I think it would be good for a new dms if they explicitly state in the rules that the DM does not have to call for a role of there is 0% chance of success or failure. I would also add an exception for the nat 1 being an automatic fail if the player is proficient in the skill being tested.
Agreed about it makes sense to be explicit saying you don't have to roll if the player cannot fail or cannot succeed. Regarding the crits, this was a rule I floated to my table this past Sunday and everyone agreed to it fully. If you are proficient, nat20s are automatic success but nat1s don't cause a crit fail. Conversely, if you are not proficient, nat20s do not automatically cause success, but a nat1 is a crit fail. (Combat continues operating exactly as it does in the past.) What do you think?
@@chrism6315 Fact is, in pre-written adventure modules at least, Skill Checks have always been a binary outcome. You either roll high enough to succeed, or you don't and as a result, fail. It is only rarely where it is written that there is a sliding scale of knowledge based on the value of a roll (if you roll 10 on history you know the general details compared to rolling a 15 where you know a lot more). Effectively, rolling a 12 on a persuasion roll is no different to rolling a 14 when the DC is 15.
On Backgrounds: the "customization option" is not an option, it is the default choice. The provided backgrounds are merely examples of how one might construct a background and could be used as is if a player wants to
This is 100% the design intent, but myself and several others have raised concerns regarding actual human psychology. When presented with a choice, in which A is 'make your own' and B is "Pick from this list of options' people will overwhelmingly choose one of the options from the list. The backgrounds update is a wonderful design, but the formatting in how WotC presents it needs to be clearer.
Here’s the problem with auto-fails on a skill check when rolling a nat 1: I’m a commercial pilot. Landing a large aircraft takes a lot of skill, and under certain circumstances, it can be very difficult. But I’m expected to land it every time. If I had a 1-in-20 chance to botch every landing, regardless of my level of skill or experience, my career as a professional aviator would be over in a week. You should be able to get so skilled at something that you expect to succeed 100% of the time under normal circumstances.
But that is the thing, "under normal circumstance." You can be the best pilot in the world and you roll a 1 and can still be worked as an auto failed. There can be plenty of way to interpret this failure from the DM. The steering wheel can break off, sudden engine failure or the DM can even just say: DM - "Based on your extensive knowledge while trying to control this plane, you feel that something is off about the plane and you are having trouble controlling it how it normally. You feel that there is something seriously wrong with the plane and as you try to gain further control of the plane you feel your grasp on the control continue to slip" If the situation was truly a normal situation, the DM can just bypass the skill check and just make you auto succeed. Either way works. It is 100% on the DM on how he want to work it.
But if you can't fail even on a 1, why roll the check at all? Just roleplay being extra careful and concentrated and save the skill checks for crash landing in the Hudson while shooting back at terrorists trying to take over the plane
With the 3 different magic sources, I want to see more unique spells and less crossover. Arcane, Primal, and Divine need to feel different from each other.
It comes from 4th edition, where they had five sources of "powers", the three magic powers, along with the Martial and Psionic power types. Expect those other two to arrive soon.
I suspect they will make level specific class spells available as characters get stronger. This way the three sources are shared pools, but each class auto learns new magic that is on theme for the class. With the coding on d&d beyond for always prepared spells, it would be pretty easy to implement...
As someone who learned D&D kinda of recently playing a 3.5 table I have to tell you that it can go sour so fast... It probably won't, but be careful with your wishes.
At least guidelines for basic items. Weapons and armor with straight bonuses and no other abilities, wands that just cast a spell X times per day, common items. The weird unique stuff can have group-specific formulae.
One thing relevant to the “monsters can’t crit” issue that was mentioned in the Crawford interview is that the justification to remove monster crits was because monsters have a recharge mechanic already where the big hits are under the control of the DM rather than chance. So there might be a major monster design overhaul that balances out the inability to crit, just we haven’t seen it. Cautious optimism perhaps? Unrelated, but something that caught my eye about the glossary is the Slowed status. It seems weird that it would get its own definition of it only mattered to grappling, and I can’t help but wonder (hope?) if we’re going to see a change to the Monk’s Stunning Strike.
But honestly, do you believe it to be true, that at least 50% of the monsters will actually get that complete overhaul and recharge mechanics? Because I am fairly sure, that a couple of more iconic monsters, like Illithid, Beholders, Liches, Dragons and maybe Vampires will get something, but most of the 'fodder' monsters will get nothing. Which is unfortunate - I for one love the idea of low-level adevntures, where goblins and kobolds do pose an actual threat, even without much preparation!
@@FraternityOfShadows Unique recharge abilities? Unlikely, I’ll admit it. GENERIC recharge abilities? That’s a greater possibility. Crusher/Piercer/Slasher already gave us something like it. A handful of options that you could just bolt onto any random monster wouldn’t be too difficult.
@@joshuaturner8853 That's the thing: Wizards of the Coast put more, and more responsibility and workload on the DM to *figure it out*; *fix this and that*, while giving us less and less rules to rely on, and giving players more and more wacky options, that create more difficulties when creating an encounter. Even a traditionally dangerous creature, that required preparation to face head-on - a werewolf i- s essentially useless now, because it has no ranged attack, and half of the characters have flight from the get-go, and there's usually a cantrip or even a spell that everyone gets for free [BTW. cantrips should scale with caster-level (like spell slots do) and not character level, and I'm going to die on this hill]. The CR system had it's issues from the start, and it is more and more broken with every book's release. D&D is just becoming more and more anti-DM. I love the forgotten realsms, and i'm really, really hanging on there, but I'll just have to switch to Pathfinder 2ed at this rate.
I think they should have an index in the back that flags Racial Features as "Dominant" and "Recessive", so your half-orc can be inspiring, lift heavy loads and get the dash, OR get the extra starting feat and the free Death Ward. I feel like this would be a quick and easy way of making the options of mixed race meaty but not a headache. We don't want a Gurps 5th edition here.
I like this approach a lot. It could be super simple too. Have features tagged as major/minor. If you are a half-whatever pic the major traits from one and the minor from another. This way no one could stack the stronger major traits for balance. But you would actually feel unique and not just a reskin.
This is definitely a good idea. The problem I saw with the half races is that people will just cherry pick the best options of both leaving the pure races feeling underpowered. It would almost force everyone to be a half-race to be optimal. This solution would prevent people from doing that while also giving people the choices. Great solution to the problem lol
@@Bemused247 a more complex idea i had, which i actually left in the survey, was a sort of trait point system where every trait that a race has would have a score out of 10, the more powerful the trait, the higher the cost, and half-races could use a budget of trait points to buy features from their parents, with a budget of maybe 10, or their parents total divided by 2 or some-such. i haven't fleshed it out yet, but i like it
@@CarlosDiaz-je1bg Players wouldn’t be able to do that based on the way the rules are written. You select physical features from both, but your traits all come from one race. Playing a mixed race is purely cosmetic
I like the idea of inverting that inspiration rule so that you get inspiration from failing with a natural 1 instead of succeeding with a natural 20. Then it would sort of balance out the luck at the table instead of making the lucky ones even luckier. Plus, it makes more logical sense to me since the ones who fail would be motivated by that failure to do better.
It takes a special person to be motivated by failure; most aren't. That being said, in creating a character, you are trying to make an exceptional person, so maybe that fits. Stil, as a general rule, people are MUCH more motivated by success than failure.
i feel like this would work best as an innate ability for certain races, like hafling luck. it would make sense for some races (or even backgrounds) to be motivated by failure, and to be able to gain inspiration from a nat 1
Potentially exploitable since you can "farm" inspiration by trying to ask your DM to make a bunch of non-impactful ability checks. Would be even more effective in a video game adaptation.
PF2e uses the phrase ABC’s in regards to character creation as they ditched the term race for Ancestry :) It’s a great change, telling people to remember their ABC’s helps a lot of new 2e players in character creation ^^
would love for them to walk away from using race as a game term entirely. There is also a great supplement on DMs Guild going in a same direction. Ancestry sounds cool, too.
@@florianbocher7596 I almost stopped watching when they spouted out "You could call these the ABC's of Character Creation... feel free to use that WotC" as if they came up with it. Yes WotC, please do... so that Paizo can sue the $#it out of you for stealing a phrase that they coined with the release of Pathfinder Second Edition. In 2009. I get it that most of these RUclipsrs see bank off of association with D&D 5E. But pretending that other companies don't exist AND stealing their IP? Big fail.
Eldritch Blast is not part of the spell lists, making it feel like it will be an innate ability of warlocks and thus might have the ability to crit. This could also fix the situation where 2 levels of warlock gets you the best cantrip scaling in the game. The ability to crit could also be included in things like sneak attack.
The way it's currently worded only unarmed strikes and weapon attacks can crit, which wouldn't include magical effects/abilities like a theoretical 5.5e warlock's eldritch blast.
@@Mike_L. But the phrasing of Eldritch Blast and Sneak Attack might in the new reprinting have "this attack can crit" or some other similar wording. We simply don't know yet.
That makes a lot of sense to me, class/race abilities being abilities and not a traditional SPELL, meaning it can crit does solve this issue and is what I think they're actually attempting here.
@@SheenaMalfoy right, none of this is final; things likely will change. I'm just speculating. But the way critting specifically applies only to martial attacks, I doubt their intent (at time of publishing the UA at least) is to include *any* magical abilities in that. EB would need wording along the lines of "this attack is considered a weapon attack for the purposes of critical hits" or something to not outright conflict with those rules, which is very odd and seems unlikely to me. Not sure how sneak attack will be treated though. I'm not a fan of magic attacks not being able to crit to be clear.
@@Mike_L. The reason Eldritch Blast is being called out specifically is because it has been left out of all 3 spell lists, meaning it will most likely be restricted to the Warlock only and is therefore not "abusable" by other casters taking a feat. As such, it might receive special treatment as it appears to be a class feature now, rather than a "normal" spell.
The biggest thing I would like to see with Ancestry/Race is essentially tiers of traits. So if all races get a Tier 1, 2, 3 traits you can mix and match them really easily for multiracial characters
@@brianschneider1961 The way I would think of this would be something like this: Human: Tier 1: Resourceful Tier 2: Skillful Tier 3: Versatile Dwarf: Tier 1: Darkvision + Dwarven Resillience Tier 2: Forge Wise Tier 3: Dwarven Toughness + Stronecunning Orc: Tier 1: Darkvision + Powerful Build Tier 2: Relentless Endurance Tier 3: Adrenaline Rush Something like that not sure exactly. So if you wanted to be a Human-Orc you could essentially pick 2+1. So you could have: T1: Darkvision+Powerful Build T2: Relentless Endurance T3: Versatile So you would 'lose' an inspiration on long rest automatically as a trade off for darkvision+carry capacity/weight movement. You lose a skill but you gain relentless endurance. Then you gain the feat and lose adrenaline rush.
Honestly, that's a really good idea. I might implement that into my next campaign. I'm considering giving some of the new material a cautious playtest in a future home game.
I mean, it sounds good as a "one and done" concept, but given that D&D always involves more material, it just means they have an ever-growing list of traits the need to juggle to avoid broken combinations. Honestly, I think the current approach is the most effective overall, but sadly it does kill off the defining feature of half elves.
On the crit success/fail point I think instead of it being a crit success is an auto-success and a crit fail is an auto-fail it can be more of a “rolling a 20 will make failures less punishing, and rolling a 1 will make successes less rewarding”. If the DC is 13 for a long jump and your rogue rolls a 1 with a +14, instead of it being “well I literally can’t fail this”, it’s now “I made it across the gap but something else is going to happen”. You can follow up by saying the rogue cleared the gap, but barely and they’re hanging on to the ledge and now have to make a strength check. On the other side, you can have a very un-dexterous character roll a 20 on the same check but they actually have a -8. They fail the check, but don’t instantly just fall to their death, they get a chance to pull themselves up too Edit: I’m also super down for calling it 5.1 and every few years when we get a new update, it becomes 5.2, 5.3, etc until it really feels like we need a 6. I think 5e is good enough to be a living edition, and 6 is probably not necessary
There are some major issues that I have with the presented play test material 1) critical hits for weapon or unarmed strikes only seems like a massive blow to “blaster” style spell casters 2) No monster critical hits also is another issue. This makes cannon fodder just that cannon fodder that will pose no threat what so ever to mid level PCs (5th or 6th level) 3) the change to grappling to a set DC from the opposed str (athletics)checks is a major nerf to that play-style / tactic 4) the 1 auto fail 20 auto success is also another issue (adding in gaining inspiration on 20 as well) makes for more rolls when one wouldn’t be necessary.
on point 2, if they just give every monster atleast 1 special attack, DM can deterministically use it when they want, they want DM to have more control over the story. so with a good DM it will be even better. monster crits are basically special attack now
I'd argue the change in grappling rules is a sidegrade or slight upgrade, as while theres now no reason to invest in Athletics, it being looped in with unarmed strikes just made monks viable for consistent cc, and now also makes a dex grappler possible. Contested checks was cool, and you could effectively lock down an enemy, I like that now I can be a walking faerie fire in a group of enemies simply by investing in my primary attack stat. Honestly all I want now is ability/ spell support on unarmed strikes, and I'll be in heaven.
@@Cosmic_K13 while I can see your point I would like to present one of my favorite characters: he was a barbarian human and at level one he had advantage (when raging) on his str check to grapple you with a +7 to his roll at level one (thanks to his skill expertise with his feat selection) With the new system his DC is a 13. Against the same class they have a +5 to their save requiring a roll of 8 or higher to escape. That is a pretty significant decrease in scale of effectiveness mathematically.
@@SoulShadow69 again while I can see that “if” they add those special attacks it would be an equalizer I feel it takes from the DMs discretion. Any DM that would allow a bugbear to crit a second level PC to death (outright not death saves) shouldn’t be behind the screen. However removing a threat makes the PCs more likely to cake walk through situations. Not to mention there are several class features that are designed around nullifying critical hits. To me it seems like they created more work for themselves instead of sticking to their stated mission objective of retaining “backward” compatibility.
I absolutely love what they did with the Orc. I always liked Orcs but felt like they were largely overshadowed by half-orc abilities. Now they get the best of both worlds.
@@momomomocensoredbyyoutube9085 not really, because they retain distinct features despite outsourcing the ASIs to backgrounds. Also feats being more easily and widely available is definitely a win for me.
So far my group has been trying the new rules, and this is what we found: - We found the inspiration on crits actually rather nice, and inspiration farming has been a thing. - Our bard/warlock with eldritch blast kept getting nat 20's, and is dishing out inspiration to others as free support tokens. We only have one question: since it's from a bard, is it bardic inspiration? - Our main tank, a grappler, is absolutely LOATHING the grappling changes. He put expertise in athletics with a feat and now it means nothing in regards to what he was aiming to do. We are currently thinking of ways to circumvent this issue, our first attempt is going to be to change the Grappler feat to give +1 STR ASI and double proficiency on the save DC. Edit: We just ran into another issue with grappling. Since it is now an "unarmed strike", we actually have to beat AC for it to connect. We didn't have this problem for a while, most of the enemies had low-mid AC. However when our grappler wanted to pull our paladin out of a web via a grapple, we didn't know if it could be done automatically or if it had to be considered an unarmed strike. We decided to go RAW, and our grappler couldn't do it with the paladin's really high AC. How the heck does that make sense? - We are split on only weapons and unarmed strikes doing critical damage. Our current understanding is that its likely to help martial characters not be left behind in the late game when casters become bonkers. This has definitely allowed our monk to catch up in damage, which means this change wasn't without some serious thought and helps with some balancing issues. Try to keep that in mind. - One of our players had a half aasimar half centaur character, which only kept the centaur traits. This was sadly lowkey mocked by groups and sometimes took some convincing to allow into games at all. Now, its official, and the player had the biggest grin showing that to the test group. - We tested the recharge on crit for monsters with our BBEG which had a charging force damage legendary action. It seemed underwhelming at first until a crit allow the BBEG to gain a charge of it's legendary actions and reactions, which it used to suddenly curb-stomp our barbarian with force damage. The crit was on a weaker attack with physical damage on said barbarian, so the old crit would not have dealt near as much damage as allowing the force damage legendary action to go off. Our thoughts on the creature crits instantly changed from "meh doesn't look good" to "oooooh NOW we understand!"
@@Hazel-xl8in It was something talked about in the interviews about One DnD. The actual rules aren't in the PDF, not that we've found. We just tried to create the rule as best as we could because the "creatures can't crit" rule just didn't sit right with anyone. We wanted to see exactly how this change would affect gameplay before deciding it was bad. So far, we found it to be rather effective and fun, especially with any creature that had multiple abilities. In our case it was the BBEG with a charge attack legendary action that dealt heavy force damage.
I have a question? Why is it said that martials only critting is a buff to martials. Isn't it a nerf for certain casters who are already using their great spells on non crits like wall of force or meteor storm?
The name is my biggest pet peeve. Like when the Xbox One came out or whenever a franchise decides to reboot and uses the same title for their movie that they used 15 years ago.
Great video as always, gents. Your analyses dont miss; very insightful examinations of the material we’ve been given. Also wanted to take a moment to suggest a peek at the books “An Orc and an Elf Had a Little Baby: Parentage and Upbringing in D&D” (one and two) in reference to the issues with the mechanics of mixed race/ancestry. I was put on by GinnyDi, who did an entire video on the mechanics if you need to be sold on it. Anyway, thanks for your presence and positive influence in the community, Monty and Kelly. Keep up the great work!
What I find somewhat interesting is right there on the first page, first sentence under "Determining your Origin": "After choosing your character’s Class, it’s time to consider the character’s origin." This seems to imply that in One D&D we'll be choosing our Class first, which is not the order presented in PHB 2014.
and that's why it's actually difficult to playtest these new rules. if we want to make a new character under the playtest rules, we should be choosing our class first!
@@alexzephyris1455 hi alex. because D&D is a game, and games need to have certain rules and parameters for there to be enjoyment for everyone. i could playtest these character origins rules to build characters to play a one-shot with my groups, but at the moment i only have part of the tools we would need to build characters
But to some degree it makes a lot of sense at least for me. The most important think about my hero is what they do and the rest explains and adds to their depth. D&D classes are the defining atribute of each heroic story. 🙂
After reading through the UA for One D&D Character Origins, I've come to notice one thing that stand out over all the other little things that are changing. While One D&D is technically backwards compatible on a mechanics level (from what I can tell so far from Character Origins UA), there is power creep too, making it clear that the One D&D (or whatever they are going to call it) material is the strictly better options. To explain what I mean, I'm going to use something that has already happened in another Wizards of the Coast product - Magic: the Gathering. If you look at top decks from recent tournaments in the Modern format, you will see that a large number of the played cards are from 2 sets: Modern Horizons, and Modern Horizons 2. Both these sets where pushed past the 'newer' formats straight into Modern (and older formats), so their power level was higher. So high that if you want to be competitive, you are heavily incentivised to buy MH cards. Very few of the more recent sets cards are even in those decks, if any at all. I see One D&D doing the same for D&D. Using the Human as an example. In 5E, ignoring the ability boosts, because they are now in the background, the Variant human (closest equivalent One D&D Human) gets 2 features: a skill proficiency and a feat, while the One D&D Human gets 3 features: a skill proficiency, a feat, and the free Inspiration ability. That makes the One D&D option is strictly better than the 5E version, incentivising you to use it instead. And there is a reason for this power creep, just like the power creep in the MTG example above. The strictly better options will incentivise people to purchase the new books, while Wizards gets to keep up with the narrative that it is backwards compatible. IMO, forcing One D&D to be backwards compatible is actually hindering the design space for the game's developers. They have to stay within the core rules of 5E, meaning there's less freedom to experiment on newer ideas. On a side note, I personally don't like the "if you don't like it, don't use it" and "just house rule it" arguments in response to anything Wizards releases for D&D. We shouldn't need to "fix" a game we pay money for. And these responses are allowing D&D to print whatever they want rather than being held accountable for what they are doing. I really hope this One D&D playtest goes well and that we get a complete, less buggy system out of it at the end. One where we don’t need to “fix” it ourselves, or at least not have “fix” it to the point that we aren’t even playing the released product we payed money for.
"On a side note, I personally don't like the "if you don't like it, don't use it" and "just house rule it" arguments in response to anything Wizards releases for D&D" As another D&D youtuber I watched earlier said that's the "Rule Zero Fallacy." Just because you can house rule or change anything doesn't excuse rules from being bad or poorly balanced.
You are comparing two very different games and experiences. MTG has a competitive nature and tournaments, RPG is about role playing with your friends, cooperating with each other.
"One D&D" isn't even all that backwards compatible from purely mechanical standpoint. For example, if monsters can't crit, a fairly core ability of Cleric of the Grave is now absolutely useless. And the "don't like don't use" crowd drives me up a wall. The time for criticism is right now, when things are very much in progress and can be changed. The closer we are to launch, the more locked in things get. Like you can disagree, I welcome it, but bring a better argument to the table.
the DMG is also getting revamped for 2024, so I'm sure there will be a note telling DMs not to ask for rolls unless there is a legit way to both succeed or fail. I like Monty's suggestion of restricting SOME checks by proficiency. I doubt wotc would go for it, but it's a mechanically and narratively sound way of discerning who should be able to roll for those high DC checks.
