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

[Username17]

Wow, busting out the 4vengers arguments in force here. I feel like I'm back on the WotC forums. Are you going to tell me to run minion-only encounters next to speed up my games?

Look, one ogre against a 2nd level party isn't an encounter. It's a massacre.

Could you try being less of a stupid asshole? Look, the encounter guidelines in D&DN are fucked, but they just are what they are. The encounter guidelines do in fact suggest that 2nd level parties take on an Ogre and a couple of Cultists. And yeah, that's fucking trivial.

But you can't make the argument that 5e combats are some way because you personally think that the encounter guidelines are horseshit and you're rewriting them on the fly and your version of the encounter guidelines end up shitty in some other way. Or, I mean you can, but only by the expedient of being a stupid asshole. And I strongly suggest that you be less of a stupid asshole.

If you want to argue that Ogres are badly designed because they are hard to scale up and the encounter guidelines need to be scaled up because other than the blood opera that is Hobgoblin encounters all the sample encounters are trivial speed bumps - that's something I can respect. But I can't respect the claim that Ogre encounters are grindy because you intend to ignore the encounter guidelines in the book. That just doesn't make any fucking sense.

-Username17

[Voss]

But unsurprisingly, again, your math is bad (and trying to frame it as a fighter vs ogre fight is ridiculous on the basic principles of the game). The ogre is 59 hp and AC 11. If the party takes more than 2 rounds killing that, they're doing it wrong. Everybody is inherently hitting on 6s, a greatsword fighter and rogue are doing about 11 damage each hit, and the cleric and wizard (assuming they don't break out the spells) will do 7.5 each. which is easily 26-31 per round, depending on who misses, and no one uses any abilities worth mentioning. As an ogre by itself isn't quite a challenging fight for a 2nd level party (about 90 xp short of that bracket) this is actually a reasonable encounter, and its over in 2 or 3 rounds. Hardly a long slog.

Wow, busting out the 4vengers arguments in force here. I feel like I'm back on the WotC forums. Are you going to tell me to run minion-only encounters next to speed up my games?

Look, one ogre against a 2nd level party isn't an encounter. It's a massacre. Maybe it won't take that long, but that's because it's so trivial, there's no tension at all. If that's all you throw at your PCs, they're going to be bored of out their skulls anyway, because crap like that is barely even worth the trouble of picking up dice at all for. Try building any kind of reasonably challenging encounters out of ogres and tell me it's not going to be a 4E-style grind.

I'm not sure what sort of discussion I'm supposed to be having with you. You're blatantly ignoring all the ways I've bluntly said this edition is going to be shit, but you're going out of your way to build a narrative that the game is bad for reasons that don't actually exist instead of the reasons that it is actually bad. And I can't even follow the logic behind your premises (largely because of your inability to do basic math, which is a trait you share with Mearls).

I am finding flaws in the rules and numbers that actually exist. You are finding flaws in things that only exist in your head, and (somehow) benefits in the actual flaws.

Ogre encounters are going to be shit. But not because they're a grind, but because you essentially pay a mathematically expected toll in HP to successfully enter the next room. Now, this is unlike the hobgoblins, in which you take a 1 in 5 chance to completely clusterfuck the game.

It's actually a really cute video in how exactly it meets your expectations. The party starts to be murdered after a Bugbear and a Goblin both basically one shot kill a PC apiece. After that the DM starts contorting the rules to allow the party to continue to live. You can really sense how "Mother May I" the edition is once the DM starts giving every monster disadvantage for no reason and using the nonexistent skill and action rules to allow the players to do things like "Hide in water, jump out of the water and shoot, hide again underwater all in one turn with no negatives and making every monster roll twice to attack you".

Yeah, there was a lot of that, but you can also see the structural flaws (and mistakes for first time with new edition, but that is to be expected):

-first level characters don't have the resources to do shit.

-the cleric used 1 of his 2 spells to heal the needy halfling fighter (who starts whining for healing after taking less than the clerics minimum amount of healing) in the first video in a fight with 4 goblins. He uses his second spell to shield of faith himself and then doesn't realize he is completely out of things to do beyond hit stuff.

