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...

The big topic of Mike’s post is the role of non-combat healing and the essential-ness of having a healer. It’s essentially a reverse from the earlier ideal that a cleric should not be a requirement for play. Like a few other recent changes, it’s a shift to a clear ideal of what D&D is, but with the promise of huge flexibility for the DM to do whatever they want. I have all my normal concerns about how shifting, say, the need for healing is a fundamental change with many repercussions, and that making such a big change seem like a simple dial to turn won’t work out well. But instead let’s take another look at...

Time to play some catch up. Several weeks ago Mike talked about a change in his format for Legends & Lore into a This Week in D&D column. This may mean the end of Indies & More, but for now I’ll see if there’s still stuff that I can comment on. With the new format come a variety of topics, so I’ll hit each of them: The Case of the Mysterious Missing Rules When the latest playtest packet came out I was interested in the mention of new exploration rules, but couldn’t find them. Turns out there’s a good reason for that: they weren’t there. I’m actually super excited about these rules. They...

Just as expected, this week’s Legends and Lore is on Advanced D&D Next… or D&D Next Advanced? D&D Advanced Next? Anyway, wherever they stick the adjective, the idea of Advanced D&D is customization; the reference point is Unearthed Arcana. Mentioning UA as a point of reference is interesting, as the two UA books have generally appeared later in editions with an emphasis on reinvigorating an existing game. The idea of Advanced D&D is that the rules become customizable. The customizations fall into three categories: dials, modules, and core changes. Dials are smaller changes: how healing works, or what gives XP,...

The most interesting part about the latest installment of Mike’s D&D Next Goals posts is how it throws the previous posts in a different light. The topic this week is the standard rules, as opposed to the basic rules discussed last week. The fact that these aren’t the expert rules suggests that there may be more rules beyond this. I guess we’ll see next week. Before we actually get into the details of what’s in the standard rules, let’s talk names: I really hope they reevaluate these names before launch. Presented with a choice between Basic D&D and Standard D&D (and maybe Expert D&D) most people...