Looking at the 5th Edition SRD - part 13 - Discovery, Manipulation and Communication Actions

    I've been using a system that breaks a game's rules into 5 categories: Exploring, Investigating, Manipulating, Communicating and Fighting.  Last post I looked at what Exploring rules the 5e SRD has.  This post I am going to try to go through the next 3 types, because I'm pretty sure there isn't a lot to talk about in any one of them, I know Fighting has the most page count (so it will be next post).

Discovery Challenges

    So Discovery is all about learning information, as you might guess from the title.  This is different from Perception, which is actually a part of Exploring.  Perception is about noticing the environment, the things around you weather living or not (well, as used in the SRD, I personally don't think perception should be a separate skill as I mentioned in one of my posts).  Discovery is about understanding something, about seeing it deeper than the surface level.  This is the core challenge type in a mystery story (seeing what happened is not the problem, look at that big blood stain, it's interpreting what you see, what weapon did that/ who did that, is the challenge), and also encompasses riddles and puzzles.  Things that have a deeper, hidden complexity by nature.
    What kinds of skills does the SRD have for this type of challenge?  Well...

• Arcana
• History
• Insight
• Investigation
• Medicine
• Nature
• Religion

    And what sections of the rules cover this type?
None, none at all really

    This type is rough in the SRD because while there are a few skills in the system, there is nothing at all about how exactly to use them.  If I want to use Religion to identify the type or abilities of an undead creature, can I?  What's the DC?  What information can I get?  If there is a puzzle about moving rings or a riddle about carrying geese and foxes and beans across a pond is that just a plain Intelligence check?  Again, what DC?  Or are we supposed to "role-play" it only and if I can't personally figure it out then I'm tough out of luck?
    Mysteries and puzzles are some of the hardest things to pull off in an RPG, it's too bad that the SRD doesn't give you any help with them.

Manipulation Challenges

    Exploring set the environment, and let you see and interact with the surface of the things around you.  Discovery let's you see under the surface.  And then Manipulating is about changing that inner nature of things and people.  Crafting is changing raw material into items, healing is changing a damaged body back into a whole one, so both are Manipulation.  An adventure that focused on Manipulation challenges would be something like a hacker in a heist or cyberpunk story - manipulating security - or creating a forgery to replace an item with, or trying to stop a plague.  Of course, while I categorize the challenges to try to organize related skills, abilities and rules together- in a typical adventure there would be a mix of challenge types.

    So what skills are there in the SRD?
        Well, none of the skills really apply except for Medicine
        Mostly this is the area of Tool Proficiencies, which I haven't really addressed until now because the SRD itself doesn't really address them at all, so now's as good a time as any.

Tool Proficencies
    Tools are a strange thing in the SRD.  They feel like an afterthought, like somebody designed the rules and then went, hey, wait, we totally forgot about crafting items, and we don't really know how we want to handle crafting items, and we don't want to add more skills so let's make them skills that are not skills so we can say they're there and hopefully nobody will really care or notice that we totally had no idea about what we were doing.
    Okay, I'm being hostile, actually there is a sort of sense to the skill vs tools system.  If skills are things you can do innately, and tools profs are things you cannot do on your own, then there is a sense in dividing them.  The problem is that they don't really divide that way cleanly.  Take Stealth, that should be a skill because you can hide any time you want, right?  But then what about camouflage clothing?  A black ninja outfit?  Those should help you hide (in the appropriate environments at least) weather you're personally 'good' or 'skilled' at hiding or not, right?
    An easy way to see this is in the system itself.  There is the Medicine skill and the Herbalist Tools, or the Perform skill and Musical Instrument tools. Heck, there are even tool kits, like woodworking and the forger's kit - which overlap if you want to make a forgery of a wooden carving.  So if you only have one of these (kit or skill) can you do the same things?  And what if you have both?
    Now, the system did try to clarify some of this in Xanathar's Guide To Everything.  The thing is though, they didn't add any of that material to the SRD (as of this writing).  Right now I'm not reviewing DnD, I'm reviewing just the SRD, the part of it that you can use to build your own games (which I intend to do down the road).  So for the purposes of this review, these are all questions with no answers.

    Okay, back to the SRD.  So most of Manipulating is in the Tool Proficiencies, but what other rules are there?

Diseases are just over a page, with 4 examples, and no useful advise or guidance at all for creating your own or how to treat them

Madness is another just-over-page of random tables.  I hate random tables in madness/ sanity systems- trauma is not random, it is very much based on whatever the triggering event was (though, granted, it can pop up at seemingly random times/associations)

Objects is a 1 page section that gives you some basic guidelines to dealing with inanimate stuff, okay for being so short

Poisons is a little over a page, and has the same problems as in earlier editions of the d20 system.  Poison tends to be over-priced for the effects, the save DCs are pretty low so they're mostly just good against low-level monsters, and there are no DCs or steps mentioned for how to cure them with either the Medicine skill or Herbalist Kit Proficiency (in fact, neither the skill nor kit say they can actually be used to cure a poison or disease, only to "diagnose" for medicine or "create antitoxin" for herbalist)

    So basically the SRD has very few rules and most of them are useless.

Communication Challenges

    Manipulation deals with the player/ active character making changes in something else.  Talking between two sentient creatures falls into it's own category, Communication.  People are complex, and layered in their motivations and actions, so this subject is worth its own Challenge Type.
    Sadly, just as with Manipulation there is a lack of any sort of rules.  There are a whopping 5 skills related directly to Communication:

• Insight - used to figure out what a character is thinking/ feeling
• Deception - for lying to people, including disguise (though, of course there is also a disguise kit)
• Intimidation - to threaten someone
• Performance - to entertain someone/ a group
• Persuasion - to 'play nice' with others (almost its exact description)

    And in terms of rules there are none at all.  No guidance whatsoever on how to set up or run a conversation or an adventure that relied on interpersonal interactions.  No DCs or what should be/ shouldn't be possible.  So if you wanted to run a Game of Thrones-inspired campaign good luck with all the politics and drama.

    Okay, so we've covered 4 of the 5 Challenge Types, and while these have had few useful rules at least the last one I know has some detailed material, because we're going to wrap things up with a look at Fighting - next post.


You can find the rest of this series here

Looking at the 5th Edition SRD - part 12 - Exploration Actions

A Quick Side Note- this post did not come out, as the last predicted, a week later :(  In fact it's been several months since I last updated this series.  I want to apologize for that, and say that I'm re-committing on finishing this series as quickly as possible while still being worth reading.



    Having looked over the attributes, and how skills modify them, let's look at the rules for different types of actions.  In my 5-fold system for describing RPG actions/ challenges my categories are: Exploring, Investigating, Manipulating, Communicating and Fighting.
    That list starts with Exploring because it covers how the character interacts with the game world.  This is the very first starting point, you need a world to inhabit to do anything/ exist in after all.  This category includes both "natural" and "man made" environmental factors.  So traps are a part of the Exploring rules here.  So is stealth, since it's not really about the person looking for you as it is your ability to 'blend in' with the environment somehow (same way Perception is the ability to identify your environment).  Survival, tracking, movement - both gross like running and swimming, and fine like acrobatics - are also Exploration, obviously, since they move you through the environment.

    Here are the skills that I put as being exploring-
⦁    Acrobatics
⦁    Animal Handling
⦁    Athletics
⦁    Perception
⦁    Sleight of Hand
⦁    Stealth
⦁    Survival

    And here are the sections of the SRD that I think go along with those:
⦁    some of the Attributes & Skills
⦁    Time & Movement
⦁    The Environment
⦁    Traps

    I don't consider objects a part of Exploring, because I put working with/ changing objects as a part of "Manipulation."  Traps are in Exploring however because a trap denies access to a place/ items.  And movement, ie changing places, is a part of Exploration.  Likewise poisons and diseases can afflict a character from a trap or location, but treating or removing them is also Manipulation (that is, manipulating bodies, ie healing).
    So these are the core things to Exploring challenges, in my own system (which I use here only because the 5e SRD has no system at all, and I want to have a logical and well-constructed discussion [as opposed to just listing all my thoughts alphabetically, like too darn many RPG books])...
⦁    Perception / Stealth (stealth hides your whole being while sleight of hand hides your actions)
⦁    Movement
⦁    Access and Barriers (incld. Traps)
 ⦁    Weather/ Environmental Effects (including falling) [while healing these may be in Manipulation, taking them in the first place works best here]

    With that as a filter, just how many rules are there and what are they like for Exploring challenges?  Well, we have about 4 pages in 'The Environment' section, 2 pages of 'Time and Movement', and 4 pages of 'Traps' - and let's say 2 pages from the 'Abilities and Skills' section, for about 12 pages of Exploring-styled rules: out of 403 pages total (though a lot of that is characters, spells and monsters).  There are maybe 50 pages of rules on running the game (estimating generously).  Looked at that way the Exploring rules take up a decent proportion of the total rules.
    So what all do we get in those 12 pages?  Well, let's look at each section.
   
    In the Abilities and Skills we have the skills I listed above.  There are some examples of what each attribute/ skill might be used for, but as I mentioned in my last post there are no examples of DCs - weather each action might be easy or hard.  While that does give the GM flexibility it also sucks if you're a new GM and don't feel comfortable with the DC system, or you're a player and the GM hides your DCs, in which case you have no idea how likely an attempt might be, and thus weather it could be worth any potential risks.  Something is better than nothing, but I wouldn't call this section very useful.
    Let me give you an example of what I mean.  There is a little sidebar in the Dexterity section that talks about hiding.  It has exactly one sentence about hiding while invisible, "An invisible creature can always try to hide.  Signs of it's passage might still be noticed, and it does have to stay quiet."  Okay, now how does that tell you anything you wouldn't have figured out on your own when thinking about invisibility and hiding?  Instead of being written by Captain Obvious, how about we get a game designer to write about this - because a game designer would say something like: invisible creatures don't need to make Stealth checks unless the environment might give them away (ie, leaves or twigs that could break), or maybe, invisible creatures always have advantage on Stealth checks, or maybe, if an invisible creature makes noise/ tracks other characters who rely on sight still have Disadvantage to attack or interact with them, or anything that might actually help you adjudicate an invisible player/ monster at the table?  I'm not saying the game needs precise rules, just some quick advise to the GM about how to use the system. A good thing to have, even in a "rules light" styled game.

