Basic D&D's most offensive paragraph

Here now is the most offensive paragraph of the new in the 5th edition D&D Basic PDF:

Page 67 of the PDF under the heading of Long Rest, 2nd paragraph:
"At the End of a long rest, a character regains all lost hit points. The character also regains spent Hit Dice, up to a number of dice equal to half of a character's total number of them. For example, if a character had eight Hit dice, he or she can regain four spent Hit Dice upon finishing a long rest."

That is really offensive to my old school RPG playing mentality.

 Hit Points are recovered after a long rest (sleeping for the night has to be identified as a long rest for some baffling reason). ALL Hit Points are recovered after a long rest....argghhhh....so no matter how unlucky and how beat up a character is they bounce back to 100% if they can go sleep for the night somewhere.  D&D 5th edition characters are all heroes in really bad action movies as per the Basic rules.

I also have no clue at all what they are talking about in regards to regaining Hit Dice beyond spending hit dice that I noticed was to heal quicker after a short rest mentioned a couple paragraphs above the offensive lines noted above. I'm guessing there might be more about this idea in other 5th edition rules that didn't make the cut in the Basic PDF.

5th Editon Basic Review Part 3

D&D is a roleplaying game, it’s a game of wonder, and exploration… and pretending to kill things. Now this blog is going to get into the combat rules of 5^th edition.The combat chapter is organized along the order of combat from surprise,to initiative, to your turn and covers plenty of ground for the basic game. I’ll cover all the combat in the order and attention it get sin the combat chapter.

Surprise hinges on DM decision of who may be surprised. If specific situation don’t lead to an immediate decision the DM compares Stealth and Perception of each creature and those on each side that don’t notice a threat are surprised and unable to take an action until the turn ends.

Initiative determines the order of each PC and group of similar monsters turns in a combat round. Everyone makes a dexterity check (well guys sloppy language use there it’s actually a roll because nothing is actually be checked against) and the highest check goes first with the DM resolving ties. Initiative is rolled but once per combat.

Now on Your Turn you get to make actions in combat such as making and attack, moving, dodging or readying an action or taking a bonus action. Some opponents actions may spark a reaction, you may only take one reaction per round.

In combat PCs and monsters may be in constant action using movement and position to gain the upper hand. On your turn you can move up to your speed in distance and possible special movement (jumping, climbing, etc…).  In Basic D&D everyone can break up the move, you are allowed to move some, attack, and move some more. Difficult terrain is is moved over at ½ speed. You can drop prone at no speed cost, standing up costs you half your speed for the round. You can interact with one object a round at no cost to actions (you can draw a weapon at no cost, opening a door and walking through) unless there is something interfering with that interaction as decided by the DM, interacting with a second object counts as a used action for the round. It is possible to move through a friendly creature’s space in combat or sneak about really big creatures as long as you don’t end your move in their space but attempting to leave a hostile creatures reach can provoke an attack of opportunity.

Spaces are explained as is the option of playing on a grid, they game does not depend on a grid or miniatures being used. You can squeeze into a tight space but that counts as difficult terrain and anything you attempt is likely to be at a disadvantage.

Actions in combat include making an attack, casting a spell, dashing (moving quick), disengaging, dodging, helping, hiding, readying, searching, and using and object. Disengaging allows one to move out of a foes reach without being threatened by an attack of opportunity. Dodging causes any attacks made against you to be made at a disadvantage and all your dexterity saves will be at an. Helping let’s you offer healing or such to anyone or improve an adjacent allies actions in combat so they attack at advantage. Readying sets up an action as a response to opponent’s actions.

Making an attack uses the good old d20 after you have picked a target. Roll 1d20 and add the appropriate ability modifier (normally Strength for melee of Dexterity for ranged combat but there are exceptions based on equipment and special abilities), add in your proficiency bonus and if the roll equals or exceeds the AC of the target you have hit. (For those not in the know AC starts at 10 and goes up).  A hit roll of 20 is always a hit and is a critical hit. A hit roll of 1 always misses regardless of modifiers and targets AC. If a foe should be obscured or invisible you attack at a disadvantage. m/aking a ranges attack with a foe within 5 feet causes the attack to be disadvantaged.