Restricting by proficiency is something I already do to a certain extent, regardless of the DC. It just depends on the skill and the situation. Anyone could _attempt_ to climb a wall with Athletics for example, but if I may only allow characters proficient in History to roll to see if they know some obscure historical fact or not. I know, realistically, anyone _might_ happen to know this fact, but it feels better to reward a player for "investing" in History proficiency, and allowing anyone to roll all the time diminishes that investment if the 3 Intelligence barbarian without proficiency gets a lucky 20.
The house rule I played with back in 3.5E was that a natural 1 was a -10 to the overall role, and a natural 20 was a +10 to an overall role, and a chart of typical levels of challenge for DCs from 5 to 40 was generally known to both the players and the DM and this felt very fair. I think in the stat bounded 5E a similar thing could be accomplished with 1s being -5 and 20s being +5 and a similar but scaled chart of DCs
The answer to the d20 test is simple: impossible tasks can’t be d20 tests. Done, the DM should always have the ability to say “no” to an outlandish request (unless it’s really cool for the table).
The problem is, what is and isnt impossible vary from character to character. Whether it is possible or not to seduce the barmaid will depend on the sexuality of the npc and the sex of the character attempting it. If the entire party attempts to jump a ravine, and 4 of the 5 have strength scores of 14+ but the fifth person has a strength of 8, does the DM say "okay, everyone except player 5 roll. Player 5 just fails automatically"? Because I feel like singling out specific players is wrong. And, that's assuming the DM knows the party's stats, which they may not. DMs arent expected to memorize those things.
@@Sirxeko if the difference is small enough that only one person can’t make it, then a nat 20 (imo) should still succeed (maybe a gust of wind gave them that extra push or something). And if they fail then the other character should get a reaction to catch his hand (because putting a check like that without other means to cross seems a bit sadistic to me). This would be one of the better uses for the crit success rule.
It's actually in the rules for d20 test already. "A d20 test only occurs when the DC is between 5 and 30." Granted it's possible for some characters to get over a 30, but that's the outlier that they can allow to fall outside the "normal" rules.
@@Sirxeko then that's just the party not being able to think of a solution, you as the dm are the eyes ears and reason of the CHARACTERS. it's your job to make the PLAYERS perfectly clear of the situation they're in within reason of their CHARACTERS understanding so if a weak CHARACTER in this case should know they can't make that jump. and an example solution would be the party simply needs to attach a rope to them before they jump and as a party help that other CHARACTER. as one possible solution. making it a group check instead of a single member.
It's a lot better to just have the option to let them roll and then say they fail than outright saying no. No reason to cut down on the funny interactions with a DM telling them how spectacularly they failed the roll.
The ribbon features for backgrounds were what made them "sit" in the world. Removing them and turning them into a purely mechanical thing removes some of the flavour. Unless they also redo the skills to ensure there is some balance it will also result in a lot less variety in skills as people look for any opportunity to take skills like Perception and Athletics while calling their background Librarian. There are some really good things in the suggested rules, but the tendency to allow all races to do all things also removes some flavour - I can appreciate the difference between High and Wood Elf is cultural for things like Int vs Wis, but there are also biomechanical differences which would account for their Dex bonus vs, say, a Dwarf. I wish they had assigned one fixed stat bonus to lineages - one that was determined by actual concrete biomechanics. And one that was flexible to reflect culture. That sort of thing would also allow easy racial customisation - select a base race (Elf), get some features with that, then take a choice of others to reflect upbringing. For half races you could pick one base template and then take the other features from the second.
I certainly agree that entirely replacing background abilities with feats actually cuts down on unique plays from people actually using them. I'm currently playing a character that couldn't exist without the unique background ability.
@@jaceks88 congratulations on both missing the point and proving it in one go. Background skills are in theory going to be related to the background. Sure a librarian can have situational awareness and athleticism but they're likely to be the class skills not the background ones.
To expand a bit - the complete freedom to choose 2 skills, stat mods, language, tool and feat without limitation means it's not actually a background. It's just making some random choices. It's not too different in theme from doing away with races or classes and just letting people pick abilities freely. Great for power play, as long as the game plays ad expected, but it is likely to remove a lot of flavour. Limitations in the sense of certain things removing the options for.others are a big part of character development and roleplay.
My issue with natural 1s and 20s are each are a 5% chance. Being a rogue that fails to hide an easy check where the shiney paladin makes it is silly to me
And I'm personally the opposite. I think that it shows that chance of an accident happening and 5% is just real world mechanics of it. It really just comes down to the DM/Players being being able to come up with an in world reason for it. That's a part of storytelling. Like the example you come up with, maybe the rogue got caught up in some dust and started having a sneezing fit. That's draws in whoever they're trying to hide from and is what causes them from being able to see the Paladin. If it so unreasonable that you don't think you can come up with an in game reason for the success/failure, don't do the d20 test.
Yep. This is just ony good example of many. I hope this doesn't survive playtesting, but there's a good chance it does. I'll ignore it when I DM, but it will suck when I play at other tables.
@@tomasxfranco yea we’ll this isn’t the real world. It’s a game. You’re gonna fail sometimes or there would be no dramatic moments. It’s easy to tell who’s commenting as a player and who’s commenting as a dm on this video lol
Regarding the skill checks, I usually have my players narrate, before I ask them for a roll, how they would achieve a certain task they are attempting. This offloads the responsibility to come up with a ridiculous explanation of how your character jumped the 60’ gap. Also, if they can’t come up with a plausible way their character could do something… they are not bummed when I don’t let them roll. This on its own could solve the skill check problem.
It should say clearly and in boldface in the rules that a DM should let the player know what a nat20 roll will do before they roll. This will solve a lot of problems. “You can try to jump to the top of the parapet, but a nat20 is only going to get you a 15 foot standing high jump.”
@@gamelairtim I like this idea. As with life at large so much can be solved or prevented by clear communication and managing expectations.
2 года назад+3
I don't understand why most RPG can't spell out the most basic things about adjudication, especially DnD. 1) The DM asks "here's the situation, what do you do?" 2) The player describes what their character is doing /attempts / wants to do. 3) The DM says no because it's impossible or implausible, the DM says yes because there's no doubt the character would succeed and the stakes are low, or the DM says roll because there's a risk, uncertainty or a gradient of success. 4) Repeat. Sole table it's almost the reverse so it leads to problem "ok so I want to persuade the king... 26! I want him to give me the crown". "DM: uh I guess you're the king now...).
I haven't looked at the DMG, and I imagine they will need to provide some clarification, but the new rules that pertain to skills do say that you only roll when the difficulty is between 5 and 30. Assuming there is some guidance on how to set difficulties, you should be able to tell a player, yes roll and there is a reasonable chance for them to 5% fail and 5% credit, or no there is no reason to roll based on that boundary. Either you should be fine with them running up the wall, or you should be able to tell them that would be impossible. Hopefully there is some guideline to setting those difficulties above 30.
Changing the wording to "best possible logical outcome" would also help quite a bit. Let's say I have a player who wants to run up a sheer cliff. He can't do it, but I want to determine if he breaks his leg or escapes unscathed. I would have him roll a d20. If he got a nat20, hed be fine. I don't necessarily want to decide one way or another myself, so I let the dice decide, but I determine the range beforehand. It would nice if RAW backed that up instead of implied I was in the wrong. Saying "it's impossible" can also be a bit strange depending on the circumstances. Perhaps you have a big bad, that due to magic, is currently unkillable. Letting players roll and miss every time while the villain just stands and laughs can be an interesting way of revealing his magic immortality, especially when they roll a nat20 and the best they can get is "your sword cuts down where he was, the arc and curve perfect, the power behind the swing just enough, but just as you get close, he blinks away." A terrifying moment that could be metagamed out of existence if I were required to either let them win, or if I refuse to let them roll to attack.
I may be behind and someone may have already pointed this out, but the playtest doc actually has, in the D20 Test section; "The DM determines whether a d20 Test is warranted in any given circumstance."
“You can never go wrong with giving more options” That’s certainly a players perspective, But from a DM and Game Design perspective, more options make it harder to balance the game and creates more work for the dungeon master. It’s great that 5th edition has brought in so many new players, but let’s give the DM’s some help as well.
Agreed. Not a D&D player yet or a ttrpg player, but I do understand. Paizo's Pathfinder 2e has a lot of options, but it's also balanced by good game design. D&D One just screams poor game design. I don't know what to think of it other than it will be watered down that people will bore out.
Poor DMs. Been there, done that, no t-shirt though. Sometimes it was fun, sometimes it was a pain in the rear (keep it family friendly). Well, nobody ever said that being de facto god was going to be easy. "God is an overwhelming responsibility." -- Ian Anderson (1972)
They key is having the raw power come from the class and the options just giving more things to do. PF2 feats don't really make you more powerful, just more diverse and give you more choices to do in combat. The difference between a min-maxed PC and a new player is far lower than other editions I've played.
I think some of these rules have been interpreted as common house rules by Wizards when in actuality they are extremely common rule mistakes that are made by people who dont read the rules. By making these changes they are "forcing" people who actually run the rules correctly to play like those who dont care about them enough to read them. Instead of changing the rules to what people who would actually use them want
@@johnroush5731 in the one dnd Jeremy Crawford interview when they get to the critcal hits section Jeremy says hes "lost count of the number of people who have asked him if spells can crit". Then the auto success and failure on a 1 and 20 doesnt need much of an explanation I hope. I've been at multiple table where almost everyone had no clue about it, and I've seen a lot of posts on reddit whether it be a dm asking for help, or a horror story about people not knowing that 20 doesnt mean you can do anything. Edit: 22:35 is a perfect example of this Those are the two main ones I can think of currently.
I Have to disagree. 1 - There is NO correct way to run D&D. The rules from day one were meant to be guidelines not a bible. It was always intended for DM's to RUN the game as appropriate for their table. 2 - many of the rules are poorly written and open to interpretation. 3 - they are not forcing any one to do anything. You will still be free to make your own house rules just like always.
@@MeHasCake131 i fully understand what you are saying, because most spells that affect a target require it to make a saving throw. however, there about 30 spells that require attack rolls, including some of the most commonly used spells in the game e.g. Eldritch Blast and Firebolt. Is it really true that MOST people didn't know that you could crit on those spells?
I always tell my players that I don't want my players rolling checks until I ask for them. they provide an action they want to do, I determine a roll. Hopefully we'll see some kind of entry for new DM's to tell players "No." to rolling on impossible actions.
I'm sure we will see this in the text. It was there in the UA text. The problem isn't only players, though. There are many DMs who call for rolls for even absurd minutiae. Now, there's a built-in 5% failure rate for even superfluous rolls that my character shouldn't be required to make in the first place. Yuck. No thanks. 👎🏻👎🏻
@@elementzero3379 The DM is still in control so unless you're DMing some official league or something, you can modify any rules you want. I do the same as you. I don't make players roll the easy stuff (especially if they are skilled).
@Chaos_Gaming234 Or "allow the roll if you have a dramatically-appropriate way for the attempt to fail but want to increase the tension a bit" if you're at a table full of drama nerds. "Only require rolls when the outcome is uncertain" should definitely be very visible in instructions to new DMs, though, if it's not there in the rules already.
I like that, kind of off-putting when the dm is handling something woth another player and someone is like li roll this ,this and this. Then start rolling dice.
Re: Final Thoughts, I think WotC intends to migrate D&D to a "lifestyle product" model, like we see in video games now. I can't imagine they'd plaster a "5.5" on it, the idea is to have a multi-platform content engine through D&D Beyond, physical books, etc., to assert further market domination via their already established (but controversial) "ease of access" and popularity.
I think they should simply call it D&D ... forget the edition... referring to an edition means past. We don't call the current versions of software by their current version (windows for eg) unless it is in context of comparing to or referencing an older version in the same conversation.
I'm sure this comment will go unseen but, I just wanted to say thank you. You two have helped my fall in love with D&D over the past 2 years that I have been watching your channel. The break downs on classes and subclasses have helped my with building characters that I enjoy playing. Right now I am playing a crystal gem dragonborn oath of vengeance paladin and this has been the most fun character i have played yet. With one D&D I'm even more excited to see the changes they make and hope they add to the game. The wording as it stands right now can be confusing so hope that gets fixed.
I love the idea of tying Major ASIs to classes and Minor ASIs to “Ancestry” and Background. The Auto Succeed and Failure Rules I don’t enjoy as a DM, in my opinion (much like what’s said in the video) if you’re not proficient with a skill you can’t “crit to succeed,” but there is definitely a balance of knowing when to ask for a roll and when not too. Great video guys!
While taking the survey I actually came up with the idea of having +1s for two stats determined by the race/ancestry, the 2 from the background, and 2, or more, from the class. And they stack, so picking either a race, sub-race, or background with a class's primary ability scores would get you a +2 in it, or maybe a +3, I left both options for handling overlap, either cap at +2, and the 3rd +1 to an ability score gets freed up to go elsewhere.
@@SeismicHammer Well, similar. In PF 2e, you have a free/floating stat boost with your ancestry, and again with your background. And another 4 to put where you choose. But those all form your stats _in place_ of rolling or using point buy, rather than adding onto rolled or point-bought numbers.
The problem with this, there will always be those players that think that stats are everything, and so will NEVER select an ABC that doesn't give them the key stats for the type of character they are playing. The second you tie ability boosts to anything....you immediately and permanently reduce customability. Its far better to keep ability boosts 100% seperate from everything else. You pick your ABC, then you get your +2/+1 to whatever you want....no strings attached.
I love a lot of the ideas of DnD One especially feats and the entire way racials and backgrounds have been reworked but as a forever DM, the mechanics on the D20 rule make it feel like a lot of the creativity and personal flair of setting DCs and levels of success feels like it gets ruined :( I feel like it overlooks a lot of the DM struggles and focuses on making things fun for players while forgetting that DMs are players too. Having auto successes and failures as well as taking away crits from monsters and spell power just makes it harder for me to feel invested personally which sucks especially since I’m the one running the world. I’m probably gonna try to implement the leveled feats and background ideas but entirely ignore the D20 rule just bc it feels punishing rather than rewarding me for asking my players questions or if they ask me questions I just truly don’t have a good answer to or have the ability to prep or improvise
Hi friend, to be fair we as DMs always have a power to decide how far our players succeeded or how deep they failed. 1still means the worst possible outcome you allow and the 20 is still the best variant you had prepared. :-) I quite like the idea of having different attack patterns for monsters than my players because it's less of a total chance game on my side. I will decide when the enemy is enraged or frustrated enough to use their beefy attack and that's ok. :-) I'm with you considering the spell crit mechanics.
But what does actually change from what you are already doing (with auto fail or auto success)? What example would you have where you thought an action required a roll to determine outcome but the 1 didn't give some degree of failure or the 20 didn't give some degree of success?
@@Crisguss22 This. Personally I feel if there is no narratively interesting consequence to the roll, there's no need to roll at all. Having said that the DM also controls what it means to "succeed" or "fail". A fail doesn't have to mean failing the task completely if that doesn't make sense. It can just be a complication. And the complication doesn't have to be actually attributed to the player's action. For example a failed stealth roll could happen because the player stepped on the tail of a small critter that cries out in pain and bites their ankle. Or failing at wall climbing could be due to a loose brick. There are plenty of options. All this rule really does is make sure that we aren't rolling dice needlessly.
Did you also notice how Background Features are missing, I mean many people forget about them but they still add flavor to roleplay and downtime not to mention add to flavor related to a character's backstory.
While I don't particularly like them (basically if you have never been to a city you really shouldn't have any benefit - I prefer actual rp). My assumption is that they are not included because the default option (and the one most players are going to use) is the build your own background option. The backgrounds presented are only suggestions and samples/examples. I think to include the background features, you would probably have to exclude the build your own option as background features suffer greatly from there being only one or two options you should ever take and should never take the others.
They're being replaced by the Feat. I kinda get it since yes, plenty of people forget about the soft features or end up never being in a position to use them, but I liked how they helped define how your character fit into and interacted with the larger world.
I agree that we do lose something with the switch from unique background features to a handful of feats. While I think it's true that background features rarely get used, that just suggests to me that they needed clearer mechanical support, not that they should be ditched.
@@satiricalbard1 I think the reason they don't have a clearer mechanical support is because its a lot harder to do in a game. So for example, in the Acolyte, you have shelter of the faithful which allows you to get free healing at a temple of your chosen deity. I'm not sure how common it is, but I tend to play with the average person at a temple having no magical ability, as I don't think its reasonable for every cleric in every temple to have magical abilities and for there to still be anyone sick. Or the criminal background has Criminal contact, which lets you have liaison...which is cool, except that liaison naturally has to be in a specific city, which makes it less beneficial. Knowing corrupt caravan masters and seedy sailors likewise is more dependent on whether or not you are in a city you are familiar with. So many of them are DM specific, or location specific and may or may not ever become relevant in a game because of that. With the pick your own option of One D&D, I can see where people would really only pick one or two of them, and the rest would be ignored. This is the same issue with spells, while it sounds cool to have a hundred spells, ultimately you really only have three spells that should ever under any circumstance should be used. Healing Word and Cure wounds are two good examples, as you should always use healing word and not cure wounds. Cure wounds sounds cool, but you are essentially giving up an action to give them slightly more hp. Your average roll on a cure wounds is almost never going to give you enough hp to survive getting hit, so healing word would have worked. Since healing word is a bonus action you can still do something and dealing damage is usually better than the hopeful chance of getting a party member up and in combat long enough to even act. At higher levels especially if you are playing a grave cleric, cure wounds might become an option, but it really isn't until that point. Recently I was playing a moon druid and this became even more apparent, as you can turn into "any" beast you have seen, If you happen to be a level six moon druid, you turn into a Giant Elk and anything else is inferior, so you really only have one animal you can turn into during combat. With all that said...honestly, I think the biggest reason nothing like that appears within the play test document is that it is a play test document and therefore doesn't contain anything that would be considered fluff (exception for some necessary information about races).
@@satiricalbard1 In case you don't read the whole thing, I think the background features are rarely used because they are game and DM specific and mechanical support probably results in really only a couple background features that would ever be used. With that said, the likely reason they don't appear in the play test document, is because in general a play-test document isn't going to have fluff (some exceptions for race info). Since background features aren't really game mechanics and belong in the fluff category, that is something that is likely a long ways away from being written or thought about.
The thing to remember on the D20 checks - on a critical hit you don't automatically kill the monster, you just hit and do more damage. This is the critical success, allowing a better success on a more fluid idea of skill checks.
I think the autofail for a 1 needs looking at a little more closely. It seems quite drastic that every challenge any character takes will just go wrong 5% of the time. If I failed at everything I did that was skill based irl 5% of the time I'd be considered a major clutz. Maybe it'd work within the game system on a fun level (My most memorable TTRPG moments have come from failures) but it still feels a little much for a complete master of a skill attempting a relatively easy feat to just fumble it 5% of the time.
Speaking as someone who has used this rule for a long time, it really doesn’t change the game too much. Most of the time you’re gonna fail on a Nat 1 without this rule anyway. What it does do is create alot of interesting moments and balances out the fact that players will ALWAYS find a way to steamroll your encounters/situations. I fully endorse using this rule
You're missing the point. The nat 1 doesn't represent YOUR ABILITY. I'm sure you're a very sneaky rogue or charming bard or intelligent wizard. The nat 1 represents THE ENTIRE WORLD AROUND YOU THAT YOU CAN'T CONTROL. It doesn't matter how sneaky the rogue is if the guard has a dog that can smell him. It doesn't matter how charming the bard is if the beer maiden is a lesbian. It doesn't matter how intelligent the wizard is if he just never studied that particular topic. Nat 1s aren't "LOL YOU'RE BAD GIT GUD" it's "the conditions weren't suitable". There is always a chance for failure, no matter how good you are at anything.
@@TonyFlowNMMM Exactly this. The only people it affects are people like Rogues, which they are annoying anyway. All the PC classes are skilled, reliable people and yet Rogues are the only ones that just "don't fail". Which makes no sense.
As a DM you just need to avoid the urge to make your players roll every time they lift a box, throw a ball, or look for their keys. Basically, don't make them roll unless it is the sort of task that has at least a 5% chance of failure.
Then probably you shouldn't ask for a roll. Like you said, most things skill based irl wouldn't require a roll. Sure, one can fail lifting a glass off the table to drink, but that kind of thing happens once every few thousand tries at least. So you don't make a roll. And if you care about degrees of success, then make a description prior to the roll to manage expectations like "Ok, roll me an Acrobatics. If you fail you just boringly land, but let's see how great a pirouette you make". And that's it, you described that a failure to make a flashy move is to just land on your feet rather than some drastic failure like spraining your foot and the player rolling will anticipate the result and accept what failure means.