-the wizard went with mage armor at the cave entrance, and then committed the classic flaw of picking magic missile over sleep, which would have put the fight as entire party vs bugbear.

-the trivial fights soaked up too many of the extremely limited resources.

-encounter design is bug fuckery. The first two encounters are jokes (4 goblins and 2 goblins respectively), and the party just can't deal with the bugbear (though much of that was dice rolls). Even discounting the wolf, the bugbear and 5 goblins is far too much for the party. Assuming the goblins are XP priced like cultists (25 each), they are a full encounter budget by themselves. The 200 xp bugbear is beyond what a first level party is expected to be able to handle at all by WotCs own encounter design rules. To have the all together is theoretically a challenging fight for a 4th level party (which it wouldn't be), but this is the exact same sort of failure that Mearls pulled in Keep on the Shadowfell when 4e launched: encounters that varied between jokes and ridiculous overkill that the party just can't handle.

But the basic fact that they can't keep to their own encounter design rules for their intro starter set adventure (or keep it to something a newbie party can deal with) is ridiculous and sad. And bodes poorly for them getting back into selling adventures.

[tussock]

https://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.asp ... l/20140721

I didn't see this commented on anywhere. They've got feat names up, and what they'll do.

In fifth edition, each feat is like a focused multiclass option. It comes with everything you need to realize a new dimension to your character. Most feats either give you a number of small upgrades bundled together, a significant new class feature that you’ll use a lot, or a lesser benefit bundled with a +1 bonus to a single ability score.

The example is a free reroll, I guess 1/day or 1/rest. Anyone want to guess which of the 42 will rewrite all our combat assumptions thus far? Which will be worse than toughness? Does Medium Armour Master let you use +5 Dex? Does Heavy Armour Master let you use +2? Or ... give disadvantage to attackers, or some other broken shit? Oh my, the tension as we wait.

[Lago PARANOIA]

So. What are and how are the tools for 5E D&D going? If they have good digital and online support than I can possibly see them doing better than 4E D&D did. If they don't, though, then the edition is going down in flames.

[pragma]

-encounter design is bug fuckery. The first two encounters are jokes (4 goblins and 2 goblins respectively), and the party just can't deal with the bugbear (though much of that was dice rolls). Even discounting the wolf, the bugbear and 5 goblins is far too much for the party. Assuming the goblins are XP priced like cultists (25 each), they are a full encounter budget by themselves.

According to the Legacy of the Crystal Shard packet, they're 10 XP each.

[Previn]

Wow, busting out the 4vengers arguments in force here. I feel like I'm back on the WotC forums. Are you going to tell me to run minion-only encounters next to speed up my games?

Look, one ogre against a 2nd level party isn't an encounter. It's a massacre.

Could you try being less of a stupid asshole? Look, the encounter guidelines in D&DN are fucked, but they just are what they are. The encounter guidelines do in fact suggest that 2nd level parties take on an Ogre and a couple of Cultists. And yeah, that's fucking trivial.

Sample adventure encounters:
Level 1 :
• 4 goblins from ambush, that should use bad tactics, and are explicitly called out not to kill anyone.
• 2 goblins with bows across a river
• 3 wolves
• 1 goblin
• 6 goblins, one with which has 12 hp
• 1 Bugbear, 1 wolf, 3 goblins

Level 2:
• 4 ruffians
• 3 ruffians
• 3 Bugbears, 1 goblin
• 12 Zombies + Evil Mage

And as random encounters at 2nd level:
• 2-5 Ghouls
• 3-10 Stirges
• 3-6 Hobgoblins
• 3-6 Wolves
• Ogre
• Owlbear

Level 3:
• Young Green Dragon, flees if reduced to half HP. For those not in the know, the young green half dragon is AC 18, 136 HP, makes 3 attacks (+15/+11/+11) for 2d10+2d6+4 damage and 2d6+4 twice. Oh, and it has a 30' cone breath weapon that recharges on a 5 or 6 that deals 12d6 poison damage, save for half. Did I mention the 60' fly speed and 120' darkvision? Because it also happens to be in a good location and is in no way appropriate for a 3rd level party to face even with the caveat of running away at half HP.