    Time and Movement is next.  Time in RPGs is always screwy.  No matter how detailed your rules it's impossible to simulate reality enough to measure things in exact seconds.  And it's useless to try.  The most valuable thing is figuring out who gets a task done first, or arrives at a location first.  And given that DnD has always used identical numbers for a group (ie, all Humans move at exactly 30 feet per round) (DnD Olympics must suck), then it's really important to say what gets checked in a contest.  If two players are having a foot race what do they roll to determine the winner?  Dexterity?  Strength?  Constitution?  Wisdom, what ?!?!  That's the only really useful thing at the table, counting minutes and seconds is actually more of a waste of time than anything else.
    Sadly the 5e SRD doesn't have a lot of useful information.  And again it is very wasteful of its word count.  Pretty much the entire Movement section can be boiled down to this:

Walking: choose a pace-
    Fast- covers the most distance (automatically beating/ arriving before any slower creatures), but Disadvantage to Perception
    Normal - the default speed, cannot use Stealth
    Slow - the slowest speed, automatically beaten by all others, but can use Stealth
*Forced March - can treat your speed as 1 category higher, but have to make a Constitution save or gain 1 level of Exhaustion
*Difficult Terrain - move at half speed

Climbing and Swimming: move at half your normal speed

Jumping:
    Vertical - can jump roughly half your height from standing, or just over your height with a running start
    Horizontal - with a running start you can jump your Strength score in feet, half that from a standing start
*difficult or longer jumps require an Acrobatics check

    What the rules miss (IMHO) are:
        Flying creatures ignore ground terrain (and hazards), and will beat any ground characters at the same Pace.  High winds may count as difficult terrain (headwind) or a free 'forced march' (tailwind) for fliers however.
    Short-term movement is a contested Acrobatics check to determine a winner in the same Pace.  Long-term movement is a Constitution save/ check.
    Normal Pace should allow Stealth, just at disadvantage, while at Fast Pace Stealth is impossible (without a special ability).  Also a Fast Pace may impose Disadvantage to other skills than just Perception (like Survival to track).
    Hazardous Terrain (like Desert, Arctic, Volcanic) requires a save, typically Dex (? Con?) but could be another attribute, or the creatures take damage (use the Trap tables for save DCs and ignore attack roll, just apply damage).  For ease of bookkeeping Hazardous terrain should only be applied once per journey, ie a Desert may be a Con Save vs the heat to the Oasis, then another Hazard check from the Oasis to the City the PCs were headed to (making checks for every day seems like it would just slow the game, no way to heal the damage though so that's the state you arrive in).  Proper equipment/ abilities may negate Hazardous terrain, like being Fire Resistant may reduce or ignore hot environments, and using camels and buying extra water (or hiring native guides) may negate the hazards from the Desert example above.
    Characters may need extra supplies (like food and water) if they travel at a Slow Pace, or fewer supplies traveling at a Fast Pace.  Not having enough supplies requires a Con save (like for a forced march, but without the speed boost; and forced march w-low supplies is Con save at disadvantage).
    Since a Forced March represents moving when others are normally resting, ie at night or just by making a smaller camp and shorter rest/ sleeping breaks, then any creatures moving this way need to be able to see in the dark, or else make any Hazard checks at Disadvantage.
    Animal Handling - animals and the AH skill are usually either used to ride a mount or direct a carriage, or as a save against an animal hazard (ie, you recognize the dangerous animal's signs and avoid them).
    Again, this list has my personal house rules, the book doesn't say anything about them.  I only mention my thoughts to show how much the SRD is missing that might be needed at the table.


    The Environment section has a decent amount to unpack, so I'll hit on each element in order:

    Falling - as in previous editions falling damage is 1d6 per 10 feet, which works for me.  While I'm not a fan of exact foot measurements, ten foot increments are broad enough and not too hard to approximate (you could say 1d6 per 'floor' or 'story' I guess).  Hit Point inflation does make this wonky, but that's another problem.

    Suffocating - the SRD says a creature can hold it's breath for it's Con modifier in minutes, min of 30 sec (with a 0 mod).  I decided to try a scientific (I wrote it down, like Adam Savage said to do :) test and held my breath three times.  I got 0:29, 0:33 and 0:28 - I'm a middle-aged overweight guy, no Con mod here, so I'd say the low end sounds about right.  I kind of feel like it should be an extra 30 sec for your Con mod, a full minute seems like a long time - I seem to remember hearing that brain damage occurred around 6 minutes without oxygen.  This sounds logical overall, and I'm not sure just how often it will come up, but the rule makes sense and is short and sweet, so I like it.

    Vision and Light - again the SRD gets excessively wordy, basically there are 3 possible visibility levels: Normal, Lightly Obscured and Heavily Obscured.  Lightly Obscured can be caused by dim light (the edge of the torch, twilight, full moon), patchy fog or light/mod foliage and gives Disadvantage on Perception checks relying on sight.  Heavily Obscured can be caused by darkness, full fog or heavy foliage and creatures gain the 'blinded' condition.  That's simple enough and works. (though, overly-bright light could have similar effects I guess)
    Then the book talks about other types of perception, which gets a little odd.  Blindsight lets a creature perceive it's surroundings within a radius, but that's all the SRD says.  What kinds of details can it perceive?  Can it sense colors?  Can it detect a limb moving while the main body is standing still?  Read lips?  You really have to work this out on your own.  Darkvision makes Heavily Obscured into Lightly Obscured instead, and only sees in black and white.  That's detailed enough.  Truesight lets a creature see, well everything, which works since it tends to be a high level ability.

    Food and Water - like suffocating I'm not sure just how often this will come up at the table, but the rules deal with hunger and thirst by gaining levels of exhaustion.  On page 358 is the conditions list, and there are six levels of exhaustion, with level 6 being death.  That means you could survive 4 days without any water, which I think is pretty "realistic" (as weird as that gets when dealing with an RPG), I remember it being 3 days.  For food you can go 3 + Con Mod (min 1) and then gain 1 level of exhaustion each day, for a minimum of 10 days and a max of about 14 - I seem to remember 30 days being the average you could survive without food (it was 3 min w/o air, 3 days w/o water and 30 days w/o food, and I don't remember where I heard that from).  So I might house rule gaining a level of exhaustion every 2 days, but again I'm nit-picking something that might not ever come up.
   
    The last section is about traps.  Traps are a huge topic, there have been books written about traps and using them in RPGs.  I don't want to get into it here, that will be a post for another day, but I will just say that the 5e SRD rules are okay.  They're fairly detailed, they tell you to think about what the players are doing and the circumstances and not just rely on die rolls.  There are not a lot of sample traps, but there are a few tables as guides and I think enough to get your house ruling pointed in the right direction.

    Okay, so we've covered 1/5th of my Challenge categories, next post we'll cover some more.

   
You can find the rest of this series here

Looking at the 5th Edition SRD - part 11 - Skill Descriptions

    Having looked at how to roll, let's look at when to roll - so what skills does the 5e SRD have?  Although, as the Angry GM pointed out there are not really skill checks, they are attribute checks that can be increased by skill.  There is no "unskilled" concept, that is there are not any activities that the rules say you cannot do without proficiency.  So you can do open heart surgery without being proficient in "Medicine".  Another weird thing is that some actions one might think of as being "skill" are instead "tool proficiency" in the rules.  Like crafting - being a blacksmith means being proficient in balcksmith tools.  This is weird, but it does make a kind of sense.  You can't forge metal without, well, a forge, right?  And while everybody has a voice to sing with, you need a harp if you want to play the harp.  So if you don't have the tools (or at least improvised tools) then you can't do the action.  So it isn't as weird on reflection as I first thought (still feels weird though).
    By not having an "unskilled" concept the 5e SRD tries to work for a more "old school" game feel, where any character can do anything the player can make a case to the GM for.  Which is good for players who like that style of play that is more open to negotiation between the players and GM then more "rules heavy" players who use the details in the rules to handle player/GM interactions.  This is a matter of taste, whatever style you prefer is your preference, there is no absolute right or wrong (though it sucks when you and your GM or other players have different preferences).  The rules as written (or RAW in gamer slang) do lean towards that old school play-style though since they do not give very detailed guidelines for what each skill can be used for.
    In fact, let me list what the rules have to say about each skill.  I am going to re-organize the skill list though, the SRD puts each skill with a specific attribute which is stupid.  The easy example is Intimidation, which is under Charisma, but that makes no sense for a high Strength low Charisma Fighter.  Their bulging muscles, heavy armor and weapons and skill at killing do not make them scary at all (insert irony here).  That's an obvious place to add Strength instead of Charisma.  On the other hand, threatening someone with your powerful friends or that you'll cast a curse on them would totally be Charisma.  Likewise a sprint might be Strength, an obstacle course or hurdles Dexterity, and a marathon Constitution - even though all are the same skill of running/ athletics.  So for the list below I'm going to put the skill under the action categories I've been using (though not for a while now).  Also, I'm going to bullet point what each skill is good for, because frankly the SRD wastes a lot of words when describing the skills.  So let's look at the skill and what the SRD says to use them for...

