After reading through the 1 D&D UAs so far I feel like I’m getting a feel for where they are going and I’m not sure I’m in favor of it although I do like some parts. Here is where I see them headed: 1) toning down multiclassing and Gishes - they seem to be spreading abilities out more in the classes so 1 level dips don’t get you as much for the multiclass. Meanwhile gishes like the Paladin and ranger are losing some of their offensive ability with only a single smite for Paladin and no vocation spells for rangers. Granted they are both now prepared casters and get cantrips which are good things. 2) they are essentially eliminating the exploration leg of the game. The Druid has been nerfed and the ranger no longer feels like a ranger even if it can probably perform the exploration leg pretty much as well as before. I grant that, as played in many/most campaigns, the exploration leg was already on life support but it’s still sad to see. 3) I wouldn’t be surprised to see wizards toned down and maybe even the wish spell removed while weapons and fighters are beefed up. 4) it’s going to be very interesting to see what they do with the monk.
The “oh no, the exploring leg of the game” complaint was also seen against fourth edition. It was a silly complaint then; it is a silly complaint now. Exploration elements come from the DM giving something to explore and the players choosing to explore - they do not come from the mechanics. Sure, mechanics can give you additional tools for exploring but their absence does not do anything to eliminate exploration from the game.
Moreover, abilities specific to a singular aspect of the game are fairly bad game design for a game as wide-ranging as D&D. Something like favoured terrine can range from useful, to effectively never used, making it feel like a dead part of their character and a waste of a class feature.
Regarding Druid, they gave a pretty good explanation for why they are proposing a change to wild shape—it made the class the single most unpopular base class in the game due to players not liking to do math and then consult endless tables of monsters and come up with justifications for “have I seen this monster before?”
Wizards, frankly, need a nerf. A competently built Wizard easily eclipses everyone else at the table outside of combat, due to their incredibly expansive “oh look, I have a solution to this problem also” toolset of spells. For a game that is about teamwork and giving every player a chance to shine sometimes, Wizards break parity by being able to step into the spotlight of pretty much every other class.
Likewise, martial classes do need a boost. 5e was (rather foolishly) designed around eight combat encounters per day—and the idea was that a melee character could keep on chugging long after the spellcaster ran out of resources and became a wet noodle. Except numerous polls and data shows that is not how the game is actually played - there are fewer encounters, so spellcaster resources are rarely threatened, meaning the balancing component of “we might not be as flashy, but we keep going” is rarely implicated. With the primary reason for their generally being worse rarely coming up, their power needs to be increased to reflect the realities of the game.
I think the biggest problem with the exploration leg is that people don’t really do it anymore, not that it’s missing mechanically. Lots of tables don’t track encumbrance or rations, so there’s no real danger of getting lost and running out of food. And lots of people use published adventures, which don’t really have much option for exploring. If you run Phandelver, and the characters want to go somewhere not in the adventure, there’s no support for that. Really, there’s no reason to go anywhere else, or just say, let’s head east and see what we find, but if someone did, it’s left for the DM to wing it. (Which, I know is part of the job of a DM, but if you’re ok with winging it, you’re probably not running a published adventure.)
Homebrew, of course has options for exploring. But adventure design now is more story based. There’s rarely a time the PCs don’t have a defined goal they need to move towards. It’s about getting from A to B as fast as possible, not so much about seeing what’s in that cave over there. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. I don’t want to go back to the days of aimless characters and monster-hotel style dungeons with no rhyme or reason. Just, if you want there to be an exploration pillar, you need to put it, and give the characters time to interact with it.
1) toning down multiclassing and Gishes - they seem to be spreading abilities out more in the classes so 1 level dips don’t get you as much for the multiclass. Meanwhile gishes like the Paladin and ranger are losing some of their offensive ability with only a single smite for Paladin and no vocation spells for rangers. Granted they are both now prepared casters and get cantrips which are good things.
I agree they are toning down multiclassing, but where do you get your opinion on gish? I don't get that at all from what I've been seeing.
2) they are essentially eliminating the exploration leg of the game. The Druid has been nerfed and the ranger no longer feels like a ranger even if it can probably perform the exploration leg pretty much as well as before. I grant that, as played in many/most campaigns, the exploration leg was already on life support but it’s still sad to see.
I don't see this either, could you explain?
3) I wouldn’t be surprised to see wizards toned down and maybe even the wish spell removed while weapons and fighters are beefed up.
Pure speculation, we have not see the arcane classes yet.
I don't think they are toning down multiclassing, but I do think the appropriate thing to say is they are making multiclassing a much more thematic decission rather than a pure mechanical one. Tying all the big features to 3 levels of something makes sense to me. A level 1 character is essentially a townsperson who has completed training/made their warlock pact/was chosen by a god etc. They aren't anyone special, so to differeniate them so completely from NPCs to me was always a strange thing.
Regarding Druid, I liked the changes they made, but I think the subclass they showcased flat out sucked. I think it completely missed the mark and is worthless. You can cast abjuration spells in your wildshape form? There are 16 abjuration spells avaiable to druids, 6 of those are 5th level or higher, and with the exception of Absorb Elements none of them are really combat oriented. The big one is I suppose you could cast pass without trace while in a form to try and stealth past stuff? An armor class 15 combat wild shape(assuming max wisdom and remember, it specifically states that the game stats replace your own so things like rings of protection etc do not alter wild shape stats. Mainly because you are no longer "wearing" the item"), with no way to increase other than spells like Stoneskin? It really feels like the people in playtest think Wild Shape is WAY too strong, but that might be because the people in playtest are REALLY good at using Wild Shape in its current form?
Yeah, it looks like MCing isn't so much discouraged but the one level "dip" for mechanical advantages is being discouraged. I don't mind the present dipping "exploits" since at my table MCing is a matter of DMing approval/coordination (I usually let if fly or at worse put the MC on pause until there's a plausible means to take on the next level in game). But I know "dips" are sometimes viewed as a flaw in the game.
I've always been a fan of the first three levels as apprenticing ... though that's sort of problematic if you apply that principle to a more "worldly" character on the XP cost front ... I guess I'm fairly ambivalent on this development.
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Regarding Druid, they gave a pretty good explanation for why they are proposing a change to wild shape—it made the class the single most unpopular base class in the game due to players not liking to do math and then consult endless tables of monsters and come up with justifications for “have I seen this monster before?”
These actually aren't the main issues with Wild Shape, since their are stat blocks available in the SRD, the DM can just lend their books or content share them, there are other people and Online resources to help sort through all the stat blocks, and the rule about seeing monsters is almost universally ignored.