Take a wizard, +2 con bonus, 20 total hp. He makes his save vs the average damage of the dragon's breath weapon... and still is out of the fight. Now due to the location, the chances of the rest of the part being unscathed are essentially 0.

[Voss]

Yeah, sadly, no surprise on that dragon encounter. Keep on the Shadowfell end boss was the same kind of 'fuck you' unless the DM intentionally or unintentionally ran it wrong.

Any chance on condensed stat blocks (AC, HP, attack bonus, average damage and challenge/xp) for most of those critters? I've found full blocks for ogres, bugbears, evil mage and of course hobgoblins, but the rest is pretty much a mystery. I'm curious how badly they are fucking the players (or how easy they're making it). The variable numbers in the random encounters alone is making my eyebrows recede into my hairline. The difference between 3 and 6 hobgoblins makes my brain spin. Literally doubles the chance of a TPK.

-encounter design is bug fuckery. The first two encounters are jokes (4 goblins and 2 goblins respectively), and the party just can't deal with the bugbear (though much of that was dice rolls). Even discounting the wolf, the bugbear and 5 goblins is far too much for the party. Assuming the goblins are XP priced like cultists (25 each), they are a full encounter budget by themselves.

According to the Legacy of the Crystal Shard packet, they're 10 XP each.

That was based on playtest material, not the final versions, which have different numbers. Now, they may have still ended up as 10xp, but all the numbers in that pack are for a different set of assumptions

[pragma]

-encounter design is bug fuckery. The first two encounters are jokes (4 goblins and 2 goblins respectively), and the party just can't deal with the bugbear (though much of that was dice rolls). Even discounting the wolf, the bugbear and 5 goblins is far too much for the party. Assuming the goblins are XP priced like cultists (25 each), they are a full encounter budget by themselves.

According to the Legacy of the Crystal Shard packet, they're 10 XP each.

That was based on playtest material, not the final versions, which have different numbers. Now, they may have still ended up as 10xp, but all the numbers in that pack are for a different set of assumptions

That is clarifying. I ran a game this past weekend based on LoCs packet XP numbers and the Legends and Lore encounter guidelines, and the results skewed heavily in favor of the (apparently underpriced) monsters. In particular, 12 zombies+a trap seemed thoroughly capable of wrecking three PCs. They escaped by the skin of their teeth, with a little bit of charitable AI on the zombies.

Happy to share a more thorough playtest report if there's interest in picking it apart. (Does etiquette dictate that goes here or in another thread?)

[Ferret]

That warlock progression makes me angry. I don't care if they can use their spells slots infinitely (which doesn't even make sense) the fact that they start with 1 and slowly progress to 4 over 17 levels is bullshit, and its also completely out of sync with spells known. What the fuck do you even do with 10 spells known over 5 spell levels when you still only have 2 spell slots?

So their progression is kinda fucked, but it's not as bad as you make it seem. It's fucked because it's fiddly and confusing. But the warlock might actually be cooler than the wizard. Here's how it (supposedly) breaks down, based upon a DDN Q&A and comments from Rodney and Mearles.

Warlocks have 4 different arcane resources:

Cantrips are At-Will spell effects. They will have some built in scaling. You start with 2, get a 3rd at 4th level, and a 4th at 10th. You may or may not care about these after 3rd level. See the Invocations entry below. These are your AT-WILL SPELLS.

Spells Known are exactly that, picked from a generic Warlock list PLUS some additional spells you can pick based upon your warlock flavor. We do not currently know if you can change your spells known during play at all.

