I really don't get why WoTC didn't include ASIs in the Background sooner and why some people don't like the change: It just makes the most sense and is the best way to build a "natural" feeling character. It represents the best how your PC lived and what they experienced in life before becoming an adventurer.
Sure, Elves getting +2 Dex makes sense because they are, on average, more dexterous people and use bows to fight than, say, Dragonborn. But there are undoubtedly Elves that focus on studying nature or arcane knowledge, or work as blacksmiths for those nice elven armors. Why would they also get a +2 Dex, when they never fired a bow, but learned how to cast spells or built muscles from all the hammering?
And sure as hell I want to play a low Wis High Elf Fighter in plate armor wielding a Maul who lost their memories and was "raised" by a dwarfen family and worked in the families' blacksmith and can mysteriously control the smith's flame (Control Flames): +2 Str +1 Con and prof in Smith's Tools here I come.
I really like the direction of the changes and can't wait for the next UA documents regarding 1DnD.
I prefer 5e to 4e, but I haven’t decided yet how I feel about One D&D. I definitely don’t hate it though.
I find that I'm intrigued by 1D&D. I don't know that I like all the things that are being playtested, but like you said I don't hate it.
Me too. There are definitely parts I don’t like, for example ASIs moving to backgrounds. I for one liked those being genetic factors tied to specific races, but I know I’m in the minority there, and that I was doomed to disappointment so it’s not a shock or anything. I also don’t like loosing the Half-races as unique racial options, just reskinning other races feels super lazy and unsatisfying to me. And I definitely don’t like Ardlings, I think they’re kinda dumb and would be better in a supplementary book so they could be ignored more easily. I also wish that Goblins and Hobgoblins had been added to the PHB alongside Orcs too, and for the same reasons. But a lot of the other stuff I do like.
I have a feeling half race last will get the most tweaks if wizards listen to feedback, but this is after actually play testing.
ASIs to background, and more importantly keeping it the same (+1,+2) is great it means that every player at the table will be balanced and breaks the race/class connections.
Ardlings are a really interesting addition, at last in the PHB we get a playable race that is truly different. Elves, dwarves, even dragon born and tieflings are all of a kind. Arms, legs head all similar, 2 eyes, 2 ears etc. Ardlings really take a race and tell new players, this is how crazy you can get.
The other thing that has been ignored, by putting orcs, not half orcs, in as a race in the PHB we instantly start breaking old established narratives, if an orc can be a PV then they can be any alignment, meaning orcs can equally be good or evil. It forces DMs to build worlds where orcs are just a part of the world, players and DMs won’t want to be constantly RPing Orcs being hated with every NPC (well maybe in a small number of games). Orcs will stop being generic bad guy.
I really don't get why WoTC didn't include ASIs in the Background sooner and why some people don't like the change: It just makes the most sense and is the best way to build a "natural" feeling character. It represents the best how your PC lived and what they experienced in life before becoming an adventurer.
Sure, Elves getting +2 Dex makes sense because they are, on average, more dexterous people and use bows to fight than, say, Dragonborn. But there are undoubtedly Elves that focus on studying nature or arcane knowledge, or work as blacksmiths for those nice elven armors. Why would they also get a +2 Dex, when they never fired a bow, but learned how to cast spells or built muscles from all the hammering.
[Sic]
To those of us who liked fixed racial ASIs, we feel that the 27 points you get for point-buy represent the what your character did with their lives and that the +2/+1 were there to represent a genetic predisposition towards certain activities and skills.
As long as you read it with a careful eye, and an eye without prejudice, do people feel it is necessary to actually "Play" the new rules? Personally working on my own 5e stuff but definitely anxious about 6e, even if I never play. There's been maybe two things I agree with and loads I don't, though most of that is from a Lore perspective. How does the Feedback option work? Can I address both Mechanics and Mythology / Lore / Flavor, separate or together? Previously I've been kinda meh on these things, but I've developed a stronger bond with 5e and the direction I've seen it taking from the most recent books makes me extremely unhappy.
Lore feedback isn't something you have to playtest to have opinions on, so I wouldn't imagine why you'd need to "play" with them in order to comment on it. (I personally hate the changes that confirm Moradin and Gruumsh created their children in everyD&D world, because that doesn't work for Eberron, and I'll be speaking of that negatively in the survey.)
I really like Eberron. I hope they do an Eberron campaign someday. I also really like the new One D&D playtest and I would just read the stuff about Moradin and Gruumsh with the caveat that it doesn’t apply to worlds like Eberron that have different mythological origins for their races.
