Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General The One D&D project. Thoughts?

Stat blocks are a shortcut...you realize that right, they're for making a lot of mobs quickly to fill out the ranks. They're unfinished, you can make modifications to them based on...

To your (rhetorical) question, they do change if the class, race and alignment change. Or do you think a NPC is Any Alignment...you're supposed to supply the alignment, even if it's in the moment. You've been adding Humans to your campaign cosplaying different races without knowing it, and that's kind of the problem.

Case in point :

COMMONER
Now you tell me, what race's unmodified stats are Str 10 Dex 10 Con 10 Int 10 Wis 10 Cha 10

Do you copy and paste statblocks in from the books? You can do that in a pinch but don't confuse that with an actual character

I'm beginning to wonder if you don't know what you're talking about or are being willfully obtuse.

That is very funny after your posts thus far.

You can modify the monsters as you see fit, but if we make a half-orc veteran and add their +2 str, that's now a +6 to hit with melee weapons and +6 athletics. Add darkvision, increased crit dmg and intimidation proficiency. Now we're talking about a different creature that should probably have a new CR. Or you can add darkvision and leave its combat statistics the way they are. Or do nothing. Or completely redesign the whole creature.

None of that changes the fact that the monster statblocks aren't player character sheets and follow their own rules. The Veteran can, for example, dual wield a longsword and shortsword without any indication that they have the dual wielder feat a player needs to do that, since they should've had 18 AC when wearing splint if they did. And since they have 2 base attacks per turn (3 with two-weapon fighting, 1 with a crossbow with the loading property), they should be at minimum lvl 5, which means they should have a +3 proficiency bonus. Or lvl 9, since they have 9 hit dice, for a +4 proficiency bonus. Which they don't have. And they don't use their bonus action for twf. These are not rules the players follow. Same goes with commoners. It's just a statblock for someone without any special benefits from their stats.

People are reading way too much lore into game mechanics. This stuff stopped being coherent as anything but 22 years ago, with the introduction of a linear progression and ASIs.

I'd say that if anyone is putting too much weight on hard mechanics, it's you, TomReneth - you've disregarded all comments about aesthetic, feel, tone, style and character as being without value and meaningless; you've derided them as 'euphemisms' for 'playing badly', to paraphrase your earlier comments.

You've called characters that play against their race's natural propensities as being 'gimped' - yet you've disregarded the fact that the halfling barbarian, the orc barbarian, the elf barbarian and the tiefling barbarian can and usually will all reach the exact same optimum state of ability for what they excel at, and one will *not* ultimately be better at it than any of the others, regardless of where their inborn, natural biological differences and propensities start them.

It's worth stating here again: there is NOTHING about having racial, biologically based attribute propensities that says "X are always big and strong, Y are always fast and nimble". It literally does not, and has never done that. That's how performative reactionaries characterise it in order to vilify it, but that's not the case, and it's not how it's ever been. What is does say is: "X have a tendency towards towards growing stronger than other average humanoids; all things being equal between them and another humanoid of a different people, X will usually be slightly stronger" It says that in generally, that creature, from their heritage, will be slightly stronger than another person, if everything else about them, from their upbringing, life choices, training, and career paths, are all the exact same as one another... because any deviation in any of those fields has a far grater impact on the individual character than this physical, biological trait. Clarence the orc, who studied his whole life in candlekeep, rarely gets out, hasn't touched grass in years, and love books may still retain some in-born elements that leave him slightly stronger than Charles, the human candlekeep scholar who has followed the same life path and has been his reading buddy for years... but they're both weaker by a long shot than Beatrice Bruiseknuckle, the halfling barkeep down the road who likes clubs bigger than she is and regularly has to eject drunk patrons from her establishment.

You say removing these propensities doesn't remove our ability to play against type; tell me how I play against type with an Owlin, or a Fairy? I can't, because in designing them in the Tasha style, Wizards have left it so that there *isn't* a general stated propensity within the biology of these creatures for me to interact with (either for or against); I can't take pride in my racial heritage, and lean into it, because there is nothing for me to lean into with these characters.

Have I lost the ability to make a character that I currently can, with the new documents? Yes! I have, in fact... If, for example, I play a dwarf who is the dwarfiest dwarf that ever did dwarf, who is a proud representative of his people, history and culture, who has been brought up in the traditional ways and undergone all of the traditional training that folk of his culture usually do, and is not setting out into the world to possible learn new things, maybe reinforce his pride, maybe undermine it, and who knows what else.... I *can't* do that now, because the features that I would have had have been removed and I can't get them back in the new design, at least not as it currently stands.

Yes, our characters are meant to be unusual and exceptional compared to others, but if the basic blocks and descriptions lose these propensities, then there is nothing for us to be unusual or exceptional in relation to.

Again: different peoples are different. Different species of creature, as our different races are in the realms, are physically, biologically different. This is a good thing, and it's something we should be celebrating - not trying to erase. If we're allowed to say that halflings have a tendency to grow to a certain height, and that is allowed to be an in-born, biological feature of their species, we can also say that orcs tend to grow with a denser muscle mass than equivalent other humanoids, and that gnomes have slightly more crenulated brains that generally give them better information processing and detail retention capabilities than equivalent other humanoids. These are all just features of the species of creature they are; None of these are bad things, and erasing them is only taking away from the game space, not making it better.

==

Feedback for that issue has long since closed, however; if this is thread about One D&D folks should be concerning themselves with bard, ranger and rogue, with the collapsing of everyone into prepared casters, with the forcing of bards into being healers, and the overall restriction of them, making them less flexible and less versatile than they've ever been, the removal of our choice of ranger features, and the removal of the options for melee-focused rangers, as well as loss of access to some of the designed-for-ranger capstone spells, like Wrath of Nature, which they cannot access in the new document. The weakening of sneak attack, and the general blandification of class traits and abilities that leaves them all feeling flavourless and samish.

Might be worth talking about the good things too; they're relenting with hunter's mark again, which is sorely needs, they're improving dual-wielding so that it doesn't eat your bonus action, which is nice, they're reworking exhaustion to be easier to remember and more graded in its debilitation (though it still needs work in its present state)

I guess there are two types of people on this world, the ones who think CR is a useful DM tool, and the ones who think about their encounters.
Maybe I wasn't clear enough when I said that pre-built stat blocks are a shortcut, they're there for you if you aren't able to give it the time they need, and they certainly do follow the rules of the game, even if they don't have player classes, everything there conforms the the rules of the game (in third edition of course there were NPC classes, I suspect they still exist). I'm almost uncertain what we're talking about now, but if you made that veteran a different class or race then yes I would expect you to modify his abilities and because that veteran has no race, I would expect you to give him one, just don't tell me you're building NPCs that way. Honest question, how do you make NPCs?

