When asked for comment, Hasbro Executives report that while they do gamble, what they're doing is a normal part of their job.

"Listen, everyone in our industry and economy deals with growth, and the risks of growth. We need to make investments to attempt to grow or our stock prices will fall as investors chasing profits will put their money elsewhere. So when we spend billions of dollars in 2020 and 2021 to attempt to grow our brand, we do so with the sobering knowledge that this isn't a sure thing, but calculated risks need to be made."

"But we manage those risks sufficiently, because we have other peoples' jobs as collateral. I mean, just imagine how we could possibly make these financial risks if we had to shoulder the responsibility for underperformance ourselves!"

Unprompted by questions, the executives continued. "And don't you dare try to put this in a negative light. This is just how our civilization conducts its artistic output. What, do you want people to make fun things just for the joy of it? You sound like a stuttering gap-toothed simpleton. You need to grow up kid!" The Executives took this moment to pull out two Cigarettes, lighting them simultaneously before taking a series of quick drags. "WAKE UP!" They added before going eerily quiet to stare into the middle distance.

At time of printing, Hasbro Executives have entered into negotiations with eldritch powers to obliterate all cultural knowledge of Dave Arneson to improve their next Financial Quarter's figures by half of a percentage. They are additionally hoping to leverage other cultural history of the hobby for tax breaks, stating "You know, like how streaming services destroy art. Can we do that?"

cross-posted from: https://ttrpg.network/post/464263

There are devils who scheme and wheedle souls. There are beings of ancient wills and unknowable intent. One may even have entreated elemental forces from the primal dawn of the world, or Genies who have within them a stunning variety of desires, wants, and whims. Alongside Archfey who encompass a dizzying variety of the beliefs and motivations. What unites them all?

They all think Eldritch Blast is a pretty cool spell.

Please note: this feedback will mostly be focused from my own perspective as a forever GM. I am less concerned with how powerful X is against Y, as I am for the health of the game, and the ease of running encounters.

During my playtests I was given the opportunity to see both a Rogue and a Ranger, and they both feel good and bad in opposite and complementary ways. In short, the Rogue is fun but a breakdown of damage spreadsheets reveal it’s in a bad spot. In contrast, the Ranger has a lot of moments that detract from its fun, but joyless math shows that it’s super-effective.

Rogues are affable & attractive idiots

For the rogue’s part, being able to tactically choose what cunning strike to use at each given moment allowed for ranged rogues to opt into a controller role in combat, making one enemy’s life hell for a turn. When this works, it feels amazing as you are able to severely hamstring or simply exclude opponents from contributing at all on their turns. Unexpectedly, the Trip Attack with the Light Crossbow Weapon mastery allowed the rogue to make enemy melee bruisers get nailed to the ground, with a net -20 to their next movement due to being slowed, and having to use half of their reduced movement to stand up. This forced enemies to default to the party frontliner when able, or to use their action to dash instead of doing anything useful in the turn.

However, their damage is quite low. The player didn’t really notice this at the time, but a look at their output showed that they were not really big contributors to damage, and there were circumstances where their Cunning Strikes really didn’t have any impact on enemies.

The Ranger is a high performance hot mess

As for Rangers, they have so many problems that just amount to their spells all requiring concentration. There are so many toys that a Ranger simply can’t access because it would mess with their attempts at optimal damage output, and the mechanisms of bonus action to cast, concentrate, and then hit to apply the riders feels quite outdated, especially compared to the treatment that the Smite Spells received in this playtest.

However they were the number 1 damage dealer at the table. Honestly I think it’s too much damage for a ranged class, particularly because my Hunter-Ranger optimized around getting 60 movement speed, and getting the ‘Hunter’s Leap’ level 7 subclass feature. I simply couldn’t get them in melee because of how elusive they are, using their reaction the moment an enemy closed to engage them, prior to me being able to put attack actions onto them.

But this puts the dev team in a strange spot. If they fix how mutually exclusive all their damage increasing spells are, their damage output will skyrocket to preposterous levels. The solution is one that will be unpopular: Lower ranger damage quite a bit.

Additionally, a raise to rogue's damage should be performed, particularly in Tier 2-4. Maybe increase the number of die they get starting at level 5, 11, etc, or increase the size of their sneak attack dies at those places.

Finally, people who think that the new Hunter’s Mark is a nerf really need to actually give it a shot, because this feels much better.

As per usual, I have crossposted this to /r/onednd, feel free to upvote it for higher visibility. Cheers!

