather point you toCustomer Service, where representatives are ready and waiting to help guide you through the rules of the game. That said, our goal is provide you with as much information we can—in this and other venues.

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 With the exploration and interaction rules described in Legends & Lore, would it be possible to play a combat-free adventure (or even campaign) of D&D?

Sure—but you already could do that in previous editions! It’s our hope that the systems we’re putting in place for exploration and interaction will make those portions of the game a little more robust. The goal of the design of these systems is to seamlessly integrate into the natural flow of the typical D&D adventure. Ultimately, what we want is for players and Dungeon Masters to feel like the additional rules for exploration and interaction enhance those portions of the game for those who want it, or stay out of the way for those who don’t. That means that, as a DM, if you want to create an adventure that leans heavily on those two pillars of the game, the mechanics will be in place to support that if you need them. Just as in previous editions, we’re going to include guidelines for awarding XP based on noncombat challenges, so if you are using those systems, you have a good idea how to offer rewards for them, including quest-based XP rewards.

The goal of the exploration and interaction mechanics isn’t to create new mini-games that you fire up when you enter a new scene, but rather to augment what people expect from such scenes. If we try and make exploration or interaction too much of its own mini-game, we run the risk of those subsystems kicking the players out of the narrative of the game, as opposed to helping them flesh out the narrative through the choices they make. Admittedly it’s a fine line to walk; too much in one direction and the rules are not useful, too much in another direction and they become obtrusive and immersion-breaking.

 Would spells like Charm Person be revised to work within the interaction rules rather than bypass them?

To a certain extent, yes, but more in the language of how we write the spell than in hard-coded mechanics. I’ve mentioned in the past that we want to use natural-sounding language whenever possible in our mechanics, and this is one place where we can do so and have a spell function just fine whether you’re using mechanics for interaction or not. Right now, the spell charm person puts the charmed condition on someone, which absolutely does not bypass our normal concept of interaction, and instead gives advantage on ability checks made to interact socially with the charmed creature. This already functions within the confines of our expected social interaction—you still need to make checks to interact with the creature—and gives you an advantage on those checks. 

As we refine our interaction mechanics, we might modify the spell to speak more directly to our interaction mechanics, perhaps by changing the target’s attitude toward the character that charmed it to make the target friendly. If you’re not using the interaction rules, you take friendly at its normal meaning—it treats you like a friend. If you are using the interaction rules, you’ve now changed the kinds of reactions you can get from the creature, because a friendly creature and a neutral or hostile creature behave differently in the interaction rules.

 What pillars would things like chases, infiltration, and investigation fall under?

It largely depends on the context. A chase through city streets, for example, could be resolved with the combat mechanics. An overland chase—racing to catch up to a fleeing band of orcs before they reach the safety of the mountains—would work just fine using the exploration rules. For infiltration scenes, I might be tempted to use the dungeon exploration rules. For investigation, that seems like something that will make frequent use of the interaction rules, but depending on the context I could see it using exploration rules, too; when the party enters the mansion where their noble patron was murdered, you could use the dungeon exploration rules to cover their investigation of the mansion. I would do so only if the characters faced potential danger or time pressure on the investigation. Otherwise I would be tempted to allow them to explore the mansion at their own pace, using our basic mechanics for anything that would require an ability check.

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How can I submit a question to the D&D Next Q&A?

Instead of a single venue to submit questions, our Community Manager will be selecting questions from our message boards, Twitter feed, and Facebook account. You can also submit questions directly to dndinsider@wizards.com. So, if you’d like to have your question answered in the D&D Next Q&A, just continue to participate in our online community—and we may select yours!

There are certain business and legal questions we can't answer (for business and legal reasons). And if you have a specific rules question, we'd rather point you toCustomer Service, where representatives are ready and waiting to help guide you through the rules of the game. That said, our goal is provide you with as much information we can—in this and other venues.

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 With the exploration and interaction rules in mind, what might a monster entry look like? Do you expect monsters will have a combat block and then text about their exploration and interaction habits?

This is something we’re still working out, but one of the things we’ve discussed is that a monster’s entry might not contain just one stat block, but actually multiple distinct blocks of information (along with descriptive text, story hooks, ecology information, etc.). Of course, the combat stat block is the one that most people are already familiar with. We’ve also talked about creating a separate block of information that contains mechanical information used in the design of adventures and encounters; for example, where level and XP are currently a part of the combat stat block, that information might move into a second block, sitting alongside things like environment, frequency, number encountered, and similar information. Likewise, we are considering having another block of information where you would find much of that interaction material; though for many creatures, especially beasts and mindless creatures, these sections would be more limited, for others they could serve as a real asset to Dungeon Masters trying to run a monster during a scene where the players decide to talk their way past the obstacle, rather than going in spells-and-swords-a-blazin’.

 Will some classes be better at interaction and exploration and have more abilities for those pillars than others? If so, how do we adjust for games that focus less on those pillars?

