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

Blicero · Post by **Blicero** » Sat Oct 25, 2014 12:00 am

ishy wrote:The fact that they called Appendix A: Random Dungeons makes me wonder why you'd want a random dungeon.
((I do understand the need for dungeon building rules))

Appendix A in the AD&D DMG was called Random Dungeon Generation. That might be sufficient reason in and of itself.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Sat Oct 25, 2014 1:14 am

ishy wrote:The fact that they called Appendix A: Random Dungeons makes me wonder why you'd want a random dungeon.
((I do understand the need for dungeon building rules))

die rolling takes decision paralysis away I guess. And it's often fun to just roll on those tables to see what you end up with. Does this edition support "sandbox" hexgrid play with rules too?

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Sat Oct 25, 2014 11:12 am

A question about the explosives.

Why does the dynamite do thunder damage, unlike the other explosives which do fire damage?

Mistborn · Post by **Mistborn** » Sat Oct 25, 2014 12:09 pm

ishy wrote:Why does the dynamite do thunder damage, unlike the other explosives which do fire damage?

Probably because dynamite isn't damaging you by burning you but by breaking your body through concussive force. No clue what that not for all explosives though.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Oct 25, 2014 1:18 pm

When I was a small child, I ran myself solo adventures generated with the random dungeon charts in the AD&D DMG. I would certainly rather have such a thing than not. It doesn't beat my avarice for having stealth or diplomacy rules, however. Somehow, I'm not holding my breath that the pages 240 and 241 are going to have a satisfactory diplomacy mini-game on them.

-Username17

mean_liar · Post by **mean_liar** » Sat Oct 25, 2014 4:55 pm

Wait, no hiding rules? There are no rules on stealth in 5e?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Oct 25, 2014 5:09 pm

mean_liar wrote:Wait, no hiding rules? There are no rules on stealth in 5e?

You're supposed to "ask your DM" whether you can hide or not. The guidelines for when you could or could not do that were supposed to be in the DMG. If they aren't, then there's no stealth rules at all in this fucking game.

-Username17

icyshadowlord · Post by **icyshadowlord** » Sat Oct 25, 2014 5:53 pm

No Stealth rules? Let me guess, the spell Invisibility still exists despite that.

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Mon Oct 27, 2014 9:05 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:When I was a small child, I ran myself solo adventures generated with the random dungeon charts in the AD&D DMG. I would certainly rather have such a thing than not. It doesn't beat my avarice for having stealth or diplomacy rules, however. Somehow, I'm not holding my breath that the pages 240 and 241 are going to have a satisfactory diplomacy mini-game on them.

-Username17

Diablo as a series made buckets of money for being essentially a gigantic random dungeon generator.

Why nobody has ever taken structured dungeon tables like Diablo cranked out and make them a PDF product or something is beyond me. I guess because there isn't enough money in a D&D supplement as there is in coding a video game.

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Mon Oct 27, 2014 9:09 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:
mean_liar wrote:Wait, no hiding rules? There are no rules on stealth in 5e?
You're supposed to "ask your DM" whether you can hide or not. The guidelines for when you could or could not do that were supposed to be in the DMG. If they aren't, then there's no stealth rules at all in this fucking game.

-Username17

I had a brief urge to pick up 5e to see if it was something that I wanted to play.

Then I read this.

Thank you, Gaming Den, for saving my money.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Mon Oct 27, 2014 10:36 pm

TheFlatline wrote: Why nobody has ever taken structured dungeon tables like Diablo cranked out and make them a PDF product or something is beyond me. I guess because there isn't enough money in a D&D supplement as there is in coding a video game.