Opportunity Attacks are allowed if a hostile attmepts to move out of reach. Making an opportunity attack costs you your reaction for the round. If an opponent is knocked away bey an explosion or som other situation foes do not get opportunity attacks against them. AoO still here but not as invasive as they were in 3.X.

Grappling is pretty simple as written you grab a foe no more than one size category larger and a contest ensues between athletic ability or athletics and acrobatics (STR vs STR, or STR vs DEX). Unfortunately the rules don’t make it clear if that grab is a melee attack or just the ability contest. You can wriggle free from a grapple or break free. If you have successfully grappled a foe you can drag them around at ½ your speed.

You can choose to shove a creature to knock it prone or knock it away, the target can be no more than one size class larger and the results are resolved by an ability contest.

Damage and healing is covered next and the damage roll and critical hit is explained; on an attack roll of 20 (or other rolls for some special abilities) an attack is a critical hit which allows the attacker to roll twice as many dice before adding modifiers to determine damage (so if you have a 1d8 damage weapon and a +2 strength bonus on a critical hit you would roll 2d8 and add your bonus of 2 points). Danage types are covered some foes aren’t harmed by some attack forms. If a creature or object has resistance to an attack form only half damage is inflicted on it by that attack form. If a creature or object has vulnerability to an attack form damage of that type is doubled. Only one type of vulnerability or resistance counts in. There’s a whole lot of easy and readily recieved healing in 5^th editon with rest easily restoring HP. Dead creatures can’t regain HP until they are revived.

Dropping to 0 Hit points causes a target to fall unconscious if it doesn’t kill them. Massive damage kills a target instantly if there is remaining damage equal to your normal hitpoint maximum. Example: a target normally has 5 hit points and was wounded earlier so they only have 2 hp currently and they suffer a blow of 8 hp causing them to be instantly killed as there are 6 hp remaining in the attack and this is greater then (or equal to) the normal max HP of 5 that the target had. Even with all the easy healing combat will be pretty lethal to low level characters.

Death Saving Throws: at the start of any turn with 0 hit points a character must make a death saving throw.  This save is a simple d20 roll with no ability modifiers. You do not die until your third failure or stabilize until your third success. If you roll a 20 on the death save you actually recover a hp. If you roll a 1 it counts as two failures. Any damage inflicted on you before you are stabilized counts a as a death save failure (a critical is two failures).  Anyone can attempt to stabilize a creature by using their action to administer first-aid, stable creatures don’t have to make death saves unless hit again. Stable creatures regain a hit points in a couple hours. You can attack to knock a creature out and in such an attack rather than dealing a killing blow when you knock it to 0 hp you have simply knocked the creature out and they are unconscious but stable.

Mounted combat and underwater combat get a some limited attention. No clear advantage to mounted combat is given beyond the speed of but adequate rules cover some combat situations. Underwater combat is treated very briefly mostly limiting ranged combat and reducing attacks to disadvantaged attacks to those with no swim speed. Both of these areas of combat are under-explored in the basic rules in my opinion.

So that’s it for combat. No mention of attacking from behind or higher ground, no problem shooting into a melee. The difference between subduing damage and normal damage has been easily cleared up by an attacker simply not attacking to kill. The AoO horror from 3.x has been pretty much dropped and back to the good old days rules where you get a free attack against a foe trying to leave combat.  Characters are much more mobile in this version of D&D compared to any other I’m familiar with as everyone will be able to move about fairly freely in combat. Dying after being reduced to 0 hp isn’t instant but is also simple to deal with than in some other versions of the game with little book-keeping.  Death by HP loss looks like a threat round to round but not an enduring issue over the course of a game day. Combat is goign to be familiar round per round but over the course of an adventure it's going to have a different feel compared to older editions of the game.

