[D&D Next] Races and Classes

Since I’m pretty much stuck home today, I thought I’d share a §review of the 5ed PHB classes and races.

What do you think? Is it more old school or more MMO “elementary school”?

Classes

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[youtube]JGE0o47Jwdw[/youtube]

[youtube]T3w-TLtK60A[/youtube]

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[youtube]f4zNCvMHJGw[/youtube]

[youtube]eLNAKMWdzYA[/youtube]

[youtube]rwPRTLSr60o[/youtube]

Races

[youtube]oqVj5ktsaWw[/youtube]

[youtube]rj_K13pwLnU[/youtube]

[youtube]6OaYdtvvljE[/youtube]

[youtube]KIcrfjebFmQ[/youtube]

[youtube]QhZ89oglHIU[/youtube]

[youtube]Y6eSLE-alBk[/youtube]

[youtube]RoO3-l1CrEg[/youtube]

[youtube]n7-oqV5g85Y[/youtube]

[youtube]0A5lSXro6HU[/youtube]

[size=50]this took me much longer than I would like to admit[/size]

Old school? With tieflings?

Seriously though, I have the feeling this edition is going to be pretty malleable, at least initially. Unlike, say, the last edition, you’ll probably see both games that feel very traditional and others that seem closer to recent editions. Even running things more or less RAW, I think the feel will be much more dependent on the DM this time around.

Once more supplements are released, I’d assume it’ll wind up veering toward a new school feel. But who knows? We may yet be surprised.

-H- pretty much nailed my sentiment toward the hole deal. The few games I participated in really had a wastely different feel to it, even at the same level range.
From a tense death dungeon in the veins of White Plume Mountain or Tomb of Horrors to more hack-and-slash or more exploratory adventures, their current modules did try to tackle different playstyles.
And that’s fine. While only time may tell how good the direction they decided to go with really is, this is exactly what they set out to do with 5e from the start - unify the fanbase.
Of course, that’s an impossible feat to accomplish, but they did hit a reasonable spot.
Players from any edition prior can easily hop in without there being glaring clashes with their previous experiences. We had folks with backgrounds/favoritism of different editions, and while people did find some decisions odd, the hop was much less awkward than I imagine it being with the last 2 editions.
The current 5e adventure line is surprisingly solid so far, and if they keep it up that way, it should have a good life.

Or you know, it may all just all burn down in a glorious pile of ash. How glorious.

I do like the different approach on vancian casting. Although I find it funny that the Sorcerer - who more or less became an official core class in 3rd edition as a simpler variant od the wizard with less bookkeeping involved - actually is technically more complicated this time around. Be it a random effect table or the metamagic associated with him.
I find the Fighter Variants surprisingly interesting, so props for that. Taking cues from 4e and making the fighter optionally not be only about hitting hard works pretty well so far.

It’s a solid attempt all-around, and there’s not a lot of things to bicker about, even if they sometimes so feel a bit plain.

is stuck waiting and wastes his time with reading sourcebooks and adventures. Beautiful

I really like the necromancer variant!
Come to me my undead minions!

first post of two:

Game Mechnics:

(I have the beta, and have the dead in thay)

First I want to say some good things:
Nice artwork as always, has a nice 3rd-4th mix feel (as expected), I personally like the advantage/disadvatage mechanics, and I like the backgrounds;

Then we are back to “Linear Warriors - Quadratic Wizards”
meaning:

The Warriors are good at low levels, but are bruttaly outclassed at high levels be the flexibilty and number of options a Full-Caster has.

Especially the Fighter is reduced to “Full Attack Guy”, because maneuvers at low levels are not available.

In addition, to make things worse, Hit Points of Monters escalate very, very quickly!!
This fact makes “Save or Suck” spells even more powerful than before.

This is added to the fact, that now every Ability has its own save.
(e.g. a lot of Illusion spells have a Intelligence save.)
So a Caster can target a weak Save of a monster to gain maximum effect, even more easily than in 3.X / Pathfinder.

At first a Caster will be weak, since he has very few spells / day, but even at medium levels, especially if equipped with illusion spells*, that she could cast as a “Ritual” without expending the spell slot, things turn onesided for casters, very fast.**

  • a lot of monsters save pretty badly against Intelligence :wink:
    but I have to admit I have only seen Monsters up to Level 10, so maybe later it will get better, but I highly doubt it.

** I don’t mind that some classes are stronger, than others, but when the “Monk” turns out to be weaker than a class feature (animal companion) of the “Druid”, like in 3.X, something is not right.

Especially the “Champion” Archetype is pretty weak - maybe he looks good on paper, but one easily forgets that critical hits are far weaker in 5th than in previous editions. (they only double the die of the weapon, so d8+7 = 2d8+7)
It seems that the “Champion” was made for “beer & pretzels” players, who like to sit back and make full attacks, and nothing else.