Regardless, Wild Shape is flawed because it is a problematic and broken ability that is often used for boatloads of HP instead of utility or scenarios that aren't combat. So yes, this feature needed to be changed in order to allow other facets of the class concept to be explored and supported mechanically. However, this playtest has 7 class features that make Wild Shape a core part of the class, and they still fail to make it actually workable.
Wizards, frankly, need a nerf. A competently built Wizard easily eclipses everyone else at the table outside of combat, due to their incredibly expansive “oh look, I have a solution to this problem also” toolset of spells. For a game that is about teamwork and giving every player a chance to shine sometimes, Wizards break parity by being able to step into the spotlight of pretty much every other class.
Sure, Wizards are powerful in 5e. That being said, they very much do not need go be nerfed. Instead, martials and Warriors need to have their power boosted radically.
It isn't fun for Wizards and other spellcasters to lose many of the cool features that make them an enjoyable class. Buffing Martials makes those classes more enjoyable, and it allows for casters to still be awesome and fun. Yes, this might require a bit of work from the devs. However, improving the game is kinda their job, and Wizards presumably has a very skilled crew sine it's designing a game for millions upon millions of people.
Likewise, martial classes do need a boost. 5e was (rather foolishly) designed around eight combat encounters per day—and the idea was that a melee character could keep on chugging long after the spellcaster ran out of resources and became a wet noodle. Except numerous polls and data shows that is not how the game is actually played - there are fewer encounters, so spellcaster resources are rarely threatened, meaning the balancing component of “we might not be as flashy, but we keep going” is rarely implicated. With the primary reason for their generally being worse rarely coming up, their power needs to be increased to reflect the realities of the game.
Martial classes definitely do need a boost, I'm glad that we can agree on that.
I genuinely would like to see all the data you talk about how many groups have 6-8 encounters per a day. That being said, I definitely do agree that the adventuring day should either be 4-6 encounters, or that traps and social scenarios should be counted in the mix.
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As others have said, the exploration leg of the game is heavily DM dependent, and the rules for it are only supported a bit by content for players. Until we see the new DMG and Monster Manual, I would be hesitant to say that this part of the game has been removed or drastically toned down. I hope that this does not happen, but I don't think we really know at this point.
5e is an imperfect game, to be honest. It is very flawed in some areas, poorly explained in others, and terribly balanced in certain parts of the PHB. I am excited for the new edition, but I think that we can't know where 1DD is going at this point in time. We only have 3 UAs, and they have all been for players, not DMs. Not only that, but we haven't seen either the Warrior group or the Mage group, and these are probably the two types of classes that people are most interested in seeing updated.
All in all, we can only guess, hope, and provide feedback on where 1DD will go. I honestly believe that it will mostly go where we the players and D&D community direct it, with our feedback, thoughts, and pocketbooks.
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TL;DR: Wow, that was a long post. In summary, buff Martials, don't nerf casters. Wild Shape needs to be changed, but the most recent playtest didn't do a very good job at getting that right. Finally, we don't 100% where 1DD will go just yet, so I'm not really going to speculate too much on that. However, hopefully are feedback will help steer the game in the direction us fans want it to go.
There. Now have I bored you to death with my long and droning commentary?
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1) toning down multiclassing and Gishes - they seem to be spreading abilities out more in the classes so 1 level dips don’t get you as much for the multiclass. Meanwhile gishes like the Paladin and ranger are losing some of their offensive ability with only a single smite for Paladin and no vocation spells for rangers. Granted they are both now prepared casters and get cantrips which are good things.
I agree they are toning down multiclassing, but where do you get your opinion on gish? I don't get that at all from what I've been seeing.
2) they are essentially eliminating the exploration leg of the game. The Druid has been nerfed and the ranger no longer feels like a ranger even if it can probably perform the exploration leg pretty much as well as before. I grant that, as played in many/most campaigns, the exploration leg was already on life support but it’s still sad to see.
I don't see this either, could you explain?
3) I wouldn’t be surprised to see wizards toned down and maybe even the wish spell removed while weapons and fighters are beefed up.
Pure speculation, we have not see the arcane classes yet.
I’ll try to answer the questions and address some of the other comments as well.
1) I agree they aren’t eliminating MCing but are trying to force more than a one level dip making it more thematic. As for gishes we have now seen ( more or less) 3 of the 4 single class gishes - the bard, the ranger and the Paladin. I do not expect to see the bladesinger in the UAs as it was not a PHB subclass (not that I wouldn’t love to see it added). Of the 3 the only one that gets the evocation spells in 1D&D is the Paladin with their smite spells. In addition the Paladin can only smite once a turn now. To me, a Gish is a combat specialist with both sword and spell, so to block the evocation spells from them is a serious nerf. I’ll grant that rangers generally switch from a damage orientation to a control orientation somewhere in Tier 2 but even cantrips like booming blade and green flame blade that should be available to rangers aren’t. That by itself is a nerf the only 3 offensive cantrips available to rangers are thorn whip, poison spray and shillelagh.
2) the exploration leg - has always been very much up to the DM to institute and is far easier to do in a low/no magic campaign than a high magic one. My annoyance is 3 fold. First the flavor of the ranger is purely flavor text now there is little or nothing mechanically that sets the ranger’s wilderness abilities apart from those of a rogue or bard that chooses to take perception, survival, stealth and nature skills as their expertises. Second, the Druid’s wildshape now pretty well eliminates using wild shape for either frontline fighting or exploration. I agree that they are almost certainly going to have to redo the druid. Lastly, the mechanics for food, encumberance and travel need to be placed in the modules so new DMs actually see what they look like and how they affect the game (or can affect the game). There is a second part to this I’ve noticed bu WOtC can’t really do anything about it - most gamers don’t have a lot of experience with exploration/travel in wilderness settings. My present group is (from my experience) actually unusual in that we have 4 of 6 players with significant outdoors experience to base exploration actives off of. The giant’s module would have been a good place for this but instead they provided a variety of fast trip alternatives to actually traveling overland.
3) yes I’m speculating. No we won’t know for sure till we do see the fighting and casting UAs but we can project from what we have seen. Folks have been complaining about the power differential between the martial and the mage classes for years and given the actual play style (3-5 encounters/long rest vs expected 5-8) it’s not unreasonable to expect the mages to get toned down and the martials to get beefed up to generate something closer to a balance. That may place the gishes in interesting positions - stronger as casters and weaker as martials. As much because of the change in relative strength of the mages and martials as because of the nerfs to the gishes various abilities.
Imma be annoying and say that all the classes need to be nerfed down.
