Attacking while hidden grants you advantage, which on average grants you +4 to hit (+3.8....) and you get to apply your sneak attack damage for 1d6 at first, 2d6 at second, 3d6 at third... combined with your increased chance of critical hits with advantage your average damage should at least double.
D&D 5 Playtesting.
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That last one sounds more Rogueish.
So maneuvers are basically just effects you can add to attacks for a penelty (except Fighters, who don't have the penalty)? That works. It's simple and you know it'll do, but you can fluff it any way you want. Plus it's easy to homebrew new ones.
Dave
Staff member
Thoughts on what I like and what I do not.
Questions?
- I think there still needs to be attacks of opportunity. Being able to run through a gauntlet of enemies without fear of reprisals just seems to be idiotic. At the very least it can be a free attack with disadvantage. They'll probably miss but the attack still happens.
- The fact that certain skills are based the way they are make no sense. For example, the Rogue's main skills are brought about using WIS. Now, I don't know about you, but being a thief means that you probably lack that little voice in your head that says, "Stealing that is a bad idea." Most rogues in literature would have had excruciatingly bad WIS scores. I know that this can be argued and debated, but finding/removing traps should be INT based. It's not like you are just seeing something out of the corner of your eye - you are actively looking for signs of a trap; a slight indentation in the wall, a telltale discoloration of a lock that may mean a poison needle. Things like that. So it is now INT.
- So let's look at what that means for our little thief guy. If he has training in a thieving skill, every check he makes is automatically going to be at LEAST a 14. That's not even counting a stat bonus. This means an automatic success on trivial-moderate level traps. All traps would have to be advanced or above, and even then his lowest chance to succeed in advanced is 80%. Extreme is 60-75% success and Master level is 40-55%. Hell, even Immortal level DCs start at 35%success rate and don't hit 0% until the DC hits 34! Throw in a skill bonus and that makes these even more ridiculous. So do I think the thief is broken? Yes. But not in the way that Jay thinks. At 2nd level it gets even worse because of the Knack ability. So the fact that he's not that great in combat does not bother me. Does this mean there's no real good combat rogue? Maybe, maybe not. We haven't seen a lot of the other themes or backgrounds. But if Jay wants a combat oriented rogue I'll work with him, but he'll lose the Skill Mastery ability.
- Fighter remains unchanged.
- Cleric of Moridin remains the same.
- Cleric of Pelor is overpowered but I'm not sure how to dial him back without totally nerfing him. He has one almost certain killing attack but he can only use that twice per day - Searing Light. But he also has one that he can use at will from 50 feet away that does more damage than any other attack in melee with the exception of the fighter's greataxe. If I nerf anything, it'l be the damage of the Radiant Lance. Make it d6+ability damage instead. It will do double damage against undead as it's radiant.
- Wizard remains pretty much the same.
Questions?
The change to Radiant Lance sounds fine to me. It actually gives me a reason to use my melee weapon now. And Searing Light is balanced by it using the same pool as Cure Light Wounds, which (as the last battle indicated) can be the difference between living and dying. It sort of a "last resort" spell, it seems.
Are we doing the full hit die at level one thing, or do you want us to roll the hit die? Remember, your HP at level 1 is Con + Hit Die, not Hit Die + Con Mod.
Can we switch spells for others on our spell list? For instance, I know I wanted Command instead of Spiritual Hammer, mainly because I could see a reason to use it (I don't want to kill someone), where as I really don't see the point of Spiritual Hammer.
Otherwise, I'm basically ready to turn in a character sheet.
Are we doing the full hit die at level one thing, or do you want us to roll the hit die? Remember, your HP at level 1 is Con + Hit Die, not Hit Die + Con Mod.
Can we switch spells for others on our spell list? For instance, I know I wanted Command instead of Spiritual Hammer, mainly because I could see a reason to use it (I don't want to kill someone), where as I really don't see the point of Spiritual Hammer.
Otherwise, I'm basically ready to turn in a character sheet.
Which would still make it less effective than a Searing Light, except against several enemies you could kill in a single hit. Basically, it's worthless.
Probably, thought I'd also point to the extra +2 that Wizards and Clerics get to their attack rolls on top of their modifier. No other classes get that extra bonus to attack, even Fighters (who would benefit from it the most). Maybe we should drop the extra +2 as well?
EDIT: K, Dave. Then I think my sheet is ready. Just need to know the details for HP.
Fighters get an undocumented +3 and Rogues an undocumented +2, so clearly they want them there for some reason, so we should keep the magical ones.[DOUBLEPOST=1341540246][/DOUBLEPOST]I am OK with you learning Command so long as you use it to make a monster "Macarena!"
No no... it would be "Thriller!"
http://community.wizards.com/dndnext/blog/2012/06/22/reacting_to_the_reaction
The goal is to clean up the game of reaction creep that 4th and 3rd had become.
I made plans as well. Furthermore, posting this stuff on a Thursday night for the next night isn't optimal to discuss things properly... because we clearly didn't discuss things at all. I'm not even close to agreeing with what was decided in the post above regarding rogues.
The main issue was the terrible stat allocation for the rogue character, not to change how certain skill checks are done for all classes.... and not without further discussion regarding it and how it'll affect others. Wisdom has nothing to do with the fact rogues aren't wise but rather a personal choice on how they align and take advantage of others. In fact, they should have more wisdom than the norm.