Each race and background could have Primary and Secondary tags. And you're allowed to pick any primary and secondary pair from the whole list. Would be good for customization and power balancing
@@zagzig3734 subraces aren’t that. Example would be an Elf grown among halflings, good-hearted, casual, kind and down to earth instead of how usually elves behave. That’s halfling’s general culture on Fearun. Would be cool to see those split in to specifically racial traits (ancestry) and obtained by growing among specific people (culture)
For the inspiration ... what are your thoughts about awarding inspiration for a natural "1" instead of "20"? Lazy Dungeon Master suggested this idea, as a way to encourage Players to keep on going through disappointing moments, while they already are being rewarded anyway with the automatic success of natural 20
How about on a nat 1, you roll another d20 and on an 11+ you get inspiration? So it's not a given, but there's a 50% chance your character went "aha, I know what I did wrong" or similar.
Inspiration is so powerful that I hate the idea of giving it away 5% of the time every time the dice is rolled. You take a lot of drama out of the game and widen the gap of success between role players and power gamers
@@andrewpeli9019 The rule that inspiration can’t be hoarded, but it can be shared is a great idea. Let success flow around the table, and have players act like a team
@@leestauffenecker6227 I just really don't like that a group of characters can sit around arm wrestling before combat so they can farm inspiration, waiting until they all roll nat 20s on their checks. It encourages bad player behavior, which is not good for newer tables who don't have the etiquette down.
Blunting a 1 is better than double boosting a 20. That said 5% auto-success or auto-fail is a problem. Inspiration is a shit mechanic. Humans are far weaker than all other races, both in number of features as well as what said features do.
a lot of great ideas presented here! really loved how you mentioned the ancestry thing, the ABCs as it were. Pathfinder2e has been doing this for several years now and it was a great switch! i encourage y’all to dig into the Pathfinder2e core rulebook. lots of good ideas for One DnD! 😊
Ohio. Would keep physical attributes to race which would allow the mental traits to be a part of back ground which should have a direct tie in to backstory. Class already adds a lot to the nature of the character.
@@seanrea550 It's good idea that race give you biological base abilities like constitution, dexterity or strength and background give you abilities to intelligence, wisdom or charisma because you need time to gain this type of abilities.
@@SeleneSalvatore So races aren’t allowed to be genetically predisposed to being smarter or prettier? Why not? Or even be better at processing sensory information?
Thanks for mentioning that Pathfinder already does this and more (background abilities). That is one of the things I prefer from Pathfinder over D&D 5e.
I customize so much already it won't bother me either way but I do see some positives. For example I've been doing limited level one Feats for years and have never regretted it. I have a lot to say about character building however. Making your abilities bonus based on A.B,C. (1 each) would be a fine way to go but Wizards does it needs to be careful about washing out the races. Like with the silly idea of Medium sized Minotaurs and Centaur. As I see it the game is moving towards bland races where you pick most of your abilities and the traits are just flavor. Remember the Advanced Race Guide? A full hardcover book filled with racial details and options out the wazoo. But you go through a few times and you realize that the substance of it doesn't really amount to much - everyone gets pretty much the same bonuses and a few abilities that are only slightly different than the one behind it. You may as well just use the build your own race section at the back. People tend to view this kind of option overload as more 'customization' and so they can be more creative but it's not that simple - not even close. There's a common idiom about games, and writing in general, and it has proven to us that restrictions breed creativity. The reason thinking outside the box with your Orcish Warlock is cool is because the restrictions make it tough. But then someone realizes that a Warlock who gets back up with Relentless Endurance is looks really cool, then draw your Greataxe and Crit the guy who did it with Savage Attacks and Orcish Fury and it feels like they just got smited. That's not 'optimized' but it's pretty darn cool. But in the new alternative if there's too much freedom to build then that character always winds up with Hex Blade and CHR buffs, Savage Attacker, and actual Paladin splashing. Same Ancestry, Same Backgrounds, Same Classes, just with different names. You're out their Crit farming just like we do now but if we go this route we'll wind up with less creativity, not more - unless you count the numbers of people that'll be on Socials telling you how to optimize. Limits are important. I'd be fine with the stats being ABC flex as long as the races have more unique characteristics that change over time. (Like the innate spell casters or Dragon's Breath). It's already certain that Backgrounds are going to be the most flexible of the ABC's and Classes have a good level of built-in choices to make (barring a couple of bad designs), which means one of them needs to be on the restrictive end of the spectrum. One High, one Medium, one Low flex - would be best and your genetic characteristics makes the most sense to stay the same. That's all for now. There's plenty to say about the Crit situation but that'll require another post. Bidet
The interwebs are not a representative sample...in my experience fewer than half of players truly optimize. Optimize within the constraints of their character vision...yes...optimize by choosing race/class/feats centered around a maximized build...much less frequent than you would think from the endless optimization guides.
@@owensechrist1315 I think you are exactly right. In my experience I would talk about the numbers the same way. IMO things are Optimization bent is pretty reasonable. And it would be nearly ideal if a few of the feats and abilities were better balanced. This is why I don't want the system going in a 'super-flex' situation. History has proven that it narrows our creative impulses.
Restrictions breed creativity only if there are ways to overcome those restrictions. And with D&D5e there is a big problem of "every +1 to the roll matters". Like the best example is the Warlock in the PHB (without any extra books) - Pact of the Blade. Which would be the perfect for idea what you described... but unfortunately how often that will happen and how often that player will see that he missed?.. I understand your concern there because of optional rules from Tasha and how bad they are for the world building (or balancing), but they are necessary evil for the "not feeling bad" even if you are not optimizing. And those new rules are essentially the evolution of those.
One thing that I’ve gotten to mess with for inspiration. “Critical rolls” inspire your allies. Not yourself. It can be neat to be the one who springboards your allies, or be the one to get that needed push from having your friends lead by example.
That might be good, except that right now a critical hit gives you a single re-roll. With the 'inspire allies' version, it will give you as many re-rolls as there are players -1.
You actually can give your inspiration to another player and this doesn't provide mass bonuses. It works if you already have your point of inspiration too.
@@krinkrin5982 nah, just make it so that when you get a critical hit, you choose a single ally to grant advantage to. It doesn’t have to be the whole party.
I feel like giving inspiration on a natural 20 not only leaves it up to luck, but also compounds one reward on top of another. You not only have gotten the best possible result, you have now a greater chance of doing so again in the future. I feel like it might be more balancing to give out inspiration on a roll of a natural 1. That way, if a player is rolling really poorly, you have a mechanism to help counterbalance that somewhat.
Well that would be pointless, specifically rejecting crit damage on spells only to selectively allow it for the sake of diversity. Fact is, as Crawford points out, the number of spells that can crit are awfully small as is, so what you suggest is really the current state of the game
@@schemage2210 that is kinda the point. By adding it as a general rule instead of the current attack roll tules, you can make feats, subclasses, items, etc that can selectively break those rules. Like fighters and action economy, rogues and mobility, its also the basic concept of sorcerer. Im not saying the amount needs to be changed but now it might be more interactive as part of a fully realised rule set.
That idea would stratify the spells and ensure certain spells would be objectively better than others. The result would be most players will take the same spells and in reality mean less diversity in spell usage. Also, throws the promise of backwards compatibility in the trash bin.
@@esajeppie5380 Hugh is right, and it is a problem currently too where every wizard/sorcerer takes fireball and counterspell or even firebolt no matter what. And these are only a couple iconic examples. On one hand I can appreciate your intent, change the default to no crits on spells than present this option that will enable crit damage. On the other hand though, you aren't creating a truly "optional feature" but rather something that spellcasters will be require (or feel like they are required) to obtain. Other examples of this are feats like War Caster (or resilient constitution) which every caster eventually takes or Sharpshooter for any archer build. All your doing is creating more of these points that need to be acquired, instead of creating opportunities for diversity.
I think having ability scores determined by Ancestry, Background, and Class with the option of changing the Ancestry score to better fit your build is a great idea. Fighters can get +2 to either STR or DEX, Wizards get +2 to INT, etc. That way your primary stat always has the highest boost.
@@nason.mcglinn It’s not all goblins are stronger than all orcs though. A goblin who is a bodybuilder compared to an orc nerd who’s never exercised a day in his life. The goblin will do better. Especially if these boosts are smaller, like 3 separate +1s. A soldier fighter goblin vs a acolyte Wizard Orc. The archetype of orcs being strong isn’t necessarily bad, but it is an archetype. Sapient beings are so much more complicated than that
@@chloebehnke6167 a 6'5" 200 pound wizard orc will be stronger than a 3'2" 30 pound fighter goblin, though. That's just biology. The new attribute bonus rules seem to be strictly for minmaxing. There's nothing wrong with having a racial -2 int as an orc and still being a wizard. In fact, I feel it makes for better role playing and highlighting that you ARE unique for an orc. Now all sage orcs are just as good qizards as sage elves, which is weird when you delve into the history of said races.
@@chloebehnke6167 TLDR ("Sapient beings are so much more complicated than that" which sapient beings are you talking about? Because yeah humans are much more complicated than that, but these fictional creatures invented by us aren't. By necessity, they are more simplistic slices of aspects of us and our perceptions. They aren't real. They are narrative tools invented for us to explore more narrow realities and concepts of being human.) An orc is a representation of an imaginary concept of the predatory humanoid, the man-beast or monstrous man. A goblin is one of being a small, dangerous, and chaos minded creature, in a bigger world that largely doesn't want you around. An elf is the human without the fear of death, and the ability and opportunity to explore the beauty of the world to its fullest, often through a lens of sorrow or delight. They're constructs that can be made more complicated, but inso doing tend to just become more like humans. We don't have any other templates for sapience. The archetypes are what makes them different from us, and thus useful as storytelling tools. A reduction in those archetypal differences both separates them from their core concept, and makes them less inhuman, in which case they become more set dressing than anything else. We're already the most complicated game in town. These invented creatures are intentionally skewed so we can try to get out of *our* heads and try to embody something different than us. Personally I think they should go harder to make the different races/ancestries/species feel unique and different. Playing an orc that isn't really any different than playing a human, or a gnome, or a fairy other than some special powers, feels like a waste of potential, and part of why this has become a point of contention for people. I'm too busy to put much time into it, but I'd like to put together a system that doesn't rely on -2's or +1's to represent the differences being one creature or another would have, and instead mechanically represents inhabiting a different creature, with a different brain, and perspective. Something means that if you want to play an orc you'd be struggling with the fact that violence and chaos are parts of your fundamental make up, that you are a predator in a world of prey, and every fiber of your being is built to do violence. (for example) Playing a benevolent or good orc in that construct would *mean something* and you would play different if you knew that if the wrong thing sets you off, you might become dangerous to all around you.
After reading the document and seeing some of the reactions online especially to the new race and background changes, I felt kind of inspired with ideas that I saw inklings of in the system they presented even though I don't think they went far enough. I would kind of like to see a system where features are tagged as related to certain ancestries, backgrounds, and cultures (hey, there's another ABC) and organized into packages that are balanced the same as "1st level feats," or at least have a very clear and explicit power level relationship to feats. Then you pick and choose which ones you want based on the story you want to tell for your character. There would be specific prebuilt choices for ancestry, background, and culture to use, but you'd always be able to mix and match or even build from scratch for any one of those aspects. On another note, a big pet peeve of mine with the new racial options was how many of them had spellcasting slapped on. With ardlings I get it, since they're supposed to be the equal opposite of tieflings, but for the elves and gnomes it just kind of annoyed me how they seemed content to slap expanded spellcasting on them, especially since it seems so much more like a cultural thing instead of a strictly biological one. Now everyone just feels like a tiefling.
Don't forget the MASSIVE NERF humans got. Feats aren't a stand-out feature of everyone gets them now, and the extra great they used to get? Now it is nerfed to a "1st level" feat; while other races improve on leveling, HUMANS GET NOTHING. They already don't get darkvision.
@@gethriel I mean, they are still getting an extra feat, so they start with 2 while others only start with 1. Also, didn't they also get an inspiration after every long rest?
@@TheHornedKing 1ST LEVEL feat, and no option to just take their 1 point for each attribute. NERF. Inspiration? Seriously? Inspiration is given out like candy and LITERALLY all you get is a single advantage roll. NOTHING. Also, they are toying with the idea of giving that feature to ALL races.
I love the celestial part of ardlings. I love the fact that spells are finally either arcane or divine; also the primal category fits lorewise since they draw power from the inner planes as opposed to divine magic
My homebrew critical hit rule: on a critical hit, the player rolls damage as usual, then add the maximum roll of the dice to the total. Eg: 1d6+4= 1d6+4+6 on a critical. 5d8+3 = 5d8 +3 + 40 on crit
If you check their video on homebrew rules they use Crunchy Crits it's one to one this rule. I think it's one of the best options, alongside with injuries on crits( blinding, slowing, cuting arm of oponent)
Why not keep the new system, but on a crit you also automatically deal max damage. If you roll 6d6+12 a crit would be a 7d6+12=54 damage. Adding the max roll on top of the actual roll seems like way too much damage.
I don't usually comment, I like 5th edition, I started with 1st edition and skipped the rest. Im staying with 5th edition. I like Eberron best. I am doing a nautical adventure in Eberron that may move into a unique Spelljammer high level overture. I always encouraged feats, and adjustable racial traits.
theres a really cool online page ive seen that someone made for there own eberon spelljammer game that sort of gives some rough ideas on how to adapt eberons unique cosmology to the spelljammer rules if you want a link
If you do Spelljammer MagicPunk, please include a cameo of Mickey Mouse and Steamboat Willie crossed with the Sorcerer's Apprentice, just chugging along in the Astral Sea!
"Rolling a 20 doesn’t bypass limitations on the test, such as range and line of sight. The 20 bypasses only bonuses and penalties to the roll." Quoted from the document. So a 20 always succeeds...except when it doesn't.
Yeah, it sounds more like a 20 gets you the best possible outcome of whatever you're attempting. Which is a pretty common interpretation and/or house rule as is.
I really appreciated your level headed breakdown and assessment of the new test packet. I also appreciate that you guys took your time to think about it and didn't just throw out a reaction video like so many others. One of the most important things to keep in mind is what you said at the start of the video, be thoughtful, be constructive, and be respectful. If we all do that, we will end up with the best product possible in 2 years. I look forward to hearing your feedback when you get a chance to actually playtest some of the new rules. Another great point, if your group doesn't like a rule, just don't use it. We all do that to some extent anyway.
Hate crit changes; LOVE background changes, and I don’t mind the auto success or auto fail. I was hooked on dnd when I failed a stealth role as the teams scout and tripped over a sleeping dragon’s nose. We ran for life, had to start back from square one, and it was hilariously exhilarating fun.
I don't like to double down on a player failure, but if they roll a 1 or 20, I do love adding in a little extra randomness: The rope breaks, or the lock pick snaps off in the lock, or the Orcs' severed head knocks over a Goblin etc
I'm surprised you guys didn't comment on the pretty massive unarmed strike changes. That grapple is now a to hit rolls instead of a contested ability check.
And I hate it!!! Especially knowing an 8 str wizard can now knock an 11 ac ogre down so easily... ridiculous! 5th level melee character with 2 attacks, 1st attack unarmed knock prone... ac11 ogre doesn't stand a chance, next attack ... ADVANTAGE for free for the rest of the melee attackers the entire round!
Thank you so much. You've covered some of the most concerning issues I had very clearly like spells no longer being able to crit (bad idea) and more costimization ( good idea). I love the idea of getting an ability point for each of the A,B,C's. Gentlemen you've nailed this one and I will more than likely be using this one at my table from now on. If only all rule makers would let us all have a fare say in all rules like Wizards are doing lol.
I don't see why it matters where the 3 ability points come from. You can already put them wherever regardless of ancestry, background or class. Why make it more complex for no real gain.
My notification bell keeps resetting every few days for you guys. Would make sense if this was a channel I didn't really watch, but you guys are my most watched channel.
When you were talking about the spell lists, an interesting thing to note is that eldritch blast isn't listed in the cantrips, it might just be a lv 1 feature now for warlocks.
My only concern regarding all this customization is will it mean anything anymore to be an elf or a dwarf or whatever? If you can move all the ability scores around, I hope we still have some things that are unique to each ancestry. For instance, dark vision isn’t available to everyone, I hope that you have to have that ancestry in order to have that intrinsic ability. There’s a danger as we’re trying to simulate the breath of all the different kinds of people of a certain ancestry that we lose any character to that ancestry. So certainly there are to be able to be a giant very strong elf, but I hope that they are still things that you can only do if you’re an elf. And as for mixed ancestry, I’ve seen some proposals for how to resolve combining for example human an elf, but I wonder how streamlined that could possibly be, especially if you start getting to the point where you talk about a quarter elf in a half a dwarf and a quarter human or those sorts of things.
Regarding the D 20 tests, I kind of agree that in certain circumstances having an automatic fail doesn’t seem like the greatest idea. I already feel as though when you hear the description of the kind of expertise that a character has to have an attack or an action and fail it when you have a lot of really good attributes and experience it feels like the dice have too much control over that. In other words, if you are a high-level thief and are picking a lock and it’s a normal lock and you get a one and you would’ve succeeded, but you automatically fail, while there is a flavor way to make that all makes sense, it feels really disappointing if there’s nothing else going on. I would be much more interested in having an automatic fail on a scale check scale to the circumstance. In other words, the DC should increase in such a way that the character wouldn’t automatically succeed. In that way, the natural one wouldn’t be what causes a failure, it would be the circumstances which would make a natural won’t be a failure. I think it’s Pathfinder current edition that somebody has sad critical fails and successes require a second rule to determine whether they’re automatic failures or not. It might be that that would give the same opportunity but deal with the issue that I am identifying.
This. It’s a slow erosion that eventually will homogenize all the races. Before elves made good wizards (for obvious reasons) and an orc wizard would be something that was unique. Now, any race is equally bland. It doesn’t surprise me with how cosmopolitan modern D&D games are. Being a tiefling on its own should come packed with so much flavor but I haven’t seen a single game where that’s the case.
Regarding magical origins, I also think this is cool. In fact, I hope that by dividing the sources of magic, there will be options to utilize that in the same way that we use damage types for instance. In other words, maybe there’s a plane or primordial magic doesn’t work. Or maybe there are spells that block a certain source of magic. Additionally, this could also be incorporated into how multi classing works. So for example, let’s say primordial magic is tied to constitution, then you might have to have a minimum constitution in order to multi class in the druid in addition to the primary spell casting ability. Or maybe if you multiclass, you have to have a certain proficiency before you can take on a second class. I haven’t thought this through, but I do think it would be interesting to give these different sources of magic some mechanical meaning in the game.
@@brucecurtis9368 For me? No. But, if I can put words in their mouths, I think the concern is for new players/GMs who will get this and try to play without guidance. I think the simplest thing WotC could do is to explicitly state "The DM has the power to say when a roll is not needed, either because the task is so easy it automatically succeeds, or so impossible that there's no way to do it. Players should feel free to bring up this idea as well, when appropriate, for example if they have expertise in a skill and there is no pressure from an enemy or no time crunch."
The celestial aspect of ardling makes me think of the deities of ancient Egypt. It is not a bad flavor but it also is a really different flavor from anything D&D has had, and it is odd to finally give us something many folks want -- animal heads -- but to attach it to some flavor that we didn't ask for.
@@theckie I am aware that I overstated the case. I know there are these animalistic celestials in previous editions that I didn't play (which were not in even earlier editions that I did play), but it feels distant from anything relevant to 5e. They may in fact be giving me something I never knew I wanted. My dog thinks it's a great idea.
@@ajh22895 No one said Tabaxi are excluded. These are player's handbook playtests, I think. There will be lots more races elsewhere, I imagine. Just like 5e.
Kelly and Monty, your synergy at the table and application of gaming experience is the best. I have read and watched other reviews of the new changes, and this was without equal. You keep getting better over the years.
Re-read the document on backgrounds. You can be a charlatan fighter, you can be a Rogue cleric. Customizing is the default, not the standard backgrounds presented. You choose the ability score and customize by building your own background with feat of your choice. You do not need to pigeon hold attributes to classes. Maybe I don't want a +2 to str or con as a Barbarian, maybe I want Int. Let me keep my customization options.
The way I run the crit roll: any attack roll is simply max possible damage for that particular attack. Quick and easy math and no damage rolling necessary. This keeps combat moving and seems the most logical way to handle it. Try it out in your game ☺️
I actually had a player argue with me that I was nerfing his PC but once I explained the the average of doubling rolled damage is Max normal damage he seemed to grasp the concept. Personally I do Max damage on all damage dice (weapon base dice, sneak attack, smite, hunters mark etc) and roll weapon base damage dice and add it to the total.
@@voodoophil personally I can't stand to see the light in their eyes go out when they roll like shit. Piles of dice, and when they count it up, it sometimes ends up as less than average damage from a non crit. It feels awful when that happens. But it varies from table to table. My table, people tend to like the consistency to know that it's always amazing to see a 20, rather than having to wait until after the damage roll to decide whether anything noteworthy happened or not.
