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Aug. 17th, 2012 11:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretNew D&D playtest packet is out and I'm kind of ridiculously excited for the adventure I have planned. I have a great party coming- Alai, Jon, teal_dear, Nathaniel, and maybe a few others. I found a really neat little One Page Dungeon to use as the centerpiece for the adventure, and I sketched out a region around the dungeon (tentatively calling it the Mannheim Vale) that's interesting enough that I want to run more adventures in the area.
There are still things I'm dubious about with the system. I prefer a more robust skill system- Alai and I have argued for years about whether it's better to open up the skill system and allow freedom and imagination to guide what is possible to try, or to have a codified skill system with clearly assigned skill ranks. My general feeling is that there are many things you do so many times in a dungeon adventure game that to have on-the-fly adjudication for them is silly and inefficient, and to have arbitrary tables is pointless and unwieldy. The great advantage of 'modern' rpgs is their consistency of system. I think the 3E skill system is its best feature, though I've played enough 4E to have reached peace with its frustrations. In any case, 5E by the book specifically encodes a lot of on-the-fly adjudication in its skill system, so I have taken in my planning notes to referring to the equivalent 3.5 skill roll alongside the attribute roll so that I can better conceptualize what's going to happen. I'll see how I like it in game.
I also don't like that the playtest leaves it to the DMs to design the adventure this time (no pre-rolled adventure in this playtest packet), but didn't provide monster generation rules. I like that I get to test the system on my own adventures, but the sample of monsters in the bestiary is inadequate for my needs. (Maybe we're actually supposed to just keep running Caves of Chaos with the rules updates? I'm not sure) I'm going to be doing a mixture of reskinning and number-fudging to get the creatures I want, which is fine, but it's not what I ought to be doing in a playtest. And the way monsters are designed in this system actually seems nice, clear, and easy- once we get monster-generation rules I think I'm going to like building monsters in this system.
I'm glad they added opportunity attack rules to this revision, and I like the rule. I think I like turning the five foot step into a ten foot step but sacrificing an action for that. I think that lets you balance the opportunity attack rules without bogging combat down in minutiae of tactical movement the way constantly five-foot-stepping in melee does in 4E. On the other hand, tactical movement can lead to dynamic, exciting combat, so I'm looking to see if the fighter's new maneuver abilities make up for the loss of detailed tactical movement.
I think I'm also going to move toward one of the optional slow-heal rules. Especially in a one-shot, I don't want players doing the camp in the middle of the dungeon after every combat maneuver and I think slow-heal ought to make players more careful and conscious about managing hit points. And if not, they'll die. :)
But yeah, this should be fun. Will report back after the playtest on Monday.
teal_dear, Nathaniel, and maybe a few others. I found a really neat little One Page Dungeon to use as the centerpiece for the adventure, and I sketched out a region around the dungeon (tentatively calling it the Mannheim Vale) that's interesting enough that I want to run more adventures in the area.There are still things I'm dubious about with the system. I prefer a more robust skill system- Alai and I have argued for years about whether it's better to open up the skill system and allow freedom and imagination to guide what is possible to try, or to have a codified skill system with clearly assigned skill ranks. My general feeling is that there are many things you do so many times in a dungeon adventure game that to have on-the-fly adjudication for them is silly and inefficient, and to have arbitrary tables is pointless and unwieldy. The great advantage of 'modern' rpgs is their consistency of system. I think the 3E skill system is its best feature, though I've played enough 4E to have reached peace with its frustrations. In any case, 5E by the book specifically encodes a lot of on-the-fly adjudication in its skill system, so I have taken in my planning notes to referring to the equivalent 3.5 skill roll alongside the attribute roll so that I can better conceptualize what's going to happen. I'll see how I like it in game.
I also don't like that the playtest leaves it to the DMs to design the adventure this time (no pre-rolled adventure in this playtest packet), but didn't provide monster generation rules. I like that I get to test the system on my own adventures, but the sample of monsters in the bestiary is inadequate for my needs. (Maybe we're actually supposed to just keep running Caves of Chaos with the rules updates? I'm not sure) I'm going to be doing a mixture of reskinning and number-fudging to get the creatures I want, which is fine, but it's not what I ought to be doing in a playtest. And the way monsters are designed in this system actually seems nice, clear, and easy- once we get monster-generation rules I think I'm going to like building monsters in this system.
I'm glad they added opportunity attack rules to this revision, and I like the rule. I think I like turning the five foot step into a ten foot step but sacrificing an action for that. I think that lets you balance the opportunity attack rules without bogging combat down in minutiae of tactical movement the way constantly five-foot-stepping in melee does in 4E. On the other hand, tactical movement can lead to dynamic, exciting combat, so I'm looking to see if the fighter's new maneuver abilities make up for the loss of detailed tactical movement.
I think I'm also going to move toward one of the optional slow-heal rules. Especially in a one-shot, I don't want players doing the camp in the middle of the dungeon after every combat maneuver and I think slow-heal ought to make players more careful and conscious about managing hit points. And if not, they'll die. :)
But yeah, this should be fun. Will report back after the playtest on Monday.