“Orcs and goblinoids are people, and just as capable of being good or evil as any other person. Demons and devils are the embodiment of pure evil (chaotic and lawful respectively).”
But that is exactly what orcs and goblins were to begin with, they literally could not exert free will and defy their gods. D&D lore has now changed to have orcs and goblins as playable races, same as drow. They are no longer intrinsically evil and are fully capable of making their own choices about their morals and behaviours. And I am fully for this. Some of my favourite characters in recent years have been a goblin paladin, a drow bard, and a goblin drunken master monk. I love that the lore has changed.
My argument is that someone basically said that they aren’t using orcs as a generic bad guy race any more, but they are using demons and devils because they are all intrinsically evil and have no free will. Surely people can see that this argument is completely flawed and hypocritical? Surely I am not the only person here that thinks if it is wrong to say race ‘a’ is intrinsically evil and has no free will, then surely it is just as equally wrong to say that race ‘b’ is intrinsically evil and has no free will? If the lore has been changed to make ‘a’ an acceptable race then surely the lore should be changed for ‘b’ otherwise you are literally just substituting one racist opinion for another. Either all races are considered to be free to live and chose, or none are.
Demons and devils are anthropic personifications of evil. They're not born, they're poofed into existence as full adults with all the knowledge of how to fight, speak, and use their innate abilities already part of them. Orcs and goblins, on the other hand, reproduce the old fashioned way. They're born helpless, squirming infants like every other humanoid race. They need to be taught languages and how to take care of themselves. They have no innate knowledge or understanding of how to use a weapon.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
It’s terrible, and a lot of pointless nonsense. Can anybody explain how changing it from being a game to a ‘digital play experience’ actually makes any difference whatsoever to actual game play? Or how rephrasing ‘roll a perception check’ to ‘roll a d20 perception test’ has any relevance? It’s change for the sake of change. It doesn’t make the game better in any meaningful way.
It already is a digital play experience for loads of us, my games are run using DnD beyond for character sheets, a VTT for maps, discord and avrae for communication and for most of my party electronic dice rolling on DnD beyond or the VTT. As for wordings of the rule book I will say again as others have. This is a pay test I repeat this is a play test, give your feedback, hopefully in a more succinct way then this post, it may be wording like this changes. It might be that Wizards have done studies with thousands of people who don’t play DnD and this line worked better let’s wait and see in 2 years time when all the feedback is fed into the actual release.
I know it’s a play test and you are utterly missing my point. Pretty much most games over the last couple of years have been digital and online. But tell me, how does changing the name from being a game to a digital play experience change anything within the game itself? It is literally just changing the name for the sake of it.
there is No other TTRPG I know of where the publisher has a fully digital option for players. Wizards is selling a unique aspect of the new DnD which is an in house VTT, Digital library and with Avrae intervention to Discord. All other TTRPGs rely on 3rd parties to do the digital bit for them.
Surely that’s being specieist against demons? Don’t they also feel pain? Don’t they also have hopes and dreams and aspirations? Don’t they also laugh or cry? What on earth is the difference in saying Orcs are bad guys or demons are bad guys? It’s exactly the same thing, and highly hypocritical to say it’s fine to label every single demon as evil and twisted bad guys, but it’s not okay to say the same about orcs. PMSL do you not understand that?
Demons aren't supposed to be free willed peoples, they are extra planar beings whose essence is aligned with a plane of Chaos and Evil. That's different from orcs and goblinoids, who are explicitly written as free willed peoples. You don't seem to like the fact that orcs and goblinoids are written as people, but they are. Just say it clearly, you don't regard orcs and goblinoids as people.
I can pretty much guarantee that nobody I know, and none of the places I play are going to stop saying ‘make a perception roll’ and start saying ‘make a perception d20 test’.
Well good, because that would be incorrect. "d20 test" is an umbrella term that encompasses ability checks, attack rolls, and saving throws. Since a perception checkis an ability check and not an attack roll or a saving throw, there's no reason to call it a d20 test, and in fact, doing so would probably obfuscate useful information.
