5e announced!

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MichaelTumey
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Re: 5e announced!

Post by MichaelTumey »

Cam wrote:I noticed above that there's new rakshasa fluff/background in 5E. Could someone provide a high-level summary of the new elements here, without breaking whatever the non-disclosure agreement is that I imagine you have to agree to to see pieces of 5E? No problem if that is not possible, I'm not looking to cause trouble. I'm interested because I'm preparing a campaign that will use a rakshasa as a major villain. It's going to be a Pathfinder campaign, but I am not limiting myself to the Pathfinder race background. Thanks!
No offense, but PF Rakshasa come in 6 varieties, divided into castes, while I don't know the background/fluff to 4e nor 5e rakshasa, back in 3x, there was only one variety (at least it was that way in 2e and before). Isn't Pathfinder's 6 variety fluff enough background material for your needs? It's actually volumes more than what I'm used to and seemingly quite enough for most needs.

What are you looking for, that needs more than PF fluff?
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Re: 5e announced!

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The Pathfinder background is sufficient. So is the 2E background, or 3E background, or (I imagine -- I am not familiar with them all) backgrounds from other systems. I could use any one system's fluff and I'm sure it would be fine. I could also use general lore about rakshasas not related to D&D and I'm sure it would be fine. But I am trying to come up with a background to use in my game that I think will be compelling. I asked about 5E because someone above mentioned that there were new ideas about rakshasas in 5E. If some of those new ideas are compelling to me, I will think about using them. If game designers have new, interesting ideas about monster ecology, I want to hear them even if the old ideas about monster ecology are satisfactory.
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Re: 5e announced!

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Jester of the FoS wrote:D&D is bigger than one company, one edition, or one person's preference in monster lore. It's hard to find any common ground. You're not going to alienate a fan by not changing lore, and you're not going to gain sales by changing lore, but you're are going to piss people off and possibly lose sales by changing lore. It should be done carefully.
I think we're looking at it from different perspectives. Glass half full and all that. You're assuming that a change will piss people off, I'm assuming that a change might have a beneficial effect. Sort of "Oh, that's cool, they should have done that from the start" sort of idea.
Jester of the FoS wrote:I like the idea of a progenitor elf race that lives in faerie. That's cool.
I dislike making that a core race under the assumption that having two types of elves is confusing.
And I dislike Eberron and the Realms suddenly having to retcon all grey elves (or moon elves) into being eladrin and being able to teleport.
So you're more against the teleport ability than the race itself, if I understand? Fair enough. The retconning thing I can understand as being annoying; I always thought of it as a "price of doing business" sort of thing. It's change, and no one said change was easy. Ravenloft went through a similar bit when it went from 2E to 3E. Maybe not quite as drastically as some of the 4E changes, but they were definately there (see my note before about Paladins).
Jester of the FoS wrote:Elves were always split into wood elves and grey elves. Way back in 1e they had the split. Heck, when explaining the game to new players I say there's the Elrond type elf and the Legolas type elf.
The problem is assuming having Subraces is complicated and that people will pick the wood elf and try and play a wizard.
Now we have Subraces back (yay) but will still likely have eladrin. I think they'll work better without having to be too elflike, and we can make them faeries plus. We need a good Oberon & Titania magical fae race in D&D.
It's actually a bit more than that, though Jester. For elven subraces we had: elves, Aerenal elves, aquatic elves, avariel, drow, moon elves, painted elves, snow elves, star elves, sun elves, Valenar elves, wild elves, wood elves and more besides. And the way they were presented, they weren't subraces (though they were called that). They were flat out different races. Mechanically-speaking. So if you look at it like that, it might seem complicated to a new player.

But there's another whole question beyond whether it was too complicated: Was it necessary? Are the differences between Wild and Wood elves that much, that we needed a whole separate race for each one? I'm actually really a fan of 5E's way of handling the races, in that you choose "Elf" and you get some abilities. Then you choose your subrace, which doesn't seem to affect the previous choice of "Elf" at all, and it gives you one or two more abilities to make you different from the other subraces. It allows you to show that this subrace is different from that one, while at the same time, showing that they are all "Elves."
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Re: 5e announced!

Post by Jester of the FoS »

Mortavius wrote:So you're more against the teleport ability than the race itself, if I understand? Fair enough. The retconning thing I can understand as being annoying; I always thought of it as a "price of doing business" sort of thing. It's change, and no one said change was easy. Ravenloft went through a similar bit when it went from 2E to 3E. Maybe not quite as drastically as some of the 4E changes, but they were definately there (see my note before about Paladins).
The teleporting was annoying, but mostly for how it meshed with past lore. As a new race it's alright but it's not elven nor is it grey elven. It didn't mesh with any portrayal of grey elves, be it moon elves from the Realms, Silvanesti elves from Dragonlance or Sithican elves from Ravenloft. But neither did the actual 4e "elf" fit those races.
Eladrin were the definition of "tacked on".
Mortavius wrote:It's actually a bit more than that, though Jester. For elven subraces we had: elves, Aerenal elves, aquatic elves, avariel, drow, moon elves, painted elves, snow elves, star elves, sun elves, Valenar elves, wild elves, wood elves and more besides. And the way they were presented, they weren't subraces (though they were called that). They were flat out different races. Mechanically-speaking. So if you look at it like that, it might seem complicated to a new player.
And do all of them need to be their own seperate race?

