So it’s not that they’ll have to change grave clerics. It’s that grave clerics, along with all other existing class/subclasses won’t exist.
I mean, we don't know what sub-classes are going to be in the next Player's Handbook; while I'm expecting there to be some casualties, I'm hoping grave cleric isn't one of them (especially since death cleric was never really intended for players to use), so if grave is staying in then presumably they'll just change that ability to function differently.
As for the critical hit changes and what it will do for monster balance; there has always been a degree of fudging required by DMs for the CR balance in the game, as two monsters at the same CR bracket can have wildly different difficulties depending upon the party composition and context in which they're fought. But really critical hits aren't that frequent, only a 1 in 20 chance, so for an individual monster the chances of actually rolling one during a fight aren't that high. It's only when you're facing groups of enemies that critical hits become likely, and in that case the critical hits probably aren't individually threatening, it's the difference in action economy that presents the challenge.
So personally I don't see the change noticeably affecting encounter difficulty all that much in practice, and it'll make the players less likely to just be suddenly dying as a result of dumb luck. I'm on board with that, I just hope they increase the variety in monster mechanics a bit more, or maybe even give us more mix-in features in whatever is the main monster manual, so we can quickly add unusual features to any monster to change things up a bit more easily for our players.
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So it’s not that they’ll have to change grave clerics. It’s that grave clerics, along with all other existing class/subclasses won’t exist.
I mean, we don't know what sub-classes are going to be in the next Player's Handbook; while I'm expecting there to be some casualties, I'm hoping grave cleric isn't one of them (especially since death cleric was never really intended for players to use), so if grave is staying in then presumably they'll just change that ability to function differently.
I didn’t mean anything about grave cleric in particular. I more meant they just wipe the slate clean. All the subclasses pre 1D&D would be pitched out, and they’d start new. And they can’t announce it officially, because then people will just stop buying books until the new edition drops. I mean, planescape will be a tough sell knowing it’s shelf life can be measured in months. The crit mechanic is only part of it. There’s grave cleric, but I’m betting there’s other things that are impacted that people haven’t thought of or realized yet. And I’m sure there’s other things. Like, if they maintain this push for using inspiration, I could see them designing new subclasses that give more ways to generate and use it, as an example. But any change they make to the base rules will reach out. For example if they make a change to temp hp (I’m not trying to suggest they will, this is just an example to help with explaining my theory) it would impact a number of subclasses and spells. So they could either go re-write all of them, or just say, they don’t work anymore, time for new stuff. Like when 3.5 came out, and there was a guide to change your characters, but really everyone just ended up having to make new characters.
It also goes a way towards explaining why we haven’t gotten any new subclasses recently. Save for the playtest for the giant book, and the card stuff, which now seems destined for the deck of many things book. But there were none in printed in spelljammer, for example, which seems like it could use some. Could be they are holding off until they have those class/subclass mechanics more dialed in.
I wish this document gave more of a vertical slice of the system. This seems to be quite a horizontal slice.
Keeping the subject focus limited makes it a lot easier for them to absorb feedback from the surveys.
Right, because the feedback they get is irrelevant, since we can't know how anything else that might be changed interacts with this. We (currently) have to take everything else as unchanged, which will not occur as they've already said there will be regular new UA pdfs. For example, how can we know if crit changes are good or bad if we don't know how they've changed weapons, attacks, spellcasting, or individual spells?
I don't see how you can give valid criticism of a new model year of a car by putting the new steering wheel in last year's model.
I wish this document gave more of a vertical slice of the system. This seems to be quite a horizontal slice.
Keeping the subject focus limited makes it a lot easier for them to absorb feedback from the surveys.
Right, because the feedback they get is irrelevant, since we can't know how anything else that might be changed interacts with this. We (currently) have to take everything else as unchanged, which will not occur as they've already said there will be regular new UA pdfs. For example, how can we know if crit changes are good or bad if we don't know how they've changed weapons, attacks, spellcasting, or individual spells?
I don't see how you can give valid criticism of a new model year of a car by putting the new steering wheel in last year's model.
If you're that cynical, why bother reading the UA? Just so you can get a head start on complaining? The feedback DOES matter, and they won't know your concerns if you don't submit the survey. Tell them what you think and when the later articles come out, if something about how they interact with the earlier material is a concern, tell them that too. They've ABSOLUTELY made changes from UA to official based on the feedback surveys in the past, no need to be such a pessimist.
planescape will be a tough sell knowing it’s shelf life can be measured in months.
Not necessarily; from what we've seen in UA they've been working towards background/feat changes for a while, so it would surprise me if they release anything that requires more than minor errata to correct (based on any slight changes in the final edition) for that. Magic items, spells and races should be relatively easy to errata for minor changes.
