D&D Next

okay I finally found something I don't like... I don't like it in 4e and I will continue to dislike it. Bloody crappy max damage crits. I want something better than that. It makes dagger crits crappy. If I crit I want fanfare, I want the enemy to howl, I want something more than, okay "20 more of those and they'll be bloodied". I'm thinkin... critical gives max damage automatically and a critical threat roll, another hit on the threat and the enemy explodes or something.

Yah, in my Pathfinder game, we use Crit and Fumble cards. They're awesome.

Our magus critted a great big spider and her magic "phased" the spider to another dimension

Or you get bleed damage, or blind / stun / etc

They're great ...

If you'd like, we can try and introduce those to this game. I could make a table up under Yayy ... ooops ... Yayyy or similar, and if you crit or fumble, you roll on that table ??

When you crit, you take two cards and choose which (or three cards if it's a BIG weapon) so I could give you that option.

When baddies crit, they just give double damage ... except Bosses that is

But they do get Fumble cards as well

Love it! I vote yes, where do you find these cards or did you guys make them up? My players often roll damage with hit, and it's like I crit yay... +1dmg. (said like Ben Stein)

You buy them from Paizo (or you local FLGS): Crit Hit Deck Fumble Deck

had my first Next session. I have one MAJOR complaint. At first level the players are walking through every encounter... it was too easy, they killed like fourty goblins and an ogre in the same day without even getting bloodied. I wasn't easy on them either, I setup ambushes, decoys, surrounded them, sneak attacks and pretty much every sneaky trick a goblin could think of to no avail... and a sling should not do a d8 damage, I'm assuming(hoping) that's some sort of halfling racial ability. Besides this it was loads of fun, loads and loads of fun.

I wish I could comment more on the spell system, but my wizard got drunk and said, Sleep is awesome, I'm memorizing that x3. It actually worked out really well for them... but nobody wanted to play the wizard. Oddly enough as half my players are 2nd ed. players and the others from 3.5

played a second session of Next. you gotsta get real creative with the fighter to keep him from getting dull. The rogue and cleric found contented mediums but wizard was having a blast...

On my side of the table I was having fun with making goblin pyramids and trapize artists to do anything I could to make them get advantage and spice up combat.

All and all maneuvers and tactical play was missed, its nice to have the option to opt out if you want to play a relaxed session while sitting around the campfire with a few brew, but overall the freedom it grants is due to necessesity. The fighter has to be creative or he'll get bored to death. Also, the most efficient tactic became: ready actions to protect the wizard as he shocks and burns his way through the monsters. This concerns me.

Appreciating the running reviews, Rum, although your last paragraph, about the boring fighter and big-hitter wizard, also concerns me. Ideally, these will be issues that are ironed out after they've "cemented" the core mechanics.

I've yet to play in / run a DnDN session ;(

The weapon damages look stupidly big compared to even the maxed starting hp ... Rum, didn't the gobbies even lay a weapon on the heroes ???

Actually I made a major mistake in that first session. The defender ability is only 1/round. *facepalm* Also I started using "aid another" with the masses of goblins to give them advantage in close combat. That way they do extra damage which was very nearly equivalent to two hits, but with the upped chances to hit it was great and they don't have to be under the cover of darkness. So in this second session they quickly became mean lil green bastards.

The weapon damage was somewhat high, but it quickly levels off. They went towards the hobgoblins and all of a sudden the sleep only slows them because they have over 10hp each and burning hands deals only half their hp in damage, so they were still going strong. Wizard was still by far most effective against them as he gained advantage with his shocking grasp for them being dressed in metal armour. This is why it became a "protect the wizard" scenario, because he would almost always hit, and a preped attack could always work. Basically what happened is they'd lure the hobgobs into a halway, use burning hands, then chop them down as they came after the wizard while he continued to use shocking grasp. The PCs still took a massive beating and had to run away because they had no business venturing after hobgoblins at level 1, but at least that was apparent. So it seems to scale well.

So is it still a "at-will" powers type thing rather then only 2 first level spells at first level ?? Where Wizzies became useless after the first encounter ... I really need to read up on the rules for DnDN, but just not had time ;(