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1 year ago ::
May 25, 2012 - 9:03AM
#11
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Date Joined:
May 31, 2007
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Some thoughts:
- Where are the tower shields? And the attacks of oportunity? And power attack!
- At will and rituals looks like awesome ideas. Just be careful with the power. And by the way, gp cost for rituals... Not sure about this. Maybe increase the time, maybe use specific roleplay items. Money is a mess. IMHO.
- Ray of frost: Fixed version: Ranged attack, DC to avoid/resist. If pass, -10 speed.
- I miss some kind of "add strength to composite bows"
- I dont want that a Dex based fighters is the same that a Str based fighter, with the only difference being the stat. Maybe dex add only half damage and or avoid reduce damage reduction?
- Intoxicated need a -2 to AC, or something .
- Cleric AC has to be low than Fighter AC
- I like the Divine Smite
- Channel Divinity need to scale
- I love the Guardian background and how it level up.
- By the way, I love the possibilities of combining background, race, class and theme
- I dont want "powers" for the warrior. I want him to be flexible, to have options based in his training and strength. He is not magic.
That for now... I think
And then Martial was a new exciting new source of power, its practitioners manipulating the energies emanating from the plane of oiled-up burly weightlifters.
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1 year ago ::
May 25, 2012 - 9:06AM
#12
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Date Joined:
Dec 21, 2011
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Not sure I'm seeing the hit point situation as bloat.
At first glance, PCs might seem to have a lot of HP, but they also seem to get a lot less in-encounter healing.
An Orc Chieftain has 45 hp. The level 1 slayer doing minimum hit damage can beat that in (45/9) 5 rounds solo. If he is eating the minimum 5 damage each round in return, he's gonna be down by round 4.
Cure Light Wounds (d8+4) and a Orc Chieftain attack (+6; d8+4) are basically offsets if the healer rolls better than the attack.
If you consider the fighter vs an orc (+3; d8+1), he can kill in the orc in 2 rounds max (1 round very likely) and potentially take up to 45% of his hp in a single strike, 75% with a charge.
This doesn't seem like padded sumo fighting to me.
And that works great at low levels, but if the fighter is gaining an average of 6 HP every level, he's going to reach a very high HP total very quickly.
I'm not sure hp bloat will be as big an issue with this iteration as it was with 4e simply because combat rounds seem to move more quickly and if PCs (like rogues) gain extra damage on sneak attacks or other situations (perhaps "quarry" or other abilities for other classes) the big targets may go down very quickly.
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1 year ago ::
May 25, 2012 - 9:08AM
#13
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When I read HP bloat in the context of 4e, I'm thinking primarily of Kobold Quickblades with 29 hp and Orc Raiders with 46 hp.
I've certainly never complained about high level PCs being harder to kill. That seems like a core mechanic (as opposed to other games where your ability to take damage is more constant).
"At a certain point, one simply has to accept that some folks will see what they want to see..." Dragon 387
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1 year ago ::
May 25, 2012 - 9:14AM
#14
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Personally I am loving the classic elements brought back into the game, and I am sure given time they will seek to appease the 4E bratlings as they are, after all, the future generation of gamers when we old-schoolers vanish.
As said before, the rolled hit points (which I personally love the randomness) are easily handled in granting a set amount per level according to your hit dice, making it near identical to 4E.
To adress the "out of whack" spells. The variety to me was refreshing. 4E took alot of way from spells in my opinion, being a fan of wizards from day one. Everything became a bit cookie-cutter and perhaps a bit over simplified. One of the greatest pleasures of being a mage is the ability to throw unpredictible and explosive effects on people and watch your fellow players turn green with envy when you bowled down a small army. In 4E's focus on balancing every class for combat, they really took that away from mages in my opinion. So again it is nice to see some of that classic element that made the game fun for me.
I can see where the monster system has room for work but it would be unfair to lable it "horrible", especially so early on. It was simple and easy to understand to me. But this is from an old-schooler point of view. Keep in mind I often refer to 4E as "DnD for dummies" and prefer the more in depth mechanics over the oversimplified pre-stamped characters.