All of them. also, they need to do more to make them stand out as distinct things. THere is so little difference among some of the subclasses that it can read like 'well, this is a fighter who has all the rogue class abilities" or (more commonly) "here is a fighter that has all the wizard stuff".
They might as well drop the class system and just go with "pick your own features, here is a list for each of these levels, call yourself whatever".
I like the druid wildshape change. But I don't *ever* play as a PC. I am always a DM, so I like it because it means that my life just got a lot easier, lol. Even if we are having a fight about wildshaping a mimic, lol.
Paladins and clerics are basically being turned into the same thing even more, with the big difference being that now that clerics have special abilities from domains, they are somehow different from the core idea of a crusader for the holy land that is the same thing a paladin is, except Paladins now have codes of chivalry.
If your base class doesn't have magic, you get glossed over. The few games where I do something for open folks who want to see how i dm or something, no one plays a solid martial because they think that martials are too weak. And when you add umpteen gazillion special abilities that are (honestly) magical in nature to a class, well, yeah, they do get knocked the hell out of the running because sorry, but three attacks on one person is kinda blah when you can have a wizard of the same level fry half an army with a minmaxed build.
A wizard, who, I note, doesn't need to be protected because he can cast a spell every six phreaking seconds instead of needing to be covered while he gets all his crap out and needs a minute to prepare his spell. Acid splash and acid arrow both take one action, start to finish. Acid arrow should take 2, at least -- that would give the martials more import and need from a mechanics standpoint.
No wonder concentration gets a bad rap from so many -- they gutted the underlying need for it, then had to bolt it onto some things.
none of which is a new complaint and has been going on pretty much since the start of this century, lol. Ad all of it is stuff I can fix my damn self, so that my only whines are about what I did, lol.
This is the curse of playing for a long time and working on game design -- you recall the older RAI/RAW stuff and see how they got rid of the stuff that made players mope and left Dms having to struggle to a point where very few bother trying to play 15th and up levels because of the superhero issue, and now we have a hundred people who are really ten whining about how the big company is taking away their "flavor" by not being racist.
I like a lot of what I see. But all of that is based on the status quo and the continuing march towards creating the walking deities of the old basic Set era and the Immortals. The old idea of balance was to balance the classes against each other -- now it is about does it break a rule of the game.
I can go on (I am old and verbose, it is easy, and digital ink is cheap) but yeah, I can either "get with the times" and how the lowest common denominator plays, or I can sit and be sour and grumpy and holler about lawns.
I kinda prefer getting with the times.
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To me it feels like the design is becoming overly homogenized, and you lose class identity rather quickly. Maybe it was just younger me but I felt the AD&D classes and special/prestige classes seemed to have their own identity. I'm sure we can all deal without THAC0 ever again, but I liked that class diversity and flavor that was baked into the rules. As we've seen in the MMO space, when things become overly homogeneous they lose favor and become boring because nothing is unique or special anymore. I have a feeling 1D&D is going towards the "everyone gets a medal" flavor of game versus actually allowing people to have more meaningful choices, both good and bad.
To me it feels like the design is becoming overly homogenized, and you lose class identity rather quickly. Maybe it was just younger me but I felt the AD&D classes and special/prestige classes seemed to have their own identity. I'm sure we can all deal without THAC0 ever again, but I liked that class diversity and flavor that was baked into the rules. As we've seen in the MMO space, when things become overly homogeneous they lose favor and become boring because nothing is unique or special anymore. I have a feeling 1D&D is going towards the "everyone gets a medal" flavor of game versus actually allowing people to have more meaningful choices, both good and bad.
I would somewhat reiterate this point.
Fewer classes did mean classes that seemed to be more distinct from one another. But I also think the fewer options available meant players were then forced or inspired to optimize things in a role-playing sense and not in a rules sense to make one character of any given class truly stand out among others of the same class.
These days, players want to see the latest playtest content that might enable them to play a character they've envisioned. In the old days, these were the sorts of things we dreamt up ourselves and then negotiated at the table. I really don't need to see something official to be convinced by one of my players that his or her character ought to be proficient in its use of something if a strong enough case has been made for this feature.
I started this thread by speaking about where I think 1D&D is going (not where I which it would go) and a lot of the replies have been more about where folks would like it to go not ( primarily) about where they think it is going - that’s fine and useful and was somewhat expected. Those that have been reading my posts for the last year and a half know I’m an opinionated old fart that likes a lot of reality and would be happy if stuff from earlier editions was brought back in places. So here goes some of my thoughts on how I wish things would go: 1) real life - low intelligence folks don’t often multiclass (become professionally competent if not expert in multiple professions) to do so takes interest/ need and brains to learn the skills and knowledges to be multidimensional. If I could I would require at least a 13 in Intelligence in order to multiclass - in addition to whatever other stats are required. Yes that means you’re going to see a lot less multiclassing and most multiclassed PCs are going to be rolled not standard array or point buy. If you are that interested in the concept keep rolling - I don’t mind - I tell my players to use rolling and take the first character with nothing below a 10 and at at least 3 stats of 13+ as it is. The PCs are supposed to be great hero’s so why not?
2) classes, subclasses and prestige classes - we are indeed getting overly homogenized with overlapping classes and subclasses I would be happy to go back having 4 classes - fighters, mages, rogues and clerics and EVERYTHING else being a subclass of one of the four. If your character vision is of a multiclassed character see #1above. Having a limited base of classes clearly defined actually makes for more creative effort not less ( think of the word skill needed to put your ideas into sonnet form or Haiku rather than free verse in poetry - or go read the story of the dot and the line) fighters would have 5 subclasses: fighter (your basic combat specialist), Ranger ( your “primal”/ nature centered Gish, Paladin ( your Divine centered Gish), Arcane warrior (your arcane centered Gish) and the Monk (your martial artist with “KI” talents). Not separate classes competing with fighter but variants specialized for selected rolls. If you want to go further then (yes like 4e) each subclass has some higher level prestige classes that let them specialize even further. Same for the other classes. Note that this way the “best”/“ most powerful” features are generally left for the single class characters while multiclass characters get a mix of good but not great lower level abilities from their classes. As an example start with the champion fighter as a base, then add the hunter ranger abilities for the subclass and then the gloomstalker ranger as the prestige class ( no not every ability will fit but draw from those 3 to grant something new each level) .