I was curious what you guys thought of the change to grappling. You didn't mention it in the video, and it seemed like a pretty big change to me. Grappling is now an unarmed attack, and if it hits, it works. No opposed skill check necessary, and to escape the roll becomes a saving throw with a set DC. Athletics or acrobatics skill don't play into the equation at all anymore. (Shove also becomes an unarmed attack, no skill contest)
And the slow condition also really changes the dynamic, attacks against you have advantage, even from the grappled creature. I hope there'd be ways to boost the DC as it is now with expertise or rage
@@ledhyper4282 Since it says "the grappler suffers the Slowed Condition _while moving"_ (emphasis mine), it definitely reads to me as if it would only matter for opportunity attacks and readied attacks.
My only gripe with new races is that a couple have been stripped of updates they were given in later 5E installments (like the dragonborns breath weapon reverting back to using the entire attack action instead of just a single attack on a character with multiple attacks) but I trust they will bring those changes back before its official launch...I hope
Splitting up ability score increases (ancestry,background,class) would allow for players to start with a +3 to a stat. Splitting it up doesn't actually give any more options since you can customize the background completely.
I totally agree. I think the way WOTC is proposing (connection to background only) is the winner. Having these increases split up for each of the ABCs adds unnecessary complexity to character creation. (Love the idea of replacing 'race' with 'ancestry' for the 'ABC's, though, by the way!!!)
Racial bonuses used to indicate a an intrinsic natural aptitude. Backgrounds, by definition, are extrinsic. We already had ways of getting extrinsic ability score increases: Through leveling up.
@@Dharengo so in its early days d&d supposed the races were all segregated homogenous and had little contact with others. All dwarves were basically the same, had the same upbringing, same underground home, same culture same prejudice against elves. They couldn't be wizards because as a race they weren't deemed smart enough. There was no lore reason. That's always been a little effect up. Intrinsic aptitude doesn't mean crap if you don't use it. A few elves get a bonus to int. But what if they were orphaned as many PCs are and never received any education? Only biological bonuses should apply to races, dwarves have advantage against being poisoned because their livers are made out of hartier stuff. This rule is just trying to define what do all members of a race share irregardless of how they were raised. It's a good thing.
@@MrApocryphon "Only biological bonuses should apply to races." To me, ability score bonuses _are_ biological. Also there's no rule saying that dwarves aren't smart enough to be wizards. You can still use your point buy and ASI's to raise a dwarf's int. They won't be a natural at it compared to, say, a gnome, but they can do it if they set their mind to it. How would being orphaned and not receiving an education reduce an elf's int? It just means they're unlikely to be taught how to use magic. Their inherent biological aptitudes would not change. Changes in their environment are reflected in what stat spread you choose on character creation, as well as how you spend your ASIs from leveling up.
@@Dharengo in 1st and 2nd edition there was a rule that said what races could be what classes and what level they would max out. For example orcs could be clerics but only to level 8or10. But let's look at that elf and int. Int is tied to nature arcana history and religion. With no education at all you are telling me an elf is more likely to know about religions than a dwarf? The fact that you think some races are just naturally smarter than others or more able to navigate social situations, or wiser is problematic. I need you to ask yourself if you really believe that and if the answer is yes, you can check your eugenics at the door and this conversation is done.
I only got into DnD during the first covid lockdown, so I've only ever played 5e and have no expectations or nostalgia from previous editions. In general I like the way these changes are going. I particularly like the idea of more customisable character creation options. What I'd like to see for races, in order to not make them irrelevant but still allow many classes to use each race and get something out of it, is a list of racial features for each race where you choose, say, 1 feature that your character has inherited. For instance, orcs could have 1 feature related to martial prowess, and another related to toughness. A fighter might take the first, but the second could be something a spellcaster might value. With the disassociation of ASIs from races, this means you could have an orc wizard who is powerful, but their orc heritage still means something by making them a bit sturdier than a wizard of another race.
Apologies in advance this ended up a bit longer than I anticipated. 🙏 I might be misunderstanding, but are you saying that choosing your race would only give you 1 ability? Staying consistent with the Orc example that you used, Orcs currently have Adrenaline Rush, Darkvision, Powerful Build, and Relentless Endurance. I'd say Darkvision would likely be inherent across all and remain constant. The other 3 however, seem to be more oriented towards the orcs being a warrior people, focused on strength and fighting. Poweful Build just adjusts your carrying capacity essentially but even that would seem to be more martially focused, such as a fighter or barbarian, and wouldn't apply to a more scrawny Wizard or something. So, what I'm getting at is that I may have misunderstood your concept? Would they only end up with 1 feature overall or would only 1 of their given features be interchangeable? As a bit of a spin on your idea, what if each race/ species had a pool of abilities unique to their people, say maybe 5 abilities, and we got to choose 3 abilities from that pool that would suit our given character. This would also make playing mixed race characters easy as well because now you just choose any combination of 3 features from either of your parent race. And, I know they're doing away with sub-races, or at least renaming the term, but unique surfaces could potentially just have 1 specific feature special to them and you choose 2 other features from the base race. This would, however, add a lot of work to the writers and developers to come up with that many unique ideas for every single race.
@@zac9933 yes what you describe is exactly what I had in mind, I was just using the example of picking 1 from 2 abilities as an oversimplified example. So all orcs get darkvision, then you can pick 3 of 5 possible racial features which are all thematic to orcs but the combo you choose can make them valid for your class. Totally agree.
By the Gods thank you, the final thoughts really drove the point home. Nothing wrong with *"DnD 5.5"* or *"5th Revised"* // *"DnD3.5"* was amazing. And also _"If our table don't like these rules we are just not gonna use it..."_ some people really need to hear this more often. _"It's just a game, why u heff to be mad?"_
I use inspiration as a reward for players giving me a recap of the previous session at the start of the new session. I don't want to have it disappear if they take a short rest, and I don't want to depend on RNG for inspiration points. I'd house rule out this new rule immediately. I really like the idea of Arcane/Divine/Primal magic categories. I think it'll be easier for new players if the DM says, "You pick from the divine spell list." I'm sure it'll make the makers of spell cards happy, too, since they can just do small edits and re-sell the same thing in a new package.
You could do both. There are good reasons that they made inspiration die use it or lose it. You could just call your non-expiring die "divine favor" or something.
@@TenzaBurabura I don't disagree that they had a good reason. I'm simply not on board with that reason since I use inspiration as a incentive for positive activity. I'd rather not tie it to a die roll.
Personally, I'm a big fan of customization. However, I do see one pitfall of that which is not all racial/ancestry abilities are created equal and while in theory opening up all the options to everyone should encourage diversity, one pitfall I have seen in systems like Chronicles of Darkness or some of the Storypath game systems is that by opening up all the options to everyone, people who are mechanics minded all gravitate towards the one true build of the mechanically optimal options. Whilst I think racial feats are dumb, I know putting myself to pick up Elven Accuracy means that I am delaying all other feats by four levels or more by not taking variant human or custom lineage. If I can have both, and I want to be good at the thing I want to be good at, why shouldn't I take them both every time I want to be good at punching things? The solution is to make a wide variety of roughly mechanically equal choices, but that's really hard to balance, especially when things can be altered later. The introduction of a new cantrip on the Arcane spell list or a new eldritch invocation or fighting style or whatever else can be gained by feat has the potential to upend any early parity and makes new additions to the game in future supplements increasingly cumbersome to play test as more parts can interact with each other. In the end, I personally favor greater flexibility and more player options even if that paradoxically creates less player variance, but I do see how it could potentially go wrong if handled clumsily and how hard it is to handle correctly in perpetuity.
This is why they are extending 1st level feats to everyone, but limiting which feats can be taken at 1st level. I'm 99.9% certain this is not intended to be used on top of variant human or custom lineage also gaining any other feat they want at level 1. I think the UA human is meant to replace variant human and if they do keep custom lineage they will alter it to not include a feat. While the 1st level feats won't be perfectly balanced I think they'll be more balanced than the feats we currently have. I think they also intend to achieve a better balance with the races than what we currently have... how successful they are at that... who knows?
@@MannonMartin Sure, this was more in regards to the mix and match race bits when it comes to making your quarter elf, quarter orc, half tiefling than feats, but as far as variant human goes, in the playtest rules, human gives a feat as does every background, so I think they are intended to stack.
Great video and I find myself agreeing with a lot of what you guys called out. On inspiration though, I'm not a huge fan of awarding it on landing a 20: Rewarding rolling well with a greater chance of rolling well. I'd honestly be more a fan of giving it on rolling a 1 (your character getting frustrated by failure and inspired to do better) or if you land a 20, you have to give the inspiration to someone else, you cannot give it to yourself: Your actions and successes are inspiring your allies. I just think helping come back from failure is more interesting.
I like the idea that you hang out Inspiration to another player on a nat 20 and that you gain inspiration on nat 1. It's easy to remember and makes inspiration happen more.
Glory to the changes to Race and Background. DnD to me has always been about the story telling and the roleplay and not about solving the optimal meta game. Finally you won't rely on homebrewing to play your Orc Mage, your Drow Berserker, your Gnome Paladin, your Halfling Druid, without the looming shadow of having knowingly and willingly gimped your character. This is especially good for new players in the current era of gaming. No more will you pick your class and then ask what race pairs well with that class. You will now be able to pick your race and then decide what he or she will be. I've always preferred custom backgrounds anyway but this really just saves your new player magic user from defaulting to Sage or Scholar because it has the things you want to have.
I personally like the idea of a nat 20 on an ability check lowering the dc. So when the barbarian does an investigation check to loot something and there is a 25 DC for an extra magic item or something similar he can still succeed in finding it even with maybe just a +1 to his investigation.
If I'm understanding you right, I really like this idea. In the example you gave, the barbarian has a +1 bonus to investigation so previously he could have, on a nat20, gotten only a 21, so he still failed the check (or test as we're calling them now.) However, if he got a nat20, his total score (21 for investigation) remains the same but the DC of the test is reduced to 20, making this a success. Let's set a different scenario - the DC of the check is now 30, and it's presumed that only a very lucky inquisitive rogue will succeed on a good roll. The barbarian still gets a nat20, reducing the DC for the barbarian to 25, and the 21 for investigation doesn't pass. The inquisitive rogue, however, is proficient and has expertise in investigation, giving her an overall +14. Any roll of 16 or better will pass the test. Let's try the same thing with survival: our party's ranger is tracking an enemy while using hunter's mark, but miraculously rolls two nat1s; the DC was set as 10, but with the +5, the ranger now must pass a 15 DC test. Much like our rogue from before, the ranger is in his favored terrain and tracking a favored enemy, so expertise is effectively applied to the survival check, and 1+14 manages to pass the check even though he rolled 2 nat1s. Is this more or less what you're describing because I think I like it. Due to bad circumstances or whatever, the challenge is harder for that PC but they could still succeed if they are REALLY good at that skill.
Early AD&D did something like this. A natural 20 was considered a 25, but only for rolls to hit. A natural 20 has always been a successful save, and a 1 always a fail. The problem seems to be applying this mechanic to a skill check.
I am very excited about this! There is some stuff that Definitely need tweaking, but I think it is going in a really cool direction I really like the new lore of *Primal* magic instead of druids being divine. I also really like the further implementation of inspiration I really like the new ways to make the character (particularly the feats) I do not like that nat 1's always fail however, i think that should be just for attacks. I have high hope! :D
I do backgrounds/stats like this: the +2/+1 or +1/+1/+1 where you want them. For your background, you get four "Background Points". Each skill/language/tool costs one point to buy, but you can only spend two points in any one category. It is up to the player to create a compelling story for the DM to work with. They can also (if they choose) create (or research) some sort of perk (like default backgrounds) that fits thematically. Fits in well with old/updated and these new rules.
I agree: More tools, more customization, more options. Xanathar's and Tasha's, which were reponses to the advanced 3 books (Players, Monster's manual, dungeon master's), was all about increasing options and making options more powerful, usually rendering older subclasses and races less powerful. Completely agree. Modularity and empowering choice for customization is what everyone playing a game really wants. Glad you guys are standing clear in this
To me, im never using the auto win/fail rule. That said, if the rule was more like ''when you make a d20 test on a skill or saving throw you are proficient with, a 20 is a auto success. If you make a d20 test on a skill or saving throw you are NOT proficient with, then a 1 is a auto fail''. I would be more agreeable, that said, never using it.
@@AC-eb7kt i agree. I mean, sure, even the masters make mistakes sometimes, pro athletes get tripped and fall, but thats rare events, and they arent magic creatures in a world full of dragons...
@@orishahar Just remembered, at level 7, dependig on thte build you can have proficiency with every skill. Hope that doesnt make a big difference for you T^T
Crits: Just for attacks and saves, not checks. Don't monkey with the damage, spells, or NPCs. Background Ability Score Increases: Interesting. It seems there is a strong push to just let players put their stats wherever, regardless of ancestry, background, or class. I have concerns that some segment of the audience is going to be disappointed, because I know I enjoy pairing together odd combinations that would normally be "bad" to find unusual character builds. Taking that away has pluses and minuses; if every ancestry and background is equally viable at every class, the game should be very cosmopolitan, though most games already are. You can still build the character in the "wrong" way, but there's no mechanical incentive to do so with an offbeat ancestry or background. Will that lead to a feeling of "same-y" character builds? I don't know. There's a sweet spot in customization where you get your say, but work within the constraints of the framework. I feel a little uncomfortable with the idea that the framework is losing its constraints and everything starts to feel like a reskinned version of the same thing. My concerns may be unfounded, but there they are.
@@tomasxfranco I disagree. Characters usually have ways to bounce back. Having more control over the outcome is not necessarily desired - the threat of death needs to be real, for both the characters and the Storyteller / DM. If the campaign needs a more laid-back approach, house rule as needed... but a typical game needs that swingy variance. Sometimes the 28 AC bladesinger wizard takes a critical hit and goes down, I would call that a feature rather than a bug. I have seen RPG systems where the characters might surpass ever being damaged by the cannon fodder, but the more important villains always pose a true threat - Reign (Enchiridion) and 7th Sea both possess this to some degree. You could implement a sort of house rule where only the important monsters in an encounter can get critical hits, I guess.
The Crafter feat is stronger than it seems. Since you gain advantage on ability checks related to your tool proficiencies, having multiple tool proficiencies increases your odds of being able to apply advantage to them. I'm also curious if they define more specific rules for item and crafting prices that makes that discount matter more.
They should split the biological abilities like dexterity, constitution and strength to race abilities. Background should give you intelligence, wisdom or charisma abilities. Race is also ancestry and culture of that particular race that shape you but all races should give you +1 con. Some races should give you ability to choose between dex&str like humans, tifling, ardlings and some could give this ability by choosing different subspecies gnome, dwarf. Elf could have dex except drows that could have str etc.
What scares me more about the playtests is not that the DnD community is going to be able to give feedback. Is that the communities that are not DnD are also giving feedback. I am tired of all these suggestions of "Do it like PF2" from people who actually don't like DnD.
Great review as always, Dudes. Perhaps you missed it (or maybe I missed you pointing it out), but I think a lot of your worries about the natural 1 and natural 20 being auto success is set to ease with this one bit that they included in the playtest: "[...]a d20 Test must have a target number no less than 5 and no greater than 30" So yeah. They've already covered that you can't call for a roll on things that should be impossible to fail/succeed. So no need to worry about characters forgetting how to see or walk, and worries about them flapping their arms to fly. The new wording doesn't even allow for rolls for those tasks.
If this makes it through, that’s gonna be the first new rule I ignore. Considering that with stacking various buffs you can push a skill check up to where it’s easily possible to roll into the 50s, a 35+ DC isn’t all that unreasonable. To me, putting in the effort and burning resources on a skill check to ensure success is far more interesting gameplay than automatic successes and failures. (Also, this seems like it would imply that AC is hard capped at 30?)
@@hatihrodvitnisson Yeah, if you like numbers getting up that high, ignore it. I'll be sticking to the smaller numbers. No clue what the AC cap is or if there's even going to be one.
The feats are all amazing, especially *Crafter*. Think about it, you take wizard (or other caster), have proficiency in Arcana, and can start crafting spell scrolls. A cantrip/1st level spell scroll takes 8hrs to make normally and no chance to fail, you can now make that same scroll in 6.5 hours instead, in theory, making two spell scrolls (Shield x2) for cheap and always at the ready, beyond what your spell slots are limited too.
We don't have any definite ruels for crafting magic items. If Crafter includes the crafting of magical items, it is indeed amazing - probably even too good.
@@carlcramer9269 Sure we do. In XGE's Downtime Revisited, scroll down to Crafting an Item (p 128) and then look at the subheading for Crafting Magic Items. It gives us the • Rarity CR Range • Rarity Cost & worktime • Complications for the amount of time taken I would also believe this should work for scribing a spell scroll as well, which is a bit further into the book on pg 133. They're great rules for doing all sorts of stuff on downtime.
In regards to the topic of losing other races for ones presented in the One D&D playtest. If I remember correctly, One D&D is working with 5e, which should mean that even if the Aasimar aren't updated to One D&D, then they're still playable in their current iteration with the new/expanded rules. It seems as though the playtest material, as stated earlier in the video, are just ways of fixing/adjusting things that were not working as intended from the origins in 5e.
I think it would be good for a new dms if they explicitly state in the rules that the DM does not have to call for a role of there is 0% chance of success or failure. I would also add an exception for the nat 1 being an automatic fail if the player is proficient in the skill being tested.
It'll likely be listed as an optional rule for a more high magic game.
The issue is that it makes it too binary, something a PC has a small chance to not fuck up now players will expect a 5% success rate at.
Agreed about it makes sense to be explicit saying you don't have to roll if the player cannot fail or cannot succeed. Regarding the crits, this was a rule I floated to my table this past Sunday and everyone agreed to it fully. If you are proficient, nat20s are automatic success but nat1s don't cause a crit fail. Conversely, if you are not proficient, nat20s do not automatically cause success, but a nat1 is a crit fail. (Combat continues operating exactly as it does in the past.)
What do you think?
It is listed in the d20 test rule. A DM should not call for a d20 test if the DC is less than 5 or more than 30
@@chrism6315 Fact is, in pre-written adventure modules at least, Skill Checks have always been a binary outcome. You either roll high enough to succeed, or you don't and as a result, fail. It is only rarely where it is written that there is a sliding scale of knowledge based on the value of a roll (if you roll 10 on history you know the general details compared to rolling a 15 where you know a lot more). Effectively, rolling a 12 on a persuasion roll is no different to rolling a 14 when the DC is 15.
On Backgrounds: the "customization option" is not an option, it is the default choice. The provided backgrounds are merely examples of how one might construct a background and could be used as is if a player wants to
This is 100% the design intent, but myself and several others have raised concerns regarding actual human psychology. When presented with a choice, in which A is 'make your own' and B is "Pick from this list of options' people will overwhelmingly choose one of the options from the list. The backgrounds update is a wonderful design, but the formatting in how WotC presents it needs to be clearer.
Fg, biurze
gi%I @@maclaglen6875
@@maclaglen6875, o9yfg, 43?3"I
@@maclaglen6875, o9yfg, 43?3"I
I'm so early Drakkenheim is still a functional city
No wait here it comes
Priceless
Can't be; Dudes marketed their Dheim -kickstarter 🤞
Masterful
The early bird gets the Delerium... 🙃
Here’s the problem with auto-fails on a skill check when rolling a nat 1: I’m a commercial pilot. Landing a large aircraft takes a lot of skill, and under certain circumstances, it can be very difficult. But I’m expected to land it every time. If I had a 1-in-20 chance to botch every landing, regardless of my level of skill or experience, my career as a professional aviator would be over in a week. You should be able to get so skilled at something that you expect to succeed 100% of the time under normal circumstances.
But that is the thing, "under normal circumstance." You can be the best pilot in the world and you roll a 1 and can still be worked as an auto failed. There can be plenty of way to interpret this failure from the DM. The steering wheel can break off, sudden engine failure or the DM can even just say:
DM - "Based on your extensive knowledge while trying to control this plane, you feel that something is off about the plane and you are having trouble controlling it how it normally. You feel that there is something seriously wrong with the plane and as you try to gain further control of the plane you feel your grasp on the control continue to slip"
If the situation was truly a normal situation, the DM can just bypass the skill check and just make you auto succeed. Either way works. It is 100% on the DM on how he want to work it.
So planes never crash?
@@mattfinch3895 Crashing with a 5% chance? No one would enter an airplane with those odds. that is the essence of the argument.
@@themasterofdungeons9196 I agree with you on the odds. But the game needs some realistic chance of failure.
But if you can't fail even on a 1, why roll the check at all? Just roleplay being extra careful and concentrated and save the skill checks for crash landing in the Hudson while shooting back at terrorists trying to take over the plane
With the 3 different magic sources, I want to see more unique spells and less crossover. Arcane, Primal, and Divine need to feel different from each other.
I totally agree. I want my Druid to feel unique and not a mix of divine and arcane.
It comes from 4th edition, where they had five sources of "powers", the three magic powers, along with the Martial and Psionic power types. Expect those other two to arrive soon.
Mixing magic should be like mixing potions volatile with summoning may be a fun side effect.