We've all seen, both in recent threads and in threads prior, that there's a percentage of the playerbase that is desperate for Faerunian lore to be held as canon across all realms and realities, and for that lore to be deep, thick, and packed into every single corner of every single book. They get deeply upset if their books aren't stuffed cover to cover with Faerunian lore and they don't really care if that lore doesn't apply to any other world. They think it should, because Faerun IS D&D and anyone doing anything else should be carrying the onus of Mucking With Things, not them.
We can think what we like of that attitude, but those people buy books too. Wizards is forced to thread a delicate needle of giving folks usefully open-ended stuff they can make work in their own game worlds whilst giving the Faerun diehards enough Faerun lore to keep them content/satisfied. Saying "a god of stone and forge that goes by many names on many worlds created dwarves long ago" allows the Faerunites to yell "SEE? MORADIN MADE DWARVES! IT'S CANON!" and gleefully go about their lives knowing that their canon won, while the rest of us can simply insert whichever god we prefer there. Or, as often, discard the line as senseless for our worlds and simply say that dwarves are dwarves and they got here the same as everybody else - via horny monkeys.
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.
We've all seen, both in recent threads and in threads prior, that there's a percentage of the playerbase that is desperate for Faerunian lore to be held as canon across all realms and realities, and for that lore to be deep, thick, and packed into every single corner of every single book. They get deeply upset if their books aren't stuffed cover to cover with Faerunian lore and they don't really care if that lore doesn't apply to any other world. They think it should, because Faerun IS D&D and anyone doing anything else should be carrying the onus of Mucking With Things, not them.
We can think what we like of that attitude, but those people buy books too. Wizards is forced to thread a delicate needle of giving folks usefully open-ended stuff they can make work in their own game worlds whilst giving the Faerun diehards enough Faerun lore to keep them content/satisfied. Saying "a god of stone and forge that goes by many names on many worlds created dwarves long ago" allows the Faerunites to yell "SEE? MORADIN MADE DWARVES! IT'S CANON!" and gleefully go about their lives knowing that their canon won, while the rest of us can simply insert whichever god we prefer there. Or, as often, discard the line as senseless for our worlds and simply say that dwarves are dwarves and they got here the same as everybody else - via horny monkeys.
And now I am picturing short, squat honey monkeys much hairier then the others :).
I ran a game once based in an atheist world, all races had evolved, there where no such things as gods, rational thinking held true. One player played a cleric who was the first being to have belief in the world, they where manifesting a being through magic it was a great campaign that I was roundly told was not DnD by online DMs because it had no gods lol.
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.
We've all seen, both in recent threads and in threads prior, that there's a percentage of the playerbase that is desperate for Faerunian lore to be held as canon across all realms and realities, and for that lore to be deep, thick, and packed into every single corner of every single book. They get deeply upset if their books aren't stuffed cover to cover with Faerunian lore and they don't really care if that lore doesn't apply to any other world. They think it should, because Faerun IS D&D and anyone doing anything else should be carrying the onus of Mucking With Things, not them.
We can think what we like of that attitude, but those people buy books too. Wizards is forced to thread a delicate needle of giving folks usefully open-ended stuff they can make work in their own game worlds whilst giving the Faerun diehards enough Faerun lore to keep them content/satisfied. Saying "a god of stone and forge that goes by many names on many worlds created dwarves long ago" allows the Faerunites to yell "SEE? MORADIN MADE DWARVES! IT'S CANON!" and gleefully go about their lives knowing that their canon won, while the rest of us can simply insert whichever god we prefer there. Or, as often, discard the line as senseless for our worlds and simply say that dwarves are dwarves and they got here the same as everybody else - via horny monkeys.
And now I am picturing short, squat honey monkeys much hairier then the others :).
I ran a game once based in an atheist world, all races had evolved, there where no such things as gods, rational thinking held true. One player played a cleric who was the first being to have belief in the world, they where manifesting a being through magic it was a great campaign that I was roundly told was not DnD by online DMs because it had no gods lol.
I just kill off all of my gods in my homebrew worlds, and divine power is just people believing in a fake so much it actually works.
I really don't get why WoTC didn't include ASIs in the Background sooner and why some people don't like the change: It just makes the most sense and is the best way to build a "natural" feeling character. It represents the best how your PC lived and what they experienced in life before becoming an adventurer.
Sure, Elves getting +2 Dex makes sense because they are, on average, more dexterous people and use bows to fight than, say, Dragonborn. But there are undoubtedly Elves that focus on studying nature or arcane knowledge, or work as blacksmiths for those nice elven armors. Why would they also get a +2 Dex, when they never fired a bow, but learned how to cast spells or built muscles from all the hammering.
[Sic]
To those of us who liked fixed racial ASIs, we feel that the 27 points you get for point-buy represent the what your character did with their lives and that the +2/+1 were there to represent a genetic predisposition towards certain activities and skills.