3) exploration/travel leg - there are some really excellent pieces for this like the tables in Xanthers but it’s too scattered. And too unclear on how to use and when. What should be done is to generate a module in which wilderness travel by foot and mount are, in fact, the primary goals not the interruptions. There was some of this in ToA and SLT but really a training adventure for both DMs and players with tools and notes on dealing with different environments. Yes you can use things like portals etc but use them as shortcuts to new terrains to further the story rather than as a means of skipping to the fight scenes. Imagine having to hunt thru a deep forest for a lost manor with clues to some needed artifact. But not actually knowing where the manor is and having to explore and avoid getting lost and turned around or running unexpectedly into local humanoid groups (friendly, neutral and hostile) only to discover that the clues there require you to use a portal to a swamp that you have to survive to get to mountains you explore before crossing a desert to finally find all the pieces and notes to assemble an artifact and only then as a reward for all that travel and exploration do you get access to shortcut magics. All of this being done without general recourse to non mundane materials to make the travel faster and easier and to avoid encounters. One of these I might even have the time and energy to actually write that adventure including the survival notes for the environments. Oh well I can dream because I don’t think WOtC is ever going to do it.
Anyway, I don’t think wizards is headed that way on any of these, and, while I think they are headed in the wrong direction I’m not in a position to stop them and it will be interesting to see what they do as well as probably being enjoyable even if not my dream game.
So where do you think 1D&D is headed and yes speculation is acceptable but it would be nice to get some explanation/evidence for backing up your speculations.
So, I confess that I am essentially rewriting all the classes and the magic system. I have no idea where they will go, but it worries me and I see an implosion down the road not from the crap about stuff I mentioned earlier, but from the slow an inexorable shift toward a Feature based system instead of a class one.
I have those 20 classes. I totally snarked from the existing ones to give each class 12 abilities. There are no subclasses, and the abilities all grow over time. Then I took a bunch more and they are things folks can pick one from now and again — they are the stuff that is more commonly found as a “shared ability”, and I strive to make the 12 they all have distinct and “just for them”.
now, I did make it so that magic takes time to cast. Up to a minute for 9th level spells. And I am resetting the spell tables and spell lists. And I have to rewrite at least a third of spells from the SRD. Added Sword Skills. Took out material components for mages, changed rituals all to hell and back, put in gunslingers, magical girls, Jedi, witches. Laughed when they said Arcane, Divine, and Primal magic because I had done that already, and added Mystical and Eldritch. I have taken out all the ugly crap, and while the rule book is being finalized, you can see the world itself without any rules to it because I laid it out already.
my players asked for all of it. Maybe not the details of how it works or whatever, but they said “ this is what the want” and so I am making it possible for them — in a way that makes it all work together, using what is still 5e at its core. I have 30 players (plus or minus 7), so it matters a lot for me and my tables, but is probably meaningless for anyone else.
I put so much work in over the last four years and change that I don’t want WotC to head in this direction I am going in, lol. Not because I want to make a gazillion dollars or anything selling it, but because damn, I had to do this work because it wasn’t something they were going to get out of WotC.
they threw Anime at me, people. I had to homebrew a Warforged into a robot maid or butler. I had to make magic visible. No way WotC is going to do that.
technically, I am still working on the setting as we finalize the rule book — ensuring that lore matches and expanding things where we need to. And by we, I mean me. They play test, they throw a hundred ideas at me, and then I have to figure out how to do it and how to make it work.
WotC is doing The Exact Same Thing, though: listening to the players who answer surveys, and trying out new things that were thrown at them. They just have a lot more people, and that flattens the curve.
D&D was created by a small group of people trying to make a game that made them happy. WotC can’t do that, realistically, but they can and have given us the tools to do it. But they also have a completely different way of seeing the game than someone like me does. Their first effort at a fresh D&D game was 3e. It is influenced by the success of Magic and their ideas of lore there.
every new rule, every new Feature or Ability or Feat or whatever they call them now, lol, those are all tools in a toolchest, and like I said, I like keeping up with the times. So I am using those tools.
land that, in the end, is where it will eventually get as a whole game if it is allowed to flourish. A point where everyone has to create their own class from scratch because the old archetypes have been wiped out, a set of rules that says “this is what you can do to make your special kind of whatever, and here are the choices you can use to do that.
Since they are making One D&D kind of an iterative thing, I suspect it will be the full 6e that loses it, and 7e will be a major course correction. If an average of eight years between versions hold, I will likely be gone by then.
but, if I am lucky and one of the grandkids in our group (my oldest grand daughter is 23!) likes it enough, they may pick up the work I did here, and that will continue — down a different path.
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After reading through the 1 D&D UAs so far I feel like I’m getting a feel for where they are going and I’m not sure I’m in favor of it although I do like some parts. Here is where I see them headed: 1) toning down multiclassing and Gishes - they seem to be spreading abilities out more in the classes so 1 level dips don’t get you as much for the multiclass. Meanwhile gishes like the Paladin and ranger are losing some of their offensive ability with only a single smite for Paladin and no vocation spells for rangers. Granted they are both now prepared casters and get cantrips which are good things. 2) they are essentially eliminating the exploration leg of the game. The Druid has been nerfed and the ranger no longer feels like a ranger even if it can probably perform the exploration leg pretty much as well as before. I grant that, as played in many/most campaigns, the exploration leg was already on life support but it’s still sad to see. 3) I wouldn’t be surprised to see wizards toned down and maybe even the wish spell removed while weapons and fighters are beefed up. 4) it’s going to be very interesting to see what they do with the monk.
1) Toning down level 1 isn't just an attempt at raining in dips, there's also the fact that every level 1 character has become more frontloaded now thanks to the level 1 feat no longer being optional, all the half-casters getting casting right away now, and most races species having some form of build-defining choice too. Which kind of Elf am I? Or Tiefling? Or Goliath? Even the most vanilla race, Human, now has TWO feats to look through before the campaign even starts.
2) The exploration pillar was never dependent on ribbon features like the original Ranger had. Exploration is resolved via roleplay, ability checks, maybe the occasional spell... and of course, exploration.
3) Wish is right there on the Arcane List in the playtest doc so not sure what you're talking about there.
I just really hope classes have their own niches so different classes can feel special, and it doesn't end up a little like World of Warcraft ('everyone evolved to do everything').
This isn’t really profound, but I think everyone needs to get ready for at least some level of disappointment. For every person saying they want classes to be distinct with no overlap, there’s someone else asking why wizards can’t cast healing spells, or suggesting that all martial classes should get battlemaster maneuvers by default. People on the boards often like the idea of customization and making choices, but the developers are pretty sure new players bounce off the game if there’s too many choices.
There’s a lot of competing goals out there. No matter what you want, the game won’t tick all of everyone’s boxes
This isn’t really profound, but I think everyone needs to get ready for at least some level of disappointment. For every person saying they want classes to be distinct with no overlap, there’s someone else asking why wizards can’t cast healing spells, or suggesting that all martial classes should get battlemaster maneuvers by default. People on the boards often like the idea of customization and making choices, but the developers are pretty sure new players bounce off the game if there’s too many choices.