I don't read as many D&D blogs as I used to but here's a pertinent one that I read a number of years ago that I liked a lot Calibrating Your Expectations an unmodified commoner is not only important it is more or less fundamental to this whole discussion, it's a d20 system by which the Vitruvian human commoner is the measuring stick of every dice roll, by making every race align with that 10 ability array, you're making them all conform to that mold. I think Justin revisited this post when 5e first came out which is also pertinent, but I don't have that bookmarked.

Matthew Colville, who I don't often agree with as a DM, also had an interesting video on encounters and stat blocks, but I can't remember where that was, if I find it in time I'll edit it in.

Making everyone prepared casters has to be rough draft material, I can't bring myself to get too worked up about it because I can't take it seriously.

Well, just make sure you submit the feedback survey when the time comes- because if folks don't tell them, they're likely to take general quiet about a feature as being approval.

Where do we find these surveys?

Except if they are focusing on their strong sides their whole life ...

Bcs one day "Beatrice Bruiseknuckle, the halfling barkeep down the road who likes clubs bigger than she is and regularly has to eject drunk patrons from her establishment." ...
Will be litterally and exactly as strong as Krull the Half-Orc who was training and fighting his whole life in arena.

Thats the problem with caps.

Am i really the only one who finds it silly?

Here, Zarna: https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/one-dnd

You'll need to have an account with D&D Beyond, so you can view and download the test documents, and then, after a few weeks, they open up a detailed feedback form about the specific content they just tested. Each successive document won't necessarily reflect feedback taken from the previous, as they're doing along chain of many iterations which they expect to take a year or two - so for example, many changes the first document were then reverted for the second; this wasn't because of the overwhelming negative feedback (though consensus is there was), because the second document was already prepped for testing before they parsed the feedback from the first. They're testing things out and laying out feelers at the moment.


To Rag... I won't say you are the only one, but your view is not being sensible, so you're likely in a minority who are looking at it that way. No, Beatrice in this example would not one day be as strong as the gladiator, because she is not spending her life constantly working on improving and pushing her limits - she's not levelling up at any particular rate, if you want to think about it that way, while the career fighter most certainly is.

IF Beatrice closed her inn and took to a life of adventure in an effort to make the world a better place, and grew in levels and strength as part of that, pushed the limits of her potential to their extremes - then yes - she would eventually be able to attain the same maximum capability as the prize fighter, if said prize fighter also did so... because by the time they both reach those extreme upper limits of mortal potential, differences between race become inconsequential. IF you look at that and think it's 'silly', then yes, you're going to be in a minority.

Thanks, Niara. I was afraid this would be the only place for it, won't make an account there with the restricted sign up options.

This might be a touch out of the order you put them in.

Not putting too much weight on it. Reading too much lore into it. Hard mechanics are important, and yes, I stand by that the idea of "playing against race" is a euphemism for playing a character that starts out as gimped. You're literally picking a race/class combination that gives you worse stats to work with for roleplaying reasons. How is that anything but gimping your character? Given how dnd currently and look like it will continue to work, the difference between having and not having good stats for your class at the start can delay your progression by 4 levels.

You might get to lvl 8 in a campaign, but lvl 12 seems much rarer. If you need feats for your playstyle (like 2handed or archery), you can be stuck at that +2 for a long while. So Beatrice Bruiseknuckle is absolutely playing with a disadvantage until lvl 12 at the minimum, since you point out Barbarians specifically. A half-orc Barbarian will be ahead in stats or feats even after Beatrice "catches up".

A very quick look at stats:
H-orc: 16 / 14 / 16 / 10 / 12 / 8 / Beatrice: 15 / 16 / 15 / 10 / 10 / 8
Lvl 4: Great Weapon Master / +1 str, +1 con
Lvl 8: +2 Str / Great Weapon Master
Lvl 12: +2 Str / +2 Str
Lvl 16: +2 Con / +2 Str
Lvl 19: +2 Con / +2 Con


"...you've disregarded all comments about aesthetic, feel, tone, style and character as being without value and meaningless..."


It's worse than meaningless. You are using those as arguments to make everyone else have to play gimped characters too without homebrew. It strikes me as a fundamentally selfish and gatekeeping that you value your sense of aesthetic, feel, tone, style and character over giving people the freedom to play whatever they want without punishing them mechanically.


"... different peoples are different. Different species of creature, as our different races are in the realms, are physically, biologically different. This is a good thing, and it's something we should be celebrating - not trying to erase...


It might not matter much in a system where these differences do not have as big of an impact, like the Pillars of Eternity, where -3% to +6% (17 vs 20 max. 18-21 with background) of base value gets lost in a wide range of much more impactful modifiers and only a handful of builds are even going to go above the normal cap because they have so many stats that matter. But dnd has few stat increases and each one represents a fairly big part of your progression, so forcing some races to constantly play catchup is definitely not a good thing.

Again, you can gimp your character if you want to. I don't want that to be part of the base rules, where players of all stripes have to be considered.


"...Have I lost the ability to make a character that I currently can, with the new documents? Yes! I have, in fact... If, for example, I play a dwarf who is the dwarfiest dwarf that ever did dwarf..."


You're saying you're dependent on a specific stat bonus to know? That's strange, I thought you valued aesthetic, feel, tone, style and character, which can be taken from more than just a +2 bonus on a character sheet. Like the basic lore for the setting you're using. Or features like the orcs' Powerful Build. And I think Powerful Build is a pretty good flavorful feature; it shows that they tend towards high physical strength without limiting what other races are allowed to have in starting stats. I want more of the racial features to be like that: low mechanical impact that doesn't discriminate on the basic stat progression, and still tells you something about them.

That the basic ruleset no longer specifically reflects the Forgotten Realms is also a nice side effect of this. Like a setting where dwarves are known for their rangers, preferring to hunt down and pick off enemies that come too close to their territories with archery, ambushes and stealth instead of meeting them on the field of battle. That would not be covered in the PHB 2014, since there is no dwarf with a +dex bonus. But it would be covered in the Tasha's and One D&D system without needing specific homebrew.


"...That's how performative reactionaries characterise it in order to vilify it, but that's not the case, and it's not how it's ever been...."


Call me crazy, but why are people ignoring the fact that fantasy races are very often inspired by real world people? Again, Tolkien's orcs are "squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the least lovely Mongol-types" (Letter 210). That's the basis the modern orc is built from, which definitely gives some very bad vibes when they're made to fit the barbarian stereotype. Or when races that are meant to be beautiful to human eyes (elves, angels) tend to be white and often blond. It says a lot about the biases of the creators and their assumptions about their audience. Even more when there is backlash against depicting these as different.