Spell Slots are fucking WONKY. You have 1 Spell Slot at level one. THIS REFRESHES ON A SHORT REST. Now, this is shitty as fuck at level one because you and the fighter have to basically offer to blow the rest of the party for your 1 hour nappy time after every fight (unless the DM says fuck that and short rests are 5 or 10 minutes like EVERY OTHER CLASSES short-rest-but-not-Short-Rest timers). You get addition spell slots at 2, 11, and 17, but they always count as your biggest slots (1st level slots at 1, 2nd level at 3rd, 4th at 7th Level, and 5th at 9th, which incidentally matches when Wizards get access to those spell levels). These are your Encounter Spells.


Your Mystic Arcanum starts kicking in at 11th level. This is a high level spell you can cast once per day. You start with a 6th level spell . You get a 7th level spell at 13th, an 8th level spell at 15, and a 9th level spell at 17th. You know who else gets 1 spell of that level at 11th, 13th, 15th, and 17th? The Wizard. Now, the wizard eventually gets one more 6th and one more seventh level spell slot, but you both only ever get 1 8th or 9th level slot. Mystic Arcanum are you DAILY SPELLS.

Invocations are your wild card. These are either new spells you can cast at-will, or pick a class feature from a list (like 120' darkvision), or enhance your Eldritch Blast cantrip to be an Eldritch Spear or whatever. These are your UTILITY spells/effects.

But wait, I hear you say: At-Will, Encounter, Daily, Utility? I know this, you cry! That's right.

The 5e Warlock is the 4th Edition Wizard with the serial numbers filed off, a hit die increase, and proficiency in light armor and simple weapons.

Compared to the 5e Wizard, you're about equal in spell casting until 6th; from 6th to 11th you're actually ahead, since you get more slots of your highest level spells than they do - eventually you get to use your 4 5th level spells in every fight because you and the fighter both want a short rest after every fight, plus a 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th spell once a day (only 2 effects behind a wizard, who can hit one more 6th and 7th level spell). Thats better than the wizard who only ever gets 3 5th level spells per DAY, and he doesn't get the 3rd until 17th level. Wizard eventually pulls ahead at 10th to 15th level when he gets one more 6th and 7th level cast compared to you, but then you catch back up at 15 when you both get your 1 8th level spell.

If invocations are any good AT ALL, it might just be better than the wizard - or at least reasonably comparable in many cases.

[Voss]

Yeah, that is headache inducing. My big complaint is that isn't what Spell Slots mean for anyone else. Not that you're wrong, but why the balls would anyone make game defining terminology use different recharge cycles for different classes?*

But my faith in their ability to balance an increasing number of utility invocations against an increasing number of spells that they just aren't getting is vanishingly small.

Especially with the encounter design the way it is: that cave in the starter adventure doesn't lend itself to short rests. You can theoretically bugger off and come back, but holing up for an hour doesn't work. Hell, realistically, you should get the entire contents of the cave to the face in short order.


*yes, I know, there is a lot of terminology confusion already: hit dice is used multiple ways, and for fuck's sake, level. But why add more intentional confusion?

[Ferret]

Yeah, their fucking editing team needs a slap in the head. Too many overlapping terms. And sneaking in at will/encounter/dailies but trying to keep the terminology the same to keep people from flipping their shit is just....mindboggling.

It does make me wonder, though, if the Warlock is going to be the 4e player chassis: does the Pact of the Blade end up giving you 4e Tank/Striker powers? Pact of the Book give Controller powers, and Pact of the Chain give...uh...pet-powers or whatever, was that even a thing in 4e?

I expect most folks are going to be handwaving short rests to "did you stop for first aid," but of course we can't count on that.

[Previn]

Yeah, sadly, no surprise on that dragon encounter. Keep on the Shadowfell end boss was the same kind of 'fuck you' unless the DM intentionally or unintentionally ran it wrong.

Any chance on condensed stat blocks (AC, HP, attack bonus, average damage and challenge/xp) for most of those critters? I've found full blocks for ogres, bugbears, evil mage and of course hobgoblins, but the rest is pretty much a mystery. I'm curious how badly they are fucking the players (or how easy they're making it). The variable numbers in the random encounters alone is making my eyebrows recede into my hairline. The difference between 3 and 6 hobgoblins makes my brain spin. Literally doubles the chance of a TPK.