There’s a lot of competing goals out there. No matter what you want, the game won’t tick all of everyone’s boxes
Aye.
I would go so far as to say that the people who ask or suggest that kind of thing tend to be more the norm than those of us who want the distinction.
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Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
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Not hubris - greed, and even then it’s buried several layers deep trying to maximize sales by taking the big pieces ( books and modules) and itemizing the new salable stuff (classes, races, spells and equipment) and making that individually purchasable for those that don’t want to get the whole book ( generally the better buy in the long run). Because of the nature of the game it will never really be a free to play mmo with in-app purchases required to “win” the game. A reminder for everyone ( including me) this is barely half way thru the first play test iteration so any and everything we have seen so far is still really on the drawing room table so things like the wish spell could still go the way of PC spell extinction even if they survive in game in things like the ring of 3 wishes etc. Personally I think the game would benefit from its removal from the normal spell listings. I could easily see it as an “epic” level spell only available to L21+ characters. No it’s not there now but we still have over a year of development and play test before the final versions come out sometime in (probably) late 2024. Xalthu, I expect to be disappointed in many ways by 6e in the sense that it’s not going to be what I would have done, on the other hand it should still be a decent game and I expect to keep playing and enjoying D&D for many years to come.
There seems to be a lot of confusion regarding what Exploration is supposed to encompass. While Exploration certainly can involve travel, and depending on the group you might track food, water, and other resources, saying that Exploration equals travel is like saying Combat equals making sure your character has weapons and armor. To be a meaningful Exploration scene you need all the same elements of what makes a meaningful Combat or Interaction scene: the players need at least some agency, they need to be given important choices, and it needs to be exciting.
Exploration actually encompasses everything that isn't Combat or Interaction. The former ranger features (finding food, not getting lost) represent a very thin slice of Exploration. A session where the PCs delve into a dungeon doesn't require you to track food or make survival checks to avoid becoming lost, but will contain many Exploration options.
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After reading through the 1 D&D UAs so far I feel like I’m getting a feel for where they are going and I’m not sure I’m in favor of it although I do like some parts. Here is where I see them headed:
1) toning down multiclassing and Gishes - they seem to be spreading abilities out more in the classes so 1 level dips don’t get you as much for the multiclass. Meanwhile gishes like the Paladin and ranger are losing some of their offensive ability with only a single smite for Paladin and no vocation spells for rangers. Granted they are both now prepared casters and get cantrips which are good things.
2) they are essentially eliminating the exploration leg of the game. The Druid has been nerfed and the ranger no longer feels like a ranger even if it can probably perform the exploration leg pretty much as well as before. I grant that, as played in many/most campaigns, the exploration leg was already on life support but it’s still sad to see.
3) I wouldn’t be surprised to see wizards toned down and maybe even the wish spell removed while weapons and fighters are beefed up.
4) it’s going to be very interesting to see what they do with the monk.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
The “oh no, the exploring leg of the game” complaint was also seen against fourth edition. It was a silly complaint then; it is a silly complaint now. Exploration elements come from the DM giving something to explore and the players choosing to explore - they do not come from the mechanics. Sure, mechanics can give you additional tools for exploring but their absence does not do anything to eliminate exploration from the game.
Moreover, abilities specific to a singular aspect of the game are fairly bad game design for a game as wide-ranging as D&D. Something like favoured terrine can range from useful, to effectively never used, making it feel like a dead part of their character and a waste of a class feature.
Regarding Druid, they gave a pretty good explanation for why they are proposing a change to wild shape—it made the class the single most unpopular base class in the game due to players not liking to do math and then consult endless tables of monsters and come up with justifications for “have I seen this monster before?”
Wizards, frankly, need a nerf. A competently built Wizard easily eclipses everyone else at the table outside of combat, due to their incredibly expansive “oh look, I have a solution to this problem also” toolset of spells. For a game that is about teamwork and giving every player a chance to shine sometimes, Wizards break parity by being able to step into the spotlight of pretty much every other class.
Likewise, martial classes do need a boost. 5e was (rather foolishly) designed around eight combat encounters per day—and the idea was that a melee character could keep on chugging long after the spellcaster ran out of resources and became a wet noodle. Except numerous polls and data shows that is not how the game is actually played - there are fewer encounters, so spellcaster resources are rarely threatened, meaning the balancing component of “we might not be as flashy, but we keep going” is rarely implicated. With the primary reason for their generally being worse rarely coming up, their power needs to be increased to reflect the realities of the game.
I think the biggest problem with the exploration leg is that people don’t really do it anymore, not that it’s missing mechanically. Lots of tables don’t track encumbrance or rations, so there’s no real danger of getting lost and running out of food.
And lots of people use published adventures, which don’t really have much option for exploring. If you run Phandelver, and the characters want to go somewhere not in the adventure, there’s no support for that. Really, there’s no reason to go anywhere else, or just say, let’s head east and see what we find, but if someone did, it’s left for the DM to wing it. (Which, I know is part of the job of a DM, but if you’re ok with winging it, you’re probably not running a published adventure.)
Homebrew, of course has options for exploring. But adventure design now is more story based. There’s rarely a time the PCs don’t have a defined goal they need to move towards. It’s about getting from A to B as fast as possible, not so much about seeing what’s in that cave over there. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. I don’t want to go back to the days of aimless characters and monster-hotel style dungeons with no rhyme or reason. Just, if you want there to be an exploration pillar, you need to put it, and give the characters time to interact with it.
I agree they are toning down multiclassing, but where do you get your opinion on gish? I don't get that at all from what I've been seeing.
I don't see this either, could you explain?
Pure speculation, we have not see the arcane classes yet.
I don't think they are toning down multiclassing, but I do think the appropriate thing to say is they are making multiclassing a much more thematic decission rather than a pure mechanical one. Tying all the big features to 3 levels of something makes sense to me. A level 1 character is essentially a townsperson who has completed training/made their warlock pact/was chosen by a god etc. They aren't anyone special, so to differeniate them so completely from NPCs to me was always a strange thing.
