D&D 5e: For real this time?

[awaken_D_M_golem]

AHA ...

They ought to make a base class called "Vance"
and it would be the complicated arcane caster we all know and "love".

Then they can make "Wizard" "Mage" "Magus" "Sorc" "Prestidigitator" etc
... be whatever stereotype or mechanic of arcane caster.

[Dwarfi]

Cant say much about the vance-mage stuff. Though it sounds interesting to put in different types of magic.

I hope they redesign the whole craft-skill from 3.5.
The thought of putting points in there to make my own armor is nice and tempting, but it just takes way too much time and doesnt work very well.

Adamantine: Well, not really worth the price. I think most players prefer the mithrall armor, which makes the dwarfen racial for armor speed pretty useless.

-------
edit:
I would like to change a few skills to con based. Seriously Concentration as the ONLY skill ?
Great, lets see, I have a fighter with +5 con bonus and a lot of str... hmm all the str checks are reduced by 5-7 for ACP, so I have to spend at least that many points to reach 0. Well, what else can I do ? I can CONCENTRATE !!! That will come in handy...
seriously ?

[veekie]

Save Or Die

[Bozwevial]

Save Or Die

..wait, what?

For most monsters, you can make a save or die effect sit on top of a damaging attack (a wyvern's tail stinger) or trigger automatically each round (a basilisk's gaze). The same can't be said for expendable spells, and the save or die mechanic is likely too powerful for spells you can reuse.

So a physical attack, like that of a tail stinger, can have a SoD rider. But in the very next sentence, he turns around and says that it would be too much to give reusable spells (which presumably can be used at best as frequently as a physical attack) the very same thing.

Am I missing something here?

[bhu]

No, but I think he is...

[linklord231]

Kinda reminds me of this post by SneeR.  Not sure if I like the proposed idea or not; as someone who generally plays spellcasters, nerfing SoD's doesn't sit well with me.  But it definitely would make things more balanced. 
On the other hand, my DM might actually "allow" SoD's back in to his games with this mechanic.  Currently, every single monster we fight is either flat out immune (even to spells without the [death] tag), or just has saves so high they only fail on a 1. 

[kitep]

Am I missing something here?

I think so.  He's talking about a save & die is only effective after the target drops below a certain number of hit points.  So Slay Living might not work on something with 80 hp, but might work on something with 40 hit points (or whatever the numbers work out to).  Presumably, you need to whittle down the monster a bit before you can hit it with a save or die.

But this presents a problem - how do you know how many hit points a monster has left?  If the save or die happens *every* time - such as a hit with a tail stinger, or a basilisk's gaze, it's no problem.  But if it's an expendable resource - such as a scroll - then you don't want to cast it without knowing it has a chance of working.  It's not that save or die won't work with scrolls or other expendables, it's more not wanting to waste resources without a chance of them working.

Not a problem in my group - we would just ask the DM if X would work yet.  But some DMs like to be very secretive about hit points.

Hope that helps.

[TenaciousJ]

The 4e bloodied mechanic helps out for letting players know when an effect will work.  Set bloodied mechanics for different HP numbers if you want effects to not work until certain times.

[Bozwevial]

But this presents a problem - how do you know how many hit points a monster has left?  If the save or die happens *every* time - such as a hit with a tail stinger, or a basilisk's gaze, it's no problem.  But if it's an expendable resource - such as a scroll - then you don't want to cast it without knowing it has a chance of working.  It's not that save or die won't work with scrolls or other expendables, it's more not wanting to waste resources without a chance of them working.

That's not it. The sentences in question are talking about the same save-or-die being applied to a tail stinger and a spell. He's saying that the save-or-die mechanic is too powerful for spells that you can reuse, but it's perfectly fine on something like a natural attack that you can just use whenever you want. That is the same recharge time, given as a reasonable mechanic in the first sentence and then explicitly called overpowered in the sentence immediately following. The only way that makes any sort of sense is if you can fire these spells off faster than the wyvern or whatever can sting people with its tail, which I really doubt is the case. So one of three things is going on here: His actual message is something different and he's just phrased it very badly, the mechanics he's talking about are not intuitive at all and need further elaboration, or he had a minor stroke while typing this.

