#143. D&D 2024 is Looking Pretty Good... well, Except That! | Eldritch Lorecast | DnD 5e

this week on the eldrich lawcast as of today you can now go to D and D Beyond and get the Grim Holo player pack I didn't know that the valon Clans material was going to get in there we're basically doing a refresh of the entire Grim Holo campaign guide and the players guide is it going to refresh to match the 2024 stuff yes oh we've had a week of previews from the new players handbook and a little bit from the DMG as well we're going to dive deep into it basically taking a bunch of my home brew and going we're making this the official PHP now I'm like cool that works it's it's fine there are a few little bits and pieces where I'm like yeah like take it or leave it like whatever but mostly the stuff that they've revealed I'm I'm pretty hyped about all that and more right now hello everybody and welcome to this week's episode of the eldrich lawcast the number one tabletop RPG podcast in all the realms holy down that is the most accurate air horn I've ever heard anybody make with their mouth being a human jukebox is one of my talents I'm not exactly uh what's his name from the police academy movies Michael Winslow Michael Winslow yeah I'm not exactly his level but I am very good I I am often touted as being very impressive with my my ability to make noises like arrow sticking its trees completely caught me off guard you know getting back on guard my name is Ben burn if this is the first time you've listen to the podcast joined as always by Sha mwin D nailed it nailed it mate you're nailing it let's try that again yeah I'm doing well this morning my name is Ben burn joined as always by Shawn Merwin Dale Kings Mill and this week joining us Robert Harley from vivaa dirt League Robert welcome for the old podcast thank you very much it's great to be here for folks that don't know or may not know your work uh where where can folks find you what what what might they know you from so I'm Robert heartley or Robert heartley GM on all of the platforms thankfully I was lucky enough to get that handle on everything um because that's important Dale to get I don't need you come into my home Robert heartley GM on all the platforms uh I'm most well known for being the DM for a comedy group called Viva Le dirt League that's New Zealand based but worldwide audience uh they have a sketch comedy uh channel that has like coming up to 7 million subscribers and then they've got a secondary Channel That's specifically for ttrpg content with me uh that has 430,000 subscribers so we're doing pretty well on YouTube uh that's what I'm most well known for but I do I do all sorts of stuff all of the internet basically D and D content creation I highly recommend folks go check out Viva because I I found them I think right when they were starting to blow up big with this epic MPC man which was the show that I first started but also bored because I worked in EB Games and so I was like retail series the retail series became big because everybody could relate to working retail and having crappy customers and stuff we've since run a one shot a couple of one shots as their board characters as well yeah ttgs that I've made up for one shot so in like a Sci-Fi setting where they get sucked into a video game or whatever I should go check those out all right let us jump into this as of today if not yesterday you can now go to D and D Beyond and get the Grim Hollow player pack uh which is the first uh player pack that we're putting up of grim Hollow content onto D and D Beyond uh and I'm pretty excited about this because we're kind of drawing content from uh multiple different Grim Hol books of player options for people to use I've just realized as I'm saying this none of you have any idea what I'm talking about because I didn't end up putting it on the run sheet but so I'm just going to give you the rund down yeah for the folks at home the run sheet just says redacted and then a big Blank Spot yeah s the recording time and the release we're going to talk about the concept of redacting things got a whole whole we censorship well speaking of Cloak and Dagger Grim Hollow um we are including in this pack two new species wexel and the disembodied which I'm super excited about two of my favorite to be honest uh because I got to have a lot of say of what goes into this pack we've got six subclasses including the Inquisition domain cleric and the Zeal Paladin oath of zeal um which is the the kind of Arcanist Inquisition uh incredibly uh you know they are unyielding in their Doctrine uh as faith-based subclasses uh The Misfortune bring a rogue and the College of requim bards and then what I'm kind of really excited about is the path of the caran crow Barbarian and the bladebreaker fighter which are from Valic Clans and they both include Marshal Maneuvers uh which are like a new spell type abilities that Marshal classes in in fact all classes got in the valan Clans Raiders guide to Valar we've brought those to D and D Beyond which was kind of a funny story because we were telling uh Jay from D and D Beyond this is all the content we kind of would love to throw in here and I brought up valika almost offhandedly and Jay was like give me a look at that give me a look at that valica and I was like all right here you go he's like yep I reckon we could do this let's get two of these in here and I was like all right let let's do it so there in there we've also got uh 10 spells um uh I tried to make a real mix of these spells between the really powerful feeling like Ride the Lightning where you turn into a lightning bolt and then teleport and then everybody takes damage along the line of your teleportation two the really uncomfortable and creepy Like Flint where you can each turn carve off a slice of your enemy just using magic uh kind of kind of ramsy Bolt in them with magic uh is is what that spell brings to mind and we kind of did a similar thing with the 12 Magic items that are in there being the arc rifle which is a a gun that shoots lightning bolt or the bow of four which is like an elemental bow that does 2D eight of Elemental damage but we've also got things in there like the the Ring of hidden desire which all it does is you have the ability to learn the darkest desires of one U of someone that you're talking to which is not powerful it doesn't give you any advantage in combat it's just creepy uh and it and it opens really cool role play possibilities which I really like about it I've been talking a lot here but considering you guys don't have the run sheet I don't know if you've got anything to say so uh sounds Soul sounds pretty Grim that's the go he said the thing I didn't know that this the valan Clans material was going to get in there so I didn't know that they would be able to put in the uh the Marshall Maneuvers yeah the Marshall Maneuvers I think that is great that was something that we were very excited about adding to the valan Clans book and adding to the game to sort of give Wizards a chance to be more Marshal and giving Fighters and Marshall characters a chance to do a a little bit more mystical be more wizard Supernatural kinds of things to add a little flexibility to to people's experiences the fact that they were able to put those just those two in uh means that that system has started to go into do there because it uses Dice and it uses uh uh different a different currency if you will I I really love the theming of these two as well the valik obviously being a Nordic inspired part of Eis as the setting the path of the caran Raven is based on this Saga that was told about a raven who could shape shift into different animals and led a band of adventurers to slay a great monster um for the for the deal if the if the party succeeded this raven would get to eat the monster's heart and that just feels so it feels like something straight out of Norse myth to me pretty metal it's pretty metal and the art for it is pretty metal as well of like