Zero Buzz on 5E...Is It Dead Out The Gate?

[momothefiddler]

Given that I'm almost certain there are more people who consider God their mother than Ayn Rand, the claim that combining the two makes it entirely unambiguous is a stretch and the claim that reversing them solves it is almost insulting*.

But as for the actual concept behind the example, I guess I can see that. Thank you for the clarification and I apologize for not checking Wikipedia myself; that was an oversight on my part.

*Perhaps it's fair to note that people who consider God their mother would be unlikely to dedicate a book to Ayn Rand, but then again people who would dedicate a book to Ayn Rand are unlikely to dedicate a book to God, so...

[fectin]

No worries; it was a citation, not a rebuke.

[deaddmwalking]

This reminds me that I have a book floating around that I've been meaning to read: Eats, Shoots and Leaves.

[shadzar]

Even the ogre pictured is pissed off the wrong alignment scheme is still being used. he doesn't have time for the 9 pockets because he has skulls to smash!

i have no idea what the fuck ever a Nothic would look like. they picture an ogre which is common fantasy shit, and then leave out something that is new and undefined. how bad can WotC fuck up?

Nothic entry = no inspiration to use. by the reading, just replace with a known monster like a lich.

[ACOS]

I do believe those are some of the most bland and uninspiring monster entries I've ever seen.
Also, if all 3 of those are supposed to be CR2, I am actively afraid of what the final CR system actually looks like.

This makes me sad.

[Maxus]

This reminds me that I have a book floating around that I've been meaning to read: Eats, Shoots and Leaves.

I'll summarize:

"People use punctuation poorly and I hate it."

[Username17]

Even the ogre pictured is pissed off the wrong alignment scheme is still being used. he doesn't have time for the 9 pockets because he has skulls to smash!

i have no idea what the fuck ever a Nothic would look like. they picture an ogre which is common fantasy shit, and then leave out something that is new and undefined. how bad can WotC fuck up?

Nothic entry = no inspiration to use. by the reading, just replace with a known monster like a lich.

Basically, yes. That monster page is terrible. It doesn't help that a big chunk of it is taken up with an ooze (never the most interesting monster in any edition), but the other monsters display a shocking amount of problems on multiple levels.

The Nothic entry is a complete train wreck. The backstory is reasonable enough (evil wizard unwisely turns themselves into a monster, forgets that they were once human), but the backstory also largely negates itself from mattering: there's a hard break in the monster's memory, so while there are presumably affects of what the wizard used to be and care about among the remnants of its lab, that won't really affect what the Nothic cares about. There is no indication of what a Nothic cares about or even looks like. Can they pass for human? Can they even talk? I have no idea, and no idea what they could do with their ability to psychically extract secrets from people.

But the numbers on these bad boys are also extremely bad. This is 4e levels of padded sumo. The Ogre takes an average of a bit over six rounds to drop himself with his club - and he's what passes for a glass cannon in this fucking game. The Nothic takes fourteen rounds to claw itself to pieces. That is fucked.

And the alignment thing is just incomprehensible. Even people who hate 4e will grudgingly agree that 4e's use of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay alignments was 44% better than the fucking alignment square of AD&D. OD&D's 3 flavor alignments would be better still, and just not having such a designation would be best of all. Putting in Neutral Evil and Chaotic Evil as different things is a tremendous step backwards for no conceivable gain.

-Username17

[shadzar]

Basically, yes. That monster page is terrible.

well the Nothic can speak undercommon. but another thing is these are level 2 monsters? wtf does Challenge 2 mean? it is a challenge for a level 2 party and gives 450 xp to split amongst the party.

an ogre for level 2 in the starter set? a jelly/ooze for level 2?

4th edition was on hard mode if these kinds of monsters are level 2. what is good monster for a level 3 party, a cavern of red dragons in their lair?

this is terrible for a NORMAL MM, but for the starter set, this is a colossal fuck up!

they probably should have stuck with the damn artwork bit and showed the goblin entry. were they afraid someone was going to play a game of 3E without buying anything? (did they realize they did an open playtest where people were doing just that?)

feel fre to explain anything else that is just stupid looking other than Challenge # if you can figure it out. 14 rounds for the Nothinc to claw itself to death.. sounds like an emo monster to me.

