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

[shadzar]

how the fuck would anyone think anything like that from the entry?

did they leave out the monster descriptions so they could sell more Monster Manuals?

that thing should be: claw/claw/bite/spines

no wonder they are giving basic away as free PDF online because it wont be able to do shit if the starter set is lacking even the ability to be a basic game.

[Grek]

Huh?

Let's look at some test cases for a level 2, Str 18 fighter:

Option 1: Greataxe with Great Weapon Fighting Style and Great Weapon Master feat:
The fighter rolls 1d20+4+1-5 to hit. On a hit, he does 2d12+8 damage, due to his feat. On a miss, he still does 4 damage, due to his fighting style. 0.70(4)+0.30(21)=9.1 average damage per attack action. That's 4.95 attack actions to take down the Nothic. Since the fighter can use Action surge to get an extra swing the first round, he takes 3.95 rounds to kill the Nothic on average.

Option 2: Long & Short Swords with Two Weapon Fighting Style and the Dual Wilder feat:
The fighter rolls 1d20+4+1 to hit on each of his two swings. On a hit, his longsword does 1d8+4 damage and his shortsword does 1d6+4. On a miss, both do 0.55(9.5)
+0.55(8.5)=9.9 average damage per attack action, or an average of 4.54 attack actions to kill the Nothic. Again, due to Action surge, this takes the fighter 3.54 rounds to accomplish.

Option 3: Longbow with Archery Fighting Style and Archery Master feat. 18 Dex instead of 18 Str:
The fighter rolls 1d20+4+1+1 per attack action. On a hit, the fighter does 1d8+4 damage and on a miss he does 0 damage. 0.35(9.5)+0.35(9.5)=6.65 average damage per attack action, or an average of 6.77 attack actions to shoot a Nothic to death. As before, this takes the fighter an average of 5.77 rounds to do because Action Surge.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Putting in Neutral Evil and Chaotic Evil as different things is a tremendous step backwards for no conceivable gain.

-Username17

It gives 1E AD&D to 3.5E/PF grognards/tropers stiffies. For everyone else who isn't a neurotic dork overly attached to symbols and afraid of change, we can just roll our eyes at the shamans game designers waving their totems and ignore it.0

I don't like it, but if you're committed to the goal of 'unite the fans of previous editions through affinity fraud' (many of whom are only fans or detractors of a particular edition because of totems like alignment or THAC0 or 3d6 in order) it's an obvious starting point. Hell, it might even actually be a net positive to the product. You know how those people are.

Yes, I'm doing some hardcore hatin', why do you ask?

[ishy]

Let's look at some test cases for a level 2, Str 18 fighter:

Your numbers are slightly off.

"The fighter rolls 1d20+4+1-5 to hit
0.75(4)+0.25(21)=8.25 average"
If you need to roll a 15 to hit, you have a 30% chance to hit (and a small chance to crit).

[Grek]

Whoops.

[ishy]

Option 2: 1d20+4+1 to hit on each of his two swings. On a hit, his longsword does 1d8+4 damage and his shortsword does 1d6+4. On a miss, both do 0.
5(9.5)+0.5(8.5)=9 average damage per attack action,

Option 3:1d20+4+1+1 per attack action. On a hit, the fighter does 1d8+4 damage and on a miss he does 0 damage. 0.35(9.5)+0.35(9.5)=6.65 average damage per attack action,

Something is off about these too (or I'm missing something).
Option 2: needing a 10 to hit is 55% chance to hit.
1d8+4 = 8,5 / 1d6+4 = 7,5 damage

Option 3: needing a 9 to hit is 60% chance to hit (assuming there is a rapid shot ability here?)
1d8+4 = 8,5 damage

[Grek]

There is indeed a rapid shot ability. -5 to attack rolls in exchange for making two attacks per attack action.

The math error is due to me misreading the AC entry for the Nothic. It's one lower than I thought it was when I did the math.

[Cyberzombie]

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]!