An issue came up during our playtest, regarding Paladins and mounted combat that I think reveals a fraught issue with making rules more specific. One of my players decided to lean fully into the new Find Steed spell, and to make the most of it. This included pulling a lot of rulings from the following RPGBOT blog post.

https://rpgbot.net/dnd5/characters/mounted_combat/

Before we get into it too far, I feel like purely Rules as Written (RAW) interpretations of the rules are quite silly, and do not make the most fun at the table. To that end, I try to make table rulings that are the best for the fun in the moment, rather than trying to obtain an ideal RAW.

However, these playtest rules have been written with a lot more specificity in mind, taking a queue from PF2e’s conventions in several areas.

With all that in mind, I see the above contents of the blog post as basically RAW in 5e… Until you encounter the specific rules for Find Steed.

Combat. The steed is an ally to you and your companions. In combat, it shares your initiative count, and it functions as a controlled mount while you ride it (as defined in the rules on mounted combat). If you have the Incapacitated condition, the steed takes its turn immediately after yours and acts independently, focusing on protecting you.

In my read, the problem arises in trying to adjudicate what occurs when a rider dismounts their Mount willfully, in order to take advantage of the ‘intelligent mount’ capabilities as laid out in the aforementioned blog article. The spell specifies exactly how it behaves when you are riding it, and what happens when you are incapacitated. But it says precious little about if it is not being ridden, and the rider is not incapacitated. It clears the bar for 6 intelligence on the intelligent mount rules, so does it get to attack on your turn, effectively? Can you just ride up to an enemy, dismount, attack yourself, and have your mount attack? Can you then mount up to ride to the next enemy, and then dismount? I think RAW yes, but that is tremendously silly to a point that I think it's not Rules as Intended.

Additionally during combat, if you are incapacitated until the end of your turn (By say, the breath of a Sapphire Dragon Wyrmling, which I was running) what happens? We’re taking RAW as far as we can go with it to allow for the potential attack of an intelligent mount just because you aren’t riding it. RAW, it will act after your turn if you are incapacitated in order to protect you. But the Incapacitating Breath lasts until the end of your turn. So RAW, does the summoned steed go to take its action, and then the condition required for it to do so directly after your turn (incapacitation) is no longer there, so it now isn’t able to act at all?

I feel like this example reveals a big issue with trying to make rules more specific, in that you have to write a tremendous amount of rules to cover every situation. And even PF2e doesn’t accomplish that (e.g. There’s no RAW way to target an empty square with a splash weapon to hit adjacent enemies. I have gotten a Family Feud number of responses on how that should be ruled).

I maintain that ‘rulings, not rules’ should be the guiding light for DMs in D&D, and that if you don’t like Rulings not Rules and would prefer a game closer to 3.5e, you should find another system that fits your style better. I think the level of specificity here, and in the stealth rules perversely introduce more vagaries that hurt the ‘rulings, not rules’ playstyle more than it helps empower DMs to make rulings.

Oh btw the Paladin is fun and it looks neat having a toolbelt of neat riders on your attacks per turn that isn’t just raw damage is fun.

As with many other posts, this has been crossposted to the /r/onednd subreddit. Please feel free to upvote it there to boost visibility.

As always, I've crossposted this over to the OneD&D subreddit in the link below. Feel free to upvote there to raise visibility.

https://www.reddit.com/r/onednd/comments/14ufvvq/is_the_dance_bard_all_that_good/

As part of preparing player characters on behalf of my less UA invested friends for a one-shot I'm running tomorrow, I made a Dance Bard. The player was excited to hear the concept, and I thought it was a really neat idea when I first read over it.

But the act of actually making it lead to a conclusion that this isn't that great.

Yes, Charisma + Dex armor is neat, but since ~~Shield + Light Armor would get you to the same level of AC, it isn't an upgrade over the baseline Bard starting out.~~ (For some reason I thought Bards got shield proficiency. This is still sub-par AC for anyone going into melee, especially without an on-turn disengage or shove) Later on when you can max out your Dex and Charisma to 20, it would be eventually higher AC, but full casters typically don't want to put a lot of investment outside of their casting stat.

"Okay," I thought to myself, "then let's look at this as not a caster, but as a melee combatant who prioritizes Dexterity." Well that's not great either. You get to use your bonus action to cast a spell to help your attack damage, but that is limited to the 1d6/level Smite spells^1^, or Zephyr Strike. Shadow Blade isn't on any spell list now either, and if it was it doesn't bookend with any of these features anyhow so you can't play it like a Bladesinger who is able to dump spell slots into single-target damage. But even if you did do this, that's in direct competition to your free attack on a Bardic Inspiration.

The fact that this subclass doesn't get a second attack at 5th or 6th level really torpedoes any sense that you'll be getting that much out of their 'bardic-martial-art' die damage. Not even to mention they don't get to pierce Bludgeoning/Piercing/Slashing resistance.

So what's left?

A bard who can get an extra hit in if they're next to an enemy when they inspire an ally, as well as use their reaction to reposition allies and get another hit in.^2^ This is the only reason to close to melee range on your own turn. The bard as a fullcaster would be better off using spellslots that don't require being in melee range with their action, most of the time. What that effectively means is that you can use your attack action in lieu of a cantrip, so you get essentially 1 extra cantrip. In tier 2, they can boost their party's initiative by an impressive amount.

That kit is flavorful, but it will be playing very much like a very normal Bard with some neat features. This feels like a faint shadow of what a Monk can do, not a replacement. Almost every Monk subclass has some way to avoid getting hit while darting in and out of combat^3^, while also having high movement speed. This Bard doesn't do any of that.

Of anything that I mentioned, the repositioning of the ally and the initiative boosts are the best thing about this subclass. Everything else are ribbon abilities. If you think I'm off base, please feel free to let me know how. I'll also be posting a followup after my playtest, but having just playtested a neat session with two monks, conceptually this doesn't feel all that exciting.

edit: I just realized that taking Tavern Brawler at 1st level fixes this subclass's (and Way of Mercy's) problem with engaging in melee, and is actually quite powerful. Each time you hit someone with your unarmed strike, you can push them away. I think that it could be a mandatory feat on anyone who wants to really lean into the dance-fighting vibe of this class.

^1^ Altho Searing smite might be OP since you get two instances of the damage before the target gets to save and negate the burn. Which means its the best scaling Smite in the game, and exceeds what a Paladin with half-caster progression can achieve if the target fails its save once.

^2^ And note that Bardic Inspiration is tied to your Charisma modifier. So as resource hungry as the Monk is, this is worse.

^3^ Way of Mercy is the odd one out.

This post is crossposted to /r/onednd here . Please feel free to upvote it there for higher visibility.

This post is a brief overview of my takeaways from running a playtest game which included the latest 1 Arcane Rogue and 2 Monk(Mercy & Elements).There was also a Frenzy Barbarian, rounding out the group to a solid 4 characters, but since the Barbarian’s playtest came and went, I’ll be only touching on them briefly. All characters were level 6

The game was cut a little short, so we didn’t get too much combat in. However, what little we did had a great set of fascinating moments.

This is written mostly from a GM (my) perspective, but I will be peppering in player takeaways wherever I can.

Elements monk = FUN

The Warrior of Elements Monk was a skirmishing speed demon. With the +15 movement speed from their monk feature and the +10 movement speed from their level 4 feat, this character had 55 feet of movement. There was some theory crafting that the max possible speed could be 70 feet of movement, with Wood Elves +5 movement bonus and Longstrider, but that seems like gilding the lily.

But even with just 55 feet of movement, the ability to have 10 minutes of 15 foot ranged strikes let this Monk contribute fully without needing to put themselves at risk. Additionally the ability to make enemies struck move backwards or forwards by 10 feet on each attack roll means that they were able to punt enemies around the battlefield, sometimes chasing targets down on follow up attacks to send them careening 20-40 feet across the map.

This also translated to being able to take enemies that had closed distance to push them well away, before disengaging beyond their movement. Without ever having to spend a ki point on ‘step of the wind’ this Monk was fairly untouchable, and was only ever in melee range of enemies at the beginning of a surprise combat.

Mercy Monk is situational

The Mercy monk had a bit less of a rip-roaring time. The one notable enemy in the playtest so far had poison immunity, which made their lives a bit harder. However, it was agreed that the ability to simply inflict Poison without a saving throw seems strong. Further playtesting will tell, but it feels like a hold-over from 5e.

This monk took the Charger feat, which let them deal upwards of 5d8+Mod(4) unarmed attack damage on a perfect round of combat. If they use their Way of Mercy 1/turn damage boost, this rises to 6d8+Mod(4), which felt hefty and contributed well at the table.

Ranged Rogue feels solid, but not exciting

While the Ranged Rogue didn’t have much time to shine, the new Cunning Attacks combined with Shortbow Weapon Mastery allowed them to trip enemies while reducing their movement speed. This effectively nailed most enemies down to only having a 10 foot range on their turn, making the loss of 1d6 damage feel more than worthwhile when it worked.

However, this simply resulted in the enemies attacking people who had already closed to melee instead. It hemmed me in as the DM, and did force me to attack the party’s preferred frontliners, so it wasn’t without impact, but the rogue player themselves didn’t really feel too excited by their contribution. This would have been better if the rogue wasn’t at the bottom of the initiative, and the most threatening enemies at the very top of the order in our combats, as the Rogue couldn’t delay their turn to go just after the enemy to make sure they were prone for the rest of our melee damage dealers.

Also to be honest, our table isn’t sure what the utility of Disarm is supposed to be. If there’s a MacGuffin, it’s quite clear that it’s a great way to take it off an enemy. But to take the weapon off an enemy has a few problems.

1. If another player doesn’t use their free object interaction to pick up the weapon, AFAIK the disarmed creature can just pick it up with a free object interaction. This isn’t a new issue, it’s been a problem with Disarm since the beginning of 5e.
2. If you do allow disarming-and-swiping of a weapon, as a DM I don’t know how to feel about that. For verisimilitude, it feels fine, but from a CR balance perspective it means that I have to contrive reasons why the target’s damage output doesn’t immediately crater, thus throwing off the CR fight balance.

It feels like Disarm needs to have a more well defined mechanical consequence if this will be a common effect achieved by any Rogue player.

Otherwise, the rogue felt like they fell far behind in damage, which is a known issue.

Barbarians have toolkit & a high damage floor

The Barbarian in our group was able to swap between Cleave, Graze, and Topple weapon masteries as required. The end result is that they were able to feel like they were making conscious decisions each round of combat. And even on the round of combat where all they could do was throw hand-axes, they were able to deal an impressive amount of damage on what would have otherwise been an unimpressive turn.

Before factoring in damage die, the Barbarian deals 2d6 (avg 7) Frenzy +2 Rage +4 STr Mod damage on a hit. If they use graze, then that’s a guaranteed +4 if they miss once, raising a single-hit damage round’s damage floor to an average of 17 damage. Simply put, our Barbarian did not feel bad about a single round of combat. This player is typically quite loss averse, and gets annoyed when they whiff on their turn, and they felt like they never had a ‘down’ turn.

Musings on Damage Resistance

One notable fight was with a Water Elemental Myrmidon. The Myrmidon deals Force Damage, and it has resistance to Bludgeoning/Slashing/Piercing (BSP). The legacy version of the Myrmidons had magical weapons, which specifically mentioned how they pierce through magical resistance to BSP. Also note that none of my players had magical weapons.

It was rated as a medium encounter, and it felt like a medium fight. It lasted 3 rounds, and everyone was able to contribute to its defeat in a number of ways, each player making conscious tactical decisions. The rogue and Barbarian were dealing half damage, while the Monks were cutting straight through the damage resistance. Even though the Monks would be doing less damage than the damage optimized Barbarian typically, they were the number 1 & 2 contributors to the total damage on the creature, and this served as a GREAT spotlight moment for those players.

This made me wonder: SHOULD every martial character get magic weapons that bypass BSP resistance? I could use more datapoints, but this combat came in solidly at a Medium fight by general eyeballing and feel at the table. It didn’t feel like a token encounter to blast through, and while the Monks weren’t lighting the world on fire with their fight contribution in other combats, this one made them feel rather impactful. Additionally, the Barbarian didn’t feel like they were laughing off the damage, and I was able to make sure everyone felt suitably tested without flirting with rocket-tag like I would otherwise have to do in 5e.

I have a theory that could use more testing, but I believe that Damage Resistance is currently an underutilized tool in 5e, and that we should not expect that all Martials will be able to bypass it. Additionally the ability of some creatures to bypass Barbarian Rage BSP resistance seems like a net positive for the game.

Edit: I had forgotten my other takeaway! Full disclosure for this next section, one Monk player is my spouse, and we really workshopped optimizing their Mercy Monk. We tried finding a way to get Weapon Masteries integrated into their build, but none of the options really seemed like a better choice than simply using the d8 Martial arts die.

Weapon Mastery feels vestigial on Monks

The only weapon that can match the d8 in damage output is the Staff, and the Flex mastery that it possesses is incredibly dubious in terms of potential impact. You cannot use an offhand attack with the Light or Nick properties unless the mainhand is Light. So you will never have a moment where you wouldn’t be able to wield a Staff with two hands.

In fact, the only weapon mastery that seemed to have any purpose at all was a dart’s Vex mastery allowing their monk to have limited ranged options while setting up their next melee attack roll with advantage.

Additionally the other monk saw no need to have any masteries whatsoever. The only masteries that MIGHT fit into their kit are Offhand Nick and Vex from a mainhand light weapon, but by level 5 you are lowering your damage of your mainhand attack (necessary to trigger offhand) in order to unlock a +1d4 nick attack. With an average of 2.5 damage, that is a net increase of 1.5 raw damage, which is so little for a lot of bother.

This discussion has been linked on the r/OneDND subreddit. Please feel free to upvote it there for more visibility over here.

I had made a previous post in this community regarding how I predict that the 2024 revision of D&D5e will be vastly improving CR. In that post, I laid out a lot of ideas on how I think the future playtests will go, and so far I haven't been wrong yet.

If you want to read it all, you can find it here. For everyone else, I will now provide a brief summary.

All the changes so far should not be looked at in terms of individual abilities and their power compared to each other individual ability, because that has not been the focus of the playtests so far. Instead, the focus has been in standardizing how damage output functions, with the purpose of closing loopholes.

This includes making par (or arguably sub-par) spells like 'Spiritual Weapon' now requiring concentration. THis isn't because Spiritual Weapon was doing too much damage, but because it was a persistent spell that dealt damage each turn, and did not require concentration. It doesn't matter that the damage was low, because it functioned in a non standard fashion, so balancing it was needlessly harder to do and it was a potential loophole to place more damage than intended into a Divine spellcaster's round.

Other examples can be found in the previously mentioned post.

However, I'm making this post now to unpack what I see as frustraitingly shallow takes on how the playtest is progressing. I will link the following PackTactics video not as endorsement of the views (altho he has several observations I agree with), but as an example of what I'm talking about.

https://youtu.be/40D0-Ezxlho

This is a rigorous look at Monk in isolation, and in this video he is obsessed with the idea that each ability needs to be assessed in terms of a buff or nerf. I believe that focus immediately stops him from considering further on what the possible motives behind the changes are.

The best example of this tunnel vision, is his assessment of the level 6 feature, Empowered Strikes. This allows the Monk to deal force damage instead of normal damage types with their unarmed strikes. He calls this a nerf, because it is now a damage type that can sometimes be resisted where before it was damage that could go through resistance trivially. He makes this judgement, without acknowledging that this is the new system standard. All features that once would go through magical Bludgeoning/Slashing/Piercing (BSP) resistance, both on Monster statblocks and UA material, now change the damage type away from BSP. So this isn't a nerf, it's the new normal for everyone and a sign of a shift in system design.

I'm writing this post with the hopes that someone who is performing this same reflexive reaction to changes in a strict comparison of higher or lower performance will now take a moment to consider. Why would intelligent game designers who want to do a good job and like the hobby make a bad decision on purpose? Because I don't think it's a rational position to think that the development team at WotC are not earnest.

As a closing thought & followup on my previous post, I believe that what will come next are spell nerfs that will bring their effects and capabilities in line with the current slate of controller abilities we've seen introduced. Most afflicted conditions will become 1 turn in duration, or will end on a repeated save. This will rein in how warping to fight balance controller spellcasters are on the battlefield.

After this is done, numeric balancing will begin, at about the dead-end of the playtest. This is in part because I don't think WotC devs require the internet's opinion on what is essentially a set of Math problems. Additionally, they couldn't know how much to really change the numeric content of abilities and spells until they had standardized how damage and conditions are applied, because the non-standard methods that we have in 5e are rife for optimization abuse (say hello to my Gloomstalker/Fighter build).

I told people that this would happen! But now we just have a precious small amount of time to SPECULATE as to how extensive the revision of the spells in the next UA.

There are spells that I hope they simply remove (or drastically change) without comment or recourse for feedback. Such is my distaste for Shield, Counterspell, and many others.

Shield should just give resistance to damage if it has to stay around. The +5 to AC is a problem.

If Counterspell has to hang around, it should either impose disadvantage on the spell attack, and have saving throws be performed at advantage for the duration of the spell while causing no damage to be taken on a successful save.

Forcecage, Hypnotic Pattern, and other crazy powerful spells need to come down in potency as well. I hope we see it, as this is another big step towards getting a CR system that works.