That some people dismiss this observation as "performative reactionaries" strikes me as more than a little strange, and almost like a knee-jerk reaction to have any excuse to dismiss it without consideration.


"...Clarence the orc, who studied his whole life in candlekeep, rarely gets out, hasn't touched grass in years, and love books may still retain some in-born elements that leave him slightly stronger than Charles, the human candlekeep scholar who has followed the same life path and has been his reading buddy for years..."


Why should Charles be allowed a starting intelligence of 16 and Clarence only 15? It's not an insignificant penalty, especially on Wizards. That's +1 to int based skills, +1 int saving throws, +1 spell DC, +1 to hit with spells and +1 prepared spells per day in Charles' favor. That last one is particularly brutal. And Clarence will forever be playing catchup with Charles because of his lower initial stats. You call that "playing against race", I call it gimping your character.

If you want to gimp your character, you can. The system allows for it. I don't see why the rest of us should have to homebrew to get around it.


"...Again: different peoples are different. Different species of creature, as our different races are in the realms, are physically, biologically different. This is a good thing, and it's something we should be celebrating - not trying to erase. If we're allowed to say that halflings have a tendency to grow to a certain height, and that is allowed to be an in-born, biological feature of their species, we can also say that orcs tend to grow with a denser muscle mass than equivalent other humanoids, and that gnomes have slightly more crenulated brains that generally give them better information processing and detail retention capabilities than equivalent other humanoids. These are all just features of the species of creature they are; None of these are bad things, and erasing them is only taking away from the game space, not making it better..."


I absolutely do consider it a bad thing to punish people for playing a character you think is "against race" mechanically. Racial features should be flavor, not optimization.

Someone asked (might've been you) what to do with racial bonuses and monster statblocks. The answer was, and is, that monster statblocks don't follow the rules player characters do. I don't see how you can miss that, since it is literally spelled out in the first sentence of the 3rd paragraph. And that same paragraph includes specifics as to how the Veteran breaks with player characters on rules. Like its two-weapon fighting and proficiency bonus.

And if you're interested in how I make NPCs, it's really not that complicated. I usually have an idea of what a character can do in combat, so I find a statblock to modify as needed. I've occasionally dabbled in using actual character sheets, but they tend to punch way above their weight so I rarely do, like a Gloom Stalker Ranger who made a party of 5 dread going out at night all on his own. He didn't even use feats, just basic and legal stats you'd expect from a lvl 10 dex Ranger. Good for very special NPCs though. And when the players drag an NPC into a fight I hadn't planned for, I tend to favor a simple statblock instead of dragging the game down by spending time modifying it, adding any special abilities I need on the fly. Race rarely factor into ot, beyond darkvision and any immunities, like Fey Ancestry, because monster statblocks don't follow the same rules as players.

And, just in general, I tend to increase HP by 25-50%, because I find the basic HP numbers to be too low for my particular players. Even more if we're more than 4 at the table. They defeated a 200 HP Githyanki Gish and two 75 HP Githyanki Warriors in 4 rounds once. But I should've expected as much when we had 2 wizards, a GWM barbarian, a blood hunter sharpshooter and an artificer.

Duh ...
I mean is it really needed to specificly mention that in order to reach higher level you need to gain xp? xD
I thought some things should go without saying ... shame on me.

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And yes i do find it silly ... i find silly that "apex of mortal potential" is the same for everyone ...
I find it silly that "naturaly strong races" can improve less that "naturaly weak races" ...
I find it silly that if your character study they get smarter and smarter until they reach a point where their brain say "f**k it" and from that point it refuses to improve any futher ...
I simply dont think that is how body works.

If you take Rottweiler and Colia ...
Will feed them the same, train them the same, they would basicaly live the same ... they never overcome their inhereit predispositions ... Rottweiler will allways be stronger and tougher ... while Colia will allways be faster and more agile ...
Thats just how things are.

In reality just bcs im a male and you are female ... if we would live the same, eat the same, workout the same ...we would never ever end the same ... its not sexist thats just a fact.
Thats why there are separate categories for each sex in competitive sports.
And we are the same species ... unlike our DnD races.

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Thats why i like some of new racial traits ...
But that was allready said.

Just a shot in the dark... but...

You're an Adventure League player, aren't you Tom? Or at least, you're not that interested in the roleplay aspect of the world's greatest roleplaying game. You like 'number-go-up', and you like 'my-number-bigger-than-your-number', and that's what you're here for when you play. That's fine, by the way... but of all the types of players that Wizards should listen to and take advice from, that sort of player is at the very bottom of the list. At least, in my opinion.

No race has 'worse' stats than any other – they just have different stats. Beatrice, for example, starts with a higher AC than her half-orc friend... so at SOME point, if they wish to really crunch numbers against one another, he is going to have to pick up those two dex points that she already has, while she's picking up the strength he has on her.

Is a Barbarian that is actually a little better at wisdom saves worse than one who is a hair stronger, and are either them worse than one who is a hair quicker on her feet, or projects better presence when they enter a room? No – they just have a different balance to work with. So if you want to do a direct measure up, point for point, score for score, then ultimately, no-one is 'better' than anyone else, when you carry it to the end stages of progression. Some races start out with natural propensities that incline them towards a better out-of-the-gate start at some classes, perhaps, but unless you're a min-maxing munchkin it's not a big deal, and the other choices you make for your character are far more important; playing the class and race you want to play is more important, working with and around the areas you're weaker in is more important. The game is more important than nitpicking the numbers.

So if you want to talk about 'gatekeeping', then answer the question I asked you, and which you tactfully decided to ignore: How do I play against type with an Owlin, or a Fairy? How? Tell me. If insisting that it be done the floating point way, for everyone, always, forever, is your stance, then how are you not gatekeeping me out of the freedom to play the character I want, with the background and social frictions I want them to have to consider? How can I play TO type with a Fairy or an Owlin, for that matter? Answer me that one, while you're at it please. How can I lean into something that doesn't exist?

You can play any race the Tasha way – that's standard as an option now, and isn't going away. I'm not stopping you from doing that; no-one is. It's there, and it's going to BE there, going forward. No-one is forcing you to do anything. But if they stop listing the default propensities for each race, and they don't describe them for new ones, then the only one being gate-kept out of their preferred playstyle in this scenario is me, not you.