Regarding Druid, I liked the changes they made, but I think the subclass they showcased flat out sucked. I think it completely missed the mark and is worthless. You can cast abjuration spells in your wildshape form? There are 16 abjuration spells avaiable to druids, 6 of those are 5th level or higher, and with the exception of Absorb Elements none of them are really combat oriented. The big one is I suppose you could cast pass without trace while in a form to try and stealth past stuff? An armor class 15 combat wild shape(assuming max wisdom and remember, it specifically states that the game stats replace your own so things like rings of protection etc do not alter wild shape stats. Mainly because you are no longer "wearing" the item"), with no way to increase other than spells like Stoneskin? It really feels like the people in playtest think Wild Shape is WAY too strong, but that might be because the people in playtest are REALLY good at using Wild Shape in its current form?
Druid will get a 2nd pass, for sure.
Yeah, it looks like MCing isn't so much discouraged but the one level "dip" for mechanical advantages is being discouraged. I don't mind the present dipping "exploits" since at my table MCing is a matter of DMing approval/coordination (I usually let if fly or at worse put the MC on pause until there's a plausible means to take on the next level in game). But I know "dips" are sometimes viewed as a flaw in the game.
I've always been a fan of the first three levels as apprenticing ... though that's sort of problematic if you apply that principle to a more "worldly" character on the XP cost front ... I guess I'm fairly ambivalent on this development.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
These actually aren't the main issues with Wild Shape, since their are stat blocks available in the SRD, the DM can just lend their books or content share them, there are other people and Online resources to help sort through all the stat blocks, and the rule about seeing monsters is almost universally ignored.
Regardless, Wild Shape is flawed because it is a problematic and broken ability that is often used for boatloads of HP instead of utility or scenarios that aren't combat. So yes, this feature needed to be changed in order to allow other facets of the class concept to be explored and supported mechanically. However, this playtest has 7 class features that make Wild Shape a core part of the class, and they still fail to make it actually workable.
Sure, Wizards are powerful in 5e. That being said, they very much do not need go be nerfed. Instead, martials and Warriors need to have their power boosted radically.
It isn't fun for Wizards and other spellcasters to lose many of the cool features that make them an enjoyable class. Buffing Martials makes those classes more enjoyable, and it allows for casters to still be awesome and fun. Yes, this might require a bit of work from the devs. However, improving the game is kinda their job, and Wizards presumably has a very skilled crew sine it's designing a game for millions upon millions of people.
Martial classes definitely do need a boost, I'm glad that we can agree on that.
I genuinely would like to see all the data you talk about how many groups have 6-8 encounters per a day. That being said, I definitely do agree that the adventuring day should either be 4-6 encounters, or that traps and social scenarios should be counted in the mix.
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As others have said, the exploration leg of the game is heavily DM dependent, and the rules for it are only supported a bit by content for players. Until we see the new DMG and Monster Manual, I would be hesitant to say that this part of the game has been removed or drastically toned down. I hope that this does not happen, but I don't think we really know at this point.
5e is an imperfect game, to be honest. It is very flawed in some areas, poorly explained in others, and terribly balanced in certain parts of the PHB. I am excited for the new edition, but I think that we can't know where 1DD is going at this point in time. We only have 3 UAs, and they have all been for players, not DMs. Not only that, but we haven't seen either the Warrior group or the Mage group, and these are probably the two types of classes that people are most interested in seeing updated.
All in all, we can only guess, hope, and provide feedback on where 1DD will go. I honestly believe that it will mostly go where we the players and D&D community direct it, with our feedback, thoughts, and pocketbooks.
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TL;DR: Wow, that was a long post. In summary, buff Martials, don't nerf casters. Wild Shape needs to be changed, but the most recent playtest didn't do a very good job at getting that right. Finally, we don't 100% where 1DD will go just yet, so I'm not really going to speculate too much on that. However, hopefully are feedback will help steer the game in the direction us fans want it to go.
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HERE.I’ll try to answer the questions and address some of the other comments as well.
1) I agree they aren’t eliminating MCing but are trying to force more than a one level dip making it more thematic. As for gishes we have now seen ( more or less) 3 of the 4 single class gishes - the bard, the ranger and the Paladin. I do not expect to see the bladesinger in the UAs as it was not a PHB subclass (not that I wouldn’t love to see it added). Of the 3 the only one that gets the evocation spells in 1D&D is the Paladin with their smite spells. In addition the Paladin can only smite once a turn now. To me, a Gish is a combat specialist with both sword and spell, so to block the evocation spells from them is a serious nerf. I’ll grant that rangers generally switch from a damage orientation to a control orientation somewhere in Tier 2 but even cantrips like booming blade and green flame blade that should be available to rangers aren’t. That by itself is a nerf the only 3 offensive cantrips available to rangers are thorn whip, poison spray and shillelagh.
2) the exploration leg - has always been very much up to the DM to institute and is far easier to do in a low/no magic campaign than a high magic one. My annoyance is 3 fold. First the flavor of the ranger is purely flavor text now there is little or nothing mechanically that sets the ranger’s wilderness abilities apart from those of a rogue or bard that chooses to take perception, survival, stealth and nature skills as their expertises. Second, the Druid’s wildshape now pretty well eliminates using wild shape for either frontline fighting or exploration. I agree that they are almost certainly going to have to redo the druid. Lastly, the mechanics for food, encumberance and travel need to be placed in the modules so new DMs actually see what they look like and how they affect the game (or can affect the game). There is a second part to this I’ve noticed bu WOtC can’t really do anything about it - most gamers don’t have a lot of experience with exploration/travel in wilderness settings. My present group is (from my experience) actually unusual in that we have 4 of 6 players with significant outdoors experience to base exploration actives off of. The giant’s module would have been a good place for this but instead they provided a variety of fast trip alternatives to actually traveling overland.
3) yes I’m speculating. No we won’t know for sure till we do see the fighting and casting UAs but we can project from what we have seen. Folks have been complaining about the power differential between the martial and the mage classes for years and given the actual play style (3-5 encounters/long rest vs expected 5-8) it’s not unreasonable to expect the mages to get toned down and the martials to get beefed up to generate something closer to a balance. That may place the gishes in interesting positions - stronger as casters and weaker as martials. As much because of the change in relative strength of the mages and martials as because of the nerfs to the gishes various abilities.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
Imma be annoying and say that all the classes need to be nerfed down.
All of them. also, they need to do more to make them stand out as distinct things. THere is so little difference among some of the subclasses that it can read like 'well, this is a fighter who has all the rogue class abilities" or (more commonly) "here is a fighter that has all the wizard stuff".
They might as well drop the class system and just go with "pick your own features, here is a list for each of these levels, call yourself whatever".
I like the druid wildshape change. But I don't *ever* play as a PC. I am always a DM, so I like it because it means that my life just got a lot easier, lol. Even if we are having a fight about wildshaping a mimic, lol.
