The newest version or the D&D Playtest came out a couple weeks ago with many an exciting change! I thought about doing a disgusting Christmas theme and making a list of “naughty” and “nice” features of the new playtest, but my sense of decency prevailed. The good and bad highlights below:

Good:

–Fighters, Rogues, and Monks have the same hit progressions, martial damage dice, and bonus damage: Frankly, as far as class features go, these are all pretty barebones and basic, so I am perfectly happy to see these qualities shared by each class. It goes a LONG ways towards balancing them in combat relative to each other, and there is still a lot of room to distinguish them from each other with maneuvers and other abilities.

–Skill Dice: These introduce more variance to skill checks, which I tend to prefer, as it evens the playing field between disparate opponents and makes success or failure more uncertain at various difficulty levels (the uncertainty, of course, being why you roll the dice to begin with). Skill dice also address some potential concerns with the rogue. Rerolling skill dice is a nice ability but less powerful than rerolling a d20. Also, spending skill dice provides the rogue with more flexibility in using skills without giving them yet another advantage in the basic success/failure mechanic.

-Rogue Schemes: The alternative options for sneak attack are surprisingly viable, considering how big a part of the class that ability has been in previous editions. Also, requiring the rogue to give up advantage to use sneak attack or assassinate helps balance those abilities and make using them an interesting choice.

Bad:

–Feats: A number of feats seem poorly balanced. Two-Weapon Strike and Riposte both seem a bit too powerful, unless I am missing something important. With regards to TWS, guaranteed advantage is tough to pass up, especially for a rogue with sneak attack, and it doesn’t appear to have many downsides (d8 damage die compared to a d12?). Riposte seems like a no-brainer for any tank types, adding to their damage and increasing their chances of using their martial damage dice considerably. Of course, some feats are plain-out underpowered. Weapon focus, for example, adds a mere 1/6 damage per martial damage die!

–Cleric hit progression, martial damage dice, and bonus damage: These max out at +2, 4d6, and +5 by level 20, which is considerably less than HALF the bonuses of the fighter, rogue, and monk (+5, 6d6, +20). Now with Divine Power, clerics do improve noticeably to +6, 4d6, +9, but that is still 18 damage behind the other classes. I think the expenditure of a mid to high level spell (depending on what level you are) should even the ground a bit more (or clerics should just be more effective to begin with). The bottom line is that WotC needs to determine if clerics should be capable of being relatively effective melee combatants or not; their current state feels like they are making a promise about the class that they can’t deliver on.

–Spell Damage + Effects: Spells still seem a bit underwhelming compared to fighter/rogue/monk damage output. Let’s use a really simple example: a level one fighter with a two-handed sword can do about 13 damage when they hit with their Greatsword (1d12+3+1d6). Rogues and monks are a little lower at 11 (1d8+3+1d6). A wizard, in contrast, does only 5.5 damage + a minor effect with their Cantrip, which is a lot to lag behind; I’d be much more comfortable with them adding their ability mod to cantrip damage to keep up a bit. 1st level spells are similarly lacking: Burning Hands does about 10.5 damage (3d6), with a save for half. With the potential to hit multiple targets and reliably do damage even on a miss, this is certainly better than a normal hit. If a wizard could do this sort of thing at-will, I might say they were a bit overpowered, but with a limit of twice a day I am not impressed. Things don’t appear to change much at higher levels, with a 9th level fireball doing about 42 damage (12d6) versus the 51.5 damage (1d12+4+6d6+20) of the same fighter at level 20. Mike Mearls made a comment that he thought each class should look totally awesome when they do what they are best at; the wizard should wish he was the fighter when he chops enemies in half round after round, but then the fighter should look enviously at the wizard when he blows a ton of enemies apart with a well placed fireball. I’m just not convinced we’re there yet.

Part of the fun of gaming is measuring yourself against challenges and seeing where you stand. In any game except, like, Pachinko, your wins and losses have to do with the choices you made.

Here are some speculations about what “meaningful choices” might mean to different people in D&D, and how it informs people’s choice of edition.

What makes your character-building choices meaningful? By “character-building” I mean choices about class, race, feats, powers, and maybe equipment: character-sheet stuff. Little variations in character power are best measured by pitting the characters against a standardized challenge. Therefore, versions of D&D with lots of character-building options (like 3e and 4e) are best served by having the characters frequently face opponents similar in power to the PCs. That maximizes the chance that small character-building adjustments will mean the difference between failure and success. And indeed, the 3e and 4e rules do expect that opponents will frequently be the right CR or level.