I suspect they will make level specific class spells available as characters get stronger. This way the three sources are shared pools, but each class auto learns new magic that is on theme for the class. With the coding on d&d beyond for always prepared spells, it would be pretty easy to implement...
@@isaackarr6576 So basically.
Wizard: "Damnit! That wasn't a fireball, it was a swarm of pixies..."
I really want to see standardized magic item creation rules.
Maybe in later UA releases. This is literally just about character generation this month.
Op: and better if it mirrored the creation rules in 3.0-3.5. enough of this " magical trashpicker" vibe!
As someone who learned D&D kinda of recently playing a 3.5 table I have to tell you that it can go sour so fast... It probably won't, but be careful with your wishes.
@@JessicaMorgani idea. Use 3.5 creation guidelines, but less charges, +3 max, and additional rolls to make enchantments permanent.
At least guidelines for basic items. Weapons and armor with straight bonuses and no other abilities, wands that just cast a spell X times per day, common items. The weird unique stuff can have group-specific formulae.
One thing relevant to the “monsters can’t crit” issue that was mentioned in the Crawford interview is that the justification to remove monster crits was because monsters have a recharge mechanic already where the big hits are under the control of the DM rather than chance. So there might be a major monster design overhaul that balances out the inability to crit, just we haven’t seen it. Cautious optimism perhaps?
Unrelated, but something that caught my eye about the glossary is the Slowed status. It seems weird that it would get its own definition of it only mattered to grappling, and I can’t help but wonder (hope?) if we’re going to see a change to the Monk’s Stunning Strike.
But honestly, do you believe it to be true, that at least 50% of the monsters will actually get that complete overhaul and recharge mechanics? Because I am fairly sure, that a couple of more iconic monsters, like Illithid, Beholders, Liches, Dragons and maybe Vampires will get something, but most of the 'fodder' monsters will get nothing. Which is unfortunate - I for one love the idea of low-level adevntures, where goblins and kobolds do pose an actual threat, even without much preparation!
@@FraternityOfShadows Unique recharge abilities? Unlikely, I’ll admit it.
GENERIC recharge abilities? That’s a greater possibility. Crusher/Piercer/Slasher already gave us something like it. A handful of options that you could just bolt onto any random monster wouldn’t be too difficult.
Removing chance from a game about chance is bad game design. This isn't a video game.
@@joshuaturner8853 That's the thing: Wizards of the Coast put more, and more responsibility and workload on the DM to *figure it out*; *fix this and that*, while giving us less and less rules to rely on, and giving players more and more wacky options, that create more difficulties when creating an encounter.
Even a traditionally dangerous creature, that required preparation to face head-on - a werewolf i- s essentially useless now, because it has no ranged attack, and half of the characters have flight from the get-go, and there's usually a cantrip or even a spell that everyone gets for free [BTW. cantrips should scale with caster-level (like spell slots do) and not character level, and I'm going to die on this hill].
The CR system had it's issues from the start, and it is more and more broken with every book's release. D&D is just becoming more and more anti-DM.
I love the forgotten realsms, and i'm really, really hanging on there, but I'll just have to switch to Pathfinder 2ed at this rate.
@@joshuaturner8853 yeah, I they'll just add some generic rechargable abilities, either that or delayed damage crits
I think they should have an index in the back that flags Racial Features as "Dominant" and "Recessive", so your half-orc can be inspiring, lift heavy loads and get the dash, OR get the extra starting feat and the free Death Ward.
I feel like this would be a quick and easy way of making the options of mixed race meaty but not a headache. We don't want a Gurps 5th edition here.
I like this approach a lot. It could be super simple too. Have features tagged as major/minor. If you are a half-whatever pic the major traits from one and the minor from another. This way no one could stack the stronger major traits for balance. But you would actually feel unique and not just a reskin.
This is definitely a good idea. The problem I saw with the half races is that people will just cherry pick the best options of both leaving the pure races feeling underpowered. It would almost force everyone to be a half-race to be optimal. This solution would prevent people from doing that while also giving people the choices. Great solution to the problem lol
@@Bemused247 a more complex idea i had, which i actually left in the survey, was a sort of trait point system where every trait that a race has would have a score out of 10, the more powerful the trait, the higher the cost, and half-races could use a budget of trait points to buy features from their parents, with a budget of maybe 10, or their parents total divided by 2 or some-such. i haven't fleshed it out yet, but i like it
>We don't want a Gurps 5th edition here
And you suggest an additional mechanic... like the gurps does. Bruh
@@CarlosDiaz-je1bg Players wouldn’t be able to do that based on the way the rules are written. You select physical features from both, but your traits all come from one race. Playing a mixed race is purely cosmetic
I like the idea of inverting that inspiration rule so that you get inspiration from failing with a natural 1 instead of succeeding with a natural 20. Then it would sort of balance out the luck at the table instead of making the lucky ones even luckier. Plus, it makes more logical sense to me since the ones who fail would be motivated by that failure to do better.
It takes a special person to be motivated by failure; most aren't. That being said, in creating a character, you are trying to make an exceptional person, so maybe that fits. Stil, as a general rule, people are MUCH more motivated by success than failure.
i feel like this would work best as an innate ability for certain races, like hafling luck. it would make sense for some races (or even backgrounds) to be motivated by failure, and to be able to gain inspiration from a nat 1
Potentially exploitable since you can "farm" inspiration by trying to ask your DM to make a bunch of non-impactful ability checks. Would be even more effective in a video game adaptation.
Looking at you Bartholomew Osiris Bladesong...
@@BoyoWhoGoesPoyo True, but that was also true of the original rule. I feel like the DM will have to rein in the players regardless.
PF2e uses the phrase ABC’s in regards to character creation as they ditched the term race for Ancestry :) It’s a great change, telling people to remember their ABC’s helps a lot of new 2e players in character creation ^^
would love for them to walk away from using race as a game term entirely. There is also a great supplement on DMs Guild going in a same direction. Ancestry sounds cool, too.
@@florianbocher7596 I almost stopped watching when they spouted out "You could call these the ABC's of Character Creation... feel free to use that WotC" as if they came up with it. Yes WotC, please do... so that Paizo can sue the $#it out of you for stealing a phrase that they coined with the release of Pathfinder Second Edition. In 2009.
I get it that most of these RUclipsrs see bank off of association with D&D 5E. But pretending that other companies don't exist AND stealing their IP? Big fail.
@@florianbocher7596 What supplement?
There's also D - Don't forget your 4 free boosts!
@@HuevoBendito Haha - how could I forget!
Eldritch Blast is not part of the spell lists, making it feel like it will be an innate ability of warlocks and thus might have the ability to crit. This could also fix the situation where 2 levels of warlock gets you the best cantrip scaling in the game. The ability to crit could also be included in things like sneak attack.
The way it's currently worded only unarmed strikes and weapon attacks can crit, which wouldn't include magical effects/abilities like a theoretical 5.5e warlock's eldritch blast.
@@Mike_L. But the phrasing of Eldritch Blast and Sneak Attack might in the new reprinting have "this attack can crit" or some other similar wording. We simply don't know yet.
That makes a lot of sense to me, class/race abilities being abilities and not a traditional SPELL, meaning it can crit does solve this issue and is what I think they're actually attempting here.
@@SheenaMalfoy right, none of this is final; things likely will change. I'm just speculating. But the way critting specifically applies only to martial attacks, I doubt their intent (at time of publishing the UA at least) is to include *any* magical abilities in that. EB would need wording along the lines of "this attack is considered a weapon attack for the purposes of critical hits" or something to not outright conflict with those rules, which is very odd and seems unlikely to me. Not sure how sneak attack will be treated though.
I'm not a fan of magic attacks not being able to crit to be clear.
@@Mike_L. The reason Eldritch Blast is being called out specifically is because it has been left out of all 3 spell lists, meaning it will most likely be restricted to the Warlock only and is therefore not "abusable" by other casters taking a feat. As such, it might receive special treatment as it appears to be a class feature now, rather than a "normal" spell.
The ABCs huh. Great idea, you can see exactly how thise work in the Pathfinder 2e Core rulebook. 😉
it's genius, idk how monty came up with it. they should change subrace to heritage, wotc you can have that one for free too! 🤣
And then you seem to get a Feat more or less arbitrarily. So... ABCF ? feels like we need D and E :)
@@Silenc42 E is for equipment. Now we just need to come up with a synonym for skills that starts with D. ;)
@@Torvik40 D is for Deity. Glad were all giving this out for free.
The biggest thing I would like to see with Ancestry/Race is essentially tiers of traits. So if all races get a Tier 1, 2, 3 traits you can mix and match them really easily for multiracial characters
Then play pathfinder 2e
Would you have the most powerful abilities only accessible to pure blood of that race to prevent power builds picking and choosing?
@@brianschneider1961 The way I would think of this would be something like this:
Human:
Tier 1: Resourceful
Tier 2: Skillful
Tier 3: Versatile
Dwarf:
Tier 1: Darkvision + Dwarven Resillience
Tier 2: Forge Wise
Tier 3: Dwarven Toughness + Stronecunning
Orc:
Tier 1: Darkvision + Powerful Build
Tier 2: Relentless Endurance
Tier 3: Adrenaline Rush
Something like that not sure exactly.
So if you wanted to be a Human-Orc you could essentially pick 2+1.
So you could have:
T1: Darkvision+Powerful Build
T2: Relentless Endurance
T3: Versatile
So you would 'lose' an inspiration on long rest automatically as a trade off for darkvision+carry capacity/weight movement. You lose a skill but you gain relentless endurance. Then you gain the feat and lose adrenaline rush.
Honestly, that's a really good idea. I might implement that into my next campaign. I'm considering giving some of the new material a cautious playtest in a future home game.
I mean, it sounds good as a "one and done" concept, but given that D&D always involves more material, it just means they have an ever-growing list of traits the need to juggle to avoid broken combinations. Honestly, I think the current approach is the most effective overall, but sadly it does kill off the defining feature of half elves.
On the crit success/fail point I think instead of it being a crit success is an auto-success and a crit fail is an auto-fail it can be more of a “rolling a 20 will make failures less punishing, and rolling a 1 will make successes less rewarding”. If the DC is 13 for a long jump and your rogue rolls a 1 with a +14, instead of it being “well I literally can’t fail this”, it’s now “I made it across the gap but something else is going to happen”. You can follow up by saying the rogue cleared the gap, but barely and they’re hanging on to the ledge and now have to make a strength check. On the other side, you can have a very un-dexterous character roll a 20 on the same check but they actually have a -8. They fail the check, but don’t instantly just fall to their death, they get a chance to pull themselves up too
Edit: I’m also super down for calling it 5.1 and every few years when we get a new update, it becomes 5.2, 5.3, etc until it really feels like we need a 6. I think 5e is good enough to be a living edition, and 6 is probably not necessary
Honestly I've been waiting to hear y'all's take on this the most and it was the best breakdown I've watched so far!
There are some major issues that I have with the presented play test material
1) critical hits for weapon or unarmed strikes only seems like a massive blow to “blaster” style spell casters
2) No monster critical hits also is another issue. This makes cannon fodder just that cannon fodder that will pose no threat what so ever to mid level PCs (5th or 6th level)
3) the change to grappling to a set DC from the opposed str (athletics)checks is a major nerf to that play-style / tactic
4) the 1 auto fail 20 auto success is also another issue (adding in gaining inspiration on 20 as well) makes for more rolls when one wouldn’t be necessary.
on point 2, if they just give every monster atleast 1 special attack, DM can deterministically use it when they want, they want DM to have more control over the story. so with a good DM it will be even better. monster crits are basically special attack now
@@SoulShadow69 that is IF they do.
I'd argue the change in grappling rules is a sidegrade or slight upgrade, as while theres now no reason to invest in Athletics, it being looped in with unarmed strikes just made monks viable for consistent cc, and now also makes a dex grappler possible. Contested checks was cool, and you could effectively lock down an enemy, I like that now I can be a walking faerie fire in a group of enemies simply by investing in my primary attack stat.
Honestly all I want now is ability/ spell support on unarmed strikes, and I'll be in heaven.
@@Cosmic_K13 while I can see your point I would like to present one of my favorite characters: he was a barbarian human and at level one he had advantage (when raging) on his str check to grapple you with a +7 to his roll at level one (thanks to his skill expertise with his feat selection) With the new system his DC is a 13. Against the same class they have a +5 to their save requiring a roll of 8 or higher to escape. That is a pretty significant decrease in scale of effectiveness mathematically.
@@SoulShadow69 again while I can see that “if” they add those special attacks it would be an equalizer I feel it takes from the DMs discretion. Any DM that would allow a bugbear to crit a second level PC to death (outright not death saves) shouldn’t be behind the screen. However removing a threat makes the PCs more likely to cake walk through situations. Not to mention there are several class features that are designed around nullifying critical hits. To me it seems like they created more work for themselves instead of sticking to their stated mission objective of retaining “backward” compatibility.
I absolutely love what they did with the Orc. I always liked Orcs but felt like they were largely overshadowed by half-orc abilities. Now they get the best of both worlds.
This is the main change I am most looking forward to. Orcs deserve to be good PCs.
@@momomomocensoredbyyoutube9085 not really, because they retain distinct features despite outsourcing the ASIs to backgrounds. Also feats being more easily and widely available is definitely a win for me.
So far my group has been trying the new rules, and this is what we found:
- We found the inspiration on crits actually rather nice, and inspiration farming has been a thing.
- Our bard/warlock with eldritch blast kept getting nat 20's, and is dishing out inspiration to others as free support tokens. We only have one question: since it's from a bard, is it bardic inspiration?
- Our main tank, a grappler, is absolutely LOATHING the grappling changes. He put expertise in athletics with a feat and now it means nothing in regards to what he was aiming to do. We are currently thinking of ways to circumvent this issue, our first attempt is going to be to change the Grappler feat to give +1 STR ASI and double proficiency on the save DC.
Edit: We just ran into another issue with grappling. Since it is now an "unarmed strike", we actually have to beat AC for it to connect. We didn't have this problem for a while, most of the enemies had low-mid AC. However when our grappler wanted to pull our paladin out of a web via a grapple, we didn't know if it could be done automatically or if it had to be considered an unarmed strike. We decided to go RAW, and our grappler couldn't do it with the paladin's really high AC. How the heck does that make sense?
- We are split on only weapons and unarmed strikes doing critical damage. Our current understanding is that its likely to help martial characters not be left behind in the late game when casters become bonkers. This has definitely allowed our monk to catch up in damage, which means this change wasn't without some serious thought and helps with some balancing issues. Try to keep that in mind.
- One of our players had a half aasimar half centaur character, which only kept the centaur traits. This was sadly lowkey mocked by groups and sometimes took some convincing to allow into games at all. Now, its official, and the player had the biggest grin showing that to the test group.
- We tested the recharge on crit for monsters with our BBEG which had a charging force damage legendary action. It seemed underwhelming at first until a crit allow the BBEG to gain a charge of it's legendary actions and reactions, which it used to suddenly curb-stomp our barbarian with force damage. The crit was on a weaker attack with physical damage on said barbarian, so the old crit would not have dealt near as much damage as allowing the force damage legendary action to go off. Our thoughts on the creature crits instantly changed from "meh doesn't look good" to "oooooh NOW we understand!"
which bit is the recharge on crit rule? is that just a common idea people had surrounding this?
Yeah... Let your barbarian grapple. That change is awful.
@@Hazel-xl8in It was something talked about in the interviews about One DnD. The actual rules aren't in the PDF, not that we've found. We just tried to create the rule as best as we could because the "creatures can't crit" rule just didn't sit right with anyone. We wanted to see exactly how this change would affect gameplay before deciding it was bad. So far, we found it to be rather effective and fun, especially with any creature that had multiple abilities. In our case it was the BBEG with a charge attack legendary action that dealt heavy force damage.
*Ba-dum, TISH* on the bardic inspiration pun.
I have a question?
Why is it said that martials only critting is a buff to martials. Isn't it a nerf for certain casters who are already using their great spells on non crits like wall of force or meteor storm?
The name is my biggest pet peeve. Like when the Xbox One came out or whenever a franchise decides to reboot and uses the same title for their movie that they used 15 years ago.
Great video as always, gents. Your analyses dont miss; very insightful examinations of the material we’ve been given.
Also wanted to take a moment to suggest a peek at the books “An Orc and an Elf Had a Little Baby: Parentage and Upbringing in D&D” (one and two) in reference to the issues with the mechanics of mixed race/ancestry. I was put on by GinnyDi, who did an entire video on the mechanics if you need to be sold on it.
Anyway, thanks for your presence and positive influence in the community, Monty and Kelly. Keep up the great work!
What I find somewhat interesting is right there on the first page, first sentence under "Determining your Origin":
"After choosing your character’s Class, it’s time to consider the character’s origin."
This seems to imply that in One D&D we'll be choosing our Class first, which is not the order presented in PHB 2014.
and that's why it's actually difficult to playtest these new rules. if we want to make a new character under the playtest rules, we should be choosing our class first!
You can do it in whatever order man, why you gotta follow rules to make a character you want to enjoy?
@@alexzephyris1455 hi alex. because D&D is a game, and games need to have certain rules and parameters for there to be enjoyment for everyone. i could playtest these character origins rules to build characters to play a one-shot with my groups, but at the moment i only have part of the tools we would need to build characters
But to some degree it makes a lot of sense at least for me. The most important think about my hero is what they do and the rest explains and adds to their depth. D&D classes are the defining atribute of each heroic story. 🙂
I think most mechanically oriented people already did it that way.
After reading through the UA for One D&D Character Origins, I've come to notice one thing that stand out over all the other little things that are changing.
While One D&D is technically backwards compatible on a mechanics level (from what I can tell so far from Character Origins UA), there is power creep too, making it clear that the One D&D (or whatever they are going to call it) material is the strictly better options.
To explain what I mean, I'm going to use something that has already happened in another Wizards of the Coast product - Magic: the Gathering. If you look at top decks from recent tournaments in the Modern format, you will see that a large number of the played cards are from 2 sets: Modern Horizons, and Modern Horizons 2. Both these sets where pushed past the 'newer' formats straight into Modern (and older formats), so their power level was higher. So high that if you want to be competitive, you are heavily incentivised to buy MH cards. Very few of the more recent sets cards are even in those decks, if any at all.
I see One D&D doing the same for D&D. Using the Human as an example. In 5E, ignoring the ability boosts, because they are now in the background, the Variant human (closest equivalent One D&D Human) gets 2 features: a skill proficiency and a feat, while the One D&D Human gets 3 features: a skill proficiency, a feat, and the free Inspiration ability. That makes the One D&D option is strictly better than the 5E version, incentivising you to use it instead.
And there is a reason for this power creep, just like the power creep in the MTG example above. The strictly better options will incentivise people to purchase the new books, while Wizards gets to keep up with the narrative that it is backwards compatible.
IMO, forcing One D&D to be backwards compatible is actually hindering the design space for the game's developers. They have to stay within the core rules of 5E, meaning there's less freedom to experiment on newer ideas.
On a side note, I personally don't like the "if you don't like it, don't use it" and "just house rule it" arguments in response to anything Wizards releases for D&D. We shouldn't need to "fix" a game we pay money for. And these responses are allowing D&D to print whatever they want rather than being held accountable for what they are doing. I really hope this One D&D playtest goes well and that we get a complete, less buggy system out of it at the end. One where we don’t need to “fix” it ourselves, or at least not have “fix” it to the point that we aren’t even playing the released product we payed money for.
"On a side note, I personally don't like the "if you don't like it, don't use it" and "just house rule it" arguments in response to anything Wizards releases for D&D"
As another D&D youtuber I watched earlier said that's the "Rule Zero Fallacy." Just because you can house rule or change anything doesn't excuse rules from being bad or poorly balanced.
You are comparing two very different games and experiences. MTG has a competitive nature and tournaments, RPG is about role playing with your friends, cooperating with each other.
"One D&D" isn't even all that backwards compatible from purely mechanical standpoint. For example, if monsters can't crit, a fairly core ability of Cleric of the Grave is now absolutely useless.
And the "don't like don't use" crowd drives me up a wall. The time for criticism is right now, when things are very much in progress and can be changed. The closer we are to launch, the more locked in things get. Like you can disagree, I welcome it, but bring a better argument to the table.
the DMG is also getting revamped for 2024, so I'm sure there will be a note telling DMs not to ask for rolls unless there is a legit way to both succeed or fail. I like Monty's suggestion of restricting SOME checks by proficiency. I doubt wotc would go for it, but it's a mechanically and narratively sound way of discerning who should be able to roll for those high DC checks.
Restricting by proficiency is something I already do to a certain extent, regardless of the DC. It just depends on the skill and the situation. Anyone could _attempt_ to climb a wall with Athletics for example, but if I may only allow characters proficient in History to roll to see if they know some obscure historical fact or not. I know, realistically, anyone _might_ happen to know this fact, but it feels better to reward a player for "investing" in History proficiency, and allowing anyone to roll all the time diminishes that investment if the 3 Intelligence barbarian without proficiency gets a lucky 20.