Cultist
AC 12, 9 HP, +3 to hit melee, d6+1 damage. CR 1/8 (25 xp)

Goblin
AC 15, 7 HP, +4 to hit ranged or melee d6+2 damage for both. CR 1/4 (50 xp)

Ruffian
AC 14, 16 HP, +4 to hit melee, d6+2 damage. CR 1/2 (100 xp)

Owlbear
AC 13, 59 HP, +7 to hit melee, 2 attacks doing d10+5 and 2d8+5. CR 3 (700 xp)

Stirge
AC 14, 2 HP, +5 melee, d4+3 damage, auto d4+3 damage while attached. Deteches at 10 hp drained. CR 1/8 (25 xp)

Wolf
AC 13, 11 HP, +4 to hit melee with possible advantage. 2d4+2 damage.Knocks prone if failed save on an attack. CR 1/4 (50 xp)

Zombie
AC 8, 22 HP, +3 to hit melee for d6+1 damage. Get to make con saves to avoid being dropped to less than 1 hp. CR 1/4 (50 xp)

[Voss]

Thanks. That gives some more numbers to work with

Its amazing how they're pricing these critters. I know goblins are being over-valued because they can disengage for free (so attack then move without AoOs) but there is serious math failure all over the place.

They really think -4 AC and -7 damage balances out +5 hp and +1 to hit, so ruffians and hobgoblins are equal?

Zombies look like such annoying fuckers.



@Ferret- yeah the short rest is a weird deal, and while mechanically it reminds me of 4e (obviously), thematically it reminds me of 2nd: no one is going to want to play this as written, because sitting around a 10x10 room for an hour so the party can heal without exhausting the cleric and fighters/warlocks can get their combat abilities back is utter bullshit.

[Ferret]

The horrible thing is that in the playtest docs a Short Rest is 5 minutes. I think boosting it to 1 hr was a curveball thrown into the Basic rules.

Was there some vocal group saying Short Rests were too short?

[Voss]

The horrible thing is that in the playtest docs a Short Rest is 5 minutes. I think boosting it to 1 hr was a curveball thrown into the Basic rules.

Yeah, it was, which is why I missed it first time through the basic rules. I have no idea what motivated the change, but it might have been 'healing was too easy,' which is bullshit considering how necessary it is.

It also makes all the 'you can get these abilities back on a short rest' a fucking tease. Because it turns into Mother May I play, and there are whole types of adventures that just aren't suited to multiple hour long breaks.

[Cyberzombie]

If you want to argue that Ogres are badly designed because they are hard to scale up and the encounter guidelines need to be scaled up because other than the blood opera that is Hobgoblin encounters all the sample encounters are trivial speed bumps - that's something I can respect. But I can't respect the claim that Ogre encounters are grindy because you intend to ignore the encounter guidelines in the book. That just doesn't make any fucking sense.

The encounter guidelines suck too, but that's not a huge deal because they're guidelines anyway and not ironclad rules. And it's easy enough just to ramp up the challenge by adding more monsters. Back in AD&D you didn't even have encounter guidelines, so whatever, they're nice to have but far from necessary.

It's a bigger problem that the monsters are 4E-style garbage, and no change to encounter guidelines will fix that. Either you fight an actual reasonable encounter and the battle is grindy, or they make the battle ridiculously easy where the PCs know its a sure win. Either way, you'll have bored players. It's a lose-lose situation.

You may say the hobgoblins are ridiculously overpowered, but at the very least you'll have players that are excited at what each throw of the dice is going to bring. I will take that over guaranteed wins and grind any day.

[Voss]

Yes, they'll be quite excited to be released from the DM pulling shit out of his ass and smearing it all over them. They'll be able to get up from the table and go play with the xbox.

Bad encounter guidelines means you either must have a good GM who has worked out for himself exactly how the game works despite the designers, one that ends up with TPKs on a regular basis, or one who fudges the shit out of everything so the party doesn't end up dying horribly. I'm not sure which of the latter you're actively advocating, though 'just add moar monstahs!' is a pretty damn poor sign.