And to the majority the view was that the dice roll gave you a sense of the genetics and then on top you had to be big strong half orc, we can go round and round on this the fact is that putting ASIs into the background solves issues that where real, it also means balanced parties, no more will my players really cool half orc wizard concept be hamstrung and run behind by the 3 other optimized characters in the party. All of whom are half elf because it gives them a cool +4 total to ASI. Now he can roleplay that cool character idea and be as good as the other characters at the table meaning they all progress at the same rate.
Why? Orcs, goblins, and bugbears are the generic badguys. It’s even encouraged in beginner adventures such as Lost Mines.
In ice spire peak there is a group of orcs, but the narriative is far more grey. They have been forced out by the dragon and so are encroaching on human lands, when I ran that stater campaign it allows me to RP the orcs far more sympathetically, and the players came up with really clever non combat options to get the orcs on side and working with the townsfolk.
Lost Mines is being moved out of print I think so they can make more nuanced clever stories.
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.
We've all seen, both in recent threads and in threads prior, that there's a percentage of the playerbase that is desperate for Faerunian lore to be held as canon across all realms and realities, and for that lore to be deep, thick, and packed into every single corner of every single book. They get deeply upset if their books aren't stuffed cover to cover with Faerunian lore and they don't really care if that lore doesn't apply to any other world. They think it should, because Faerun IS D&D and anyone doing anything else should be carrying the onus of Mucking With Things, not them.
We can think what we like of that attitude, but those people buy books too. Wizards is forced to thread a delicate needle of giving folks usefully open-ended stuff they can make work in their own game worlds whilst giving the Faerun diehards enough Faerun lore to keep them content/satisfied. Saying "a god of stone and forge that goes by many names on many worlds created dwarves long ago" allows the Faerunites to yell "SEE? MORADIN MADE DWARVES! IT'S CANON!" and gleefully go about their lives knowing that their canon won, while the rest of us can simply insert whichever god we prefer there. Or, as often, discard the line as senseless for our worlds and simply say that dwarves are dwarves and they got here the same as everybody else - via horny monkeys.
And now I am picturing short, squat honey monkeys much hairier then the others :).
I ran a game once based in an atheist world, all races had evolved, there where no such things as gods, rational thinking held true. One player played a cleric who was the first being to have belief in the world, they where manifesting a being through magic it was a great campaign that I was roundly told was not DnD by online DMs because it had no gods lol.
I just kill off all of my gods in my homebrew worlds, and divine power is just people believing in a fake so much it actually works.
I love Forgotten Realms, but it’s only one world in the D&D multiverse. FR lore should not dominate.
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.
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.
'Digital play experience' is just marketing. It's unimportant. They're hyping that they have DDB and are making a VTT.
"d20 test", which is going to become "test" at every single table even if they don't rename it, is somewhat meaningful. Mostly for clarity: by having a unified term, it makes it more obvious whether or not a modifier applies to all of attacks, saves, and ability checks. It's unlikely to affect your play, but it'll make things a bit easier for new players.
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.
'"d20 test", which is going to become "test" at every single table even if they don't rename it, is somewhat meaningful. Mostly for clarity: by having a unified term, it makes it more obvious whether or not a modifier applies to all of attacks, saves, and ability checks. It's unlikely to affect your play, but it'll make things a bit easier for new players.
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’.
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.
'"d20 test", which is going to become "test" at every single table even if they don't rename it, is somewhat meaningful. Mostly for clarity: by having a unified term, it makes it more obvious whether or not a modifier applies to all of attacks, saves, and ability checks. It's unlikely to affect your play, but it'll make things a bit easier for new players.
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 check is 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?
It's not rephrasing what already exists. It's not another term for "check", etc. A Perception check is still properly called that. d20 test a new phrase that is an umbrella term for ability checks, saving throws and attack rolls. Anything you use the d20 for, basically (watch someone come up with a an exception!). It's a shorthand. So,.instead of saying:
"Inspiration gives you Advantage on an ability check, a saving throw or an attack roll of your choice."
We can now say:
"Inspiration gives you Advantage on a d20 test of your choice."
The utility of it makes it is pretty evident - especially as it seems that these kinds of checks are going to be grouped together quite often now. Granted, it's a crap name and I hope they change it to something better, but still.
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.
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I really don't get why WoTC didn't include ASIs in the Background sooner and why some people don't like the change: It just makes the most sense and is the best way to build a "natural" feeling character. It represents the best how your PC lived and what they experienced in life before becoming an adventurer.
Sure, Elves getting +2 Dex makes sense because they are, on average, more dexterous people and use bows to fight than, say, Dragonborn. But there are undoubtedly Elves that focus on studying nature or arcane knowledge, or work as blacksmiths for those nice elven armors. Why would they also get a +2 Dex, when they never fired a bow, but learned how to cast spells or built muscles from all the hammering?