this Blood covered Barbarian with an axe uh kind of their their armor shaped almost like the feathers of a raven but the the things that you can do with it are it's kind of totem Barbarian is but it gives you a lot of different options turn to turn Wild Heart Barbarian thing you very much yeah Ben the Wild Heart sorry sorry I I'm not not down with my uh 2024 law quite yet can you tell us more about the uh I forget what it's called depression inducer misery maker the misery maker the sorrow sorrow bringer whatever you call the Rogue The Misfortune bringer the roge that's I feel like most Rogues stabbing you in the backwards Sak attacks bringing you Misfortune so what what is that in in game design and gameplay terms think of debuffing right it is the it is the thing that not only will it stab you depression inducing but it will also make it harder for you to not be stabbed by all your Rogues friends makes it harder for their victims to escape the beating that is about to be laid down upon them thematically uh puts out Misfortune upon anybody who crosses its path it's like the black cat Rogue if you will oh that's NE applying jinxes to different people that off them y there a variety of small curses that the the Rogue can put up on someone to oh that's cool yeah I think depression inducer might be a better name for the if it's not locked in yet yeah consider it well we'll consider it for our next bit of news because that's not the only thing you can go to D and D Beyond right now and uh grab the player pack if you want a bit of a taste of grim Hollow of what Grim Hollow has to offer um I'll put a link somewhere around here it'll probably be that I can't never remember which way the links are but they're somewhere around here to the sides I don't know D it's in perspective as well I'm the description has been below the video for a thousand years I think we can settle on we can embed links in the video so they might appear up there or there but I'm not sure which direction it is oh oh oh wait we're exactly exactly now you're confused as well how the mighty has fallen uh speaking of mighty that is not the only thing we also have and this is absolutely massive bit of grim Hollow news uh folks know we've got a Kickstarter coming out in October um a video released earlier this week on the ghostfire main Channel talking about what that Kickstarter will be and we're basically doing a refresh of the entire Grim Hollow campaign guide and the players guide uh in a single Kickstarter so we're going to have all our player content in one book instead have kind of split across the two which they are currently we didn't know we were going to get to make a players guide when we made the pl campaign guide is it going to refresh to match the 2024 stuff yes it will which is what I'm super excited about and that's why I was thinking about the uh the Rogue uh the the highway rider Rogue their quick shot ability is going to have to be a little bit rethought because the way that it functions at the moment might not work super well with the new rules we've got to think about how weapon Mastery is going to work with the paladins and the barbarians and the fighters um how will a bwalk fighter be able to make the best use out of uh things like weapon Mastery um you know there's new exciting spells how a feat's going to work and honestly one of the things I'm really excited about as well is the Heritage system which is why I brought up Scott Fitzgerald gry earlier the Heritage system which we've had in Aurora we had it in valan Clans and we had it in uh uh the Ethereal expanse setting guide we're bringing it to Grim Hollow uh Rob if you're not familiar basically this system is a way of choosing your species but you get to freely pick what your uh features are you get I think it's six or eight options like a custom lineage situation like basically that and wings kind of yeah yeah you got swi speed and a fly speed and nothing else cuz that's too are powerful there's there's sort of suggest questions around like if you want to play an elf this is the typical traits an elf may have if you want to play a disembodied these are the typical traits a disembodied may have is it Point space thing do you put value on like how powerful it is to have a fly speed at level one and then like and then like how powerful it is to have dark vision and stuff like that and then you each Co costs different points only to the point where most of them there will be a a onepoint trait and then a twoo trait that is a more powerful version and we give examples of game master if you want to run this sort of campaign we would suggest doing letting allowing eight points and we have categories for each of the the trait so this is sort of a role playing trait this is more of an exploration trait and then you can that's how I've thought about doing my in the in the future is like having having all of the races to to prevent having like oh here are the 10 races you can play as and then a supplemental comes out and you're like here's five more and then here's 10 more and then here's 12 and then by the time you've finished you've got thousands of them and they're all basically the same yeah it really creates the opportunity for really nuanced Expressions I think of lineage and upbringing and and where your character comes from which I really like but it also creates opportunities for self-expression and creativity in the way that you want to lock those traits together we we have the dreamer as a species in Grim Hol these these folk that were trapped underground for unknown Millennia they've been asleep all that time in this catatonic state that has kept them safe from some cataclysm that first put them underground but now that they've woken up they've been asleep for so long they they don't know what is memory and what is dream they've been dreaming this entire time and so they have these features where they can tap into the dreams of others that you would take if you want to play a dreamer but if you want to play let's say a wexel which is uh kind of like a a living puppet a nightmare Pinocchio as we call it in the office um who was used as a changeling but you still have some connection to the Fay wild you might take that dreamer trait and reflavor it as because of your connection with the Fay Wild and the realm of dreams you can also access you know dreams in a way that's similar to a dreamer um your brain went to what's an alternative version of this ah yes a nightmare puppet that's connected to Fay wild I was just thinking psychics but you know psychics nightmare puppets sure I I was thinking of Santa cuz he sees you when you're sleeping okay that's going to be our one shot all of our sub classes that were in the players guide are going to be recreated for the 20 24 rules but we're also going to do a new subass for each of the core classes we've got our Monster Hunter class coming it's going to be revised for the 2024 rules from its play test we've got the Heritage system we've got Transformations are going to be in the players guide now and we are going to create new Transformations and kind of review how they work uh we've got magic items that are going to be in the campaign guide we've got advice for GMS about how to transform your game into a more Dark Fantasy World you know 5e is heroic fantasy at its core he's becoming more that with the 2024 rules update we want to give GM's rules and rules to make their world equally as dangerous to try and uh kind of uh level the playing field between the the players and the Monsters a little bit more so uh links again somewhere around here I don't know I'll point at it eventually would you I'll say nothing I the editor has to the editor has to pause you and like screenshot at the one moment that you're actually exactly the right time and then look one down in the dooblydoo just for safety as well um there'll be links everywhere so so that's the redacted Grim Hol news we're really excited I hope you're excited