D&DNext: Playtest Review

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Fri May 25, 2012 1:40 am

I rate the cleric pretty highly, especially the Pelor one, because starting at level 2 the Pelor cleric gets access to several uses of a 20-foot radius sphere that does 1d8+wisdom modifier damage (save for half).

This is important because the adventure regularly throws 5-14 hit point enemies in groups from 4 to several dozen that do like 1d6+1 damage a pop. But the rooms are rarely larger than 40 feet x 40 feet. A couple of Pelor clerics can mop up the room really damn quickly and keep on keepin' on.

K wrote:and you still need a successful attack roll each round with your Multiple Attribute Dependency stats.

Nah. The three stats you NEED in 5E D&D in roughly descending order are Wisdom, Dexterity, and Constitution. Strength and Intelligence and Charisma are generally useless. If you focus on those stats you'll have an average of about 15 points per stat judging by the playtest characters.. And it's not particularly difficult to get a 18 / 16 / 14 spread. A wizard is MAD, but not a cleric. Yes, this means that you're going to dump strength, but Radiant Lance does 1d8+4 damage, is always available, and there's no opportunity attacks for shooting lasers in melee (just a disadvantage) and there's no penalty at all for maneuvering around enemies.

I can see charisma or intelligence being useful, but given how the Dungeon Master Pamphlet wanks on and on about bypassing the need for those checks if a player puts in enough effort, it's like, what the fuck?

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Fri May 25, 2012 1:41 am

K wrote:I'm not terribly impressed with the cleric. Spiritual Hammer is 1d8 damage a round for a spell/action and you still need a successful attack roll each round with your Multiple Attribute Dependency stats.

For some reason I thought wisdom got added in, but note that after you cast it, it doesn't take an action. It moves and attacks as _part_ of your action. So from round 2 on, you are getting an extra 1d8 attack. (at +6 because of that odd bonus on the character sheet).

Not sure why you think the cleric has any sort of MAD though. There is an at-will blast that they can toss all day, and the Pelor cleric is at +6 and does d8+4.

Searing Light looks better for a 1st level spell at 4d6 + stat damage on a hit for turn advantage, but even that's not too impressive considering that you can miss with the silly thing.

Everything but MM has an attack roll or a save. Compared to the bestiary creatures it hits easily and has a lot of potential to one shot. But it is using a spell to blast, and the cleric has much better options.

Shield of Faith is probably the best 1st level cleric spell. Tossing down Disadvantage on an ally's attackers for a minute is going to create the most turn advantage in most circumstances.

Hell, the way that ANY healing puts someone from negatives to instant "HP >0" becomes "0+whatever the healing gave," Word of Healing's option to get a weapon attack with some healing on an ally has the potential to get a dropped PC up and fighting and is pretty competitive.

Can't disagree with either of these. Healing word also works with radiant lance, so, yeah.

Still, compared to the Wizard who has several no-save options and combat control, they seem reasonably balanced. The fact that spells are checking AC in a lot of circumstances really bones a lot of spells.

The no-save spells all seem to require an attack roll. I'm really not seeing an advantage or even equality with the cleric here. Grease isn't bad and sleep is marginal, but the cleric has a pile of buffs and a debuff, plus better attacks, armor, and no chance of being screwed by enemy attacks.

-----------------------

Anyone notice that humans have +4 stat points? Totally not worth the stuff that other races get, but interesting nonetheless.

I'd rather have the stat points. They affect everything you can do in the damn game. Not caring about heavy armor's 5 speed penalty, sleep or charm is shit in comparison.

Lucky isn't bad, but I'd still rather shove my numbers up.

CapnTthePirateG · Post by **CapnTthePirateG** » Fri May 25, 2012 1:42 am

Hey, K, what were the awesome no-save spells? I don't think I saw any. Are you referring to the HP-check things? Those seem to work well on a sizable portion of the opposition, but I didn't see anything that seemed that awesome.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Fri May 25, 2012 1:44 am

K wrote:You'd probably do more overall damage by just having a high Str and wading into melee with a decent weapon. The extra stat damage to every attack is going to be bigger total per combat than the spell.

Clerics get an At-Will at first level that does 1d8+WIS Mod damage and uses wisdom for the attack roll, so if you put an 18 into your wisdom you get a +6 attack--which is the highest people can get short of a magic doodad. Unless you find yourself regularly surrounded by foes, there's no reason for you to melee, like, ever.

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Fri May 25, 2012 1:46 am

Voss wrote: There are either a lot of typos, or place where they just aren't showing the math. (which makes for a fucking frustrating playtest, because you can't generate accurate numbers if the input is wrong).

