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Post by Deleted on Jul 7, 2014 0:12:25 GMT -6
1) 0d&d assumes magic items, 5e does not. So 0d&d assumes people will get their hands on girdles of giant strength and gauntlets of ogre power and rings of wishes. 5e does not. Magic items have been a staple of D&D in every edition. Can it really be true that there will be so few in 5e that we should discount having them? I think there would be no need to discount magic items in 5e as if the starter adventure is any indication to what might be expected as standard for the new edition there are quite a few of them. In fact there are 10 potions of healing, a potion of invisibility, a potion of flying, a potion of vitality, a scroll of augury, a scroll of charm person, a scroll of fireball, a scroll of darkness, a scroll of misty step, a scroll of lightning bolt, a scroll of silence, a scroll of revivify, a +1 long sword(Talon), a Staff of Defense (casts mage armor or shield) , a ring of protection, a +1 battleaxe (Hew), a pair of boots of striding and springing, a wand of magic missiles, a magical statuette(can be asked a question as per the augury spell 1/person), gauntlets of ogre power, a +1 mace (Lightbringer), a +1 Breastplate (Dragonguard), and the Spiderstaff (casts spider climb or web). In all that's 23 different items and while many of them are single use items the wand and the two staves are able to be recharged meaning that there are a total of 10 items that are designed for long term use. This adventure (or series of adventures in all actuality) take the players to the fifth level and doles out 10 long term magical items! Personally this almost feels a bit Monty Haulish and though it is not guaranteed that all of these items will be found by most players it is a clear indicator that magic items are still one of the focal points for character acquisition and improvement.
Additionally as character saves as well as attacks are dependent on their ability score bonuses (as well as their proficiency bonus which caps out at +6) I feel that the stat inflation has actually reached a sort of balance with expected character capabilities. By providing a hard cap of 20(+5) on ability scores and a +6 on proficiency bonuses, even a character's best attacks and saves will not make their respected rolls obsolete against suitably difficult challenges. And as for those stats not raised, or saves which have no proficiency in, characters will still be finding moderate challenges tough to beat with an average roll. The only issues this leaves is the damage potential due to high stats and the amount of hit points projected at various levels. Both of these factors are reflective of each other as monsters have more hit points and are also able to dish out more damage. In 3e this was not so much the case as monster HD and damage changed little unless those monsters were representative of higher level play (i.e. dragons and the like). Whereas there was no cap on ability scores and various other modifiers for characters in 3e and thus stat inflation would quickly get out of hand. As a comparison I think that the way ability modifiers are handled in 5e are more akin to how the Greyhawk Supplement affected character performance. While significant it is not completely unreasonable, particularly if players use the suggested point buy system or better yet good old 3d6 in order (or arrange to taste).
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Post by cadriel on Jul 7, 2014 4:20:52 GMT -6
the ring of wishes, djinn, and demon lords from the earliest games were used to raise stats. Magical pools that adjust stats are also used very early in the games history including B1! That's not the kind of stat increases we are talking about, though. There is a difference between having the possibility of stat increases come from exceptional circumstances in game play, and having them automatically occur as a basic part of the system. The way you stated it, it sounded like you were talking about the latter, which is very much how 3e, 4e and 5e do it. You can certainly ask what someone means when they say that a game you spend a lot of time playing, reading and interpreting is totally different from how you've experienced it. The "doesn't assume magic items" sounds like a technicality. It will probably assume a level of magic item use similar to any other edition, it just won't have the checkpoints that 3e and 4e did to say "you're not on-level unless you have x, y and z items." There were campaigns that treated magic items like Halloween candy, and there are good records of this. But they're not the ones we tend to use as inspiration, in no small part because that's not how the guys with their names on the cover of the game played. Not sure how this is an "Amish-like" game, and your last sentence doesn't really make sense.