DD beyond all that stuff uh back back to the show an edit seamless transition I do have to ask because we've had a week of previews from the new players handbook and a little bit from the DMG as well uh we're going to dive deep into it but just quick round circle starting with Rob First Impressions me likey or me no likey me likey me notice that it is mostly things that I have already changes that I've already made in my games anyway it's basically taking a bunch of my home brew and going we're making this the official PHP now I'm like cool that works uh and then there's lots of things in it that I'm like not going to be using that but yeah we'll get into that um I'm bad at twitch so we're getting raided but yay welcome Raiders this the appropriate reaction anytime Ben has to acknowledge Like official functions of the platform he gets flustered so so we must be kind to him in this difficult time I'm basically 60 years old in twitch years um in all honesty but Dale Kings Mill what about yourself what are you are you enjoying the reveal so far I am enjoying the reveal so far I I broadly speaking really like the stuff that they've revealed it's it's all stuff that I'm like excited to to get in and use there are a few little bits and pieces where I'm like yeah like take it or leave it like whatever but um but mostly the St that they've revealed I'm I'm pretty hyped about okay I really like the fight like I'm not saying much because I know we're going to get into it in depth that's we're going to dive deep we're going to dive deep uh just before we do Shawn Merwin I know there's one change that you are nashing your teeth about but other than that uh which we're going to dive into concerning backgrounds me likey or me no likey I'm I wrote I'm going to reserve my judgment until I read the whole thing and then I go out and totally judge it uh so obviously I have not reserved my judgment it's it's fine it's good in some places it's not good in other places and we will get into it here momentarily and then I will vent my spleen across the inter I'm excited for your spleen venting across the internet yeah I feel like I have two spleen so there's a lot like well speaking of which let us dive deep in I have to say me likey so far it is the changes are uh uh kind of bigger than I was necessarily expecting in subtle ways I was like oh okay oh okay I like that that's a good change and that's a a significant change um but obviously not so big that that you know it's not the same room with the furniture rearranged within uh to draw on an earlier analogy that we used uh let's dive in let's start with um I don't even know where to start I'm going to start with Sean's uh spleen bleeding because um uh cuz why wait for a spleen bleeding uh well I think it's going to be if you've been promised a spleen bleeding you can't it's it's everybody knows about storytelling it's it's a check off spleen I think it's called SP bleeding we need to get to you got to get to it quick well this is kind of tied into a couple of things what what I'm going to jump into and and it's an odd place to start but it's backgrounds right because backgrounds give you uh I think that's the only logical place yeah exactly right the back we're going back to the of story I think they're calling them Origins right I think they're calling I think that chapter is called origin you choose your species you choose your species and your your background in the origin because the way that they've described it is you start by choosing what class you are and then you work backwards and think how did I become this class by looking at your background and then you work backwards even further by saying how did I how did I become that Background by looking at what species you were born as right interesting way to do that makes sense having it worded like that it sounds a lot closer to tals of the Valiant uh kind of Heritage lineage system where they split it into two but I I don't know but I believe they have like backgrounds separate to both of those two things I think right anyway uh we're not talking about tales of the Valiant we're talking about new 5 so you get your origin feet or your beginning feet they have a special name for it because they've split the feets out and feets much more important can't ignore them now and the other thing that you get is your ability score increase based on your background now there is a little bit of flexibility in this because you get three choices and you can put two in one and one in another or you can put three across all of them but it is a it is a constraint can't have farmers who want to be Wizards anymore uh because they didn't study hard enough I suppose on the farm we got rid of bioessentialism by taking away those abilities for increases and decreases from species and we went yay yay and now we hate Farmers for some re farmers are all stupid yeah yeah yeah they they went this is kind of BIOS centralism so we get rid of it and everybody was largely touting that as a success and then they go but we are going to restrict classes to to coming from certain well optimized classes I should say right because my take on it is I'm not I'm not entirely against the idea I think it's strange to put all of your ability score improvement from background the way that I would run it and the way that I probably will because every time something like this happens I go I get a little bit closer to the inevitability of in eventually writing my own ttpg so relatable eventually have to write my own TTP I I homebrew so much that eventually I'm not playing Dungeons and Dragons anymore but the way that I would do it is I would give you a plus one uh to a particular stat of your choice from your background a plus one from your species and a plus one from your class and like the prime your primary your primary stat in your class because like yes if you trained as a background as a soldier you're more likely to have a buff to your strength Constitution or dexterity and so yes giving a constriction around that makes sense to me but don't tie the whole thing to it because what species you are also makes sense to me and like yes goliaths are probably going to be stronger than than Hobbits or whatever so giving a plus one because of your species also makes sense but then also you choose to be a rogue so you're probably going to have a plus one from deck because you've spent a lot of your job doing roguish things and that's how I I would I would split as like a plus one from this a plus one from that and a plus one from this because you're you're doing three different choices and you're taking three different plus ones I don't see why that's not the way to do it and it's it's because I understand where they're coming from um with this method I don't think the method is inherently without Merit but it does exactly like like you were saying it it comes to the same kind of problem at the end of the day which is this idea of yeah there's the freedom to to do what you want and to be like oh yes I was a humble farmer and then I became a wizard like yeah absolutely you can do that but like you're saying it is discouraged because it is not optimized like it's it's a it's a matter of kind of it's not a stick but you're not getting a carrot and someone else is getting a carrot just because they're Towing the cliche line or whatever you know um and so there's and that's exactly part of the problem that came with the the sort of bioessentialist kind of thing that accidentally came about uh with the with the previous version which is you know yeah of course you can be um an orcish wizard but none of the things you get for being an orc encourage you to do that they they kind of discourage you to do that because they are so based in this concept of physicality um and so you end up with this weird even though there is technically the freedom to make other choices you get funneled in the direction just by you know the little bonuses and and I think that I think