The “Battle Master” can finally use all the cool stuff a 3.X/Pathfinder vanilla Fighter can do anyway: like disarm or feint in combat.

The only Fighter specialization that is not as weak is the “Eldritch Knight” - who is a caster - again.
(btw. the same is true for the “Arcane Trickster” - Rogue Archetype, but to a lesser extend)

The only real good thing (mechanics wise) of a Fighter is, that a caster could dip 2 levels Fighter to get the bonus action 1x/rest, which is by far more useful to a Caster than a Warrior btw.

Magic Items or as i call it:

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!”

Maybe to give the game a more “old School” vibe, they had the brilliant idea to make Ability items like the “Belts of Giant Strength” again like in AD&D times.

splendid

That means: If you wear the "Belt of “Cloud Giant Strength” your Strength will be that of a Cloud Giant, regardless what the original Strength Ability score of your character has been. As opposed to the 3.X/Pathfinder “Belt of Strength +6”, which gives you a +6 enhancement bonus to your Strength score.

Maybe (hopefully) they will change that, till the final version of the 5th DMG will come out.

second post:

Financial Aspects:

D&D is a brand of a company and tries to make money. Will it survive? Will it retake the throne of bestselling RPG-line Paizo (and others) have taken from them?

The main opponent 5th Editon has, is their own baby the OGL of 3rd Edition.
Paizo/Pathfinder can put all their rules online.
“What was the range of that spell again?”
-> d20pfsrd.com/home
“Is that class feature of my Archetype a mind-influencing effect?”
-> d20pfsrd.com/home
etc.

This is, in my opinion a huge advantage. You don’t have to flip (and carry) a lot of books, or search through several of your PDFs to find a rule, you could simply look it up - online.

Even if the rules have their problems (and they do!), the advantage that a DM could simply send someone, who has no Pathfinder books whatsoever, a d20pfsrd.com/home Link and he could make a character with everthing available, is a massive advantage!

I remains to be seen, how the new feature of 5th D&D’s GL will look like, but it seems it will resemble the more restrictive GGL of 4th edition.
In 4th they do pot everything online, but were charging money for doing that.
Why should someone buy new D&D 5th books, if the d20pfsrd.com/home feature for Pathfinder games is available?

That is the main opponent, D&D 5th will have to face. :ugeek:

I like it how all of us have this “some nice ideas, but also flawed” view of the game as it is.

[quote=“Darthbinks”]Especially the “Champion” Archetype is pretty weak - maybe he looks good on paper, but one easily forgets that critical hits are far weaker in 5th than in previous editions. (they only double the die of the weapon, so d8+7 = 2d8+7)
It seems that the “Champion” was made for “beer & pretzels” players, who like to sit back and make full attacks, and nothing else.[/quote]
Honestly, if anything, the Champion seems like more of a choice for newcomers, from my current experience. While I’d like to argue they should have stayed with the last playtest’s crit system, I do think having a barebones, typical fighter variant is better than lacking one.

One may argue that while 3.x’s era’s fighter was able to do that, it was often an overlooked option. If one didn’t take the right feats to specialize in it, most options were a downright waste to even attempt in a combat round.
Now, you still can attempt such maneuvers usually, but as long as you’re not trained in it, you’re rolling with an disadvantage. Not sure if someone would call BS on that ruling, but as long as it makes sense in the actual game world, I don’t see why such an action would be considered illegal. Sure, it’s harder to pull off. But as opposed to 3.x, it doesn’t have different rules altogether associated with it.

This is probably just my tendency to say “yes, do that, it sounds cool”, but it seems like people have a bigger tendency to pull of stunts this time around. Mostly due to the ruleset not bogging the action down.

[quote=“Darthbinks”]The only Fighter specialization that is not as weak is the “Eldritch Knight” - who is a caster - again.
(btw. the same is true for the “Arcane Trickster” - Rogue Archetype, but to a lesser extend)[/quote]
Technically, every class this time around has casting abilities. Except the Barbarian. Who does feel a bit gimped.

As for the Pathfinder rivalry…
I honestly doubt they should even try to rival them. There’s 2 specific groups that switched over to PF - people who really really really liked the 3.x era. And people who just like the way they re-imagined most DnD elements. They do have some interesting products when it comes to lore and modules and what not.

While they can and will overlap, I don’t think WotC can or should do anything about it.

That being said, I can’t say 5e will be my first system of choice (wait in line, kiddo), but it does have its merits and I’m glad the community is acknowledging them. Same for the flaws. I’d always be up for a game of it, mostly because it plays much faster than the last 2 instances, though.
And while it’s more elegant to Gamemaster this time around, it still has a lot of things that tick me off about the whole experience. Sadly, most of them are DnD staples that won’t be changed anytime soon, so I won’t complain too much.

