Hey all,
I have been seeing sprinkled all around of suggestions and feedback regarding how close to 5e many mechanics are in the game. I would like to put my findings together and hopefully anything that I missed MECHANICALLY anyone could also pitch in.
Its very important to me as well as many others that we stick to much as 5e as possible for the pure balance of the game. 5e has been very successful due to how well the systems work together in their flow for a reason on top of high fun value.
Party Comp Balance:
The game of Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition and its encounters is balanced on two basic premises.
Each adventuring day, a party of three to five adventurers should be able to handle six to eight Medium or Hard encounters (DMG, page 84).
Most combat encounters should last 3 rounds on average (DMG, page 274).
This means that the characters playing the game should have enough resources–including hit points, spells, special powers, etc.–to last roughly 18 rounds of combat. In addition, the party should take at least two short rests per day to recover a portion of their spent resources.
So basically Larian has took the average of what the balance is currently made for. Its NEVER 6 players if you do that you actually have to make the game HARDER by changing the CR by tweaking numbers all across the board on top of much higher DCs for everything.
If they raised it to 5 players, it wouldn't be terrible as the raw states its balanced around that. Another observation is the game has many more traps and environmental effects that put a lot more damage out than regular tabletop DnD. So having a 5th party member I could see an argument for. ( Would rather not have any or rare environmental effects )
It also mentions (2) short rests between combat. Please Increase short rests to at least 2 maybe 3 with the frequency of combat.
Action Economy:
A major impact of doing well in the game is mastering Action economy and finding ways to synergize with others. With that said I noticed tweaks were made to certain Action economy that devalues other classes feature abilities:
ACTION should be: Attack, Hide, Ready, Dodge, Dash, Disengage, Shove(counts as an attack) ** EDIT 1 ** Ready an Action aka Reactions based off a specific ( Not sure if this will be able to be implemented to the scope of creativity). Example if X melee walks up to Y Caster I Shoot arrow at X.
BONUS action should be: Any skill or ability that say it in raw
MOVEMENT: Please calculate JUMP distance AGAINST your current movement as per raw books. On top of the current Jump formula regarding strength.
Please remove all the skills you marked as Bonus actions that are not supposed to be there. Such as Disenage, Dip, Shove, Hide. Classes have features that allow them to do THIS as a bonus action for that reason.
Spells:
For the most part this is well done across the board and understand the tweaks needed to make this more of a video game. With that said a MAJOR problem i have is as follows:
Cantrips: : Remove the Environmental effects immediately and increase the damage that was lowered on some back to raw please. Cantrips are balanced for a reason to be just that, cantrips
Mage Hand Specifically: While I appreciate the action economy it can do, with current form it breaks the current balance in a major way by allowing the mage hand to do it. Remember when I mentioned above that a Shove Counts as an attack? The mage states in raw that it CANT make an attack. So therefore it cant shove. (See how that works regarding the balance)
Spells that can cause environmental effects:
I enjoyed the environmental effects in previous games you made but not so much in this one due to the fact its super saturated with them many cantrips spells, traps etc.
While its true that traps can certainly cause environmental effects and certain items: Alchemist Fire etc, and because we see more traps in the game vs a tabletop we are seeing more pew pew everywhere. I highly suggest keeping the traps as they are, but lowering the radius of traps unless it a major one
Spells in general that cause environmental effects galore: Please stop, the PHB is very specific on what spells cause effects due to the reason of balance and the choice to PICK that spell due to the potential crowd control ( hard to give specifics as i dont know all the spells in the game yet )
LAIR EFFECTS: I Did an encounter that many of you have that had lair properties. THIS IS GOOD and totally viable in DnD and would like to see more and makes sense with the Environment.