Exploring

Athlethics

• climbing
• jumping
• swimming

Acrobatics

• keep your balance
• dive, tumble, roll or flip

Stealth

• hide from soneone
• move without being noticed
• (hiding does have a detailed breakdown in a sidebar)

Animal Handling

• calm an animal
• maneuver a mount
• intuit animal's intentions

Perception

• spot, hear or otherwise notice something in the environment

Survival

• hunt
• guide/ navigate
• predict weather
• avoid hazards

Investigating

Arcana

• identify spells
• identify magic items
• knowledge about the planes

History

• past events, people and civilizations

Investigation

• look around for clues and make deductions from clues

Nature

• terrain
• plants and animals
• weather

Religion

• dieties
• religious hierarchies
• secret cults

Manipulating

Sleight of Hand

• planting or lifting an object on/from another person
• concealing an item on your person

Medicine

• stabilize a dying companion
• diagnose an illness
• (I find it a little odd that healing is not mentioned at all)

Talking

Insight

• determine the true intentions of a creature

Deception

• hide the truth from another

Intimidation

• influence another's actions through threats/violence

Performance

• "delight an audience with music, dance, acting, storytelling or some other form of entertainment"

Persuasion

• influence with "tact, social graces, or good nature"

Fighting
There are no skills for fighting, exactly, rather you have the weapon proficiencies and such that are scattered throughout the rules


    Okay, I'm not listing the full descriptions here, but if you read them please tell me if you think they suck.  I really don't like the way the SRD describes the skills at all.  There are no examples of actions that might be more difficult - that whole Easy, Medium and Hard DC chart that opened this section of the rules - which is the kind of thing that a more "rules heavy" table could use, and the descriptions get overly specific for what a "rules light" table needs.  I think in trying to accommodate both play styles they ended up being useful to neither.  And the tools/ tool proficiency do not really have any descriptions.  If you have a Herbalism Kit it is used when you "identify or apply herbs."  Wow, how helpful.  So if I want to heal someone by using herbs, how many HP can I heal?  Doesn't say.  If I want to remove a condition like exhausted by giving someone an all-natural Red Bull, can I and what's the DC?  Again, there is nothing there for "rules heavy" play, and even "rules light" GMs don't have a lot of guidance (for example, should herbs be allowed to remove conditions at all? should herbal and magical healing stack? that's a more rules light guidance on "should you let your players do this or will it screw up the game" the designers could point out).
    Also, a pet peeve, tool proficiencies are basically skills and weapons/ armor proficiency are basically skills, but they are not listed with the skills - instead the same basic concept is scattered in different locations.  I like more structure in the rules layout, listing and describing similar things in the same place.  Makes it easier to find a rule you forget at the table if you know everything skill-like is in the same chapter (and the fact that the pdf does not have a table of contents really, really, pisses me off).

    So, looking at skills overall - need a breakdown by DC levels, I think it would be good to have examples of how each attribute could be used with each skill (which might inspire "rules light" players in how to think in each skill in different ways too), put tools with skills (or just make them a kind of sub-set of skills) and fold in the weapons and armor since they are basically the same thing (or should be at least).  Some things I would change in the existing system.  As is, this is better than nothing, but more skilled and experienced players and GMs who like the "rules light" style will get the most from this I think.  18 skills is at least better than the 30+ of the 3.5 SRD, I do like the more focused skill list.  There is fairly good coverage.  Using skills at the table though, in particular for mysteries and NPC interactions seems like a problem since there is no guidance on the roll dice vs role-play minefield.  Off the cuff I think the skill system mostly sucks, but this was just a first look - next week I'm going to keep poking around the skills and how you'd use them at the table, along with some other checks.

Looking at the 5th Edition SRD - part 10 - One Roll To Rule Them All

You can find links to the previous articles here.

    One of the things I like about the 5e SRD is how it's pretty simple mechanically.  There is one core mechanic for most rolls, which is easy to remember, and it has enough depth (I feel) that you can adjust it to the ever-changing circumstances (and player ingenuity).  There are 4 parts to a check:

⦁    The d20 Roll
⦁    Attribute Modifier
⦁    Proficiency Bonus
⦁    Other Modifiers


The d20 Roll
    All checks use a d20 roll, but there are 3 ways you could roll the dice.  A normal roll is just 1d20 and take the result.  If you have Advantage then you roll 2d20 and take the best.  If you have Disadvantage you roll 2d20 and take the worst.  Pretty simple to remember, but does it really matter?  Well, let's turn to our friend, AnyDice.com, and see...

    So Advantage basically doubles your odds of getting a 20 and drops the odds of a 1 to "very rarely."  Disadvantage works the same in reverse.  So it's a pretty hefty change in the odds.  In combat a 1 is an automatic miss and a 20 an automatic hit, so it can really matter then.  Some GMs I've known have done the same with skill checks, or given some bonus on a 20 and penalty on a 1, but that's a house rule.
    While some abilities give Advantage (can't think of any that impose Disadvantage off the top of my head) what I like about it is using it as a GM tool.  Offering Advantage can be a nice way to reward a player for clever thinking, or to tempt a player into doing something stupid.  It's important to convey to the players that this is a pretty significant bonus/ penalty (something I don't think the SRD does a good job of) though.  Even a poor character, with low stats or no proficiency bonus, has a moderate chance of success if they can gain Advantage - which is something the players need to know to encourage them to think of how to generate Adv when they have to roll something they are bad at.
    According to the rules any number of Adv and Dis cancel each other out.  So if 3 different things gave you Dis and 1 thing gave you Adv, then you would roll normally.  I'm not so fond of this.  Given how little there is to mechanically effect a roll, I'm okay with having the players try to stack up bonuses to overcome penalties.  That gets kinda meta-gamey, but it also works from a role-playing sense, and I think it can encourage the players to get creative and figure out how to turn a negative situation into a positive one, or can be fun when the GM turns a positive situation into a negative one :)


Attribute Modifiers
    Every roll adds one attribute modifier (subtracting if it's a negative modifier of course, adding a negative number is the same as subtraction after all) (honestly though, I've seen few negative mods overall).  The SRD usually lists an attribute, but you could use any if common sense says a different one would be more appropriate.
    The highest you could start with is a score of 20, for a +5 modifier (if I remember right).  The highest the attribute table goes up to is 30, for a +10 modifier.


Proficiency Bonus
    Depending on what you're doing, you might also add your proficiency bonus from a skill, tool or saving throw.  The SRD lists which skills go with which attributes, which is just stupid and should be ignored.  Use whatever skill and attribute combination that makes sense, the game is too unpredictable to hard-code these things.  The proficiency bonus is fixed to the character's level, though a few abilities will increase it (usually by 150%), it starts at +2 at 1st level and goes up to +6 at 17th level (which still baffles me that it doesn't hit the highest at 20th level, the pinnacle of your development).
    These compare fairly evenly to the ability modifiers.  Most players will have at least a +2 at their key attributes, and while the +5 is the highest possible starting modifier, it's fairly unlikely.  A +2 or +3 would be the most common, +4 for that focused character (or lucky roller).  So the odds of success between someone with good attributes and poor attributes is usually about a 10-15% difference.  It takes a change of both attributes and proficiency to swing the odds by 20-40%.  This is a big change from previous editions and some other games.  The fairly flat math of the 5e SRD means that every character has a decent chance at any activity, generally speaking.  It would be pretty rare to have no chance of success, especially when you add in the possibility for your GM to give you Advantage from a clever idea.  Players again need to know this, and possibly be encouraged to roll on something they might see as outside their specialty.


Other Modifiers
    The SRD does not explicitly say this (at least that I can remember), but it's not unreasonable to think that a GM might want to award a smaller modifier than Adv/Dis, something like a +/-2.  That's only about a 10% shift, enough to add up, but not a big deal.  Kind of a consolation prize, but it's still something.
    Along with this, I don't remember the SRD addressing it, but it's only logical to say that some things will be automatic success or failure.  That's an important thing for everybody to keep in mind.  The rules are meant to encourage creating a logical and consistent world, but they are not, and cannot be, perfect and cover every situation.  There will be times when the GM has to step in and say something just logically can't be done, or logically will work.  It's also very, very important that the GM make this clear to the players.  If the players come up with a really clever or amazing idea, let them win.  Don't drag out the dice, just narrate how their awesomeness saves the day and give them all a pat on the head.  That's not something you always want to do, but if you keep your eyes open you'll find those moments when the players need to be rewarded for working (and thinking) hard.  Likewise, whatever the rules might say there will be times when something just should not be possible to roll, and make sure you tell the players that before they commit to a course of action.


The Check
    Okay, having gone over the general outline of how to roll, let's break it down and start looking at the probabilities.  Again, with the help of AnyDice.com I've got the odds of success for each of the 6 difficulties in the SRD, with Adv and Dis, from a +0 to a +16...

    Okay, looking at the table what strikes me?  Overall I like it.  I think you get a good spread of results, Adv and Dis make a nice difference, I think it's a pretty good system overall.  I'm not sure about the Easy DC, granted it would only come into effect at the lowest levels but it kind of seems like if something was this easy you should just go ahead and say the character succeeds.  It's interesting that Adv/Dis has the biggest impact in the middle.  If you had a 5% chance of success Adv would make that 10% (which may be double in absolute terms, but still sucks), but if you had a 45% Adv would make it 70% (going from 'iffy' to 'reliable').
    From a beginning character standpoint, let's look at 3 lines: the +0 for someone with no proficiency and no attribute mod, +2 for only one of those, and +4 for both...

Modifier    Very Easy (5)        Easy(10)    Medium(15)        Hard(20)
+0               64 80 96                30 55 80      9 30 51              1 5 10
+2               81 90 99                42 65 88      16 40 64            2 15 28
+4               Win Win Win        56 75 94      25 50 75            6 25 44

So having both, with the +4 modifier (or the max starting attribute mod), is a pretty good edge on the others.  You auto-succeed at the Very Easy challenges, you've got a 75% on Easy and a 50% on Medium.  Get Adv on either of those and they get pretty reliable.  Your 25% on a Hard sucks, but might still be enough to risk.  Given that's a character with an above-average attribute and is proficient, those seem like the odds you'd expect.  The character with a +2, only proficiency or a 14-15 attribute, is not as good but still not bad.  With the 90% chance of a Very Easy I'd just let the player have it as a GM (unless there was a really, really bad potential consequence for failure).  The 65% chance of an Easy is not great, so getting Adv is pretty important.  The 40-65% on a Medium are not great at all, but worth risking if the stakes are fairly low.  At a +0 modifier it's even more critical to get Advantage, getting 80% for Easy makes it pretty reliable and even the 51% Medium is again worth trying if the stakes are fairly low.  For the +0 and the +2 you wouldn't want to think about a Hard challenge unless you can get Advantage and the stakes were low.