(Also, welcome back, Darth! Great seeing you again after a while. Hope to see you on a weekly game in the near future again!)

P.S.:
Props for your musical selection

just a brief comment on the “linear warriors, quadratic wizards” issue:

yes I agree, this is back. It was bissfully absent from 4e (which is why that is still my preferred edition of D&D, and will likely remain so), but it’s back now.

However, I wouldn’t say that the problem is back “in full force”, i.e. as bad as it was under 3.x (can’t really talk about PF though, sry)

So far, I saw two things regulating (sort of) the issue:

One of them is that spells don’t scale on their own anymore. E.g. Fireball doesn’t do “your level in d6” damage anymore, at least not automatically. You actually have to cast such spells on a higher spell slot to make it do more damage. Otherwise, a Fireball, even cast by an 18th level Wizard, will do exactly as much damage as one cast by a 5th level Wizard.

Secondly, and that interacts with the first observation, there are simply fewer high-level spell slots now than there were under 3.x, even for the highest-level spellcasters.

So, sure there are Save or Die spells, and other abominations back in, BUT at least they can be cast less often per day. Or not at all if you want to throw a few of those really awesome Fireballs around (because those will eat up the same spell slots if you empower them enough) :wink:

This may be just nitpicking, or putting nice make-up on a rotting corpse or which ever way you’d like to put it, AND either way I’d have to see it in actual play first in order to be able to properly judge the matter… but hey, seems like at least they “softened” the “linear/quadratic” issue a bit.

[quote=“Auburney”]
One of them is that spells don’t scale on their own anymore. E.g. Fireball doesn’t do “your level in d6” damage anymore, at least not automatically. You actually have to cast such spells on a higher spell slot to make it do more damage. Otherwise, a Fireball, even cast by an 18th level Wizard, will do exactly as much damage as one cast by a 5th level Wizard.[/quote]
The damage spells were never the problem …

One of the reasons 3rd was so broken was, because the playtesters played the following (old school way):

Wizards were damage dealers, Rogues find traps, Clerics heal and Fighters tank.

If you play it that way 3rd is balanced (kinda).
But when you look at the problem solving abilities a caster has
Like the Scry + Impoved Invisibity + Teleport + Save-or-Suck Spells (aganst the weak save of the target)
it gets nasty very fast

or “I polymorph the rogue into a seven-headed hydra so she can make 7 sneak attacks”

[quote=“Auburney”]Secondly, and that interacts with the first observation, there are simply fewer high-level spell slots now than there were under 3.x, even for the highest-level spellcasters.
So, sure there are Save or Die spells, and other abominations back in, BUT at least they can be cast less often per day. Or not at all if you want to throw a few of those really awesome Fireballs around (because those will eat up the same spell slots if you empower them enough) :wink:[/quote]
… or you can cast them as rituals and you do not have to spend a spell slot at all. This is possible especially for the flexible and thus powerful “out of combat” spells.

Jop a little bit :slight_smile:

In PF warriors can deal an incredible amount of damage / round. So they are not totally useless, like the Warrior-Classes in 3.X high level games.
Their problem solving & utility option are still by far worse than those of a Full-Caster*.

It gets a littel better if you are focusing on “Combat Maneuvers”, but at high levels, the “combat Manbuever defense” of Monsters is really high. So this options will weaken somewhat, except if your character is very optimised.**

  • btw Bards are Full-Casters in D&D 5th

** I still remember the time, when the Half-Orc Barbarian successfully tripped an Ancient Green Dragon.

[quote=“GJsoft”][quote=“Darthbinks”]Especially the “Champion” Archetype is pretty weak - maybe he looks good on paper, but one easily forgets that critical hits are far weaker in 5th than in previous editions. (they only double the die of the weapon, so d8+7 = 2d8+7)
It seems that the “Champion” was made for “beer & pretzels” players, who like to sit back and make full attacks, and nothing else.[/quote]
Honestly, if anything, the Champion seems like more of a choice for newcomers, from my current experience. While I’d like to argue they should have stayed with the last playtest’s crit system, I do think having a barebones, typical fighter variant is better than lacking one.[/quote]
True, but still …

One may argue that while 3.x’s era’s fighter was able to do that, it was often an overlooked option. If one didn’t take the right feats to specialize in it, most options were a downright waste to even attempt in a combat round.
Now, you still can attempt such maneuvers usually, but as long as you’re not trained in it, you’re rolling with an disadvantage. Not sure if someone would call BS on that ruling, but as long as it makes sense in the actual game world, I don’t see why such an action would be considered illegal. Sure, it’s harder to pull off. But as opposed to 3.x, it doesn’t have different rules altogether associated with it.[/quote]
Really? Well I have to admit, that my D&D/PF troupe were always kinda tactician fanatics, so maybe they were more into that stuff, than others.