What I'm curious about are sub-classes; Spelljammer was ripe for some new sub-classes yet didn't get any, and I do wonder if that's because they knew much more substantial errata might be required to fix them since (sub-)classes will be the most vulnerable things to changes in the new edition?
I'm hoping that since this is basically going to be 5.5e that that will mean they're going to update most sub-classes, maybe merging a few that are quite similar, for the new player's handbook, so we won't have to rely on older books for many (if any) of those; there may be some that don't make the cut, or will get reimagined by a later book, but in those cases they may get errata'd so the content remains usable in spite of any rules changes.
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I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
I wish this document gave more of a vertical slice of the system. This seems to be quite a horizontal slice.
Keeping the subject focus limited makes it a lot easier for them to absorb feedback from the surveys.
Right, because the feedback they get is irrelevant, since we can't know how anything else that might be changed interacts with this. We (currently) have to take everything else as unchanged, which will not occur as they've already said there will be regular new UA pdfs. For example, how can we know if crit changes are good or bad if we don't know how they've changed weapons, attacks, spellcasting, or individual spells?
I don't see how you can give valid criticism of a new model year of a car by putting the new steering wheel in last year's model.
If you're that cynical, why bother reading the UA? Just so you can get a head start on complaining? The feedback DOES matter, and they won't know your concerns if you don't submit the survey. Tell them what you think and when the later articles come out, if something about how they interact with the earlier material is a concern, tell them that too. They've ABSOLUTELY made changes from UA to official based on the feedback surveys in the past, no need to be such a pessimist.
It isn't about whether the feedback is going to matter or not. It's that the feedback wont be accurate. Without knowing what they're intending for the connected parts it's pretty much impossible to accurately judge what we've been given. Simply put, we have no real context to judge the changes in. Lets take the monster crit rules for example. They could be good given the right changes to monster design. Are they actually good? Who the hell knows, we haven't been shown what their new monsters look like. What about player crits only affecting weapon dice? That could also be good. Is it? Who the hell knows, we haven't seen any class design changes or monster design changes, and that hinges on both of those.
So long story short, any feedback we give on this stuff is inevitably going to be flawed because we're only looking at like 1/8th of the full picture.
I wish this document gave more of a vertical slice of the system. This seems to be quite a horizontal slice.
Keeping the subject focus limited makes it a lot easier for them to absorb feedback from the surveys.
Right, because the feedback they get is irrelevant, since we can't know how anything else that might be changed interacts with this. We (currently) have to take everything else as unchanged, which will not occur as they've already said there will be regular new UA pdfs. For example, how can we know if crit changes are good or bad if we don't know how they've changed weapons, attacks, spellcasting, or individual spells?
I don't see how you can give valid criticism of a new model year of a car by putting the new steering wheel in last year's model.
If you're that cynical, why bother reading the UA? Just so you can get a head start on complaining? The feedback DOES matter, and they won't know your concerns if you don't submit the survey. Tell them what you think and when the later articles come out, if something about how they interact with the earlier material is a concern, tell them that too. They've ABSOLUTELY made changes from UA to official based on the feedback surveys in the past, no need to be such a pessimist.
It isn't about whether the feedback is going to matter or not. It's that the feedback wont be accurate. Without knowing what they're intending for the connected parts it's pretty much impossible to accurately judge what we've been given. Simply put, we have no real context to judge the changes in. Lets take the monster crit rules for example. They could be good given the right changes to monster design. Are they actually good? Who the hell knows, we haven't been shown what their new monsters look like. What about player crits only affecting weapon dice? That could also be good. Is it? Who the hell knows, we haven't seen any class design changes or monster design changes, and that hinges on both of those.
So long story short, any feedback we give on this stuff is inevitably going to be flawed because we're only looking at like 1/8th of the full picture.
You're talking as if the full picture already exists. This is likely just what they've developed to a point they feel is ready for widespread playtesting. It makes sense to start with character creation, and since the concern about monster critical hits is largely about 1st level characters they've given us enough to digest and test these rule changes with first level characters.
The full picture is likely to change multiple times as a result of feedback. The fact that some people are already looking ahead and finding features that get invalidated by this crit change further down the road is excellent. It will help remind the devs of things they need to highlight to be adjusted when they reach that point in playtest documents.
The feedback doesn't need to be perfect it just needs to be.
If they're rolling out playtesting and hinting at changes in monster design as they've already done then they have some idea of what the full picture kinda looks like. It almost certainly isn't set in stone, but it doesn't need to be. Yes, the full picture is going to change a bit as time passes and they get feedback, but it would move in a better direction if they received more accurate responses. Responses that we could give more accurately if they gave us more information.