I feel like manybodies have done that before, "how to generate a dungeon" seems common enough, especially for sandboxy settings

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Mon Oct 27, 2014 11:26 pm

OgreBattle wrote:
TheFlatline wrote: Why nobody has ever taken structured dungeon tables like Diablo cranked out and make them a PDF product or something is beyond me. I guess because there isn't enough money in a D&D supplement as there is in coding a video game.
I feel like manybodies have done that before, "how to generate a dungeon" seems common enough, especially for sandboxy settings

I haven't seen a particularly good one come up. One that cranks out decently logical dungeons (so you don't have drow elves living in a room next to solars or whatever) of different themes.

There used to be a pretty decent random dungeon generator way back in early 3.0 that I used a lot for short 1-2 level dungeon dips that I could fudge enough to remain fairly consistent.

Ferret · Post by **Ferret** » Tue Oct 28, 2014 2:01 pm

TheFlatline wrote:
FrankTrollman wrote:
mean_liar wrote:Wait, no hiding rules? There are no rules on stealth in 5e?
You're supposed to "ask your DM" whether you can hide or not. The guidelines for when you could or could not do that were supposed to be in the DMG. If they aren't, then there's no stealth rules at all in this fucking game.

-Username17
I had a brief urge to pick up 5e to see if it was something that I wanted to play.

Then I read this.

Thank you, Gaming Den, for saving my money.

You could extrapolate what I think they intended to be their stealth game from their line of sight rules, what with their obscured/lightly obscured/visible differentiation, and Wild Elves ability to vanish when lightly obscured.

I think the "ask your DM" is "is there available mechanism for me to gain the heavily obscured keyword"

Certainly they could do a vastly better job of effectively communicating what I think is supposed to happen, which is the following:

Player declares Stealth, makes a stealth check and define how he is hiding in general terms (likely attempting to force the NPCs to lose line of sight/gain the Obscured keyword vs them).

Player makes a Dex(Stealth) Check, the results of which are compared against any observer's Wis (Perception) check; NPC check is potentially made with disadvantage if the character did manage to get Lightly Obscured or better.

Player ninjas past NPCs if their check was higher, is detected if not.

Now, like I said - that's just my extrapolation, based upon reading rules sections: Chapter 7 - Ability Checks - Contests, Chapter 7 - Using Each Ability - Dexterity, Chapter 7 - Using Each Ability - Wisdom, and Chapter 8 - The Environment - Vision and Light (all from the Players Handbook). It would have been grand for their to be an example of stealth given in the book. :-/

Ferret · Post by **Ferret** » Wed Oct 29, 2014 3:50 pm

Wizards updated the Basic DM Rules Supplement to version .2, http://media.wizards.com/2014/downloads ... iendly.pdf and it includes what appears to be a completely re-written Encounter generation section. They vastly de-emphasized their section on Challenge Rating, reducing it to a single, short paragraph sidebar, and doing away with mention of simple vs complex encounters.

The actual mechanics are the same: Use the level of each character in the party to define single-encounter XP budgets for each difficulty level, choose the desired difficulty level, modify by # of opponents, pick monsters from a list and don't pick monsters whose CR exceeds the average level of the party. Both the Basic Rules PDF and the DMG have an index of Monsters by CR & XP value.

Previn · Post by **Previn** » Wed Oct 29, 2014 5:45 pm

Ferret wrote:Wizards updated the Basic DM Rules Supplement to version .2, http://media.wizards.com/2014/downloads ... iendly.pdf and it includes what appears to be a completely re-written Encounter generation section. They vastly de-emphasized their section on Challenge Rating, reducing it to a single, short paragraph sidebar, and doing away with mention of simple vs complex encounters.

Given that they're still clearly trying to actually write the game and have been doing Bob knows what for the past few years I can't say it's surprising that they rewrote what they published.

Ferret · Post by **Ferret** » Thu Oct 30, 2014 1:27 pm

Damn, I'm starting to think official D&D character builders are cursed or something.

Today, Trapdoor Technologies the guys behind the official digital companion for 5th Edition and Wizards of the Coast announced they were dissolving official ties, and that the Dungeonscape "Beta" will be closed down this coming Friday.

