D&D Next Playtest

[Phaezen]

To get the ball rolling while I am waiting for my second email,

What are peoples initial impressions?

[flashedarling]

My impression is... disappointment. Mixed with a little bit of frustration. I think they have some good ideas in here, having everything derive from your ability scores is a neat trick. Less numbers to keep track of is a good thing. Removing skill lists for free form situation skills? I like that too, it's less numbers to keep track of. It even makes me ok with things that deal stat-damage, because it doesn't lead to a cascade of changes that need to be made on your character sheet.

Unfortunately they just haven't put enough effort yet into making things run well. Advantage and Disadvantage sound good at first, extra d20? Cool! Until you realize that they are either crippling or overpowered, completely blowing anything else out of the water. Perhaps they should had left Advantages as a -2/+2 then incorporated the roll 2d20 as Major Advantages. Armor is completely messed up in terms of the protection it provides and the amount it costs.

The frustration comes in with the philosophy of not defining things for the sake of "DM Empowerment". For example Sneak Attack. Rogues are going to have a really hard time generating sneak attack if the only ways Advantage can be gained are by spending a turn hiding or by DM discretion. It might sound good at first "Why give a codified list of what does and doesn't give Advantage when you can just spout stuff that sounds cool?" until you look at how things play out at the table. It either becomes a game of "Mother May I?" where you never know for sure if you can get Advantage or not, or DM's let you use a trick once or twice but then start saying "You can't do that again" because watching the same thing over and over again gets tiresome. Even if it is a different set of enemies who have never seen your rogues tricks before the DM running them has. Finally it is hard to keep coming up with creative ways to describe things for every attack, sometimes you just want to say "I stab him, 23 vs AC" without having to come up with a flowery description so the DM will let you use your class feature. I know that in my playtests of the earlier versions I was trying to stay fun and roleplay every attack a little bit but after a couple rounds of combat I just started feeling repetative and wanted to move on.

There need to be codified rules for things like the rogue getting advantage for two reasons. A) So that there are shared expectations at all tables, which is important for things like convention play. B) So that there is a convenient shorthand between the DM and the Player so that there doesn't have to be a discussion every time he wants to gain sneak attack. He can just make the attack and they both know he has Advantage. This isn't to say it needs to be an exhaustive list that covers every situation and says "You have Advantage when this happens and no other time", DM should be able to adjudicate situations appropriate.

This kind of thing comes up in a variety of places, the stated goal of DM empowerment. Which for some reason they don't think existed in 4E. Which is horsefeathers. DM's have always been empowered to make, break, and bend rules as they saw fit in every edition. Players need to be able to know how a class will work just be reading the book, not by having to do a character study on a DM to figure out if they will be allowed to use their class features.

There is a lot of sloppy stuff in the playtest document, inconsistancies, bad math, etc. Those are the kinds of things I have faith can be fixed with more editing. The things I have issue are with the core of the philosphy of DM power and legacy elements that have left some things intentionally vague when they should be specific, and specific when things should be left vague.

[Matt James]

Make sure you turn this over with your playtest feedback. Great write-up.

[Scrivener of Doom]

It feels like a fantasy heartbreaker posted on some dim, dark corner of the internet rather than the latest offering from the official brand owners.

Honestly, if I want the old school vibe I will go with Swords & Wizardry. Unless the next playtest document is absolutely amazing I will simply stick with 4E which I am growing to really love (especially by sticking to Heroic Tier campaigns).

[gaming tonic]

The playtest material is so early on that I think we should all be very careful to steer clear of knee-jerk reactions. So far I have seen some very clever elements. The advantage/disadvantage mechanic shocked me as a radical change from what we had seen during the Friends & Family Playtest, but I think we need to really playtest it before we can rule on it from reading it. Does it work? I am not sold either way yet. It is definitely new and sometimes people always treat the new thing like Frankenstein's Monster so we all need to be cautious in not doing that. The feedback is really important but we must frame it in a way that furthers the design goals and doesn't allow for ranting. As each playtest version is released I think we will see a few of the errors cleared up.

[Matt James]

Exactly. It's very early in the process and you can't really critique anything other than the concepts provided. I hope people are turning over their playtest feedback!