I wish this document gave more of a vertical slice of the system. This seems to be quite a horizontal slice.
Keeping the subject focus limited makes it a lot easier for them to absorb feedback from the surveys.
Right, because the feedback they get is irrelevant, since we can't know how anything else that might be changed interacts with this. We (currently) have to take everything else as unchanged, which will not occur as they've already said there will be regular new UA pdfs. For example, how can we know if crit changes are good or bad if we don't know how they've changed weapons, attacks, spellcasting, or individual spells?
I don't see how you can give valid criticism of a new model year of a car by putting the new steering wheel in last year's model.
If you're that cynical, why bother reading the UA? Just so you can get a head start on complaining? The feedback DOES matter, and they won't know your concerns if you don't submit the survey. Tell them what you think and when the later articles come out, if something about how they interact with the earlier material is a concern, tell them that too. They've ABSOLUTELY made changes from UA to official based on the feedback surveys in the past, no need to be such a pessimist.
The difference is a focused vertical slice that is testable in context versus a horizontal slice that doesn’t fit with the rest of the system and has zero context.
One of those provides a glimpse of a whole, the other doesn’t. One of those provides the availability for much more meaningful feedback with relevant context of that entire game. How can you tell how good a 1st level feat is if you don’t know what classes give at level 1? You can’t put together an entire character with this system. Your feedback can only say "this new thing feels bad in the old system."
Hrmmm... This is difficult to playtest without the rest of the system available, as I'm suspicious that these changes are indicative of *other* changes in the ruleset. So here are my first impressions:
1) I get wanting to make Backgrounds more impactful by shifting things into them from Racial Features. But to be honest, I prefer the method of 'Ancestry, Culture, and Background' systems that are employed by some other rulesets, and have been made available through DM's Guild for 5e. A couple of those have a more crunchy way of dealing with half-whatevers as well, and I like having *optional* crunch available for my players if they want to use it (providing it doesn't penalize those who don't.)
2) The campaign setting I run is the result of 40-some years of GM'ing in a variety of systems, not just D&D, so it incorporates a lot of ... unusual features that seem to work for my players. Because of that anything that is pure flavor text like the racial origins, is going to be torn apart and only the bits I (and my players) find interesting as additions to established canon will be retained. So, to be honest, it's not really that relevant to me as playtest material.
3) Crit changes are hard to judge in isolation. Without knowing the changes to Spells, Classes and NPCs, it's tricky to know what the end effect is really going to be. It has been mentioned that the rule writers are banking on Monster features to balance it out for non-entry-level parties, but I'd like to see that before I judge.
4) There's stuff that reads to me like they are intended to be 'example guidelines for DM rulings' but are presented as 'hard rules', like when a DM can call for a d20 Test. I'm sure it's going to get another pass through Editorial, but I hope they are getting actual Technical Editors for that job rather than relying on the Writers to do double duty. Unclear wording has been the downfall for many a system. :)
5) The big problem I have with inspiration is not the mechanism for getting it, but just getting my players to remember it's *there*. I've been using physical tokens to remind them, and it still gets lost in all the other crap they tend to accumulate (spell & item cards, tons of dice, miscellaneous props, etc.)
6) Grappling. This ... might be good? Need to actively playtest this.
7) Spell Lists. I'm not entirely convinced of the 'Primal' origin, but that might be prejudice on my part as in my campaign world I've been using just Arcane/Divine with 'Psionics' as a mysterious third origin from exposure to the Outer Beyond (my equivalent to the Far Realms). Splitting Primal out as it's own origin is... I'm gonna have to think through how to incorporate that into existing canon. :)
I think it's totally fair when the questionnaire comes out to answer some things with "OK so if you say X, does that mean Y you haven't mentioned is going to change?"
Just give them all your opinions, including all these questions, or saying "this is hard to judge." That's all fair game at this point.
I'm currently just marking up my PDF as I read and re-read it with comments and questions, and will hit them all with everything when it comes up. Anything they miss in the survey I'll be sure to cover here.
I'm super curious how some of these things will change *but* it's all supposed to be backwards compatible. They're already breaking some stuff, like having a *new* Alert feat that's different than the original. Does that mean they'll have two listings of "Alert" in Beyond dropdowns? Are we going to see a whole raft of things tagged "-5e" or something? Is that really *compatibility*? A lot of "races" (which I hate that term) are getting substantial upgrades for Level 1, is that to balance all the races, and how does that work with previous books and adventures?