it's I I've never been against that as an idea basically because I'm saying if you want to be an arish wizard you're you're you're already making the choice of I want to play against type and so the mechanics showing that you're playing against type like having to fight against the mechanics is also the same as fighting against the type so like if you want to play against type you shouldn't be optimized because you're making that choice to not play optimiz Char who whose type are we talking about are we talking about right you know you gave as an example for Soldier you're going to have strength Constitution and dexterity as if there are no soldiers who plan or who have tactics or who do things other than fight so it's it's it's just taking one assumption and it's it could be an assumption of our world or it could be an assumption of the game worlds that we're used to but it's still putting a type on a thing where what we should want as a game design world is letting people play whatever they want and not quote unquote suffer because of those choices they should be able to play an orc wizard who is from a an established world where Orcs are the intelligencia Orcs are the ones that that did these things and so the G assumption about what the game setting is by saying or wizard is against type in the first place it's like well no maybe this is a setting where award but I mean at that point you're getting into the home brew of like if you are a setting where that's the case then your DM's just as easy to say oh in my world you can do this this and this that's very true except that then you are setting up expectations you can set up expectations of players against game Masters you can set up yeah people who say well the book tells me how to play and I'm going to play like I'm told and the book sometimes has to give permission or and maybe they do I I I don't know maybe they do say do whatever you want game master here's our world or here's the way we see it and hopefully they do that to to sort of sand down that rough Edge and let people uh get into the game that they want see that and it's kind of the curse once again in a few different ways of this kind of really broad scope that D andd and wizards deal with right they they're dealing in trying to sell something to everybody and so you end up with this weird mish mash of trying to incorporate all these different fantasies and what counts as what but at the same time it's also like in the system this this breadth that they you know they'd really have to go in and completely rebuild if they wanted to take away this this kind of you know like these are applying to Broad abilities rather than specific skills and even if they are like even even where they do reference specific skills even where you do get bonuses to specific skills versus ability scores even then those skills are really broad skills you know it's your Athletics um sort of skill and and that covers a huge amount of ground so you can't even get into the nitty-gritty of like what is covered by those um individ because no matter what you're doing the system is Broad the genre is Broad um and there's a lot of benefit to that but these are the places where you really start to kind of hit issues I I think some of the push back against setting backgrounds to be choosing from three options is by making one or two of your stats significantly more powerful than the other stats by have by having the concept of a primary a primary and a secondary stati stat that you must be good at in order to have a playable character it's a problem because like having a having a Char having a a class where it's like if you have an a sub-optimized strength you're basically unplayable as that character that's a that's that's where the problem comes from because I saw people saying uh oh so Paladin acolytes aren't a viable option anymore because they the the primary stat is a strength and strength isn't one of the acolyte abilities um and so I'm forced to take a plus one into intelligence or wisdom which is useless as a as a paladin and and I think the problem comes from the fact that strength that wisdom and intelligence are use are useless as a paladin like wisdom shouldn't be a useless step for anyone and neither should intelligence if if intelligence was more useful for everybody to take it wouldn't be seen as being suboptimal to be to be forced to take a point in intelligence I I have a question as we've been uh Milling this over because I when I first heard that that backgrounds were going to give you your ability score increase uh I and Sean and I had discussed this a little bit um already we were you know we were spitting poison we were just like what they fixed it in tashes and now they've completely gone back again and then I had a bit of a think about it and I was like oh look it is still there's more customizability here because there's three choices and you can plus one in all or you know there's some level of customizability and it makes sense in some capacity because you know you can't you can't become a doctor if you didn't go to university right um now that might not be the structure of your campaign world but Kings give me um but uh I have two questions here one's based on a a question from the chat met Matt met man m sorry uh said hopefully they still have a customized background option that was in the UA I think they mentioned that that they have it but it's in the DMG which I think is a nuisance they should put it in the phb because the phb should have the 16 options of like this is how this is the class this is the backgrounds we've already got and then here's how to make your own because it's the player facing side of things but they've hidden that in the in the dungeon Masters game because that was always technically an option in in the 2014 rules but I don't think I ever played in a game maybe once or twice where I had a player ask me if they could invent their own background and I was like yeah cool no problem most other people want to kind of choose an option for once in my life I can say I'm that person who used that all the time not just as a player where I was constantly like none of these fit and I have to make my own but also as a DM regularly I would just talk to my players about what they wanted their character to be and I would and they'd look at the backgrounds and go uh I don't know maybe uh this one and I would go you know what we're gonna we're going to make you a we're make exclusively used the custom option I exclusively used the custom option because of how it was overwhelming to look on a D and D Beyond app and you and you click on the backgrounds drop down and there's like a, 160 backgrounds to choose from and at that point I'm like all all I'm doing is going through until I find the exact combination that I want of which which bonuses which skill set do I get and so I just exclusive and because background in in 2014 one was so so little to to do with what your character was it gave you a couple of skills and a language proficiency or something and that's all the background is you never refer feature but the feature was always kind of weak Source you get free room board somewhere yeah it's always you get free room and board there's like three backgrounds that didn't give you free room and board somewhere um and so that always ended up like on D and it's kind of going you learned something about what you learned well Acquisitions Incorporated we made our backgrounds very different like the plaintiff if you were a plaintiff suing Acquisitions Incorporated you got some different uh some different background features love that that's what the power of a strong theme can give you exactly but no on D and D Beyond it's always a nightmare going through and picking your your background feature as well so like I would just not do because it just gives you the title of it and I never remember what the titles of those background features are so I would just end up writing my