We certainly expect certain classes to have more tools for succeeding in the interaction and exploration portions of the game than others. For example, rangers are likely to be extremely valuable during exploration, and we’ve been thinking of bards a lot like “social rangers” in that you will be very happy to have a bard along with you during interaction scenes. Of course, just like everything else in the game, this design is about finding the right balance where the class can exceed in these pillars without falling too far behind in combat. While it’s true that campaigns that focus less on interaction and exploration will make reduced use of features geared toward those pillars, the same can be asked of campaigns that rarely have combat; does the fighter feel diminished in a campaign that only sees combat once every few sessions?

The goal we’re working toward is making sure there are enough options out there inside the classes so that a class can excel at one pillar and still contribute to the others, and that goes for all three pillars. This is one of the reasons why we’re looking at putting more interaction and exploration abilities in classes like the fighter; for example, we’ve been exploring allowing the soldier subclass of the fighter to be really good at keeping watch, a reflection of the sort of awareness that comes with being a seasoned warrior with formal training. These kinds of features might be fewer and have a lighter footprint than, say, the kinds of abilities you would see in a class focused toward a particular pillar, but they should be good for helping players feel like they can always contribute to the party’s success.

 How do the designers feel about random tables as DMing tools (random treasure, wandering monsters, 1d100 adventure hooks, etc.)?

Though I can’t speak for everyone, I would say that generally we feel very positive about them. One of the things that is often of some concern to us is the speed with which you can get an impromptu game of D&D going. It’s easy to fill a few hours with a board game because there’s no prep time and everyone just jumps into the game, but it’s much tougher to do that for D&D. This is one of the areas where DM tools like random tables shines; the DM doesn’t need to figure everything, he or she just needs to roll on a few tables and then stitch things together. It’s not a total solution to the pick-up-and-play challenges, but it certainly does contribute to a solution.

That’s to say nothing of their benefit to Dungeon Masters while running a game; when the game takes a left turn into unexpected territory, a few well-stocked random tables can give the DM enough of a nudge to keep the game going smoothly. Moreover, those random tables can also serve as great inspiration for DMs who are doing prep work in advance. While having a total blank slate works great for some DMs, there are others (me included) who like being able to flip through a few pages of other peoples’ ideas for inspiration.

Personally, I also really like the creativity that comes out of being forced to figure out how things fit together; I will sometimes use random tables to stock dungeons, build magic items, etc., taking the randomly generated parameters and then exercising my creativity to figure out how it all works together to form something cohesive. It is one of the things I really like about the random table-based character generation from the Gamma World game we released a few years ago: rolling two halves of a character (say, Felinoid and Swarm) and coming up with an explanation of how they fit together (“My character is a sentient hive-mind pack of kittens.&rdquo.

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How can I submit a question to the D&D Next Q&A?

Instead of a single venue to submit questions, our Community Manager will be selecting questions from our message boards, Twitter feed, and Facebook account. You can also submit questions directly to dndinsider@wizards.com. So, if you’d like to have your question answered in the D&D Next Q&A, just continue to participate in our online community—and we may select yours!

There are certain business and legal questions we can't answer (for business and legal reasons). And if you have a specific rules question, we'd rather point you to Customer Service, where representatives are ready and waiting to help guide you through the rules of the game. That said, our goal is provide you with as much information we can—in this and other venues.

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Are there plans for a permanent wound and injury module?

It’s one of the things we want to explore in a rules module. Such a thing would probably also not be just one set of rules, but a spectrum, allowing people to dive as deeply into lingering wounds as they like. For example, one group might want more consequences for being injured in a fight, but not be interested in highly specific injuries, ( “Ooh, critical hit, looks like the orc crushes your collarbone!” ), while another group might want to combine everything from hit locations to lingering wounds and slow healing all together to create a really gritty game. That’s fine—and we hope that you can use a single module, or combine modules, to get the kind of game you want.

Will a halfling barbarian be able to contribute to the group as much as a human barbarian?  Are certain concepts designed to be sub-optimal?

While there are always going to be some combinations that work together more naturally than others, we’d like to think that playing an oddball combination doesn’t mean you can’t contribute. For example, in the case of the halfling barbarian, while you certainly won’t have the strength of a half-orc, you could still be very effective by option to use a two-weapon fighting style (with, say, two short sword) since some of the heavy weapons like the greataxe are off-limits. Every possible combination is not going to be equal, but the goal is to make sure that any given basic combination of choices can feel good about contributing to the adventure, even when playing a less common combination.

 Could humans have subraces or would those be better expressed as cultural details?  Could half-races and planetouched be expressed as human subraces?

We’re pretty happy with how easy-to-use humans are right now, and how they help make character generation go quickly. Right now, we think that the half-races (like half-elf and half-orc) work better as their own race choices; the same goes for the planetouched races. That way, we can focus on getting the feel of each of those races right, without the need to worry about how certain racial traits affects the normal human.

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How can I submit a question to the D&D Next Q&A?

Instead of a single venue to submit questions, our Community Manager will be selecting questions from our message boards, Twitter feed, and Facebook account. You can also submit questions directly to dndinsider@wizards.com. So, if you’d like to have your question answered in the D&D Next Q&A, just continue to participate in our online community—and we may select yours!