I've never liked that some "races" are inherently better for some classes and there's no game framework around that, and I don't feel like what I read in the first pdf addresses it. In fact, it might make it worse. Personally, I'd like to see a lot more starting flexibility and balance, but even *that* might break backwards compatibility.
So one of my main responses at this point will be, "OK, so is this going to be 5e compatible or not and how?" Especially if we're looking at making it all run together in Beyond.
I wish this document gave more of a vertical slice of the system. This seems to be quite a horizontal slice.
Keeping the subject focus limited makes it a lot easier for them to absorb feedback from the surveys.
Right, because the feedback they get is irrelevant, since we can't know how anything else that might be changed interacts with this. We (currently) have to take everything else as unchanged, which will not occur as they've already said there will be regular new UA pdfs. For example, how can we know if crit changes are good or bad if we don't know how they've changed weapons, attacks, spellcasting, or individual spells?
I don't see how you can give valid criticism of a new model year of a car by putting the new steering wheel in last year's model.
If you're that cynical, why bother reading the UA? Just so you can get a head start on complaining? The feedback DOES matter, and they won't know your concerns if you don't submit the survey. Tell them what you think and when the later articles come out, if something about how they interact with the earlier material is a concern, tell them that too. They've ABSOLUTELY made changes from UA to official based on the feedback surveys in the past, no need to be such a pessimist.
The difference is a focused vertical slice that is testable in context versus a horizontal slice that doesn’t fit with the rest of the system and has zero context.
One of those provides a glimpse of a whole, the other doesn’t. One of those provides the availability for much more meaningful feedback with relevant context of that entire game. How can you tell how good a 1st level feat is if you don’t know what classes give at level 1? You can’t put together an entire character with this system. Your feedback can only say "this new thing feels bad in the old system."
How about trying to go by what the designers have said? They have said that they want this to be "One True" DnD. That Fifth Edition specifically is a good base board to go off of. So let's treat it that way. Let's assume nothing is changing besides what has already been put forth. Treat 5e as the base system and these rules as modular with it. Tell Wizards what DOESN'T work with 5e. Tell them what seems good with it. Tell them what COULD work with another minor tweak.
For example. Right now I think Races are fine except dragonborn. If their goal is to make all the races good for all the classes, dragonborn breath weapon should probably be balanced around being a bonus action. This way it doesnt feel so bad because you aren't giving up your entire action for it. Other than that, races aren't really pushing one class over another. The spells are useful whether you have spell slots to cast them again or not. The tremor sense is useful regardless. Luck is good regardless. There are no weapon proficiencies which ironically encourage you not to play a class that uses weapons. There is nothing in the races that isn't useful for both casters and non-casters. Talk about the balance of the 1st level feats against other 1st level feats, we know what those are. Talk about their balance against current available feats so that maybe we can give suggestions for other potential first level feats. Like maybe weapon master could be a good first level feat.
I have tried something similar to what they are doing with inspiration in the past. Personally not a huge fan, it still got largely ignored, except by like one player who people kept gifting their inspiration too because they kept forgetting to use it. So one player loved it the others less so. I was a player with it at one point too and I just used it to get advantage on a concentration check for an important spell. I would have made the save anyway, but having that option actually killed the tension. So personally I don't care for inspiration as a common thing. I am ok with it as a mechanic for the musician and human though. once per day advantage on any check for human seems cool. Just like giving advantage to one check after a short rest seems ok as well. But as something that is super recurring, it just feels cheap.
Crit change, I need to play with more, but just based on what we have..... not a fan. I don't mind it not existing for monsters at lower levels because of how easy it is to down or potentially even kill a player at that level with crits, but I think that is a problem with low level survivability and could be solved in other ways, like adding more base health at low levels. At higher levels crits can still through off the balance of an encounter a bit, but usually it is in a good way adding tension to an otherwise moderate fight. I do think limiting how many dice a player can add might be a good thing because paladin and rogue crits can be TOO swingy. I still think they should be the king of crits, but something like "when you crit you roll double the amount of dice, adding no more than 3 dice" may help. Honestly, not sure, but overall crits are fun, and add tension at higher levels. At lower levels crits may not be the issue, health may be.
Spell list, if they are intending to use this for the classes, as it seems to be hinted, they should really add a fourth list. Artistry. Bards and Artificers draw their powers from creativity and creation itself. They both have a mix of arcane type spells and support type spells, by making their list separate from wizards, warlock and sorcerers it would allow them to keep their identity. Also all of those times the things would say "you can choose from a wizard, sorcerer or warlock spell of xyz school" it never included bard or artificer. This just works more consistently to have bard and artificer separate from the arcane spell list.
These are just the thoughts I have had with the minor testing I have done.
