I listened to the Character Origins interview. They didn't really mention any changes to DMing besides maybe the recharge ability. Are there any changes that have been announced yet? Are any changes even possible? As a DM what changes, if it is even possible, would you like to see One DND have?
The document isn't that long to read, faster than the video. Things that may stand out is that a d20 roll (attack, save, skill/ability check) is being called a "d20 Test". I don't know how long that will survive actual play, sounds like a needless formalization of "roll a d20 in these three situations".
The 20 is always a success and a 1 is always a failure popular mechanic is codified. More interestingly, PC can perform criticals and it appears monsters/npcs don't. I'm sure DMs will houserule certain types of monsters/npcs can crit too.
EDIT Oh long rests are discussed, but short rests are no where in the present document. Dropping short rests has been anticipated after a lot of new content seems to be leaning toward chracter features being "times per proficiency bonus" as opposed to recharged on short rest. If that change is definite, that will lead to changes in the way some DMs planning an adventure day. Nothing yet on CR or encoutner building. Tool usage and skill usage in conjunction has been clarified to mean such a usage is skill at advantage. That makes ,more sense to me than the skill + proficiency I've seen many tables do.
I think there's a lot more that will tie in with the crit changes. We don't know if other class or subclass features will have their own crit rules, and its almost certain that monsters will be adjusted to compensate. Either higher baseline damage, or an extra recharge power that does crit-level damage, or some combination of both.
Strictly speaking, the rules should be playtested as they are and feedback given based on that. But rather than "the crit rules suck" something more along the line of "here's where the crit rules caused issues" or "here's what we added to make crit rules fun" might be more helpful.
EDIT Oh long rests are discussed, but short rests are no where in the present document.
Actually, in the long rest section it says:
INTERRUPTING THE REST If a Long Rest is interrupted by combat or by 1 hour of walking, casting Spells, or similar activity, the rest confers no benefit and must be restarted; however, if the rest was at least 1 hour long before the interruption, the creature gains the benefits of a Short Rest.
I remembered that because I thought it was a good clarification to have, and certainly a question that has come up in my games.
EDIT Oh long rests are discussed, but short rests are no where in the present document.
Actually, in the long rest section it says:
INTERRUPTING THE REST If a Long Rest is interrupted by combat or by 1 hour of walking, casting Spells, or similar activity, the rest confers no benefit and must be restarted; however, if the rest was at least 1 hour long before the interruption, the creature gains the benefits of a Short Rest.
I remembered that because I thought it was a good clarification to have, and certainly a question that has come up in my games.
Ah ok, so short rest is on the table, we just can't see that part of the table yet. I'm guessing this is a result of things in this sort of "rules and concepts" appendix were things that were specifically mentioned in the playtest materials. Short Rest hasn't come up yet, but long rest has, so they give us the definition of long rest with short rest to come whenever something mentions it. Thanks for pointing that out.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
EDIT Oh long rests are discussed, but short rests are no where in the present document.
Actually, in the long rest section it says:
INTERRUPTING THE REST If a Long Rest is interrupted by combat or by 1 hour of walking, casting Spells, or similar activity, the rest confers no benefit and must be restarted; however, if the rest was at least 1 hour long before the interruption, the creature gains the benefits of a Short Rest.
I remembered that because I thought it was a good clarification to have, and certainly a question that has come up in my games.
Ah ok, so short rest is on the table, we just can't see that part of the table yet. I'm guessing this is a result of things in this sort of "rules and concepts" appendix were things that were specifically mentioned in the playtest materials. Short Rest hasn't come up yet, but long rest has, so they give us the definition of long rest with short rest to come whenever something mentions it. Thanks for pointing that out.
There's a section in the doc saying that if a rule doesn't appear in the PDF, then it is unchanged, so it looks like short rests are likewise, unchanged.
Edit:
RULES GLOSSARY This glossary includes game terms that have new or revised meaning in these playtest rules, as well as terms, such as Creature Type, that aren’t defined in the 2014 Player’s Handbook. The terms are organized alphabetically. If a term doesn’t appear here, use its definition in the 2014 Player’s Handbook
I listened to the Character Origins interview. They didn't really mention any changes to DMing besides maybe the recharge ability. Are there any changes that have been announced yet? Are any changes even possible? As a DM what changes, if it is even possible, would you like to see One DND have?