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Post by Finarvyn on Jul 7, 2014 5:21:59 GMT -6
1) 0d&d assumes magic items, 5e does not. So 0d&d assumes people will get their hands on girdles of giant strength and gauntlets of ogre power and rings of wishes. 5e does not. Magic items have been a staple of D&D in every edition. Can it really be true that there will be so few in 5e that we should discount having them? I think that the way magic items are supposed to work in 5E (and the way they do work in 13th Age, by the way) is that you don't find "random magic" stuff anymore but instead find magic items customized to the characters, and an item would be for a specific character instead of the party decidiing what to do with it. Obviously, each DM has control over this. I think that the method described above is supposed to be for D&D Encounters play and not necessarily home play. My 5E DM made a comment the other day of "too bad you don't have a druid, because you would have found a great druid item." I'm not certain he was kidding.
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Post by waysoftheearth on Jul 7, 2014 6:09:59 GMT -6
if the starter adventure is any indication to what might be expected as standard for the new edition there are quite a few of them. In fact there are 10 potions of healing, a potion of invisibility, a potion of flying, a potion of vitality, a scroll of augury, a scroll of charm person, a scroll of fireball, a scroll of darkness, a scroll of misty step, a scroll of lightning bolt, a scroll of silence, a scroll of revivify, a +1 long sword(Talon), a Staff of Defense (casts mage armor or shield) , a ring of protection, a +1 battleaxe (Hew), a pair of boots of striding and springing, a wand of magic missiles, a magical statuette(can be asked a question as per the augury spell 1/person), gauntlets of ogre power, a +1 mace (Lightbringer), a +1 Breastplate (Dragonguard), and the Spiderstaff (casts spider climb or web). In all that's 23 different items I'd call that a proverbial "truck load"
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Post by kesher on Jul 7, 2014 8:17:53 GMT -6
Thought this was a useful counterpoint to some of our (myself included!) speculation. From the comments on today's Daily DnD.
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Post by robertsconley on Jul 7, 2014 8:28:11 GMT -6
Magic items have been a staple of D&D in every edition. Can it really be true that there will be so few in 5e that we should discount having them? I think that the way magic items are supposed to work in 5E (and the way they do work in 13th Age, by the way) is that you don't find "random magic" stuff anymore but instead find magic items customized to the characters, and an item would be for a specific character instead of the party decidiing what to do with it. Obviously, each DM has control over this. I think that the method described above is supposed to be for D&D Encounters play and not necessarily home play. My 5E DM made a comment the other day of "too bad you don't have a druid, because you would have found a great druid item." I'm not certain he was kidding. The 5e has both, there are traditional "anybody can use" magic items and there items that characters can attune to themselves. And there is a limit to how many items can be attuned to a character. Attuned items grant additional powers to their wielder. If it like the playtest the traditional magic items will be severely capped in the bonuses they grant. In keeping with the design of character creation more powerful items are more flexible in what they can do and how they deal damage. All of this is to keep bounded accuracy intact. So that low level characters/creatures have more than a 5% chance of hitting and high level characters have more than a 5% of missing.
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Azafuse
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
Posts: 245
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Post by Azafuse on Jul 7, 2014 20:04:03 GMT -6
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Post by ravenheart87 on Jul 8, 2014 1:20:10 GMT -6
Too bad they aren't really up to date.
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Post by tetramorph on Jul 10, 2014 15:09:15 GMT -6
I was on vacation when the thing became available and I was expecting a release on the 15th. When I got back and started catching up on the forum threads I was confused. "How the heck do these guys know basic in advance? Are they just assuming it from the play test." Duh. Anyways, I've downloaded it and here are my two cents. They echo many others:
its is a great idea, and a good direction for WotC. It is beautifully and sleekly presented. I can see it possible, with all y'all's help, to hack a way to get an old school feel out of it. So I guess they made good on their hope to give something to every edition fan out there. I mean, hacking and house ruling is part of our deal-i-o anyway.
But, as an old schooler, and echoing other comments, it does not seem basic to me at all! It feels like it just drones on and on! I mean, they have the starter kit. Why not introduce folks to role play and "what different races think about each other" (seriously?) there?