What makes your strategic choices meaningful? By “strategic” I mean high-level decisions made after seeing the opposition. Fight, run, or parley? Hoard resources or go nova with spells? These decisions are most meaningful when the PCs face challenges that can’t always be handled by the same strategy. If every encounter can be handled with a fight, there’s never a reason to run. Therefore, strategic choices are most meaningful when the characters frequently face opponents of varying power relative to the PCs (and the PCs can tell who’s too powerful to fight). Strategic choices are very important in OD&D, where there aren’t a lot of character-building choices, and randomly-encountered monsters have widely varying strengths (especially in the wilderness). Furthermore, in OD&D, there are a limited number of enemy types. You can’t make informed strategic decisions when you’re presented with a constant stream of enemies of unknown capabilities.

What makes your roleplaying choices meaningful? By “roleplaying” I mean making decisons based on your character’s goals, personality, backstory, and relationships with NPCs. These choices are meaningful when the PCs are able to influence the game’s story. If a conversation scene might legitimately make an important NPC a friend or enemy; if the adventure can take an unexpected turn because a PC decides to honor an obligation; if skipping an entire dungeon won’t make the DM mad, then role-playing decisions are meaningful. This happens in games where the characters frequently face NPCs. Apart from skill checks, there aren’t a lot of rules in D&D to handle this sort of thing. During a tense negotiation, a carefully-nuanced speech doesn’t give a mechanical benefit: it relies on the DM’s social sense, gained not from rules mastery but from the DM’s actual experience talking to humans. Roleplaying choices don’t have much to do with rules design and more to do with adventure design. Roleplaying choices can be more important in sandboxy adventures than in linear adventures, like Dragonlance and some of the less flexible adventure-path campaigns.

I’m going to take it as axiomatic that all three types of decision-making are worthwhile (they’re all fun for someone). Every edition of D&D presents character-building, strategic, and roleplaying choices. However, if you’re primarily interested in one of these, that might steer you towards (and away from) a specific system or adventure type.

If you love character-building the most, you should probably play 3e or 4e, and it probably explains why you don’t like the randomness of early D&D.

If you love high-level strategic decisions made during play, you should play early D&D editions or retroclones. You probably don’t like the balanced encounters of later editions.

If you love roleplaying, you can play any edition you want, but you hate DM railroading. Few adventure modules are flexible enough to handle this style well. Your best bet is to find a DM with good improv skills.

I think what’s most interesting about this analysis is how it shows the coherence of various D&D editions. Editions with a lot of character options should provide carefully balanced encounters (and 3e and 4e do). Editions without many character options should provide opponents of random but known strength (and early editions do).

What’s also interesting is what doesn’t cohere according to my analysis: 2e, post-Skills and Powers, has detailed character-building options but doesn’t, I think, have anything like a Challenge Rating system to test yourself against. Lamentations of the Flame Princess concentrates on strategic play, but presents unique monsters of unknown capacities so that you have difficulty making informed decisions.

As a DM, I want to throw in cool magic weapons that people can actually use. On the other hand, I don’t want a formalized 4e-style wishlist. The big selection of D&D weapons actually makes my life difficult. If I want to include a magic sword, do I need to pay attention to who in the party uses a short sword, longsword, bastard sword, and greatsword?

As I was designing an adventure recently, I thought, “maybe I’ll describe this magic sword as an extra-long longsword, so it can be used as either a longsword or a greatsword, player’s choice.” (beat) “Hey, that’s what a bastard sword is supposed to be!”

The 1e bastard sword is kind of like that. It comes with a note: “Treat as a long sword if used one-handed.” Used two-handed, though, it’s its own thing. In later editions, the bastard sword is all over the map: for instance, in 3e, it has one set of stats one-handed or two-handed, but it requires a feat to use it one-handed.

As a DM, here’s how I wish the bastard sword worked: “The wielder can treat it either like a longsword or greatsword.”

What if this combination-weapon approach were expanded?

For one thing, the fifty polearms in D&D are basically different combinations and permutations of spears, axes, picks, hammers, and hooks. The very existence of the glaive, the glaive-guisarme, and the guisarme imply that there’s a use for a “combination-weapon” category.

Here are some weapons that could be turned into combination things:

Battleaxe: A battleaxe can be used either as a hand axe or a greataxe.
Bastard sword: A bastard sword can be used as either a longsword or a greatsword.
Glaive: A glaive can be used as either a greatsword or a spear.
Halberd: A halberd can be used as either a spear, battleaxe, or hook.
Morning Star: A morning star can be used either as a flail or a mace.
Rapier: A rapier can be used either as a shortsword or as a longsword.
Spiked Chain: A spiked chain can be used either as a whip or as bondage gear.

By reducing the number of unique weapons, you’re taking away the need to come up with a million slightly-different dice expressions to justify each weapon. You’re also replacing various solutions for “weapon groups”, where special rules are needed to give people proficiency with a large number of similar weapons. With my rule, a guy with longsword specialization can always use whatever rapier, longsword, or bastard sword he picks up (although only as a longsword).

Side note: You know what I’ve under-appreciated about 4e? How few weapons there are. 33 weapons in the 4e Players Handbook, as opposed to 50 in the 1e PHB, 63 in the 2e PHB, and 72 in the 3e PHB.