Yes, I'd love there to be more flavoursome racial features that were actual reflections of their unique biology – I absolutely would! If they do this well enough, I'd even relent on this point altogether! As of right now, however, they Aren't. Just taking the ones we have and making sure every race has something unique as well isn't good enough; it needs to make up for taking away the native propensity.

For the record: you're describing using Standard Array for ability score generation. Standard Array is an optional rule – the tertiary suggestion after the actual basic rule for ability score generation, which is rolling, and the secondary option, which is point buy. The standard array is not the standard method of ability score generation, ironically... though I'm going to hazard a guess that rolling for scores is anathema to you.

==


Fair call on this bit; I was referring to other elements of the new documentation, not specifically the ability score question, and I should have been clearer about that. Symptoms of a larger problem, as it were. Right now, for example, I can't play the dwarfiest dwarf in OneD because they've taken away the traits that represented an upbringing steeped in traditional dwarven culture, but they've not allowed you any way to take them, or get them back, if you happen to be playing a dwarf who, in fact, did have just such an upbringing... so by proxy we are, currently, losing the ability to play a lot of the social-culturally archetypal representations of our various races.


We don't have a Forgotten Realms source book, or campaign setting book. We don't have one, because it is treated as the default 'most setting agnostic' space of all of the realms, and so the baseline, setting agnostic core rules book is what the forgotten realms takes as its default. It's not that the player's hand book is based on the forgotten realms – it's that the forgotten realms is based on the player's handbook.

All they're doing right now is erasing a large mass of basic lore for creatures, and replacing it with Nothing. This is not a good thing. If Wizards publish a Forgotten Realms campaign setting book sometime in the near future, which restores and updates all of the lore they're currently erasing, great! I'll happily redact this issue if they do... but they've made no signs of doing so as of yet.


Have your dwarves been doing this for long enough that it actually has had an impact on their physical biology – is a dwarf from this setting identifiable different from a realms dwarf, by their innate biology as a species?

If so, then they have a different base ability score propensity now – and that's cool, but they DO have one nonetheless.

If not, then what you're describing is cultural and social, and it should have no impact whatsoever on matters of basic biology... so if your dwarves are still dwarves, then they're still built the same as realms dwarves, and have certain biological tendencies, just the same, and if they're not, then they're a subspeices with different propensities, or they aren't dwarves any more.

Remember that allocating your ability scores is the 'nurture' part of your physical and mental background and your upbringing; allocating your ability scores represents your life choices, and the social and cultural pressures that have shaped the way your character has developed themselves to this point. That's what allocating your ability scores is for. That's the greater part of your character's final ability score spread. One tiny little extra part of it represents the nature side of things; the basic biology of the creature that you were born as, and which was not something that you had any choice in. The cultural and social elements, the personal choice elements – those Already make up the larger part of your character's initial attribute spread... that one little extra bit is the bit that says “Yeah, different people are born different, and that's okay. You don't have to embrace that if you don't want to; you didn't choose it, it is what it is, but whether you lean into it, or define yourself against it, it's not going to ever be a gate on your potential to achieve”. There is no justifiable reason to remove that from the game.

I'll mention again: Tasha's options are an officially supported method of character generation now. It's not home-brew, it's in the rule book and no-one is stopping you from using those rules at your table. No-one is trying to take that away from you, or tell you you shouldn't have it. No-one. But you are telling me I shouldn't have it the other way as well – that the existing propensities shouldn't be in the rule book too. You are the one attempting to gatekeep here, not me.

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As for the whole race depiction thing...

Realms orcs aren't Tolkien orcs, and haven't been for more than two decades. That whole line of discussion is ridiculous beyond measure and is made by people trying to create an argument to have and who want to vilify for the performance of doing so. Elves are almost never 'white'; they come in a great many shades and skin tones – if all the elves in YOUR game are white, take that up with your DM, don't blame the system. Celestials, likewise, are not traditional caucasian tones; they trend towards entirely unnatural tones, in fact. If all your celestials are white, then again, take that up with your DM and don't blame the game system that didn't do that. You're mapping something onto the system that simply isn't there, and then attempting to blame it for your prejudice in doing so.

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I'm not going to write any more essays on this; the window for feedback on this particular topic is closed; I've given my feedback to Wizards on the matter and I hope you've done the same. I will try again to push this back on topic:

How do folks feel about Bards being described on one hand as flexible polymaths who can dabble with skill in everything... and then being given access not only to a single class of magic, but to only four spells schools within that single class – not even the full arcane list, just the Illusion, Enchantment, Divination and Transmutation – and only being allowed to have a maximum of two spells not within that narrow list for their entire career, ever? Personally, I'm not a fan.

I'm not happy about them losing access to so many spells that are considered archetypal to the flexible bard utility kit, and getting back traditionally wizard spells in return. I'm also not a fan of the restriction to magical secrets, since it means, more or less, that every high level bard will have the exact same two spells picked out of their 'out of school' list, as every other bard, permanently, and never anything else, ever (it'll be wish and counterspell, most likely).

What are folks feelings about going back to 3rd editions 'memorised-by-level' restriction? Your 20th level bard would like to have Charm Monster, Dimension Door, Freedom of movement and Polymorph ready to hand today? Too bad – you literally cannot; you're not allowed to have more than three 4th level spells prepared, ever. And you MUST have exactly three 3rd level spells prepared, even if Dispel Magic is the only third you want from the bard list right now. I'm not a fan of this either.

- Other changes include a change to Exhaustion – it's now a linear progression, up to ten ranks before death, and the effects are all the same; just a cumulative penalty to your rolls and your save DC. It's mechanically simpler, but there's nothing narratively interesting about the new exhaustion, and certain characters can happily go about at 9 exhaustion without really being bothered by it, if their role in the group is one that doesn't require many rolls (buffers and supporters, for example). It's definitely easier to remember, and that's a positive, but it's much less interesting, too. I'd also comment that it's imbalanced against spell-casters, quite heavily; one point of save DC is worth about two points of attack bonus, but the penalties increase equally. I feel like this needs to change, and there should probably be some decrease in speed as well.

- Magical flight is no longer excluded from the fall-if-restrained clause of flying speeds; previously, you fell if you were restrained only if you were actually needing your body's movement to do the flying in some capacity, which made sense; if you were held aloft by magic, then being restrained, such as by a net thrown over you, didn't suddenly make the magic fail and cause you to drop to the ground. Now it does... unless they are going to go through every other feature and spell that grants a flying speed and given them all the 'hover' trait caveat... which seems like a lot of book work.

