I skimmed the released content earlier today and I liked most of it. I like 1st level feats and stats being tied to backgrounds, not your ancestry. I am concerned that nat20s are now universally...
I skimmed the released content earlier today and I liked most of it. I like 1st level feats and stats being tied to backgrounds, not your ancestry. I am concerned that nat20s are now universally guaranteed successes; a person with -5 charisma should never be able to deceive a god of truth, which this ruling makes possible 5% of the time. In the instances I have DM'd a nat20 on a roll that cannot succeed, I gave some benefit to the player, maybe the NPC takes a liking to you, but not a miraculous success. Also, inspiration seems to be thrown around a lot.
Edit:
As there was a bit more discussion on this then I thought, I'll expand a bit on what I meant. My personal reasons come from playing with bad players who would pressure the DM, sometime me sometimes not, into "just letting them roll" for something they simply can't do. Letting them just roll it, while reminding them that ability checks can't crit, got them to drop it. In a more respectful group, I can imagine it being less of a problem. It also allowed for situational critical successes; I love the rule of cool as much as an anyone. Clearly every DM/Group can change rules how they wish, but by setting it as the default, I am mildly concerned it will provide ammunition for shittier players while not providing any meaningful benefit to better groups. I'd prefer it just be explicitly situational with no default.
Current guidelines in the DMG (which are assumed to remain unless replaced in these updates) are that the DM should not call for a roll if a task is impossible. Edit: I should say: there's no...
Current guidelines in the DMG (which are assumed to remain unless replaced in these updates) are that the DM should not call for a roll if a task is impossible.
When a player wants to do something, it’s often appropriate to let the attempt succeed without a roll or a reference to the character’s ability scores. For example, a character doesn’t normally need to make a Dexterity check to walk across an empty room or a Charisma check to order a mug of ale. Only call for a roll if there is a meaningful consequence for failure.
When deciding whether to use a roll, ask yourself two questions:
Is a task so easy and so free of conflict and stress that there should be no chance of failure?
Is a task so inappropriate or impossible — such as hitting the moon with an arrow — that it can’t work?
If the answer to both of these questions is no, some kind of roll is appropriate.
Edit: I should say: there's no wrong way to play D&D and every table is different. I've always played with crits on ability and skill checks, but my style of game has never been particularly grounded in reality; on the contrary, my games have generally been more "professional wrestling with wizards" or "anime bullshit and video game logic" than realistic, low powered dungeon crawls.
I think the kind of circumstance Arshan was getting at was when as a DM you ask for anyone at the table to roll a perception check to look for tracks in the forest. The city-slicking former town...
I think the kind of circumstance Arshan was getting at was when as a DM you ask for anyone at the table to roll a perception check to look for tracks in the forest. The city-slicking former town guard who dumped WIS might not actually be able to contribute even if they roll a 20.
I think the counter point that TheRtRevKaiser was bringing up is that you shouldn't have everyone roll for the check if only the two of the five players have a chance of success. Instead of having...
I think the counter point that TheRtRevKaiser was bringing up is that you shouldn't have everyone roll for the check if only the two of the five players have a chance of success. Instead of having everyone roll and using an impossibly high DC to exclude people from succeeding, only allow people who can succeed the option to roll. Maybe you shouldn't let everyone roll to look for tracks in the forest, maybe you only give that roll to the druid and ranger.
Yeah exactly. In fact, this is what the Help action is for. I elaborated a bit more in my reply to @Bonooru but I think that having everyone roll for the same check is a mistake, but I get why a...
Yeah exactly. In fact, this is what the Help action is for. I elaborated a bit more in my reply to @Bonooru but I think that having everyone roll for the same check is a mistake, but I get why a lot of DMs do it, because they gate progress in the "story" behind a check and they're up shit creek if nobody succeeds. I'm of the mind that if the result of failing a check is "nothing happens" or "you fail the story" then you've failed as a DM.
I think that there's a bit of a subtle problem that the nat-1 / nat-20 rule has which is that it actually gives you information about what is going on, from a game-theoretical point of view, in at...