Are you just whining about this because you don't actually understand it?
Bold by me for effect. So you are saying that whilst an ability check is covered by the term d20 test, that in fact there’s no actual reason to call it that? Do you not see how you have contradicted yourself and how silly your argument sounds?
You're ... really not doing yourself any favors in carrying out this argument. You are making yourself look rather foolish, to be honest. This argument makes you look deliberately ignorant of what an "umbrella term" is.
Making one term to cover Ability Checks, Attack Rolls, and Saving Throws is going to let me stop having to type "Ability Checks, Attack Rolls, and Saving Throws" and that will be helpful for WOTC from a logistical perspective. Do a search for ... I think the order it comes in is, "an ability check, a saving throw, or an attack roll" and see how many times it comes up. It's awkward and having one term to refer to all of them when a feature affects all of them, like say Inspiration, is going to be so much more convenient. It is a term of convenience in order to package Ability Checks, Saving Throws, and Attack Rolls all into one thing. You do not have to refer to any of those, individually, as a d20 Test, but it sure as heck gets easier to refer to all of them at once if you have one term for the lot.
I do understand what you are saying but be honest, how many times during a session would you need to refer to all 3 at the same time? Maybe during a session 0 or in the first couple of sessions where you are teaching completely new players. I mean I can’t really remember ever doing it even once in a regular session. So yeah, I think they are wasting time coming up with new names for things that don’t really matter and not enough time on the things that do matter.
Do you not see that they are saving themselves work in the future? If my business were writing and I had to write rules with specificity I would do exactly the same thing.
You only need to look at the new Spelljammer material to see how poor and unoriginal it is, they just ripped stuff out of the original 2e stuff and dumbed it down. I mean Astral Elf is just a mixture of High Elf and Eladrin, with the word Astral in front of the name. It could have been so much better, they could have provided a wealth of information about them, An Imperial highly developed space faring society. But now, instead they spent their time changing role-playing game to digital play experience and creating a new name for something barely ever mentioned, nobody asked for or wanted.
So you disliked Spelljammer and are bringing that up in this argument where it is tangential at best. You're also complaining about them making a VTT when that is basically the number one thing people have been asking of DNDBeyond for years and years. And you're saying it's wasting time and that no one wanted it?
This is far to much to break down on my phone, so simply put;
1. Orcs and goblins weren’t free willed playable races, they were monsters, made to be evil by their gods. They were never good aligned, and never free willed which makes them no different to devils and demons. D&D lore has now changed to make orcs and goblins not intrinsically evil - I have no problem with that, but your argument that demons and devils are made to be pure evil and not have any free will is as hypocritical as saying that orc and goblins used to be thought of as that. Surely you can see the hypocrisy? I mean Demons and Devils are people too.
2. No, I don’t see orcs and goblins as people. Nor do I see elves or halflings or dragonborn as people. Because they aren’t real, they are figments of someone’s imagination. That’s like saying Prof Plum in Cluedo is real, or the racing car in Monopoly is a real car.
3. I’m British, educated beyond degree level, and english is my native language. I know what an umbrella term is, and I still think it is unnecessary. If a group of individual things are practically never referred to as a group then there really is no need to spend time and money developing a name for that group of things. You calling me stupid doesn’t invalidate my point and in fact only serves to make your stance weaker. It is a well known fact that in any debate, when one side is reduced to insulting the other participants rather than defending their stance then that side has already lost the debate.
4. Yes I mentioned Spelljammer specifically as an example of what they should have been spending more time on rather than creating a new term for a group of things that are never referred to as a group.
5. I have never once mentioned a vtt in any of my posts until this very sentence.
Ok I will talk about just one thing here, as someone who has written technical documents and also my own game systems creating the term D20 test is practically a brilliant move by wizards, why, because it will save printing space for other content. Forget about what you call it on the table, and I guarantee actually your table will start using it when discussing spells, feats and Inspiration (which is a bigger thing now) but take the 2 sentences below.