To discuss unlocking traps/door and whatnot without even encountering one and making massive changes isn't advisable. Perhaps if players would take their characters a bit more seriously instead of blindly running into halls and getting flanked by three sides we could have worked on the non-combat mechanics of the game a bit but we clearly didn't. My character was obviously built for skill checks, others for combat. So why change the whole system?
Fighters can go in and hit enemies every turn for 15+ damage at the first level... the best a rogue can do is around 10. If they take a turn to hide, they can buff that a bit but the damage is no where close to the other classes with current hiding mechanics. So ummm yeah, that skill check advantage stays and DC checks should be in line for the character levels. No "Master locks" in newbie dungeon LVL 1 please. People have complained EXTENSIVELY in 4th edition how "all classes can do any skill check, no experts, 4th is lame" but the moment in 5th edition a class is specifically good at a specific skill of their trade, they want to destroy it? That's hypocritical at best. You can't have it both ways.
Lastly, there were no discussion about how ridiculous a 30 foot main radius of a sling is and how anything beyond that range is a disadvantage. So even if I use a turn to hide and then attack something at 35 feet away, I'm just wasting my time playing that night as my advantage gets nullified when clerics and wizards can cast spells clearly across rooms without any problems, some of them with auto-hit mechanics to their spells. If I waste a turn hiding for a sneak attack, odds are most enemies will move out of range. Broken.
The main issue was the terrible stat allocation for the rogue character, not to change how certain skill checks are done for all classes.... and not without further discussion regarding it and how it'll affect others. Wisdom has nothing to do with the fact rogues aren't wise but rather a personal choice on how they align and take advantage of others. In fact, they should have more wisdom than the norm.
To discuss unlocking traps/door and whatnot without even encountering one and making massive changes isn't advisable. Perhaps if players would take their characters a bit more seriously instead of blindly running into halls and getting flanked by three sides we could have worked on the non-combat mechanics of the game a bit but we clearly didn't. My character was obviously built for skill checks, others for combat. So why change the whole system?
Fighters can go in and hit enemies every turn for 15+ damage at the first level... the best a rogue can do is around 10. If they take a turn to hide, they can buff that a bit but the damage is no where close to the other classes with current hiding mechanics. So ummm yeah, that skill check advantage stays and DC checks should be in line for the character levels. No "Master locks" in newbie dungeon LVL 1 please. People have complained EXTENSIVELY in 4th edition how "all classes can do any skill check, no experts, 4th is lame" but the moment in 5th edition a class is specifically good at a specific skill of their trade, they want to destroy it? That's hypocritical at best. You can't have it both ways.
Lastly, there were no discussion about how ridiculous a 30 foot main radius of a sling is and how anything beyond that range is a disadvantage. So even if I use a turn to hide and then attack something at 35 feet away, I'm just wasting my time playing that night as my advantage gets nullified when clerics and wizards can cast spells clearly across rooms without any problems, some of them with auto-hit mechanics to their spells. If I waste a turn hiding for a sneak attack, odds are most enemies will move out of range. Broken.
We talked about that during the actual session (which you probably don't remember because you were pretty pissed at that point). We all agreed that was bullshit, and Dave was going to increase the range of the sling to something more reasonable. I think it was going to be like double the min range, so that would make it 60? That would put it over Radiant Lance, especially with the damage reduction we're giving that spell, but not over a bow or crossbow (which SHOULD have range advantage over a sling).
There really isn't any point for a Rogue to have Str anymore, since they let you add your Dex Mod to damage in certain cases now. I think the only time you'd need it is if you were going to use a Mighty Bow or something. So yes, Stat allocation is crap for the test Rogue. You'll be able to do better when making your own.
I think we're losing sight of something: We're not entirely sure how skills improve (if they improve) as you level. This might not be an issue later on down the road, as a harder, better designed dungeon may simply be that much harder for a rogue to tackle. I think we should leave it alone for now and come back to it later if it does plainly become a problem.
So yeah. They just nerfed the sling for some reason. We'll just house rule it back to normal.
Ironically, 2nd is probably the only realistic depiction.
Sling is the only ranged weapon with a decreased normal range from 4th and it's the distance weapon assigned to a character most likely to use it. They must have done that for a reason. And they also gave it weird damage and bonuses to hit. It's almost like they want us to use the playtest characters and see how they work with the new rules.
That's crazy talk right there.
Dave
Staff member
As I stated before, the sling range was going to be moved to 50'. Nothing else combat-wise for the rogue is going to happen at this point because of his overpowering non-combat stuff. If we want to have a combat-oriented rogue (i.e. more combat abilities) then he'll lose the automatic 10 roll on the skill die.
It's only fair.
It's only fair.
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http://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/v2cu5/ama_mike_mearls_head_of_dd_research_and_design_at/
http://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/v2cu5/ama_mike_mearls_head_of_dd_research_and_design_at/
It looks like they want to pare down the spell list to the important stuff. I kinda agree: there were TONS of spells that were useful, but you'd never want most of them every day.
It's still not all that important as a feature yet.
It's still not all that important as a feature yet.
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