I think that there's a bit of a subtle problem that the nat-1 / nat-20 rule has which is that it actually gives you information about what is going on, from a game-theoretical point of view, in at least two ways that I can think of.
Problem one: if you have two people attempting something, and you say to one "okay, go ahead and roll," and to the other "you don't get to roll," then that has told the table that there is a thing to succeed at.
Problem two: you are giving out "perfect information" with natural 20s. If you are doing a perception check and you score a 20, you know that what you are told is right.
I think both of these are mitigated within the current ruleset, which lend themselves also quite well to a graduated success (or "degrees of failure" per the DMG). But I'm sure we'll all get used to this too, and DMs can still have graduated levels of success - using the example above, maybe if a druid with high perception rolls a nat 20 while tracking, they would know how many people passed by and how long ago, but the warlock with poor perception would only know "TRACKS!" and not really get further information from them; critical successes don't have to be the same for each character.
Yeah, to bounce off what @Banisher said, I don't typically let multiple players roll checks for the same action. If there's a perception check to be made and everyone is present, then the PC with...
Yeah, to bounce off what @Banisher said, I don't typically let multiple players roll checks for the same action. If there's a perception check to be made and everyone is present, then the PC with the highest mod who is participating in that action will roll and others that want will take the Help action to possibly give them advantage. The whole situation where you have a chain of people wanting to make perceptions checks for the same thing after the first person fails, or the whole group wants to roll to search an area, really throws the resolution system of D&D out of whack. I also typically try to "fail forward" when it comes to misses though. So instead of just saying, "you can't find the tracks" I'd try to find some way to present additional complications that the part has to overcome to continue with what they want to do. I'd probably only make a hard move like "you can't find the tracks" if there are interesting consequences to that failure which will make the lives of the party more interesting (in the sense of the old "Chinese" curse).
Certainly. It seems like we're both on the same page. When I'm DM'ing, I'll only do that sort of thing for figuring out who spots the the tracks. I know that someone is going to spot them and...
Certainly. It seems like we're both on the same page. When I'm DM'ing, I'll only do that sort of thing for figuring out who spots the the tracks. I know that someone is going to spot them and whoever has the highest roll (or everyone who rolled well) is the one who spots the tracks
Inspiration is a mechanic that the tables I play with don't really use, and they don't really use them because it's hard to decide when you're supposed to give it out. Having a strict rules of...
Inspiration is a mechanic that the tables I play with don't really use, and they don't really use them because it's hard to decide when you're supposed to give it out. Having a strict rules of "roll a nat20, get inspiration" helps tables like mine use it.
Knee jerk thoughts on the Unearthed Arcana: Grapple I don't like this change, I think it's a big nerf to one of the few unique control options that martial characters had. The main difference here...
Knee jerk thoughts on the Unearthed Arcana:
Grapple
I don't like this change, I think it's a big nerf to one of the few unique control options that martial characters had. The main difference here is that it's a saving throw instead of being an ability check to escape - that's big because grapple ignored legendary resistance before. Perhaps this is just to simplify, perhaps it is because the way contesting ability checks worth, it's fairly simple to get proficiency in the score and advantage and then it's practically impossible to lose the roll.
There may also be a change to legendary resistance as they release more rules, since that is also an often complained about rule as a probably necessary, but very blunt, instrument for any kind of balance.
Critical Hits
They nerfed crits to oblivion. I think their intention is clear from the fact that enemies can no longer critical hit at all - it's mainly to prevent "Goblin Ambush" syndrome, the first encounter of Lost Mines of Phandelver, where infamously any of the goblins criting gives pretty much all level 1 characters like a 70% chance of being knocked unconscious.
In terms of PC strength relative to each other, I don't think it's particularly important on average to anyone... except Paladins. Paladins, because they can chose to smite after the roll, can and often do exclusively or almost exclusively smite on crits. That being said, that's just one part of Paladin - they're one of the best classes in the game. It also hits rogues in that way but rogues can't pick and choose so I don't think it's as big of a deal as it is to Pallys
I've heard some people talking about this being nerf to spellcasters, but honestly, it's not. If a full spellcaster wants to do damage, it's typically not through an attack roll to begin with - it's through saving throws, like Spirit Guardians, or summons like Summon Fey (which have weapons!) or Animate Objects. Firebolt was always a filler turn - that it can't crit is not meaningful.