Paladins and clerics are basically being turned into the same thing even more, with the big difference being that now that clerics have special abilities from domains, they are somehow different from the core idea of a crusader for the holy land that is the same thing a paladin is, except Paladins now have codes of chivalry.
If your base class doesn't have magic, you get glossed over. The few games where I do something for open folks who want to see how i dm or something, no one plays a solid martial because they think that martials are too weak. And when you add umpteen gazillion special abilities that are (honestly) magical in nature to a class, well, yeah, they do get knocked the hell out of the running because sorry, but three attacks on one person is kinda blah when you can have a wizard of the same level fry half an army with a minmaxed build.
A wizard, who, I note, doesn't need to be protected because he can cast a spell every six phreaking seconds instead of needing to be covered while he gets all his crap out and needs a minute to prepare his spell. Acid splash and acid arrow both take one action, start to finish. Acid arrow should take 2, at least -- that would give the martials more import and need from a mechanics standpoint.
No wonder concentration gets a bad rap from so many -- they gutted the underlying need for it, then had to bolt it onto some things.
none of which is a new complaint and has been going on pretty much since the start of this century, lol. Ad all of it is stuff I can fix my damn self, so that my only whines are about what I did, lol.
This is the curse of playing for a long time and working on game design -- you recall the older RAI/RAW stuff and see how they got rid of the stuff that made players mope and left Dms having to struggle to a point where very few bother trying to play 15th and up levels because of the superhero issue, and now we have a hundred people who are really ten whining about how the big company is taking away their "flavor" by not being racist.
I like a lot of what I see. But all of that is based on the status quo and the continuing march towards creating the walking deities of the old basic Set era and the Immortals. The old idea of balance was to balance the classes against each other -- now it is about does it break a rule of the game.
I can go on (I am old and verbose, it is easy, and digital ink is cheap) but yeah, I can either "get with the times" and how the lowest common denominator plays, or I can sit and be sour and grumpy and holler about lawns.
I kinda prefer getting with the times.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
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To me it feels like the design is becoming overly homogenized, and you lose class identity rather quickly. Maybe it was just younger me but I felt the AD&D classes and special/prestige classes seemed to have their own identity. I'm sure we can all deal without THAC0 ever again, but I liked that class diversity and flavor that was baked into the rules. As we've seen in the MMO space, when things become overly homogeneous they lose favor and become boring because nothing is unique or special anymore. I have a feeling 1D&D is going towards the "everyone gets a medal" flavor of game versus actually allowing people to have more meaningful choices, both good and bad.
I would somewhat reiterate this point.
Fewer classes did mean classes that seemed to be more distinct from one another. But I also think the fewer options available meant players were then forced or inspired to optimize things in a role-playing sense and not in a rules sense to make one character of any given class truly stand out among others of the same class.
These days, players want to see the latest playtest content that might enable them to play a character they've envisioned. In the old days, these were the sorts of things we dreamt up ourselves and then negotiated at the table. I really don't need to see something official to be convinced by one of my players that his or her character ought to be proficient in its use of something if a strong enough case has been made for this feature.
I started this thread by speaking about where I think 1D&D is going (not where I which it would go) and a lot of the replies have been more about where folks would like it to go not ( primarily) about where they think it is going - that’s fine and useful and was somewhat expected. Those that have been reading my posts for the last year and a half know I’m an opinionated old fart that likes a lot of reality and would be happy if stuff from earlier editions was brought back in places. So here goes some of my thoughts on how I wish things would go:
1) real life - low intelligence folks don’t often multiclass (become professionally competent if not expert in multiple professions) to do so takes interest/ need and brains to learn the skills and knowledges to be multidimensional. If I could I would require at least a 13 in Intelligence in order to multiclass - in addition to whatever other stats are required. Yes that means you’re going to see a lot less multiclassing and most multiclassed PCs are going to be rolled not standard array or point buy. If you are that interested in the concept keep rolling - I don’t mind - I tell my players to use rolling and take the first character with nothing below a 10 and at at least 3 stats of 13+ as it is. The PCs are supposed to be great hero’s so why not?
2) classes, subclasses and prestige classes - we are indeed getting overly homogenized with overlapping classes and subclasses I would be happy to go back having 4 classes - fighters, mages, rogues and clerics and EVERYTHING else being a subclass of one of the four. If your character vision is of a multiclassed character see #1above. Having a limited base of classes clearly defined actually makes for more creative effort not less ( think of the word skill needed to put your ideas into sonnet form or Haiku rather than free verse in poetry - or go read the story of the dot and the line) fighters would have 5 subclasses: fighter (your basic combat specialist), Ranger ( your “primal”/ nature centered Gish, Paladin ( your Divine centered Gish), Arcane warrior (your arcane centered Gish) and the Monk (your martial artist with “KI” talents). Not separate classes competing with fighter but variants specialized for selected rolls. If you want to go further then (yes like 4e) each subclass has some higher level prestige classes that let them specialize even further. Same for the other classes. Note that this way the “best”/“ most powerful” features are generally left for the single class characters while multiclass characters get a mix of good but not great lower level abilities from their classes. As an example start with the champion fighter as a base, then add the hunter ranger abilities for the subclass and then the gloomstalker ranger as the prestige class ( no not every ability will fit but draw from those 3 to grant something new each level) .
3) exploration/travel leg - there are some really excellent pieces for this like the tables in Xanthers but it’s too scattered. And too unclear on how to use and when. What should be done is to generate a module in which wilderness travel by foot and mount are, in fact, the primary goals not the interruptions. There was some of this in ToA and SLT but really a training adventure for both DMs and players with tools and notes on dealing with different environments. Yes you can use things like portals etc but use them as shortcuts to new terrains to further the story rather than as a means of skipping to the fight scenes. Imagine having to hunt thru a deep forest for a lost manor with clues to some needed artifact. But not actually knowing where the manor is and having to explore and avoid getting lost and turned around or running unexpectedly into local humanoid groups (friendly, neutral and hostile) only to discover that the clues there require you to use a portal to a swamp that you have to survive to get to mountains you explore before crossing a desert to finally find all the pieces and notes to assemble an artifact and only then as a reward for all that travel and exploration do you get access to shortcut magics. All of this being done without general recourse to non mundane materials to make the travel faster and easier and to avoid encounters. One of these I might even have the time and energy to actually write that adventure including the survival notes for the environments. Oh well I can dream because I don’t think WOtC is ever going to do it.
Anyway, I don’t think wizards is headed that way on any of these, and, while I think they are headed in the wrong direction I’m not in a position to stop them and it will be interesting to see what they do as well as probably being enjoyable even if not my dream game.