The house rule I played with back in 3.5E was that a natural 1 was a -10 to the overall role, and a natural 20 was a +10 to an overall role, and a chart of typical levels of challenge for DCs from 5 to 40 was generally known to both the players and the DM and this felt very fair. I think in the stat bounded 5E a similar thing could be accomplished with 1s being -5 and 20s being +5 and a similar but scaled chart of DCs
The answer to the d20 test is simple: impossible tasks can’t be d20 tests.
Done, the DM should always have the ability to say “no” to an outlandish request (unless it’s really cool for the table).
The problem is, what is and isnt impossible vary from character to character. Whether it is possible or not to seduce the barmaid will depend on the sexuality of the npc and the sex of the character attempting it. If the entire party attempts to jump a ravine, and 4 of the 5 have strength scores of 14+ but the fifth person has a strength of 8, does the DM say "okay, everyone except player 5 roll. Player 5 just fails automatically"? Because I feel like singling out specific players is wrong. And, that's assuming the DM knows the party's stats, which they may not. DMs arent expected to memorize those things.
@@Sirxeko if the difference is small enough that only one person can’t make it, then a nat 20 (imo) should still succeed (maybe a gust of wind gave them that extra push or something). And if they fail then the other character should get a reaction to catch his hand (because putting a check like that without other means to cross seems a bit sadistic to me).
This would be one of the better uses for the crit success rule.
It's actually in the rules for d20 test already. "A d20 test only occurs when the DC is between 5 and 30." Granted it's possible for some characters to get over a 30, but that's the outlier that they can allow to fall outside the "normal" rules.
@@Sirxeko then that's just the party not being able to think of a solution, you as the dm are the eyes ears and reason of the CHARACTERS. it's your job to make the PLAYERS perfectly clear of the situation they're in within reason of their CHARACTERS understanding so if a weak CHARACTER in this case should know they can't make that jump. and an example solution would be the party simply needs to attach a rope to them before they jump and as a party help that other CHARACTER. as one possible solution. making it a group check instead of a single member.
It's a lot better to just have the option to let them roll and then say they fail than outright saying no.
No reason to cut down on the funny interactions with a DM telling them how spectacularly they failed the roll.
The ribbon features for backgrounds were what made them "sit" in the world. Removing them and turning them into a purely mechanical thing removes some of the flavour. Unless they also redo the skills to ensure there is some balance it will also result in a lot less variety in skills as people look for any opportunity to take skills like Perception and Athletics while calling their background Librarian.
There are some really good things in the suggested rules, but the tendency to allow all races to do all things also removes some flavour - I can appreciate the difference between High and Wood Elf is cultural for things like Int vs Wis, but there are also biomechanical differences which would account for their Dex bonus vs, say, a Dwarf.
I wish they had assigned one fixed stat bonus to lineages - one that was determined by actual concrete biomechanics. And one that was flexible to reflect culture. That sort of thing would also allow easy racial customisation - select a base race (Elf), get some features with that, then take a choice of others to reflect upbringing. For half races you could pick one base template and then take the other features from the second.
I certainly agree that entirely replacing background abilities with feats actually cuts down on unique plays from people actually using them. I'm currently playing a character that couldn't exist without the unique background ability.
So librarians can't pay attention or exercise? Lol
@@jaceks88 congratulations on both missing the point and proving it in one go.
Background skills are in theory going to be related to the background. Sure a librarian can have situational awareness and athleticism but they're likely to be the class skills not the background ones.
To expand a bit - the complete freedom to choose 2 skills, stat mods, language, tool and feat without limitation means it's not actually a background. It's just making some random choices.
It's not too different in theme from doing away with races or classes and just letting people pick abilities freely.
Great for power play, as long as the game plays ad expected, but it is likely to remove a lot of flavour. Limitations in the sense of certain things removing the options for.others are a big part of character development and roleplay.
My issue with natural 1s and 20s are each are a 5% chance. Being a rogue that fails to hide an easy check where the shiney paladin makes it is silly to me
I agree. How would you feel about a crit only auto succeeding if you have proficiency?
And I'm personally the opposite. I think that it shows that chance of an accident happening and 5% is just real world mechanics of it. It really just comes down to the DM/Players being being able to come up with an in world reason for it. That's a part of storytelling. Like the example you come up with, maybe the rogue got caught up in some dust and started having a sneezing fit. That's draws in whoever they're trying to hide from and is what causes them from being able to see the Paladin. If it so unreasonable that you don't think you can come up with an in game reason for the success/failure, don't do the d20 test.
@@duelist301 5% is very high for that. Most process once perfected have failure rates
Yep. This is just ony good example of many. I hope this doesn't survive playtesting, but there's a good chance it does. I'll ignore it when I DM, but it will suck when I play at other tables.
@@tomasxfranco yea we’ll this isn’t the real world. It’s a game. You’re gonna fail sometimes or there would be no dramatic moments. It’s easy to tell who’s commenting as a player and who’s commenting as a dm on this video lol
Regarding the skill checks, I usually have my players narrate, before I ask them for a roll, how they would achieve a certain task they are attempting. This offloads the responsibility to come up with a ridiculous explanation of how your character jumped the 60’ gap. Also, if they can’t come up with a plausible way their character could do something… they are not bummed when I don’t let them roll. This on its own could solve the skill check problem.
It should say clearly and in boldface in the rules that a DM should let the player know what a nat20 roll will do before they roll. This will solve a lot of problems.
“You can try to jump to the top of the parapet, but a nat20 is only going to get you a 15 foot standing high jump.”
@@gamelairtim I like this idea. As with life at large so much can be solved or prevented by clear communication and managing expectations.
I don't understand why most RPG can't spell out the most basic things about adjudication, especially DnD.
1) The DM asks "here's the situation, what do you do?"
2) The player describes what their character is doing /attempts / wants to do.
3) The DM says no because it's impossible or implausible, the DM says yes because there's no doubt the character would succeed and the stakes are low, or the DM says roll because there's a risk, uncertainty or a gradient of success.
4) Repeat.
Sole table it's almost the reverse so it leads to problem "ok so I want to persuade the king... 26! I want him to give me the crown". "DM: uh I guess you're the king now...).
I haven't looked at the DMG, and I imagine they will need to provide some clarification, but the new rules that pertain to skills do say that you only roll when the difficulty is between 5 and 30. Assuming there is some guidance on how to set difficulties, you should be able to tell a player, yes roll and there is a reasonable chance for them to 5% fail and 5% credit, or no there is no reason to roll based on that boundary. Either you should be fine with them running up the wall, or you should be able to tell them that would be impossible. Hopefully there is some guideline to setting those difficulties above 30.
Changing the wording to "best possible logical outcome" would also help quite a bit.
Let's say I have a player who wants to run up a sheer cliff. He can't do it, but I want to determine if he breaks his leg or escapes unscathed. I would have him roll a d20. If he got a nat20, hed be fine.
I don't necessarily want to decide one way or another myself, so I let the dice decide, but I determine the range beforehand. It would nice if RAW backed that up instead of implied I was in the wrong.
Saying "it's impossible" can also be a bit strange depending on the circumstances. Perhaps you have a big bad, that due to magic, is currently unkillable. Letting players roll and miss every time while the villain just stands and laughs can be an interesting way of revealing his magic immortality, especially when they roll a nat20 and the best they can get is "your sword cuts down where he was, the arc and curve perfect, the power behind the swing just enough, but just as you get close, he blinks away."
A terrifying moment that could be metagamed out of existence if I were required to either let them win, or if I refuse to let them roll to attack.
I may be behind and someone may have already pointed this out, but the playtest doc actually has, in the D20 Test section; "The DM determines whether a d20 Test is
warranted in any given circumstance."
“You can never go wrong with giving more options” That’s certainly a players perspective, But from a DM and Game Design perspective, more options make it harder to balance the game and creates more work for the dungeon master. It’s great that 5th edition has brought in so many new players, but let’s give the DM’s some help as well.
Agreed. Not a D&D player yet or a ttrpg player, but I do understand. Paizo's Pathfinder 2e has a lot of options, but it's also balanced by good game design.
D&D One just screams poor game design. I don't know what to think of it other than it will be watered down that people will bore out.
Poor DMs. Been there, done that, no t-shirt though. Sometimes it was fun, sometimes it was a pain in the rear (keep it family friendly). Well, nobody ever said that being de facto god was going to be easy. "God is an overwhelming responsibility." -- Ian Anderson (1972)
They key is having the raw power come from the class and the options just giving more things to do. PF2 feats don't really make you more powerful, just more diverse and give you more choices to do in combat. The difference between a min-maxed PC and a new player is far lower than other editions I've played.
I think some of these rules have been interpreted as common house rules by Wizards when in actuality they are extremely common rule mistakes that are made by people who dont read the rules. By making these changes they are "forcing" people who actually run the rules correctly to play like those who dont care about them enough to read them. Instead of changing the rules to what people who would actually use them want
Any data for this?
@@johnroush5731 in the one dnd Jeremy Crawford interview when they get to the critcal hits section Jeremy says hes "lost count of the number of people who have asked him if spells can crit". Then the auto success and failure on a 1 and 20 doesnt need much of an explanation I hope. I've been at multiple table where almost everyone had no clue about it, and I've seen a lot of posts on reddit whether it be a dm asking for help, or a horror story about people not knowing that 20 doesnt mean you can do anything.
Edit: 22:35 is a perfect example of this
Those are the two main ones I can think of currently.
Exactly this💯
I Have to disagree. 1 - There is NO correct way to run D&D. The rules from day one were meant to be guidelines not a bible. It was always intended for DM's to RUN the game as appropriate for their table. 2 - many of the rules are poorly written and open to interpretation. 3 - they are not forcing any one to do anything. You will still be free to make your own house rules just like always.
@@MeHasCake131 i fully understand what you are saying, because most spells that affect a target require it to make a saving throw. however, there about 30 spells that require attack rolls, including some of the most commonly used spells in the game e.g. Eldritch Blast and Firebolt. Is it really true that MOST people didn't know that you could crit on those spells?
I always tell my players that I don't want my players rolling checks until I ask for them. they provide an action they want to do, I determine a roll.
Hopefully we'll see some kind of entry for new DM's to tell players "No." to rolling on impossible actions.
First time I've heard of players rolling without the DMs permission for ability checks
I'm sure we will see this in the text. It was there in the UA text. The problem isn't only players, though. There are many DMs who call for rolls for even absurd minutiae.
Now, there's a built-in 5% failure rate for even superfluous rolls that my character shouldn't be required to make in the first place. Yuck. No thanks. 👎🏻👎🏻
@@elementzero3379 The DM is still in control so unless you're DMing some official league or something, you can modify any rules you want. I do the same as you. I don't make players roll the easy stuff (especially if they are skilled).
@Chaos_Gaming234 Or "allow the roll if you have a dramatically-appropriate way for the attempt to fail but want to increase the tension a bit" if you're at a table full of drama nerds. "Only require rolls when the outcome is uncertain" should definitely be very visible in instructions to new DMs, though, if it's not there in the rules already.
I like that, kind of off-putting when the dm is handling something woth another player and someone is like li roll this ,this and this. Then start rolling dice.
Re: Final Thoughts, I think WotC intends to migrate D&D to a "lifestyle product" model, like we see in video games now. I can't imagine they'd plaster a "5.5" on it, the idea is to have a multi-platform content engine through D&D Beyond, physical books, etc., to assert further market domination via their already established (but controversial) "ease of access" and popularity.
Precisely. This is super reminiscent to "Xbox Series ___" that M$ is doing.
I think they should simply call it D&D ... forget the edition... referring to an edition means past. We don't call the current versions of software by their current version (windows for eg) unless it is in context of comparing to or referencing an older version in the same conversation.
@@keithnewsome7729 Windows 10 is called Windows 10, not just Windows.
Thank you, for the 40minute PF2e ad.
I'm sure this comment will go unseen but, I just wanted to say thank you. You two have helped my fall in love with D&D over the past 2 years that I have been watching your channel. The break downs on classes and subclasses have helped my with building characters that I enjoy playing. Right now I am playing a crystal gem dragonborn oath of vengeance paladin and this has been the most fun character i have played yet. With one D&D I'm even more excited to see the changes they make and hope they add to the game. The wording as it stands right now can be confusing so hope that gets fixed.
Seconded, this channel really helped to foster my understanding of 5e's mechanics and allowed me to bring out the best in my games.
I love the idea of tying Major ASIs to classes and Minor ASIs to “Ancestry” and Background. The Auto Succeed and Failure Rules I don’t enjoy as a DM, in my opinion (much like what’s said in the video) if you’re not proficient with a skill you can’t “crit to succeed,” but there is definitely a balance of knowing when to ask for a roll and when not too. Great video guys!
While taking the survey I actually came up with the idea of having +1s for two stats determined by the race/ancestry, the 2 from the background, and 2, or more, from the class. And they stack, so picking either a race, sub-race, or background with a class's primary ability scores would get you a +2 in it, or maybe a +3, I left both options for handling overlap, either cap at +2, and the 3rd +1 to an ability score gets freed up to go elsewhere.
@@Tiyev That's basically how it works in Pathfinder 2e
@@SeismicHammer Well, similar. In PF 2e, you have a free/floating stat boost with your ancestry, and again with your background. And another 4 to put where you choose. But those all form your stats _in place_ of rolling or using point buy, rather than adding onto rolled or point-bought numbers.
The problem with this, there will always be those players that think that stats are everything, and so will NEVER select an ABC that doesn't give them the key stats for the type of character they are playing. The second you tie ability boosts to anything....you immediately and permanently reduce customability. Its far better to keep ability boosts 100% seperate from everything else. You pick your ABC, then you get your +2/+1 to whatever you want....no strings attached.
I love a lot of the ideas of DnD One especially feats and the entire way racials and backgrounds have been reworked but as a forever DM, the mechanics on the D20 rule make it feel like a lot of the creativity and personal flair of setting DCs and levels of success feels like it gets ruined :( I feel like it overlooks a lot of the DM struggles and focuses on making things fun for players while forgetting that DMs are players too. Having auto successes and failures as well as taking away crits from monsters and spell power just makes it harder for me to feel invested personally which sucks especially since I’m the one running the world. I’m probably gonna try to implement the leveled feats and background ideas but entirely ignore the D20 rule just bc it feels punishing rather than rewarding me for asking my players questions or if they ask me questions I just truly don’t have a good answer to or have the ability to prep or improvise
Ignore DND and find a different system, even maybe one you made yourself
Hi friend, to be fair we as DMs always have a power to decide how far our players succeeded or how deep they failed. 1still means the worst possible outcome you allow and the 20 is still the best variant you had prepared. :-)
I quite like the idea of having different attack patterns for monsters than my players because it's less of a total chance game on my side. I will decide when the enemy is enraged or frustrated enough to use their beefy attack and that's ok. :-)
I'm with you considering the spell crit mechanics.
@@alexzephyris1455 Why?
But what does actually change from what you are already doing (with auto fail or auto success)? What example would you have where you thought an action required a roll to determine outcome but the 1 didn't give some degree of failure or the 20 didn't give some degree of success?
@@Crisguss22 This. Personally I feel if there is no narratively interesting consequence to the roll, there's no need to roll at all. Having said that the DM also controls what it means to "succeed" or "fail". A fail doesn't have to mean failing the task completely if that doesn't make sense. It can just be a complication. And the complication doesn't have to be actually attributed to the player's action. For example a failed stealth roll could happen because the player stepped on the tail of a small critter that cries out in pain and bites their ankle. Or failing at wall climbing could be due to a loose brick. There are plenty of options. All this rule really does is make sure that we aren't rolling dice needlessly.
Did you also notice how Background Features are missing, I mean many people forget about them but they still add flavor to roleplay and downtime not to mention add to flavor related to a character's backstory.
While I don't particularly like them (basically if you have never been to a city you really shouldn't have any benefit - I prefer actual rp). My assumption is that they are not included because the default option (and the one most players are going to use) is the build your own background option. The backgrounds presented are only suggestions and samples/examples. I think to include the background features, you would probably have to exclude the build your own option as background features suffer greatly from there being only one or two options you should ever take and should never take the others.
They're being replaced by the Feat. I kinda get it since yes, plenty of people forget about the soft features or end up never being in a position to use them, but I liked how they helped define how your character fit into and interacted with the larger world.
I agree that we do lose something with the switch from unique background features to a handful of feats. While I think it's true that background features rarely get used, that just suggests to me that they needed clearer mechanical support, not that they should be ditched.
@@satiricalbard1 I think the reason they don't have a clearer mechanical support is because its a lot harder to do in a game. So for example, in the Acolyte, you have shelter of the faithful which allows you to get free healing at a temple of your chosen deity. I'm not sure how common it is, but I tend to play with the average person at a temple having no magical ability, as I don't think its reasonable for every cleric in every temple to have magical abilities and for there to still be anyone sick.
Or the criminal background has Criminal contact, which lets you have liaison...which is cool, except that liaison naturally has to be in a specific city, which makes it less beneficial. Knowing corrupt caravan masters and seedy sailors likewise is more dependent on whether or not you are in a city you are familiar with.
So many of them are DM specific, or location specific and may or may not ever become relevant in a game because of that.
With the pick your own option of One D&D, I can see where people would really only pick one or two of them, and the rest would be ignored. This is the same issue with spells, while it sounds cool to have a hundred spells, ultimately you really only have three spells that should ever under any circumstance should be used. Healing Word and Cure wounds are two good examples, as you should always use healing word and not cure wounds. Cure wounds sounds cool, but you are essentially giving up an action to give them slightly more hp. Your average roll on a cure wounds is almost never going to give you enough hp to survive getting hit, so healing word would have worked. Since healing word is a bonus action you can still do something and dealing damage is usually better than the hopeful chance of getting a party member up and in combat long enough to even act. At higher levels especially if you are playing a grave cleric, cure wounds might become an option, but it really isn't until that point.
Recently I was playing a moon druid and this became even more apparent, as you can turn into "any" beast you have seen, If you happen to be a level six moon druid, you turn into a Giant Elk and anything else is inferior, so you really only have one animal you can turn into during combat.
With all that said...honestly, I think the biggest reason nothing like that appears within the play test document is that it is a play test document and therefore doesn't contain anything that would be considered fluff (exception for some necessary information about races).
@@satiricalbard1 In case you don't read the whole thing, I think the background features are rarely used because they are game and DM specific and mechanical support probably results in really only a couple background features that would ever be used.
With that said, the likely reason they don't appear in the play test document, is because in general a play-test document isn't going to have fluff (some exceptions for race info). Since background features aren't really game mechanics and belong in the fluff category, that is something that is likely a long ways away from being written or thought about.
The thing to remember on the D20 checks - on a critical hit you don't automatically kill the monster, you just hit and do more damage. This is the critical success, allowing a better success on a more fluid idea of skill checks.
So far I get "Pathfinder 2E Light" vibe from One D&D - which is a good thing, given how much better P2E is than vanilla 5e.
I think the autofail for a 1 needs looking at a little more closely. It seems quite drastic that every challenge any character takes will just go wrong 5% of the time. If I failed at everything I did that was skill based irl 5% of the time I'd be considered a major clutz.
Maybe it'd work within the game system on a fun level (My most memorable TTRPG moments have come from failures) but it still feels a little much for a complete master of a skill attempting a relatively easy feat to just fumble it 5% of the time.
Speaking as someone who has used this rule for a long time, it really doesn’t change the game too much. Most of the time you’re gonna fail on a Nat 1 without this rule anyway. What it does do is create alot of interesting moments and balances out the fact that players will ALWAYS find a way to steamroll your encounters/situations. I fully endorse using this rule
You're missing the point. The nat 1 doesn't represent YOUR ABILITY. I'm sure you're a very sneaky rogue or charming bard or intelligent wizard. The nat 1 represents THE ENTIRE WORLD AROUND YOU THAT YOU CAN'T CONTROL. It doesn't matter how sneaky the rogue is if the guard has a dog that can smell him. It doesn't matter how charming the bard is if the beer maiden is a lesbian. It doesn't matter how intelligent the wizard is if he just never studied that particular topic.
Nat 1s aren't "LOL YOU'RE BAD GIT GUD" it's "the conditions weren't suitable".
There is always a chance for failure, no matter how good you are at anything.
@@TonyFlowNMMM Exactly this. The only people it affects are people like Rogues, which they are annoying anyway. All the PC classes are skilled, reliable people and yet Rogues are the only ones that just "don't fail". Which makes no sense.
As a DM you just need to avoid the urge to make your players roll every time they lift a box, throw a ball, or look for their keys. Basically, don't make them roll unless it is the sort of task that has at least a 5% chance of failure.
Then probably you shouldn't ask for a roll. Like you said, most things skill based irl wouldn't require a roll. Sure, one can fail lifting a glass off the table to drink, but that kind of thing happens once every few thousand tries at least. So you don't make a roll. And if you care about degrees of success, then make a description prior to the roll to manage expectations like "Ok, roll me an Acrobatics. If you fail you just boringly land, but let's see how great a pirouette you make". And that's it, you described that a failure to make a flashy move is to just land on your feet rather than some drastic failure like spraining your foot and the player rolling will anticipate the result and accept what failure means.
