Quote from: Benoist;541859For the nerfed version of level drain, see the Enervation ability of the Wight, in the Bestiary document, page 33. Hint: it is made of suck.

EDIT - if the Enervation ability of the Wight (in the Bestiary) is anything to go by as far as level drain is concerned, this totally stinks, as far as I'm concerned. Everything seems to be short term, "until the next long rest". The basic unit of the game becomes "the next 24 hours". All the strategic aspects of game play seem to have been nuked beyond that. This totally blows.

At least the medusa's petrification ability is permenant.

Quote from: Benoist;541859For the nerfed version of level drain, see the Enervation ability of the Wight, in the Bestiary document, page 33. Hint: it is made of suck.

EDIT - if the Enervation ability of the Wight (in the Bestiary) is anything to go by as far as level drain is concerned, this totally stinks, as far as I'm concerned. Everything seems to be short term, "until the next long rest". The basic unit of the game becomes "the next 24 hours". All the strategic aspects of game play seem to have been nuked beyond that. This totally blows.

Speaking for myself, I actually don't mind this. Level drain was pretty much the most hated rule for me in TSR editions. To me it was the single greatest offender when it came to disassociated mechanics in TSR D&D. I love how it made the monsters feared, but not the mechanics of how it worked. It was especially jarring in vampires where it changed from no0t wanting to be bit by them to not wanting to be touched by them. It made them straight up toe-to toe horrors rather than how they should be, the shadows in the night, sneaking up under the cover of darkness and draining your blood. They were meant to be ninjas not supervillians, IMO. Not sure I'll like the new version better (haven't gotten there yet), but I don't mind trying to change the old version at all.

Quote from: QuestionC;541855Bugs me too.  Feels really... '4E' if that makes sense.  The thief one particularly... he gets advantage for attacking from hiding... why do we need a class ability for that?

Fortunately, Themes seem to have very little mechanical impact.  You can probably just houserule them away.

Thieves have always had backstab ability which conveys some advantage (nullifies shield bonus, does more damage, etc.)

That's not very 4e to me, that's very core of D&D to me.  And I eschew all latter-day attempts to reframe AD&D, so take that for what it's worth.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;541863At least the medusa's petrification ability is permenant.

Now that's very good news.

this is what I said over at enwurld:

Themes: Love. It's like a little on paper version of your miniature; a character sketch, that adds a little emergent gameplay to the DM's arsenal of "What happens next" tools.

I like themes enough that I am going to incorporate them into my 1e games.

Magic: Love/Hate. Love that it's vancian and all of the classic spells seem to be back. Hate the fact that it's so fiddly, mechanically. Basically it's I as caster roll to see how "strong" my spell will be, then roll an attack, then you as a target roll to resist (save).  Sleep sucks now, it's now no longer the go-to spell for magic-users. I would likely discard how magic works entirely and go back to the 1e system. I see magic-users becoming just overpowering at low levels otherwise. Here's the good news: D&Dn seems to support that amount of modularity. More on that at the bottom.

Saving throws: Like. There are more, and more granular ones again.
Combat: Like. Fast, fluid, just how it should be. Did not seem fiddly at all. Left a lot to the DMs discretion. I hope that's a feature not a bug. Example: I jumped over a running stream, grabbed a goblin by the head, and killed him by smooshing my thumbs into his eye sockets. There's no "tumbling" nor "grappling" or anything involved with that, I just told the DM what I was going to do and he had me make a to-hit roll to grab the goblin, then a strength roll, with a sufficiently high enough roll indicative of goring out the goblin's brains.

Modularity: I saw...one? thing in the rules that was boxed as "Optional rule!". If they're going to try and sell it on the idea of modularity this needs to be addressed.

All in all, the game felt like a heavily houseruled Moldvay BASIC D&D. And that is a very, very good thing.

So to sum up: Themes: YAY. Magic: BOO! Combat: YAY! Modularity: WTF.

Quote from: Benoist;541859For the nerfed version of level drain, see the Enervation ability of the Wight, in the Bestiary document, page 33. Hint: it is made of suck.

EDIT - if the Enervation ability of the Wight (in the Bestiary) is anything to go by as far as level drain is concerned, this totally stinks, as far as I'm concerned. Everything seems to be short term, "until the next long rest". The basic unit of the game becomes "the next 24 hours". All the strategic aspects of game play seem to have been nuked beyond that. This totally blows.

We've moved from the 15 minute adventuring day to the 24 hour adventuring day, but every day we start off completely rested, refreshed, at full HPs and without any lasting effects.  :rolleyes:

Quote from: thedungeondelver;541865Thieves have always had backstab ability which conveys some advantage (nullifies shield bonus, does more damage, etc.)