Which leads to my final (and shared by others) lament: the fully and unapologetically self-referential (how postmodern!) nature of the legendarium (now, no longer a mechanic that allows engagement with a plural "legendaria"). I agree with previous posters who say that an 11 year old boy will have their imagination sparked just the same. I totally get that.I hope the 90% of them who read will discover the classical legendaria of this genre and be led to old school play! So I agree with Oakspalding that, ultimately, it is a downer for D&D to demand its own in-game legendarium. At least with regards to reaching us old schoolers as a target audience. It seems like this is the history of the game: a move from an attempt to engage the inherited legendaria, to the creation of its own legendarium.
I still love the war-gammer notion that what we are trying to do is move from gammifying actual historical battles, to building rule-sets that allow for "realistic simulation" of hypothetical battles. Now add to that medieval warfare. Now add to that the hypothetical battles of medieval fantasy literature. Now raise the scale to a 1:1 player to "troop" ratio. Now you have D&D. I want to engage traditional, classical, and recent medieval fantasy legendaria. I don't believe any other edition allows one to house rule your way there quite as well as 0e. (Although, in all fairness, I have only studied most of the other editions. I have played 1e as well.)
Thanks for the discussion so far. I'm learning a lot.
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Post by strangebrew on Jul 11, 2014 7:48:48 GMT -6
In regards to what tetramorph said about the self-referential nature of modern D&D, it really does seem like a profound shift has happened in the past 20 years. From OD&D to 2nd edition, the gaming imagination of players seemed to be very much fueled by fantasy fiction. As 2nd edition came along, more and more of this became D&D fiction, in house TSR novels in the different universes. Not as great and inspirational as Conan or Elric perhaps, but at least they were books.
What are the fantasy touchstones for today's youth? I'm sure many of them still read Tolkien, but the movies might play a stronger role in their minds. (When I saw the hobbit movie, I compared the book to a cup of Earl Grey, and the movie to a 20 oz. Mt Dew. I guess the same could be said for OD&D and 4th edition) I think computer games are probably first and foremost in kids' minds these day. I don't think computer games light up the imagination as well as novels, but maybe I'm just too old.
On a related rant, it's interesting how D&D led to the birth of the computer RPG industry, but then the computer RPG feel became the standard, and D&D shifted to resemble them to appeal to modern/young gamers (by adding skill trees, tons of character options, heavy combat rules with preset maneuvers, etc.). With a computer game, the computer does all the heavy lifting instantaneously, but with a table top game, the calculations are left to the human brain (not so fast). So we had 15 years of tabletop D&D slogging along, poorly mimicking computer RPGs. 5th edition is an improvement, but I think the paradigm shift has already occurred. My recent stint in a Pathfinder game only confirms this deep change in play style . Sigh...
That being said, kids will get by. "The golden age of anything is 13", so D&D 5th edition will be some kid's golden age. I grew up playing AD&D 2nd edition, surrounded by self-referential and usually terrible TSR novels, and I turned out alright! I'm here, aren't I?!?
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Post by dukeofchutney on Jul 11, 2014 19:25:21 GMT -6
I just had a skim read of the PDF for the basic. Its not too bad. It is a little more complex that i thought it would be. Its something like 77 pages of actual rules. ASSH and DCC and S&W White box are my systems of choice atm and they all come in much shorter if you pair them down to 'the rules' (ASSH might exceed this if you count each character class). Whilst 3.5 was my first proper rpg and i played 4e, i never gm'd or bothered to read the rules myself so i can't really compare it.
I don't have any really in depth analysis. Broadly i'm glad something a little more middle ground is out there for newer players. It seems less constrained and ordered than 4e, and less bloated than 3.5 (at this early stage i guess). Combat still seems a little complex with attacks of opportunity and i did see some mention of feats but it seems like an optional extra, or something to come in later rules. It looks like this might be the rule set of optional extras. Does this vibe come across for others? or is it more of a case that the basic rules are just like stabilizers for a bike? You are expected to go for the real McCoy later.
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Azafuse
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
Posts: 245
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Post by Azafuse on Jul 11, 2014 19:30:44 GMT -6
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zeraser
Level 4 Theurgist
Posts: 184
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Post by zeraser on Jul 12, 2014 21:29:46 GMT -6
I had the chance to play a little 5e this past week using the starter set and basic rules; I liked it. One of our fighters went down and rolled a rather sobering 1 on his first death save during the goblin ambush!