Itemization:
Food that heals: This is a direct cross over from your previous games
- Remove all of the food that heals unless its a special itemized magic item that is rare in property. I have never once in my experience in a table top that I ate food to heal myself, I did eat food however to keep rations for a days rest tho to not go into a "Starvation" tierd status effect
-- If you must keep the value of healing into the game due to numbers I highly suggest just putting them in the form of more potions of healing but less of them as that is DnD
-I am not a fan of being showered with Scrolls and potions galore all over the place. Scrolls should be itemized with around the same value as a potion maybe found in a chest on occasion and if so MAYBE one. I should really not find any scrolls on a body unless its a caster boss of some form. These scrolls should be more valuable to the balance of DnD proper.
-- I will have to check but I do not believe ANYONE can cast a scroll nor should it. It SHOULD be anyone can cast the spell IF its on your spell list AND can cast your spell with no check. If the scroll is higher level than you can cast there is a DC check Arcana involved to see if you can cast is successfully or not.
Magical Items
While its not exactly DnD I do like the equipment slots with a variety of Unique items to have a sense of progression.
-- EDIT #1--Specific Issue: Found a Headband of Intellect off a Ogre Shaman at level 3 creature which raises INT to a hard 19. This item should easily only be found on a around party maybe around level 7-8 ISH Maybe even higher. Any item that can hard increase a stat to 19 needs to be WAY down the line. People will exploit stat allotment for character creation otherwise if these items are found in the first act especially at level 3
I think overall I like the frequency and uniqueness to them, and really enjoy the risk/reward items you put in as well. Keep this up!
--EDIT #1-- Dice Rolls:
I actually like how you handled the DC for a video game and makes sense to me. But for a newcomer we need better explanation of how DCs work
I love dice rolls and I want to see more dice rolls across the board
Initiative: Please allows us to roll and see what we roll
Passive Skill Checks: Please show us what we roll easily (( If we pass )). In a tabletop we will never know if we are rolling for passive check as the DM will know our passive and if we make it or not. They only tell us a trigger if we have the passive. Please dont show that we are making passive checks on failure
Active Skill Checks: If in a Convo with someone allow a party member to HELP ( Adv on skill check ) ONLY if they are also proficient in the skill. OR allow you to use a party member roll instead of that is too hard to implement
Suggestion: It might be more fun to see on an Advantage/Dis on a skill check that we can see 2 rolls at the same time to see the gaps of either one. Its always pretty awesome when you have an Adv on something and you roll a 1 and a 20
Active Skill Checks based on clicking an environment: I like that you really only have 1 chance to figure out something by a skill check so people cant just spam or cheese the situation. However please allow the tool tip scroll over there will be a skill check involved and maybe what skill check is needed ( not sure on this one yet )
Suggestion: 2nd Attempt on an active skill check environment. In my tabletop the DM allows us a 2nd attempt from something like that but with a Disadvantage on the roll. No more checks after. If you increase the frequency of the amount of times we can active skill checks in this manner, please use something like this as HEAVY diminishing returns.
Combat Attacks: I understand why the % is there from the calculations of what my To Hit # is from a D20 with my bonuses against that creatures AC. But many newcomers will have no idea that at 75% chance to hit is them rolling a 5 on a D20 ( which is actually a really good chance to hit in 5e ). I highly recommend you explain in detail how the To Hit mod works against a creatures AC to = a % chance conversion. That might help people understand the high value of getting an Adv on attack or even buffs like Bless ( Gives D4 additional roll to their attack (( 5-20%))
Critical Miss: While in raw a Critical Miss just means auto miss, but many DMs allow for house rules for certain things to effect that.
Suggestion: If a melee Critical misses you, allow the player to use their Attack of Opportunity against them,
Critical Hit: I understand for the sake of speed of combat why the Crit hit is done, I highly suggest since this is a video game for the Animations of a Crit Hit make it a lot more verbose.
Suggestion: If we Crit an attack, it would be a lot more fun if you would allow us to manually roll the dice involved to get a better feel of the crit as in a tabletop its always a good feeling to roll a ton of dice/
--EDIT #1 Complete --
------RAN OF OUT TIME WILL CONTINUE MORE LATER----
Jaz
Last edited by Jazhara202; 12/10/20 05:46 PM.
