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Nov 16, 2012 -- 7:53PM, waltron wrote:

Perhaps I'm mistaken, but over the course of life I've noticed that internet forums are prone to hyperbole. Even when it's a legitimate critique, this hyperbole can make it hard to figure out what needs tweaking, and what is a major red flag.

Case in point, I tend to play wizards. So when I find myself thinking "waaah, wizards need moar power," I can step back, notice my bias, and realize after some number crunching that it's fine. Similarly, as a DM, I used to haaaate Monks getting Wis to AC, because in high level games everybody took 1 level of monk to get that bonus. But, when I take a deep breath and think about bounded accuracy, I stop worrying. 

But when you think about the playtest packet now, what would you ragequit over? What's your hardcore, red flag, rage quit, never-play-5E-again gripes? And what's just grumbling, personal preference, and nitpicks? I don't mean to imply nitpicks don't matter. They do! But on forums, it's hard to tell the diff between red flags and yellow flags. Here, I'll start with mine. 


RAAAAGEQUIIIIT!!!

• Sneak Attack. Nothing new to say that hasn't been said already. I'd bet this is the top of everyone's list
• Skill Mastery. With no dice-per-round pool outside of combat, 10th level rogues can get 1/3D10 to almost every non-combat skill check.
• 1st level spells that DON'T scale. Signature spells mean that a tactician mage's scaled-to-5th-level encounter Thunderwave is WAAAY better than the illusionist's non-scaling equivalent Color Spray. Either specify that it can't be memorized to higher levels, or make sure other 1st level spells that might get a Tradition built around them do scale. 
• Polymorph's broken. Should be tied to hit dice, much like druids back in the day. 
• Hold Person. 3rd level wizard spell, 2nd level cleric spell!?!?!? That's gotta be a typo. 
• Heavy Armor at High Level. 5E's big goal has been to think about flavor first. In 3E and 4E, epic level characters rarely could be seen wearing plate, and I think something flavorful is lost because of that. 
• Use Rope Get rid of it, please. It's entirely covered in a combination of Escape Artist, Sleight of Hand, Climb (rappelling), Ride (block n' tackle), and Profession (Sailor).  

Nitpicks 

• Skill Bonus from levels. Is this a new skill you get? +1 to existing skills? Mostly just need more info.
• Ability bonus to spell damage? Do they get this? The language isn't clear. My number-crunching for damage implies no, they don't. 
  
• One stat classes. A really nice touch in 4E was that Wizards were rewarded for other stats; otherwise, it was the core example of dumping everything into 1 of 6 abilities. Some Wizard traditions that bring that back would be nice.
• Give Magic Attack to martial classes. Sure, it's hard to picture them using it. But what about magic items? What if they multiclass? At least throw in an optional rule that says "if it pops up, a Fighter's crappy magic attack is equal to a wizard's crappy physical attack." 
• Same with Save DC bonus. Sure, fighters will probably never use it, but they might. 
• Rogue HP should use a D8. Fighter's the high end of the spectrum, wizard's the low end. If a class ain't low end, don't put 'em in the low end. 

What about you? If you have to separate your gripes into Boycott-level gripes and Nitpick-level gripes, what makes the cut? 

***EDIT: Let's be honest. If you're into D&D enough to have an active account on the forums, you won't not buy 5E; you'll buy it and make a 30 page homebrew errata. But just pretend for argument's sake that you're not a lifetime D&D junkie XD

3e style multiclassing/level progression.

So I guess I wont buy.

Jan 23, 2013 -- 7:07PM, Chibikabki wrote:

 3e style multiclassing/level progression.

So I guess I wont buy.

I have much misgivings about 3e style multiclassing as well.  I feel that it is open to much abuse when people dip into a class for one level.  If they had a hard cap of number of classes at 2 (perhaps 2 + 1 prestige class), or required an even split of xp (2nd edition style), it would be much better.