[Koumei]

feel fre to explain anything else that is just stupid looking other than Challenge # if you can figure it out. 14 rounds for the Nothinc to claw itself to death.. sounds like an emo monster to me.

To be a little less silly, if two of them get in a fight (regardless of what magical knowledge they had beforehand, now a mad Illusionist and a mad Conjurer become the same Nothic), it takes 14 rounds for one of them to beat the other one down. But they will nearly always figure each other's secrets out, so actually, I guess they actually do get into fights with one another all the time. "SHIT, WE HAVE EACH OTHER'S SECRETS, WE MUST FIGHT TO KEEP OUR SECRETS SAFE!" slap slap slap slap

[Sakuya Izayoi]

It sounds to me like, because of bounded accuracy, challenge != level. Rather, Challenge 1 = mook, Challenge 2 = bruiser, and I'm guessing Challenge 3 is some sort of midboss, and Challenge 4 is big bad. IE, that ogre is a slog at every level.

I suppose the idea is being able to fight the entire bestiary within an E6 style ruleset.

[NineInchNall]

To be a little less silly, if two of them get in a fight (regardless of what magical knowledge they had beforehand, now a mad Illusionist and a mad Conjurer become the same Nothic), it takes 14 rounds for one of them to beat the other one down. But they will nearly always figure each other's secrets out, so actually, I guess they actually do get into fights with one another all the time. "SHIT, WE HAVE EACH OTHER'S SECRETS, WE MUST FIGHT TO KEEP OUR SECRETS SAFE!" slap slap slap slap

The fact that it still takes eight rounds even if they HIT WITH EVERY ATTACK defies comprehension.

[Username17]

It sounds to me like, because of bounded accuracy, challenge != level. Rather, Challenge 1 = mook, Challenge 2 = bruiser, and I'm guessing Challenge 3 is some sort of midboss, and Challenge 4 is big bad. IE, that ogre is a slog at every level.

I suppose the idea is being able to fight the entire bestiary within an E6 style ruleset.

I'm pretty sure you're wrong. First of all, all of those creatures are worth the same amount of XP. Secondly, all of these monsters are from the Starter Set, which is only supposed to go up a few levels. So these really are all 2nd level challenges. With 7 hit dice, because go fuck yourself.

-Username17

[Sakuya Izayoi]

If they really are level 2 encounters, and not just some arbitrary number Mearls slapped on them, then this game is a lot worse than I had fathomed. I had just written it off as unnecessary considering Labyrinth Lord is free and 3.PF is mostly free. Not actually terrible in new and exciting ways!

[ishy]

To be a little less silly, if two of them get in a fight (regardless of what magical knowledge they had beforehand, now a mad Illusionist and a mad Conjurer become the same Nothic), it takes 14 rounds for one of them to beat the other one down. But they will nearly always figure each other's secrets out, so actually, I guess they actually do get into fights with one another all the time. "SHIT, WE HAVE EACH OTHER'S SECRETS, WE MUST FIGHT TO KEEP OUR SECRETS SAFE!" slap slap slap slap

The fact that it still takes eight rounds even if they HIT WITH EVERY ATTACK defies comprehension.

4 rounds actually, they get to make 2 claw attacks a round.

[Username17]

Oh goodness, you're right. It's only 7 rounds for a Nothic to drop a Nothic, because they have that awful 4e nomenclature where one attack is listed as an action and then a different action lets you use that attack and also do something else. So there's a "claws" action that attacks once, and a "multiattack" action that uses the "claws" action twice. That is such a fucking over-complicated way of writing this shit.

But yes, it's only painfully slow, not "kill yourself" slow.

-Username17

[Grek]

On the other hand: 5e is the Alpha Strike edition, and based on the playtest documents it looks like it would take a 2nd level fighter around 4 to 5 rounds to drop a Nothic depending on their weapon. Monsters have big numbers for hit points, but players do big numbers in damage.

[Korwin]

To be a little less silly, if two of them get in a fight (regardless of what magical knowledge they had beforehand, now a mad Illusionist and a mad Conjurer become the same Nothic), it takes 14 rounds for one of them to beat the other one down. But they will nearly always figure each other's secrets out, so actually, I guess they actually do get into fights with one another all the time. "SHIT, WE HAVE EACH OTHER'S SECRETS, WE MUST FIGHT TO KEEP OUR SECRETS SAFE!" slap slap slap slap

The fact that it still takes eight rounds even if they HIT WITH EVERY ATTACK defies comprehension.