Inspiration may be used to reroll any ability check, attack roll or saving throw
or
at the start of the book.
A D20 test is any ability check, attack roll or saving throw
later in the book
Inspiration dice The player can reroll any D20 test
Silvery Barbs The player can reroll any D 20 test.
I make it 45 characters to ability check, attack etc etc etc
vs I think 56 (including spaces) to define the term D20 test and from then on, in every book published ever going forward. 8 characters to say D20 test.
So wizards is saving itself loads of characters in every book moving forward that can be used for other more important words. I mean I can think of several locations.
Lucky Feat
Inspiration
Advantage and Disadvantage description in the rules
Silvery Barbs
Various conditions
There will be many other places, 37 characters gained in each of those 4 places is over 100 characters overall. Multiply that out across the PHB, DM Guide, Monster Manual for a start. Then add in each additional book released, very quickly Wizards have gained a paragraph or even a whole page across there works.
And yes, your table will start saying it, because it is easier then saying “ability check, attack roll or saving throw”
Honestly, I don't see a problem with generic bad guy groups so long as you keep it setting accurate. It can arguably create even more interesting stories, especially with how many races are made evil by their god.
You force a DM to think a specific way when home brewing, for 20 years in my campaigns orcs have never been made evil and have been able to run the full spectrum of alignments, that makes for more interesting stories and makes players stop and think more. Is there a way out of this that does not involve hitting stuff.
Did you not see the part where I said setting accurate, your generically evil but reasonable to be fought at low levels bad guy can be frickin halflings for all I care. Because sometimes believe it or not, I just want to roll some dice and kill a thing without having to stop without having to stop for a 50 minute RP about the moral quandry of what were doing.
Rolling some dice and killing things without having to stop for a 50 minute RP about the moral quandary of what you're doing is totally fine. I think the question is why you need that to be justified by race rather than, say, willing membership in some evil organization.
Honestly, I don't see a problem with generic bad guy groups so long as you keep it setting accurate. It can arguably create even more interesting stories, especially with how many races are made evil by their god.
You force a DM to think a specific way when home brewing, for 20 years in my campaigns orcs have never been made evil and have been able to run the full spectrum of alignments, that makes for more interesting stories and makes players stop and think more. Is there a way out of this that does not involve hitting stuff.
Did you not see the part where I said setting accurate, your generically evil but reasonable to be fought at low levels bad guy can be frickin halflings for all I care. Because sometimes believe it or not, I just want to roll some dice and kill a thing without having to stop without having to stop for a 50 minute RP about the moral quandry of what were doing.
Rolling some dice and killing things without having to stop for a 50 minute RP about the moral quandary of what you're doing is totally fine. I think the question is why you need that to be justified by race rather than, say, willing membership in some evil organization.
Honestly, I don't see a problem with generic bad guy groups so long as you keep it setting accurate. It can arguably create even more interesting stories, especially with how many races are made evil by their god.
You force a DM to think a specific way when home brewing, for 20 years in my campaigns orcs have never been made evil and have been able to run the full spectrum of alignments, that makes for more interesting stories and makes players stop and think more. Is there a way out of this that does not involve hitting stuff.
Did you not see the part where I said setting accurate, your generically evil but reasonable to be fought at low levels bad guy can be frickin halflings for all I care. Because sometimes believe it or not, I just want to roll some dice and kill a thing without having to stop without having to stop for a 50 minute RP about the moral quandry of what were doing.
Rolling some dice and killing things without having to stop for a 50 minute RP about the moral quandary of what you're doing is totally fine. I think the question is why you need that to be justified by race rather than, say, willing membership in some evil organization.