Not sure how I feel about getting a free attempt to get released from a grapple rather than needing your action to release, but considering it might be easier to land as it is just to hit vs AC and you can then just immediately move them, it might be good.
Personally I think musical instruments cost too much and have always done too little in terms of tool proficiency. Most everything else are just optional rules being codified, and having played with most of those optional rules for years. Ya they are good, thank you.
Is this thread the main launchpad for OneD&D stuff in the forums? I'd kinda expected them to put up a dedicated subforum rather than shunt it into the Unearthed Arcana one.
Okay, so I had a thought. A lot of people have already said that this playtest is mirroring a lot of things happening in that system I know I already advocate for too much, so I won't mention it by name here. I think the reason for the removal of crits in spell casting, is to make room for a spell casting system like they have. A system where most, if not all spells have different effects depending on critical success or critical failure than just success or failure, something beyond just doubling damage. Of course to make such a thing worth it they would need to find a way to make crits more common.
So everyone wants to make a big deal out of the critical damage changes. I would like to see some sage advice on this change before going nuts over it. However, if you are opposed to the change, upvote those posts complaining about the change so that WotC sees your input. That's what this playtest is all about. But Please: How about actually testing it before ranting and raving over something you read? See how it actually effects your campaign before condemning the change. If you prefer hack and slash sure, this might be huge for you. But, if you enjoy role play, exploration, and problem solving it might not make that much difference.
So funny thing is, the table I'm at has been essentially using a version of the rules VERY similar to these new crit rules and we have 2-3 rogues at the table depending on the week.
The DM rule for Critical hit is to add the maximum of the weapon die. So a short sword crit is 1d6+6+stat. for our rogues it was 1d6+6+dex+ sneak attack. Being a bit of a rules hawk I caught on quickly but kept my eye on it. I've been at that table with that rule for a full year now it works just fine. Due to party comp we dont see a lot of spell attack rolls (mostly save type spells), So spell crits are very infrequent.
That being said, as a Cleric who makes heavy use of Inflict Wounds (yep, THAT cleric) I'm going to have to give real thought to not Critical hitting on a 20. My first reaction is, I like it, to me it feels more balanced, and with the proposed crit change to inspiration I'm still getting something bonus out of the equation. Dumping a 4th level spell slot into an inflict wounds is 100% something I'd regularly do, and that's like 6D10, with the existing rules that 12 D10 and with his rules its 60+6d10. Anyway you slice that, it's way too much if I'm being perfectly honest with myself.
Removal of critical hits from spells seems dubious, but remember: a nat20 gives you inspiration now. I'd say it's a more useful thing than a couple more dice that can always roll low.
getting rid of crits for spell attacks seems unbalanced to me. 10% relative nerf to casters. you get inspiration but no crit... makes the game less fun for casters. critical roll... who cares... youre a caster...
i would say the game might move faster, but people will still crit fish since you get inspiration.
I get nerfing guiding bolt crits, or sneak dice... but nerfing anything that isnt a weapon or a fist seems like an overcorrection.
to be fair casters can do exponentially more damage then standard weapon attacks.
getting rid of crits for spell attacks seems unbalanced to me. 10% relative nerf to casters. you get inspiration but no crit... makes the game less fun for casters. critical roll... who cares... youre a caster...
i would say the game might move faster, but people will still crit fish since you get inspiration.
I get nerfing guiding bolt crits, or sneak dice... but nerfing anything that isnt a weapon or a fist seems like an overcorrection.
to be fair casters can do exponentially more damage then standard weapon attacks.
This true, but the crit changes nerf everyone. No Critical Smites, Sneak Attack or any other added damaged dice associated with attacks. These changed don't really help narrow the gap.
I mean, we don't know what sub-classes are going to be in the next Player's Handbook; while I'm expecting there to be some casualties, I'm hoping grave cleric isn't one of them (especially since death cleric was never really intended for players to use), so if grave is staying in then presumably they'll just change that ability to function differently.
As for the critical hit changes and what it will do for monster balance; there has always been a degree of fudging required by DMs for the CR balance in the game, as two monsters at the same CR bracket can have wildly different difficulties depending upon the party composition and context in which they're fought. But really critical hits aren't that frequent, only a 1 in 20 chance, so for an individual monster the chances of actually rolling one during a fight aren't that high. It's only when you're facing groups of enemies that critical hits become likely, and in that case the critical hits probably aren't individually threatening, it's the difference in action economy that presents the challenge.
So personally I don't see the change noticeably affecting encounter difficulty all that much in practice, and it'll make the players less likely to just be suddenly dying as a result of dumb luck. I'm on board with that, I just hope they increase the variety in monster mechanics a bit more, or maybe even give us more mix-in features in whatever is the main monster manual, so we can quickly add unusual features to any monster to change things up a bit more easily for our players.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
Keeping the subject focus limited makes it a lot easier for them to absorb feedback from the surveys.