own thing which makes it kind of another layer of inaccessible just because not every DM or player is gonna do that even the adventurers League went to a system where you could create your own backgrounds just to let people do the thing and as we've said it there wasn't a lot of heft to it anyway so it it became pretty standard I I think the real question will be how easy is it in D and D Beyond to create your own background cuz I know you can create home brew things in D and D Beyond current and I imagine backgrounds is probably one of those but I would think maybe in the next uh iteration of whatever D and D Beyond looks like maybe it's like a form fillable part of the backgrounds where you can pick from a drop list and it kind of fills it out for you or you can just go in and kind of fill it out yourself uh to to to customize your own background in a way that is player facing my other quick question is because you get a feat with that background can you take the ability score Improvement feat oh with your background and just maximize your ability think so because they've split feets into three different tiers now there's origin feet that are specific to the ones you can take in your background then there's the regular Feats and then there's epic Feats that you only get from 19th level above like Boon or something and so the origin Feats probably don't include the ability score Improvement feet which sure although how how locked off are those CU I I believe I remember jemy or Chris saying in one of those videos that that was the case but that you could negotiate with your GM which you can negotiate anything with your GM so that's kind of a meaningless statement right but love that phrase again in D and D Beyond like as a player would I be able to just choose whatever feed I want is it going to give me the full list or is it only going to give me the list in D and D Beyond of what I can what I meant to be able to choose from you because how do you account how do you code into D and Beyond the I've negotiated with my DM and he says it's okay for me to take this like is that that table click box that you're like given the list of the origin Fe and then underneath it at the bottom there's a tick box if you tick that then it says I've talked to my DM and he wants me to take a different feet and then it shows you all the other feets maybe maybe something like that um all right let's let's jump into we we we'll stay broad for the second before we start drilling down into the classes the other two things that I think are interesting and they were just these are examples of what I think an incredibly small change but I think is's going to have big impacts and I and I really like it uh for what it's going to implicate in my game the first is they've changed how surprise works so there's no longer a big kind of almost free round of combat for the group that has surprise so to speak I know surprise rules are technically there's no such thing as surprise in a surprise whatever it's changed so that you either so that if you are surprised you have disadvantage on initiative that that's nice and simple the other thing is heroic inspiration which is no longer advant advantage on a D20 dice rooll which is what inspiration was in 2014 it is now a roll but what I really like about it is that it's a roll on any dice anything even damage right even healing what I want to know the exact wording of is if you are rolling like Fireball and you've got 8 D6 is the heroic inspiration a re roll of all 86 or you pick dice the D6 and roll roll that one I suspect it's going to be just one die just based on I don't know their sort of um [ __ ] footing around uh the rerolls of damaged dice for Sorcerers in the 2014 version not to say that they're you know sticking to that kind of a thing but I just feel like there's a precedent for them taking the coward's path so could you reroll percentile dice if you do you have to roll the tens and the ones do you have to roll one of them you you make a wild magic Surge and you're like I got a 14 and then you look at the table and you're like okay so what's the 24 what's the 34 what's the and then what's the what's the 11 12 13 you go through the different options like which is better for me to roll it's almost like you know my players uh but broadly I think it's a a cool little change because I think that's going to help alleviate to some extent this everpresent problem of the underwhelming crit where you roll a crit and then you roll a two on your damage day yeah um but maybe not if you have to keep the second role which is most likely oh I had this discussion with someone recently Scott Fitzgerald gray was designing something for us um and and talked about how they didn't like when you roll a dice you have to stick with the second result and I was like well if don't roll a dice just give if you if you want to just keep rrolling until you get a result you like just don't just no I think it's I think it's a a failure of English there I think when you when they say you have to stick with the second result is not saying you can't keep rerolling it's saying you can't go with your first choice so if you roll a four on your damage Dice and you're like I can probably do better and then you roll a two you can't go oh I'll go with the four they're saying no you have to take the two because you rolled into the two this was in the context of like a a um not great weapon Master but the what was previously a fighting style two weapon fight not two fighting the one with the big weapons yeah it's something that sounds like great weapon yeah yeah yeah yeah basically like if you roll a one or two on damage you can roll it again have to stick with the second result even if it's a one or two again which yeah but this is maybe a war gamer philosophy thing of like I don't mind but I can see how people would be underwhelmed if they rolled a one or two again um if it was if it was if it was meant to be reroll again and again and again until you don't roll a one or a two you would just instead of rolling a d8 you'd roll a D6 plus two well I D6 plus two would be a d8 where you can't roll ones the other person in this conversation it feels like a a very sort of um I don't know a platonic kind of discussion that's happening here I feel like I'm building the person that we're discussing against um but you know I feel like they were just saying if you roll again and it is lower you should be able to take the higher like it should work like Advantage if you are better if you are better at this why are you getting worse which I think I think basically it comes down to one of those things where statistically it might make sense for a game to decide that no you have to take the second result you took that risk um and you know you you make that choice if your result was low enough you decide to do this thing and you will probably get a better result but if you had a medium fine result and you decide to roll again then you have to stick with you know that that risk that you took and I understand that but it is also one of those game design things that feels bad if you roll a water or two and then you roll a water or two again that feels bad to feel bad yeah you don't want your players to feel bad yeah it doesn't matter if it statistically makes sense if everyone is like oh especially for like one shots and things with this being such a long game that people that life gets in the way of so often you don't you're not necessarily going to be getting to like the play testers Jeremy Crawford and and the rest of them in these videos that they've been putting out keep saying oh yeah for the last 18 months I've been playing this fighter it's really good I really enjoy this new Fe thing that we've got this weapon Mastery whatever and it's like yeah but also keep in mind when your game designing that people don't play as often as you people won't be playing four five six times a week yeah people will sometimes be playing this