- Grappled is again in the awkward situation where, as long as a creature can hit your AC, there isn't a single gosh darned ting you can do about them running off with you. There's no contest now; the grappler just has to hit your AC. They can move you without a fight, and you only get to escape at the end of each of your turns... so even IF you escape successfully, you've ended your turn and can't move back from the cliff they're carrying you towards... so on their next turn they can just hit you again, and move you further... and there's nothing you can do about this. Other methods – forced movement, teleports, etc., do still work of course, and you can try to fight the target with your actions, as well, but it's still poorly written, in my opinion.

- The help action now requires you to specify how (using which skill proficiency... and it must be skill you ARE proficient in; two people who aren't skilled at a task can't work together to complete it, now) you are going to help your ally – you cannot simply be ready to help out with whatever your ally decides to do, or be ready to assist them with however they decide to attempt something. You've got to declare your skill proficiency before hand, and if the DM decides that that's not that kind of skill check, then you're out of luck, and the action is wasted.

- You never need more than 15 to Hide successfully now, no matter who or what you are attempting to hide from. You take the action and you are hidden until the creature makes an active perception check to find you. You can hide from Bahamut and Tiamat at the same time with a DC 15 check now, and they've got to do perception checks to find you; they'll probably do so, sure, but you're actually hidden from them until they do, no questions asked... this is... pretty dumb.

- How do folks feel about going back to having a 'move action'? Your movement is a discrete thing, rather than a per-turn spent resource. It can still be broken up around attacks, but, for example, you must choose which movement speed you're using on a turn, and you can only use ONE. So, this means, for example, if you have a base speed of 30 and a swimming speed of 60 (due to your fancy cape), and you're chasing after someone that is trying to swim away from the docks to their pirate ship... You can run 10 feet to the edge of the dock... and you dive into the water... you can only travel another 10 feet and then you have to stop for your turn, because you started with your land speed, and so you had to use that, and only that, for that turn. Similarly, if you have a flying speed of 60 and a swimming speed of 60, and you're just about to crest the surface of the water to chase after something in the air... you can swim 10 feet to the surface, and then MUST stop at the water's surface, and CANNOT fly into the air on this turn. Well, unless you take the dash action to use your other movement type.

- In the same vein, Jumping is now a discrete Action; if you want to jump, you've got to use your action to do it, rather than just having jumps consume your movement for the distance you travel. Not a fan, personally.

- Everyone is a ritual caster now, no feature required. This is nice, though it kind of removes the difference and flavour form the various spellcasters. Unfortunately, they don't seem to have remembered that ritual casting is different for different casters; some need to have the spell prepared to ritual cast it, others don't. The new definition of ritual casting does not state which way this goes.

- Dual wielding no longer takes up your bonus action – this one is nice. It's now baked into the light weapon property, which I can foresee causing some confusion, but mechanically it's an all-round improvement.

- Resting is strange. They've changed up the wording and still failed, utterly, to clarify the exact same confusions that were always part of rest previously. I'm not sure how they managed it. Now, A long rest is: 1) at least 8 hours long. 2) You sleep for at least 6 hours (elves have a caveat on this), and 3) Spend No More Than 2 hours performing light activity such as reading, talking, eating or taking a watch. So.... So.. if we take along rest for 10 hours, what CAN I do for those other 2 hours? I must... I don't know... site very still and make sure not to exert myself in any notable way? I can't chat to my party members... I already spend half an hour eating, an hour reading and half an hour talking with one of them.... if I spend any more time chatting quietly to my buddies, my rest will be interrupted and fail! This is worded very stupidly, simply put.

That's most of the most salient bits... I didn't go into depth on rogue and ranger because it's after 2am and folks will get upset at me if I stay up any longer. So, what are other people's thoughts on these things?

The more I think about it, the more I like this idea.
- Boo making casters more uniform
- I'm fine with making them less flexible/versatile. They're still more versatile than 2e/3.5e's specific-slot preparation casters, are they not? The proposed changes are midway between that and 5e's system.
- Boo weakening of sneak attack and general relative nerf to the rogue by giving monks and rangers new features, some of which heavily overlap with the rogue's strengths (expertise).
- Boo doubling down on Healing Word by giving it to Bards as a use for their Bardic Inspiration. This will result in even more whac-a-mole in 5e gameplay :\

All the good stuff is good, I agree. Especially the exhaustion system. Stacking d20 penalties are simple and affect all characters. Potentially there should be a speed penalty, but given that melee characters would suffer the most from this I'd want something else that affects mainly casters (spell failure chance?) & ranged characters (??)...it's probably not worth it.

"...Just a shot in the dark... but...

You're an Adventure League player, aren't you Tom? Or at least, you're not that interested in the roleplay aspect of the world's greatest roleplaying game. You like 'number-go-up', and you like 'my-number-bigger-than-your-number', and that's what you're here for when you play. That's fine, by the way... but of all the types of players that Wizards should listen to and take advice from, that sort of player is at the very bottom of the list. At least, in my opinion..."


A hilariously bad shot at that. I've never touched the adventure league. I mostly DM with a group of friends in a group where we sometimes focus heavily on roleplaying and sometimes focus on mechanically challenging encounters. And if someone in my group choose to play a suboptimal character, that is on them. But I do let them know that I don't account for that when designing encounters and tell them I'd be happy to help if they want to optimize their stats. I also try to help players avoid traps like True Strike.

"Roleplaying" is not a justification for punishing someone mechanically I accept, under any circumstances.


"...No race has 'worse' stats than any other – they just have different stats..."


Some races have better stats for specific classes or roles. Barbarians have medium armor proficiency, so there is no advantage to the +2 dex there. And since that half-orc starts with a +3 to con instead of +2, they have the same AC unarmored until lvl 4. And yes, a barbarian who can get their strength and constitution to good values quicker and/or have room for feats like GWM are better. They are going to be more effective at what Barbarians do; hit and be hit. That class in particular has precious little utility, sadly enough.

5e is not a terribly complicated system. It isn't hard to identify what a class is supposed to be good at and from there it is very simple to see what is and isn't a good build.


"...So if you want to talk about 'gatekeeping', then answer the question I asked you, and which you tactfully decided to ignore: How do I play against type with an Owlin, or a Fairy? How? Tell me...."


At this point, I do have to wonder if you're actually reading my post. I did. Read their lore for the setting and look at their features. None of those require the races to be limited to what they can start with good stats in. If you can't get what you need from that, that is your problem and not something I accept as an argument as to why everyone should have to deal with your preferences specifically.


"...You can play any race the Tasha way – that's standard as an option now, and isn't going away. I'm not stopping you from doing that; no-one is. It's there, and it's going to BE there, going forward. No-one is forcing you to do anything. But if they stop listing the default propensities for each race, and they don't describe them for new ones, then the only one being gate-kept out of their preferred playstyle in this scenario is me, not you..."