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Post by Finarvyn on Jul 13, 2014 4:29:49 GMT -6
Yeah, characters may seem more buff but so are the monsters. In some ways this makes battles that much more epic. We haven't had a problem of players getting bored because their characters are too powerful, but just the opposite. Except that at 0 hp you aren't automaticlly "dead" but can still be brought back.
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Post by Vile Traveller on Jul 13, 2014 8:29:23 GMT -6
Except that at 0 hp you aren't automatically "dead" but can still be brought back. I think this is one of the biggest changes between editions. Characters in my experience are more likely to survive, because when they go down the monsters are likely to ignore them in favour of those still standing. If the characters end up winning the encounter, there's still a chance they can revive their comrades (and vice versa, of course). On the other hand, it does tend to make players more likely to keep their characters fighting when discretion might be the better part of valour ...
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Post by Finarvyn on Jul 13, 2014 8:53:22 GMT -6
Except that at 0 hp you aren't automatically "dead" but can still be brought back. I think this is one of the biggest changes between editions. Characters in my experience are more likely to survive, because when they go down the monsters are likely to ignore them in favour of those still standing. If the characters end up winning the encounter, there's still a chance they can revive their comrades (and vice versa, of course). On the other hand, it does tend to make players more likely to keep their characters fighting when discretion might be the better part of valour ... Depends upon how the DM runs the game, I suppose. In one 5E playtest we encounterd a bunch of ghouls and when one of us went down most of the pack went after the corpse.
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zeraser
Level 4 Theurgist
Posts: 184
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Post by zeraser on Jul 13, 2014 19:51:09 GMT -6
I think this is one of the biggest changes between editions. Characters in my experience are more likely to survive, because when they go down the monsters are likely to ignore them in favour of those still standing. If the characters end up winning the encounter, there's still a chance they can revive their comrades (and vice versa, of course). On the other hand, it does tend to make players more likely to keep their characters fighting when discretion might be the better part of valour ... Depends upon how the DM runs the game, I suppose. In one 5E playtest we encountered a bunch of ghouls and when one of us went down most of the pack went after the corpse. Yeah, the death save system causes kind of a weird situation where the DM's decisions about the enemies' behavior basically determines whether the character lives or dies. If an intelligent monster attacks a downed character, the jig is more or less up for that character - and it feels very much like the DM is going out of her way to screw the player. If, on the other hand, a hungry wild animal goes after a character who's still vertical, it might feel like the DM is pulling her punches. It's not a major problem as far as I'm concerned, but it does create a strange sociopsychological dilemma.
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Post by kesher on Jul 14, 2014 13:23:26 GMT -6
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Post by Red Baron on Jul 14, 2014 15:26:11 GMT -6
Depends upon how the DM runs the game, I suppose. In one 5E playtest we encountered a bunch of ghouls and when one of us went down most of the pack went after the corpse. Yeah, the death save system causes kind of a weird situation where the DM's decisions about the enemies' behavior basically determines whether the character lives or dies. If an intelligent monster attacks a downed character, the jig is more or less up for that character - and it feels very much like the DM is going out of her way to screw the player. If, on the other hand, a hungry wild animal goes after a character who's still vertical, it might feel like the DM is pulling her punches. It's not a major problem as far as I'm concerned, but it does create a strange sociopsychological dilemma. *Holds up a die* "Alright guys, on a 1-3 the thing finishes off unconscious Jim here, and on a 4,5,or 6 it goes after Bill"
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Post by dukeofchutney on Jul 14, 2014 16:13:32 GMT -6
Good tip will use this in the future as it is a problem i have had.
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Post by Finarvyn on Jul 14, 2014 18:09:33 GMT -6
Alright guys, on a 1-3 the thing finishes off unconscious Jim here, and on a 4,5,or 6 it goes after Bill" That's exactly the way I DM! I love to do this for critical fumbles, too. "1-2 you hurt yourself, 3-4 you slip and fall and miss this round, 5-6 you stab your buddy." That kind of thing. My players fear to roll a natural 1.