Each race and background could have Primary and Secondary tags. And you're allowed to pick any primary and secondary pair from the whole list. Would be good for customization and power balancing
Something like a split of a race in to Ancestry+Culture would be great.
@@temacore1057 so like it was already? Where like all gnomes have certain traits, but there's "subraces" (cultures) that give you bonuses
@@zagzig3734 subraces aren’t that. Example would be an Elf grown among halflings, good-hearted, casual, kind and down to earth instead of how usually elves behave. That’s halfling’s general culture on Fearun. Would be cool to see those split in to specifically racial traits (ancestry) and obtained by growing among specific people (culture)
For the inspiration ... what are your thoughts about awarding inspiration for a natural "1" instead of "20"? Lazy Dungeon Master suggested this idea, as a way to encourage Players to keep on going through disappointing moments, while they already are being rewarded anyway with the automatic success of natural 20
How about on a nat 1, you roll another d20 and on an 11+ you get inspiration? So it's not a given, but there's a 50% chance your character went "aha, I know what I did wrong" or similar.
Inspiration is so powerful that I hate the idea of giving it away 5% of the time every time the dice is rolled. You take a lot of drama out of the game and widen the gap of success between role players and power gamers
@@andrewpeli9019
The rule that inspiration can’t be hoarded, but it can be shared is a great idea.
Let success flow around the table, and have players act like a team
@@leestauffenecker6227 I just really don't like that a group of characters can sit around arm wrestling before combat so they can farm inspiration, waiting until they all roll nat 20s on their checks. It encourages bad player behavior, which is not good for newer tables who don't have the etiquette down.
Blunting a 1 is better than double boosting a 20. That said 5% auto-success or auto-fail is a problem. Inspiration is a shit mechanic. Humans are far weaker than all other races, both in number of features as well as what said features do.
a lot of great ideas presented here! really loved how you mentioned the ancestry thing, the ABCs as it were. Pathfinder2e has been doing this for several years now and it was a great switch! i encourage y’all to dig into the Pathfinder2e core rulebook. lots of good ideas for One DnD! 😊
Yeah, I think people disappointed by this will most likely switch to Pathfinder 2e.
I like the idea of each piece of your character's 'back story, race, class, and background, each giving a +1 to an ability score.
Ohio. Would keep physical attributes to race which would allow the mental traits to be a part of back ground which should have a direct tie in to backstory. Class already adds a lot to the nature of the character.
@@seanrea550 It's good idea that race give you biological base abilities like constitution, dexterity or strength and background give you abilities to intelligence, wisdom or charisma because you need time to gain this type of abilities.
@@SeleneSalvatore So races aren’t allowed to be genetically predisposed to being smarter or prettier? Why not? Or even be better at processing sensory information?
Thanks for mentioning that Pathfinder already does this and more (background abilities). That is one of the things I prefer from Pathfinder over D&D 5e.
I customize so much already it won't bother me either way but I do see some positives. For example I've been doing limited level one Feats for years and have never regretted it.
I have a lot to say about character building however. Making your abilities bonus based on A.B,C. (1 each) would be a fine way to go but Wizards does it needs to be careful about washing out the races. Like with the silly idea of Medium sized Minotaurs and Centaur. As I see it the game is moving towards bland races where you pick most of your abilities and the traits are just flavor. Remember the Advanced Race Guide? A full hardcover book filled with racial details and options out the wazoo. But you go through a few times and you realize that the substance of it doesn't really amount to much - everyone gets pretty much the same bonuses and a few abilities that are only slightly different than the one behind it. You may as well just use the build your own race section at the back.
People tend to view this kind of option overload as more 'customization' and so they can be more creative but it's not that simple - not even close. There's a common idiom about games, and writing in general, and it has proven to us that restrictions breed creativity. The reason thinking outside the box with your Orcish Warlock is cool is because the restrictions make it tough. But then someone realizes that a Warlock who gets back up with Relentless Endurance is looks really cool, then draw your Greataxe and Crit the guy who did it with Savage Attacks and Orcish Fury and it feels like they just got smited. That's not 'optimized' but it's pretty darn cool.
But in the new alternative if there's too much freedom to build then that character always winds up with Hex Blade and CHR buffs, Savage Attacker, and actual Paladin splashing. Same Ancestry, Same Backgrounds, Same Classes, just with different names. You're out their Crit farming just like we do now but if we go this route we'll wind up with less creativity, not more - unless you count the numbers of people that'll be on Socials telling you how to optimize. Limits are important. I'd be fine with the stats being ABC flex as long as the races have more unique characteristics that change over time. (Like the innate spell casters or Dragon's Breath). It's already certain that Backgrounds are going to be the most flexible of the ABC's and Classes have a good level of built-in choices to make (barring a couple of bad designs), which means one of them needs to be on the restrictive end of the spectrum. One High, one Medium, one Low flex - would be best and your genetic characteristics makes the most sense to stay the same.
That's all for now. There's plenty to say about the Crit situation but that'll require another post.
Bidet
Bidet to you too :)
The interwebs are not a representative sample...in my experience fewer than half of players truly optimize. Optimize within the constraints of their character vision...yes...optimize by choosing race/class/feats centered around a maximized build...much less frequent than you would think from the endless optimization guides.
@@owensechrist1315 I think you are exactly right. In my experience I would talk about the numbers the same way. IMO things are Optimization bent is pretty reasonable. And it would be nearly ideal if a few of the feats and abilities were better balanced. This is why I don't want the system going in a 'super-flex' situation. History has proven that it narrows our creative impulses.
Restrictions breed creativity only if there are ways to overcome those restrictions. And with D&D5e there is a big problem of "every +1 to the roll matters". Like the best example is the Warlock in the PHB (without any extra books) - Pact of the Blade. Which would be the perfect for idea what you described... but unfortunately how often that will happen and how often that player will see that he missed?..
I understand your concern there because of optional rules from Tasha and how bad they are for the world building (or balancing), but they are necessary evil for the "not feeling bad" even if you are not optimizing. And those new rules are essentially the evolution of those.
One thing that I’ve gotten to mess with for inspiration. “Critical rolls” inspire your allies. Not yourself. It can be neat to be the one who springboards your allies, or be the one to get that needed push from having your friends lead by example.
That might be good, except that right now a critical hit gives you a single re-roll. With the 'inspire allies' version, it will give you as many re-rolls as there are players -1.
You actually can give your inspiration to another player and this doesn't provide mass bonuses. It works if you already have your point of inspiration too.
@@krinkrin5982 nah, just make it so that when you get a critical hit, you choose a single ally to grant advantage to. It doesn’t have to be the whole party.
I feel like giving inspiration on a natural 20 not only leaves it up to luck, but also compounds one reward on top of another. You not only have gotten the best possible result, you have now a greater chance of doing so again in the future. I feel like it might be more balancing to give out inspiration on a roll of a natural 1. That way, if a player is rolling really poorly, you have a mechanism to help counterbalance that somewhat.
Thank you for a measured response to the changes and playyest materials congrats on the 1 mil! For the kickstarter
Imagine if certain spells had a text that said "This spell can critically strike" could diversify spells more.
Well that would be pointless, specifically rejecting crit damage on spells only to selectively allow it for the sake of diversity.
Fact is, as Crawford points out, the number of spells that can crit are awfully small as is, so what you suggest is really the current state of the game
@@schemage2210 that is kinda the point. By adding it as a general rule instead of the current attack roll tules, you can make feats, subclasses, items, etc that can selectively break those rules. Like fighters and action economy, rogues and mobility, its also the basic concept of sorcerer.
Im not saying the amount needs to be changed but now it might be more interactive as part of a fully realised rule set.
That idea would stratify the spells and ensure certain spells would be objectively better than others. The result would be most players will take the same spells and in reality mean less diversity in spell usage. Also, throws the promise of backwards compatibility in the trash bin.
@@HughRGlen i cant speak of balance now as the spells doc has not been released but it anything in compatible with 5e. Thats why its so popular.
@@esajeppie5380 Hugh is right, and it is a problem currently too where every wizard/sorcerer takes fireball and counterspell or even firebolt no matter what. And these are only a couple iconic examples.
On one hand I can appreciate your intent, change the default to no crits on spells than present this option that will enable crit damage. On the other hand though, you aren't creating a truly "optional feature" but rather something that spellcasters will be require (or feel like they are required) to obtain. Other examples of this are feats like War Caster (or resilient constitution) which every caster eventually takes or Sharpshooter for any archer build.
All your doing is creating more of these points that need to be acquired, instead of creating opportunities for diversity.
I think having ability scores determined by Ancestry, Background, and Class with the option of changing the Ancestry score to better fit your build is a great idea. Fighters can get +2 to either STR or DEX, Wizards get +2 to INT, etc. That way your primary stat always has the highest boost.
I get that from a min max perspective. From a role playing perspective a 30 lbs goblin having more strength than an orc makes absolutely no sense.
@@nason.mcglinn It’s not all goblins are stronger than all orcs though. A goblin who is a bodybuilder compared to an orc nerd who’s never exercised a day in his life. The goblin will do better. Especially if these boosts are smaller, like 3 separate +1s. A soldier fighter goblin vs a acolyte Wizard Orc. The archetype of orcs being strong isn’t necessarily bad, but it is an archetype. Sapient beings are so much more complicated than that
@@chloebehnke6167 a 6'5" 200 pound wizard orc will be stronger than a 3'2" 30 pound fighter goblin, though. That's just biology. The new attribute bonus rules seem to be strictly for minmaxing.
There's nothing wrong with having a racial -2 int as an orc and still being a wizard. In fact, I feel it makes for better role playing and highlighting that you ARE unique for an orc. Now all sage orcs are just as good qizards as sage elves, which is weird when you delve into the history of said races.
Another system does this and I'm surprised it isn't already in 5e.
@@chloebehnke6167
TLDR
("Sapient beings are so much more complicated than that" which sapient beings are you talking about? Because yeah humans are much more complicated than that, but these fictional creatures invented by us aren't. By necessity, they are more simplistic slices of aspects of us and our perceptions. They aren't real. They are narrative tools invented for us to explore more narrow realities and concepts of being human.)
An orc is a representation of an imaginary concept of the predatory humanoid, the man-beast or monstrous man.
A goblin is one of being a small, dangerous, and chaos minded creature, in a bigger world that largely doesn't want you around.
An elf is the human without the fear of death, and the ability and opportunity to explore the beauty of the world to its fullest, often through a lens of sorrow or delight.
They're constructs that can be made more complicated, but inso doing tend to just become more like humans. We don't have any other templates for sapience. The archetypes are what makes them different from us, and thus useful as storytelling tools. A reduction in those archetypal differences both separates them from their core concept, and makes them less inhuman, in which case they become more set dressing than anything else.
We're already the most complicated game in town. These invented creatures are intentionally skewed so we can try to get out of *our* heads and try to embody something different than us.
Personally I think they should go harder to make the different races/ancestries/species feel unique and different. Playing an orc that isn't really any different than playing a human, or a gnome, or a fairy other than some special powers, feels like a waste of potential, and part of why this has become a point of contention for people. I'm too busy to put much time into it, but I'd like to put together a system that doesn't rely on -2's or +1's to represent the differences being one creature or another would have, and instead mechanically represents inhabiting a different creature, with a different brain, and perspective.
Something means that if you want to play an orc you'd be struggling with the fact that violence and chaos are parts of your fundamental make up, that you are a predator in a world of prey, and every fiber of your being is built to do violence. (for example)
Playing a benevolent or good orc in that construct would *mean something* and you would play different if you knew that if the wrong thing sets you off, you might become dangerous to all around you.
After reading the document and seeing some of the reactions online especially to the new race and background changes, I felt kind of inspired with ideas that I saw inklings of in the system they presented even though I don't think they went far enough. I would kind of like to see a system where features are tagged as related to certain ancestries, backgrounds, and cultures (hey, there's another ABC) and organized into packages that are balanced the same as "1st level feats," or at least have a very clear and explicit power level relationship to feats. Then you pick and choose which ones you want based on the story you want to tell for your character. There would be specific prebuilt choices for ancestry, background, and culture to use, but you'd always be able to mix and match or even build from scratch for any one of those aspects.
On another note, a big pet peeve of mine with the new racial options was how many of them had spellcasting slapped on. With ardlings I get it, since they're supposed to be the equal opposite of tieflings, but for the elves and gnomes it just kind of annoyed me how they seemed content to slap expanded spellcasting on them, especially since it seems so much more like a cultural thing instead of a strictly biological one. Now everyone just feels like a tiefling.
Love the C being culture and differentiating it from background and ancestry.
Don't forget the MASSIVE NERF humans got. Feats aren't a stand-out feature of everyone gets them now, and the extra great they used to get? Now it is nerfed to a "1st level" feat; while other races improve on leveling, HUMANS GET NOTHING. They already don't get darkvision.
@@gethriel I mean, they are still getting an extra feat, so they start with 2 while others only start with 1. Also, didn't they also get an inspiration after every long rest?
@@TheHornedKing 1ST LEVEL feat, and no option to just take their 1 point for each attribute. NERF.
Inspiration? Seriously? Inspiration is given out like candy and LITERALLY all you get is a single advantage roll. NOTHING. Also, they are toying with the idea of giving that feature to ALL races.
I love the celestial part of ardlings. I love the fact that spells are finally either arcane or divine; also the primal category fits lorewise since they draw power from the inner planes as opposed to divine magic
My homebrew critical hit rule: on a critical hit, the player rolls damage as usual, then add the maximum roll of the dice to the total. Eg:
1d6+4= 1d6+4+6 on a critical.
5d8+3 = 5d8 +3 + 40 on crit
If you check their video on homebrew rules they use Crunchy Crits it's one to one this rule. I think it's one of the best options, alongside with injuries on crits( blinding, slowing, cuting arm of oponent)
I like it, except for characters built for crit fishing that can do crazy crit damage
Why not keep the new system, but on a crit you also automatically deal max damage. If you roll 6d6+12 a crit would be a 7d6+12=54 damage. Adding the max roll on top of the actual roll seems like way too much damage.
I don't usually comment, I like 5th edition, I started with 1st edition and skipped the rest. Im staying with 5th edition. I like Eberron best. I am doing a nautical adventure in Eberron that may move into a unique Spelljammer high level overture. I always encouraged feats, and adjustable racial traits.
theres a really cool online page ive seen that someone made for there own eberon spelljammer game that sort of gives some rough ideas on how to adapt eberons unique cosmology to the spelljammer rules if you want a link
Eberron is underappreciated.
Yes, this... I might adopt the backgrounds with feats and dynamic proficiencies idea but I love 5e and I too am a man of eberron culture.
Agreed! Most of the new stuff is rubbish.
If you do Spelljammer MagicPunk, please include a cameo of Mickey Mouse and Steamboat Willie crossed with the Sorcerer's Apprentice, just chugging along in the Astral Sea!
"Rolling a 20 doesn’t bypass limitations on the test, such as range and line of sight. The 20 bypasses only bonuses and penalties to the roll."
Quoted from the document. So a 20 always succeeds...except when it doesn't.
Yeah, it sounds more like a 20 gets you the best possible outcome of whatever you're attempting. Which is a pretty common interpretation and/or house rule as is.
So ready to send in my feedback. I've gone through several drafts and reread the pdf many times.
I really appreciated your level headed breakdown and assessment of the new test packet. I also appreciate that you guys took your time to think about it and didn't just throw out a reaction video like so many others. One of the most important things to keep in mind is what you said at the start of the video, be thoughtful, be constructive, and be respectful. If we all do that, we will end up with the best product possible in 2 years. I look forward to hearing your feedback when you get a chance to actually playtest some of the new rules. Another great point, if your group doesn't like a rule, just don't use it. We all do that to some extent anyway.
For ancestry I feel like a point buy system could make sense with different ‘costs’ for different racial abilities depending on how powerful it is
Hate crit changes; LOVE background changes, and I don’t mind the auto success or auto fail. I was hooked on dnd when I failed a stealth role as the teams scout and tripped over a sleeping dragon’s nose. We ran for life, had to start back from square one, and it was hilariously exhilarating fun.
I don't like to double down on a player failure, but if they roll a 1 or 20, I do love adding in a little extra randomness: The rope breaks, or the lock pick snaps off in the lock, or the Orcs' severed head knocks over a Goblin etc
I'm surprised you guys didn't comment on the pretty massive unarmed strike changes. That grapple is now a to hit rolls instead of a contested ability check.
And I hate it!!! Especially knowing an 8 str wizard can now knock an 11 ac ogre down so easily... ridiculous! 5th level melee character with 2 attacks, 1st attack unarmed knock prone... ac11 ogre doesn't stand a chance, next attack ... ADVANTAGE for free for the rest of the melee attackers the entire round!
Thank you so much. You've covered some of the most concerning issues I had very clearly like spells no longer being able to crit (bad idea) and more costimization ( good idea). I love the idea of getting an ability point for each of the A,B,C's. Gentlemen you've nailed this one and I will more than likely be using this one at my table from now on. If only all rule makers would let us all have a fare say in all rules like Wizards are doing lol.
I don't see why it matters where the 3 ability points come from. You can already put them wherever regardless of ancestry, background or class. Why make it more complex for no real gain.
"Costimization." I am stealing this word, for it is awesome.
My notification bell keeps resetting every few days for you guys. Would make sense if this was a channel I didn't really watch, but you guys are my most watched channel.
When you were talking about the spell lists, an interesting thing to note is that eldritch blast isn't listed in the cantrips, it might just be a lv 1 feature now for warlocks.
Or the given spell lists just exist for the purposes of feats like Magic Initiate.
@@willieoelkers5568 Even then you can take Eldritch Blast by taking the Warlock Magic Initiate, so dunno about that one.
@@Zathul4198 In 5e, yes, but using that in a 1D&D game would be a houserule based on what we’re seeing
My only concern regarding all this customization is will it mean anything anymore to be an elf or a dwarf or whatever? If you can move all the ability scores around, I hope we still have some things that are unique to each ancestry. For instance, dark vision isn’t available to everyone, I hope that you have to have that ancestry in order to have that intrinsic ability. There’s a danger as we’re trying to simulate the breath of all the different kinds of people of a certain ancestry that we lose any character to that ancestry. So certainly there are to be able to be a giant very strong elf, but I hope that they are still things that you can only do if you’re an elf.
And as for mixed ancestry, I’ve seen some proposals for how to resolve combining for example human an elf, but I wonder how streamlined that could possibly be, especially if you start getting to the point where you talk about a quarter elf in a half a dwarf and a quarter human or those sorts of things.
Regarding the D 20 tests, I kind of agree that in certain circumstances having an automatic fail doesn’t seem like the greatest idea. I already feel as though when you hear the description of the kind of expertise that a character has to have an attack or an action and fail it when you have a lot of really good attributes and experience it feels like the dice have too much control over that. In other words, if you are a high-level thief and are picking a lock and it’s a normal lock and you get a one and you would’ve succeeded, but you automatically fail, while there is a flavor way to make that all makes sense, it feels really disappointing if there’s nothing else going on.
I would be much more interested in having an automatic fail on a scale check scale to the circumstance. In other words, the DC should increase in such a way that the character wouldn’t automatically succeed. In that way, the natural one wouldn’t be what causes a failure, it would be the circumstances which would make a natural won’t be a failure. I think it’s Pathfinder current edition that somebody has sad critical fails and successes require a second rule to determine whether they’re automatic failures or not. It might be that that would give the same opportunity but deal with the issue that I am identifying.
This. It’s a slow erosion that eventually will homogenize all the races. Before elves made good wizards (for obvious reasons) and an orc wizard would be something that was unique. Now, any race is equally bland. It doesn’t surprise me with how cosmopolitan modern D&D games are. Being a tiefling on its own should come packed with so much flavor but I haven’t seen a single game where that’s the case.
Regarding magical origins, I also think this is cool. In fact, I hope that by dividing the sources of magic, there will be options to utilize that in the same way that we use damage types for instance. In other words, maybe there’s a plane or primordial magic doesn’t work. Or maybe there are spells that block a certain source of magic.
Additionally, this could also be incorporated into how multi classing works. So for example, let’s say primordial magic is tied to constitution, then you might have to have a minimum constitution in order to multi class in the druid in addition to the primary spell casting ability. Or maybe if you multiclass, you have to have a certain proficiency before you can take on a second class. I haven’t thought this through, but I do think it would be interesting to give these different sources of magic some mechanical meaning in the game.
@@EliotHochberg Is it really that hard to say 'It's so easy you don't need to roll'?
@@brucecurtis9368 For me? No. But, if I can put words in their mouths, I think the concern is for new players/GMs who will get this and try to play without guidance.
I think the simplest thing WotC could do is to explicitly state "The DM has the power to say when a roll is not needed, either because the task is so easy it automatically succeeds, or so impossible that there's no way to do it. Players should feel free to bring up this idea as well, when appropriate, for example if they have expertise in a skill and there is no pressure from an enemy or no time crunch."