So, something like the Nat1/20 auto success/failure thing. Can easily be playtested as a house rule with the agreement of your players. I don't see that as being terribly difficult to work with.
Sadly, I fear that by starting with character origins there's an expectation that these changes will need a new game to be set up utilising the rules as released and playtested in that way. My intention is certainly to start a new game with players up for playtesting, so that they can work their new character with the new origins. See what the experience of drawing up characters were. In all honesty this is where I'm already seeing that they should've included a new character sheet download for those wishing to playtest. I'm sort of agog that they didn't think to do that, but for now use the standard 5e sheet I guess.
I listened to the Character Origins interview. They didn't really mention any changes to DMing besides maybe the recharge ability. Are there any changes that have been announced yet? Are any changes even possible? As a DM what changes, if it is even possible, would you like to see One DND have?
I like that they are bringing back uniqueness to each race after the whitewashing of TCoE. What I would like to see for all the official settings is a demographics table. Could be for an entire world, a region, or a city. That way if I want to run a campaign with characters more representative of the world they inhabit, I can have them make a percentage roll for race. Obviously not mandatory, but helpful for when you want to use it. Sometimes to get the creative juices flowing, one needs some guardrails. This, in addition to the excellent back story tables in XGtE can really help in creating a new character by leaving many overwhelming choices to the arbiter of all chance in DnD: the dice.
The 20 is always a success and a 1 is always a failure popular mechanic is codified. More interestingly, PC can perform criticals and it appears monsters/npcs don't. I'm sure DMs will houserule certain types of monsters/npcs can crit too.
My main issue with the 20 as a success is the fact that some players demand the ability to roll, and under this situation, the d20 is no longer a secure option. Or, what the character asks for and what he gets might be completely different. which will also cause issues. But during combat, if alevel 1 player is throwing a rock to a dragon, regardless of the roll, the dragon won't die
The 20 is always a success and a 1 is always a failure popular mechanic is codified. More interestingly, PC can perform criticals and it appears monsters/npcs don't. I'm sure DMs will houserule certain types of monsters/npcs can crit too.
My main issue with the 20 as a success is the fact that some players demand the ability to roll, and under this situation, the d20 is no longer a secure option. Or, what the character asks for and what he gets might be completely different. which will also cause issues. But during combat, if alevel 1 player is throwing a rock to a dragon, regardless of the roll, the dragon won't die
Oh definitely, there will need to be more/better guidance on when to roll (and when to not roll, I like some recent other TTRPG games that have sections telling the GM that "rolling for everything" is probably not a good idea and a GM should be very mindful as to when to have a roll, or in 1D&D a "d20 Test".
I ran the play test rules this weekend. the new inspiration rules are fantastic. the player’s loved getting and then spending their inspiration. one player got two hits in the same encounter and the entire table went nuts. it was great.
that was the standout, but all of the other rules worked very well. the new division between arcane, divine, and primal sources of magic was great for world-building and it helped resolved an edge case.
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Since 1995: AD&D 2nd Ed.; D&D 5e; Vampire: The Masquerade (and other Old-WoD titles); Rifts (and other Palladium RPGs); Star Wars (WEG); Magic: The Gathering; Old School Essentials; AOL Red Dragon Inn; Ultima Online; Dark Age of Camelot
I'm not really sure why there's so much discussion about testing d20 tests... they are considering codifying something that's widely practiced... so it's widely playtested already, including the consequence of low level skill crit abuse. The impact of inspiration farming and player check requests are rather trivial given the frequency of players choosing to help at every opportunity.
The document isn't that long to read, faster than the video. Things that may stand out is that a d20 roll (attack, save, skill/ability check) is being called a "d20 Test". I don't know how long that will survive actual play, sounds like a needless formalization of "roll a d20 in these three situations".
Using the cover-all term of "d20 Test" just reduces the amount of times that rules will have to say "on an attack roll, ability check, or saving throw" - and clarifies that whenever the "d20 Test" term is used then it always applies to all three types of roll.
EDIT Oh long rests are discussed, but short rests are no where in the present document.