The point is this. If a race is morally complex (ie they're not just twirling villains who want to kill, **** and pillage), then the question must come as to why they're doing it. The situation can't be black and white, there has to be a motive for they're doing it...which normally means that there is a more moral way of resolving it than beheading them all or having a BBQ courtesy of the Wizard's Fireball. Sometimes, you just want the easy way of just saying "yup, he's an enemy, there's no reasoning with them, kill them all!" without spending ages explaining why this group of morally complex creatures are beyond all redemption. Saying that all Goblins (or whatever) are those morally black and white creatures, and certainly on the evil side, makes them a nice go-to creature that we don't have to justify why they're all kill-on-sight creatures.
I'm not saying that I fully agree with the position. I think Gobs and Orcs can be more interesting if they're morally complex. I can see the problematic side of it too. But I also see the appeal of being able to just pick up a sword and attack an enemy without having the concern of "what if I just sat down and discussed things...would I have been able to save a life today?" Of course, creatures like Zombies fit the morally simple description, but they're dumb and it's not the same as fighting against opponents whose brains aren't already rotten.
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If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
In the base cosmology of D&D 5e, Demons are literally made of Chaotic Evil. They cannot be any alignment besides chaotic evil, because then they would turn into something else, just like Zariel turned into a Devil when she fell and Grazzt turned into a Demon Lord when he stopped being Lawful Evil.
Orcs, Goblins, and Bugbears are true-breeding sentient humanoid races that can learn morality and in a few settings have no inherent inclinations towards evil (Eberron, Ravnica), and in Exandria are just cursed by an evil god to be more likely to be evil.
If a Goblin in the Forgotten Realms stops being evil, they're still a Goblin. If a Demon in Planescape stops being evil, they stop being a demon and become something else (like that Fey-Balor in Wildemount and Nocticula from Pathfinder).
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Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
The point is this. If a race is morally complex (ie they're not just twirling villains who want to kill, **** and pillage), then the question must come as to why they're doing it. The situation can't be black and white, there has to be a motive for they're doing it...which normally means that there is a more moral way of resolving it than beheading them all or having a BBQ courtesy of the Wizard's Fireball. Sometimes, you just want the easy way of just saying "yup, he's an enemy, there's no reasoning with them, kill them all!" without spending ages explaining why this group of morally complex creatures are beyond all redemption. Saying that all Goblins (or whatever) are those morally black and white creatures, and certainly on the evil side, makes them a nice go-to creature that we don't have to justify why they're all kill-on-sight creatures.
I'm not saying that I fully agree with the position. I think Gobs and Orcs can be more interesting if they're morally complex. I can see the problematic side of it too. But I also see the appeal of being able to just pick up a sword and attack an enemy without having the concern of "what if I just sat down and discussed things...would I have been able to save a life today?" Of course, creatures like Zombies fit the morally simple description, but they're dumb and it's not the same as fighting against opponents whose brains aren't already rotten.
That's a very good distillation of the game problem. And (as has already been mentioned) things like demons and fiends and constructs and undead and predators and eldritch monsters can fill the intelligent-enemy void.
Besides, if you just want to "pick up a sword and attack an enemy" why worry about motivation and morality at all? Just play the wargame.
A girl spends one weekend visiting with family, driving around and having a generally fun time, and her thread on Not Panicking turns into yet another [REDACTED] trashfire.
Allow me to put paid to this line of discussion, gentlemen. Ahem: this is not the thread to talk about the morality of anything. if Wizards puts a species in a book as "Playable", that carries certain connotations and requirements. Always has, always will. End of discussion.
As for "d20 test"? Every word in a document like this is three other words that didn't get printed. Word count, page count, layout and book size are all critical issues for physical book production. Replacing "ability check, attack roll, or saving throw" with "d20 test" turns seven words and forty-three characters into two words and eight characters. Over the course of an entire book? That's an entire paragraph or three of Utterly Required For All Players Everywhere Faerunian Lore you get to read that would'nt have been there if they hadn't decided to settle on the short, snappy, useful "d20 test".