once every month and then and then life gets in the way after they've played four games and so they might not get those features coming up as often as they will like regressing to the mean over time you get to see this feature coming up a lot but yeah the the and and things like rolling re-rolling your damage and rolling into a lower one that might be the only time that session that that comes up and you and you rerolled lower and had to keep the lower result and and d and d and sort of D20 fantasy at large is so designed towards averages um which I I just wonder whether it's maybe showing in this Modern Age of ttrpgs where so many games are being designed explicitly for one shot style play whether we're starting to see a little bit of strain because just the culture of gaming has shifted a little bit away from that constant regular play that lent itself to averages yeah yeah I don't know I just feel like tabletop RPGs is the only place you know board gaming I don't think that the social uh uh parameters around board gaming of like we only get to play this board game like once in a in a blue moon and then it's really hard to get together to play this game again but not in board gaming or War gaming which is a bit different because War gaming is typically by experience of from ever feeling disappointed uh at the table and that's what I kind of grate against a bit is I'm like look disappointments part of the risk reward is part of playing the game you know I agree and that's a thing that's coming up in the comments a lot as well people saying like oh no the the failing is part of it it's not a risk unless you can feel bad but I think what Dale and I were saying that is if the feature is coming at a later level in your class or whatever you finally get this class or you take a feat or whatever that allows you for to use the same example we using you spend something or You' get a resource some class feature gives you the ability to reroll your damage that is not a that's not where the risk and feeling bad thing comes in that's like you shouldn't like Sean was saying earlier you you're getting a thing that that should be indicative of you're getting better at this thing you're getting better at fighting you're getting more consistent with your damage and then you reroll into lower damage and you're like well now now the dice is telling me I'm actually worse at this thing than I was a second ago which is where where it comes in and I I still think that yeah absolutely you should be able to fail at stuff you should have hard monsters and go up against terrible things and have moments of disappointment you should be able to you know roll ones but if you're taking a feature that allows you to roll then that's the game telling you oh this is a this is an Evidence of you getting better at this thing yeah and it rarely comes up that it matters it's only in this damage sort of are because normally it's the pass fail it's either if you if you hit you hit you're not going to reroll if you miss uh then it's fine you reroll the lower result doesn't matter yeah yeah it doesn't matter so yeah and actually that's that's why I think it's such an interesting choice to have heroic inspiration apply to whatever dice you choose because they really are very different systems the system of rolling the D20 to determine you know success failure versus the system of rolling a damage day they feel really different so so it it makes a difference there whether you have to keep the second roll or not because with damage I don't think that that should matter I think you should be able to choose the higher one it's like whatever you're rolling at at the highend like 2d6 is kind of like yeah you can roll one of those Di and keep the higher number I don't think that's really going to matter when it seems from the information we've got that we're still dealing with bags of hit points as the bad guys but it does make a difference being able to choose the higher and do the advantage thing the D20 so yeah I mean uh uh and this is to say that heroic inspiration is not um changing Advantage as a mechanic because Advantage still exists in terms of yeah exactly which I like because it adds a bit more texture to the game you know it'll be interesting to see how the heroic inspiration roll works with the advantage as well do you roll both do you just roll the high I think they've said I think they've said that you can you roll one of them you just roll one of them yeah um also mentioned as part of the heroic expression you also mentioned the changes in uh in in um surprise what do what do people feel about that in general see this is interesting to me because okay for folks who who aren't aware there's been this whole Saga of like confusion because they used to be surprise rounds no they didn't no they didn't yes no they no they did I'm going further back they used to be surprise rounds and that was a thing that that DMS became very used to and it worked in you know its own specific ways and then 5 tried to simplify it by being like there's no surprise round now there is just the surprised condition they love making things conditions and so um then a lot of people coming into 5V who had experience with DD or similar fantasy D20 games were like ah yes the surprise round and would try to run it the way that it used to work but it didn't work that way anymore and so then it would get confusing when it clashed against stuff like certain Barbarian class features and so then that became confusing and what they've done now I think is basically going the direction of um it seems to me prioritizing new players and coming in and making it work in a way that seems fairly intuitive for someone who is just starting the game it's like they're surprised so they are worse at this thing and just forget the rounds forget the condition none of these weird little floating qualities that are going on it's just this one thing that happens I definitely see the need to fix it from a mechanics point of view as well because D and D is over in so especially at higher levels you can finish a fight so quickly if you have the advantage it can turn the tape like balancing a fight in advanc takes some real experience in running the game to know how quickly things can change because if all of the Party happen to go first in the init in the initiative order before any of the monsters get to act suddenly it can turn the tide and so having it before as like you get an entire round of surprise and then you also if you happen to roll better than them again you get two full turns on top of whatever was the triggering in instigation anyway so like if the wizard threw a fireball you do the fireball damage then you roll initiative and they're surprised so then you get around you end up with like almost two and a half three turns of of the doing anything and so I understand they need to be like let's let's Nerf that back but giving them disadvantage on the initiative I'm not sure is enough because if you Fe if you do set up an ambush and you do get the drop on somebody and you're attacking something that is like you're attacking a a Thieves Guild and everybody in there all of the Assassins that you're attacking are going to have uh are going to have high dexterity and maybe the alert feet or whatever they've got high initiative anyway especially if they're like swashbucklers and they can add their Charisma to their their initiatives if you get the drop on someone and then don't go before them in the initiative order it's not going to feel like you've for sure yeah for sure I agree I I the thing that I didn't like about how surprise worked in 2014 was especially for the player that was the player as well not necessarily the G but the player who was surprised and then rolled low on initiative yes because the monsters had get a turn then the party would get a turn then the monsters would get another like you were just waiting like you know half an hour at best until your to it comes