Based on what I've seen so far, I feel they are going back they are going back to the roots and keeping more true to what DnD is / was. 4E stepped away from the heart of the game for me - that being said I still play it, and do like some elements of it and as far as Next I cant wait to see what comes out in future packets.
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1 year ago ::
May 25, 2012 - 9:24AM
#15
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To adress the "out of whack" spells. The variety to me was refreshing. 4E took alot of way from spells in my opinion, being a fan of wizards from day one. Everything became a bit cookie-cutter and perhaps a bit over simplified. One of the greatest pleasures of being a mage is the ability to throw unpredictible and explosive effects on people and watch your fellow players turn green with envy when you bowled down a small army. In 4E's focus on balancing every class for combat, they really took that away from mages in my opinion. So again it is nice to see some of that classic element that made the game fun for me.
It is a shame that they couldn't just let non-casters in on the fun without weakening casters as well. That's what I'm most looking forward to as we start to see new materials, is everyone getting the chance to do awesome stuff, and each class having a different kind of awesome.
To clarify, I don't consider "hitting really hard" to fall under the category of awesome stuff. If someone wants to play a dude that just does damage and doesn't get into a lot of complex decision-making, that's cool, they should have that option regardless of what class they play. A friend of mine refuses to play anything but casters because she likes the idea of being able to do magic, but actively shies away from anything that resembles choices. Simple wizards should be a thing you can do, just as much as complex fighters should be.
That said, I didn't care for 4e's approach to that. I loved the mechanical elegance of powers, I just wish every class hadn't had the exact same power progression, and that there had been more benefits to leveling up besides new powers and feats. Class features are good things!
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1 year ago ::
May 25, 2012 - 9:35AM
#16
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Some thoughts:
- Where are the tower shields? And the attacks of oportunity? And power attack!
No tower shields, no attacks of opportunity (out of turn actions is restricted to reactions), power attack might be available later on.
- Ray of frost: Fixed version: Ranged attack, DC to avoid/resist. If pass, -10 speed.
Most opponents don't have that much speed in the first place, right?
- I dont want that a Dex based fighters is the same that a Str based fighter, with the only difference being the stat. Maybe dex add only half damage and or avoid reduce damage reduction?
The most powerful Finesse weapon is 1d8 (two handed). The most powerful Strength-based weapon is 1d12 melee, 1d10 ranged. So Strength-based Fighters do get to do more damage in the long run.
- Intoxicated need a -2 to AC, or something .
I'd rather that Intoxicated grant disadvantage to the target and advantage to creatures that attack the target.
- Cleric AC has to be low than Fighter AC
The Fighter and the Cleric are supposed to have the same AC, the Cleric just so happens to be using a heavy shield.
- Channel Divinity need to scale
It'll probably scale at higher levels.
- I dont want "powers" for the warrior. I want him to be flexible, to have options based in his training and strength. He is not magic.
That for now... I think
I prefer the powers format. Options can appear regardless of format, but between reading paragraphs and trying to decipher what its actual mechanics are, and a small text box with adequate enough fluff + the exact meaning of the fluff mechanics-wise, I prefer the latter to the former.
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1 year ago ::
May 25, 2012 - 9:40AM
#17
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Date Joined:
May 23, 2012
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Reposted from ENWorld for wizards: the packets seem to represent possible books: MM = Bestiary (why have this otherwise, we have monster stats in the adventure) PHB = How To Play DMG = DM Guidelines 5 PC Sheets = Character Sheet support product Caves of Chaos = Adventure productFirst Impressions: This a work in progress. Given the amount of development and editing these documents have likely seen in the last 6+ months, there's a lot of thought behind everything. It's confusing. Not the formatting, which I wouldn't expect a final draft of. There are definitely rules in place here that really only support specific play styles, from old to millennial to contemporary. There is a lot of 4e school of thought here, but when I go looking a whole lot of it is 3.x too. Shake that up with so much of the old school stuff that doesn't quite know why it's there and the whole comes off as confused. Again, a work in progress. Many schema in place just aren't necessary. I mentioned breaking the texts into book clumps before, I don't think you need to do that. I'm not seeing the rationale for having equipment in relation to exploration (or anything else). The three tiers of play look like skills, skills, and combat. Let's think outside the box here. The adventure is going to be difficult to run. It looks a little bland and way overpriced XP-wise for 3 levels. It's appears to be combats all the way through. I like the format and the do-it-yourself attitude with advice in the front, but it needs fleshing out with examples for that. We can place our own monsters too (unless I missed a hidden scheme for that), but it could definitely use some "What they know, what happened before, and what will happen if left unengaged" and stuff like that. Best thing so far: the beginning. Those first two paragraphs in How to Play. That blended well the old school and new school philosophies and phraseology. I would lead with that and definitely trim down the packet size of this thing. In no way do we need all this info for the first, short-term phase of a long play testing. Let's get focused. It scares me that this looks like everything otherwise as it is a heap o' work.