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Post by waysoftheearth on Jul 15, 2014 7:17:38 GMT -6
"Alright guys, on a 1-3 the thing finishes off unconscious Jim here, and on a 4,5,or 6 it goes after Bill" I nearly always dice for targets in combat as it is.
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Post by Red Baron on Jul 15, 2014 10:46:41 GMT -6
Its how my dm runs things.
Its quick, easy, impartial, and everyone is clinging to the edge of their seat in suspense hoping the monster goes after somebody else.
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Post by cooper on Jul 15, 2014 11:45:02 GMT -6
Very few intelligent creatures attack fallen targets. It was (is?) actual sound military strategy to incapacitate/wound more than to kill as wounded fallen take up more resources from the opposing side than dead do. By attacking a fallen enemy that is no longer a threat, you remove the need of his companions to provide first aid/assistance (he's dead so they can continue to fight). If you leave wounded, you remove also from combat he who must now tend the wounded.
Animals also very rarely if never begin feeding while they are still in mortal danger. In fact the most successful preditors attack to mortally wound and then circle in wait for the creature to die as it puts them at less of a risk to fight to the death with another creature--sharks being the best example of this tactic.
Ghouls may be more like a feeding frenzy of sharks. But they would be the exception, not the rule.
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Post by kesher on Jul 15, 2014 14:11:52 GMT -6
What about ghoul-sharks?
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Post by kirbyfan63 on Jul 22, 2014 11:05:03 GMT -6
I haven't been keeping up with this, just browsing. Is hasbro gong to release anything else for the free. Like monsters treasure, Xp rules I would like to play at least for a while before making a decision whether to buy the full thing.
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Post by tetramorph on Jul 22, 2014 11:24:48 GMT -6
Yes. After the new PH comes out in August they are going to release a Basic 1.0 (the current is 0.1) that includes monsters and treasure, wilderness and underworld adventure stuff (or whatever they call it in later editions!).
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Post by xmanowarx on Jul 22, 2014 15:49:48 GMT -6
i've played a few sessions of 5e so far. i like it. one session was a homebrew thing my friend threw together (with almost no combat) and the other was a session of the module in the starter set.
when i read the basic pdf, i was put off by the healing mechanics and the max hp at first level thing. i still don't like the healing rules. but...combat is very deadly. the monsters deal out a ton of damage and we had players dropping all over the place. granted, most of them were players who were used to pathfinder or 4e - but they learned pretty fast that fighting might not always be the best option.
this isn't a charop game - at least not yet. if you choose to use array or point buy, the highest stat you can get is a 15. plus, as DM, you can just have players roll their stats in order. if and when i ever run this, i plan on having the players roll 3d6 in order. that's how i rolled my halfling wizard. i actually rolled everything randomly - race, class, spells, cantrips. everyone at the table laughed since his INT is "only" an 11...but he's the only character to take no damage so far - and his use of SLEEP saved their butts. twice. plus, the cantrip MINOR ILLUSION makes a nice MIRROR IMAGE for a 3' tall, 25 lb character.
it took maybe 20 minutes to write my character down on the sheet - but that's because i was busy rolling on all his randomized background tables and fleshing out his backstory.
i love OD&D and BX...but i think WoTC may have done this thing right. give it a shot.
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Post by Red Baron on Jul 22, 2014 16:22:06 GMT -6
I gave it a quick look. The disclaimer is funny and the d100 Trinket table is my favorite thing in the PDF. The bulk of it isn't my style these days but I probably would've loved it when I was 16 and running 2e AD&D. It seems like it would play similarly to 2e but with some 3e/4e twists. I think its based on Jeff Reint's Deck of Stuff. There's an expanded version in one of the Fight On magazines (issue 6?, 7?), and a special list for Carcosa in What Went Wrong.
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Post by Falconer on Jul 24, 2014 10:33:35 GMT -6
I think [the d100 Trinket table is] based on Jeff Reint's Deck of Stuff. There's an expanded version in one of the Fight On magazines (issue 6?, 7?) Issue #5. Thanks for the reference! Nice to see that 5e is borrowing something cool from the OSR, but also proud to know that “we” did it first!
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