down to the uh the paralyzed and stunned and stuff how that's fun for the players to apply to NPCs it's not fun for the NPCs to apply to your players because the DM gets to play 100 different and bad guys and if this one standun so be it I'll use these other goblins but if the player gets stunned and is like that's my whole round I you basically played Skip a turn on me which is bad game design skip a turn in general is bad game design you don't want to Part of Your Game design to be don't play this game for the next 20 minutes um so that's that that is the same with low initiative how I would have done like I I if I was designing the Nerf on surprise I would have just said if you have the surprise condition your your initiative can't be above a 10 so you roll initiative as normal if you roll above a 10 it drops to 10 and then like and then you're more likely that you're going to go in the second half of the thing but you're also guaranteeing that if you surprised somebody who's super uh if super dextrous and and has a high initiative bonus they're not going to still out outweigh you well the one other thing I liked about how surprise did work was that if you were surprised and this was a little thing you couldn't use your reaction and I believe if you weren't surprised but rolled lowerer initiative you couldn't use your reaction until you had your turn maybe I'm making that bit up but you would still your initiative even if you were surprised when your initiative passed you didn't act but you could then start using your reaction using your reaction and I liked that specific thing because it could interact with interrupting certain uh reaction-based abilities one example of a feature that I freaking love um is the SW uh uh uh Highway Rider Rogue I believe it's called from the Grim Holo players guide has Fast Draw which allows them to use their reaction when initiative is rolled to make a free sneak attack basically and it's the like pull out the gun and and aim couple different options of of a thing that they can you could also move and and do some other things as well that's that's the interesting thing there are some really interesting cool pieces of class design that do get lost with this version of surprise like they are really cool especially Rogue regularly feat that come up that are like based around that that interaction with surprise that were genuinely awesome pieces of the design the the the Assassin gets a bunch of cool stuff like there's all this awesome stuff that will be lost but it was stuff that was specific to if you are playing this type of character so I think broadly this will likely have a net positive effect but it is sad to see some of that awesome stuff disappear can I say something to really upset all the game players and DMS out there don't even use Initiative for your monsters GMS put the monsters in the initiative order where it makes very cool narrative sense that's what I do and that fixes so many problems don't be punitive with it right also let the let the big slow monsters go last but the tricky the the wizard The the big boss who needs to get off their big thing to make the fight interesting get off their monologue before they get off their monologue and their Fireball finished right they go immediately oh look I rolled a 20 and oh they're plus seven I don't know how that happened but H yeah they get to go there uh it's so much better it's so real because if you find yourself like me when you're building a step block for a for a monster or a Home Brew monster and you're just you're you're like ah yes initiative plus 14 or minus 9 like if you find yourself doing that where you're trying to engineer the randomness to make them go at a certain point just just shove them in there just shove them there just shove them in there I tend to do especially if there's like a battle where there's kind of a this person's fighting over here this person's fighting over here I just do I just do a retaliatory thing so wizard attacks that hobgoblin okay then it's my turn hob I just I just intersperse them their order my order their order my order it's much more like um the Miniatures game uh Imperial assault Star Wars miniatures game very good very good game but that's how it works the players choose who goes first in that in that game The Players choose one of them to go first and then the bad guy gets to use one from one from his monsters then it's back to the players who who wants to go next then it's back to me and that's how I run my D and D game because then I'm not I'm not playing with myself for half an hour um and they're not waiting they're not waiting for me to get through all of the monsters and getting all uh um uh ganged up on by a million different goblins all getting to go once it's like you attack that guy so he gets to attack you back now it's back to you guys in the initiative order and then after they've gone through all four of them or five of them whatever then any of my bad guys that haven't gone at that point all all of them get to go before the end of the initiative order I am going to just dive into classes I'm not going to pull out one specifically somebody tell me what is your favorite and SL or least favorite change that they've made to the class they've talked about so far I am very happy as as a rogue fighter man I'm I'm actually really happy with where they've landed on the Fighter um I I had my doubts at times but I've I've really come around on it I think that what they've ended up landing on is something that is still fairly simple but it leans more in the active tactical range right instead of getting a feature that is passive which is something that I've constantly complained about with the fighter you know yeah the champion gets this increase to their critical range and it's like that's nice but I keep forgetting about it Rob has run games for me where I've had character class features where I've just forgotten about it because it's some passive thing in the background I have to keep track of um but you know they they've changed that kind of a thing for you got a critical hit and now you can move you can choose to move half your speed wherever you want it's not going to proc um opportunity attacks and maybe you don't want to do that maybe you do want to do that but it gives you options and choices that you can make um that are that are a little bit more active that I don't know it I I'm really pleased with where it's gone and even things like weapon Mastery which I didn't care about that are so core to the fighter I still don't care about it but it doesn't feel like it's in my way it doesn't feel like it's cluttering me with a bunch of choices it's just H this is here if you want to engage with it and I think a lot of people will want to engage with it I'm I'm very and that's the one thing I I did want to talk about before classes but I guess it's kind of interl is weapon Mastery because I'm when I first was hearing about weapon Mastery you know as a GM it kind of sucks when your monsters are constantly getting pushed over knocked off CS moved around attack you can knock somebody over knock somebody over make a sa make a save make a sa exactly like initially I was kind of like oh this seems a bit uh but what I'm hoping it will do is provide tactical options to uh Marshall players and kind of get rid of a couple of tactics that I really didn't like yet I'm talking to you Steven you know who you are who would do things like like the optimum play in a lot of combats became grapple prone push them because there's no way that it is not worth it for a villain or a monster to try to get out of a grapple because they lose a whole turn doing Turn yeah and they have disadvantage on their attack rols because they're prone everyone has advantage against them or grapple like the number of times this particular player and I'm calling him out uh has asked me so uh is that a is that a cliff there like is that a ledge is that a is that an edge I just