I think what I dislike most about the article is the underlying hint that monsters are going to play by a different set of rules than PCs. That's something that always irks me.

[linklord231]

I think what I dislike most about the article is the underlying hint that monsters are going to play by a different set of rules than PCs. That's something that always irks me.

+1
It's useful for a DM if the rules to create monsters are simpler than for creating PC's, because it means less prep time.  But anything that would be considered "too powerful" for a PC should absolutely be "too powerful" for monsters.  Otherwise, you're creating a double standard and just asking for a "players vs DM" mentality.  Everything in the entire campaign should play by the same rules.  It promotes verisimilitude and fairness. 

[Ziegander]

I swear D&D designers DO NOT CARE if Team Monster gets things that Team PC can never get, and they especially don't care if Team Monster gets really powerful stuff that Team PC can never get.

Not to mention, the Save or Die article is discussing death spiral mechanics, which are just not fun.

[RedWarlock]

Well, it kind of makes sense, if you assume the accuracy of SoD effects is inversely proportional to their frequency of use. So a 1-in-20 chance could be useable every round, but a 9-in-10 chance from a daily-use ability is too strong. (I could be overjustifying, but I think it's a valid idea.)

[Wiggins]

Except that if your DM is anything like me, then if he includes a monster with a save or die ability, then he'll include a habitat for it. Perhaps a nest. Not because you want them to ever go there, but for completeness sake.

And if the players search it out, they may not realise that they're entering somewhere that's way too dangerous for them. As soon as I realise I've made something that deadly, I have a bad habit. I don't remove it, I instead surround it with plotlines heading away from it that I hope will distract players off in the opposite direction so that they don't get killed unless they persevere.

My narrative maps are almost built around these black holes, it's quite useful.

Basically, I can see a lot more black holes forming if the designers are relying on an ability being rare because the species itself is rare for balance purposes.

On a personal note, I too dislike the idea that a Monster can ever do anything a player can't do eventually if that's the goal they've set for themselves. I don't mind ALMOST impossible, but you shouldn't have to be near godhood before getting the ability of something you faced before you'd reached your first city.

[Keldar]

But this presents a problem - how do you know how many hit points a monster has left?  If the save or die happens *every* time - such as a hit with a tail stinger, or a basilisk's gaze, it's no problem.  But if it's an expendable resource - such as a scroll - then you don't want to cast it without knowing it has a chance of working.  It's not that save or die won't work with scrolls or other expendables, it's more not wanting to waste resources without a chance of them working.

That's not it. The sentences in question are talking about the same save-or-die being applied to a tail stinger and a spell. He's saying that the save-or-die mechanic is too powerful for spells that you can reuse, but it's perfectly fine on something like a natural attack that you can just use whenever you want. That is the same recharge time, given as a reasonable mechanic in the first sentence and then explicitly called overpowered in the sentence immediately following. The only way that makes any sort of sense is if you can fire these spells off faster than the wyvern or whatever can sting people with its tail, which I really doubt is the case. So one of three things is going on here: His actual message is something different and he's just phrased it very badly, the mechanics he's talking about are not intuitive at all and need further elaboration, or he had a minor stroke while typing this.

I think what I dislike most about the article is the underlying hint that monsters are going to play by a different set of rules than PCs. That's something that always irks me.

The difference is monsters will only be spamming SODs of this type in some of the encounters, while if a PC has access to the same she'll be spamming it in every last encounter.  Its quite possible that SODs may never wind up functioning for Team Monster through a campaign due to potential scarcity of the ability.  The same cannot be said for giving it to players at will.  We can, and will, use the frack out of it.  Especially if we can't tell when its finally past the thresh hold for success.  Its just safer design to avoid that potential for abuse.

That doesn't mean I like the system, just that I get his point.