I didn’t mean anything about grave cleric in particular. I more meant they just wipe the slate clean. All the subclasses pre 1D&D would be pitched out, and they’d start new. And they can’t announce it officially, because then people will just stop buying books until the new edition drops. I mean, planescape will be a tough sell knowing it’s shelf life can be measured in months.
The crit mechanic is only part of it. There’s grave cleric, but I’m betting there’s other things that are impacted that people haven’t thought of or realized yet. And I’m sure there’s other things.
Like, if they maintain this push for using inspiration, I could see them designing new subclasses that give more ways to generate and use it, as an example. But any change they make to the base rules will reach out. For example if they make a change to temp hp (I’m not trying to suggest they will, this is just an example to help with explaining my theory) it would impact a number of subclasses and spells. So they could either go re-write all of them, or just say, they don’t work anymore, time for new stuff. Like when 3.5 came out, and there was a guide to change your characters, but really everyone just ended up having to make new characters.
It also goes a way towards explaining why we haven’t gotten any new subclasses recently. Save for the playtest for the giant book, and the card stuff, which now seems destined for the deck of many things book. But there were none in printed in spelljammer, for example, which seems like it could use some. Could be they are holding off until they have those class/subclass mechanics more dialed in.
Right, because the feedback they get is irrelevant, since we can't know how anything else that might be changed interacts with this. We (currently) have to take everything else as unchanged, which will not occur as they've already said there will be regular new UA pdfs. For example, how can we know if crit changes are good or bad if we don't know how they've changed weapons, attacks, spellcasting, or individual spells?
I don't see how you can give valid criticism of a new model year of a car by putting the new steering wheel in last year's model.
If you're that cynical, why bother reading the UA? Just so you can get a head start on complaining? The feedback DOES matter, and they won't know your concerns if you don't submit the survey. Tell them what you think and when the later articles come out, if something about how they interact with the earlier material is a concern, tell them that too. They've ABSOLUTELY made changes from UA to official based on the feedback surveys in the past, no need to be such a pessimist.
Not necessarily; from what we've seen in UA they've been working towards background/feat changes for a while, so it would surprise me if they release anything that requires more than minor errata to correct (based on any slight changes in the final edition) for that. Magic items, spells and races should be relatively easy to errata for minor changes.
What I'm curious about are sub-classes; Spelljammer was ripe for some new sub-classes yet didn't get any, and I do wonder if that's because they knew much more substantial errata might be required to fix them since (sub-)classes will be the most vulnerable things to changes in the new edition?
I'm hoping that since this is basically going to be 5.5e that that will mean they're going to update most sub-classes, maybe merging a few that are quite similar, for the new player's handbook, so we won't have to rely on older books for many (if any) of those; there may be some that don't make the cut, or will get reimagined by a later book, but in those cases they may get errata'd so the content remains usable in spite of any rules changes.
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I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
It isn't about whether the feedback is going to matter or not. It's that the feedback wont be accurate. Without knowing what they're intending for the connected parts it's pretty much impossible to accurately judge what we've been given. Simply put, we have no real context to judge the changes in. Lets take the monster crit rules for example. They could be good given the right changes to monster design. Are they actually good? Who the hell knows, we haven't been shown what their new monsters look like. What about player crits only affecting weapon dice? That could also be good. Is it? Who the hell knows, we haven't seen any class design changes or monster design changes, and that hinges on both of those.
So long story short, any feedback we give on this stuff is inevitably going to be flawed because we're only looking at like 1/8th of the full picture.
You're talking as if the full picture already exists. This is likely just what they've developed to a point they feel is ready for widespread playtesting. It makes sense to start with character creation, and since the concern about monster critical hits is largely about 1st level characters they've given us enough to digest and test these rule changes with first level characters.
The full picture is likely to change multiple times as a result of feedback. The fact that some people are already looking ahead and finding features that get invalidated by this crit change further down the road is excellent. It will help remind the devs of things they need to highlight to be adjusted when they reach that point in playtest documents.
The feedback doesn't need to be perfect it just needs to be.
If they're rolling out playtesting and hinting at changes in monster design as they've already done then they have some idea of what the full picture kinda looks like. It almost certainly isn't set in stone, but it doesn't need to be. Yes, the full picture is going to change a bit as time passes and they get feedback, but it would move in a better direction if they received more accurate responses. Responses that we could give more accurately if they gave us more information.