[quote=“GJsoft”][quote=“Darthbinks”]The only Fighter specialization that is not as weak is the “Eldritch Knight” - who is a caster - again.
(btw. the same is true for the “Arcane Trickster” - Rogue Archetype, but to a lesser extend)[/quote]
Technically, every class this time around has casting abilities. Except the Barbarian. Who does feel a bit gimped.[/quote]
… and that is exactly the problem. A class should not feel gimped, just because it could not cast spells.
If you compare the “Arcane Trickster” with the “Assassin” (both are Rogue Archetypes), you can’t help feel sorry for the latter.

Still a Vanilla Barbarian deals more damage than a “Champion” Fighter. : P

[quote=“GJsoft”]P.S.:
Props for your musical selection[/quote]
Thanks :mrgreen: - too bad I can’t see the faces of those, who see the Hocus Pocus video the first time. :laughing:

I always liked the Vancian system. Not only were literary influences on the game a decidedly good thing, but it forced you to think about the way magic worked and what a spell actually is. It was weird, unique, and even a bit, well, magical. Certainly more magical than spell slots and the like. I rather liked that.

I have yet to be convinced that this is a bad thing.

Again, why do you think this is such a bad thing? When you polymorph into a duck, you also gain the duck’s strength rather than -10.

This may no longer be true to the extent it was for the previous edition, and might not even be a primary goal at all any more, if rumors are to be believed. If true, it might do wonders for the game. This certainly bears watching …

There’s also the group that just wants everything as self-contained as possible, once a perk of Pathfinder but no longer. Or the group that simply wants the highest chance of finding a pick-up game. It’ll be interesting to see how all this turns out, but I think I’d put money on D&D reclaiming the top spot.

Interesting discussion!

I have yet to be convinced that this is a bad thing.[/quote]
I have no problem with Full-Casters being by far more flexible than Warriors. But if the best thing a Warrior can do will be worse then the same ability of a Full-Caster, even if that is not even the main ability of the Full-Caster - things are broken.[ul]
[li]e.g. 3.X Monk are weaker than the Druid’s animal companion … and in addition a Druid can communicate with nature, change the weather, entangle and trap foes, scry on enemies, summon / charm hordes of animals as well as wildshape into more advantagious forms and craft magic items.[/li]
[li]e.g. a 3.X warrior style Cleric and a Fighter. The fighter could not hit the bosses easily - the Cleric could. And if they both hit, the cleric would deal more damage. In addition the Saves of the cleric are better and she can summon planar allies, communicate with her god, scry on enemies, turn invisible enemies visible, grant various resistances & immunities, and heal. Plus she could craft magic items![/li][/ul]

In 3rd Edition, casters can make concentration checks to avoid spell failure - a feature unheared of in previous editions. In addition they can cast defensivly to avoid AoO, or make a 5ft step to get out of melee-range as a free/swift action.
-> In previous editions, a high level Magic User would still bring his Fighter buddy to the high level quest, so that the Fighter can shield him from damage and thus spell failure. In 3.X a Full-Caster would do that only out of pity.
In addition the Saves of a Fighter were really good before 3.X/Pathfinder.

In D&D 5th:[ul]
[li]…they are no AoO from spellcasting unless the opponent has the “Mage Slayer” feat (and feats are optional rules in 5th).[/li]
[li]…you have a system, where a CR 1/2 opponent (e.g. a Satyr) has a lot of hit points (e.g. 31). Here “Save-Or-Suck” effects are king, as even a level 20 fighter, who is well equipped with magic gear and maximum damage feats will need 1 to 2 attacks to finish off a CR 1/2 enemy. As mentioned before the HP of monsters do escalate quickly - a Winter Wolf (CR3) has 75HP.[/li][/ul]

It’s not the (high level) Save-Or-Die spells …
I am talking about:
Blindness, Nausea, Grappling & Pinning, Paralysing, Sleep, Charm / Dominate, etc. …

Just as an example:
Look at the duration of the following level 2* Pathfinder** spell:
Blindness
(* available to PCs at Character-Level 3)
(** it was the same in 3.X)

If you play an Half-Orc, you will have a Strength bonus of +2 and not a fixed Strength score of 12. If Freddy the Ogre is polymorphed into a duck, he will become Freddy the duck.
… but maybe that is just being me seeing this being misused in 3.0 far too often (“I polymoph the rogue into a seven-headed hydra.”).

In addition:
A Fighter should now dump-stat Strength and wait till he can afford a “Belt of Giant Strength” ??

That being said, we have to wait till the final DMG will show up. Maybe they change it again.

This may no longer be true to the extent it was for the previous edition, and might not even be a primary goal at all any more, if rumors are to be believed. If true, it might do wonders for the game. This certainly bears watching …[/quote]
Really? Very Interesting O_O

jop :slight_smile: