D&D Next Playtest Review

In late May, Wizards of the Coast released their public beta playtest material for the next edition of Dungeons & Dragons to the masses. For the cost of an email address, which is to be used to send you mandatory surveys regarding your playtest experiences, anyone could download, review and play a very early version of D&D. Now, you might be saying:

Whazzat? Didn’t 4th edition just come out? I already bought all these books …

There are many theories as to why this edition is being released so hot on the tails of 4th edition. Some claim it’s because 4E was such an abysmal failure. Other think is a simple money grab to get players to buy another new batch of books. Yet more feel WotC is doing it as an attempt to reclaim the market share Paizo’s Pathfinder system has garnered over the past few years.

What do I think? Based on the approach and design goals stated so far by WotC, it sounds to me like this new edition is being developed as a means to heal divisions and attempt to finally placate, and perhaps even subdue, the Edition Wars.

I know, I know, that’s a pretty tall order. After all, the Edition Wars have been raging probably since Gygax rolled his first d20. Performing a feat like this is comparable to unifying every existent Christian denomination, from Orthodox to Unitarian, under a single new religion simply called “Christianity” and everybody being fine with it. It’s nigh impossible.

Or is it?

Pulling off the impossible

To make this work, WotC is going to have to completely break the old adage about “pleasing all the people all the time”. They won’t be the first to try. Arguably, every RPG system that’s been created since the original D&D game back in the ‘70s has been trying to do just that. Whether this Next edition can pull it off is yet to be seen (natch), but there are glimmers of hope in the design goals that inspire promise.

Foremost among these ideas is looking at what things are iconically D&D. When people think about the game, what are the first things that come to mind? Designers asked themselves this question while playing every edition of D&D, from original red box to 4th. The answers they came up with became the foundation for what they felt was needed in Next.

While they were looking for icons, the designers also boiled down all the mechanics to their base components, to try to find the most bare-bones and ubiquitous rule set that would still work in every single edition of the game so far. This is the truly impossible part because each edition has been so disparate from the last that there’s almost nothing unifying between them all. So instead, they abstracted up and looked at what the mechanics were actually trying to do to begin with. There they were finally able to find some common threads to conjoin concepts.

Lastly, the designers wanted to give every player the opportunity to have a taste of their favorite flavor. To get this, they’re implementing the rules and play-styles of previous versions as optional modules that can bolt on to the base system, thus customizing the game framework to your own personal flavor. DMs have always been creating house rules; finally WotC are making house rules part of the actual rules.

OK, enough of this jibba-jabba. Tell me about the game already!

NOTE: As of this writing, D&D Next is in Beta. Therefore, any and all descriptions of the game made here are subject to drastic change or elimination at the whim of the creators. Nothing has been carved in stone; but if something has, that stone can be smashed with impunity.

• WHAT’S FAMILIAR
  • The majority of what you would expect to see in a D&D game is still there: ability scores, levels, races, classes, experience, gold, damage, armor class, equipment, etc.
  • The base classes: Fighter, Cleric, Rogue, Wizard
    • Fighters make with the butt-kicking
    • Clerics are dispensers of the Holy Band-aids
    • Rogues do shadowy-like sneaky-stabby
    • Wizards master the fwoosh, kaboom, and pew-pew.
  • Common fantasy races: Dwarves, Elves, Halflings, Humans

• WHAT’S DIFFERENT
  • No other classes (for now)
  • No other races (for now)
  • No separate saving throw values
  • No racial ability score modifiers
  • No racial skill modifiers
  • No Attacks of Opportunity
  • To-hit will not increase with level (mostly)
  • Backgrounds
  • Themes
  • Advantage / Disadvantage

• WHAT’S BOTH
  • Feats / Features
  • Skills
  • To-hit instead of THAC0
  • At-will cantrips for Wizards AS WELL AS Vancian magic
  • Electrum as currency
  • Distances described in real units (no mandatory figurines or battle mats)
  • Cleric spheres of magic
  • Monsters

Whoa! Wait! What?  What do you mean {insert thing mentioned above here}? Are you f*&^%ing kidding me?!

Nope, I’m as serious as a pimple on prom night.

Instead of addressing every alteration one-by-one, here are some highlights of the things that are the biggest changes and require either some clarification or definition.

Advantage/Disadvantage

The idea works like this: instead of granting bonuses and penalties to rolls based on situational modifiers (e.g. +4 prone, -4 invisible, +2 cover, etc.), players are either at an advantage or disadvantage for performing the action they want to do. You’re invisible and attacking a bad guy? You have Advantage. Trying to dodge a fireball while your shoelaces are tied? You have Disadvantage. You’re invisible and attacking a bad guy while hanging by your toes from a ledge? Your Advantage and Disadvantage cancel each other out.

Mechanically, when you have either Adv or Dis you roll 2d20 instead of 1d20. You then take the highest or lowest roll, respectively, and that is your result. This mechanic was developed under the auspices of increasing the speed of combat. DMs can look at the overall situation of an action and declare a binary yes/no without the need of excessive crunch. Additionally, if a player and DM forget about an effect that would provide either a benefit or difficulty, it’s easy enough to just grab another d20, roll it, and resolve the action from there.

I’ve seen statistical discussion on using this methodology and what it actually maths out to (essentially +/-5, if you’re curious). Some people like it, some people don’t for various reasons that won’t be discussed here.

Backgrounds / Themes

Background and Themes are the biggest points of modularity in the new game system. A Background is where your character came from, i.e. what they were doing before they became an adventurer. The examples from the playtest material include Knight, Priest, Soldier, Noble, Commoner, and Sage. Each background provides bonuses to skills and also include a Background Feature such as Knight’s Station (free food and lodging), Temple Services (free healing), and Endurance (double encumbrance capacity).

A Theme is reminiscent of 2nd editions class kits. Themes define the style in which you plan to play your character. The only playtest example that can be contrasted is the two cleric PCs provided. One has the Guardian theme (if you have a shield, grant disadvantage to an adjacent attacker targeting a friendly unit as a reaction) and the other has the Healer theme (gain the Herbalism feat/feature).

Even though it appears by the playtest content like the themes are class-specific, I believe the design goals were to make them transcendent of classes. They could be mixed and matched at will to define and customize the characters to each players whim.

“Leveling the curve”

Although not mentioned above specifically, there are a few items that fall into this category. For many years, there has been a strong power-curve that players undergo as they level up. Historically, this has made epic level campaigns difficult to play and manage because of the massive stats and abilities the players gain throughout their PC careers. To combat this trend, the developers have looked at ways to “flatten” out the numbers and prevent stat inflation. Of course, the other side of this is re-balancing the challenges so that PCs aren’t frustrated by impossible scenarios and also making it feel like gaining experience is still worthwhile and rewarding.

The best example for this concept is by looking at the recently disclosed design goals regarding monsters. WotC has stated (paraphrasing) that they want monsters like orcs to be challenging to low level characters but they also want a horde of orcs to be challenging to high level characters. To do this, in their minds, means that it should be just as difficult to hit an orc at 1st level as it is at 8th level, but – a 1st level character would need 3 hits to kill it while an 8th level character would need only one.

So in this example, it’s the damage output and range of effect, like adding AoE, that scales for the characters as they go up in level and with monsters it’s their Hit Points and defenses/abilities that increase their difficulty. Therefore, a large city militia could effectively defend their home from a marauding dragon – but not necessarily from an equally sized army of goblins. Personally, this feels balanced to me but I know there are others who feel that a high level character should stomp through an army of kobolds with minimal resistance and little-to-no worry of injury. Different strokes, I guess.

OK. I’m intrigued but not sold yet. Where can I learn more?

WotC has been very good about publishing ongoing articles on their website describing their design goals, changes that have occurred to date, and surveys for player input. Subscribing to the D&D  Facebook page is an excellent method of keeping updated on everything they publish.

Also, following gaming sites like Critical Hits, En World and, of course, The Comic Book Nerd is a good idea as well (naturally).

I hope this article has lit an inquisitive fire in your belly and prods you into learning more about the next iteration of D&D. If you have questions, comments, criticisms, or troll-fodder, then post them in the comments below! Stay tuned for more D&D updates as they occur.