What are these “themes”?
3.5 already has that, in the form of taking 10.
And taking 20 if you’re in a safe place with a lot of time (my group always took 20s on searches, though sometimes it caused us to miss time based objectives).
Power sources are out.
This is your one-stop shop for D&D NEXT reveals :
Looks like I wasn’t far off with my modular class notion :
Honestly lot of those things discussed have been done in other game systems (or in older editions of D&D) such as using ability scores for saving rolls, customizing your class with a pool of options (GURPS), not needing to roll unless in risky circumstances (Unknown Armies), character features mirror aspects in Fate or career choices in Barbarian of Lemuria…
I am kind of quietly excited that my favourite mechanics are coming to D&D though. It’s always easier to get a group for D&D than using some obscure indie rpg.
Hell, that’s what they did with the Skills and Powers update for 2nd edition. Each class had a pool of points, and you could buy the standard suite for your class, or swap them out for things that better fit your character concept.
Pathfinder’s doing kind of the same thing, with their Archetypes, although those are swapping out whole set of class abilities, instead of allowing the player to pick and choose.
There’s individual swapping too. You can do some really amazing stuff with the Barbarian if you look at the Advanced Player’s Guide. Everything from a jungle shaman to a magic-eater.
Where does the APG have individual swapping for class features? It has it for racial features, but the class features are all package deals, as far as I’m aware.
Oh yeah. It’s called Alternative Class Features, which is a nightmare for my chargen spreadsheet. Starts on page 72. It’s not even alternate standard builds, it’s individual pickable class features around a theme.
Right, the Archetypes. Those are not a la cart abilities. You have to take the entire power suite. From the APG, page 72:
So if you want, say, the 1st level Pole Fighting ability from the Polearm Master fighter variant, you must also take the Steadfast Pike ability at 3rd level. You can’t decide to skip it and keep Armor Training from the base class, or swap in Armored Charger ability from the Roughrider archetype.
So… uh… does anyone actually want to talk about the upcoming edition of D&D? Should I start a new thread, perhaps?
I do! I’m quietly allowing myself to be optimistic. I think D&D is finally going to get an edition that’s a true successor to 3.5 (although I think it can be argued that that is Pathfinder, I have not played Pathfinder and thus am unable to judge).
**Chronos **and **Jragon **, the source I was looking at (linked from the source that Candid Gamera posted above, which I think I liked back on page 2 as well) specifically calls out taking 10. The way they are talking about using skills and stats in this way echoes taking 10, but seems (at least to me) to be more about the skill making things possible automatically and less about checking the skill level vs a difficulty chart. Although this is D&D and the chance of charts is always high.
I’m hoping that there will be a way to port characters from 4E into 5E. And the level of customization they’re talking about fairly screams for some kind of online character generator.
I am looking forward to it, because it sounds like the system that I would like to run. Not too much crunch, different level of customization, low reliance on magical items and some narrative mechanics. Plus the D&D brand name to draw people for a game.
I hope they really do an online adventure tabletop this time.
I’m not sold on the idea of including every PH race from every edition in the core rules. That’s gonna be a lot of races. I’d rather see just human, elf, dwarf, halfling (and possibly half orc and half elf) and have the other races in later books. I admit, though, I’m biased against the tieflings, dragonborns, and so on.
I’d like to see sub-races back. I dunno why, but they appeal to me. 4E split high and wood elves into eladrin and elves; I’d rather see “Elf” with a small selection of elvish subraces. That really is just a personal taste thing, though.
I’m liking what I’m seeing so far on skills. I’m liking Vancian magic as core, with feats providing magical at-will abilities. I’m liking broad weapon proficiencies. I’m liking the ability score and bonuses being scaled back to they don’t advance so fast, and the increased effect of ability scores.
Not sure about the opposed rolls as a core mechanic (attack roll sets DC of save against it). I wonder if two rolls for every attack is going to slow things down too much?
My overall impression is positive so far, so that’s a good thing.
Quick! Roll on the Wandering Chart Table!
I’m unquietly pessimistic. There’s been too much gabbing from Monte and Mike about how much people love simple rules and having the GM make up rulings on the fly and so on for D&D Next to be very much like 3.5.
At best, they’ll come out with a simplified core rulebook and a bunch of “Player’s Option”-style splatbooks to add some of the complexity back in, but (a) I don’t want to buy five books in order to get what 3.5/Pathfinder has in one book, and (b) from what I’ve seen, most splatbooks get about 10% of the playtesting and second thought put into them compared to core rulebooks, so some of them are bound to be disappointing..
With the way 4e was specifically designed to be nonportable, I’m thinking that they’ll have to choose between portability with 4th, or portability with all other versions of D&D. Given that choice, I’d rather see portability with everything else.
And Candyman74, you forgot gnomes.
No I didn’t. 