5th Editon Basic D&D Review Part 2

Ability Scores and basic Mechanics. 5^th Edition D&D uses the classical D&D ability scores… and how, it uses the heck out of them.                  

Ability score modifiers are similar to 3.x going from 1 to 30 with penalties at 9 or lower and bonuses at 12 or higher. Each score has a single modifier or the ability socre -10 and cut in half.

Ability Checks are the meat and bones of all task resolution in 5^th edition Basic D&D.  Roll 1d20 and add your ability modifier to meet or beat a Difficulty class of 5 (easy) to 30(nearly impossible). Contests between two individuals simply pits the dice rolls against each other, nice and simple that.

Skills are simply an refinement and extension of ability checks. Each ability score has a small selection of very broad skills. If you are proficient in a skill you roll a d20 add the relevant ability modifier and add your proficiency bonus (which is a fixed score from +2 to +6 depending on level).

Passive checks exist which are simply a means of a DM secretly determining success of an action without the player rolling dice again and again or potentially being tipped off to something they shouldn’t be aware of. The example in the introduction center would have been better explained as an application of Passive Checks as opposed to a die roll by the player.

The means by which each ability score and related skills can be resolved is adequately explained.

The biggest change to me in 5^th edition D&D is the nature of Saving Throws. Each ability score can be used to make a saving throw. One doesn’t “save vs wands” or make “reflex save” they would instead make a Dexterity Save. Each class gets to use it’s proficiency bonus to save made for two scores otherwise saves are pretty much straight ability checks.

A host of picky and minor bonuses and penalties modifying a wide range of actions is dropped from the game by a simple and elegant mechanic : Advantage and Disadvantaged. If a character would have an advantageous situation involving any ability check, skill check, saving throw, or hit roll two d20 are rolled and the higher roll is used. If a character is disadvantaged two dice are rolled and the lower of the two die rolls is used. No multiple dice or ever stacking mods ultimately it boils down to typical, advantaged or disadvantaged rolls.

The adventuring rules are pretty brief and without the detail a DM would likely see on their side of the table and a such a lot of the pertinent details are absent at this point. Rules are given about movement and time within the game that are self-consistent; a party must be moving slow to be stealthy, if moving at a fast pace there is a penalty to perception scores.

Resting in 5^th edition is broken down into a Short Rest and a Long Rest. A short rest is at least an hour long (really… not that short by my book). After a short Rest any character can recover HP = Hit dice rolled + Con mod.  A long rest is at least 8 hours long and all HP are regained.  Damage doesn’t stick with characters for long in 5^th edition D&D.

Between adventures characters spend downtime living a normal life and pay up their lifestyle expenses, craft items if so capable, practice their profession, researching, training, or recuperating. When recuperating a character can recover from debilitating injury, disease, or poison after three days of rest a save made be made to improves the save vs one such condition each day.

Criticisms and comments:  I like that ability scores have been made far more important. The play experience between adventures played with 5^th edition and say 2^nd edition style rules will vary greatly as HP loss is very brief and easily recovered in 5^th edition. 5th edition will very much play like an action movie where heroes shrug of “flesh wounds” and never suffer the consequences of their actions for long.

5th Edition Basic D&D Review Part 1

My Review of 5^th edition basic as released to date.104 pages plus appendix and character sheet. Part 1- Intro and Character creation

Intro cover the basics of what D&D is and how it plays. All pretty straight up and well written but the intro example of play is unfortunately an example of roll-play over roleplay.  This is definitely a sales pitch basic set but that’s fine that’s what basic set are for.

 The steps in order according to 5^th edition basic for character creation are (in order presented) choose a race, choose a class, determine ability scores, describe your character, choose equipment and come together. A number of options are given ot generate ability scores with roll 4d6 and keeping the 3 highest to generate the six scores and putting them where you wish being the default method.

