So today I received the first packet for playtesting Project Black Flag.   Packet #1 is Character Creation and Heritages.

It says it is backwards compatible with 5e and I can see that from what is in the packet.   Character creation is similar and they use Lineages in order to avoid using race which set the crybabies off.

I am going to try to create a character and see how that goes.

I am kind of excited.  Looks good so far, of course YMMV.

I received it as well. There are a couple of things which are kind of unclear, which I will provide eventually in my feedback.

But otherwise, just having the race and having to use 5e for the class is kind of tough to get a grip on what the system is like.

I guess I'm just worried that (particularly with the Talents concept) the game will be getting more and more complex until it reaches the level of old 3.5...

Also, it may be that it's just because the basic rules were simply generic, but I found the heritages to be exceptionally uninspired. "Nomad" and "Cosmopolitan"? Really?

I skimmed it and am mostly unimpressed. There is a pretty obvious typo in the rolling for stats section but somehow ive met people who are confused on what the author meant. (It says 7four d6 iirc and some one i talked to actually thought they meant 74d6 for each stat)

It doesn't look very revolutionary yet.  The big change so far is "we can run away from race faster than Hasbro", which isn't compelling to me at all.

1a- Races have no attribute modifiers.  In 5ed this is becoming popular among a lot of players, because the hard cap of 20 means that everyone wants to hard cap their primary attribute then buy feats, and this means that your race ("lineage" here) becomes important for this reason, even in ways that it was not in prior editions.  5ed proper has a bunch of copes for this, including Tasha's rules that basically throw away everything meaningful, and 5.5's moving of stats to backgrounds, which is pretty dumb and may not stick.
1b- Point buy table explicitly lets you buy an 18.  It's hard to believe that most classes won't feel pressured into doing this.  The attributes generally needing to be correct to play a character is simply a common enough thing in modern D&Ds, so obviously any system needs to let you match what 5ed would with a maxed stat plus a +2 from a race pick.

2- Background give you a free feat.  Feats are now called "talents".  The feats in question are from a small list dependent on each background.  This system will ultimately require them to come up with a shit lot more feats, as the small number in the PHB or for that matter all of 5ed won't work with a system that should have at least eight backgrounds eventually, and ideally more.  Because these feats are from a small list, things can be made much more balanced than if you allow power feats like crossbow master, etc.  This does mean that the normal method of choosing backgrounds in Black Flag may end up being "pick from a list of premade backgrounds".  In 5ed, all the backgrounds are explicitly sample backgrounds, and are subsets of just spinning your own background- a method that is a stock rule, not an optional one, and precedes all the sample backgrounds in the 5ed PHB.  With this method, you would need more to that, as you can't just let the default rule be "choose any feat", as that would require all their new "talents" be extremely well balanced, and even if they were, it would still be too good versus the backgrounds that limit you to a choice of two to four relevant 'talents'.

3- The talent setup seems to mean that talents will appear in about two power tiers- the limited ones you can start with, and the more optimized ones you can score later.  It looks like talents will weigh as much as 5ed feats, and be a bit less sparse, because of the starting one.

4- The few talents they have are mangled versions of existing feats, and generally they are poorly thought out. 
We start with a remodeled warcaster, which changes advantage on concentration into auto-pass for the vast majority of hits, fixes the issue wherein you can cast VSM or VM or SM or M spells, but not VS or S spells, whilst holding your weapons (most tables houserule this without even knowing it), and generally seems a strange set of changes. 
Then we go to elemental savant, which may as well be called thunder savant because that's the only reasonable option, a simply terrible redesign that no one asked for or wanted. 
Next is mental fortitude, a very hard-countery feat that would stack really well with Resilient: Wisdom.  It doesn't seem like most players would take it, but those that do would simply turn off many campaign-level spells, like geas- it doesn't seem like a terrible 'talent', but I can see it being utterly wasted in some cases or very disruptive in others. 
Finishing up the castery themed feats, we have  school specialization, which comes in doing basically what you'd expect it to do straight out of AD&D or 3.X.  I think this one is fine, but the fact that it adds to DC is a big deal in 5ed world.

The martial talents are overall a bit worse.  We start with a unified armor talent that just increments your armor proficiency, and doesn't even give you a bonus to strength or dexterity as the 5ed version does- but you'd be picking this with your background presumably, so that's part is fine.  The bigger note is, any caster can just upgrade their armor for the cost of this background feat, which might be a bit odd.  The next one, armored combatant, seems very overtuned, allowing you some damage reduction to each incoming hit and a +1 to AC.  This seems much more potent than the average defensive feat in 5e.  The final one is a ruinous hit point feat that gives you a bigger benefit the earlier you take it- a character with a d8 hit die who takes it at 4th level will have d10 hit dice from level 4 onward, but will still have d8 hit dice on prior levels, gaining less out of it by level 9 than someone who takes it at level 9.  It's also rigged to not help barbarians explicitly.  This is the worst designed version of toughness I've seen since the +3 hit points of 3.0.