Overview
    Looking at the system, it does a good job and is simple to use.  Instead of chasing a million modifiers getting Advantage, or avoiding Disadvantage, becomes the focus of a challenge.  That does nicely reduce a challenge to the one or two most important elements.  And while the overall spread is pretty narrow, given that a +16 is the highest you could get at level 20 (or, 17 actually).  In the 3.5 SRD/ Pathfinder a +40 modifier is not impossible, or even that hard, at 20th level.  So I like the simpler but not simplistic system.  So to speak :)  Actually, after laying out all the numbers I like the resolution system even more than my first impression.  This is a good mechanic, IMHO, and one I can build on.  The only thing I think is missing at all is a discussion of risk.  Saying how hard something is an important step, but the even more important question is what's at stake?  If it's a matter of life and death, like a save or die effect, then a 25% chance is not something you want to take.  But if it's a wager of a few copper pieces, or a few hit points out of hundreds, then 25% is not a big deal.  No game that I know of really talks about risk though, it is a hard thing to codify given all the variables, but it's still a key part of considering a course of action.
    Another thing the SRD does not address is hidden vs explicit target numbers.  I'd say the general advise I've heard is to hide the numbers a player needs, but I'm actually not a big fan of that overall.  I think it's a good thing for players to know what they need, it lets them make intelligent decisions, and my compromise for unpredictability is that I'll usually hide the DC for the first attempt, and then say what they need.  So the first swing is blind, but after that roll (hit or miss) I'll just give out the enemy's AC.  On other attempts I'll give a ballpark, like "you think it'll be a 10 or 15" since the character should be able to assess the situation to some degree that I can't communicate as well to the player.  Same thing with hit points, I'll say "it looks like the enemy is down to half their HP" during a fight.  Or, "you think 1 or 2 more attacks will finish them."  I want the players to know the odds, so that if they see they have really bad odds they can stop and think about how to change the situation.  Which is what I love about the Adv/Dis mechanic.  Getting Adv can turn bad odds into decent ones, in a lot of cases, and I'll gladly give Adv to a player who can think creatively.  That gives me some narrative flexibility, and anybody can get Adv on anything with a good enough reason, so that gives the players something they can mostly measure and is always an option (not necessarily easy or cheap, but there).
    While the strange progression of the proficiency table looks weird to me, I have to admit that overall I think the system hangs together pretty well.  I also think it would greatly benefit every player to look at these tables and get a feel for the odds.  Knowing when the odds are in your favor and you should charge ahead, or when things are going against you and you need a new plan, can be critical to survival.

    Okay, we've taken a pretty good look at a lot of the 5e SRD so far.  I'm not sure what I want to look at next, but we'll continue our journey through the rules next week.
   

Looking at the 5th Edition SRD - part 9 - Feats and Final Thoughts on Classes

    Since part 4 of this series started on classes and we're at part 9, I've been thinking about classes for a while now.  I want to wrap up this section and move on to other mechanics, even though I could write tons more picking apart all 20 levels of all 12 classes (that's 240+ abilities).  This post is going to hop-and-skip around a few different topics.


Ability Score Increases
    Every class gains an ability score boost every 4 levels.  This is weird to me.  The 3.5e SRD gave these on character levels, independent of class, so the shift is interesting - why did they change it?  I'm not sure.  It seems like it would punish multiclass characters, making a full level essentially worth nothing.  Which is point number two, even with the flat math of the game, this does not seem like it would feel very impressive to get as a level-up reward.  I don't agree with this one, this is something that logically should be in the background, not a specific character ability (the fact that every single class gets it exactly the same way and on the same schedule seems like it would suggest this is not really a class-based effect, just a part of growing older and wiser regardless of class).


Multiclassing and Leveling Up
    I am not a fan of counting XP, or gold either for that matter.  I think it adds a lot of book-keeping for little to no return.  What exactly is so dramatic about being 1 orc short of level 5?  What does the game gain from trying (and typically failing) to create an economy?  Along, in a way, with that I hate multiclassing in every class-based game I've ever read.  So, I'm not going to be taking a close look at how the 5e SRD handles either of these two topics because I already know I'm going to make something of my own (or steal from another game).  Again, this look is to help me prepare to create my own game, not because I want to pass the rules lawyer bar exam ;)


Static vs Dynamic Abilities
    This is something about how class abilities are created that eats at me.  Generally each class has one dynamic ability, a single ability that will gain extra options (not just extra power) as the class advances.  All the other class abilities are static, a single bonus to a single thing, which may "level up" by being a +2 bonus at the level one and a +3 bonus at level 3 and so on.  The thing is, static abilities are the least interesting.  They add one cool new thing, but often to only one circumstance, so while while getting a new ability feels good, how much you'll actually use it is another matter.  Second, increasing modifiers are evil, they lead to the dreaded numbers bloat.
    Dynamic abilities are the real magic, they let you do new and interesting stuff as you progress.  Having 3 ways to deal with a monster at level 1 and 50 ways to deal with a monster at level 20 feels like you've actually grown.  Because you have.  Increasing a modifier means you've progressed, being able to do something you couldn't, or having a new way to do something means you've grown.  But the game does not handle dynamic abilities very well.  In particular the fighter classes don't get any or very strong dynamic abilities.  Look at the Fighter's "Fighting Style" ability, which they can choose only once (in the straight class, not counting the archetype I'll go over later).  That's it.  Compare that to the Wizard's Spellcasting ability.  The classes with weak or no dynamic abilities need to be shored up.  But also, it feels kind of funny that at most every class only ever gets 1 dynamic ability.  Most of those are gained at 1st level, and the following 19 levels are just static abilities.  It seems to me that there should be 2 or 3 more dynamic abilities that are milestones of growth, adding a lot of options and more future options to the character as a sign of their growth through adversity.  I also think that higher-level monsters need more options and abilities than lower-level ones, so having more options as a character is necessary to find the more limited weaknesses of the monsters and/or resist the more frequent monster abilities.
     Along with this static vs dynamic thing is something that was huge in the 3.5e SRD, but deprecated in the 5e SRD, feats.
   
   
Feats
    If you ever played D&D 3.5 or Pathfinder then you have likely had many nightmares about feats; tracking the extremely complicated prerequisite chains and trying to pick out the handful for feats you got over your career from the hundreds to thousands (depending on how many books you bought) available.  Feats sucked.  There, I said it, they sucked.  They still suck big time in Pathfinder.  They suck because everybody and every book has to include two dozen new feats and there are no solid guidelines for what a feat is or how powerful it should be - so they vary hugely, wildly, and ridiculously in power.  I can easily think of several feats that should be abilities anybody could do, more that should be skill checks and several that are wickedly overpowered in the right combination (which I know from the players who've discovered those combinations).  They add way, way too much complexity and system knowledge and pre-planning to the game, which again gets worse with every new book.
    And I rant about another game to set up the fact that the designers of the 5e SRD knew all this about feats, so they totally changed the system.  In the 5e feats are optional, you can take a feat instead of an ability score increase if your GM is using this optional rule.  And as for power, the SRD has only one feat, again a sickening lack of guidance, and that feat is Grappling.  Grappling is arguably something that anybody should be able to do, though the feat does give you Advantage on it, so there's something.  The feat also lets you attempt to pin someone you have grappled, which again kind of seems like something anybody should be able to do.  I totally know how to grab you and wrap my arms around you to try and keep you from acting, I can see in my head how to do it - I'm sure you can too if you've ever been in a grade-school fight or watched an action movie.  I might not be any good at doing it, and I would get my backside kicked by a professional fighter, but it is an option.  This feat does not seem to add any really significant new options or dynamic abilities to the character.  So, sadly, the feat system in the SRD is useless.  No guidelines for what a feat should and should not do or how powerful they should be.  That's sad.  The total lack of feats and backgrounds makes me wish they had just left them out of the SRD altogether.  I think no system would be better than a system with bad or non-existent guidelines.
    I also started this feat discussion/rant with another game because I think a different game got feats right - and it's an OGL game too thank goodness.  In 13th Age you get a feat every level, and every class ability (even spells if I remember right) has 3-5 feat options - so you pick what ability you want to apply the feat to, and now that ability can do something new.  Perfect.  A nice dynamic expanding of your static abilities, and a system that helps make two identical classes grow in different directions.  I hate the 5e SRD's feats, but I will totally steal 13th Age's system.


Class Archetypes
    Speaking of static vs dynamic (which apparently this post turned into, huh) there are the class archetypes.  Every class has one of these, by some name.  It is the "Primal Path" for the Barbarian, the Cleric's "Domain" and the Warlock's "Patron".  At some intervals each archetype gives specific bonuses.  This makes two characters of the same class different, assuming they took different archetypes.  Each class gains/ chooses its archetype at a different point, either 1st, 2nd or 3rd level, and the archetype abilities are gained at different levels for each class.
    Like feats this is one of those systems that sounds good in practice, but can easily spiral out of control.  Again, each class has only 1 archetype listed, and no guidelines on what the power range should be.  Easy to make too many archetypes, to make them over- or under-powered, and you also need to balance archetypes against multiclassing, should an "arcane warrior" be a Fighter archetype, and Wizard archetype or a multiclass Fighter/Wizard?  That'll make your head hurt :)


    Class abilities are a complex subject.  I fully know that, and even trying to review and think about them is an invitation to insanity.  It would be great if there was some developer's guide somewhere that explained the thinking for each ability.  Why this one, at that power level for that class?  Those are thing that the designers had to think about when making the game - sadly I don't know of any game that had the designers' thoughts included with the rules.  And with something like an OGL game, that is an invitation for other people to design around, it would be priceless.  So I have a lot to think about when I go to make my own game off the SRD.  What abilities do I keep, which ones do I change, how do I balance the growth of the classes and the challenges they face.  And sadly there is little guidance from the developers so I'm going to have to answer a lot of questions on my own.  Can't say I'm looking forward to those hard decisions.

    And that's a wrap on classes.  Time to move on.  Since classes are one of the central parts of a character, let's move on to the central part of the game: the core mechanic of d20+stuff.  I see math in our future :)  Until next week!