And no one is stopping you from picking whatever bonus you want for your character in One D&D. Hurray, we did it.

Those default propensities are tied up in the old lore of dnd, which they seem to be moving away from, and by making it actually setting neutral, these rules fit better across more settings. And guess what? That lore that you're longing back to is still there. You want to play a Forgotten Realms dwarf? Read FR lore. It's not hard to find. I assume you would do that anyway, if you value aesthetics etc.


"...For the record: you're describing using Standard Array for ability score generation. Standard Array is an optional rule – the tertiary suggestion after the actual basic rule for ability score generation, which is rolling, and the secondary option, which is point buy. The standard array is not the standard method of ability score generation, ironically... though I'm going to hazard a guess that rolling for scores is anathema to you..."


Another shot far off the mark. You probably shouldn't try to make more speculations about me, because these have been way of target, to the point where it is starting to sound like you don't think one can care about both roleplaying and having a ruleset that appeals to as many people as possible. I hope that's not the case, but that is how you're coming across.

If people want to roll for stats at my table, they can. They are responsible for their own characters. And that is irrelevant to the stat balance in the game, because we have non-random options we can use as the basis; standard array and point buy. So in 2 of the 3 ways you can choose to build the character Clarance is out of luck, while in the last one he is statisitcally more likely to be out of luck than Charles, because he doesn't have the int modifier. Why should any character have to deal with their primary stat being treated like that? I can't think of a good reason.


"...If not, then what you're describing is cultural and social, and it should have no impact whatsoever on matters of basic biology... so if your dwarves are still dwarves, then they're still built the same as realms dwarves, and have certain biological tendencies, just the same, and if they're not, then they're a subspeices with different propensities, or they aren't dwarves any more..."


They might never have been Realms dwarves to begin with. You're treating FR as the basis for everything, everywhere, even though the game doesn't require any setting. Less FR sepcific rules means more freedom to adapt the rules without homebrew, both for WotC and third parties. That is a good thing.


"...I'll mention again: Tasha's options are an officially supported method of character generation now..."

And One D&D looks like it did it even better by tying your character's stat bonuses to their actual past, rather than their race. That's a win in my book, both for roleplaying and character building.





I suppose a summation is in order for the whole racial stat thing. All I see are people who want their flavor of elf or orc or whatnot to be the default for everyone and are happy enough to let everyone else find their own solutions to a problem their preferences would create, despite this new system allowing them to play whatever character they want. I do think "gatekeeping" is a very fitting word for that line of thinking.




"...As for the whole race depiction thing..."


They've luckily evolved with time, but the 1930s eugenics thinking is still going strong, given how obsessed people are with making sure they can categorize races. And let's not pretend we don't see backlash over the stupidest things from people, from black elves in the Witcher to a black human being the default appearance before you start editing it in BG3 to whatever people are upset with in the Rings of Power this week.

Still weird that the response is just "nono, it's totally not a real world inspiration here" though. Not exactly convincing.

@Niara: We apparently posted simultaneously, so I'll add on to my previous post to address your new OneD&D points.

Bards I'm not necessarily opposed to Bards having a restricted spell list or spellcasting. Imo 5e bards were too good at spellcasting at too bad at combat for their "jack of all trades" role. Illusion and Enchantment specifically seem to be an ideal focus for bards. I agree with you that the specifics might be a bit too punishing/restricting.

Memoized-by-level restriction See my post above; I don't hate it. Unrestricted memorization in 5e gave casters a significant power boost. I suggest that casters can prepare lower-level spells in higher level slots.

Exhaustion Can you explain why "one point of save DC is worth about two points of attack bonus"? It is because ST spells are (roughly twice as) more powerful than weapon or spell attacks, so an enemy making their save is ~twice as bad?
- Buffers will be more likely to fail their concentration STs, and concentration makes it so they can only really concentrate on a single spell at a time. Idk, "buffer" as a role doesn't really seem like something you can focus on in 5e...not unless you include debuffing enemies, which at that point requires STs.
- see my previous post on a potential Speed penalty.

Flying + Restrained Huh, I didn't notice that. I hope they'll give the Hover trait to everything with a magical, non-physical fly speed...

Grappled I like grappled as an opportunity attack. Tanks can actually hold space.
- I dislike the change to make it against AC. We lost flat-footed and touch AC, now we've also converted contested athletics checks into hit-against-AC. :\
- You can attempt to escape a grapple by making a Shove attempt against enemy AC, as an attack-equivalent action, and then move away.
Overall, it's an interesting change but I agree it needs work.

Help I like that you have to be proficient in the skill in order to help. Someone without Arcana proficiency shouldn't really be able to help a Wizard recall some magic lore.
- Your example about wasting their Help action won't come up often imo. Especially with the grapple vs AC changes, very few (unknown beforehand) skill checks will take place during combat that you'd actually spend your action to help on. Helping Attack Rolls still works the same after all.

Hide...depends. I like the simplicity of a DC 15 check, but it is a bit weird.
- In your example, all Bahamut and Tiamat have to do is move until they can physically see you, and then you're automatically found. No perception check required. Whereas if you're invisible or hidden behind a wall at a distance greater than their move, it makes sense they'd have to spend an action to actually locate you by e.g., your footsteps. This also makes the (relatively common) Legendary Action: Search more useful.

Move Action They did the opposite of what I would want. I'd prefer if you had to move your entire movement before or after attacking, but could swap movement types freely.
- E.g., a ranged character moving 15 feet, stopping, drawing their bow, aiming, firing accurately, then moving 15 more feet seems like it should require a feat or fighting style: "shot on the run."
- You should use up proportional movement for each type. E.g., base speed of 30 ft and swimming speed of 20 feet. If you move 15 feet on land, that's half your movement. Thus, you can now swim 20/2=10 feet OR run 15 more ft.
- Action Jump is dumb

Resting A 10-hour long rest can be split into one 8-hour chunk and one 2-hour chunk. If the 8 hour chunk (the first 8 hours, the last 8 hours, or 8 hours in the middle) satisfies the resting requirements, then you've successfully rested for 8 hours and spent 2 hours of your Adventuring Day...sitting around. I'll agree that it could be worded better.

Sorry Tom - if my impression was incorrect, then let me just say, back to you: That's how you come off. As the kind of sweaty DM who will get hung up about what is optimal and what isn't, and who will frequently make side comments about other players playing sub-optimally, or back-seating them about what they should or shouldn't do, and what they should or shouldn't take, etc. That's how your posts read. If you're not that kind of person and player, then I apologise; it was the impression I got from your writing.