The basic set has details presented for Dwarves, Elves, Hallfings, and Humans. For each race we get the ability score increases (yup “increases” no penalties here), and age entry explaining the typical starting age and expected lifespan for each race, alignment tendencies, size, speed, languages, and subraces along with general descriptions of the races behavior and special abilities. Example names are given for each race. Subraces are given for each of the demi-human races and humans get ethnicities which in basic all are drawn from the forgotten realms ( a good example but not a lot of use if your campaign isn’t in the realms).

The classes are the now classical four of Cleric, Fighter, Rogue, and Wizard. Each class has hitdice, a number of initial and acquired special abilities. All the classes have ability score improvement as they gain level but using this character development feature no ability score can go over 20. All classes have the same proficiency score and it is tied to level and is applied as a positive modifier to: attacks with proficient weapons, attacks with spells cast, skill use, use of tools the character is trained to use, proficient saving throws, and for setting the DC scores for spells you may cast. The proficiency score is used a lot in the game but has a pretty subdued curve going from +2 at 1^st level to +6 at 20^th level.

Clerics are familiar with old versions but can’t wear all armor well and start out proficient with simple weapons.  Clerics get a lot more spells than they did in some earlier versions of the game starting able to cast 3 cantrips and two 1^st level spells. The spell casting system used by clerics and magic users is identical to each other and similar to the past but not identical; spell slots are used up as spell are cast but the spells prepared aren’t lost as long as there are spell slots that haven’t been used in casting you can cast any of your prepared spells again (more on spells and the revised magic system in a future post). The greatest departure is clerics don’t gain the ability to turn undead until 2^nd level when they gain the ability to Channel Divinity:Turn Undead. Clerics will each have a divine domain to further define their abilities the Life Domain is the one available in Basic D&D and it provides a number of bonus spells and additional special abilities.

Fighters are pretty familiar being proficient with all armors, simple weapons, and martial weapons.  Each fighter chooses a Fighting Style that offer a combat bonus of some sort such as archery giving a +2 to hit. Fighters can recover quickly from damage if they take the time to rest recovering 1d10+ fighter level in hp as often as they can rest. Fighters get more actions in combat and more attacks as they level up and gain the abilities of their martial archetype; the champion is the martial archetype for fighters in basic D&D the biggest impact this has is they acquire improved criticals as they gain levels. 18^th level fighters with the champion archetype will regain 5+ CON mod hp at the start of each turn (rounds for us old timers) unless they have 0 HP so high level fighters are pretty hardy fellows.

Rogues are presented as skillful ands sneaky skirmishers often on the shady side. Wepaons selection for rogues make sense with all simple weapons and a few swashbuckling arms. Rogues get to use double their proficiency bonus with 2 skills of their choice at 1^st level. Rogues get a sneak attack that increases damage againbst one foe they hit if they have advantage in vombat the extra dmage is defined as a bonus damage dice per level going from 1d6 to 10d6. Rogues are nimble folks and the host of special abilities is tied to that. The presented roguish archetypr is the Thief which makes a rogue better at doing the thiefly things we are familiar with .

Wizards are the arcane spell caster of D&D they start  able to cast 3 cantrips and 2 1^st level spells as does the cleric. Wizards have the ability once per day after a short rest to recover as many used levels in spell slots as half their character level (but no spells of 6^th level or higher). The sample archetype in basic D&D for wizards is the School of Evocation and this impacats the spells the caster has access to (but is really all the basic spells as all basic wizards will be evokers). Evokers get a number of special abilities which improve their ability to prepare and cast spells from the school of evocation, as a veteran player I can see what is going on but I can’t help but wonder if this will confuse newbies going from starter/basic to the full game.

                                                                                                                                   

Next section of the rules covers personality and background; everyone has a sex and a name. Heights and weights are given for each race/subrace. Alignement is briefly explained in this section and is the classic LG to CE of AD&D days And while there is Neutral the basic is without a peep about True Neutral or Balance freaks. Languages are covered in a bit more detail in this section. What gets the greatest amount of attention and is one of the newer parts of D&D in Basic D&D is the various backgrounds which serve to define a couple extra skill proficiencies for a character and a couple bonus pieces of equipment along with a set of Personality Traits, Ideals, Bonds, and Flaws for each character. That last set fo characteristics is provided as a set of (optional) random charts in each category for each background And some folks will bristle at personality characteristics being randomly defined but other will likelt find them useful hooks in visualizing a character.