Well it is clear they aren't showing us some things, here for example

Anyone can use an improvised weapon. Attacking with these weapons does not grant a bonus to the attack roll and deals 1d6 damage or 1d10 damage if the wielder has to use two hands to hold it.

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Fri May 25, 2012 1:50 am

Yeah, that one confused me too. Made me double check the weapon table, realize it really was just a couple columns and I couldn't have missed it.

Maybe they mean strength/dex bonus?

@Captain-
Hold person gets that stupid save every round thing. The DC is going to be 13 or 14 (13 for the sample pc). Thats... probably going end on round 2, longer odds on 3.

CapnTthePirateG · Post by **CapnTthePirateG** » Fri May 25, 2012 2:22 am

Gah, I missed that.

So, yeah, there's no reason to bring along a wizard. Ever.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Fri May 25, 2012 2:32 am

CapnTthePirateG wrote:So, yeah, there's no reason to bring along a wizard. Ever.

Ray of Frost is pretty okay in some solo fights.

CapnTthePirateG · Post by **CapnTthePirateG** » Fri May 25, 2012 2:34 am

If the class has one ability that's "pretty ok," something has gone seriously wrong.

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Fri May 25, 2012 2:43 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:
CapnTthePirateG wrote:So, yeah, there's no reason to bring along a wizard. Ever.
Ray of Frost is pretty okay in some solo fights.

I don't think anyone signed up as a wizard to play fucking 'red light, green light' in solo encounters.

CapnTthePirateG · Post by **CapnTthePirateG** » Fri May 25, 2012 2:48 am

Voss wrote: I don't think anyone signed up as a wizard to play fucking 'red light, green light' in solo encounters.

Sigged.

K · Post by K » Fri May 25, 2012 3:05 am

Wizard's most notable no-save spells are Sleep and Ray of Frost.

Sleep tosses down an AoE no-save effect that halves moment rates AND for a save will put to sleep the wounded enemies or low HP mooks. For a lot of monsters, that's basically auto-killing a group of melee monsters because the party can ranged attack them to death or move and attack (again, to death). Monsters like Orcs can't use their awesome charge stuff and monsters with dangerous special abilities can't close and use those abilities.

Ray of Frost drops a monster to 0 movement on a successful ranged attack and doesn't allow saves. Basically, it's the kiting stuff but on one monster and the Wizard has a good chance of doing it successfully every turn, but it's also a denial tactic to keep some monsters of of melee while the party focuses fire.

I think it's also important to note that Magic Missile also scales in damage by level where Radiant Lance doesn't and always hits. The tactics that work well at level 1-3 clearly aren't going to work at higher levels.

By the numbers, Spiritual Hammer is probably going to be averaging 3 points of damage a round with misses and never improving, Radiance Lance is probably averaging 5 a round with misses and never improving much, and Magic Missile is never missing and averaging a minimum of 3.5 at 1st, 7 at 3rd, 10.5 at 6th, and 14 at 9th AND saves you an action at the beginning of every combat.

Channel Radiance is also kind of unimpressive when you realize that it seems to damage friends and foes. I don't see it as a "mook-clearing tactic" unless the party wants to spend a lot of time damaging itself too.

Basically, the cleric has some impressive buffs and great armor and the Wizard has impressive crowd control and sketchy armor (Mirror Image is great, but wasting an action every combat of a 2nd level slot sucks).

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Fri May 25, 2012 4:16 am

K wrote: Basically, the cleric has some impressive buffs and great armor and the Wizard has impressive crowd control and sketchy armor (Mirror Image is great, but wasting an action every combat of a 2nd level slot sucks).

Where do you get the "great armor" for a cleric? Medium armor sucks.

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Fri May 25, 2012 4:25 am

I finally got it and am reading it...

Wonkiness:

Surprise- Okay, it's easier than a surprise round, but it's weird that you "never" recover from surprise, even in a long, protracted battle. And in a game where there can be a lot of surprise combat, that's going to equal some pissed off players or MCs (ideally, my NPCs, wanting to survive, *always* launch ambushes unless they aren't able to).

Coup de Grace- Jesus really? Do we need specific rules for this? I guess the wonky address of a CdG is to prevent me from casting hold or sleep on you and slitting your throat. Now it takes two actions to slit your throat instead of just one. Why this is initial playtest priority I dunno.

Dodge combat action- Okay, you get +4 to your ac. Cool. But +4 to dex based saving throws??? So in combat you can actually give yourself an effective +8 to your dex stat for a saving throw? I can see it now:

"Hey wizard, start throwing daggers or some rocks at me it'll help me focus. Don't worry! I'm drunk and you're weak. I'm effectively immune to daggers!"