Then we have two technical skills- one of which gives you advantage or expertise on a host of social powers, substantially upping the bar on what a social skill monkey can bring to the party.  This is probably too good at what it does, but on the other hand a feat for this kind of thing needs to be pretty power-shifty.  I still think advantage on social checks for anyone unlucky enough to speak common is simply too much for a feat, though.  The final one allows you to make a good living with a trade skill, and I expect this is intended to be a background feat.  Is this meant to model everyone who has just a regular job though, or just somewhat exceptional characters?

Overall I only see a couple things that really seem well thought out, and this is a pretty disappointing start.

Quote from: Slambo on February 14, 2023, 01:24:43 PM
I skimmed it and am mostly unimpressed. There is a pretty obvious typo in the rolling for stats section but somehow ive met people who are confused on what the author meant. (It says 7four d6 iirc and some one i talked to actually thought they meant 74d6 for each stat)

That would be funny. Here's the distribution for 74d6 keep highest 3 (on average, you'll roll 17.998)...

Quote from: Venka on February 14, 2023, 01:30:06 PM
It doesn't look very revolutionary yet.  The big change so far is "we can run away from race faster than Hasbro", which isn't compelling to me at all.

This is true but I heard that Pathfinder 1st edition was just like 3.5 and then after continuous playtesting it changed.

This is all to be expected. 

They are short on time, and are using 5E as a base.  Essentially I will be shocked if it's anything other than a nearly identical 5E clone. 

To be honest, that may be their goal.  No new surprises.  It's the same as you already know.  Expect no significant differences other than terminology names of things will be changed. 

I looked it over... chuckled at the lack of effort. So should we refer them to the 3.x threads on this forum?

Why bother. Sail on to your doom, losers.

It seems not as good as 5e ca 2014. About as good as 5e post Tasha's I guess.

But, isn't a non-WotC 5E what everyone wants?  A new Pathfinder 3.0?

In my case, no, but what's so bad about 5E clones?

Quote from: weirdguy564 on February 14, 2023, 06:13:58 PM
But, isn't a non-WotC 5E what everyone wants?  A new Pathfinder 3.0?

In my case, no, but what's so bad about 5E clones?

Its just not very exicitimg and thebways they've decided to deviate from 5e are generally things that i personally see as just making it worse. For example i don't think PCs need to be any more powerful than they already are in 5e but Black Flag pcs are meant to be more powerful.

Quote from: weirdguy564 on February 14, 2023, 06:13:58 PM
But, isn't a non-WotC 5E what everyone wants?  A new Pathfinder 3.0?

In my case, no, but what's so bad about 5E clones?

It all depends on your definitions of "everyone" and "wants":

Everybody that thinks WotC/D&D + OGL is bad for the hobby? Probably are celebrating the totally not 5e clone.
Everybody that likes 5e but agrees with the previous group are probably salivating at the thought.

So, "everyone wants" Black Flag the not 5e clone is correct for some definitions of everyone and wants.

The first group probably includes people that don't like 5e or D&D who will not play it and people that like it and will play Black Flag.

But pointing out things you think are poorly thought isn't a sign of "not wanting" the clone, although I think here most will not buy/play it.

I don't think Black Flag has much of a point anymore

Originally it was going to be an unofficial 5e for people who wanted to continue to publish 5e products, using their ORC license.

Now that seems unnecessary.

The only thing it really exists for now is for fans of Kobold Press to switch to, because they really like Kobold Press. But I don't know how big a following they have and there doesn't seem to be a good reason to stop playing 5e since OneD&D seems 5.5e more than something radically different.

Quote from: JeremyR on February 14, 2023, 07:35:51 PM
I don't think Black Flag has much of a point anymore

Originally it was going to be an unofficial 5e for people who wanted to continue to publish 5e products, using their ORC license.

Now that seems unnecessary.

The only thing it really exists for now is for fans of Kobold Press to switch to, because they really like Kobold Press. But I don't know how big a following they have and there doesn't seem to be a good reason to stop playing 5e since OneD&D seems 5.5e more than something radically different.

Only if you trust WotC, most people don't.

Quote from: Slambo on February 14, 2023, 01:24:43 PM
I skimmed it and am mostly unimpressed. There is a pretty obvious typo in the rolling for stats section but somehow ive met people who are confused on what the author meant. (It says 7four d6 iirc and some one i talked to actually thought they meant 74d6 for each stat)

(Laughs in Dragonball Z rpg)



74 D6? Those are rookie numbers.