D&D Next Playtest

So the new packet for D&D Next playtest just came out today and I just finished downloading it but have not given it a full read yet. It now has stuff for character creation going from level 1 to level 5. The Bestiary has been tweaked and some of the monsters have been given more abilities. The classes and such have been tweaked a bit and a few minor rule changes. So all in all it looks like some interesting things to start messing around with. With that said I just wanted to open up discussion about the Next Playtest stuff, especially the new stuff. And at least it was easy to download the packet this time, granted I did log on and download it 2 min after it went live so hopefully it will stay working.

Considering that D&D Next is looking like it is trying to go back to simplified mechanics with modular import of rules from 1st 2nd 3rd and 4th edition, it shouldn't demand anything to outlandish. As I look over it more and possibly run a few games there should be a better picture of what could benefit the system.

I can name one specific feature that will increase support for D&D Next: you may have seen this in the Dice Rolling thread, but I'd recommend adding or altering the dice roll codes to allow keeping the lowest dice in a pool. Right now, the Keep and Drop functions are somewhat redundant, since you're either keeping the highest N, or dropping the lowest N (in both cases, though, what you end up with are the highest rolls in the pool). Specifically, D&D Next uses a feature called Advantage/Disadvantage in which you roll 2d20, and if you have advantage, you keep the highest, and if you have disadvantage, you keep the lowest . Right now, as far as I know, Roll20 can't do that - you can only keep the highest, or drop the lowest, which are functionally the same thing. My proposal has been to change the XdYkN roll command and the XdYdN both have N refer to the highest rolls. So it's "roll XdY, and keep the highest N" or "roll XdY and drop the highest N." Doing that would change an existing code and might affect existing campaigns; but then, beta is the time for that. Alternatively, you could add a new code of some sort.

New keep/drop works perfectly for advantage/disadvantage, just use: /roll 2d20kh1 for Advantage /roll 2d20kl1 for Disadvantage

Excellent! I figured it would - that was the "missing link" so to speak.