Auto hit/crit & misses- Sigh... we're fucking still stuck on 1's missing and 20's hi... wait what? 20's are flat crits that do max damage? *palmface* Well, I guess that's necessary, since if you had to confirm a crit and were at advantage you'd probably have to roll 2d20 a second time to confirm the crit. Still... *palmface*

Short Rest Healing- I can just see it... "I take a short rest, roll my die, fuck... I roll a 1, and my con modifier is -2. I take a hitpoint of damage". Minor issue, but needs to be addressed. I might say "character level" instead of "con modifier". Makes a little less "sense", but is more heroic-y.

Long rest: 8 hours to regen *all* hit points? O.o Jesus jumped up Christ. With Vancian casting and the 5 minute work day, why bother fucking healing magically outside of a fight?

Edit: I'd read more but I was just invited to go drinking on a worknight, which seems way better of an idea that wading into this stuff some more.

Edit edit: Okay last thing what the fuck. Have you ever seen someone throw a handaxe 120 feet... with anything resembling accuracy?

K · Post by K » Fri May 25, 2012 4:44 am

hogarth wrote:
K wrote: Basically, the cleric has some impressive buffs and great armor and the Wizard has impressive crowd control and sketchy armor (Mirror Image is great, but wasting an action every combat of a 2nd level slot sucks).
Where do you get the "great armor" for a cleric? Medium armor sucks.

Well, the difference between the best medium armor and no armor is 5-7 points on a D20 before magic bonuses and depending on your Dex bonus.

Add in Shield of Faith, and their defensive "armor" is pretty great.

That being said, I honestly did think that they had proficiency to use shields because of the Moradin cleric's Defender ability using shields, so downgrade my evaluation to "good armor."

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri May 25, 2012 6:15 am

Ugh. The Cleric of Pelor would be better protected for less money if he swapped from Scale Mail to Studded Leather. Medium armor is so bad.

-Username17

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Fri May 25, 2012 6:26 am

God, Disadvantage and Advantage accumulation is so out of control. I mean, if Disavantage or Advantage was like The Edge and was only given for rare and specifically defined occasions it'd be fine, but Jesus.

I wonder if it's possible for someone to do a TO to stack on as many Advantages and Disadvantages onto a single character at once.

CapnTthePirateG · Post by **CapnTthePirateG** » Fri May 25, 2012 6:49 am

I thought they didn't stack.

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Fri May 25, 2012 7:14 am

I do find it funny that if a cleric picks up the slayer theme (stat dmg on missed attacks) she does more damage on average if she misses with spiritual hammer if her stat is 20.

I'm not sure I agree with shield of faith being any good though, just way too many ways to get advantage / disadvantage to judge it properly.

Having a preperation time of 1 minute * spell level for each spell sounds like it will scale to insane lengths.

K · Post by K » Fri May 25, 2012 7:38 am

ishy wrote: I'm not sure I agree with shield of faith being any good though, just way too many ways to get advantage / disadvantage to judge it properly.

The way to judge it is to look at the monsters.

For example, a Goblin Chief grants advantage to his allies against any opponent he hits and Goblins get a extra d6 of damage vs things they have advantage (+2d6 for the Chief).

This means that if you have Shield of Faith, you are immune to the extra d6 and the 2d6 from the Chief and the extra rolls to hit. It also makes you immune to enemy sneak attack damage if they only have one source of Advantage.

That's the only one monster like that in the playtest, but I'd bet good money that effects triggered off advantage are going to be as common as 4e's effects triggered off Bloodied.

FatR · Post by **FatR** » Fri May 25, 2012 7:51 am

While I don't think these playtest rules are necessarily horrible, looking at how low-power and down-to-earth Next is clearly supposed to be, I just don't see any reasons to prefer it over any of abundant low-fantasy systems out there. In fact, I suspect that Savage Worlds does everything Next sets out to do better. Make no mistake, I really wanted DnD to become simpler. But I wanted this because I wanted a simpler fantasy superhero game, not because there is a shortage of low-powered dungeon crawl games...

K · Post by K » Fri May 25, 2012 8:53 am

No, the playtest rules are pretty horrible. 5e is shaping up to be a Red Box revision with gutted bits of 3e and 4e glued on without any of the merits of the Red Box, 3e, or 4e.

I mean, it's certainly playable for an afternoon, but right now the numbers don't add up, substantial portions are Magic Tea Party and/or Calvinball, and several fundamental design principles are being ignored. Sadly, I can actually recommend the Red Box over it.

The things they are doing correctly feel accidental. That's a bad sign.