The difference is a focused vertical slice that is testable in context versus a horizontal slice that doesn’t fit with the rest of the system and has zero context.
One of those provides a glimpse of a whole, the other doesn’t. One of those provides the availability for much more meaningful feedback with relevant context of that entire game. How can you tell how good a 1st level feat is if you don’t know what classes give at level 1? You can’t put together an entire character with this system. Your feedback can only say "this new thing feels bad in the old system."
Hrmmm... This is difficult to playtest without the rest of the system available, as I'm suspicious that these changes are indicative of *other* changes in the ruleset. So here are my first impressions:
1) I get wanting to make Backgrounds more impactful by shifting things into them from Racial Features. But to be honest, I prefer the method of 'Ancestry, Culture, and Background' systems that are employed by some other rulesets, and have been made available through DM's Guild for 5e. A couple of those have a more crunchy way of dealing with half-whatevers as well, and I like having *optional* crunch available for my players if they want to use it (providing it doesn't penalize those who don't.)
2) The campaign setting I run is the result of 40-some years of GM'ing in a variety of systems, not just D&D, so it incorporates a lot of ... unusual features that seem to work for my players. Because of that anything that is pure flavor text like the racial origins, is going to be torn apart and only the bits I (and my players) find interesting as additions to established canon will be retained. So, to be honest, it's not really that relevant to me as playtest material.
3) Crit changes are hard to judge in isolation. Without knowing the changes to Spells, Classes and NPCs, it's tricky to know what the end effect is really going to be. It has been mentioned that the rule writers are banking on Monster features to balance it out for non-entry-level parties, but I'd like to see that before I judge.
4) There's stuff that reads to me like they are intended to be 'example guidelines for DM rulings' but are presented as 'hard rules', like when a DM can call for a d20 Test. I'm sure it's going to get another pass through Editorial, but I hope they are getting actual Technical Editors for that job rather than relying on the Writers to do double duty. Unclear wording has been the downfall for many a system. :)
5) The big problem I have with inspiration is not the mechanism for getting it, but just getting my players to remember it's *there*. I've been using physical tokens to remind them, and it still gets lost in all the other crap they tend to accumulate (spell & item cards, tons of dice, miscellaneous props, etc.)
6) Grappling. This ... might be good? Need to actively playtest this.
7) Spell Lists. I'm not entirely convinced of the 'Primal' origin, but that might be prejudice on my part as in my campaign world I've been using just Arcane/Divine with 'Psionics' as a mysterious third origin from exposure to the Outer Beyond (my equivalent to the Far Realms). Splitting Primal out as it's own origin is... I'm gonna have to think through how to incorporate that into existing canon. :)
I think it's totally fair when the questionnaire comes out to answer some things with "OK so if you say X, does that mean Y you haven't mentioned is going to change?"
Just give them all your opinions, including all these questions, or saying "this is hard to judge." That's all fair game at this point.
I'm currently just marking up my PDF as I read and re-read it with comments and questions, and will hit them all with everything when it comes up. Anything they miss in the survey I'll be sure to cover here.
I'm super curious how some of these things will change *but* it's all supposed to be backwards compatible. They're already breaking some stuff, like having a *new* Alert feat that's different than the original. Does that mean they'll have two listings of "Alert" in Beyond dropdowns? Are we going to see a whole raft of things tagged "-5e" or something? Is that really *compatibility*? A lot of "races" (which I hate that term) are getting substantial upgrades for Level 1, is that to balance all the races, and how does that work with previous books and adventures?
I've never liked that some "races" are inherently better for some classes and there's no game framework around that, and I don't feel like what I read in the first pdf addresses it. In fact, it might make it worse. Personally, I'd like to see a lot more starting flexibility and balance, but even *that* might break backwards compatibility.
So one of my main responses at this point will be, "OK, so is this going to be 5e compatible or not and how?" Especially if we're looking at making it all run together in Beyond.
How about trying to go by what the designers have said? They have said that they want this to be "One True" DnD. That Fifth Edition specifically is a good base board to go off of. So let's treat it that way. Let's assume nothing is changing besides what has already been put forth. Treat 5e as the base system and these rules as modular with it. Tell Wizards what DOESN'T work with 5e. Tell them what seems good with it. Tell them what COULD work with another minor tweak.
For example. Right now I think Races are fine except dragonborn. If their goal is to make all the races good for all the classes, dragonborn breath weapon should probably be balanced around being a bonus action. This way it doesnt feel so bad because you aren't giving up your entire action for it. Other than that, races aren't really pushing one class over another. The spells are useful whether you have spell slots to cast them again or not. The tremor sense is useful regardless. Luck is good regardless. There are no weapon proficiencies which ironically encourage you not to play a class that uses weapons. There is nothing in the races that isn't useful for both casters and non-casters. Talk about the balance of the 1st level feats against other 1st level feats, we know what those are. Talk about their balance against current available feats so that maybe we can give suggestions for other potential first level feats. Like maybe weapon master could be a good first level feat.
I have tried something similar to what they are doing with inspiration in the past. Personally not a huge fan, it still got largely ignored, except by like one player who people kept gifting their inspiration too because they kept forgetting to use it. So one player loved it the others less so. I was a player with it at one point too and I just used it to get advantage on a concentration check for an important spell. I would have made the save anyway, but having that option actually killed the tension. So personally I don't care for inspiration as a common thing. I am ok with it as a mechanic for the musician and human though. once per day advantage on any check for human seems cool. Just like giving advantage to one check after a short rest seems ok as well. But as something that is super recurring, it just feels cheap.
Crit change, I need to play with more, but just based on what we have..... not a fan. I don't mind it not existing for monsters at lower levels because of how easy it is to down or potentially even kill a player at that level with crits, but I think that is a problem with low level survivability and could be solved in other ways, like adding more base health at low levels. At higher levels crits can still through off the balance of an encounter a bit, but usually it is in a good way adding tension to an otherwise moderate fight. I do think limiting how many dice a player can add might be a good thing because paladin and rogue crits can be TOO swingy. I still think they should be the king of crits, but something like "when you crit you roll double the amount of dice, adding no more than 3 dice" may help. Honestly, not sure, but overall crits are fun, and add tension at higher levels. At lower levels crits may not be the issue, health may be.
Spell list, if they are intending to use this for the classes, as it seems to be hinted, they should really add a fourth list. Artistry. Bards and Artificers draw their powers from creativity and creation itself. They both have a mix of arcane type spells and support type spells, by making their list separate from wizards, warlock and sorcerers it would allow them to keep their identity. Also all of those times the things would say "you can choose from a wizard, sorcerer or warlock spell of xyz school" it never included bard or artificer. This just works more consistently to have bard and artificer separate from the arcane spell list.
These are just the thoughts I have had with the minor testing I have done.
Not sure how I feel about getting a free attempt to get released from a grapple rather than needing your action to release, but considering it might be easier to land as it is just to hit vs AC and you can then just immediately move them, it might be good.
Personally I think musical instruments cost too much and have always done too little in terms of tool proficiency. Most everything else are just optional rules being codified, and having played with most of those optional rules for years. Ya they are good, thank you.
Is this thread the main launchpad for OneD&D stuff in the forums? I'd kinda expected them to put up a dedicated subforum rather than shunt it into the Unearthed Arcana one.
Okay, so I had a thought. A lot of people have already said that this playtest is mirroring a lot of things happening in that system I know I already advocate for too much, so I won't mention it by name here. I think the reason for the removal of crits in spell casting, is to make room for a spell casting system like they have. A system where most, if not all spells have different effects depending on critical success or critical failure than just success or failure, something beyond just doubling damage. Of course to make such a thing worth it they would need to find a way to make crits more common.
So funny thing is, the table I'm at has been essentially using a version of the rules VERY similar to these new crit rules and we have 2-3 rogues at the table depending on the week.
The DM rule for Critical hit is to add the maximum of the weapon die. So a short sword crit is 1d6+6+stat. for our rogues it was 1d6+6+dex+ sneak attack. Being a bit of a rules hawk I caught on quickly but kept my eye on it. I've been at that table with that rule for a full year now it works just fine. Due to party comp we dont see a lot of spell attack rolls (mostly save type spells), So spell crits are very infrequent.
That being said, as a Cleric who makes heavy use of Inflict Wounds (yep, THAT cleric) I'm going to have to give real thought to not Critical hitting on a 20. My first reaction is, I like it, to me it feels more balanced, and with the proposed crit change to inspiration I'm still getting something bonus out of the equation. Dumping a 4th level spell slot into an inflict wounds is 100% something I'd regularly do, and that's like 6D10, with the existing rules that 12 D10 and with his rules its 60+6d10. Anyway you slice that, it's way too much if I'm being perfectly honest with myself.
Removal of critical hits from spells seems dubious, but remember: a nat20 gives you inspiration now. I'd say it's a more useful thing than a couple more dice that can always roll low.
to be fair casters can do exponentially more damage then standard weapon attacks.
This true, but the crit changes nerf everyone. No Critical Smites, Sneak Attack or any other added damaged dice associated with attacks. These changed don't really help narrow the gap.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
considering this ruleset is only focusing on player characters I wouldnt jump to the conclusion that monsters cannot crit