And even when weapons do crit, they're going to be doing 3-4 more damage on just that attack, which even at low levels is not that impressive. It does really remove the spectacle of critical hits, and makes it more of a reliable and small bump to damage rather than a story defining moment.
d20 tests and inspiration
Not sure how I feel about the always succeed/fail thing. It puts more onus on the DM to consider whether or not it should be possible to roll, and it gets weird in cases where the mechanics dictate rolls. For instance, if a 25 strength giant grapples a toddler, the toddler still gets to make saving throw under the new grapple rules, so they have a 5% chance of succeeding?
On inspiration, I think it's fine, I just think it can have the opposite effect of the often criticized critical failure homebrew rule, in that PCs that naturally roll more now have more inspiration. If you're a Bard or Rogue and are the skill monkey, especially perception skill monkey, then you're just going to get way more inspiration. Similarly, if you're built to make a lot of separate attacks, you get more advantage than ones that make fewer, but harder hitting attacks.
In the end, I doubt it matters that much, there's lots of ways to get advantage on any particular roll anyway.
Feats
It's hard to say just with just what they have there. That being said, feats are one of the most criticized parts of the game, and I think outside of Fey Touched, the new feats are much better than the PHB/XtGE/SCAG feats in balance and enjoyability. The level requirement is also another lever - if something like Polearm Master, or Great Weapon Master, or Sharpshooter still exists, it'll probably be higher level requirement, and that may help prevent the overpowering power of Vuman and Custom Lineage as races.
In our current campaign we just started I'm playing a Rouge with expertice in Athletics (+7 at lvl one). I'm deciding on either going Barbarian or picking Fighter and getting rune knight. At level...
In our current campaign we just started I'm playing a Rouge with expertice in Athletics (+7 at lvl one). I'm deciding on either going Barbarian or picking Fighter and getting rune knight. At level 5 I'd have +10 to Athletics and could easily gain advantage by raging as a barbarian. As a rune knight I'd have the added benefit of becoming large and then also gaining adv. to strength checks. If someone then casts enlarge I'd be able to grapple Gargantuan creatures. With shield master I can push them prone with a bonus action (giving them disadvantage on attack rolls and me advantage).
Sooo with this Grapple rule change pinning down an Ancient Red Dragon at level 5 while everyone else stomps on it is no longer a viable strategy 😂. Now it can just use a legendary resistance to get out!
I think that's fine, though. Grappling alone doesn't accomplish much - it requires further teamwork and strategy, unlike other control conditions. In current 5e, a grappled character can still...
I think that's fine, though. Grappling alone doesn't accomplish much - it requires further teamwork and strategy, unlike other control conditions. In current 5e, a grappled character can still attack you, if it has ranged attacks, it can still attack anything in range without disadvantage, unless you use another action to make the character go prone no one has advantage attacking it. Depending on the type of enemy, it might not do anything at all!
If you're a level 5 (or any level) rogue, that ancient dragon is going to one shot you. If your party doesn't have ranged attackers, they'd still get breath weaponed.
But, grappling the right type of enemies, with the right party (e.g if you were less likely to immediately die, you could grapple a dragon, and have everyone stay out of breath weapon range, and then pelt it to death before you die), and/or abuse spells like Spike Growth, could make it an effective and worthwhile thing to do. And all that faffing is worth it because it doesn't apply to legendary resistance.
Now that it's just a saving throw, it's a tough for it to ever be worth doing all that when either you could just hypnotic pattern them, or it was never going to work on them anyway.
I like the new spell breakout of Primal, Arcane and Divine spells, and Magic Initiate allowing you to use selected spells with your own spell slots and the Stat of your choice is powerful stuff....
I like the new spell breakout of Primal, Arcane and Divine spells, and Magic Initiate allowing you to use selected spells with your own spell slots and the Stat of your choice is powerful stuff. Your Wizard can spam upcast Healing Word, your Wildfire Druid can get Fire Bolt as the good Lord intended, and your pro wrestler flavored Bard with the Tavern Brawler feat can literally "give 'em the chair" with Shillelagh.