I am waiting for the actual rules before passing judgment on this, but if it is open ended 3e style multiclassing I will house rule it into oblivion - or in the spirit of this thread play a different edition... reprinting first edition and putting early modules online can keep me in gaming nirvana for a long time and raises the bar that dnd next must clear.

Honestly, I think I'll buy d&dn anyways.

However, will I play it? Will I buy more than just the core books? If some long awaited fixes aren't part of future packets, I guess I won't play d&dn a lot if not at all.

Ragequit:

D&Dn has been since day one the heavy armor and shield edition. Lots of game mechanics strenghthen  the heavy armored builds. I will try to explain it hereunder:

- Bounded accuracy: Though a great idea, bounded accuracy means that high AC is more valuable in d&dn than in any prior edition because it will always be the best way to mitigate melee and ranged damage.

- Advantage/disadvantage: Again, it's a great game mechanic, but, combined with feats such as combat superiority and high AC values, it makes PC or NPCs nearly impossible to hit.

- Expertise dice: Great idea also, however for the fighter class expertise dices damage can easly  exceed weapon damage, meaning that weapon choice becomes nearly unrelevant. The best choice is then obviously to wield a weapon that allows to use a shield.

- Monsters low attack bonus:  monsters melee and ranged attacks are no serious threat to a PC party. For the DM, the only standard ways to threaten a good pc party is through spells/special abilities/save or die mechanics.


Nitpick:

- 3rd edition style multi-classing. Multi-classing should be an option, it shouldn't be in the core.

- No Stat damage modifier to spells and limited spell choices make the current wizard underpowered and quite boring.

- Sneak attack still needs to be fixed.

- War cleric seems to be the only current viable option. Other builds could  be encouraged.

- Fighters are too powerfull.

- Dual wield still isn't interesting.

Jan 30, 2013 -- 4:46AM, Khadrin wrote:

Personally, I played since 1979 1st and 2nd ed and I got an huge amount of fun, we used house rules because some stuff felt wrong. Then I played 3.5 and quite enjoyed it, again it was not perfect but I still had fun. Then came 4th ed, I was hoping a corrected, tweaked 3.5 ed, Oh boy how wrong I was. They broke my game, they broke Forgotten Realms where I was having fun !!!
When they announced a 5th ed, I started praying. Please take the real D&D and fix what was wrong in the game mechanics so we can play again D&D and have fun.
Again (from what I've seen in the playtest so far) they break everything. They listen to people whinning because the wizard is too strong, now the warrior is too strong, so we have to balance evrything, the thief is no more, it has to be a rogue. The wizard is just ridiculous. The game mechanic isn't D&D, I hate the skill dice thing, I hate advantage/disadvantage. I hate the cleric, I hate the rogue, I hate the wizard. Everything I liked went to pieces. So here you have it, I won't buy 5ed. On top of that, I never tried Pathfinder before and now it seems to me that they made more or less what I was waiting for. So I think I will go Pathfinder when the majority will go for the 5th edition of a game that is no more.

Just imagine how us 4e fans feel about it. Pretty much 0% of what I enjoy about 4e has gone into Next (imho it should be called D&D Past). So yeah, I think I'll pass as well.

but to be fair, I do like Next's backgrounds determining trained skills. I might try houseruling that into 4e.  

Jan 30, 2013 -- 4:46AM, Khadrin wrote:

Personally, I played since 1979 1st and 2nd ed and I got an huge amount of fun, we used house rules because some stuff felt wrong. Then I played 3.5 and quite enjoyed it, again it was not perfect but I still had fun. Then came 4th ed, I was hoping a corrected, tweaked 3.5 ed, Oh boy how wrong I was.

Up to this point, our experience was pretty much the same.

Every edition felt like an improvement. 3.5 was well on the right track; it felt like FINALLY the mechanics are awesome, customizable characters, simplicity in multi-classing, and so on. Then 4e was like some wierd tangent, really really wierd tangent (IMHO I think it should be recalled).