So where do you think 1D&D is headed and yes speculation is acceptable but it would be nice to get some explanation/evidence for backing up your speculations.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
So, I confess that I am essentially rewriting all the classes and the magic system. I have no idea where they will go, but it worries me and I see an implosion down the road not from the crap about stuff I mentioned earlier, but from the slow an inexorable shift toward a Feature based system instead of a class one.
I have those 20 classes. I totally snarked from the existing ones to give each class 12 abilities. There are no subclasses, and the abilities all grow over time. Then I took a bunch more and they are things folks can pick one from now and again — they are the stuff that is more commonly found as a “shared ability”, and I strive to make the 12 they all have distinct and “just for them”.
now, I did make it so that magic takes time to cast. Up to a minute for 9th level spells. And I am resetting the spell tables and spell lists. And I have to rewrite at least a third of spells from the SRD. Added Sword Skills. Took out material components for mages, changed rituals all to hell and back, put in gunslingers, magical girls, Jedi, witches. Laughed when they said Arcane, Divine, and Primal magic because I had done that already, and added Mystical and Eldritch. I have taken out all the ugly crap, and while the rule book is being finalized, you can see the world itself without any rules to it because I laid it out already.
my players asked for all of it. Maybe not the details of how it works or whatever, but they said “ this is what the want” and so I am making it possible for them — in a way that makes it all work together, using what is still 5e at its core. I have 30 players (plus or minus 7), so it matters a lot for me and my tables, but is probably meaningless for anyone else.
I put so much work in over the last four years and change that I don’t want WotC to head in this direction I am going in, lol. Not because I want to make a gazillion dollars or anything selling it, but because damn, I had to do this work because it wasn’t something they were going to get out of WotC.
they threw Anime at me, people. I had to homebrew a Warforged into a robot maid or butler. I had to make magic visible. No way WotC is going to do that.
technically, I am still working on the setting as we finalize the rule book — ensuring that lore matches and expanding things where we need to. And by we, I mean me. They play test, they throw a hundred ideas at me, and then I have to figure out how to do it and how to make it work.
WotC is doing The Exact Same Thing, though: listening to the players who answer surveys, and trying out new things that were thrown at them. They just have a lot more people, and that flattens the curve.
D&D was created by a small group of people trying to make a game that made them happy. WotC can’t do that, realistically, but they can and have given us the tools to do it. But they also have a completely different way of seeing the game than someone like me does. Their first effort at a fresh D&D game was 3e. It is influenced by the success of Magic and their ideas of lore there.
every new rule, every new Feature or Ability or Feat or whatever they call them now, lol, those are all tools in a toolchest, and like I said, I like keeping up with the times. So I am using those tools.
land that, in the end, is where it will eventually get as a whole game if it is allowed to flourish. A point where everyone has to create their own class from scratch because the old archetypes have been wiped out, a set of rules that says “this is what you can do to make your special kind of whatever, and here are the choices you can use to do that.
Since they are making One D&D kind of an iterative thing, I suspect it will be the full 6e that loses it, and 7e will be a major course correction. If an average of eight years between versions hold, I will likely be gone by then.
but, if I am lucky and one of the grandkids in our group (my oldest grand daughter is 23!) likes it enough, they may pick up the work I did here, and that will continue — down a different path.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
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1) Toning down level 1 isn't just an attempt at raining in dips, there's also the fact that every level 1 character has become more frontloaded now thanks to the level 1 feat no longer being optional, all the half-casters getting casting right away now, and most
racesspecies having some form of build-defining choice too. Which kind of Elf am I? Or Tiefling? Or Goliath? Even the most vanilla race, Human, now has TWO feats to look through before the campaign even starts.2) The exploration pillar was never dependent on ribbon features like the original Ranger had. Exploration is resolved via roleplay, ability checks, maybe the occasional spell... and of course, exploration.
3) Wish is right there on the Arcane List in the playtest doc so not sure what you're talking about there.
4) On this one we agree.
I just really hope classes have their own niches so different classes can feel special, and it doesn't end up a little like World of Warcraft ('everyone evolved to do everything').
This isn’t really profound, but I think everyone needs to get ready for at least some level of disappointment. For every person saying they want classes to be distinct with no overlap, there’s someone else asking why wizards can’t cast healing spells, or suggesting that all martial classes should get battlemaster maneuvers by default. People on the boards often like the idea of customization and making choices, but the developers are pretty sure new players bounce off the game if there’s too many choices.
There’s a lot of competing goals out there. No matter what you want, the game won’t tick all of everyone’s boxes
Aye.
I would go so far as to say that the people who ask or suggest that kind of thing tend to be more the norm than those of us who want the distinction.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
The trash.
It's a contrived mess designed from the ground up to facilitate microtransactions to purchase spells and feats and background features.
The playtest materials all reek of 'free to play' MMO models.
It's like WoTC looked back at what happened in 2012 and were like "You know... It's about time another Pathfinder was born...".
Welcome to TABLE pt II.
The hubris is breathtaking.
Not hubris - greed, and even then it’s buried several layers deep trying to maximize sales by taking the big pieces ( books and modules) and itemizing the new salable stuff (classes, races, spells and equipment) and making that individually purchasable for those that don’t want to get the whole book ( generally the better buy in the long run). Because of the nature of the game it will never really be a free to play mmo with in-app purchases required to “win” the game.
A reminder for everyone ( including me) this is barely half way thru the first play test iteration so any and everything we have seen so far is still really on the drawing room table so things like the wish spell could still go the way of PC spell extinction even if they survive in game in things like the ring of 3 wishes etc. Personally I think the game would benefit from its removal from the normal spell listings. I could easily see it as an “epic” level spell only available to L21+ characters. No it’s not there now but we still have over a year of development and play test before the final versions come out sometime in (probably) late 2024.
Xalthu, I expect to be disappointed in many ways by 6e in the sense that it’s not going to be what I would have done, on the other hand it should still be a decent game and I expect to keep playing and enjoying D&D for many years to come.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
There seems to be a lot of confusion regarding what Exploration is supposed to encompass. While Exploration certainly can involve travel, and depending on the group you might track food, water, and other resources, saying that Exploration equals travel is like saying Combat equals making sure your character has weapons and armor. To be a meaningful Exploration scene you need all the same elements of what makes a meaningful Combat or Interaction scene: the players need at least some agency, they need to be given important choices, and it needs to be exciting.
Exploration actually encompasses everything that isn't Combat or Interaction. The former ranger features (finding food, not getting lost) represent a very thin slice of Exploration. A session where the PCs delve into a dungeon doesn't require you to track food or make survival checks to avoid becoming lost, but will contain many Exploration options.