It's not going anywhere. It's useful. I guarantee Wizards isn't going back to using half a paragraph to describe d20 tests anymore. Get over it.
Can we move on, please? I'm not doing the whole Unbearable Baggage of Orcs thing again, and I will start reporting people who try and continue it.
A playtest for a new system would have options...not a fully fleshed out revised rule set. Like the 5e play test did. Yes I do know what is going on, they are making a new edition of DnD and trying to deceive the fans so we do not stop buying books that are going to be obsolete in two years. please explain to me how these new rules are in any way compatible with what is in the current players handbook?
3. I’m British, educated beyond degree level, and english is my native language.
Umm...And what does that have to do with anything? It doesn't add any additional weight to your argument. I happen to be British, educated beyond degree level and English is my native language. It's irrelevant.
The term "D20 Test" is probably only going to come up in the documentation when it refers to all 3 types of roll. You're being pedantic.
BTW if we're being pedantic you should be spelling English with a capital E since you are referring to the language.
For everyone freaking out about the name, this will go the same way DnD next did...it will be know as 5.5 or 6th edition...the way its looking its going to be 6th edition. we will see with further play materials. To respond to the Digital experience, well digital assets are cheaper than physical. they are in the business to make money, and a digital play space is a massive money maker. Digital minis, digital playsets, you want to customize your characters mini "buy this skin". capes, amulets, staves, swords, shields, tabards, color schemes, armor, magical items, digital dice, mounts, etc. you pay a dollar or five for a glowing staff...that's not that much.....they sell 10,000 of them to the however many players. when most people are only playing 5-6 seasons that how many "basic" packs they are going to sell? O and if you do not like the changes they are making to the game and get to load on a message board than they can ban your account and the hundreds to thousands of dollars you have spent on this game and decades of playing well that not going to matter...cause the real revenue going to come from the people who just want a shiny sword, to go Merry Sue through hordes of dragons for a couple of seasons and forget theirs login and has to create another account to re-buy the "starter Pack" they want their own Fort Night guys. I'm not saying its going to be all bad, just Don't think your going to be able to run your From scratch homebrew world and campaign stacked with house rules on it.
A playtest for a new system would have options...not a fully fleshed out revised rule set. Like the 5e play test did. Yes I do know what is going on, they are making a new edition of DnD and trying to deceive the fans so we do not stop buying books that are going to be obsolete in two years. please explain to me how these new rules are in any way compatible with what is in the current players handbook?
When compared to every edition change in the past 20 years, this is not an edition change. It's most comparable to the 3e ---> 3.5e change, but even then, from what we have seen, the changes are very small. Your books won't be "obsolete" in two years, they will work basically completely fine with the updated ruleset. There is very, very little you would have to do to convert your games to the updated version of the ruleset.
They're trying to assure fans that they won't have to rebuy all of their books again. It will still be 5e, just slightly different, where monsters and spells can't deal extra damage from critical hits, racial ASIs are now background ASIs, and feats are divided by level and you get an extra one at level 1 (which you're supposed to tie to your background, but who knows how often that will happen).
From what we've seen so far, this isn't an edition change, because your books from earlier in 5e will still (mostly) work in 2024's 5e.
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A playtest for a new system would have options...not a fully fleshed out revised rule set. Like the 5e play test did. Yes I do know what is going on, they are making a new edition of DnD and trying to deceive the fans so we do not stop buying books that are going to be obsolete in two years.
I've run a fair amount of playtesting in my time, and "here's a thing, test it, revise it, test some more, etc." is the normal playtest cycle. Sometimes, depending on time, you try A/B versions in parallel, but that dilutes the playtest data.
And, when you're testing a revision to an extant thing, you already have a well-tested option, which is to use the original. You don't need data on that.
please explain to me how these new rules are in any way compatible with what is in the current players handbook?
They share all the basic mechanics. A character built in 5e looks a lot like a character built in these rules. You can currently take either one of them and run it in either ruleset and it'll function just fine, if not perfectly identically.