Actually, in the long rest section it says:
INTERRUPTING THE REST If a Long Rest is interrupted by combat or by 1 hour of walking, casting Spells, or similar activity, the rest confers no benefit and must be restarted; however, if the rest was at least 1 hour long before the interruption, the creature gains the benefits of a Short Rest.
I remembered that because I thought it was a good clarification to have, and certainly a question that has come up in my games.
It is interesting that they have put "interrupted by combat" before the "1 hour of..." part of the long rest definition.
I listened to the Character Origins interview. They didn't really mention any changes to DMing besides maybe the recharge ability. Are there any changes that have been announced yet? Are any changes even possible? As a DM what changes, if it is even possible, would you like to see One DND have?
So, something like the Nat1/20 auto success/failure thing. Can easily be playtested as a house rule with the agreement of your players. I don't see that as being terribly difficult to work with.
Sadly, I fear that by starting with character origins there's an expectation that these changes will need a new game to be set up utilising the rules as released and playtested in that way. My intention is certainly to start a new game with players up for playtesting, so that they can work their new character with the new origins. See what the experience of drawing up characters were. In all honesty this is where I'm already seeing that they should've included a new character sheet download for those wishing to playtest. I'm sort of agog that they didn't think to do that, but for now use the standard 5e sheet I guess.
My players all made a character and we ran through the low levels with them over the weekend with the full new rules. We are also applying some of the rule changes to our existing campaign just to get a flavour.
So far a mixed bag, The main issue is that there are already far too many ways to get advantage on an ability or attack role that inspiration has largely been used only for saving throws. Players can assist each other for ability checks usually, and in combat my party are very tactically astute and so get advantage to hit a lot already. pretty much most of the fights turned into the party farming any inspiration to the Rogue and Ranger so they got advantage on there shots, so the Rogue could get Sneak Attack regardless of what was going on and the Ranger could sharpshooter all the time (and try and get a crit hit for the damage himself). Ranger has multi-classed as Rogue as well and neither was massively upset by having there sneak attack critical damage nerfed.
Combat seems to run a bit smoother and I didn't have to buff my enemies with extra hit points/ac just to make the encounter last more then a few turns.
Feedback from me is the character building side is good, tavern brawler none of my players took, it feels that it needs to scale or do something better to be worth taking even as a level 1 feat. Players like the Ardling idea and had some interesting character concept ideas. Half races need work, it didn't feel unique enough really on paper for the player to feel they where playing a half race. Not sure how you go about fixing that and keeping things balanced but I will def be feeding that back. I think the idea is good, just needs some thought on execution.
In terms of DM changes then, combat feels a little better balanced, from levels 1-3 the no crit from monsters meant I wasn't having to think about fudging anything just to make sure a bad dice roll didn't end a player early. That is balanced nicely by the reduced crit damage from Players meaning that the encounters lasted a bit longer and therefore where a bit more fun, they are putting out less damage and as a DM I can pretty much estimate the damage output a turn without having to account for the wizard or rogue getting a massive damage spike from a 20 which makes planning easier.
Still getting my head around the nat 20 nat 1 ability checks, is leading to a change to the way I DM, which may not be a bad thing, but, the fact that players now have even more ways to gain advantage is feeling a little silly.
The new spell lists I can see the attraction of them and think they will work well. The D20 test issue, is really not an issue, it is a way of being less verbose in the book I still ask for the same things at the table, but, I found players using a variation of it when describing what certain abilities do, "oh it lets you re roll a D20 roll" instead of specifying each type.
EDIT Oh long rests are discussed, but short rests are no where in the present document.
Actually, in the long rest section it says:
INTERRUPTING THE REST If a Long Rest is interrupted by combat or by 1 hour of walking, casting Spells, or similar activity, the rest confers no benefit and must be restarted; however, if the rest was at least 1 hour long before the interruption, the creature gains the benefits of a Short Rest.
I remembered that because I thought it was a good clarification to have, and certainly a question that has come up in my games.
It is interesting that they have put "interrupted by combat" before the "1 hour of..." part of the long rest definition.
I think it's obvious right? one hour of combat would be 600 rounds of combat. Not really something that happens. (I hope)
I listened to the Character Origins interview. They didn't really mention any changes to DMing besides maybe the recharge ability. Are there any changes that have been announced yet? Are any changes even possible? As a DM what changes, if it is even possible, would you like to see One DND have?
