I'm sure I will get yelled at for making a new thread when there are already plenty of existing ones, but I want to get my initial thoughts out after reading the whole packet.
First, I'll mention a few things I DO like. I think the rolling two d20's and taking the higher for Advantage is a good thing, better than a straight +2 like in other editions, because it evens out the "swing factor" of basing everything on a large single die instead of a pool of dice like most other RPG's. The swinginess of the d20 in skill rolls is something that's always bothered my in D&D, and allowing the players to somewhat often change that into a roll 2d20 take the higher is a good way to balance that out a bit. I like that you guys kept the "easy healing" of 4e and didn't make a cleric required, even though I'm sure there was a lot of push to make it like it was in 2e where it was impossible to play without one. Healing kits are moderately interesting and using hit dice instead of healing surges seems ok. Having rituals be a tagalong to existing spells is kind of a cool idea, but it also is a "solution" to a "problem" that you're only creating yourselves (more on that below).
So, things that I don't like:
First, I really dislike the overall tone of pandering to grognards and talking about how 1e and 2e were better than 3e and how 4e just sucked. I get it. Mearls hates 4e and loves 1e. That's fine, but having that opinion infuse every part of the rules makes the whole packet sound snide and spiteful, enflaming the very edition wars that you guys are claiming to not want to incite. Stop "talking down" to people who like minis and balanced combat by explaining why the "theater of the mind" is superior and why "too many options" are bad for the fighter and so on. If a return to 1e is truly better, then it should be able to stand on its own; it shouldn't need constant justification within the rules for why you think it's better. Rules should be rules, not cheerleading for your new edition and putting down your other editions.
I also dislike the constant reminders of "the rules don't really matter, the DM will just handle everything!" I understand that a big part of the appeal of 1e is that you're not "chained down" by rules and the DM is allowed to just make things up and not worry about balance or mechanics. But I don't really find that a selling point. I already have an awesome book that lets me make up my own rules and do whatever I can imagine: it's called a blank notebook, and I can buy it at Walmart for 50 cents. If I'm going to spend money on an actual game book, it needs to contain rules that actually make a good game, not a whole bunch of encouraging prose telling me to make things up on my own. When I see things like "These DC's are all just estimates, feel free to change them to what works for your game!" I don't think "Wow, how freeing, I'm so glad this book is letting me change the rules as written", I think "Crap, the designers have realized the math behind these numbers is total crap, and I'm going to have to fix it for them to make this game playable." Likewise, all the allegedly "positive" things about how skills and class balance are totally off and are "allowed" to be adjucated or how the DM is strongly "encouraged" to fudge die rolls or make up random crap to ensure the game mechanics don't ruin gameplay aren't positives to me; they are signs that the mechanics as written don't work and that the authors are trying to shift the problem and the blame onto the DM. "Oh, your party gets TPK'd constantly and all of your skill challenges fail terribly? You're just a bad DM." I don't want to pay money to have to figure out how to redo the math to make the game work, and I don't want to pay money to get a game where the math doesn't work on its own and requires me to fudge it constantly in order to have a decent experience. A game like that isn't worth anything to me; I might as well just freeform roleplay at that point.
Along the same lines, having your playtest adventure be the Caves of Chaos, and saying that you're trying to test monster balance, but then having a lengthy prose section talking about the "positives" of it being completely unbalanced and unusable as written, and that it will result in a TPK if used as written, and requiring (sorry, "encouraging) the DM to redo all the encounters and figure out how to make it work without killing the party is dumb. How can I test to see if your combat math works if you're telling me you have no idea what the challenge rating of any of these encounters is and that you're pretty sure they don't work at all unless I change them? Having the players be unsure if they can survive a combat and unsure if the encounters are actually balanced to their level might be sort of interesting (to me it's not, but I can see the appeal), but having the DM have no idea if the encounters are balanced or whether the party is likely to survive is absolutely not exciting; it's stupid and just makes it harder to DM.
Next up on the complain train: Vancian casting. I hate it, I've always hated it, and I always will hate it. You've introduced a few new systems to ease the pain of Vancian casting, like Ritual addons, but as I mentioned above, if you find yourself coming up with a bunch of subsystems and subrules to ease the pain of your first rule, you should ask yourself why you think the painful rule is so important. "Because it was in 1e" is not enough for me. Vancian sucks, and plenty of people who played all the editions agreed it sucked but lived with it because they had no real choice. I've already read a few responses from Mearls saying that the wizard was going to be the way he wants it and he doesn't care how many people complain, and that's not exactly encouraging for what's supposed to be a "gathering feedback" event. I understand Mearls has put his foot down and the wizard is going to be Vancian come hell or high water, but that doesn't stop me from saying I hate it and I hope to got that someone on the team other than Mearls gets to design the sorcerer or warlock to make an arcane caster that doesn't have to deal with Vancian bullshit.