All you have done is baselessly accuse others of being "emotional". Yah, no. Not going to just let that fly.
Not "others" plural. Just you, because you literally told people that they should be angry at WotC because in a playtest document they proposed a change to a mechanic you like.
Speak poorly about the proposed change all you want in the survey. But having such an extreme reaction to a proposed change that they want feedback on is ridiculous.
Just because you don't understand it, (races changing) doesn't make the way you like it better. You can have you opinion, and others are allowed to disagree.
What, that races should have to be beholden to their default culture in one setting? No thanks, keep your Toril and Oerth out of my Eberron.
1) Oh, sorry. Apparently it was CPTBrando that was taking the proposed change to the crit rules personally. Not you. My mistake. However, you did decide to support them and try to do a "No U" argument, which is what I was referring to. People getting angry at WotC for proposing a change to crit rules are overreacting.
2) They're separating race and culture. You asked how it was a strawman to say that the races are becoming more bland because of removed subraces. My response to that is a) the Dwarf and Halfling subraces were already bland, so removing them gets rid of blandness in the game and b) the main reason they're removing some features from races is to separate race and culture, because they're very different things that shouldn't be covered by the same game mechanic.
If you were genuine in your questions and just asking for clarification, apologies. I assumed you were acting in bad faith due to hearing those exact same questions from trolls multiple times in discussions like these.
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Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Well, there is one time I used my background feature: the Outlander's ability to automatically survive in the wild was helpful in Tomb of Annihilation AND in Out of the Abyss.
Hmmmmm, actually, that might be an argument for scrapping it.
Just scrap it all. It is obviously too easy.... and when it isn't, it is clearly too hard. Then publish not one, but two new editions.
One has a lot of prose, examples and really easy to manage rules with the punchline in a book to be published 10 years later, the ultimate rule: "The party wins."
The other with a lot of prose, examples and really elaborate, harsh, 'realistic,' very challenging to manage rules with the punchline in a book to be published 10 years later, the ultimate rule: "The party loses."
Clearly the best solution for all concerned.
I get that you’re being sarcastic but I’m not sure I get the joke…
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Personally, I am all for Fiendish rights.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
Demons and devils are anthropic personifications of evil. They're not born, they're poofed into existence as full adults with all the knowledge of how to fight, speak, and use their innate abilities already part of them. Orcs and goblins, on the other hand, reproduce the old fashioned way. They're born helpless, squirming infants like every other humanoid race. They need to be taught languages and how to take care of themselves. They have no innate knowledge or understanding of how to use a weapon.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
there is No other TTRPG I know of where the publisher has a fully digital option for players. Wizards is selling a unique aspect of the new DnD which is an in house VTT, Digital library and with Avrae intervention to Discord. All other TTRPGs rely on 3rd parties to do the digital bit for them.
Ok I will talk about just one thing here, as someone who has written technical documents and also my own game systems creating the term D20 test is practically a brilliant move by wizards, why, because it will save printing space for other content. Forget about what you call it on the table, and I guarantee actually your table will start using it when discussing spells, feats and Inspiration (which is a bigger thing now) but take the 2 sentences below.
Inspiration may be used to reroll any ability check, attack roll or saving throw
or
at the start of the book.
A D20 test is any ability check, attack roll or saving throw
later in the book
Inspiration dice The player can reroll any D20 test
Silvery Barbs The player can reroll any D 20 test.
I make it 45 characters to ability check, attack etc etc etc
vs I think 56 (including spaces) to define the term D20 test and from then on, in every book published ever going forward. 8 characters to say D20 test.
So wizards is saving itself loads of characters in every book moving forward that can be used for other more important words. I mean I can think of several locations.
Lucky Feat
Inspiration
Advantage and Disadvantage description in the rules
Silvery Barbs
Various conditions
There will be many other places, 37 characters gained in each of those 4 places is over 100 characters overall. Multiply that out across the PHB, DM Guide, Monster Manual for a start. Then add in each additional book released, very quickly Wizards have gained a paragraph or even a whole page across there works.