Since you didn't comment on it, I assume that you are also strongly in favour of them releasing a dedicated forgotten realms source book and campaign setting book, at the same time that they erase all of the lore and flavour from the base handbook/monster manual etc., in order to restore and update what they're erasing? I'm guessing you're looking forward to purchasing those books separately too?

Three things:

- The best and most effective barbarian's I've ever played with, have both been halflings. They make fantastic Barbs.

- What lore, exactly, should I be using for Fairy. Quote me something from their official release lore that I can use to play for or against type. Tell me something about their traditional society or culture, as released in their playable race lore, that I can get my teeth into. If you would take a moment to look into doing this, you'll see the problem; it's not there. There's nothing. In their desperate attempt to erase the differences between different peoples, they went and created their next new race with no flavour, no spirit, and no feeling at all. There's nothing to play into or against here. Please, go look at the release for Fairy and show me what I missed. You say no-one is stopping me, but the lack of a basic 'mundane' propensity, for 'average' representatives of any given race is. If I want to play a charter who is very simply an average representative of the peoples they come from, or starts as such, I don't have that - I'm basically pressured into simply allocating by min-max decision, and I don't like feeling like the system is pushing me to do that. It's actively encouraging min-maxing over thematic choices, and I don't like that. So I am against it.

- Tying your ability score bonuses to your personal character's past is not a good move, in my opinion. It encourages min-maxing in a soulless way. Allocating your ability scores is the statement of how your past, your upbringing, and your own life choices to date have shaped the person you are - allocating your ability scores, however you derived them, is what that is for, and it makes up the greater part of defining your character's ability scores overall. The bonuses are a representative of the elements your character didn't choose for themselves; the basic biology of their species, and it makes up the extremely lesser fraction of determining the ability spread your character starts out with. Making those bonuses also applied by background is doubling up in a way that I do not feel is legitimate. You don't put the 18 you rolled into your Intelligence "because you spent your early life raised in candlekeep and have been a dedicated scholar all these years", and then also put your +2 into intelligence "because you spent your early life raised in candlekeep and have been a dedicated scholar all these years". That's just... no. That's not legitimate, and it encourages a lack of depth in characters. I don't accept that as fair reasoning.

Enough; I'll read whatever last word you'd like to have, but I'm stepping out of this conversation at this point; you've got your opinion, and that's great and I hope you sent it along to Wizards while the feedback forms were open.
==

Anyway...


I guess I don't really see "It's better that 2e" as a comment in its favour, mrfuji, when it's worse and more restrictive than 5e... it's like saying "We made this worse, but at least it's not as bad as it was in an even earlier edition!" Yeah, no, that's not a positive comment in my book ^.^

I don't disagree that illusion and enchantment are good thematic focus points for bards, but they are meant to be flexible, and by having access to only four spell schools of a single spell list, they're currently *less* flexible than any other full caster. Add to this, a lot of what they've lost access to are the gamut of flexibility and utility spells that bard has often stood out for. No abjuration, for example, guts their ability to buff and protect party members. No necromancy denies them any of the raising options, and even if they want to be healers, and the design is forcing them into... they can't really be, because they can't actually take any other healing spells besides the ones it gives them; no power word heal, which is an archetypal bard spell, no beacon of hope, etc.

Bard is losing access to, amongst others:

The spells we gain access to that we didn't have before are about the same in number, overall, but it's not an even trade, in my opinion - we're losing too much flexibility, utility, and flavour spells for the class, in return for a lot of traditionally wizard spells that are mostly about mechanical punch.

On save DC: Save Dc is much harder to raise than attack bonus. Players frequently end up with ~+14 to their attack bonus, and you'll often, by late game, see attack rolls passing 30 on the regular. Save Dc, competitively, grows more slowly, and rarely passes 18-19, even at late game. Taking a -5 penalty to your attack roll wills till see you averaging a high enough roll to hit reliably - there are even feats that do specifically this, and people love them. Taking that same -5 to your saving throws would be massive, beyond any sense, and would reduce your save Dc to the point that most creatures will pass it most of the time, in most cases; if there were a feat that let you take a penalty of -5 to your Save Dc, for any bonus, it would still never be taken, because that's just too huge a penalty. In terms of the new exhaustion, I would push that you should only lose one point of save Dc for every 2 levels of exhaustion. (Also, my bard is a buffer/debuffer/utility supporter. She doesn't attack or do harm at all, but is the party's strong card for social resolutions. She's also got a negative con modifier, and at eighth level only has 30hp, so she gets exhausted a bit more easily than her friends already ^.^)

Yes to grapple being a legitimate substitution on opportunity attacks; that should always have been the case, in my opinion. Grapple has been written as substituting one of your attacks for a grapple check, and that should always, absolutely, have extended to opportunity attacks. A large portion of Dms already allow this anyway, so definitely a good correction there.

We'll have to agree to disagree on the help action: I'm not proficient in athletics, and the bard isn't proficient in athletics, but I can absolutely wait by the wall to give them a boost up and Help them pass their check to climb the wall. It's both nonsensical and also anathema to the very concept of team play that I can't. I, the gunslinger, may not be proficient in arcana, but I've got a very good eye for detail, and I can definitely assist the wizard in examining and working out this arcane array; I can see where similar symbols are, and note details, as well as helping the wizard keep various pieces of information spinning while they actually put it all together. I'm not doing the check for them - I'm just Helping them... and it makes no sense to say that I can't. At least, that's how I see it. I also think you underestimate the amount of times a player may wish to help an ally without really knowing what check, exactly, the Dm will call for in advance. Making them guess, above table, and penalising them in-game for guessing the Dm's mind incorrectly, is silly, and generally harmful to team play, in my opinion. If someone isn't sure what sort of check will be required, they're far more likely to decide not to 'risk' helping their friend, and do something else instead. It's not a good design move, for a team game.

Movement, as it is now, is optimal and smooth - it's more or less perfectly implemented, though it could be worded slightly more clearly. There is no value to changing it from how it works right now, and the changes proposed are pure nerfs, for no gain. Right now, you spend your movement speeds simultaneously; you have a land speed of 30 and a swim speed of 60, and you run 20 feet to dive into the water, you're now swimming and your swim speed dictate that you have 40 feet left. It's clear, easy, flexible, sensible and fluid... it's basically perfect. Having to stop dead mid turn because you have to use a different movement speed is dumb as balls.