Saw the announcement video for this and hope they can create something nice. Especially cool if people outside of WotC can create and sell adventure modules à la dungeon masters guild. We ran some...
Saw the announcement video for this and hope they can create something nice. Especially cool if people outside of WotC can create and sell adventure modules à la dungeon masters guild. We ran some rollplayibg sessions over roll20 during COVID, but in person is just soo much better. Just a simple thing as leaning over and having a short in (or out of) character conversation with some other player while the dm is busy can't be done smoothly over eg discord or a VTT.
Will try it out, but can't see this replacing in person sessions for me. One night CE thing they've hinted at is getting digital versions of the books when buying the hard copy. Just that change will be awesome!
The nat 1 auto-fail sucks to see. 5e's design philosophy of putting the role of arbiter on the DM instead of the book so much creates a kind of adversarial relationship that the book itself...
The nat 1 auto-fail sucks to see. 5e's design philosophy of putting the role of arbiter on the DM instead of the book so much creates a kind of adversarial relationship that the book itself insists shouldn't exist, and it's annoying to see one of the more irritating homebrews that lean into this be codified.
I know this is the article title, but it irks me how some are reporting this as 6th ed when it's everything I've seen leading up to this has been development of 5.5. The reason it is compatible is...
I know this is the article title, but it irks me how some are reporting this as 6th ed when it's everything I've seen leading up to this has been development of 5.5. The reason it is compatible is because this is to 5th as 3.5 is to 3rd.
I skimmed the released content earlier today and I liked most of it. I like 1st level feats and stats being tied to backgrounds, not your ancestry. I am concerned that nat20s are now universally guaranteed successes; a person with -5 charisma should never be able to deceive a god of truth, which this ruling makes possible 5% of the time. In the instances I have DM'd a nat20 on a roll that cannot succeed, I gave some benefit to the player, maybe the NPC takes a liking to you, but not a miraculous success. Also, inspiration seems to be thrown around a lot.
Edit:
As there was a bit more discussion on this then I thought, I'll expand a bit on what I meant. My personal reasons come from playing with bad players who would pressure the DM, sometime me sometimes not, into "just letting them roll" for something they simply can't do. Letting them just roll it, while reminding them that ability checks can't crit, got them to drop it. In a more respectful group, I can imagine it being less of a problem. It also allowed for situational critical successes; I love the rule of cool as much as an anyone. Clearly every DM/Group can change rules how they wish, but by setting it as the default, I am mildly concerned it will provide ammunition for shittier players while not providing any meaningful benefit to better groups. I'd prefer it just be explicitly situational with no default.
Current guidelines in the DMG (which are assumed to remain unless replaced in these updates) are that the DM should not call for a roll if a task is impossible.
Edit: I should say: there's no wrong way to play D&D and every table is different. I've always played with crits on ability and skill checks, but my style of game has never been particularly grounded in reality; on the contrary, my games have generally been more "professional wrestling with wizards" or "anime bullshit and video game logic" than realistic, low powered dungeon crawls.
I think the kind of circumstance Arshan was getting at was when as a DM you ask for anyone at the table to roll a perception check to look for tracks in the forest. The city-slicking former town guard who dumped WIS might not actually be able to contribute even if they roll a 20.
I think the counter point that TheRtRevKaiser was bringing up is that you shouldn't have everyone roll for the check if only the two of the five players have a chance of success. Instead of having everyone roll and using an impossibly high DC to exclude people from succeeding, only allow people who can succeed the option to roll. Maybe you shouldn't let everyone roll to look for tracks in the forest, maybe you only give that roll to the druid and ranger.
Yeah exactly. In fact, this is what the Help action is for. I elaborated a bit more in my reply to @Bonooru but I think that having everyone roll for the same check is a mistake, but I get why a lot of DMs do it, because they gate progress in the "story" behind a check and they're up shit creek if nobody succeeds. I'm of the mind that if the result of failing a check is "nothing happens" or "you fail the story" then you've failed as a DM.