And yes, your table will start saying it, because it is easier then saying “ability check, attack roll or saving throw”
Rolling some dice and killing things without having to stop for a 50 minute RP about the moral quandary of what you're doing is totally fine. I think the question is why you need that to be justified by race rather than, say, willing membership in some evil organization.
Like the Cult of the Dragon in Faerun.
The point is this. If a race is morally complex (ie they're not just twirling villains who want to kill, **** and pillage), then the question must come as to why they're doing it. The situation can't be black and white, there has to be a motive for they're doing it...which normally means that there is a more moral way of resolving it than beheading them all or having a BBQ courtesy of the Wizard's Fireball. Sometimes, you just want the easy way of just saying "yup, he's an enemy, there's no reasoning with them, kill them all!" without spending ages explaining why this group of morally complex creatures are beyond all redemption. Saying that all Goblins (or whatever) are those morally black and white creatures, and certainly on the evil side, makes them a nice go-to creature that we don't have to justify why they're all kill-on-sight creatures.
I'm not saying that I fully agree with the position. I think Gobs and Orcs can be more interesting if they're morally complex. I can see the problematic side of it too. But I also see the appeal of being able to just pick up a sword and attack an enemy without having the concern of "what if I just sat down and discussed things...would I have been able to save a life today?" Of course, creatures like Zombies fit the morally simple description, but they're dumb and it's not the same as fighting against opponents whose brains aren't already rotten.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
@Beardsinger
In the base cosmology of D&D 5e, Demons are literally made of Chaotic Evil. They cannot be any alignment besides chaotic evil, because then they would turn into something else, just like Zariel turned into a Devil when she fell and Grazzt turned into a Demon Lord when he stopped being Lawful Evil.
Orcs, Goblins, and Bugbears are true-breeding sentient humanoid races that can learn morality and in a few settings have no inherent inclinations towards evil (Eberron, Ravnica), and in Exandria are just cursed by an evil god to be more likely to be evil.
If a Goblin in the Forgotten Realms stops being evil, they're still a Goblin. If a Demon in Planescape stops being evil, they stop being a demon and become something else (like that Fey-Balor in Wildemount and Nocticula from Pathfinder).
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
That's a very good distillation of the game problem. And (as has already been mentioned) things like demons and fiends and constructs and undead and predators and eldritch monsters can fill the intelligent-enemy void.
Besides, if you just want to "pick up a sword and attack an enemy" why worry about motivation and morality at all? Just play the wargame.
Sigh.
A girl spends one weekend visiting with family, driving around and having a generally fun time, and her thread on Not Panicking turns into yet another [REDACTED] trashfire.
Allow me to put paid to this line of discussion, gentlemen. Ahem: this is not the thread to talk about the morality of anything. if Wizards puts a species in a book as "Playable", that carries certain connotations and requirements. Always has, always will. End of discussion.
As for "d20 test"? Every word in a document like this is three other words that didn't get printed. Word count, page count, layout and book size are all critical issues for physical book production. Replacing "ability check, attack roll, or saving throw" with "d20 test" turns seven words and forty-three characters into two words and eight characters. Over the course of an entire book? That's an entire paragraph or three of Utterly Required For All Players Everywhere Faerunian Lore you get to read that would'nt have been there if they hadn't decided to settle on the short, snappy, useful "d20 test".
It's not going anywhere. It's useful. I guarantee Wizards isn't going back to using half a paragraph to describe d20 tests anymore. Get over it.
Can we move on, please? I'm not doing the whole Unbearable Baggage of Orcs thing again, and I will start reporting people who try and continue it.
Please do not contact or message me.
A playtest for a new system would have options...not a fully fleshed out revised rule set. Like the 5e play test did. Yes I do know what is going on, they are making a new edition of DnD and trying to deceive the fans so we do not stop buying books that are going to be obsolete in two years. please explain to me how these new rules are in any way compatible with what is in the current players handbook?