Yeah, had 4E not happened, it'd actually be forgiveable to have that point of view. The problem is that the D&D community has already seen the problems inherent in trying to oversaturate hit points. The long combats aren't exciting or epic, they're just boring and grindy. To make that mistake once is potentially understandable, but to make that mistake twice is just stupidity, especially when a great deal of the anti-4E feedback was "combats take too damn long."

At the very least, they could have at least tried to keep combats exciting by putting in explosive results, but they didn't even do that. The average combat in Mutants and Masterminds takes quite a few rounds, but at least it keeps people engaged and tense, because any failed roll can potentially drop someone. But this crap where monsters have godawful AC and a giant bucket of hit points is just a reproduction of 4E's awful combats. There's no points of excitement there or tension, it's just a predictable grind. Even the reverse of high AC monsters with low HP would have been preferable... something, *anything* other than the 4E model, which we all know doesn't work.

[CapnTthePirateG]

Yeah, had 4E not happened, it'd actually be forgiveable to have that point of view. The problem is that the D&D community has already seen the problems inherent in trying to oversaturate hit points. The long combats aren't exciting or epic, they're just boring and grindy. To make that mistake once is potentially understandable, but to make that mistake twice is just stupidity, especially when a great deal of the anti-4E feedback was "combats take too damn long."

At the very least, they could have at least tried to keep combats exciting by putting in explosive results, but they didn't even do that. The average combat in Mutants and Masterminds takes quite a few rounds, but at least it keeps people engaged and tense, because any failed roll can potentially drop someone. But this crap where monsters have godawful AC and a giant bucket of hit points is just a reproduction of 4E's awful combats. There's no points of excitement there or tension, it's just a predictable grind. Even the reverse of high AC monsters with low HP would have been preferable... something, *anything* other than the 4E model, which we all know doesn't work.

Why would we expect Wizards to know that? Wizards staff aren't here or on GiTP or Minmaxboards. If I had to guess they'd be getting information from their forums and EnWorld, which are vast echo chamber wastelands of talking about how 4e combats are totally tactically interesting because of zones and movement and shit while 3e combats consisted of full attacking until the end of time or the wizard single-handledly winning everything in a single round. So I can see them sticking to 4e combat as the most "interesting".

Granted, they're wrong, but why would you expect Mearls to do anything right?

[Cyberzombie]

Granted, they're wrong, but why would you expect Mearls to do anything right?

I suppose I expected someone on the design team to at least take a look at the Pathfinder fans, considering PF smoked 4E in terms of popularity.

And I expected Mearls to fuck it up, it's just I at least gave him credit that he'd make some new stupid mistakes instead of repeating the old stupid mistakes.

[ishy]

If you have a party of 4 fighters, they'll have 8 actions in the first round (thanks to action surge) and will take down almost two ogres or nothics in the first round.

The 4e lengthy combats were so incredibly bad because people ran out of interesting things to do and were just spamming at-wills for a while, without being able to meaningfully affect combat.

[Previn]

So:


Despite being CR 1/2, a few of those are not an appropriate encounter for players below level 3. I could easily TPK a lot of low level groups using smart play and those bows.

Also, totally no skills.

[virgil]

Hobgoblins will require, generally, two or three attacks each to be taken out. Given a choice between an ogre and four hobgoblins each hitting as hard as said ogre...

[nockermensch]

>That AC 18 on hobgoblins.

But then again, CR never did much sense. The ogre as listed on a 3.X monster manual is a different encounter from the same ogre in full plate wielding a large greataxe, which is also different from the same ogre who has picked brutal throw and improved initiative instead toughness and weapon focus: greatclub.

EDIT: I don't know how actions like charge and flanking work on Next, but from looking the hobgoblin's special attack and AC, I suspect that 4 hobgoblins will come on top of 1 ogre more than 50% of the times.