1 shot dungeon master
The document isn't that long to read, faster than the video. Things that may stand out is that a d20 roll (attack, save, skill/ability check) is being called a "d20 Test". I don't know how long that will survive actual play, sounds like a needless formalization of "roll a d20 in these three situations".
The 20 is always a success and a 1 is always a failure popular mechanic is codified. More interestingly, PC can perform criticals and it appears monsters/npcs don't. I'm sure DMs will houserule certain types of monsters/npcs can crit too.
EDIT Oh long rests are discussed, but short rests are no where in the present document. Dropping short rests has been anticipated after a lot of new content seems to be leaning toward chracter features being "times per proficiency bonus" as opposed to recharged on short rest. If that change is definite, that will lead to changes in the way some DMs planning an adventure day. Nothing yet on CR or encoutner building. Tool usage and skill usage in conjunction has been clarified to mean such a usage is skill at advantage. That makes ,more sense to me than the skill + proficiency I've seen many tables do.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I think there's a lot more that will tie in with the crit changes. We don't know if other class or subclass features will have their own crit rules, and its almost certain that monsters will be adjusted to compensate. Either higher baseline damage, or an extra recharge power that does crit-level damage, or some combination of both.
Strictly speaking, the rules should be playtested as they are and feedback given based on that. But rather than "the crit rules suck" something more along the line of "here's where the crit rules caused issues" or "here's what we added to make crit rules fun" might be more helpful.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
Actually, in the long rest section it says:
INTERRUPTING THE REST
If a Long Rest is interrupted by combat or by 1 hour of walking, casting Spells, or similar activity, the rest confers no benefit and must be restarted; however, if the rest was at least 1 hour long before the interruption, the creature gains the benefits of a Short Rest.
I remembered that because I thought it was a good clarification to have, and certainly a question that has come up in my games.
Only spilt the party if you see something shiny.
Ariendela Sneakerson, Half-elf Rogue (8); Harmony Wolfsbane, Tiefling Bard (10); Agnomally, Gnomish Sorcerer (3); Breeze, Tabaxi Monk (8); Grace, Dragonborn Barbarian (7); DM, Homebrew- The Sequestered Lands/Underwater Explorers; Candlekeep
Ah ok, so short rest is on the table, we just can't see that part of the table yet. I'm guessing this is a result of things in this sort of "rules and concepts" appendix were things that were specifically mentioned in the playtest materials. Short Rest hasn't come up yet, but long rest has, so they give us the definition of long rest with short rest to come whenever something mentions it. Thanks for pointing that out.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
There's a section in the doc saying that if a rule doesn't appear in the PDF, then it is unchanged, so it looks like short rests are likewise, unchanged.
Edit:
So, something like the Nat1/20 auto success/failure thing. Can easily be playtested as a house rule with the agreement of your players. I don't see that as being terribly difficult to work with.
Sadly, I fear that by starting with character origins there's an expectation that these changes will need a new game to be set up utilising the rules as released and playtested in that way. My intention is certainly to start a new game with players up for playtesting, so that they can work their new character with the new origins. See what the experience of drawing up characters were. In all honesty this is where I'm already seeing that they should've included a new character sheet download for those wishing to playtest. I'm sort of agog that they didn't think to do that, but for now use the standard 5e sheet I guess.
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests - 'Better' Player Character Injury Tables?
Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.
I like that they are bringing back uniqueness to each race after the whitewashing of TCoE. What I would like to see for all the official settings is a demographics table. Could be for an entire world, a region, or a city. That way if I want to run a campaign with characters more representative of the world they inhabit, I can have them make a percentage roll for race. Obviously not mandatory, but helpful for when you want to use it. Sometimes to get the creative juices flowing, one needs some guardrails. This, in addition to the excellent back story tables in XGtE can really help in creating a new character by leaving many overwhelming choices to the arbiter of all chance in DnD: the dice.