Plus, it's not complicated as a new player will look and see the term "elf" and know exactly what they are. Everyone knows what an "elf" is. Say "eladrin" and you get blank stares, even from experienced D&D players new to 4e.
Subraces are easy to get. It's easy to explain. There's the LotR example I used earlier or blood elf and moon elf from Warcraft.
Mortavius wrote:But there's another whole question beyond whether it was too complicated: Was it necessary? Are the differences between Wild and Wood elves that much, that we needed a whole separate race for each one? I'm actually really a fan of 5E's way of handling the races, in that you choose "Elf" and you get some abilities. Then you choose your subrace, which doesn't seem to affect the previous choice of "Elf" at all, and it gives you one or two more abilities to make you different from the other subraces. It allows you to show that this subrace is different from that one, while at the same time, showing that they are all "Elves."
I love the 5e method so much. It's nigh perfect.
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Re: 5e announced!

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I also like the new race mechanic in the 5e. I would prefer the dwarf abilities to be somewhat different though, but that's schemantics.
Also, I would prefer something more like "Elves get +1 dex. Gray elves get also a +1 int while high elves get a +1 charisma (or wisdom or whatever)." And I would prefer racial stat penalties. Like elves -1 con and dwarves -1 charisma.
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Re: 5e announced!

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http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx ... l/20121203


Seems good to me!
They're thinking of increasing (thankfully) the spells/day spellcasters have, and make at-will spells that will be seperate from spells, which they will increase in potency to remain revalent.
I.e. while the 8th lvl fighter deals those 2d8 extra damage with his at will spells, so will the wizard's at will spells be relevant.
Of course, being a spam-magic person myself, I'll probably use a couple of slots for cantrip spam. Who needs to have magic missile at will when you can use the slot to cool your beer, right? :) I hope my chars won't be penalized too much by that choice...

Clerics get an awesome change (IMO) too. You get like 5 points of Channeling/lvl per day. You use some to heal or turn undead. Remove disease etc will require more channeling points.
Still, since it's just 5 channeling, people will need to have clw memorized etc.
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Re: 5e announced!

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There's an article up today about elementals and genies in 5E.

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx ... 2F20121211

Incidentally, I can't resist pointing out that the elemental section embodies my whole complaint of "let's describe a monster like it almost always was, and then ask if people recognize it."
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Re: 5e announced!

Post by Jester of the FoS »

I was interview over at the WotC Community Site for their playtester profiles series:
http://community.wizards.com/dndnext/bl ... the_jester
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Re: 5e announced!

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Jester of the FoS wrote:I was interview over at the WotC Community Site for their playtester profiles series:
http://community.wizards.com/dndnext/bl ... the_jester
And of course, I learn that you have updated the Ravenloft module to D&D Next from... the WotC site. :?
Can I have a link please?
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Re: 5e announced!

Post by Jester of the FoS »

alhoon wrote:
Jester of the FoS wrote:I was interview over at the WotC Community Site for their playtester profiles series:
http://community.wizards.com/dndnext/bl ... the_jester
And of course, I learn that you have updated the Ravenloft module to D&D Next from... the WotC site. :?
Can I have a link please?
The terms of the playtest are really specific on sharing mechanics, so I didn't want to tease anyone with an update I couldn't post.
But I'll see what I can do.
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Re: 5e announced!

Post by Zilfer »

I thought you were able to share between actual register play testers?

Not that I know of any known way to check that statis.
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Re: 5e announced!

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Jester of the FoS wrote: The terms of the playtest are really specific on sharing mechanics, so I didn't want to tease anyone with an update I couldn't post.
But I'll see what I can do.
I don't need the mechanics that are in the playtest bundle, I have those. If you have the adventure in a form that doesn't replicate the playtest material, I'm 95% sure you can share it. I.e. if you don't give the stats for skeletons since they can be found in the playtest but give stats for Strahd zombies you'd be OK I think.
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Re: 5e announced!

Post by Jester of the FoS »

The catch being I found a OCR PDF of the book and cut-and-pasted it into word, rewriting the text for ease of reference while updating the mechanics.
It's a legal grey area, as the updated Canadian Copyright Act does allow format shifting and I have a hard copy (original and House of Strahd).

I've tried to strip away all the content I don't want to share, and have this:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/7g498xdlvgf9n ... Update.pdf
Pretty simple, but it's an update. Really, there's nothing that couldn't be done on the fly other than picking specific monsters.
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Re: 5e announced!

Post by Zilfer »

That bridge is now more deadly a 5% chance on a d20 of getting a 1.... wasn't it 1% in the original module? Also yes! the green ooze! :P
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Re: 5e announced!

Post by Jester of the FoS »

Zilfer wrote:That bridge is now more deadly a 5% chance on a d20 of getting a 1.... wasn't it 1% in the original module? Also yes! the green ooze! :P
Nope. 5% in the original module.
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