But you're wrong again. Adjusting monster worth and encounter guidelines is possible to yield fights that are interesting rather than grindy or easy. Your approach just yields clusterfucks.

And once again, math. Previn provided yet more details on monsters, and yet again most go down in two hits, and the owl bear looks quite capable of gobbling a 3rd level character (d8 hit dice anyway) in a single round. This claim that monsters are grindy is simply not true, with the exception of zombies, which look to be intentionally designed for that.


-------------------
On another note, feats
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx ... l/20140721

Blah, blah, for making your characters 'unique and interesting.'
There are 42 total, and many overlap (you won't be taking lighty/moderately armored together or medium/heavy armor master together, nor the half dozen weapon style feats). And keep in mind you can't take any at all until level 4 (with the exception of the variant human), and you have to give up being level appropriate on the RNG in order to do so.

Also keep in mind that a lot of these (by name at least) were in the final playtest, and many were not interesting. Some were math breaking, like alert which gave +5 init, immune to surprise and proficiency:perception.
But I've no idea how they mutated in the final version. Some seem pretty crazy in terms of what 5e characters can actually do by default, like great weapon master: gain a bonus attack when you drop someone, and you can take -5 to hit to gain weapon damage (and strength bonus) again, which turns fights against, say ogres and zombies even less 'grindy' as they're ridiculously easy to hit and the greatsword guy is roll 4d6+6 for damage.
Though again, if it hasn't changed.

[Night Goat]

The iconic ranger has been revealed. I'll just leave this here:

[Lago PARANOIA]

I rather like the picture, aside from the extremely wasteful use of white space and the mild clash of color in the ranger's outfit. But the first problem might not even be the original artist's fault.

The goblin redesign looks good in this context, too. They actually look threatening without just looking like scaled-down humans.

[Voss]

Oh. Good. African Muslim Drizzt the Child Murderer. That looks... compelling.
And not troublesome and disturbing. Eenope.


Seriously, why are the goblins (?) cutesy while being murdered?

So where did this pic come from? Was there any commentary attached?

[Lago PARANOIA]

The goblins look cute to you? They're hardbodies with warrior ponytails and spiky chainmail bikinis. If they came running up to me waving swords my reaction would be 'holy shotz' instead of 'dawwww' like the 3E kobold or the Pathfinder Goblin.

[Voss]

It's the topknots, ears and ridiculous grin on the one in the back. The fact that the artist can't draw arms makes no nevermind to me.

They don't look threatening at all. They look small and lumbering, like someone took a five year old and injected it with steroids until it couldn't move. A threatening small creature should look wiry and quick- like it is going to cut you if you take your eyes off it. If it weren't for the blood of the scimitar, I would say they just fell over because they lack the capacity to stand up.


So, yeah. Cutesy bumbling kids with growth hormone problems that someone is inexplicably taking a sword to. (Whilst inexplicably posing at an awkward angle, which seems to be a 5e 'thing')


That this is the first piece of 5e art I've seen where one of the heroes is killing anything, and the hero happens to be black with bedouin-style desert clothing and the monsters are incongruously child sized and helpless makes this a bit more troubling than Bulky the Wizard and Her Missing Leg.

[TheFlatline]

5th edition will probably do better than 4th edition based on the fact alone, that 3rd edition is now another 6 years older.

I'm seriously burned out on D&D in general, so my interest in 5th edition is nil to begin with, but after the atrocity that was 4th ed, I ended up appreciating 3.x better and would probably stick with it if I went back to D&D.

I expect decent/good sales for the first month or so. After that I expect that sales will drop off significantly.

[NineInchNall]

The proportions are all wrong in that picture. Look at his (?) forearms! Look at where his head is relative to his torso.

Seriously bad job, artist.

[...You Lost Me]

IIRC that's Ralph Horsley's art. He does not like to do realistic human proportions or positions.

I'm fine with the picture, with the exception that the goblin in the back looks stoned out of his mind.