It's the weekend. Be more patient for the feedback from you feedback. That said, I think you're doing a good job of identifying what you like and where you're having problems, and why. What else can I say?
Still nothing? No one interested in my observations?
Waiting for comments on previous things, I have more questions and on your interpretaion of Next playset rules. They all are connected to my players starting as being captive by monsters.
Being captive
1. Rest - Being in prison is counting as long rest in terms of HP recover? Can then characters use short rests to heal more? What about spells? Are they count as prepered? Even for wizard?
2. Magic - Can clerics or wizard cast spells being in chains? Are they need full mobilty, or only being able to speak?
I'm pretty sure I saw in the DNDN books somewhere that they need to be able to move their arms to cast spells.
I'd have thought the rest in prison is up to the DM. The captors can come in every couple of hours to make sure the captives aren't up to anything, and make a lot of noise - no uninterrupted rest then. But if the captors are really negligent, just give them a bowl of gruel each day and otherwise let them moulder in prison - then the opportunity for rest is there. Unless interrupted by rats....
And now to next problems of Next. 1. 15 Minutes Work Day – it’s better than 2nd and 3rd edition „we use all our spells in one combat and go to sleep”, because of short rests. But still – after 15 minutes of action, character were so tired, that couldn’t press more inside the complex. Beside long rests giving to much HP back, we should have mechanics that will regenerates some powers of characters between long rests. Maybe giving PCs Action Points that can be be made in to recasting one spell or using extra action?
The spellcasters need to restrain themselves from blowing all their daily spells. My personal wish is that some low level Encounter spells will be part of the final mechanic, effectively some less powerful spells have encounter refresh in them and can be memorised as the Daily spells but during the day the character can read his book and refresh his memory (really fits with the style of the Dragonlance character Reistlin who consistently stopped and read his spellbook whenever the characters rested).
2. No life without tank – fighter made previous session almost casual, this one was rather tougher on players. This is bad as PCs should be able to work fine without living sack of HP and big damage. Maybe Action Points thing should solve the case.
overal the fighter should be pretty imperitive to any game where combat is involved unless there is another martial character able to step up.
3. Spellcasting unclaryfied when do you actualy roll on it, when it just succed? Do you roll on healing spells or just assume they work fine when cast? What can be done with rituals? Are clerics blessings ( not spells, but ather narration ) having any mechanical bonuses?
The spell only requires a roll if stated (often vs AC) but all others just work but may require a Save vs Dex or Will.
4.Rogue is totally blind in darkness– Night Vision should be on 1st level, Skill Mastery on 2nd – now rogue is just blind as mole if he isn’t from darkvision race.
Tricky one this as I agree with the sentiment but if they do a multiclass system this may mean that anyone who want to see in the dark can take one level as a rogue and get a lot of benefits.
I'd have thought the rest in prison is up to the DM. The captors can come in every couple of hours to make sure the captives aren't up to anything, and make a lot of noise - no uninterrupted rest then. But if the captors are really negligent, just give them a bowl of gruel each day and otherwise let them moulder in prison - then the opportunity for rest is there. Unless interrupted by rats....
I get this obtrusiveness can get to reset the prepering spell cooldown, but no HP regeneration?
The spellcasters need to restrain themselves from blowing all their daily spells. My personal wish is that some low level Encounter spells will be part of the final mechanic, effectively some less powerful spells have encounter refresh in them and can be memorised as the Daily spells but during the day the character can read his book and refresh his memory (really fits with the style of the Dragonlance character Reistlin who consistently stopped and read his spellbook whenever the characters rested).
But how with the Clerics? I would rather tie this to some form of Action Points, as it would grant the character will strive to go deeper in to dungeon...
overal the fighter should be pretty imperitive to any game where combat is involved unless there is another martial character able to step up.
I don't agree - all classes have combat abilites to be good fighters with the powers. Taking out Fighter shouldn't made very hard for group to play. ALL character should be good options to play, not only Fighter.
Tricky one this as I agree with the sentiment but if they do a multiclass system this may mean that anyone who want to see in the dark can take one level as a rogue and get a lot of benefits.
