Dungeons and Dragons Exploring a New Edition

[B9anders]

I just learned about this and I must say, I am excited.

I liked the straightforwardness of 2nd edition. All I want from D&D is a system that is a bit more modular and versatile, more streamlined and relieved of the clunkiness. 3.5 was much more versatile, got rid of the clunkiness but also an overburdened beast and prestige classes was imo not the right way of adding modularity. And the progression path was awful past 7th level. Not to mention the dependence on magic item economy (urg). I never bothered with 4ed. Everything I read about it seemed to suggestion it was all built around streamlined combat simulation and classes were pretty much all defined by this.

I like the concept of being able to have one character made in ten minutes with just a few notes scribbled on the sheet and one made in two hours with thoroughly fleshed out options being able to play at the same table and have similar competency. If they can pull that off elegantly, I'd be excited (it seems doable. An easy example in gurps: you can take 10 seconds to spend 30 points on luck and serendipity to solve your problems, or you can spend it on skills, techniques and perks).

[johndallman]

The first playtest packet - a bunch of PDFs - is out. Registering with wizards.com seems to be all that's necessary to get it.

[ak_aramis]

Originally Posted by johndallman

The first playtest packet - a bunch of PDFs - is out. Registering with wizards.com seems to be all that's necessary to get it.

And agreeing to the NDA terms.

[Mylon]

The NDA appears pretty light. Basically, "Don't re-distribute." The agreement explicitly states:

you! may! publicly! discuss! your! thoughts! regarding the! D&D! Next! Playtest! Materials! and! your! playtesting!
experience.

Weird how copy pasting injected extra punctuation.

Anyhow, that said, I'm kinda curious about where they're going with this. Fighters don't gain any attack bonus from levels 1 to 3. It looks like the core rules are going to combine race + class + background + theme to create a character and everything is predetermined based on that. Kinda like the classes from 2nd but with a bit more of the crunch that 3rd added. This is conjecture, but I figure the advanced rules do away with themes and backgrounds and let players pick up abilities much like how feats work in 3rd. The rules also include healing surges.

As a whole I think it's hard to really evaluate how the rules work. 3rd edition always seemed to work well for levels 2-5. It wasn't until after that it got muddy and bothersome. And the playtest doesn't give us a taste of how 5th ed will handle those troublesome higher levels.

[Kuroshima]

Originally Posted by Mylon

The NDA appears pretty light. Basically, "Don't re-distribute." The agreement explicitly states:


Weird how copy pasting injected extra punctuation.

Anyhow, that said, I'm kinda curious about where they're going with this. Fighters don't gain any attack bonus from levels 1 to 3. It looks like the core rules are going to combine race + class + background + theme to create a character and everything is predetermined based on that. Kinda like the classes from 2nd but with a bit more of the crunch that 3rd added. This is conjecture, but I figure the advanced rules do away with themes and backgrounds and let players pick up abilities much like how feats work in 3rd. The rules also include healing surges.

As a whole I think it's hard to really evaluate how the rules work. 3rd edition always seemed to work well for levels 2-5. It wasn't until after that it got muddy and bothersome. And the playtest doesn't give us a taste of how 5th ed will handle those troublesome higher levels.

Well, it really reminded me of 2nd ed, without the charm of 2nd ed. Of course, levels 1-3, and with no character creation, and with some possibly screwy numbers, I can't judge. The Advantage and Disadvantage mechanics inject a little curve to the dice, and that's a plus, but I certainly doubt that they've done the math on this...

[Mylon]

The advantage/disadvantage turns it from a flat probability to a triangle. With advantage you have a 1/400 chance of rolling a 1, and a 39/400 (9.8%) chance of rolling a 20, with an average of 14. It's a bit crude because you only get a potential of one net advantage or disadvantage, but it provides a nice alternative to throwing tons of modifiers around. 3.5 was pretty bad because you'd have to keep track of whether you were flanking, whether your cleric had cast bless, whether your mage had dropped some debuff, etc. 4th edition was terrible because everyone got to drop modifiers down on top of their normal attacks. I saw a game where minis had around 5 rubber bands hanging off the arms to keep track of what modifiers were applied to them.

So I kinda like the move towards simplicity.

[johndallman]

I found two things that wrecked my suspension of disbelief on the first pass, but they could be controlled by a realism switch, or house-ruled.

The first was the amount you can carry: Str*10lb before it affects anything. This is partly compensated for by the armour being so heavy, and both things need fixing.

The other is the roll-your-hit-dice recovery mechanic, which feels totally videogame.

[Mylon]

Originally Posted by johndallman

The other is the roll-your-hit-dice recovery mechanic, which feels totally videogame.

They're trying to keep it action oriented, much like a video game. Though in general there's hardly any difference between burning through your healing kit to top someone off or the cleric blowing a fat load of spells (and otherwise never getting a chance to do anything fun because his whole kit is just topping people off between battles). I think the 'resource management' portion of D&D is far too iconic for them to totally do away with it.

[Palmer]

Originally Posted by johndallman

The first was the amount you can carry: Str*10lb before it affects anything. This is partly compensated for by the armour being so heavy, and both things need fixing.

The other is the roll-your-hit-dice recovery mechanic, which feels totally videogame.

Those are absolutely realistic weights for armor. Historical plate armor (surviving examples) weighed about 40-50 pounds, on par with the 50 pounds in D&D.
15 pounds for cuir boulli leather is on the light side. A decent leather jacket easily weighs 5 pounds itself, and leather armor is MUCH thicker than that, and also includes arm and leg armor.

Carrying 100 pounds packed well isn't unrealistic for a typical man. US infantry basic kit is almost 90 pounds currently, and on patrol it can weigh even more. D&D assumes you're in shape for your ability scores, and thus it's not unreasonable for most in shape men to carry 100-120 pounds.

As for the hit dice system... you need to use a healing kit to activate that, which does cost money. It's no more or less realistic than chugging down a few quarts worth of healing potions after every fight, which is the old school way of doing it.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Palmer

Carrying 100 pounds packed well isn't unrealistic for a typical man.

Indeed, but not at the same speed as when carrying 10lb!

As for the hit dice system... you need to use a healing kit to activate that, which does cost money. It's no more or less realistic than chugging down a few quarts worth of healing potions after every fight, which is the old school way of doing it.

The level of the cost, however, seems to be quite different. You're also using substantial quantities of magic, as opposed to it being something that requires fairly low levels of mundane skill and equipment.