Making the fighter as boring as possible - Again, Mearls has talked a lot about how wizards are for smart players and fighters are for people too stupid to walk and chew gum at the same time. I strongly disagree with this, but Mearls has been championing this idea since Essentials and has again said a few times he's going to refuse to budge on it no matter how many complaints there are, so again, I'm not sure what the point is but I'm going to say I hate this as well. The fighter is boring as is, and I really hope that someone else on the team gets to design something similar like a "Weaponmaster" or "Warblade" that brings back some of the interesting parts of the fighter from 4e.
Finally - modularity. I understand that "modular" is the buzzword for 5e and you guys are pretty fixated on it, but I think you'll find that it's not really the holy grail you think it is. There are a lot of rules missing from combat currently that make it pretty unusable, and plenty of defenders on the forums saying that it will all be solved by "modules". But if you require modules in order to make the game balanced and playable, then it's not actually modular. One example is how using a grid and placement is "optional" and that things like OA's are unnecessary but could be "modules" for people who think they need it to balance combat. There is a very good chance that perhaps the people who say OA's are needed to balance combat are actually right, and not just 3e/4e holdouts who can't appreciate 1e. If the only way to run combat without the "module" is for the DM to figure out on his own that he's not supposed to ever attack the wizard, and for the DM to figure out on his own that he's supposed to ignore all the ranges and areas and shapes in the spell section that you spent time on and just "pretend" that the wizard's always in the perfect position to hit everything he wants without hitting his friends, then you have a problem, and your game is being dishonest. If you know ahead of time that these rules for shapes and areas and such are completely unusable without some kind of grid, it's dishonest to say "You don't need a grid, just use the theatre of the mind!" without mentioning that actually, the DM needs to basically ignore all the rules you're then setting out as "core" in order to actually make the game work. Unless you have a real example of how a detailed description of a cone and line of effect is supposed to be used where there is no grid, I don't think you can pretend it's supposed to be used somehow. Similarly, if you know that the only thing that will keep the wizard alive in the absence of defender mechanics and OA's is the DM faking it and making sure his monsters only attack the fighter and not the wizard, you need to say that, and not just leave it unsaid and then blame the "bad DM" for TPK's. I think a lot of the things that make 1e work (the DM fudging everything and not using the actual rules as written) are being left unsaid because it probably makes the product look bad, but if you're insistent on presenting these minimal rules as a valid way to play, you need to include the "dirty secrets" for the DM - ie, never attack the wizard, fudge all the die rolls, change monster hp's randomly to make them die whenever you want, fudge all the ranges and spell areas, fudge the durations of everything so that "one minute" just means "one encounter". These are things that someone who's familiar with 1e and 2e will figure out, but if you're purposely rolling back the new terminology of "lasts for an encounter" to "lasts for a minute" to mimic 1e, you should also include a note to DM's that they need to ignore most of the times and durations and just wing it.
OK, that's my wall of text for now. Hope you guys like it!
I agree with much of what you said, both in content and in spirit.
However, in theory, this is just the very, very start of the playtest, and, supposedly, there could be a lot more to come and a lot more changes in store.
Of course, I tend to believe that all the major elements are already fixed, and there will be no major modifications to the skeleton that we've seen here.
There may be more 'modules' down the road, but I'd assume many of the core elements are here, and presented as more-or-less how they will appear in the final edition. Things like AC, Vancian Magic, Saves, DCs, Weapon Types, all of those sacred cows are back, and in force, to appeal to the "lapsed" gamers (Grognards) who refused to move into 3e/4e and only want "their game" played "their way".
As I've stated in other threads, I may be in the minority, but I was hoping that 4e would be the basis for 5e, and that we'd see evolutionary changes from there. I can only see this agglomeration of past editions for what it is--a "greatest hits" version of D&D that looks primarily to the past instead of looking to create something new.
...but...so it goes...4e will be dead within a year, 5e will be the game, and there may or may not be a disenfranchised player base of "NeoGrogs(?)" who refuse to move off of 4e and into 5e.
But, I think giving up all hope at the very first hours of 5e is premature--we may be right, the path may well be as we think it will be, but I'm at least willing to see where it goes before casting my final judgment and either spending or saving my money on the finished product.
"I'm just killing time, since it's killing us." --Cyon Fal'Duur, Pathfinder Chronicler: Rogue Ascendant
Of course you dislike almost all of it. Because the things you like, are wanting to expect, and are going to receive, haven't been implemented yet.
Seriously. You acknowledge that there are a lot of rules missing, yet bash what's there because those rules are gone? Guess what: they are not proposing that this is the end product, do not evaluate it as one. This is not the end design of the fighter. There will be more classes. There will be more races. Bashing it as a whole is not useful. They know the things that you're complaining about aren't in there, they specifically chose not to include them for this round of playtest. The sky is not falling, the world is not ending, they're not polishing off the final touches before sending it to the printers.