And? Being able to see in darkness is crutial to character that main role in party on low level is scounting. It's also totally illogical that class based on idea of moving in dark places can't see a square in them. To me Skill Mastery is sure multiclass problems - just imagine you take one level, to get autmoatic +10 in all your skills.
Even hitpoints? Apparently yes. In the How to Play book under "Long Rest" it says that the rest has to be started again if you take any strenuous action. However... it doesn't say that it has to be started again if you're interrupted. So if the jailers come in, and you feign sleep, that might not count as strenuous action, and you might be able to keep going.
As regards movement for spell casting, yes, even clerics. Again How to Play, under "Spell Components", applying to both arcane and divine, says you need to be able to make intricate hand motions. However, it says nothing about arms. So if your hands are free to move, maybe you're okay - whereas if they're pinned to the wall by a tight wrist chain, maybe you don't have full enough movement.
1. NO XP RULES MENTIONED! - on last night game we didn't know is XP for enocunters is to get to every PC, or splited between them. BIG problem.
This problem expanded. My player point out I should be giving roleplay awards and sidequest ( they freed two hobgoblins prisoners ), but now I don't have any clue how much to give PCs XP for that.
I finally solve that, at least for time. In 3.5ed there is advice as giving max 50 XP per level of charcter per session for good roleplaying. And for quest awards, there is tabel from 4ed, to read more here.
And so, we have something from 4 ed in Next - shorts rest and whole XP rules.
50 xp per level per session! i give way more than that for good role playing. in my playtest there was hardly any combat (they took out 4 goblins which the Beastiary said was 100XP each so i gave them 125XP each for that combat) and then i gave each player got about 800 xp for the role playing. for me what they did outside of combat was brilliant and i wanted to reward them well for it. there is more to RPGs than combat and i think experience is gained by performing actions, even if that is trying to chat up the local barmaid!
This is how medival baesd combat looks like ( Clip from 1:38 )
That's one view, but not the sort of medieval combat D&D was originally designed to model. Gary Gygax mention that this was more of an influence
www.youtube.com/watch?v=L10fR31jC1w (How do you embedded video? If you don't want to follow the link it is the famous Errol Flynn duel on the stairs from Robin Hood)
Each slash and parry is actually a hit wearing down hit points, until a fatal blow once all of those have gone. Which is why you act at 100% even though you might have lost 99% of your hit points, and how you can recover them so quickly. You don't have effects like a broken knee from being hit by a rock, D&D can't model that, it never has.
4. Rogue is totally blind in darkness– Night Vision should be on 1st level, Skill Mastery on 2nd – now rogue is just blind as mole if he isn’t from darkvision race.
You know I saw this as less of a problem than the fact most enemies had darkvision, making it impossible for the rogue to hide in shadows, a key class feature. If the creatures didn't have darkvision then most of the tunnels would at least have areass of dim light from torches, so he could hide. With them having darkvision most of the tunnels aren't lit, so the party has to carry a light source making stealth for them impossible, and the rogue is instantly spotted if hiding in shadows.
You give the rogue night vision it doesn't help with the fact he still has no where to hide from all these creatures that still have darkvision.
You know I saw this as less of a problem than the fact most enemies had darkvision, making it impossible for the rogue to hide in shadows, a key class feature. If the creatures didn't have darkvision then most of the tunnels would at least have areass of dim light from torches, so he could hide. With them having darkvision most of the tunnels aren't lit, so the party has to carry a light source making stealth for them impossible, and the rogue is instantly spotted if hiding in shadows.
You give the rogue night vision it doesn't help with the fact he still has no where to hide from all these creatures that still have darkvision.
Or the rogue could just hide behind things rather than use shadows. The corner of a hall, open doors, barrels, chairs, tables, chests...all of these are easily big enough to hide 1/4 of the body of a small creature. Since orcs/goblins/kobolds do things like eating and storing stuff there will be all kinds of furnature behind wich to conceal a tiny halfling.
The rogue is a pro at this kind of thing living in a world with people who can literally see in the dark. He's worked out the angles if he is good enough to have levels in the class.