Though, if you've concerns or interest in the viability of moving and acting across your turn, there's someone who makes some very good demonstration videos of combat rounds related to the actions our characters take, and he shows how genuinely realistically acceptable a lot of it actually is, for a trained individual (aka 6 seconds is longer than you think, in active time). Take a look at David the Arrow Bard (This one and This one have some good demonstrations in them, but he's more active on tiktok and has a lot more besides over there. Some very informative stuff mixed in with the humour.)

Another thing that they're doing here is trying to delineate and clarify the difference between Perception and Investigation - which folks have often stumbled over. I'm on the fence about this On one hand, breaking up the Search and Study actions into formalised things like this will help with clarity... but at the same time, it feels very dry. Currently, you'll have players who will ask about their surroundings, and tell you what they'd like to look at, and the Dm will respond by proposing a check that they feel is appropriate. Now, the players might do the same thing, the dm will say 'that's the search action', and then they'll propose the same check anyway.. so nothing gained there... and it will also passively encourage disengagement for the world, as the more cut and dry formalisation tends to encourage players to fall back into it instead of engaging directly. You'll see far more instances of players just say they'd like to take the search action, or the study action, rather than speaking about what they'd actually like to do... not everyone, of course, but it will be more passively encouraged for them to do so, and I'm leery of that. I'm not negative about this, but I'm cautious about it.

I'd like to go over rogue and ranger as well, but I have a lot of other work to do today. I'll get around to my comments on that sooner or later, but not today right now ^.^ I'd still like to encourage other people to share their thoughts though, since that's the point of this thread.

@Niara

Spell Preparing You're equating "more restrictive" with "worse," which isn't necessarily true. Restrictions, after all, are required to make a game good (cough cough racial ASIs :P). Having to prepare spells in specific slots both limits caster power and makes prepping spells each day more tactical. I don't think we should go fully back to that system, but a middle ground isn't necessarily worse.

Bard I agree with most of your specific things, especially abjuration, spells involving inspiration or words-- Aid, Curse, Speak with Dead, etc--and utility spells. Why do you think Bards should have access to necromancy spells? Just for the general "I want to be able to play that character type" or is there a specific necromancy bard trope?

Save DCs and Exhaustion: +14 to hit: 5 from ability score, 6 from proficiency, and 3 from magical weapon. Against a 19 AC creature, you'll hit 80% of the time.
19 Spell DC: 8 + [5 from ability score] + [6 from proficiency]. Hmm so in your experience, spellcasters don't get often get the "+3 to spell DCs" magic items? (honest question; I haven't played many high level campaigns)

But it does seem like enemies in 5e are expected to fail their STs ~50-60% of the time whereas you're expected to hit ~75% of the time (base 65-70% plus it's easier to get advantage on attacks than impose disadvantage on enemy STs), so a flat penalty to STs results in a more significant drop in effectiveness. 50%->25% is half as often. 75%->50% is 2/3 as often.

Help I, at the very least agree, that you should be allow to Help with certain checks even without proficiency. E.g., Athletics or Perception.
As to your "guessing a DM's mind incorrectly," I'll argue only bad DMs wouldn't allow a player to change their Help action if it turned out that a different check is required. "Hey DM, wouldn't my character have known that Check B was actually required? I intended to help [do this task] which is still being done; can't my Help action still apply?" Also, in your games do players often use the Help action for uncertain ability checks in combat?? I can't recall a time where someone used the Help Action to aid someone's ability check in combat...maybe only ever to help escape a grapple? But in that case they'd more likely just Shove the grappler. I suppose with the new Search+ Actions in OneD&D this will come up more often..?

Partially I'm coming from a place of not really liking 5e's trivial Help Advantage. I'd prefer numerical bonuses (so that you can still benefit from other sources of Advantage) and that the helper has to make some type of check to actually provide a benefit.

Agreed

I've seen some of his videos. He does indeed move 30 feet and shoot two arrows in 6 seconds. Though I can still cling to my "against a stationary target" and "not in a stressfull/dangerous combat situation" defense; doing this in a real fight and accurately hitting would take more effort & time. :P

Generally, yes - items that boost save dc are exceptionally uncommon and rare, compared to items that boost attack rolls; there's only a very small handful in the system at all, in fact, and most of them are very high grade items. - similarly, there are more spell effects and other perks that boost or assist attack rolls, than there are effects to raise save dcs, or penalise the targets, and sources of advantage on attack rolls are massively more common than sources of disadvantage on saves (and enemies having advantage on saves is increasingly common as you increase in levels, too).

I do feel that it is worse, unquestionably, in the case of spell preparation; it reduces your ability to be tactical about what you're doing because it reduces your flexibility, and that's just abjectly a bad call, in my personal opinion on this matter. I know that at each of my tables and groups, no-one is at all interested in going back to having to prepare a specific number of spells for each level; they want to know how many spells they can prepare, and pick tactically for themselves which they will be, and if that means they are only using their second level spell slots as up-cast fodder for the 1st levels they have prepared, that's their choice. If the current new document sticks, this rule will be universally boycotted at every single one of my game groups, in favour of 5e's current rules, each independently of one another, and I don't run any of those tables.


Which is the way it currently works, as the base rules... You help someone, and the dm calls the check required when the moment comes up, if a check is warranted. So why in any holy hell would you create a rule system in which it doesn't work that way, and then require DM fiat to homebrew *around* the rule you just made?

No, wait, I retract that... current rules don't necessarily require a check, or even suggest it in the base rules, that's just common practice... and I think I'm happy with the addition of the help action causing a roll of some sort to say how effectively you help them, yes. But it should always provide *some* degree of help, regardless of the roll, because you are still sinking a cost to assist someone else, and that's something to encourage in a team and party game. My main gripe is that the player playing the game should be able to simply opt to help another character, without having to correctly guess the Dm's mind, no matter how obvious it may seem. Help in combat is uncommon at most of my tables, but help in general is quite common - but generally only one person can help with the help action on a specific task.

I will add, to movement - I get what you're saying about it being consumed proportionally (you've used 15 fee t of your 30 land speed on land, so you have 30 of your 60 left when you dive into the water to swim), I don't disagree that from a technical stand point, that makes more sense, realistically... but my contention is that it creates a layer of complexity, math, and confusion that takes away more than it gives; the wood elf with a speed of 35 has run 15 feet before getting to the water, and they have a swim speed of 40 thanks to a ring; how much swimming movement have they got left, if it's proportional? If it took more than 2 seconds to have a firm answer there, then it's too messy for the action (just moving around in combat) to be worth the realism it gives. Direct simultaneous use keeps the numbers clear, direct and simple, while still being at least *roughly* well-tracking. That's my feeling, anyhow.