Given the dismal shape of the existing software (which would be more accurately termed alpha, since it didn't even create correct single-class characters yet), I can't say I'm surprised. No word from WotC on what might or might not come next.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Oct 30, 2014 2:12 pm

Well, you can't expect anyone to make a good character builder if WotC waits until the last minute to tell people how to make characters.

Axebird · Post by **Axebird** » Thu Oct 30, 2014 5:47 pm

Wow. I'm utterly shocked that WotC failed to deliver.

mean_liar · Post by **mean_liar** » Thu Oct 30, 2014 6:17 pm

That's fucking sad.

Krusk · Post by **Krusk** » Thu Oct 30, 2014 7:55 pm

Ferret wrote: Today, Trapdoor Technologies the guys behind the official digital companion for 5th Edition and Wizards of the Coast announced they were dissolving official ties, and that the Dungeonscape "Beta" will be closed down this coming Friday.
.

lol. I think a lot of people could have said this is how it would go. In fact I think a lot of people did.

As for basic rules v2... did they release erratta after less than a month?

Jesus this really just needs to be the end of WoTC DND. How can hasbro look at 5e as anything but a colossal fuck up? At this point I can't see them making the kids (WoTC) get rid of the dog that keeps shitting the bed (DND) even if the kids really love him and promise to get him to stop.

Also, WTF, is there no changelog for what was changed? Have we just always been at war with eurasia? I mean, people have those older documents floating around and books that say what it used to. You can't just pretend its unchanged.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Oct 30, 2014 10:36 pm

I'm not surprised that this edition is a total catastrofuck, given who is in charge. But I am surprised at how explosively it is failing to meet all its release deadlines. I kinda thought they'd just wrap it up and kick a buggy product out the door rather than have everything crumble to dust before being sold to people for money.

-Username17

erik · Post by **erik** » Thu Oct 30, 2014 11:22 pm

Pity they didn't call it D&D Forever Edition.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Oct 30, 2014 11:25 pm

Do you think that it's too early to start a D&D Deathwatch thread?

I mean, between Dungeonscape getting completely cancelled, the DMG being delayed two months, and no clear release schedule it's obvious that the edition is in its death throes.

I'd polish up that resume if I was you, Mearls.

I hear that SKR was looking for new toadies for his next TTRPG project, maybe you could find gainful employment there.

Axebird · Post by **Axebird** » Thu Oct 30, 2014 11:39 pm

SKR mystifies me. One of my friends suggested that he might draw bad-design-juju out of people near him and channel it, since his design comments started sounding slightly less like lunacy and Paizo started producing lower quality work when he left. I'm inclined to agree.

It's pretty astounding how the entire thing is falling apart when it isn't even fully released yet. And how some people praise the turd despite not even having the full damn game yet.

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Fri Oct 31, 2014 12:22 am

Krusk wrote:Jesus this really just needs to be the end of WoTC DND. How can hasbro look at 5e as anything but a colossal fuck up? At this point I can't see them making the kids (WoTC) get rid of the dog that keeps shitting the bed (DND) even if the kids really love him and promise to get him to stop.

Also, WTF, is there no changelog for what was changed? Have we just always been at war with eurasia? I mean, people have those older documents floating around and books that say what it used to. You can't just pretend its unchanged.

Well the basic rules were announced with this text:

As the Monster Manual and Dungeon Master’s Guide near completion, we’ll add to the basic rules with more material to grow it into a complete game. Our goal is to continue to make updates to the basic rules for D&D until the end of the year, at which point it will be feature complete.

And they do have a changelog on their site:

Change Log

This change log indicates significant updates from the previous version of the D&D Basic Rules.

Added acid splash, counterspell, disguise self, poison spray, shatter, and wall of fire spells.

Added noble background.

Added appendix containing the Forgotten Realms deities.

Added appendix containing descriptions of the five factions that feature in the D&D Adventurers League.

Legal text added to the footer to allow reproduction for personal purposes.

Though I do really hate the new layout.