5e announced!

[Jester of the FoS]

I hate to say it... but it's not all inclusive! Do you see "explosives and alien technology" at page 268? Nope, it's ... creating a monster. And before the firearms, we get rest variant rules. PS. the firearms are not for monsters, they're for PCs.

I noticed the page discrepancy as well. Very likely they hadn't updated the exact page numbers in the ToC due to the book not being due at the printers for a few weeks. Not finalized yet.
I saw similar weirdness in the MM previews.

[alhoon]

25 pages of optional rules

I would like to correct that! Optional rules are strewn here and there in the book as we've already seen! The 25 pages are optional builds.

I would also like to know how on earth anyone is going to incorporate in a campaign non-magical weapons that deal 6d8 necrotic damage or 3d8 radiant damage.
Which also brings out the nice detail: Vampires are vulnerable to lasers! After all, it's light.

[Jester of the FoS]

I would also like to know how on earth anyone is going to incorporate in a campaign non-magical weapons that deal 6d8 necrotic damage or 3d8 radiant damage.

The flippant answer is "use tougher monsters". But, in theory, getting an antimatter gun is like getting a wand of enervation. You can't recharge it and only have so many shots, so you only use it during emergencies.
Unless your DM gives you nigh unlimited ammo, in which case that's his own fault.

[alhoon]

Or you play in a sci-fi campaign and you try to recover a crate of stolen antimatter rifles before they reach the hands of the orc tribe while you evade the blasts of the gnoll terrorists that thought of it.
Seriously though, a high tech sci-fi campaign requires that steps like Star wars saga are taken (you start with x3 max hp as in 30 hp for fighter, 18 for wizard etc) or your 2nd lvl character may die from a critical of a thug with a pistol that dealt 25 damage.

Firearms:
Gunpowder should deal thunder damage too, although just a bit. Yes, I know that technically it's not explosive but very rapidly burning fuel. The air pressure is enough to deal thunder damage IMO.
Same with dynamite. A bit of fire damage is needed.
Also, a Keg IMO should do more damage. 6d6 fire and 2d6 thunder 10' radius and 3d6 fire and 1d6 thunder at 20' radius.

[Jester of the FoS]

The Table of Contents has been updated. There's a new two-page "madness" section.

[alhoon]

The Table of Contents has been updated. There's a new two-page "madness" section.

Awesome news.

EDIT: 5 pages on other rewards. Even assuming one will be a nice full-page art and about one more would be smaller art or the "other rewards" would start somewhere mid-page we could expect about 3 pages of solid info. I believe PC-run organizations and fiefs would be in there along with the info provided earlier in the book.

[alhoon]

For anyone interested:
I've figured a formula to quite accurately calculate the XP worth of a monster without special powers. The "training" set didn't even include monsters with flight. Just monsters that had a bag of hp and dealt straightforward attacks. Like the ogre, the bears and frost giant.

I'm extremely happy with the results since they will allow me to make the "barebones" monster with great accuracy and then build on it.

For example, a monster with 50 hp and AC 15, and 2 attacks +7 that deal 1d6+4 damage each... is worth about 450 XP ~> CR2
If said monster had 40hp then it would need a "boost" of other abilities to be CR2.

A monster with 67 hp and AC 15, 2 attacks +7 that deal 1d6+4 damage +1d4 cold damage ... is worth about 750 XP~> a liiitle above CR3 line. Since not all CR 3 monsters are equal (and the differences are more varied than 50XP BTW) we've a solid CR3 monster

Using those, I found out that "simple" monsters, with a simple power like flight or the gnoll's rampage, the bugbears ambush damage etc, are worth about 10% more XP than the figure gives for them.
So, in the example with the CR2 monster, if it could fly or if it could get one last attack before dying etc, it would be worth ~500XP, still a good CR2 candidate, while our CR 3 monster with a simple power would be ~830XP instead of 700 XP, that's starting to stretch a bit.

NOTE: the training set was made with the top monster being CR 9 (fire giant) and the least being CR 1/4 (the axe-beak or something bird). I wouldn't 100% trust it at the borders but I believe that I have a solid formula for CR 1/2 to CR 8. Also, at higher CRs, the XP goes out of synch because the XP requirements to go up in level increase and you won't see a party of 7 3rd lvl characters fighting a fire giant although by the numbers they have a chance, so there's no need to keep CR 9+ monsters in synch with lower level monsters.

For anyone interested to know more, I normalized hp and damage by AC and hit roll. AC and hit roll increase survivability of the monster and the punishment it would deliver to enemies. After the normalization I figured the power at which each of those should be raised to when multiplied to give the right XP
The formula is: XP value = nhp^1.076 x ndam ^ 0.696 + 6.25 XP

[alhoon]

http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/feature ... er-are-you
Mentions Van Richten...

[Tobias Blackburn]

http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/feature ... er-are-you
Mentions Van Richten...

Strahd is one of the results too.

[vachtor]

I was a little sad that Acererak was the lich character, and not another famous A...

[alhoon]

New DM's basic rules by WotC!
http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/basicrules

With a cursory look... few things have changed. Like the wand of magic detection.
A few things have been added, like thankfully +2 and +3 items.

[Sorti]

What's your opinion on the fact that wands and staff autorecharge now? It seems better for balance but they can pile up...

[alhoon]

I haven't thought of it too much. Way better than book-keeping. None of the PCs I ever had bothered to put down charges on their wands, except my sister.
I just plan to give a wand of cure light wounds to my 11th lvl PCs (1 spell lvl/charge, up to 3 charges: 1d8+2 to 3d8+2) so they could have extra "juice" to complete more encounters. Too low to be usable in combat (spending your action just to heal one person for 10-20 hp at 11th lvl is insane) but with 6 charges it could help a bit.
Actually, I was thinking to boost it to 10 charges, so my PCs could safely use 9x1d8+2 hp.


I completely see your point though. A wand of hold person is good. 3 wands is too much firepower though. It can easily be solved though IMO, by... not giving too many wands!
Keep in mind BTW that some wands loose their appeal at higher levels. A 12th lvl wizard with 5 wands of magic missiles... is marginally better than a 12th lvl wizard. Sure, he can use magic missile practically at will. No biggie at these levels. A 3-charge magic missile does about as much damage as ray of frost (guaranteed) without slowing the creature. BUT at 12th lvl the wizard probably packs a +9 to magic attacks! It's not like his ray will miss often.

However, wands\staves that have save-or-you're-in-big-trouble effects (charm, hold, etc) shouldn't be stacked.
This is no different than past edition either though. A wizard with 3 wands of hold (What's the name? I'm sure they had a special name) in 5th edition is as overpowered as a wizard with 3 wands of hold person in 2nd edition. 150 charges are a lot. You'll probably finish the campaign without using them all.

[Sorti]

I used to give my players wands with a small number of charges to keep them in check and avoid nova effects. Also, it's reasonable that someone used the wand before they find it, unless they craft it themselves.

As you say we'll have to be a little careful on how we hand them out, since now they stay for the whole campaign. Also one of the subclasses of the Rogue can use a bonus action to activate a magic item, and they also have ways to ignore class requirements as usual, so the wizard won't necessarily be the one using it to magic missile people

[alhoon]

Hmm... Can they use the wand each round as a bonus action? At what level?