I think that there's a bit of a subtle problem that the nat-1 / nat-20 rule has which is that it actually gives you information about what is going on, from a game-theoretical point of view, in at least two ways that I can think of.
Problem one: if you have two people attempting something, and you say to one "okay, go ahead and roll," and to the other "you don't get to roll," then that has told the table that there is a thing to succeed at.
Problem two: you are giving out "perfect information" with natural 20s. If you are doing a perception check and you score a 20, you know that what you are told is right.
I think both of these are mitigated within the current ruleset, which lend themselves also quite well to a graduated success (or "degrees of failure" per the DMG). But I'm sure we'll all get used to this too, and DMs can still have graduated levels of success - using the example above, maybe if a druid with high perception rolls a nat 20 while tracking, they would know how many people passed by and how long ago, but the warlock with poor perception would only know "TRACKS!" and not really get further information from them; critical successes don't have to be the same for each character.
Yeah, to bounce off what @Banisher said, I don't typically let multiple players roll checks for the same action. If there's a perception check to be made and everyone is present, then the PC with the highest mod who is participating in that action will roll and others that want will take the Help action to possibly give them advantage. The whole situation where you have a chain of people wanting to make perceptions checks for the same thing after the first person fails, or the whole group wants to roll to search an area, really throws the resolution system of D&D out of whack. I also typically try to "fail forward" when it comes to misses though. So instead of just saying, "you can't find the tracks" I'd try to find some way to present additional complications that the part has to overcome to continue with what they want to do. I'd probably only make a hard move like "you can't find the tracks" if there are interesting consequences to that failure which will make the lives of the party more interesting (in the sense of the old "Chinese" curse).
Certainly. It seems like we're both on the same page. When I'm DM'ing, I'll only do that sort of thing for figuring out who spots the the tracks. I know that someone is going to spot them and whoever has the highest roll (or everyone who rolled well) is the one who spots the tracks
Inspiration is a mechanic that the tables I play with don't really use, and they don't really use them because it's hard to decide when you're supposed to give it out. Having a strict rules of "roll a nat20, get inspiration" helps tables like mine use it.
Knee jerk thoughts on the Unearthed Arcana:
I don't like this change, I think it's a big nerf to one of the few unique control options that martial characters had. The main difference here is that it's a saving throw instead of being an ability check to escape - that's big because grapple ignored legendary resistance before. Perhaps this is just to simplify, perhaps it is because the way contesting ability checks worth, it's fairly simple to get proficiency in the score and advantage and then it's practically impossible to lose the roll.
There may also be a change to legendary resistance as they release more rules, since that is also an often complained about rule as a probably necessary, but very blunt, instrument for any kind of balance.
They nerfed crits to oblivion. I think their intention is clear from the fact that enemies can no longer critical hit at all - it's mainly to prevent "Goblin Ambush" syndrome, the first encounter of Lost Mines of Phandelver, where infamously any of the goblins criting gives pretty much all level 1 characters like a 70% chance of being knocked unconscious.
In terms of PC strength relative to each other, I don't think it's particularly important on average to anyone... except Paladins. Paladins, because they can chose to smite after the roll, can and often do exclusively or almost exclusively smite on crits. That being said, that's just one part of Paladin - they're one of the best classes in the game. It also hits rogues in that way but rogues can't pick and choose so I don't think it's as big of a deal as it is to Pallys
I've heard some people talking about this being nerf to spellcasters, but honestly, it's not. If a full spellcaster wants to do damage, it's typically not through an attack roll to begin with - it's through saving throws, like Spirit Guardians, or summons like Summon Fey (which have weapons!) or Animate Objects. Firebolt was always a filler turn - that it can't crit is not meaningful.
And even when weapons do crit, they're going to be doing 3-4 more damage on just that attack, which even at low levels is not that impressive. It does really remove the spectacle of critical hits, and makes it more of a reliable and small bump to damage rather than a story defining moment.
Not sure how I feel about the always succeed/fail thing. It puts more onus on the DM to consider whether or not it should be possible to roll, and it gets weird in cases where the mechanics dictate rolls. For instance, if a 25 strength giant grapples a toddler, the toddler still gets to make saving throw under the new grapple rules, so they have a 5% chance of succeeding?