Equipment is next in D&D Basic and each character starts with some equipment based on class and background and gets a small pile of coin to buy more. A wide host of armor and weapons is described along with all the rules significant to basic D&D related to equipment. Weapons do not have as much detail as they did in the 3.x era, some weapons are dropped people might expect to find and some have been reworked to more accurately fit historical weapon types with by example the Longsword working more like the medieval longsword did (or the bastard sword of older D&D), what is curiously lacking is the plain old arming sword or broad sword there is definitely room for an weapons book in the future of 5th edition D&D. there are a few pre-selected adventure packs for players to buy for a character as opposed to worrying about individual items to speed up play. There’s a wide selection of equipment available nothing I noticed was missing but I do dislike the inclusion of healing potions in standard adventuring gear. Rounding out this section is a random table of trinkets, every character can start with one random trinket.

I haven’t  really touched on skills and ability scores yet, that will come in a future post.  Skills do not dominate the rules in the same manner they did in 3.x  and the ability score have a much more prominent role in the game than seen in many previous versions of the game. More to come...

D&D Basic

So I just downloaded the D&D basic PDF, just skimmed it really superficially. Over 100 pages and it's character creation, combat and exploration rules foe levels 1 to 20.  On a skim the only surprises were how shallow the bonus curve is and how few EXP it takes to level up. I haven't seen any of the playtest stuff so this is really day 1 for 5th edition D&D for me. I'll probably post some more about it today.

Why are so many buildings rectangular?

Looking more into building and dwelling and I came upon this paper by one Philip Steadman: Why are most buildings rectangular? It’s a great architectural theory piece that explores a variety of general floor-plan layouts and the structures that go with them. It’s worth a look for the variety of floor plans and layouts illustrated in the paper alone.

In summary there are host of reasons why rectangular structures are so prolific and three main points are explored including the use of instruments used by building designers (you have rectangular implements it’s easy to design rectangular buildings), cultural attachments to mathematical concepts and spaces (has western geometry influenced out capacity to design enclosed space?), Is there a deeper psychological tie to how spaces are arranged?

In the piece the author demonstrates how in many places and times the basic structure is often a single space and that single space will often be circular in more primitive societies. It is also noted however that some single-spaces have a basic rectangular design that will incorporate non-rectangular extensions as the structure is expanded (copula, towers, apses). Historians have explored the issue and it is noted that less sedentary less well established people tend to build circular dwellings but as a people tend to be more sedentary a rectangular design dominates architecture.

It’s all pretty interesting stuff to me and useful stuff to consider when building an RPG campaign where the GM doesn’t want the players bumping into the same architecture again and again. Take the time to give the paper a read as I mentioned above it’s worth it for some of the illustrations alone.

Ammunition Tracking It Isn't very hard

For some really weird reason ammunition use and tracking has generated a lot of attention and subsystems over the years. I suspect part of it is from folks coming over from skirmish level wargaming... i.e. Warhammer where ammo tracking is based on dice rolls because tracking the precise ammo use of 10-100 different guys would be a pain in the butt. Others claim keeping track of individual arrows flies in the face of the abstract nature of D&D combat which is nonsense an arrow in your opponent isn't abstract, there is nothing abstract in the discrete capacity to harm a foe 100-600 feet away at one chance per arrow. It's gotta be a new thing because I don't recall bumping into the issue in the 20th century.

Here how I track ammo when there is no spaces for it on a character or equipment sheets:

Quiver (20)
 I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I

I cross one off as a I shoot, If I can reclaim it or get a new arrow I put another little line at the end. It works every time, no fiddly rules to worry about.

Why get more complicated?