PS. Anyone else amused that the Cleric of Moradin gets an ability that requires using shields, but he has no proficiency with shields and trying to use one would be wildly damaging to his effectiveness as a character?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri May 25, 2012 9:04 am

Advantage and Disadvantage are 5e's answer to 4e's "mysterious +/-2 bonus/penalty", and show up in pretty much every place those things do. It is preferable to handing out situational plusles and minuns because you don't have to do much math and it's capped at one extra die so it never breaks the RNG. But there's just so much of it that's it's going to be extremely annoying. Especially if you don't collapse extra Advantages or Disadvantages until you've canceled all the Advantage/Disadvantage pairs. You're seriously going to be asked to figure out whether you have Advantage, Disadvantage, or nothing from Advantage Advantage Disadvantage Advantage Disadvantage Disadvantage Disadvantage. And then you're going to have Advantage and Rerolls that you have the option of using.

And what's with using a four syllable word for something you'll use that often? That's nuts. Are people really supposed to just call it "Adds" and "Dees"? You clearly need something to shorten things.

I just don't even know what the lack of number scaling is for. They didn't make it so that things aren't a pain in the ass, and as far as I can tell they didn't make it so that things weren't numerically broken. I notice that their big idea about Ability Thresholds is even more fucked up than I thought: It is divergent, in that adding +2 to your ability adds 1 to your roll and 2 to your ability thresholds, but the made the starting conversion so bad (a Strength 10 character auto-succeeds at DC 5 even though everyone auto-succeeds at DC 9 by the "don't let the PCs make rolls they can succeed on" rule), that you have to have a 15 before the rule even kicks in. And you need a straight 20 in your stat before your ability threshold is even as good as taking 10.

-Username17

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri May 25, 2012 9:51 am

ishy wrote:I do find it funny that if a cleric picks up the slayer theme (stat dmg on missed attacks) she does more damage on average if she misses with spiritual hammer if her stat is 20.

I'm not sure I agree with shield of faith being any good though, just way too many ways to get advantage / disadvantage to judge it properly.

Having a preperation time of 1 minute * spell level for each spell sounds like it will scale to insane lengths.

I'm calling it now, I foresee Clerics of Metal with the Slayer theme, and attack routines called things like "Fucked with a Knife" and "Rain of Blood"

Also, I do like the portrayal of goblins. Even the cowardice can be ameliorated with a goblin saying "cowardice? No, we just like it when the fight isn't fair for others." I know it's a minor thing, but 5e will have a bit a my favour if this portrayal sticks around.

I think someone really does need to tell WotC to pick different terms, like Edge and Bane (or something) instead of Advantage and Disadvantage

Hell, even Weal/Woe, or Edge/Hindrance

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri May 25, 2012 10:50 am

K wrote:Wizard's most notable no-save spells are Sleep and Ray of Frost.

No.

Sleep tosses down an AoE no-save effect that halves moment rates AND for a save will put to sleep the wounded enemies or low HP mooks. For a lot of monsters, that's basically auto-killing a group of melee monsters because the party can ranged attack them to death or move and attack (again, to death). Monsters like Orcs can't use their awesome charge stuff and monsters with dangerous special abilities can't close and use those abilities.

No. Sleep gives them a movement penalty until they take any damage or someone spends an action slapping them. It's a 20 foot radius sphere of enemies losing some movement or one action, whichever is less. You can't use it for root kiting, because if you hit them with anything at all, it instantly wears off. You can't use it for effective crowd control, because any group of enemies could slap each other awake with one action each and then come after you. it's just bad.

Ray of Frost drops a monster to 0 movement on a successful ranged attack and doesn't allow saves.

Saves and attack rolls aren't really different in 5e. Let's say you're up against something like a Minotaur. Obviously, you want to pin it down repeatedly while the rest of the party beats on it. You do no damage at all, but every time you hit with a ray of frost, the minotaur is stuck and the rogue gets to throw another sling stone. Ray of Frost is +6 vs. AC, so it works on an 8+ (Minotaurs have an AC of 14). So 65% of the time, the Minotaur doesn't get to move.

But if instead you'd used Moment of Confusion (a cantrip I just made up: Int or perhaps Cha save or lose your movement for one turn), you'd force the same minotaur to roll at a -1 or -2 against a DC of 13 - for a total chance of 65 or 70% of losing their movement. And that's against a Minotaur, a creature with two weak saves and a low AC. An Ogre is tilted grossly in favor of save-required spells: having an AC of 15 and four shitty saves (everything but Str and Con effectively).

Any spell that requires an attack roll isn't really different from a spell that allows a save.

By the way, what do Intelligence saves even do?

The DM commonly asks you to use Intelligence when you make a saving throw to resist spells that attempt to overcome your intellect.

Welcome to Tautology Club.

-Username17