Go read my post, particularly the part about respecting the developers' choices on what to test when. Insulting them and claiming that they just hate your favorite edition isn't constructive in the slightest.
(to OP) Couldn't have said it better myself. I was once excited for the beta playtest. Now, after having read the actual documents, I want to burn a 2nd edition book out of spite.
Advantage and disadvantage are ingenious mechanics. The whole "you adjudicate it" aspect of the game is not.
Honestly, the playtest is way too basic. They should have given all of the rules to make characters up to level 5. If those rules are not complete, as some people tell me, then they should not present the rules like this.
I WANT to like this game. I really do. There's a lot of opportunity for excellent choices. It just does not function.
I hope this Mike Mearls individual listens to the community, and that Fighters get cool options.
Couldn't have said it better myself. I was once excited for the beta playtest. Now, after having read the actual documents, I want to burn a 2nd edition book out of spite.
....
Way to be constructive.
Seriously people, how is this a surprise in any way whatsoever? If you've been even paying slight attention to the process up until now, you'd realize that they've acknowledged most of your concerns and are planning on including them. That they haven't yet is not an indication that they won't. They said just the opposite in the very recent announcement of what this playtest will include.
Step back, breathe, and look at the big picture. If later on down the line, when they roll out the more complex, 4e-style, modern features, and you're still not happy, then provide feedback on those directly. But whining that they haven't yet put out your things isn't useful. It's coming. Patience.
Guess what: they are not proposing that this is the end product, do not evaluate it as one. This is not the end design of the fighter. There will be more classes. There will be more races. Bashing it as a whole is not useful. They know the things that you're complaining about aren't in there, they specifically chose not to include them for this round of playtest. The sky is not falling, the world is not ending, they're not polishing off the final touches before sending it to the printers.
Go read my post, particularly the part about respecting the developers' choices on what to test when. Insulting them and claiming that they just hate your favorite edition isn't constructive in the slightest.
I suggest you copy that text into a text file and paste it whenever needed; it'll save you a lot of time.
Honestly, the playtest is way too basic. They should have given all of the rules to make characters up to level 5. If those rules are not complete, as some people tell me, then they should not present the rules like this.
Why should they? Because it would satisfy your demands? Sorry, that's not a good enough reason. They put out the playtest to test exactly what they want to test, not what you want to test. You have to accept that, and you can't complain that they're not running things the way you would run them.
They shouldn't present the rules like this, eh? Well, the alternative is not doing a playtest. Now tell me, what would you, and makeshiftwings, and the rest of the raging 4e fans prefer? That this incredibly basic, ridiculously early, mostly incomplete build were still just internal? If the state of the game is the same as it is now, but you just didn't have the information about it, would you be any happier? Would you be even more concerned?
They cannot do what you want, right now. The things you're wanting can't be designed properly until they get the basics done. And by basics, I don't mean "make the fighter suck because Mearls said so." I mean how attacks and defenses work, how hitpoints work, how monsters work. They can't do what you want yet. But that's not something to rage and complain about: they'll get to it.
I say this as a huge 4e fan, and someone who will very likely not get 5e if it doesn't have the elements of 4e that I am expecting it to have: tactically deep combat, wide variety of options for all character concepts, and balance among all character types. Yet, somehow, I can understand what they're doing, and respect their path for doing it, instead of jumping down their throats for not giving me my pony first, before anyone else.
Of course you dislike almost all of it. Because the things you like, are wanting to expect, and are going to receive, haven't been implemented yet.
No offense, but the argument that that "If only you would wait, you'd see the great stuff just behind the curtain" is rediculous. We cannot playtest good intentions or wishful thinking. If the developers want our feedback, which, I would point out, is another way of asking us for free labor, they can give us the material they feel confident being evaluated.
Seriously. You acknowledge that there are a lot of rules missing, yet bash what's there because those rules are gone? Guess what: they are not proposing that this is the end product, do not evaluate it as one. This is not the end design of the fighter. There will be more classes. There will be more races. Bashing it as a whole is not useful. They know the things that you're complaining about aren't in there, they specifically chose not to include them for this round of playtest. The sky is not falling, the world is not ending, they're not polishing off the final touches before sending it to the printers.
Go read my post, particularly the part about respecting the developers' choices on what to test when. Insulting them and claiming that they just hate your favorite edition isn't constructive in the slightest.
It is certainly constructive in the sense that it helps to create a context. Context is what determines the value of intellectual property. If the developers want their property to retain or gain value, they need to understand that a certain portion of the player base considers their current iteration unacceptable.
Ultimately, their job is to sell me something. My job is not to smother them with kisses or smoke out their lower GI tract. If the developers want the player base excited, then they need to understand that the promise of good meat tomorrow makes rancid meat today taste no better.