[ishy]

3.5 Ogres are not proficient in heavy armour though, so don't think an ogre would want to wear full plate.

[Lago PARANOIA]

To be perfectly honest, I don't exactly find the formatting of these monsters to be all that awful for what they are. I agree that it's criminal for every monster entry of anything that doesn't have a real-world equivalent to not have a picture and some of the inherited game design decisions are idiotic (alignment, hobgoblins apparently not having skills) but they're already better than 4E D&D monsters and monster formatting. I mean, shit, you can equip a hobgoblin in 5E D&D with a glaive or with full-plate without the game kerploding.

[Cyberzombie]

>That AC 18 on hobgoblins.

For whatever reason, worn armor is totally superior to any kind of natural hide that monsters get in 5E, even if you're talking about something like an iron golem that's made of metal. So you get ogres with 11 AC and anything that wears regular human armor has awesome AC by comparison. That's a deliberate design decision they made for some reason, I figure it was to cater to the "I hate missing" crowd of PCs, who want every battle to be a boring predictable series of auto-hitting grindy battles.

But then again, CR never did much sense. The ogre as listed on a 3.X monster manual is a different encounter from the same ogre in full plate wielding a large greataxe, which is also different from the same ogre who has picked brutal throw and improved initiative instead toughness and weapon focus: greatclub.

Well, CR as a quantity isn't really supposed to be linked to hit dice or even monster type, so it should fluidly change based on how powerful the monster is. It's perfectly reasonable to jack up the CR of something if you optimize its feats or give it equipment, as CR is a measure of how challenging something is supposed to be.

[ishy]

I missed this at first. But the Longbow entry has it listed as a melee attack or a ranged attack.
Do you use your dex or strength for melee attacks with a longbow?

[shadzar]

where in the hell do they get some of these numbers? are they trying to put the average, mean, mode, or some shit?

HP 11 (2d8 +2)

just put the fucking range
4~18

same with the "extra damage"
7 (2d6)

do they do an extra 7 damage or 2d6, which is it?

who in the hell came up with the idea to do that and put both in. choose 1!

who gets to choose which to use? the DM or the players? i know what they are trying to say, but for any player that the starter set is for it should have been made simple, and that means you want dice rolled you put the dice (2d6). you want an real number of extra damage done, you put the number. dont put the average number rolled on those dice unless that is the real number to be used in the game. everything doesnt need the dice average printed for it and the actual dice to roll in parenthesis as an afterthought.

i thought it was fine before in the HP because similar has always been done, but this extra damage shit means they really dont understand how older editions did the numbers.

NO. APPEARING: 2-20 (2d10)

Copyright 1999 TSR Inc.

range of number followed by dice notation to get that range. NOT THE FUCKING AVERAGE NUMBER ROLLED ON THE DICE!

for 5r I guess they would try to put something stupid like:
NO. APPEARING: 11 (2d10)

this is very different from saying 2 hobgoblins are the minimum and 20 is the max, that reads like 11 show up all the time and any time.

so which is it for this hobgoblin? it does 7 extra damage for martial advantage or 2d6?

[momothefiddler]

I presume they're taking the mean (rounded down, it appears).

And it looks to me like groups who don't want to spend a bunch of extra time where the MC rolls dice and everyone else watches can use the mean, while groups who do that beforehand or don't mind and who enjoy the extra randomness are given the generating function so they can do it themselves.

I don't really see the problem with that. I definitely see how "the hobgoblin's sword always does 5 damage" could be a bit dull, but I also see how rolling up to 42 extra dice just to put a group of hobgoblins on the table before even starting the combat could be dull too.

[Previn]

To be perfectly honest, I don't exactly find the formatting of these monsters to be all that awful for what they are. I agree that it's criminal for every monster entry of anything that doesn't have a real-world equivalent to not have a picture and some of the inherited game design decisions are idiotic (alignment, hobgoblins apparently not having skills) but they're already better than 4E D&D monsters and monster formatting. I mean, shit, you can equip a hobgoblin in 5E D&D with a glaive or with full-plate without the game kerploding.

The formatting is pretty good, but that's helped by the fact that there just isn't much more to 5e monsters than there was to 4e monsters, and 5e rolls a lot of stuff into attributes so there's no need for things like saves, or grapple stuff.