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1 year ago ::
May 25, 2012 - 9:44AM
#18
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- I dont want that a Dex based fighters is the same that a Str based fighter, with the only difference being the stat. Maybe dex add only half damage and or avoid reduce damage reduction?
The most powerful Finesse weapon is 1d8 (two handed). The most powerful Strength-based weapon is 1d12 melee, 1d10 ranged. So Strength-based Fighters do get to do more damage in the long run.
This is the way it should be, in my honest opinion. If you're stronger, you should be able to hit harder. Especially when you consider that a dex based fighter is likely to have a higher AC, since he can wear light armor, which under these rules will end up giving you better AC than heavy armor if you've got a decent dex bonus. Which I also think is appropriate, someone who's more agile and less weighed down should be harder to hit, your hits just shouldn't be as effective on the guy in the heavy armor. Which is normally the case, since the fighter will normally be the heavy armor guy, but sacrificing a bit of damage for a bit of AC also seems reasonable to me.
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1 year ago ::
May 25, 2012 - 10:33AM
#19
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Date Joined:
May 31, 2007
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Some thoughts:
- Where are the tower shields? And the attacks of oportunity? And power attack!
No tower shields, no attacks of opportunity (out of turn actions is restricted to reactions), power attack might be available later on.
Yeah, I see that.. but why? It was such a big problem the rules from the tower shield? I would give him something like cover and disadvantage. In another topic, I enjoy to see shields to be more useful. Atacks of opportunity are needed, only, they need to be simplified.
- Ray of frost: Fixed version: Ranged attack, DC to avoid/resist. If pass, -10 speed.
Most opponents don't have that much speed in the first place, right?
Good point. But this way at least they have a opportunity to minimize the damage
- I dont want that a Dex based fighters is the same that a Str based fighter, with the only difference being the stat. Maybe dex add only half damage and or avoid reduce damage reduction?
The most powerful Finesse weapon is 1d8 (two handed). The most powerful Strength-based weapon is 1d12 melee, 1d10 ranged. So Strength-based Fighters do get to do more damage in the long run.
Good point. As always, 2H, 2TW and S&B are difficult to compensate
- Intoxicated need a -2 to AC, or something .
I'd rather that Intoxicated grant disadvantage to the target and advantage to creatures that attack the target.
Good enough
- Cleric AC has to be low than Fighter AC
The Fighter and the Cleric are supposed to have the same AC, the Cleric just so happens to be using a heavy shield.
Why? I have said other times, the fighter musn´t have the same AC as a cleric. A cleric has his spells, let the Fighter (and maybe, the paladin), have the best armour.
And then Martial was a new exciting new source of power, its practitioners manipulating the energies emanating from the plane of oiled-up burly weightlifters.
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1 year ago ::
May 25, 2012 - 10:56AM
#20
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Date Joined:
May 31, 2007
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By the way, why a crossbow have to attack with the strength? Do you hit in the head with it?  Edit: Shortsword, under this rules, strictly better than rapier. The same as Club and hammer (well, the club is cheaper). And the mace. Supposing that "Light" doesnt have malus.
And then Martial was a new exciting new source of power, its practitioners manipulating the energies emanating from the plane of oiled-up burly weightlifters.
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