And sure as hell I want to play a low Wis High Elf Fighter in plate armor wielding a Maul who lost their memories and was "raised" by a dwarfen family and worked in the families' blacksmith and can mysteriously control the smith's flame (Control Flames): +2 Str +1 Con and prof in Smith's Tools here I come.
I really like the direction of the changes and can't wait for the next UA documents regarding 1DnD.
We’re allowed to disagree on some points.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
To those of us who liked fixed racial ASIs, we feel that the 27 points you get for point-buy represent the what your character did with their lives and that the +2/+1 were there to represent a genetic predisposition towards certain activities and skills.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
I really like Eberron. I hope they do an Eberron campaign someday. I also really like the new One D&D playtest and I would just read the stuff about Moradin and Gruumsh with the caveat that it doesn’t apply to worlds like Eberron that have different mythological origins for their races.
We've all seen, both in recent threads and in threads prior, that there's a percentage of the playerbase that is desperate for Faerunian lore to be held as canon across all realms and realities, and for that lore to be deep, thick, and packed into every single corner of every single book. They get deeply upset if their books aren't stuffed cover to cover with Faerunian lore and they don't really care if that lore doesn't apply to any other world. They think it should, because Faerun IS D&D and anyone doing anything else should be carrying the onus of Mucking With Things, not them.
We can think what we like of that attitude, but those people buy books too. Wizards is forced to thread a delicate needle of giving folks usefully open-ended stuff they can make work in their own game worlds whilst giving the Faerun diehards enough Faerun lore to keep them content/satisfied. Saying "a god of stone and forge that goes by many names on many worlds created dwarves long ago" allows the Faerunites to yell "SEE? MORADIN MADE DWARVES! IT'S CANON!" and gleefully go about their lives knowing that their canon won, while the rest of us can simply insert whichever god we prefer there. Or, as often, discard the line as senseless for our worlds and simply say that dwarves are dwarves and they got here the same as everybody else - via horny monkeys.
Please do not contact or message me.
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.
And now I am picturing short, squat honey monkeys much hairier then the others :).
I ran a game once based in an atheist world, all races had evolved, there where no such things as gods, rational thinking held true. One player played a cleric who was the first being to have belief in the world, they where manifesting a being through magic it was a great campaign that I was roundly told was not DnD by online DMs because it had no gods lol.
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 just kill off all of my gods in my homebrew worlds, and divine power is just people believing in a fake so much it actually works.
N/A
And to the majority the view was that the dice roll gave you a sense of the genetics and then on top you had to be big strong half orc, we can go round and round on this the fact is that putting ASIs into the background solves issues that where real, it also means balanced parties, no more will my players really cool half orc wizard concept be hamstrung and run behind by the 3 other optimized characters in the party. All of whom are half elf because it gives them a cool +4 total to ASI. Now he can roleplay that cool character idea and be as good as the other characters at the table meaning they all progress at the same rate.
In ice spire peak there is a group of orcs, but the narriative is far more grey. They have been forced out by the dragon and so are encroaching on human lands, when I ran that stater campaign it allows me to RP the orcs far more sympathetically, and the players came up with really clever non combat options to get the orcs on side and working with the townsfolk.
Lost Mines is being moved out of print I think so they can make more nuanced clever stories.
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.
I love Forgotten Realms, but it’s only one world in the D&D multiverse. FR lore should not dominate.
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.
'Digital play experience' is just marketing. It's unimportant. They're hyping that they have DDB and are making a VTT.
"d20 test", which is going to become "test" at every single table even if they don't rename it, is somewhat meaningful. Mostly for clarity: by having a unified term, it makes it more obvious whether or not a modifier applies to all of attacks, saves, and ability checks. It's unlikely to affect your play, but it'll make things a bit easier for new players.
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’.
That's not what the term "d20 test" is meant to do. What it's meant to do is describe when something affects all d20 rolls.
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 check is 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?
Beardsinger,
It's not rephrasing what already exists. It's not another term for "check", etc. A Perception check is still properly called that. d20 test a new phrase that is an umbrella term for ability checks, saving throws and attack rolls. Anything you use the d20 for, basically (watch someone come up with a an exception!). It's a shorthand. So,.instead of saying:
"Inspiration gives you Advantage on an ability check, a saving throw or an attack roll of your choice."
We can now say:
"Inspiration gives you Advantage on a d20 test of your choice."
The utility of it makes it is pretty evident - especially as it seems that these kinds of checks are going to be grouped together quite often now. Granted, it's a crap name and I hope they change it to something better, but still.
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.