Looking at the 5th Edition SRD - part 8 - Monster Abilities and Defenses

    I hate the way my mind works on an almost daily basis.  That really includes this morning: after looking at the spell saves and damage types I knew I would have to do the same for the monsters.  Well, in the 5e SRD there is 130 pages of monsters, which it turns out comes to 198 individual monsters (wow, 2 short of an even 200, so close...).  Yeah, that means I went over them all, for about the last 4 hours.  So let's look at the saves and damage types monsters can inflict.
    First the energy types:

Fire  47  (24% roughly)
Poison  36  (18%)
Acid  24  (12%)
Cold  17  (9%)
Lightning  16  (8%)
Necrotic  10  (5%)
Radiant  4  (2%)
Psychic  2  (1%)
Thunder  1  (0.5%)
Force  --  (0%)

    Okay, Once again fire is the dominate effect, PCs need to get that resistance first.  Poison was one of the lowest for spells, but second-highest for monsters (which makes sense; if you can channel energy in a spell why poison something when you can just blast it out of existence?).  Cold and Lightning were tied for second in spells and 4th/5th for monsters, so they're pretty common effects.  I am surprised at Necrotic  I thought there would be more undead and negative planar monsters who would do it, but it's fairly uncommon.  Radiant is "good" divine magic, so no surprise there are not many monsters who do it (since the monster list mostly focuses on bad ones, only the few angels and the unicorn are "good guys").  Psychic resistance (again, for a player) is just about useless, only 5 spells do it and almost no monsters, which goes double for Thunder and Force.
    Bludgeoning, Slashing and Piercing are special since monsters can do them either as innate or weapon attacks.  the GM could easily change what weapon a monster is using, but since I'm sure most don't (hey, it's a lot of work being a GM :) I'm going to include them in the totals here:

Bludgeoning  86 innate + 18 weapons
Slashing  82 innate + 27 weapons
Piercing  107 innate + 46 weapons

    So if you can get Piercing resistance, do it.  Otherwise it's a fairly even spread.  And of course you're much more likely to run into a physical attack than an energy one, so they are more useful in general (only makes sense, just about anything can hit or bite or pick up a pointy stick after all).


Saving Throws
    The other thing I was looking at with spells was which kinds of saving throws they required.  Let's do the same for the monsters' abilities (listed by most common):

Con  84
Dex  71
Wis  42
Str  28
Cha  2
Int  0

    Wow.  Okay, so let's total monsters and spells, and get the percentages for all save-requiring effects (of which there are 340 I've looked at, listed in order):

Str  2 + 28 = 30  (9%)
Dex  32 + 71 = 103  (30%)
Con  26 + 84 = 110  (32%)
    total of 71% of saves are physical
Int  3 + 0 = 3  (0.9%)
Wis  37 + 42 = 79  (23%)
Cha  13 + 2 = 15  (4%)
    total of 28% of saves are mental/spiritual/psychic

    Okay, all illusions and illusion-effects need to be regular Int saves to make that actually worth something.  Likewise, I think that most to all of the charm saves should be Cha instead of the book's Wis.  The thing is, wisdom is often used as perception and people commonly do things they know they shouldn't - Cha seems better to me as a "contest of wills" (you're not going to tell me what to do...) and mechanically it would make a Cha save proficiency a little more useful (emphasis on 'little').  Really, out of 6 saves 3 are clearly better to have.  Of course, if you want to be totally precise you have to look at just how damaging each kind of effect is and weigh the numbers - I am not going to ever do that.  And, this doesn't take into account traps, environmental effects, poisons or diseases (all of which could force a save) - though those would only increase the Dex and Con leads I'd wager. [wow, looking at it like this I see that 5th edition does still have only the 3 saves - fortitude, reflex and will - of 3rd edition, huh]


Monster Resistances
    While looking at the monsters I had another question - how many monsters are resistant to each damage type?  So here's the list - and I'm not making a distinction between resistant or immune, this is just a general guideline on what kinds of damage types can be mitigated in some way:

Poison  64  (32%)
Fire  52  (26%)
Cold  39  (20%)
Lightning  35  (18%)
Acid  18  (9%)
Necrotic  13  (7%)
Psychic  10  (5%)
Radiant  4  (2%)
Thunder  8  (4%)
Force  0  (0%)

Non-magical/silver/something weapons (B/S/P)  57  (29%)

Spells (in whole or part)  28  (14%)

    Okay, so Poisoning monsters is not generally effective (it is mostly at low levels I think, it seemed like the higher level monsters like demons and undead that were poison resistant/immune).  Too bad Fire is the most common spell damage type since it's also one of the most mitigated by monsters.  Go magic missile, nobody mitigates Force, though some monsters are spell resistant.  And get a magic/silver weapon as soon as you can, a fair number can resist normal damage.  Quite a few Cleric spells seem to do Radiant damage, so they have a nice edge given how few monsters are resistant to it.  Psychic is like Force, would be a useful one for the PCs to do but not many ways to do it.  The 5 spells that do Psychic, 4 that do Thunder and 4 that do Force are all very good ones to learn and memorize overall.
    Again, the really interesting thing would be to break these down by level (or "CR" for monsters) and see how they develop over time, another thing I do not plan on doing however.



So what does it all mean?
    Ummm... I have too much time on my hands?  I obsess too much over little details?  Honestly, I'm not sure what great insights I have gleaned from this.  It's debatable that all damage types should be equally common, thus making them all equally useful - and while I do believe that in general, in practice it's not so clear-cut.  More higher-level monsters should be resistant to damage than lower-level ones, that's just because the PCs should be challenged as they level up to find new and more clever ways to fight the monsters.  Having a lot of monsters that could be hurt by Necrotic damage but only a few ways for the PCs to inflict Necrotic damage actually works well- Necrotic damage is associated with evil, which the monsters are more than the PCs, and it gives a temptation to "go to the dark side" to gain an ability that would be so useful.  Heck, I'm tempted to say that most really evil supernatural creatures should be vulnerable to Necrotic - "evil turns on itself" is a common theme after all, and that would make the temptation even better to mess with the players (assuming of course that there was some sort of down-side to gaining the Necrotic spells/abilities, which there isn't).  I kind of feel like more spells should be focused on mental effects, in the idea that manipulating minds and hearts should take less power than throwing fireballs - and I hate the "walking catapult" paradigm of the wizard.  The huge in-balance towards physical saves does benefit the fighter-types a lot, though you could argue that balances out the overall power of spellcasters and spells in general.
    My goal with dissecting the 5e SRD is to make my own game, which means knowing how to go along with the rules and what rules I might want to change.  From looking at this, I'm not sure right now what all I'd change - but I think I'm going to tweak at least a few things in the end.
    Of course to get to that end I need to finish looking at the rules, and there is a lot of the book to go.  So until next week!

Looking at the 5th Edition SRD - part 7 - Equivalent Exchanges

    I'm borrowing the term from Fullmetal Alchemist because of something I was wondering.  In general, the fighter gets weapons and the magic user gets spells.  So ideally the two should be about the same, right?  Weapons tend to be less dramatic, lower damage and effects, but freely reusable - while spells are big and flashy but limited.  At least, that's the general theory: but how do they compare to each other?  And also, how do things like attributes compare to each other as well?  So this post is going to be a random grab-bag of numbers looking at some things from behind the curtain.

Weapons
    Let's start with weapons.  The shortest list is for the Sorcerer and Wizard, they are only proficient with the: dagger, dart, sling, quarterstaff, and light crossbow.  Those give d4, d6 and d8 ranges for damage.  Type of damage also matters, since some monsters may be resistant to some damage types.  The Sorc/Wiz weapons are piercing and bludgeoning only (no slashing).
    Taking a step up, let's look at all the simple weapons in general.  Across all of them we get the following damage ranges: d4, d6 and d8.  And there are 8 bludgeoning, 3 slashing and 8 piercing weapons.
    Okay, so if that is the median of the simple weapons, then the martial weapons should all be better, right?  And they should be significantly better: fighters do not gain as many or as spectacular abilities as magic users, on average, so the weapons list should be worthwhile, right?  Well, the martial weapons have the following damage ranges: d6, d8, d10, and d12/2d6.  So two ranges overlap, the d6 and d8, the d10 is only a single step higher - and just how much of a difference is there in 2 potential damage points? - and only the d12/2d6 is a pretty solid step up.  Also remember that hit point inflation will make a small difference less significant as you level up and every monster has more and more hp.  Martial weapons also have 6 bludgeoning, 11 slashing and 12 piercing options - that does expand on the somewhat weak simple weapon slashing options.
    So having proficiency in all weapons is better than only simple or an even smaller list.  But how much better is it?  Not a lot really, at least on average.  Now you also have to take into account that fighters will focus their attributes on the physical ones to get better combat scores while magic users will go mental and that difference in priorities will drive the gap between the two wider.  Still, I just feel like fighters kind of get the short end of the stick - while they are meant to be smaller yet constant benefits, it kind of feels like they are under-powered.  I'd like to see them have a few more options or abilities given that combat and weapon use are their entire concept (magic users at least can do a variety of non-combat stuff).  I don't think it's a huge problem, I wouldn't say the balance was broken, I just think it's a little off for my tastes.
    At least, by the weapon numbers it doesn't look too far off - but there's more to it that that...
   
Cantrips
    You see, magic users get cantrips.  Cantrips are spells that can be used at will, just like a weapon attack.  And while casters only get a few of them, they are pretty darn useful.  Acid Splash only does d6 with a Dex-save, not that much better than a simple weapon really, but not bad and it can hit 2 people if they're within 5 feet of each other.  But then you get Chill Touch, Ray of Frost and Shocking Grasp - all do d8 damage and have some kind of extra effect.  That's at least as good as a martial weapon.  The real balance-breaker though is Fire Bolt.  It has a range of 120 feet, on the low end but a pretty good since it doesn't take a penalty to hit like most ranged weapons.  It uses a "spell attack" which is spellcasting ability modifier + proficiency, so best attribute and proficient means it's just as effective as a fighter attack.  And it does d10 damage, which is a glaive, pike, 2-handed longsword or heavy crossbow (solidly a martial weapon and higher than any simple weapons).  So since a magic user has a ranged martial weapon to use at will, what exactly is the difference between the two again?  Funny, I've heard some people revile 4th Edition D&D for making all the classes the same, but there's a lot of similarity here.  And again, a lot of the cantrips have special effects that plain weapons don't have, so it is debatable that they are superior to using weapons in at least some ways.
    With the addition of offensive cantrips, the fact that magic users can't use the full range of martial weapons isn't really much of a drawback.  Add in that spells allow for non-combat actions and increase in damage and you could say that magic users are a lot more useful than fighters overall.  Sure, they can't soak as much damage (again though, there are defensive spells) - but I would love a party to try making all magic users and see if they couldn't kill things (or charm them, put them to sleep, or otherwise incapacitate them) fast enough to make up for the lack of a tank.  It just reinforces my feeling that fighters are a bit weak.  Or rather, say that fighters don't feel very special.  They don't seem to have that "awesome moment" built into their class.  When your wizard disintegrates the dragon and the cleric banishes the demon, what does the fighter do to feel as useful to the party and story?