Eryndor - Red Dead Annihilation | GM - Volo's Trade Franchise - PF2e Adventures set in the Forgotten Realms
My main issue with the 20 as a success is the fact that some players demand the ability to roll, and under this situation, the d20 is no longer a secure option. Or, what the character asks for and what he gets might be completely different. which will also cause issues. But during combat, if alevel 1 player is throwing a rock to a dragon, regardless of the roll, the dragon won't die
Oh definitely, there will need to be more/better guidance on when to roll (and when to not roll, I like some recent other TTRPG games that have sections telling the GM that "rolling for everything" is probably not a good idea and a GM should be very mindful as to when to have a roll, or in 1D&D a "d20 Test".
And definitely better explanation as to how Persuasion is not Dominate Person or Insight is not [spell/detect thoughts[/spell].
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I ran the play test rules this weekend. the new inspiration rules are fantastic. the player’s loved getting and then spending their inspiration. one player got two hits in the same encounter and the entire table went nuts. it was great.
that was the standout, but all of the other rules worked very well. the new division between arcane, divine, and primal sources of magic was great for world-building and it helped resolved an edge case.
Since 1995: AD&D 2nd Ed.; D&D 5e; Vampire: The Masquerade (and other Old-WoD titles); Rifts (and other Palladium RPGs); Star Wars (WEG); Magic: The Gathering; Old School Essentials; AOL Red Dragon Inn; Ultima Online; Dark Age of Camelot
I'm not really sure why there's so much discussion about testing d20 tests... they are considering codifying something that's widely practiced... so it's widely playtested already, including the consequence of low level skill crit abuse. The impact of inspiration farming and player check requests are rather trivial given the frequency of players choosing to help at every opportunity.
Using the cover-all term of "d20 Test" just reduces the amount of times that rules will have to say "on an attack roll, ability check, or saving throw" - and clarifies that whenever the "d20 Test" term is used then it always applies to all three types of roll.
It is interesting that they have put "interrupted by combat" before the "1 hour of..." part of the long rest definition.
My players all made a character and we ran through the low levels with them over the weekend with the full new rules. We are also applying some of the rule changes to our existing campaign just to get a flavour.
So far a mixed bag, The main issue is that there are already far too many ways to get advantage on an ability or attack role that inspiration has largely been used only for saving throws. Players can assist each other for ability checks usually, and in combat my party are very tactically astute and so get advantage to hit a lot already. pretty much most of the fights turned into the party farming any inspiration to the Rogue and Ranger so they got advantage on there shots, so the Rogue could get Sneak Attack regardless of what was going on and the Ranger could sharpshooter all the time (and try and get a crit hit for the damage himself). Ranger has multi-classed as Rogue as well and neither was massively upset by having there sneak attack critical damage nerfed.
Combat seems to run a bit smoother and I didn't have to buff my enemies with extra hit points/ac just to make the encounter last more then a few turns.
Feedback from me is the character building side is good, tavern brawler none of my players took, it feels that it needs to scale or do something better to be worth taking even as a level 1 feat. Players like the Ardling idea and had some interesting character concept ideas. Half races need work, it didn't feel unique enough really on paper for the player to feel they where playing a half race. Not sure how you go about fixing that and keeping things balanced but I will def be feeding that back. I think the idea is good, just needs some thought on execution.
In terms of DM changes then, combat feels a little better balanced, from levels 1-3 the no crit from monsters meant I wasn't having to think about fudging anything just to make sure a bad dice roll didn't end a player early. That is balanced nicely by the reduced crit damage from Players meaning that the encounters lasted a bit longer and therefore where a bit more fun, they are putting out less damage and as a DM I can pretty much estimate the damage output a turn without having to account for the wizard or rogue getting a massive damage spike from a 20 which makes planning easier.
Still getting my head around the nat 20 nat 1 ability checks, is leading to a change to the way I DM, which may not be a bad thing, but, the fact that players now have even more ways to gain advantage is feeling a little silly.
The new spell lists I can see the attraction of them and think they will work well. The D20 test issue, is really not an issue, it is a way of being less verbose in the book I still ask for the same things at the table, but, I found players using a variation of it when describing what certain abilities do, "oh it lets you re roll a D20 roll" instead of specifying each type.
I think it's obvious right? one hour of combat would be 600 rounds of combat. Not really something that happens. (I hope)
So, is there nothing here about changes to the CR system? New DM guilds with easier ways to balance encounters and magic items?