Maybe there will be more in full MM, but I wouldn't hold out for more mechanical stuff, just more description and art. All the complaints about the 4e succubus just being a combat speed bump and total MTP out of combat seem to hold true in 5e.

I missed this at first. But the Longbow entry has it listed as a melee attack or a ranged attack.
Do you use your dex or strength for melee attacks with a longbow?

Probably you use dexterity when making attacks with bows as per the last playtest. In reality, I can easily find 3 different view points and an issue with the rules not defining what weapons are 'strength based' in the playtest so....

do they do an extra 7 damage or 2d6, which is it?

who in the hell came up with the idea to do that and put both in. choose 1!

Unless they have some rule for just using the average rather than rolling, I can see no reason to have included the average result of a roll. Well, maybe for DMs who can't eyeball it, but then you're telling DMs to fudge things to not kill the players in an edition where it's trying very hard to make killer DMs out of everyone mechanically. If they do have a rule for using the average result, the whole game just took a nose dive into being way too deterministic.

[shadzar]

in both case, that is easy. just put the average in a table for those ignorant people and let them look up what a quick number for 2d6 or 2d8+2 is.

either way the range would be better to make something softer or harder if this is why you arent rolling dice. but then the players should get to do it too. be able to pick to use dice or a number of their choosing.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Maybe there will be more in full MM, but I wouldn't hold out for more mechanical stuff, just more description and art. All the complaints about the 4e succubus just being a combat speed bump and total MTP out of combat seem to hold true in 5e.

Well, hobgoblins and ogres are common low level monsters meant as encounter fodder, so except for the whole lack of skills thing it's pathetically acceptable. I'd be more concerned about the preview of the Nothics.

[Username17]

Maybe there will be more in full MM, but I wouldn't hold out for more mechanical stuff, just more description and art. All the complaints about the 4e succubus just being a combat speed bump and total MTP out of combat seem to hold true in 5e.

Well, hobgoblins and ogres are common low level monsters meant as encounter fodder, so except for the whole lack of skills thing it's pathetically acceptable. I'd be more concerned about the preview of the Nothics.

I had to fucking google Nothics. Turns out they were introduced in the Miniatures Handbook and given 4e stats in the monster manual 2. And it's important to note: these are not Shadar-Kai or any of the other late addition monsters that "caught on" and people can actually name. These things are fucking obscure. And more than that: what identity they have is completely unlike that described in the D&DN sample. Here, I'll bring up the story text from the miniature's handbook and 4e:

This hunched creature has a single eye that dominates its entire face. Its body is bloated and misshapen, and its limbs are wiry but strong. Its arms end in claws that reach the ground as it moves in an awkward hop.

Nothics are twisted aberrations that live in deep subterranean caves and ruins, feasting on the flesh of any living creature they can catch.
Nothics speak Undercommon in hoarse, wheezing voices.

Aberrant creatures carried to the planes on drifting pieces of the Far Realm, nothics have fragmented intellects strung together by tenuous sanity. Typically controlled by a more powerful master, a nothic's propensity for random, seeminglyinsane actions makes it more like an amusing pet than a servitor.

Now, those two descriptions are pretty much nothing alike. But very importantly, both of them are wholly unlike the tiny description given in the D&DN sample. Neither previous version has any mind reading powers or particularly seems to care about peoples' brains other than as food. And neither one of them is a 2nd level monster - the Mini Handbook version is CR 3 and the 4rry version is a 15th level Artillery monster who shoots eye beams.

It's not just that the Nothic is way too fucking obscure to give a writeup without a description because very few people are in any way familiar with this fucking thing. It's that on top of that they have also scrapped all the Nothic "lore," so the five or six people in the world who are familiar with this thing are still going to be lost at sea because the only thing the starter set says about them is that the old lore doesn't apply.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

Look, dammit, Michael Bay Mearls found a cool picture of a monster and he intends to use it. So what if it completely warps what little canon he has; that shit cost like 40 American dollars.