Saving Throws
    Thinking about spells, and ranking things, gets me thinking about saving throws.  The 5e SRD has each attribute be a saving throw (unlike the 3.5 SRD that only had 3).  But the value of having a saving throw is in what all it can protect you from: so just how many different effects target each saving throw?
    This is one of those questions I knew I was going to regret asking myself.  Since there are about 130 pages of monsters in the SRD, I decided to limit my madness to just the spells.  So I went over each spell description and tallied up how many of each attribute there were:

37  Wisdom  (33%)
32  Dexterity  (28%)
26  Constitution  (23%)
13  Charisma  (12%)
3  Intelligence  (3%)
2  Strength  (2%)

    Okay, Intelligence is weird.  There are only 3 spells that call for an Int save, but there are 9 illusion spells that call for an Intelligence/ Investigation roll to spot the illusion.  I don't like that, it weakens an already useless save by having a skill check in place of the saving throw.  Strength is also really bad as a saving throw, it's almost never used - and I'd be surprised if that many monsters have Str-based saves (not opposed checks, which are a different kettle of fish).
    So if you want to resist spells, get a high Wis and Dex, and classes that give save proficiencies to both.  I'm glad to see Con has so many effects, it's an attribute that has no skills, and only one application in combat, so at least the abundance of saves makes it more important.  There are a few spells that should have different saves.  Slow should be resisted by Str (which needs more effects to resist), and polymorph should be Con or even Str - and both types are Wis, which makes no sense to me.
    Another reason this matters, no class is proficient in both Wis and Dex saves, if you did give that to a class it would be much better at resisting spells and effects.  Likewise nobody has Int and Str saves, because they would be getting hosed.  Something to keep in mind while creating your own classes.

Damage Resistances
    While looking at spells I also wanted to see how many damage types there were, to see if one type of resistance might be better than the rest.  And there is a clear frontrunner (again, from the spells only, monsters could skew these numbers a little to a lot):

19  Fire
9  Cold, Radiant
8  Lightning
7  Necrotic
6  Acid, Bludgeoning
5  Psychic
4  Force, Thunder
3  Poison
2  Piercing
1  Slashing

    Fire does have twice as many spells as any of the other types, so get it first.  A fairly even spread after that (Radiant did surprise me for being so high, but then it does make since given that should be one of the common types for divine casters).
    This is the one I really need to go over the monster list to  fill out, there are only a few poison spells (which I had thought there would be a few more of for some reason) - I'm sure there are lots of monsters that poison though.  I'm sure I'll sit down and add the monsters to this list someday.


    Okay, so this was a random list of things to look at, and I'm not sure just how much use this has all been, but it was interesting to look behind the scenes a little.

Looking at the 5th Edition SRD - part 6 - Spellcasting Progression

    So out of 12 character classes 8 of them can cast spells.  The 4 non-casters are the: Barbarian, Fighter, Monk, and Rogue.  There are 2 classes that can cast spells, but not until second level and not a lot - so let's call them the "partial casters" - the Paladin and Ranger.  Then there are the full casters, who specialize in magic, the Bard, Cleric, Druid, Sorcerer, and Wizard.  And then there's the Warlock.

    When looking at spellcasting there are several things to consider:
    First, spells have levels just like characters, spell levels go from "cantrip" (or 0) to 1st through 9th.  Each level of spells is a step up in options, offering new types of things to do as well as more powerful versions of lower-level spells.  I have always hated that spells and characters both share the word "levels," it's an unnecessary potential confusion.  So I'm going to rate spells by "tiers" since the really important thing is that each new tier expands your available options in the game.  For example, at Tier 1 you can cast Jump, at Tier 2 you can cast Levitate and at Tier 3 you can cast Fly.  So one option, movement, has limited power at lower tiers that expands - not just getting faster, or measurably better offering new abilities.  Levitate is like a jump in that it moves you vertically, but with levitate you can hover and stay in the air; flight allows the same thing, but also allows you to move horizontally.
    Second, characters can only cast or use a limited number of spells per day (or in-between long rests).  This is the limiting effect on magic, while spells can be very powerful and do things that cannot be accomplished in any other way, you only have so many of them, so you have to choose when to use them carefully.  How many spells you can cast is rated by each tier, so you may have 3 Tier 1 and 2 Tier 2 "spell slots."  You cannot combine or divide these (so 2 Tier 1 slots cannot be used to cast a single Tier 2, nor can 1 Tier 2 slot be used to cast a pair of Tier 1 spells) but you can upgrade them (so a Tier 3 slot can be used to cast a Tier 1 spell, but that spell will have an increased effect from it's basic Tier 1 version).  Now, of course there are exceptions.  Cantrips (Tier 0) do not use spell slots, they can be cast an unlimited number of times (which also breaks the pattern that spells are large, uncommon effects, these are low-powered constant abilities that a typically non-caster, blurring the lines between the two) (which is not necessarily a bad thing).  Also, some spells can be cast as "Rituals."  A spell must explicitly say it is a ritual spell, and casting it that way does not use a spell slot but does take 10 minutes instead of the usual 6 seconds or so.  So a ritual is not much good during a fight (though a fight could break out trying to stop one).
    Third, besides the limit of how many spells can be cast in a day, there is another limit in how many spells can be prepared at any time.  You can only cast a spell that you have prepared, and different classes can prepare different numbers and in different ways.
    Finally, each class has a "spell list" or what spells that class can try to cast.  They have to choose which spells from that list they know, and from the known spells which to prepare, and then expend slots (excepting cantrips and rituals) to cast those spells.
    So, with that overview let's start looking at the spellcasters and how they progress.

Partial Casters
    Okay, I want to start with the two partial casting classes, the Paladin and Ranger.  They are different from what I've been looking at in that they do not start casting spells until second level (as opposed to the first level abilities I've described and the full casters who start at first level).  Still, it seemed logical to put them in the spellcasting overview, and they have a fairly short and simple pattern to their spellcasting progression.  I'm going to list each spell tier they can cast, and how many they can cast per day for each tier:

Tier 1
2/ rest at 2nd Level
+1 at 3rd Level
+1 at 5th Level
(so a max of 4 spells/day)

Tier 2
2/ rest at 5th Level
+1 at 7th Level
(so a max of 3 spells/day)

Tier 3
2/ rest at 9th Level
+1 at 11th Level
(so a max of 3 spells/day)

Tier 4
1/ rest at 13th Level
+1 at 15th Level
+1 at 17th Level
(so a max of 3 spells/day)

Tier 5
1/ rest at 17th Level
+1 at 19th Level
(so a max of 2 spells/day)

    Okay, so this is a pretty clear and mostly solid pattern.  They start casting at 2nd Level, and oddly they start with Tier 1 spells instead of learning any Tier 0 cantrips.  I really don't get this.  Some cantrips like Light, Mending, Minor Illusion, Resistance and True Strike would be very helpful to those classes, even if you broke the pattern and made them #/day instead of at-will.  Also, since these are the partial caster classes, magic is not as necessary to their concept and execution, so starting them at Tier 0 would not be a bad thing or really hinder their abilities or usefulness.  Oh well.  After that, from learning spells at 2nd level, they gain a new Tier at 5, 9, 13, and 17 - so 3 levels later and then an even 4 levels afterwards.  I like nice clear patterns.  Why make some sort of random jumble unless there is a compelling story or mechanical reason to do so?  This is almost a nice pattern, but just a little off here and there, which I find is the common state of the 5e SRD.  It's like the designers didn't want to just make some patterns and always follow them, they have to constantly shift and move things around.  And, almost like clockwork after gaining a new tier of spell they gain another slot 2 levels later, except of course for the couple of exceptions.
    Okay, so that lists how many spell slots they have to cast, but how many spells are known and can they prepare?  Well, so much for sharing a pattern because the two classes calculate that in different ways:

The Paladin can prepare his Cha mod + 1/2 Paladin level (rounded down).  Those can be chosen from the complete Paladin class list of spells.  The Paladin class list has 11 Tier 1, 8 Tier 2, 6 Tier 3, 3 Tier 4 and 3 Tier 5 spells available/known.  So every day the Paladin has that many choices to draw from to prepare.

Rangers also have a class list, with 11 Tier 1, 11 Tier 2 (3 more than the Pal), 9 Tier 3 (3 more than the Pal), 4 Tier 4 (1 more than the Pal) and 2 Tier 5 (1 less than the Pal).  They have to choose which of those spells they know, and the known spells are always prepared.  They start knowing 2 spells at 2nd Level, gain 1 spell known at 3rd, and then another spell known every two levels after that (5, 7, 9, etc).

    At 20th level a Ranger would have a maximum of 11 spells known/prepared.  A 20th Level Paladin would have 31 spells known (their entire list) and 10 + Cha mod spells prepared (likely at least 14-15 with mod).  So while Rangers have a bit more to choose from in general, Paladins have a lot more flexibility in changing their day-to-day options.  That does give them a somewhat different feel.  I kind of think the Paladin is a better caster from looking at the raw numbers, but there are so many variables there and it doesn't seem to be an overwhelming advantage.