[Bozwevial]

The difference is monsters will only be spamming SODs of this type in some of the encounters, while if a PC has access to the same she'll be spamming it in every last encounter.  Its quite possible that SODs may never wind up functioning for Team Monster through a campaign due to potential scarcity of the ability.  The same cannot be said for giving it to players at will.  We can, and will, use the frack out of it.  Especially if we can't tell when its finally past the thresh hold for success.  Its just safer design to avoid that potential for abuse.

That doesn't mean I like the system, just that I get his point.

The point of the system he mentioned in the first place where SoDs only function at a certain hit point threshold is to let you have something like a Gorgon Sword that petrifies enemies without worrying that an accident of probability (which is almost a given as you play longer and longer) will leave the BBEG an umbrella stand thirteen levels and several story arcs before the PCs were even supposed to fight him on even footing. Conversely, you can have a wyvern with deadly tail poison and not worry that you'll kill off half the party by accident while still maintaining a heightened threat level.

So with that in mind, there really is no sense to the logic that at-will SoDs are something that monsters can have but players can't, because then you have a system in place that makes them accessible but not broken.

As for move spamming/five moves of doom, that's going to happen anyway if you don't give people a reason to switch.

[veekie]

Cleric or priest

A great deal would have been avoided if we just had priests to begin with, but nostalgia says cleric as it is will remain very popular.

[Bozwevial]

So apparently there's a supposed leak of an early version of 5e on the SomethingAwful forums. Pasted here if you want to look at the discussion. (This is obviously thirdhand and not official, but we can talk about it anyway.)

The system for ability checks/skills/what have you is pretty fucked if it's anything close to what I think it is. I'm still not sure if your modifier is the whole stat, the stat minus ten, the stat minus ten modulo 2, or some other piece of mathematical witchery, but it doesn't actually matter because it will break no matter what. You'll have weird things like someone with a 16 Strength being able to leap a pit without fail every single time, forever, while his 15 Strength buddy enjoys a 50% chance of failure on the same task (and that's if we're being generous and assuming your modifier is your score minus ten to make full use of the +1/-1 racial modifiers). So we still have some ability score numbers being much more important than others, except now you can never know which ones they are, and instead of being a 5% improved chance of success important, they are a 50% (or more) improved chance of success important. Alternatively, if they decide that your stat is the modifier, you'll have the RNG breaking from level 1.

This is admittedly largely math based on bullshit because I have no clue what the actual rules are here, but it's based on bullshit that Monte Cook has given us and these alleged playtester reports, so it counts for something.

Oh, and apparently there are six defenses, one for each ability score. But that's honestly par for the course by now.

(Also, I have no idea why they all seem convinced that it would be better to base 5th edition on 4e than 3.5.)

[Ziegander]

Definitely seems like a total pile of shit so far. Which is saying something, because I was really hopeful about 4e, even up to having access to some of the beta material and junk like that. 4e is actually a fairly well-designed game (with some mathematical pitfalls) that I just don't enjoy as much as 3.5. This 5e mess they're cobbling together sounds like a fucking catastrophe.

[awaken_D_M_golem]

The 4e bloodied mechanic helps out for letting players know when an effect will work.  Set bloodied mechanics for different HP numbers if you want effects to not work until certain times.

This is probably right.
And it opens a number of possibilities.
Who's to say HP are only tabulated Top Down?
An effect could take away the last 4e death save.
An effect could impose a cumulative death save penalty.
Bloodied could happen later or earlier, or be delayed 2 rounds.
Zero hit point condition could be applied early, on some limited effects.
etc ...

This kinda of approach excessively compli-mc-cate-ifies combat.
But conceptually, taking the category "save-or-die" and turning it
into a more playable mechanic, is a good thing. And it jibes with
some obscure but memorable previous edition material.

[caelic]

http://pastebin.com/zRWmNeZd

A lot of folks have probably seen this already, but...good Lord.  They truly seem to just be throwing stuff at the wall and hoping something will stick.