That's not very 4e to me, that's very core of D&D to me.  And I eschew all latter-day attempts to reframe AD&D, so take that for what it's worth.

This isn't backstab.  That's on the next page.

Let me rephrase this way... a Thief *without* the Lurker Trait receives no benefit for attacking from hiding.

Benoist, Delver: Thanks for both your posts. Very informative.

Wonder how houseruling the initiative system to a group initiative (like Moldvay) would affect combat, besides high dex characters not being able to use their dex modifier.

Quote from: CRKrueger;541868We've moved from the 15 minute adventuring day to the 24 hour adventuring day, but every day we start off completely rested, refreshed, at full HPs and without any lasting effects.  :rolleyes:

Yeah, that shit sucks, but hopefully they'll address it with a "Classic" rules module.  Might be a game-killer, if not.

Quote from: ggroy;541877Wonder how houseruling the initiative system to a group initiative (like Moldvay) would affect combat, besides high dex characters not being able to use their dex modifier.

Would be my first move.

Quote from: CRKrueger;541868We've moved from the 15 minute adventuring day to the 24 hour adventuring day, but every day we start off completely rested, refreshed, at full HPs and without any lasting effects.  :rolleyes:

The easiest house-rule to get rid of that is just to have your hit-dice refresh after each long-rest, rather than both your hit dice and hit points returning to normal. Then you get back into resource management territory in deciding how many of them to use.

To be honest with you, i'd remove cleric healing spells as they've been expressed and simply have them regenerate the target's hit-dice. So CLW gives the target 1 hit dice back, CMW 2, CSW 3 etc. Then the target chooses when to use it up.

If they've got the hit-dice mechanic there for recovery, then you should really link magical healing into that mechanic rather than using a seperate metric IMO.

Quote from: Sigmund;541864Speaking for myself, I actually don't mind this. Level drain was pretty much the most hated rule for me in TSR editions. To me it was the single greatest offender when it came to disassociated mechanics in TSR D&D. I love how it made the monsters feared, but not the mechanics of how it worked. It was especially jarring in vampires where it changed from no0t wanting to be bit by them to not wanting to be touched by them. It made them straight up toe-to toe horrors rather than how they should be, the shadows in the night, sneaking up under the cover of darkness and draining your blood. They were meant to be ninjas not supervillians, IMO. Not sure I'll like the new version better (haven't gotten there yet), but I don't mind trying to change the old version at all.

You know, I think you're on to something here.

The BECMI/RC D&D Creature Catalog had the Nosferatu, a more traditional, blood-drinking sort of vampire. It sucked blood instead of draining levels (I think it was handled as CON damage; IO don't have the book wioth me) but it was otherwise identical (special abilities, HD, turning, etc.)

By the way: love it that Turn Undead is a spell now. As a class ability, for me, it's been mostly a stumbling block I have to work around (though admittedly it's sometimes fun to try and come up with justifications for the God of Thunder or the Goddess of Luck to grant their warrior-priests the ability to repel undead).

Quote from: thedungeondelver;541867So to sum up: Themes: YAY. Magic: BOO! Combat: YAY! Modularity: WTF.

When thedungeondulver compliments the new edition of D&D, I sit up and listen.

Looks like Mearls &co. may yet save this one.

Quote from: One Horse Town;541880The easiest house-rule to get rid of that is just to have your hit-dice refresh after each long-rest, rather than both your hit dice and hit points returning to normal. Then you get back into resource management territory in deciding how many of them to use.

To be honest with you, i'd remove cleric healing spells as they've been expressed and simply have them regenerate the target's hit-dice. So CLW gives the target 1 hit dice back, CMW 2, CSW 3 etc. Then the target chooses when to use it up.

If they've got the hit-dice mechanic there for recovery, then you should really link magical healing into that mechanic rather than using a seperate metric IMO.

Love this. I may in fact use it on my next TSR-era D&D game.

Quote from: The Butcher;541881Looks like Mearls &co. may yet save this one.

The first set of the playtest rules could easily be polished into a Holmes II rulebooks. Cover the same things. Although there are difference in mechanics, has roughly the same feel except for the resting rules which are a bit too "generous" for my taste.

What a steaming pile of crap. If anybody but Wizards had released that, nobody would care for this lackluster "Castles & Crusades 2020"

Quote from: elfandghost;541845Also, I hugely dislike the Wolverine healing factor. They should just distance HP from actual health by having Hit Points and Wounds - make Hit Points meta-physical/gamey and Wounds for real. Of course, you could just say that Negative HP are 'Wounds' and that healing spells don't work on positive HP (as there is no damage to heal). BUT, I doubt that's going to happen.

Lord of the Rings Online goes with "Morale" as it's "character being able to operate" guage.

You can open up your design space by separating out "willingness to continue the fight" and "physical ability to continue the fight" into separate variables...