The Full Casters
    The Bard, Cleric, Druid, Sorcerer and Wizard all share a fairly common progression, so let's take a look at them together.
    First, let's go over the spell slots:

Tier 0 cantrips
2 at-will at 1st Level for the Bard and Druid
3 at-will for the Cleric and Wizard
4 at-will for the Sorcerer
+1 at 4th Level for all
+1 at 10th Level for all

Tier 1
2/ rest at 1st Level for all
+1 at 2nd Level
+1 at 3rd Level
+1 at 5th Level

Tier 2
2/rest at 3rd Level for all
+1 at 4th Level

Tier 3
2/ rest at 5th Level for all
+1 at 6th Level

Tier 4
1/ rest at 7th Level for all
+1 at 8th Level
+1 at 9th Level

Tier 5
1/ rest at 9th Level for all
+1 at 10th Level
+1 at 18th Level

Tier 6
1/ rest at 11th Level for all
+1 at 19th Level

Tier 7
1/ rest at 13th Level for all
+1 at 20th Level

Tier 8
1/ rest at 15th Level for all

Tier 9
1/ rest at 17th Level for all

    Okay, so something strange about this progression: everybody is identical except for the number of cantrips.  What?  Is having 2 or 3 or 4 cantrips such a big deal that it's even worth doing?  Why not give everybody 3 and then you could print this table once in the spells/magic chapter instead of re-printing it for each class?  Also, Tiers 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4 all gain a spell every level after they unlock that tier.  Then Tier 5 gains one the next level and then has a several-level gap.  And Tiers 6 and 7 have several-level gaps.  Then the last Tiers 8 and 9 only ever get 1 spell (though, granted, they are big spells).  I kind of get that, they wanted to slow down the higher tier spells, but at the same time it just kind of looks like a muddle.
    The next question is, how many spells does each class have on their list?

Tier 0 cantrip
7  Cleric, Druid
9  Bard
14  Wizard, Sorcerer

Tier 1
15  Cleric
16  Druid
17  Sorcerer
20  Bard
27  Wizard

Tier 2
17  Cleric, Druid
19  Bard
21  Sorcerer
31  Wizard

Tier 3
12  Druid
15  Bard
19  Cleric
20  Sorcerer
28 Wizard

Tier 4
8  Bard, Cleric
10  Sorcerer
15  Druid
23  Wizard

Tier 5
11  Sorcerer
13  Cleric
14  Druid
16  Bard
23  Wizard

Tier 6
7  Bard
9  Druid, Sorcerer
10  Cleric
19  Wizard

Tier 7
5  Druid
8  Cleric, Sorcerer
10  Bard
15  Wizard

Tier 8
4  Cleric
5  Bard, Sorcerer
6  Druid
12  Wizard

Tier 9
3  Bard
4  Cleric, Druid
5  Sorcerer
12  Wizard

    So the Wizard always has the most spells available, and it's a toss-up between the rest.
    Okay, so many spells does each class prepare?
   
Bard / Sorcerer
4        2
5        3
6        4
7        5
8        6
9        7
10        8
11        9
12        10
14        11
15        12
15        12
16        13
18        13
19        14
19        14
20        15
22        15
22        15
22        15

Cleric                                      
Wis mod + Cleric Level

Druid
Wis mod + Druid Level

Wizard
Int mod + Wizard Level

    Wow, Sorcerers get screwed over, they have the fewest spells they can prepare, and only get one more cantrip spell slot than all the other casters.  And a Bard should have at least a +4 to +5 Cha mod by 20th Level, so is only short 2-3 spells from just using the exact same Attribute mod + Level formula most other casters use - so why don't they?  Again, we see a pattern established and then broken, but what benefit is there to breaking the pattern?


The Warlock
    And lastly, there is the Warlock class.  You might think that the Warlock would be a full spellcaster, but it isn't.  It isn't a partial spellcaster either, instead it uses it's own progression that's kinda similar to the partial casters.  Warlocks can only cast up to Teir 5 spells (like partials) but they also get Tier 0 cantrips (unlike partials).  They are limited in their spells known to a max of 15, like a Sorcerer, but only have 4 spell slots total - yeah, not a typo, 4.  Wow, even the partial casters get 15 slots total.  Warlocks make no sense, they have a totally different way of using magic and I do not understand why.  If they aren't really spellcasters but should instead use their custom "invocations" then why not drop the spellcasting part altogether?  If they should only be partial casters, they why not use the same tables as the Paladin and Ranger, who are both at least pretty consistent with each other?  Again, with 7 other spellcasters setting some kinds of patterns (granted, filled with a Swiss cheese load of exceptions) why not try to use at least one of those patterns, why make something totally different?  Does that really make the Warlock such a worthwhile character?  Is the extra complexity (since it's now harder to balance the Warlock class against the other spellcasters because they have such different rules) really providing anything worthwhile?  It doesn't look like it on paper, though I'll admit I haven't played or GMed a Warlock so I don't know how they are at the table.


Last Thoughts
    Like everything in the 5e SRD I wonder what exactly the designers were thinking.  I see things that seem to have a pattern, to have been thought out, and then there are so many exceptions you wonder why they decided to make those patterns in the first pace.  I see so much that is random and unbalanced in the mechanics, I wonder if the classes play well at the table in spite of the rules and not because of the rules.  That's the problem with RPGs actually, the fact that people can use their creativity and change things in play or set up the scenarios means that the players can fix a lot of the problems - thereby hiding the mechanical defects.  Which is good from a marketing standpoint, your product looks better when the end user is fixing the problems with it, but it's a bad stand to take as a game designer.  And as I'm trying to figure out how to add my own settings and abilities to these rules, in many places I feel pretty lost about how to measure and judge any new concepts to change the rules (I do not want to set myself up for even the possibility of any future Pathfinder bloat).
    And we're just getting started in terms of the total rules, so I'll be back next week to keep looking at classes and class related mechanics.  Until then!

Looking at the 5th Edition SRD - part 5 - Starting Class Abilities

    Okay, having looked at the core elements of classes that they all share, let's start looking at the individual class abilities and see how powerful they are and how the classes compare to each other.  I'm going to start at the beginning and just look at the 1st level abilities for each class...

Barbarian
Rage - you can Rage as a bonus action, a number of times = your proficiency mod; it lasts for 1 min at most (10 rounds of combat), but ends early if you: are unconscious, do not attack an opponent or take damage for a turn, or if you choose to end it.  While raging you: have Advantage on Str checks and saving throws, add damage to melee weapons that use Str, are resistant to Bludgeoning/ Piercing/ Slashing weapons, and you cannot cast spells or wear heavy armor.

    I have never really liked the idea that "rage" can be controlled, that you start and end it at will.  That seems too tame, too domesticated for an ability that should be wild and primal.  Rage is quite the combat ability, it lasts for the whole fight and you can use it twice (to start), and it gives both offensive and defensive bonuses.  The drawbacks are minimal, in fact basically non-existent.  You don't gain any bonuses to Dex-related actions or weapons, not a big deal.  You can't wear heavy armor, which kind of matters when not raging (or would if not for your other ability below), but when raging your damage resistance is quite a nice benefit.  And you can't cast spells, which you shouldn't really need since you can hew foes limb-from-limb.  It seems like a very powerful ability.

Unarmored Defense - when you're not wearing any armor (but shield ok) add your Con mod to your AC.

    This reinforces the "lightly armored" fighter motif, adding your Con on top of you Dex mod.  Light armor is 11 or 12 base AC, and you should easily have a +2 Con mod if you're going to be a Barbarian, so you'll have at least the same AC as wearing light armor [if you have a 0 Con mod you picked the wrong class].  Medium armor goes from 12 - 15 base AC but limits your Dex mod to +2 (14 to 17 max with mod then); so if you went high-Dex and high-Con you should be able to get to Medium armor AC.  Heavy armor goes from 14 to 18 with no mods, and you should be able to hit 14 easy enough, maybe even 16.  Plus you can still use a shield for the extra +2 from that.  So even without armor you should have about as good an AC as being armored.

Bard
Spellcasting - can cast spells, but is limited in the number of spells known.  Every level (except for 3 of them) you gain more spells, and every 2 levels you access a higher tier of spells (which also have "levels," confusingly), but you are limited in the number of spells you can choose from and know.

    Spells are weird, there are 8 (of the 12) classes that can cast spells to some degree, and they vary by weird, hard-to-understand degrees.  It's complicated enough that I'm going to go over it in another post.

Bardic Inspiration - you can give one ally a bonus d6 to add to a roll (within 10 min of recieving it, only one at a time) your Cha mod times between longs rests (basically "per day").  The die increases over time.

    This ability is the worst ever for a class that tends to have marginal abilities.  One person, really, just one person gets inspired by your music - everybody else is bored and wishes you'd shut up?  This ability sucks, both because it doesn't make any logical sense and because it's so under-powered.
    Also, why have Bards always had both spellcasting and "bardic inspiration"?  Shouldn't they just have spells that duplicate the inspiration abilities?  That seems like it would make more sense.

Cleric
Spellcasting - again, I'll cover spells next post.
Divine Domain - again the sparse nature of the SRD creates a headache, as there is only 1 domain described, so trying to ascertain what power level would be appropriate is difficult.  But, from what little we see, the domain gives 2 spells prepared (not more to cast, just more to choose from), proficiency with heavy armor (for a healer?  I kind of see it and I kind of don't), and increases the effectiveness of all healing spells.
    In all, the domain does seem to do some useful stuff, and has an effect throughout the character's career.  Unlike previous versions, you only get one domain, which does seem to reduce your deity to a stereotype instead of a nuanced story element.  that might be a good thing for players who want the simple "heal and fight" cleric, but those who would like some more role-playing depth to the class might be disappointed (or, at least there is little mechanical depth to go with whatever RP elements you make up yourself).

Druid
Druidic Language - you can speak and write a secret language.

    Okay, what the hell?  Yeah, having a secret language can be a benefit (if the GM puts the right NPCs around, or if multiple players take the same class), but is it really enough of one to qualify as a class ability?  This is why I'm listing and comparing the abilities, I want to understand what kind of powers the designers consider appropriate for each level, and this one baffles me.  It seems way too weak to be a class ability and more like a Background element.  Also, what the hell is the purpose of putting a DC to detect a secret druidic message even if you can't read the language?  How the hell would you know it's a message if you can't understand it?  Not very secret if literally anybody can go "oh, that?  yeah, that's a druidic message, don't know what it says though."  The additional stupidity on top of the questionable ability is maddening.

