Dungeons & Dragons Next

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VLSmooth
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Dungeons & Dragons Next

Post by VLSmooth »

Getting back to the story: Hands-on with Dungeons & Dragons Next
WotC's Mike Mearls tries to erase memories of D&D 4e, and fans can help.
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/09/g ... gons-next/

Free playtesting sign-up:
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/dndnext.aspx

I actually saw this when I was at GenCon 2012. Unfortunately I didn't have time to try it out and get a free die (d8/d10/d12/d20, forgot which); although I did get a free d4 for taking a picture with a huge statue of Lolth and a d6 for assembling a cutesy cardboard mini-Lolth.

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons Next

Post by Jonathan »

My regular group has already tried the earlier, non Aug 13 beta. The ruleset for Aug 13 looks substantially improved, but still I think I will continue to play 4e after the release of Next.

If you want to get technical, here's the difference between 4e and Next. In 4e, a great deal of the player resources are per-encounter: one second wind, two leader minor action heals, half your powers with English on them, and so on. The dailies and surges provide a second layer of per-day resources, but these are often second order effect in my eight months of playing this game. I have yet to see a time when a surge is needed but unavailable, for example. Maybe that's just my DM. At any rate, the reliance on per-encounter powers requires that encounters have to have a minimum bar of difficulty, or otherwise they simply aren't content. Easy encounters can be defeated with just encounter powers. Therefore, nobody designs encounters that are that easy. In practice, my 4e game runs a lot closer to PC unconsciousness or death every encounter than any other D&D experience I have had. Almost every encounter turns out to be a good fight.

In Next, WOTC has made clear in both communication and ruleset that they prefer a game balanced around resources per day, not per encounter. This allows for crescendos of encounter difficulty, and also quiet periods. Like the Director in L4D, I suppose. In practice, you wind up mowing down a lot of fairly simple to defeat monsters. This is supposed to be ok since the mechanics are much simpler to run, so combat takes less time. For my group, it was just less fun. I prefer the combat where there's an element of danger in every encounter.

That said, I am sad that 4e will be abandoned to the wolves and not refined further. I wonder if there won't be a Pathfinder-like pickup of the game after WOTC ditches it. The main problem my group has is the steep power curve in defense/to-hit of monsters with levels. It's positively MMORPGish. We try various houserules to deal with this, but a game balanced differently would find us very appreciative.

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons Next

Post by Jonathan »

Also, I don't know the author's deal, but we generally start and conclude a 4e encounter within an hour.

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons Next

Post by Jonathan »

http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx ... l/20120604

I agree with this author's reasons for wanting bounded accuracy, but particularly the first two. In 4e, it is just really difficult to make a character who is very accurate, for instance. There are some powers which target non-AC defense but still use the proficiency bonus. Whenever you take a feat, or pick up an item, you find the rising defenses of monsters turn it into a strictly temporary gain. Conversely, if you try to ignore to-hit, you will miss all the damn time after a few levels. There is relatively less differentiation between characters.

In skill checks, the span between a trained character and an untrained, unsuitable character is usually about 10. Low dex characters need never try to hide, as they will always fail. That sucks, because sometimes you just want to keep the dwarf behind a try until the bad guys pass, but you can't even do that.

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons Next

Post by Jonathan »

Another thing that bugs me about Next is the removal of martial/primal powers. To some extent the fighter combat superiority is supposed to compensate for this, but that is no consolation for the rogue. Instead, they tell you to use checks. The problem with this is the only mechanism the DM had to regulate the players is DC. A complicated, useful trick like cutting someone's forehead do the blood blinds them for a round? It has a high DC because it is very effective, and so will rarely work. In 4e, this is a rogue daily power which targets enemies in a close blast 3. There is just no way to give characters who had powers taken from them the same utility they had in 4e in a game of Next.

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons Next

Post by George »

Jonathan wrote:Also, I don't know the author's deal, but we generally start and conclude a 4e encounter within an hour.
My 4e experience was exactly like the author's. We were lucky to finish two encounters in a night. The powers felt homogenized rather than consistent. And nothing was named in a way that let you tell at a glance what it did. I'm all for yelling "Dragon Slave!" before you cast a spell to add flavor, but the spell's name should be "fireball" or maybe "explosion, really big".

I never played a 3e/3.5 campaign long enough or with players cutthroat enough to suffer from the problems the 4e zealots complain about. So, in my mind 4e was mostly fixing something that wasn't broken. I fully expect them to break things worse in 5e. They're still too focused on trying to sell add-ons rather than making the core more powerful.

I consider the Hero System to be the ideal. The game rules are purely mechanical; you layer on whatever flavor you want. Too bad the system was hideous unbalanced.
I feel like I just beat a kitten to death... with a bag of puppies.

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons Next

Post by Jonathan »

What tier was your campaign? I have only played heroic tier characters.

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons Next

Post by George »

Bottom of heroic tier. I'm not sure we even made it to level 4.

Everyone was having fun, but many of them hadn't played 3e, and some had never played any tabletop RPG. My prep time as DM was through the roof, because of/in spite of the streamlining they did to the monster manual and encounter planning.
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Re: Dungeons & Dragons Next

Post by Dave »

Are there girls at these events now?
It takes 43 muscles to frown and 17 to smile, but it doesn't take any to just sit there with a dumb look on your face.

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons Next

Post by George »

My previous group had two women regularly, and a third once. They were all wives of other players, so I'm not sure if you'd count them. The group before that had two, both occasional. One was (eventually) married to the DM, but the other was just a friend.
I feel like I just beat a kitten to death... with a bag of puppies.

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons Next

Post by quantus »

Anyone ever put a weapons merchant like this in their campaign?
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Re: Dungeons & Dragons Next

Post by Jonathan »

My current group has one wife as well.

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons Next

Post by Jonathan »

Last playtest update gives rogues maneuvers just like fighters, adds to-hit level progression back in, and adds opportunity attacks back in. I am not going to playtest it, but it smells pretty 4e-y to me. The remaining differences from 4e:
+Max PC stat is 20/max stat mod is +5 (not really an issue through level 10, but they seem pretty firm about this cap)
*HP/healing (between 2e and 4e)
*Only Daily and at-will spells (negated somewhat with Signature Spells which are 1 daily you can cast every encounter)
+Skills reworked. Training less mandatory to be successful, but since level isn't part of the equation your base stats really figure in. I definitely get the sense they want to move away from the optimal standard stat arrays like 4e promotes.

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons Next

Post by Jonathan »

Jonathan wrote:My current group has one wife as well.
And she just quit. It will be interesting to see whether her husband sticks around and continues to host.

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons Next

Post by Jonathan »

Better known as: Basic Dungeons & Dragons?

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons Next

Post by Jonathan »

PHB is out.
http://www.critical-hits.com/blog/2014/ ... h-edition/
No DMG until November.

Right now my group has shown zero inclination to ditch Dungeon World as our primary tabletop system. I think the main reasons are:
-Player agency is well-supported by the rules
-The non-binary move structure of DW keeps the table lively

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons Next

Post by Alan »

Anyone playing 5e?

I've been playing organized play for the past few months, so it's just the official modules. Tyranny of Dragons is wrapping up and we'll be moving onto Elemental Evil.

I hadn't played since college so I don't really know anything about 4e, but 5e seems like a streamlined (and slimmed-down) version of what we used to play.

Somewhat related is Sword Coast Legends, which supposedly focuses on having the DM experience be one of the core features:

http://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/swo ... ing-right/

Seems interesting but I'm skeptical about how well it will actually work.
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