Umm...And what does that have to do with anything? It doesn't add any additional weight to your argument. I happen to be British, educated beyond degree level and English is my native language. It's irrelevant.
The term "D20 Test" is probably only going to come up in the documentation when it refers to all 3 types of roll. You're being pedantic.
BTW if we're being pedantic you should be spelling English with a capital E since you are referring to the language.
For everyone freaking out about the name, this will go the same way DnD next did...it will be know as 5.5 or 6th edition...the way its looking its going to be 6th edition. we will see with further play materials. To respond to the Digital experience, well digital assets are cheaper than physical. they are in the business to make money, and a digital play space is a massive money maker. Digital minis, digital playsets, you want to customize your characters mini "buy this skin". capes, amulets, staves, swords, shields, tabards, color schemes, armor, magical items, digital dice, mounts, etc. you pay a dollar or five for a glowing staff...that's not that much.....they sell 10,000 of them to the however many players. when most people are only playing 5-6 seasons that how many "basic" packs they are going to sell? O and if you do not like the changes they are making to the game and get to load on a message board than they can ban your account and the hundreds to thousands of dollars you have spent on this game and decades of playing well that not going to matter...cause the real revenue going to come from the people who just want a shiny sword, to go Merry Sue through hordes of dragons for a couple of seasons and forget theirs login and has to create another account to re-buy the "starter Pack" they want their own Fort Night guys. I'm not saying its going to be all bad, just Don't think your going to be able to run your From scratch homebrew world and campaign stacked with house rules on it.
When compared to every edition change in the past 20 years, this is not an edition change. It's most comparable to the 3e ---> 3.5e change, but even then, from what we have seen, the changes are very small. Your books won't be "obsolete" in two years, they will work basically completely fine with the updated ruleset. There is very, very little you would have to do to convert your games to the updated version of the ruleset.
They're trying to assure fans that they won't have to rebuy all of their books again. It will still be 5e, just slightly different, where monsters and spells can't deal extra damage from critical hits, racial ASIs are now background ASIs, and feats are divided by level and you get an extra one at level 1 (which you're supposed to tie to your background, but who knows how often that will happen).
From what we've seen so far, this isn't an edition change, because your books from earlier in 5e will still (mostly) work in 2024's 5e.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
I've run a fair amount of playtesting in my time, and "here's a thing, test it, revise it, test some more, etc." is the normal playtest cycle. Sometimes, depending on time, you try A/B versions in parallel, but that dilutes the playtest data.
And, when you're testing a revision to an extant thing, you already have a well-tested option, which is to use the original. You don't need data on that.
They share all the basic mechanics. A character built in 5e looks a lot like a character built in these rules. You can currently take either one of them and run it in either ruleset and it'll function just fine, if not perfectly identically.
What are you talking about? On both accounts.
1) Oh, sorry. Apparently it was CPTBrando that was taking the proposed change to the crit rules personally. Not you. My mistake. However, you did decide to support them and try to do a "No U" argument, which is what I was referring to. People getting angry at WotC for proposing a change to crit rules are overreacting.
2) They're separating race and culture. You asked how it was a strawman to say that the races are becoming more bland because of removed subraces. My response to that is a) the Dwarf and Halfling subraces were already bland, so removing them gets rid of blandness in the game and b) the main reason they're removing some features from races is to separate race and culture, because they're very different things that shouldn't be covered by the same game mechanic.
If you were genuine in your questions and just asking for clarification, apologies. I assumed you were acting in bad faith due to hearing those exact same questions from trolls multiple times in discussions like these.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
Well, there is one time I used my background feature: the Outlander's ability to automatically survive in the wild was helpful in Tomb of Annihilation AND in Out of the Abyss.
Hmmmmm, actually, that might be an argument for scrapping it.
I get that you’re being sarcastic but I’m not sure I get the joke…