Spellcasting - you know, if spells (and by extension magic) are going to be so common why not go the Earthdawn route and say that every class uses magic, just in a different way?

    I have to admit, I am also wondering about the difference between a Druid and nature Cleric and if they really need to be different classes?  It seems the Druid should be more like a shaman, talking to spirits, but they don't really have that feel.  I dunno... maybe it's just me.

Fighter
Fighting Style - choose from a list of bonuses with certain weapons or ways of fighting.  Generally a small bonus to hit, or damage, or defense/AC.

    This feels like the meat-and-potatoes of the fighter, being the best with weapons and situations, but by default you can only choose one.  Again, previous editions are messing with me here, generally the fighter was the one who had a whole lot of combat options so seeing them reduced to just one feels weird.  Also, I'm detecting a general trend throughout the classes that each gets one main ability that grows over time and one minor ability that provides a relatively small and static bonus.  In which case, this is baffling for the fighter.  If you gained a new style every 2 levels you would parallel all the spellcasters who gain a new tier of spells every 2 levels - but you don't.  Why not?  Even the Barbarian's Rage increases over time/levels.

Second Wind - you can heal once in-between any rest (short or long)

    This works, as the minor backup ability it is not super strong, and it fits the archetype, you can stay in the fight longer than anyone else (before resorting to magic).

Monk
Unarmored Defense - with no armor or shield add your Wis mod to AC.

    This is like the Barbarian, basically you've got the same AC without armor as most other classes do with it.  It makes me wonder though, how much of a benefit is that?  What downsides are there to wearing armor?  It takes time to put on or take off, that might be bad in some limited circumstances.  It costs money, but most classes who can wear it get it for free, and in most every game on earth money is only a short-term problem (since making a balanced RPG economy appears to be impossible).  Some types do give a penalty to stealth, which only matters if that's what you're doing - and the Barbarian does not seem like a stealth class, the Monk a little more-so, but really the Rogue is going to be the sneaky one.  Armor does have a weight, again though, how much of problem is that really?  Assuming you even track it, since most games I've ever played ignored encumbrance (honestly, just how much dramatic potential is there in encumbrance?).  Anyways, this is a useful ability in it's way, I'm just starting to wonder what it really means if non-armored characters have about the same ACs as armored characters - what's the point then?  They are not really different in any meaningful way I can detect.  Again, maybe this just bugs me and not anybody else.

Martial Arts - you gain special abilities with any "monk weapon" which are all simple melee weapons that don't have the heavy or two-handed properties - and shortswords.  With these monk weapons you can: use Dex instead of Str for hit and damage, change the damage die type according to a table (which increases over time), and make an unarmed strike as a bonus action.

    Okay, umm... what to say about this one.  This is the "main" ability, the one that's going to grow over time, and it's pretty weak in a lot of ways.  First, the definition of "monk weapons" is passable - but falls short of any actual martial arts style (well, okay, given how badly generalized the weapons are, I guess it's that terrible - but the dojo fight in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is playing in my mind, though you could argue that was between two Fighters or a Monk and Fighter).  Also, the little note that nunchaku are just re-named clubs and use the club stats - uh... wow.... no.  Big no there.  Here's the easiest way to dispel that one, what are the odds of hitting yourself when swinging a club?  Now compare that to the odds of hitting yourself with nunchaku.  Seriously, that's one of those comments that tells you the person has never done the thing they're talking about (while not a nunchaku expert by a light-year, I have swung the damn things and discovered how tricky they are to use properly).  This goes with the whip and blowgun as lumping weapons together for simplicity in a bad way.
    The damage is a joke.  There are 9 weapons that qualify as "monk," 5 of them do more damage (d6) than the starting d4 - the others do the same damage.  So you literally cannot notice this ability at first level.  It takes until 5th level to see the difference (somewhat), and until 11th level (half your entire career, the chart stops at 20 after all) for an across-the-board benefit.
    The free "finesse" (use Dex instead of Str) is okay, there is only 1 monk weapon that already has it, so you add it to most of them.
    The bonus unarmed strike is also okay, but just feels a little weird.  Even if using a weapon, you don't make an extra weapon attack, it's an unarmed attack.  So instead of hitting somebody again with your enchanted dagger you're going to punch them?  It's another one of those things that I can see the reason for, and at the same time I kind of question the reason for.  If that unarmed attack can be changed to a maneuver (trip, disarm, etc) I'd see it a lot more (not sure if there's an ability to do that though).
    I'm not very fond of this ability.  It's one of the cornerstones of the Monk's definition, and it is okay but not great - and I'm picturing it next to the Barbarian's Rage and the Fighter's Fighting Style.  The Barb has a lot higher modifiers, but is limited to just 2 fights (at first, that goes up though), while the Monk and Ftr are small but constant - that seems balancing, but still, I don't know.  I almost feel like this is better than the Fighter's Styles, and actually, it is - while the Monk starts a little weak, they do at least grow over time while the Fighter is a one-and-done.

Paladin
Divine Sense - you can detect and celestial, fiend or undead within 60 feet and not behind total cover.  You know the type (broadly, literally just "celestial," "fiend," or "undead") but not the specific identity.  You can also detect any area that has been consecrated or desecrated via spell.  Usable 1 + Cha mod per day (long rest).

    Okay, every part of this bugs me.  60 feet is a semi-decent range, kinda close, but only if the creature isn't in total cover?  Why?  What are you doing to sense this then?  So a zombie behind you, got it, but one behind a door, nope... ?  Again, why not if your sight doesn't enter into it (again, behind you is not forbidden) ?  And I'm reading this as they wrote it, that you can only detect "undead" and not "vampire."  That may be bad writing in the rules, since "Lestat" is forbidden (granted, they use "Strahd").  So what you ask- well different types of undead have different types of abilities, so knowing "zombie" or "vampire" is actually helpful (heck, even just "weak" undead or "strong" undead).  The spell is fine, though you should also be able to detect the deity the area has been devoted to, IMHO.  And lastly, why the per-day usage?  First, it's not like the ability is so powerful, it can only detect 3 kinds of monsters (arguably 2, since celestials should be friendly to the presumably good character).  Second, again what exactly are you doing that is so stressful that you can't maintain it?  All of the other "minor" abilities so far have been passive, or "always on."

Lay On Hands - you can heal your level x5 HP per day, for 5 HP you can heal one poison or disease effect.

    As the "main" ability this seems a little limited, but it is helpful.  Free healing is not a bad thing, and being able to use it on poison or disease at first level is not bad (though, either would take your whole healing allotment, so you'd have to debate not healing anyone if you though you might need to heal poison or disease).  It does level up, being able to heal more points each level.  Still, it doesn't grow in having any new or expanded options over time.

Ranger
Favored Enemy - choose 1 type of creature, or 2 types of humanoids: you have Advantage on Wis/ Survival to track and Int to recall information about them, and can speak their language.  Choose another at 6th and 14th levels.

    Okay, this is hands-down the crappiest "favored enemy" in any RPG I can think of.  This ability is total garbage, and it's insulting that the designers though this was actually worthwhile.  Call this "Creature Lore" since there is actually nothing offensive or combative in the ability (which kinda sucks if that's the type of character you're trying to make).

Natural Explorer - choose one terrain type, double your proficiency mod and gain several bonuses in that terrain.

    This one is not bad, the mechanical bonus is nothing to sneeze at, and the various abilities are all useful to some degree.  Half the abilities apply to the whole group, so one Ranger makes quite a difference to how the party travels.

Rogue
Expertise - choose 2 skill proficiencies, or 1 skill and thieves' tools - double your proficiency bonus with those.  Choose two more at 6th level.

    Okay, not terrible.  I would prefer gaining 1 extra expertise every 2 levels (so you'd have 2 at 5th level, one of those at 3rd, and would keep growing after 5th) to be more in line with the spell progression - but this is not too bad.

Sneak Attack - do extra damage, starting at d6 and increasing to distracted foes.  A foe is distracted if you: have advantage to hit them with a finess or ranged weapon, or there is an ally threatening the enemy and you don't have disadvantage on the attack.

    Rogues have always back-stabbed, and they always will.  I'm not sure that's right for the class in some ways, but it doesn't hurt.  The qualifiers get a little long, and the wording is tortured.  The document talks about "the enemy isn't incapacitated" but it's referring to the enemy of your enemy, hence my using the word "ally." (hey, enemy of my enemy... right?)

Theives' Cant - you can pass secret messages face-to-face (takes 4 times longer) with others who speak this, and write short messages.

    Rogues are the only class to get 3 abilities at first level, and I'm cool with that since one is their secret language, which works better as a bonus ability then the Druid's minor ability.  Also, why do secret messages take 4 times longer and why do I care as GM or PC?

Sorcerer
Spellcasting - bet you thought I forgot about spellcasting?  Nope, the Ranger and Paladin can also cast spells, just not until 2nd level, so the spellcasters have been hiding among us :)
Sorcerous Origin - like the Cleric the SRD only has 1 choice, and the ability gives multiple benefits which also level up over time.  I do really like the idea that Sorcerers have a tie to some otherworldly origin, it just sounds cool.  It seems to be a decent ability, perhaps even a little over-powered for being the "minor" ability.

Warlock
Otherworldly Patron - again, like the Cleric and Sorcerer you get multiple benefits that level up.
Pact Magic - Warlock magic is even weirder than the other spellcasters, which I'll cover next post.

Wizard
Spellcasting - the final, and quintessential spellcaster.
Arcane Recovery - you can recover half you level (rounded up) in spells between short rests.  This is actually a pretty good ability, it is not too powerful and it helps bolster one of the weakness of the class (which is totally reliant/ dependent on casting spells).


    Okay, so with the general pattern of Major and Minor ability there is a lot of variation in the classes.  I think non-spellcasters seem to get the shorter end of the stick, since their abilities do not tend to upgrade as fast or expand as regularly as the casters.  But it's not a huge difference overall, though I think it's noticeable enough that it could stand to get fixed.  I'll have to think about that.
    Not done yet, with the prevalence of spellcasters we'll look at them next before we can say we've covered the basics of the class abilities.  Until next week :)