described recently how like they're fighting in this Nether world where there are Rifts through time and space that create gaps in the floor and uh the these culian monsters that are kind of growing from the walls and sure enough he was like is that is that a ledge there could I push him through that Gap I'm like no they grown into the walls they're literally attached like yeah okay yeah fair enough I think I think that didn't that wasn't help by balers Gate 3 having push as a bonus action because it is one of the best tactical things to do I've I've made an attack I've done a bunch of damage and I've got a Bonus action I'm not spending on anything else I might as well try and shove him off this Cliff yeah yeah so I'm hoping that um GMS are going to start creating enclosed rooms everywhere ledgers will be a thing of the past in D and D which I mean like realistically if you're having a big old fight you probably don't want to fight on the edge of a cliff because of the of somebody throwing you off that's that makes sense I I what I like about the weapon Mastery stuff is that it has finally differentiated the weapons the weapons have always been a boring homogenized massive you might as well you might as well just pick a dice and then describe what weapon you're attacking with rather than anything to do with weapons because there's so many of them that have the same tags the same whatever the same reach and do the same damage and they're basically just reskins anyway whereas now the the weapons have little tags with them for anyone who doesn't know what we're talking about weapon Mastery is all the all the weapons come with a tag the dagger has the word nick uh the greatex has topple I think and the oh no the greatex has Grays maybe uh the club has push whatever it is each one of those things if you're a marshall class only you get to uh you get to to to use that tag which I think is good as well because it's giving the Marshall some power that the spellcasters don't and I and I like that um but yeah you each of the weapons can do different things push them back knock them over whatever but you have to choose which weapon you're fighting with what I don't like about it is the implication that a fighter with four attacks and then an action surge for another four attacks can attack with eight different weapons swapping between them after every attack yeah how swapping weapons is going to be a big question for me this thing to tole them over and then I use this thing to get an extra attack suddenly RS that have always existed for like how long it takes to draw a weapon St a weapon suddenly those are going to be very important but they theyve experience with those is that it's been pretty wishy-washy I think it's something that's what I'm saying I think that they have never mattered before and so no one's paid attention I think they matter now and a lot of people are going to start paying attention I think it's going to actually become part of the action economy fun the funny thing is I'm I'm not sure if they're going to spe specifically say you can switch for free because that's how that's the implication of what Jeremy Crawford was saying when he was describing his fighter in the play testing stage he was like oh yeah I really enjoyed knocking somebody prone and then getting two attacks with my dagger and so he was specifically talking about switching weapons mid mid attack it's like you're going to do all eight eight different attacks with eight different weapons in six seconds of combat yeah and how long do combats last now is that a problem with the game for your group if it a problem now multiply that by three and that's where you're going to be at you may want to say do we really want to put weapon Mastery into our game well it it when they first announced it it felt like something that maybe was a little bit tacked on of like these the extra things that every every weapon can do to be honest the way they're talking about it now it's starting to sound pretty core to to like how a lot of different classes function and the benefits they get in how they can manipulate weapon Mastery so I'm not sure it's going to be something that's going to be part of the system that is easily uh ignorable um and the question then becomes what do monsters do your St block for your your Barbarian is that going to have a lot of pushing or proning or is it one of those right because then multiply by three again the amount of time that it takes to get through a round of combat uh yeah yeah we we shall see because that that's a very good question I hadn't even considered you know MPCs um they've talked a little bit about how the monster manual have an expanded NPC section which I'm excited about because playing in Dark Fantasy NPCs are kind of where I go to for a lot of my um you know street level uh battles as opposed to to to Grizzly monsters just wandering through the the streets or forests but um I'm very excited to get a closer look at the monster manual that being said uh we are very quickly running out of time here so we better go check us out on Twitch at ghostcore official uh we're here uh 7:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time 400 p.m. Pacific stand time every Monday or it's Tuesday 900 a.m. uh Australian Eastern Standard Time uh I've no idea what what's the time in New Zealand Rob uh it's currently noon okay cool so 11 uh Eastern Standard Time I Think off the top of my head anyway uh come check us out hang out the chat uh and you can ask questions and stuff Rob's one thing I want to say before we end end all of this and that is just to point out that we're all talking very sort of excitedly about the stuff that has been released by Wizards of the Coast regarding this 2024 version of of the game but let's all keep in mind this is the stuff that they have released okay so even if we're all coming in and going oh isn't this all great and positive just just bear in mind that they are selecting what they show us that's all I want to say I've been very intentional not I've only listened to the videos that are on the DND YouTube channel I have not listened to any of the influence of videos Benjamin I put it on backr um I gave it a like um thank you for that very reason I'm sure um you know I kind of somebody pointed this out on Twitter I can't remember who but it is very much yes we are getting we can't get the facts without it being mixed in with opinion at the moment because it's either marketing or it's you know uh someone on YouTube kind of presenting their thoughts on The Thing For Better or Worse um so I think that's a a very Salient Point Dale where can folks find you Rob if they want to check you out you can find me at Robert heartley GM h a r t l e y or if you are on Twitch I'll say hello hello that's my name I'm I stream on Twitch all the time doing Dungeons and Dragons content check me out there go check it out go check out Viva Le dirt league as well uh what's the Viva channel that you said was RPG specific vivly D and D yeah nice awesome uh that being said uh I've been Ben burn here with sha mwin at Dale Kingsmill Robert Harley and we will be back next week for another episode of the eldrich lawcast and on YouTube for the super exciting news and we will catch you then goodbye hey love it love it you're listening to radio oh

Channel: Ghostfire Podcasts

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Keywords: dungeons, dragons, tabletop, gaming, roleplaying, games, gamplay, play, game, rpg, d20, player, character, D&D, 5e, DnD, DM, Eldritch, Lorecast, Ben, Byrne, Ghostfire, podcast, podcasting, 5th Edition, ttrpg, 5.5e, dice, design, dnd, adventure, news, WotC, Wizards of the Coast, Beyond, dragon, grim hollow, martial, feats, backgrounds, subclass, species, heritages, Wechselkind, Disembodied, One DnD, Players Handbook, PHB, dark souls, witcher, dark sun, One D&D

Id: uSbyAc7Prbk

Length: 63min 8sec (3788 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 26 2024