4 rounds actually, they get to make 2 claw attacks a round.

On the other hand: 5e is the Alpha Strike edition, and based on the playtest documents it looks like it would take a 2nd level fighter around 4 to 5 rounds to drop a Nothic depending on their weapon. Monsters have big numbers for hit points, but players do big numbers in damage.

Huh?

[ishy]

Well assuming crits deal max damage and not double damage.
And looking at the average melee damage a round:

Nothic vs Nothic: 6,3 damage
Nothic vs Ogre: 8,7 damage
Ogre vs Nothic: 8,15 damage
Ogre vs Ogre: 10,75 damage

So nothics take slightly over 7 rounds to kill each other and slightly less than 7 rounds to kill an ogre.
Ogres take about 5,5 rounds to kill a nothic or an ogre.

Interesting to note that the ogre does not have reach though. And I can't believe how terrible their word choice and stat layout actually are.

[brized]

The page formatting is terrible too. The Nothic's entry runs into the second column, and the Ogre's runs off into the next page. This is 2014, not 2004. Pathfinder has been formatting monster entries competently for years now; there's no excuse here.

[rasmuswagner]

The page formatting is terrible too. The Nothic's entry runs into the second column, and the Ogre's runs off into the next page. This is 2014, not 2004. Pathfinder has been formatting monster entries competently for years now; there's no excuse here.

But this way, it feels like D&D!

[Cyberzombie]

I'm pretty sure you're wrong. First of all, all of those creatures are worth the same amount of XP. Secondly, all of these monsters are from the Starter Set, which is only supposed to go up a few levels. So these really are all 2nd level challenges. With 7 hit dice, because go fuck yourself.

Looks like they responded to everyone complaining the monsters were too easy in the playtest by nearly doubling the ogre's hit points and giving it a +1 to hit. It's 4E math all over again. It looks like "faster combats" are out as a design goal and we're back to 4E grinding, because everyone liked that, right?

I guess this is what we can expect from Mearls.

[virgil]

It looks like "faster combats" are out as a design goal and we're back to 4E grinding, because everyone liked that, right?

It's not just Mearls that thinks this way. Two DMs I played under hated fast combat and defined epic as lasting 8+ rounds, and 3 round fights being overly short for any combat. They could only think of combating it by inflating HP, only rarely thought about the time it took to resolve a single round of combat (which ham-fisted and poorly thought solutions), and never considered the idea that there needed to be more options to keep it from just being Press [A]!

[shadzar]

The page formatting is terrible too. The Nothic's entry runs into the second column, and the Ogre's runs off into the next page. This is 2014, not 2004 1984.

yeah and it would have only taken then to actually put the text down there because it fits witht he image. guess they needed a way to make the book more pages to force a higher price or have enough signature, or didnt want to crop the ogre image by 2 lines of text....

i just put those lines directly under the others and there is plenty of room since it doesnt even touch the image.

they should work and focus on 2e MC design rather than going back to crappy 1e design. the editor of this book is just plain stupid. but all editors are jsut that stupid as well because "tradition" and books have always been done that way. well maybe it you make more books the RIGHT way then people would read them more often and technical manuals need to have less breaks in information cause you to have to flip a page. and D&D books are always technical manuals.

[Previn]

I can think of absolutely no excuse to not have a picture with every monster stat block in the starter set. I've played D&D since dwarf was a class and I had to google what a Nothic actually was.

In fact those monsters are some of the absolutely most uninspiring and boring things I've seen. The Ogre apparently doesn't even have any skills. It is literally nothing more than a walking combat encounter. The fact that it can 1-shot level appropriate characters? Madness.

I don't see anything about 5e that makes it look like it's trying to expand D&D to new players. It looks like everything is instead just trying to cater to people who have already played D&D. I would almost insanely suggest that a lot of what 5e does wrong it does to deliberately drive away new players.

[virgil]

Oh, so that's what a Nothic looks like...I would not have gotten that from the monster text at all.