Mike’s given us a look at the larger picture of the different types of abilities in D&D Next. To sum up: The simplest character is just a class and race. They roll their stats for everything, generally without extra bonuses. They get class abilities and racial abilities and that’s it. The only customization are the choices presented by the class and the stats the player chooses to increase. Players who want a more complex character can use feats instead of ability increases. Optionally, they can choose a specialty to plan a path of feats to take. GMs can choose to let players take backgrounds and gain skills. Skills add to...

Since Mike’s post is mostly a run down of the changes in the latest playtest packet, I’m going to follow the same format, focusing on the new classes. Druid This take on the druid is interesting. Actually, the idea of the druid in generally is interesting—it’s a class that means some very specific things to people, and blending them all together tends to just muddy the water. Historically, D&D druids haven’t always had shapeshifting. The idea of the druid as a shapeshifter is a more recent invention, but one that has become the defining feature of the class to many people. To quote my friend Stras:...

While Mike tackles three different topics in his post, there’s a theme to it: complexity. The first venue for complexity is spells—particularly the complexity of choosing which spells to prepare. The different rules for preparing spells are practically a microcosm for how D&D has changed over time. In early D&D, choosing the right spell was essentially key to playing a wizard—a strategic choice that could make the difference between being a human pin cushion and the party’s MVP. Fast forward to 3rd Edition and preparing spells was more or less a balance for a little extra flexibility, since if you just wanted to fling...

The direction of D&D Next is to expand ‘story’ not ‘mechanics’: After the core rules for the game are done, we really want to stop adding so much stuff to the mechanics of the game and shift our emphasis to story. I knew when I read this that I was going to have a hell of a time writing this response. The false dichotomy there glares at me: why can’t mechanics and rules be one-in-the-same, or at least complementary? That’s not the real core of Mike’s post though. The core here is D&D as a common language: D&D is a shared language. The rules serve to make it easier to talk...

Most of Mike’s Legends and Lore post is about roles in D&D Next: how do you handle specialized characters and general situations? The underlying issue is this: suppose you’ve got a band of adventurers where one character (let’s call her the fighter) is better in combat than everyone else. How do you still make combat interesting for everyone? D&D Next appears to be taking the approach of making the difference between “highly skilled” and “just passable” fairly low: Every class should have the potential to contribute to a fight, and our efforts to make attack bonuses fairly flat mean...