[5e Musings] 2nd Round Initial Thoughts
The second playtest packet is out, complete with character creation rules for characters of 1st-5th level as well as an updated bestiary! The whole thing caught me by surprise - I felt like the packet was coming soon, but I thought I would at least be able to finish the Caves of Chaos from the first playtest, first. I'm pretty sure that my players would prefer to try their hand at character creation, though, so I will be converting the upcoming Sunday game to a chargen session instead.
I feel like I'm going into a more familiar zone, myself, as I feel like I thrive better as a DM when not following the general plot of a module. As the packet does not come with one (yet), I'll look into figuring out how encounter building works. I will also experiment with exploration and roleplay a little bit more.
One thing I will note is that I will likely deviate from the rules-as-written this time. I want to see how much I can bend the system with house rules without breaking it; over the course of the next few weeks, I will post things that I change in our gameplay.
To motivate the creation of these house rules, I want to start with the things that I initially like and dislike about the second round.
Likes:
- The fighter. Combat Superiority is awesome. I particularly like how the number of expertise dice increase with level, while some combat maneuvers require only one die. So a more experienced fighter can conceivably perform two minor tricks in a round, given that he has enough actions. I can also see B9S-style "optional" maneuvers for some of the more wire-fu fighter stuff that I like from time to time. (Supplementary: Pointyman's thoughts)
- Monster Statblock design. The presentation of the statblocks are cleaner now, evoking 4E sensibilities without resorting to its "green and grey" table format. I wish they'd move alignment and languages (noncombat abilities) after actions and before encounter building, but it's a minor gripe that I can live with either way.
- Normalization of monster hp. Looking at the medusa (a tactical level 4 elite) and the owlbear (a bruiser level 4 elite), their hp's are now within an acceptable deviation. The owlbear can still absorb more damage, but it's no longer outrageously large in comparison unlike last time.
- Reduction of level up xp tresholds. In the first round of playtesting, we've had a total of six play sessions. We were supposed to get to our seventh session on Sunday, and I felt like that session was their first real chance of advancing to third level. The tresholds are noticeably smaller now, although 650, 1825 and so on seem to be odd choices that can't be easily remembered by players.
- Stonecunning has been nerfed. Now I know that they're listening. It's amazing how the phrase, "reasonable guess" can change the racial trait from OP to cool and flavorful.
Dislikes:
- Hero hp. The hp system is almost* exactly as it was back in 3.5, and I see that as a bad thing. There's a reason many 3.5 games start at level 3 or higher, and that's because getting gimped by a housecat or an orc's falchion at 1st level is no fun at all. On the other hand, spamming constitution becomes too important again, as adding con mod to every level increase can cause a very severe disparity in numbers when you get to high levels. Now I understand the desire to have PCs and monsters get similar hp, but players are expected to survive at level 1 but still be "mortal" at level 20. I prefer the first iteration of player hp.
- Skills married ability scores again. Let's take Intimidate as an example. The half-orc fighter|thug with charisma 8 smashes the table to intimidate the mysterious stranger in the tavern. Shouldn't it make more sense to use his strength 16 to complement his intimidate training? They divorced for good reason. Let's keep them separated, please. (As a side note: I feel like skills were rewritten, badly, I should add, to accommodate the rogue's "spot" problem. Shouldn't it be a fix to the rogue instead of the entire skill system instead?)
- The semantic change from theme to specialty. This one's a minor gripe, but theme is so much easier to say than specialty. Why change it?
- The return of the opportunity attack. I don't have a counter-suggestion here, yet. But I'm afraid of seeing longer combats because of this. I will likely start with it in the game, and see how things go in a game or three.
* - Yeah, I know hit dice on top of hp makes it significantly different, but 4hp for a starting con 10 wizard? A d4 won't help much.
The opportunity attack is a reaction, so it's only 1/round as opposed to 1/turn. So it's not THAT bad.
ReplyDeleteAs for monster HP and defenses, ever noticed how some monsters are easily felled and yet give a LOT of EXP?
Hello, Mr.N!
ReplyDeleteOn OA's: Yeah, I probably should have noted that. So OA's feel more like their 3.5 rather than their 4E version. Interestingly, I think 3.5 had a fighter feat that allowed it to make more OA's. I wonder if we'll see something like that again.
On monster HP/def: I must admit, I did not notice that (or at least, my playtest experience on the 1st round did not reflect that). I did notice that some monsters had too MUCH hp. The troll, in particular, was such a slog to go through. I had an encounter with two of those, and it was easily one of the most boring ones. A goblin encounter that matched the troll encounter xp-wise ran a lot smoother.
Can you give examples of which monsters are easy xp-grabs?
Bugbear: 14 AC, 18 HP, 480 XP (compare Drow: 15 AC, 27 HP, 350 XP)
ReplyDeleteGnoll: 14 AC, 13 HP, 450 XP
Orog: 14 AC, 16 HP, 580 XP
You could probably have them in large enough groups to prevent ganking, but with these stats vs. the EXP they give? A stealthy enough group could just one or two at a time and quickly gain enough EXP to level TOO quickly.
I mean even with 18 HP, a fighter could quickly fell him as long as he won initiative [rolling high on the damage dice can insta-kill], and a wizard who maintains a large enough distance between himself and two Orog(s) -- certainly possible, given a reasonable 30'/round walk speed -- could magic missile them to death *solo* and level up instantly after that one fight.
The ONLY way to bypass is would be to ignore the leveling table outright, by utilizing it purely as an encounter design system. But for a living, breathing world that uses the rules as written? The moment the players say "screw the spider/kobold/zombie grind quest, let's hunt for gnolls/orogs/bugbears and level up!", I think we're going to have to either invoke railroading or expect leveling up to be a breeze.
In your troll problem, you could have placed five Orogs to gain 2550XP, as opposed to two trolls giving just 1620XP. Those five Orogs have only 16 HP each, which means instead of having to chip away through 132 HP, you only have to chip through 80 HP.
ReplyDeleteThat effectively makes killing Orogs 286.42% better than killing Trolls.
The root of the problem is the apparent lack of any consistent underlying system math. Bounded Accuracy in theory works because it allows weaker monsters to remain relevant, and at the same time allows new players to be able to join the veterans. In practice however, instead of a controlled scaling, it became NO scaling (especially monster-side), and thus a wildly swinging pendulum of monster difficulty horribly reminiscent of 3.5E's effective creature level (ECL).
One might argue that 4E level 30 minions can be one-shotted by the Magic Missile of a level 1 Wizard, but at LEAST that edition had narrative as padding: those are only minions stat-wise when the story says they're minions stat-wise. Employing the same reasoning for D&D Next would turn off those who preferred a more simulationist approach to D&D, while on its own the whole system is downright bollocks.
I wish it were simply a "feel" thing, but with the facts on the table, the dev team REALLY has to wake up and smell what they're cooking, because the over-emphasis on feel has created some very, VERY weird effects.