On inspiration, I think it's fine, I just think it can have the opposite effect of the often criticized critical failure homebrew rule, in that PCs that naturally roll more now have more inspiration. If you're a Bard or Rogue and are the skill monkey, especially perception skill monkey, then you're just going to get way more inspiration. Similarly, if you're built to make a lot of separate attacks, you get more advantage than ones that make fewer, but harder hitting attacks.
In the end, I doubt it matters that much, there's lots of ways to get advantage on any particular roll anyway.
It's hard to say just with just what they have there. That being said, feats are one of the most criticized parts of the game, and I think outside of Fey Touched, the new feats are much better than the PHB/XtGE/SCAG feats in balance and enjoyability. The level requirement is also another lever - if something like Polearm Master, or Great Weapon Master, or Sharpshooter still exists, it'll probably be higher level requirement, and that may help prevent the overpowering power of Vuman and Custom Lineage as races.
In our current campaign we just started I'm playing a Rouge with expertice in Athletics (+7 at lvl one). I'm deciding on either going Barbarian or picking Fighter and getting rune knight. At level 5 I'd have +10 to Athletics and could easily gain advantage by raging as a barbarian. As a rune knight I'd have the added benefit of becoming large and then also gaining adv. to strength checks. If someone then casts enlarge I'd be able to grapple Gargantuan creatures. With shield master I can push them prone with a bonus action (giving them disadvantage on attack rolls and me advantage).
Sooo with this Grapple rule change pinning down an Ancient Red Dragon at level 5 while everyone else stomps on it is no longer a viable strategy 😂. Now it can just use a legendary resistance to get out!
I think that's fine, though. Grappling alone doesn't accomplish much - it requires further teamwork and strategy, unlike other control conditions. In current 5e, a grappled character can still attack you, if it has ranged attacks, it can still attack anything in range without disadvantage, unless you use another action to make the character go prone no one has advantage attacking it. Depending on the type of enemy, it might not do anything at all!
If you're a level 5 (or any level) rogue, that ancient dragon is going to one shot you. If your party doesn't have ranged attackers, they'd still get breath weaponed.
But, grappling the right type of enemies, with the right party (e.g if you were less likely to immediately die, you could grapple a dragon, and have everyone stay out of breath weapon range, and then pelt it to death before you die), and/or abuse spells like Spike Growth, could make it an effective and worthwhile thing to do. And all that faffing is worth it because it doesn't apply to legendary resistance.
Now that it's just a saving throw, it's a tough for it to ever be worth doing all that when either you could just hypnotic pattern them, or it was never going to work on them anyway.
I like the new spell breakout of Primal, Arcane and Divine spells, and Magic Initiate allowing you to use selected spells with your own spell slots and the Stat of your choice is powerful stuff. Your Wizard can spam upcast Healing Word, your Wildfire Druid can get Fire Bolt as the good Lord intended, and your pro wrestler flavored Bard with the Tavern Brawler feat can literally "give 'em the chair" with Shillelagh.
Saw the announcement video for this and hope they can create something nice. Especially cool if people outside of WotC can create and sell adventure modules à la dungeon masters guild. We ran some rollplayibg sessions over roll20 during COVID, but in person is just soo much better. Just a simple thing as leaning over and having a short in (or out of) character conversation with some other player while the dm is busy can't be done smoothly over eg discord or a VTT.
Will try it out, but can't see this replacing in person sessions for me. One night CE thing they've hinted at is getting digital versions of the books when buying the hard copy. Just that change will be awesome!
The nat 1 auto-fail sucks to see. 5e's design philosophy of putting the role of arbiter on the DM instead of the book so much creates a kind of adversarial relationship that the book itself insists shouldn't exist, and it's annoying to see one of the more irritating homebrews that lean into this be codified.
I know this is the article title, but it irks me how some are reporting this as 6th ed when it's everything I've seen leading up to this has been development of 5.5. The reason it is compatible is because this is to 5th as 3.5 is to 3rd.
</rant>Strong agree. It's annoying that they don't seem to understand how the compatibility numbering works.