The celestial aspect of ardling makes me think of the deities of ancient Egypt. It is not a bad flavor but it also is a really different flavor from anything D&D has had, and it is odd to finally give us something many folks want -- animal heads -- but to attach it to some flavor that we didn't ask for.
Celestial furries.
Yeah, but I don't want a cat-headed angel that can jump. I like my Tabaxi.
Some angels in D&D have animal heads, so it’s not a “different flavor from anything D&D has had” as you said, but it is certainly odd.
@@theckie I am aware that I overstated the case. I know there are these animalistic celestials in previous editions that I didn't play (which were not in even earlier editions that I did play), but it feels distant from anything relevant to 5e. They may in fact be giving me something I never knew I wanted. My dog thinks it's a great idea.
@@ajh22895 No one said Tabaxi are excluded. These are player's handbook playtests, I think. There will be lots more races elsewhere, I imagine. Just like 5e.
PC: "I want to jump to the moon!... NAT20!"
DM: "You successfully jump to the moon..."
~D&Done
Kelly and Monty, your synergy at the table and application of gaming experience is the best. I have read and watched other reviews of the new changes, and this was without equal. You keep getting better over the years.
Re-read the document on backgrounds. You can be a charlatan fighter, you can be a Rogue cleric. Customizing is the default, not the standard backgrounds presented. You choose the ability score and customize by building your own background with feat of your choice. You do not need to pigeon hold attributes to classes. Maybe I don't want a +2 to str or con as a Barbarian, maybe I want Int. Let me keep my customization options.
The way I run the crit roll: any attack roll is simply max possible damage for that particular attack. Quick and easy math and no damage rolling necessary. This keeps combat moving and seems the most logical way to handle it. Try it out in your game ☺️
I actually had a player argue with me that I was nerfing his PC but once I explained the the average of doubling rolled damage is Max normal damage he seemed to grasp the concept. Personally I do Max damage on all damage dice (weapon base dice, sneak attack, smite, hunters mark etc) and roll weapon base damage dice and add it to the total.
One of the many things that dnd4e did right
@@voodoophil personally I can't stand to see the light in their eyes go out when they roll like shit. Piles of dice, and when they count it up, it sometimes ends up as less than average damage from a non crit. It feels awful when that happens. But it varies from table to table. My table, people tend to like the consistency to know that it's always amazing to see a 20, rather than having to wait until after the damage roll to decide whether anything noteworthy happened or not.
I was curious what you guys thought of the change to grappling. You didn't mention it in the video, and it seemed like a pretty big change to me. Grappling is now an unarmed attack, and if it hits, it works. No opposed skill check necessary, and to escape the roll becomes a saving throw with a set DC. Athletics or acrobatics skill don't play into the equation at all anymore. (Shove also becomes an unarmed attack, no skill contest)
And the slow condition also really changes the dynamic, attacks against you have advantage, even from the grappled creature.
I hope there'd be ways to boost the DC as it is now with expertise or rage
@@ledhyper4282 Since it says "the grappler suffers the Slowed Condition _while moving"_ (emphasis mine), it definitely reads to me as if it would only matter for opportunity attacks and readied attacks.
@@TheRawrnstuff thanks, that was really bothering me
My only gripe with new races is that a couple have been stripped of updates they were given in later 5E installments (like the dragonborns breath weapon reverting back to using the entire attack action instead of just a single attack on a character with multiple attacks) but I trust they will bring those changes back before its official launch...I hope
As someone in a 3.5 campaign, I like that the feats seem to be leaning more towards that edition.
I love hearing everyone's ideas for the new edition as this is all being discussed!
Splitting up ability score increases (ancestry,background,class) would allow for players to start with a +3 to a stat. Splitting it up doesn't actually give any more options since you can customize the background completely.
I totally agree. I think the way WOTC is proposing (connection to background only) is the winner. Having these increases split up for each of the ABCs adds unnecessary complexity to character creation. (Love the idea of replacing 'race' with 'ancestry' for the 'ABC's, though, by the way!!!)
Racial bonuses used to indicate a an intrinsic natural aptitude. Backgrounds, by definition, are extrinsic. We already had ways of getting extrinsic ability score increases: Through leveling up.
@@Dharengo so in its early days d&d supposed the races were all segregated homogenous and had little contact with others. All dwarves were basically the same, had the same upbringing, same underground home, same culture same prejudice against elves. They couldn't be wizards because as a race they weren't deemed smart enough. There was no lore reason. That's always been a little effect up. Intrinsic aptitude doesn't mean crap if you don't use it. A few elves get a bonus to int. But what if they were orphaned as many PCs are and never received any education? Only biological bonuses should apply to races, dwarves have advantage against being poisoned because their livers are made out of hartier stuff. This rule is just trying to define what do all members of a race share irregardless of how they were raised. It's a good thing.
@@MrApocryphon "Only biological bonuses should apply to races." To me, ability score bonuses _are_ biological. Also there's no rule saying that dwarves aren't smart enough to be wizards. You can still use your point buy and ASI's to raise a dwarf's int. They won't be a natural at it compared to, say, a gnome, but they can do it if they set their mind to it.
How would being orphaned and not receiving an education reduce an elf's int? It just means they're unlikely to be taught how to use magic. Their inherent biological aptitudes would not change.
Changes in their environment are reflected in what stat spread you choose on character creation, as well as how you spend your ASIs from leveling up.
@@Dharengo in 1st and 2nd edition there was a rule that said what races could be what classes and what level they would max out. For example orcs could be clerics but only to level 8or10. But let's look at that elf and int. Int is tied to nature arcana history and religion. With no education at all you are telling me an elf is more likely to know about religions than a dwarf? The fact that you think some races are just naturally smarter than others or more able to navigate social situations, or wiser is problematic. I need you to ask yourself if you really believe that and if the answer is yes, you can check your eugenics at the door and this conversation is done.
I only got into DnD during the first covid lockdown, so I've only ever played 5e and have no expectations or nostalgia from previous editions.
In general I like the way these changes are going. I particularly like the idea of more customisable character creation options. What I'd like to see for races, in order to not make them irrelevant but still allow many classes to use each race and get something out of it, is a list of racial features for each race where you choose, say, 1 feature that your character has inherited.
For instance, orcs could have 1 feature related to martial prowess, and another related to toughness. A fighter might take the first, but the second could be something a spellcaster might value. With the disassociation of ASIs from races, this means you could have an orc wizard who is powerful, but their orc heritage still means something by making them a bit sturdier than a wizard of another race.
Apologies in advance this ended up a bit longer than I anticipated. 🙏
I might be misunderstanding, but are you saying that choosing your race would only give you 1 ability?
Staying consistent with the Orc example that you used, Orcs currently have Adrenaline Rush, Darkvision, Powerful Build, and Relentless Endurance. I'd say Darkvision would likely be inherent across all and remain constant. The other 3 however, seem to be more oriented towards the orcs being a warrior people, focused on strength and fighting. Poweful Build just adjusts your carrying capacity essentially but even that would seem to be more martially focused, such as a fighter or barbarian, and wouldn't apply to a more scrawny Wizard or something. So, what I'm getting at is that I may have misunderstood your concept? Would they only end up with 1 feature overall or would only 1 of their given features be interchangeable?
As a bit of a spin on your idea, what if each race/ species had a pool of abilities unique to their people, say maybe 5 abilities, and we got to choose 3 abilities from that pool that would suit our given character. This would also make playing mixed race characters easy as well because now you just choose any combination of 3 features from either of your parent race.
And, I know they're doing away with sub-races, or at least renaming the term, but unique surfaces could potentially just have 1 specific feature special to them and you choose 2 other features from the base race.
This would, however, add a lot of work to the writers and developers to come up with that many unique ideas for every single race.
@@zac9933 yes what you describe is exactly what I had in mind, I was just using the example of picking 1 from 2 abilities as an oversimplified example.
So all orcs get darkvision, then you can pick 3 of 5 possible racial features which are all thematic to orcs but the combo you choose can make them valid for your class. Totally agree.
Im just glad we're having this discussion. I think these changes need more attention to detail though. It feels unbalanced.
You are so right. Crt feel the same my house rules make it feel like wow that was great. Love you guys
That bit about the king giving up his kingdom was gold. Pure gold. Keep it up boys
By the Gods thank you, the final thoughts really drove the point home.
Nothing wrong with *"DnD 5.5"* or *"5th Revised"* // *"DnD3.5"* was amazing. And also _"If our table don't like these rules we are just not gonna use it..."_ some people really need to hear this more often.
_"It's just a game, why u heff to be mad?"_
I use inspiration as a reward for players giving me a recap of the previous session at the start of the new session. I don't want to have it disappear if they take a short rest, and I don't want to depend on RNG for inspiration points. I'd house rule out this new rule immediately. I really like the idea of Arcane/Divine/Primal magic categories. I think it'll be easier for new players if the DM says, "You pick from the divine spell list." I'm sure it'll make the makers of spell cards happy, too, since they can just do small edits and re-sell the same thing in a new package.
You could do both. There are good reasons that they made inspiration die use it or lose it. You could just call your non-expiring die "divine favor" or something.
@@TenzaBurabura I don't disagree that they had a good reason. I'm simply not on board with that reason since I use inspiration as a incentive for positive activity. I'd rather not tie it to a die roll.
Personally, I'm a big fan of customization. However, I do see one pitfall of that which is not all racial/ancestry abilities are created equal and while in theory opening up all the options to everyone should encourage diversity, one pitfall I have seen in systems like Chronicles of Darkness or some of the Storypath game systems is that by opening up all the options to everyone, people who are mechanics minded all gravitate towards the one true build of the mechanically optimal options. Whilst I think racial feats are dumb, I know putting myself to pick up Elven Accuracy means that I am delaying all other feats by four levels or more by not taking variant human or custom lineage. If I can have both, and I want to be good at the thing I want to be good at, why shouldn't I take them both every time I want to be good at punching things?
The solution is to make a wide variety of roughly mechanically equal choices, but that's really hard to balance, especially when things can be altered later. The introduction of a new cantrip on the Arcane spell list or a new eldritch invocation or fighting style or whatever else can be gained by feat has the potential to upend any early parity and makes new additions to the game in future supplements increasingly cumbersome to play test as more parts can interact with each other. In the end, I personally favor greater flexibility and more player options even if that paradoxically creates less player variance, but I do see how it could potentially go wrong if handled clumsily and how hard it is to handle correctly in perpetuity.
This is why they are extending 1st level feats to everyone, but limiting which feats can be taken at 1st level. I'm 99.9% certain this is not intended to be used on top of variant human or custom lineage also gaining any other feat they want at level 1. I think the UA human is meant to replace variant human and if they do keep custom lineage they will alter it to not include a feat. While the 1st level feats won't be perfectly balanced I think they'll be more balanced than the feats we currently have. I think they also intend to achieve a better balance with the races than what we currently have... how successful they are at that... who knows?
@@MannonMartin Sure, this was more in regards to the mix and match race bits when it comes to making your quarter elf, quarter orc, half tiefling than feats, but as far as variant human goes, in the playtest rules, human gives a feat as does every background, so I think they are intended to stack.
Great video and I find myself agreeing with a lot of what you guys called out. On inspiration though, I'm not a huge fan of awarding it on landing a 20: Rewarding rolling well with a greater chance of rolling well. I'd honestly be more a fan of giving it on rolling a 1 (your character getting frustrated by failure and inspired to do better) or if you land a 20, you have to give the inspiration to someone else, you cannot give it to yourself: Your actions and successes are inspiring your allies.
I just think helping come back from failure is more interesting.
I like the idea that you hang out Inspiration to another player on a nat 20 and that you gain inspiration on nat 1.
It's easy to remember and makes inspiration happen more.
I'm open to all the play test ideas... Except the critical hit rules.
Glory to the changes to Race and Background. DnD to me has always been about the story telling and the roleplay and not about solving the optimal meta game. Finally you won't rely on homebrewing to play your Orc Mage, your Drow Berserker, your Gnome Paladin, your Halfling Druid, without the looming shadow of having knowingly and willingly gimped your character. This is especially good for new players in the current era of gaming. No more will you pick your class and then ask what race pairs well with that class. You will now be able to pick your race and then decide what he or she will be. I've always preferred custom backgrounds anyway but this really just saves your new player magic user from defaulting to Sage or Scholar because it has the things you want to have.
I personally like the idea of a nat 20 on an ability check lowering the dc. So when the barbarian does an investigation check to loot something and there is a 25 DC for an extra magic item or something similar he can still succeed in finding it even with maybe just a +1 to his investigation.
Effectively turning a 20 into a 24 and a 1 into a -4?
If I'm understanding you right, I really like this idea. In the example you gave, the barbarian has a +1 bonus to investigation so previously he could have, on a nat20, gotten only a 21, so he still failed the check (or test as we're calling them now.) However, if he got a nat20, his total score (21 for investigation) remains the same but the DC of the test is reduced to 20, making this a success.
Let's set a different scenario - the DC of the check is now 30, and it's presumed that only a very lucky inquisitive rogue will succeed on a good roll. The barbarian still gets a nat20, reducing the DC for the barbarian to 25, and the 21 for investigation doesn't pass. The inquisitive rogue, however, is proficient and has expertise in investigation, giving her an overall +14. Any roll of 16 or better will pass the test.
Let's try the same thing with survival: our party's ranger is tracking an enemy while using hunter's mark, but miraculously rolls two nat1s; the DC was set as 10, but with the +5, the ranger now must pass a 15 DC test. Much like our rogue from before, the ranger is in his favored terrain and tracking a favored enemy, so expertise is effectively applied to the survival check, and 1+14 manages to pass the check even though he rolled 2 nat1s.
Is this more or less what you're describing because I think I like it. Due to bad circumstances or whatever, the challenge is harder for that PC but they could still succeed if they are REALLY good at that skill.
Early AD&D did something like this. A natural 20 was considered a 25, but only for rolls to hit. A natural 20 has always been a successful save, and a 1 always a fail. The problem seems to be applying this mechanic to a skill check.
I am very excited about this! There is some stuff that Definitely need tweaking, but I think it is going in a really cool direction
I really like the new lore of *Primal* magic instead of druids being divine.
I also really like the further implementation of inspiration
I really like the new ways to make the character (particularly the feats)
I do not like that nat 1's always fail however, i think that should be just for attacks.
I have high hope! :D
I do backgrounds/stats like this: the +2/+1 or +1/+1/+1 where you want them. For your background, you get four "Background Points". Each skill/language/tool costs one point to buy, but you can only spend two points in any one category. It is up to the player to create a compelling story for the DM to work with. They can also (if they choose) create (or research) some sort of perk (like default backgrounds) that fits thematically. Fits in well with old/updated and these new rules.
I agree: More tools, more customization, more options.
Xanathar's and Tasha's, which were reponses to the advanced 3 books (Players, Monster's manual, dungeon master's), was all about increasing options and making options more powerful, usually rendering older subclasses and races less powerful.
Completely agree. Modularity and empowering choice for customization is what everyone playing a game really wants.
Glad you guys are standing clear in this
To me, im never using the auto win/fail rule. That said, if the rule was more like ''when you make a d20 test on a skill or saving throw you are proficient with, a 20 is a auto success. If you make a d20 test on a skill or saving throw you are NOT proficient with, then a 1 is a auto fail''. I would be more agreeable, that said, never using it.
that is actually a good idea! i’m gonna steal that
@@orishahar be my guest! Hope you guys have lots of fun lol!
I agree. To get good at something (ie to be proficient) you dont practice till you get it right.
You practice till you cant get it wrong
@@AC-eb7kt i agree. I mean, sure, even the masters make mistakes sometimes, pro athletes get tripped and fall, but thats rare events, and they arent magic creatures in a world full of dragons...
@@orishahar Just remembered, at level 7, dependig on thte build you can have proficiency with every skill. Hope that doesnt make a big difference for you T^T
I really hope we get an entire book of feats or an entire book of spells.
Back in the 2ed AD&D day I "created" a book only with spells from the PHB and all the other handbooks I had. It simply makes sense.
Crits: Just for attacks and saves, not checks. Don't monkey with the damage, spells, or NPCs.
Background Ability Score Increases: Interesting. It seems there is a strong push to just let players put their stats wherever, regardless of ancestry, background, or class. I have concerns that some segment of the audience is going to be disappointed, because I know I enjoy pairing together odd combinations that would normally be "bad" to find unusual character builds. Taking that away has pluses and minuses; if every ancestry and background is equally viable at every class, the game should be very cosmopolitan, though most games already are. You can still build the character in the "wrong" way, but there's no mechanical incentive to do so with an offbeat ancestry or background. Will that lead to a feeling of "same-y" character builds? I don't know.
There's a sweet spot in customization where you get your say, but work within the constraints of the framework. I feel a little uncomfortable with the idea that the framework is losing its constraints and everything starts to feel like a reskinned version of the same thing. My concerns may be unfounded, but there they are.
The less variable damage from enemies might be good for dming.
@@tomasxfranco I disagree. Characters usually have ways to bounce back. Having more control over the outcome is not necessarily desired - the threat of death needs to be real, for both the characters and the Storyteller / DM. If the campaign needs a more laid-back approach, house rule as needed... but a typical game needs that swingy variance. Sometimes the 28 AC bladesinger wizard takes a critical hit and goes down, I would call that a feature rather than a bug. I have seen RPG systems where the characters might surpass ever being damaged by the cannon fodder, but the more important villains always pose a true threat - Reign (Enchiridion) and 7th Sea both possess this to some degree. You could implement a sort of house rule where only the important monsters in an encounter can get critical hits, I guess.
The Crafter feat is stronger than it seems. Since you gain advantage on ability checks related to your tool proficiencies, having multiple tool proficiencies increases your odds of being able to apply advantage to them.
I'm also curious if they define more specific rules for item and crafting prices that makes that discount matter more.
Ability score from races makes much more sense to me, a gnome being stronger than an orc just feels wrong.
They should split the biological abilities like dexterity, constitution and strength to race abilities. Background should give you intelligence, wisdom or charisma abilities. Race is also ancestry and culture of that particular race that shape you but all races should give you +1 con. Some races should give you ability to choose between dex&str like humans, tifling, ardlings and some could give this ability by choosing different subspecies gnome, dwarf. Elf could have dex except drows that could have str etc.
aaah, how I love a respectful conversation about a hobby we love. Thanks guys for addressing things as this is playtest, the fans should chillax
What scares me more about the playtests is not that the DnD community is going to be able to give feedback. Is that the communities that are not DnD are also giving feedback. I am tired of all these suggestions of "Do it like PF2" from people who actually don't like DnD.
Exactly. I don't get the whole 'all games should be the same' mentality some people have.
And how, exactly, are they going to police who is or is not a D&D player?
@@willieoelkers5568 They can't.
Great review as always, Dudes.
Perhaps you missed it (or maybe I missed you pointing it out), but I think a lot of your worries about the natural 1 and natural 20 being auto success is set to ease with this one bit that they included in the playtest:
"[...]a d20 Test must have a target number no less than 5 and no greater than 30"
So yeah. They've already covered that you can't call for a roll on things that should be impossible to fail/succeed. So no need to worry about characters forgetting how to see or walk, and worries about them flapping their arms to fly. The new wording doesn't even allow for rolls for those tasks.
If this makes it through, that’s gonna be the first new rule I ignore. Considering that with stacking various buffs you can push a skill check up to where it’s easily possible to roll into the 50s, a 35+ DC isn’t all that unreasonable. To me, putting in the effort and burning resources on a skill check to ensure success is far more interesting gameplay than automatic successes and failures. (Also, this seems like it would imply that AC is hard capped at 30?)
@@hatihrodvitnisson Yeah, if you like numbers getting up that high, ignore it. I'll be sticking to the smaller numbers. No clue what the AC cap is or if there's even going to be one.
The feats are all amazing, especially *Crafter*. Think about it, you take wizard (or other caster), have proficiency in Arcana, and can start crafting spell scrolls. A cantrip/1st level spell scroll takes 8hrs to make normally and no chance to fail, you can now make that same scroll in 6.5 hours instead, in theory, making two spell scrolls (Shield x2) for cheap and always at the ready, beyond what your spell slots are limited too.
We don't have any definite ruels for crafting magic items. If Crafter includes the crafting of magical items, it is indeed amazing - probably even too good.
@@carlcramer9269 Sure we do. In XGE's Downtime Revisited, scroll down to Crafting an Item (p 128) and then look at the subheading for Crafting Magic Items. It gives us the
• Rarity CR Range
• Rarity Cost & worktime
• Complications for the amount of time taken
I would also believe this should work for scribing a spell scroll as well, which is a bit further into the book on pg 133. They're great rules for doing all sorts of stuff on downtime.
In regards to the topic of losing other races for ones presented in the One D&D playtest. If I remember correctly, One D&D is working with 5e, which should mean that even if the Aasimar aren't updated to One D&D, then they're still playable in their current iteration with the new/expanded rules.
It seems as though the playtest material, as stated earlier in the video, are just ways of fixing/adjusting things that were not working as intended from the origins in 5e.