Our Thoughts on the One D&D Character Origins Playtest Packet

I think it would be good for a new dms if they explicitly state in the rules that the DM does not have to call for a role of there is 0% chance of success or failure. I would also add an exception for the nat 1 being an automatic fail if the player is proficient in the skill being tested.

I'm so early Drakkenheim is still a functional city

Here’s the problem with auto-fails on a skill check when rolling a nat 1: I’m a commercial pilot. Landing a large aircraft takes a lot of skill, and under certain circumstances, it can be very difficult. But I’m expected to land it every time. If I had a 1-in-20 chance to botch every landing, regardless of my level of skill or experience, my career as a professional aviator would be over in a week. You should be able to get so skilled at something that you expect to succeed 100% of the time under normal circumstances.

With the 3 different magic sources, I want to see more unique spells and less crossover. Arcane, Primal, and Divine need to feel different from each other.

On Backgrounds: the "customization option" is not an option, it is the default choice. The provided backgrounds are merely examples of how one might construct a background and could be used as is if a player wants to

I really want to see standardized magic item creation rules.

PF2e uses the phrase ABC’s in regards to character creation as they ditched the term race for Ancestry :) It’s a great change, telling people to remember their ABC’s helps a lot of new 2e players in character creation ^^

I also hope feats will be separated wholey from ability score improvement. Or allow you to still get like a +1 out of ability score improvements even when you get a feat so I still get a benefit out of more character defining feats so it feels less bad.

The ABCs huh. Great idea, you can see exactly how thise work in the Pathfinder 2e Core rulebook. 😉

One thing relevant to the “monsters can’t crit” issue that was mentioned in the Crawford interview is that the justification to remove monster crits was because monsters have a recharge mechanic already where the big hits are under the control of the DM rather than chance. So there might be a major monster design overhaul that balances out the inability to crit, just we haven’t seen it. Cautious optimism perhaps? Unrelated, but something that caught my eye about the glossary is the Slowed status. It seems weird that it would get its own definition of it only mattered to grappling, and I can’t help but wonder (hope?) if we’re going to see a change to the Monk’s Stunning Strike.

I like the idea of inverting that inspiration rule so that you get inspiration from failing with a natural 1 instead of succeeding with a natural 20. Then it would sort of balance out the luck at the table instead of making the lucky ones even luckier. Plus, it makes more logical sense to me since the ones who fail would be motivated by that failure to do better.

Honestly I've been waiting to hear y'all's take on this the most and it was the best breakdown I've watched so far!

I think they should have an index in the back that flags Racial Features as "Dominant" and "Recessive", so your half-orc can be inspiring, lift heavy loads and get the dash, OR get the extra starting feat and the free Death Ward. I feel like this would be a quick and easy way of making the options of mixed race meaty but not a headache. We don't want a Gurps 5th edition here.

Eldritch Blast is not part of the spell lists, making it feel like it will be an innate ability of warlocks and thus might have the ability to crit. This could also fix the situation where 2 levels of warlock gets you the best cantrip scaling in the game. The ability to crit could also be included in things like sneak attack.

“You can never go wrong with giving more options” That’s certainly a players perspective, But from a DM and Game Design perspective, more options make it harder to balance the game and creates more work for the dungeon master. It’s great that 5th edition has brought in so many new players, but let’s give the DM’s some help as well.

On the crit success/fail point I think instead of it being a crit success is an auto-success and a crit fail is an auto-fail it can be more of a “rolling a 20 will make failures less punishing, and rolling a 1 will make successes less rewarding”. If the DC is 13 for a long jump and your rogue rolls a 1 with a +14, instead of it being “well I literally can’t fail this”, it’s now “I made it across the gap but something else is going to happen”. You can follow up by saying the rogue cleared the gap, but barely and they’re hanging on to the ledge and now have to make a strength check. On the other side, you can have a very un-dexterous character roll a 20 on the same check but they actually have a -8. They fail the check, but don’t instantly just fall to their death, they get a chance to pull themselves up too Edit: I’m also super down for calling it 5.1 and every few years when we get a new update, it becomes 5.2, 5.3, etc until it really feels like we need a 6. I think 5e is good enough to be a living edition, and 6 is probably not necessary

There are some major issues that I have with the presented play test material 1) critical hits for weapon or unarmed strikes only seems like a massive blow to “blaster” style spell casters 2) No monster critical hits also is another issue. This makes cannon fodder just that cannon fodder that will pose no threat what so ever to mid level PCs (5th or 6th level) 3) the change to grappling to a set DC from the opposed str (athletics)checks is a major nerf to that play-style / tactic 4) the 1 auto fail 20 auto success is also another issue (adding in gaining inspiration on 20 as well) makes for more rolls when one wouldn’t be necessary.

What I find somewhat interesting is right there on the first page, first sentence under "Determining your Origin": "After choosing your character’s Class, it’s time to consider the character’s origin." This seems to imply that in One D&D we'll be choosing our Class first, which is not the order presented in PHB 2014.

Re: Final Thoughts, I think WotC intends to migrate D&D to a "lifestyle product" model, like we see in video games now. I can't imagine they'd plaster a "5.5" on it, the idea is to have a multi-platform content engine through D&D Beyond, physical books, etc., to assert further market domination via their already established (but controversial) "ease of access" and popularity.

The thing to remember on the D20 checks - on a critical hit you don't automatically kill the monster, you just hit and do more damage. This is the critical success, allowing a better success on a more fluid idea of skill checks.