DnD Next: Is it any good? Part 3

Ado guys.

As we trek through the abandoned temple, two new rules came up this week that I wanted to tell you about:

Disengage

This is one of those situations where you have a new rule that's kind of a re-working of an old one, and it confused a lot of my players so I think it is worth mentioning. It basically concerns how you move out of combat without provoking an attack of opportunity. However, in order to explain the confusion, it is necessary to explain how combat worked in previous editions, and how it works now:

In Pathfinder and DnD 4th, you could usually take three actions: A Standard action, a Move action and a Swift/Minor action. Disengaging from combat - usually called a five-foot-step - was a Move action and could be done before or after your standard action, e.g. making an attack.

In this new edition of DnD, it doesn't work in quite the same way. You get a Move, and an Action. Move is just that - you move up to your maximum distance with all relevant regards for terrain, spell effects that affect movement etc. An Action is something you do in combat, which can either be an attack or some other action - like Disengage. So if you want to Disengage from your opponent, you have to do it instead of an attack.

The way the rule works is this: You move up to half your movement. If this takes you out of the reach of your opponent, they don't make an attack of opportunity against you.

Thinking about it, if you do this instead of making an attack but NOT instead of your move, that could potentially grant you 45ft (usually 9 squares) of uninterrupted movement. So, the rule is still useful, but its potential applications are different from the previous editions, where you would only be allowed to move 5ft. You might use it to beat a hasty retreat, or to reposition yourself at the other side of the battle.

That being said, I think I'm going to have to see it used more often before I can pass judgement on whether this rule is any good. It's certainly different from what I have been used to in the past!

Death

This came up a couple of times during the game last week and I actually got it wrong. Here's how:

In any RGP, falling to 0 hit points rarely kills you straight away. More likely you'll fall unconscious, and there's usually at least one mechanism in place to determine how much damage you can take before you actually die, and what you can do to prevent it. In the new edition of DnD, if you fall to 0 hit points, you fall unconscious, but any remaining damage still applies. If this takes you over your maximum hit points, you die. Which is fair enough, because lets be honest, any blow that can do that kind of damage to you would be pretty fierce! Otherwise, you just lie there until you either bleed out or stabilize - and this is the bit I got wrong, because I forgot to do it:

Each turn that you are at 0 hit points, you have to make a DC10 Constitution Saving Throw. If you pass 3 of them, you stabilize and are still alive. If you fail 3, you die. If you roll a Natural 20, you regain 1 hit point. If you roll a natural 1, you count as having failed 2 saving throws. I completely forgot to get my players to do this when they fell unconscious last session.

As it turned out it was unlikely to have made a difference either way, as in both situations the cleric got to them within one turn and cast Spare the Dying on them, which is a great little spell that revives an unconscious PC with one hit point. As he can do it as a cantrip (i.e. as many times as he likes,) then as long as he stays out of trouble, he can help the party if he needs to. And incidentally, I certainly like the idea of doing this as a spell, rather than relying on capricious dice rolls. I remember in 4th edition having to do it as a Heal check, and that could be the victim of some very poor rolling - though I never allowed that to result in character death if the players were doing the right things.

So that's what came up this week. Next week we're hoping to level up so we might be looking at some new powers and rules, let's see what happens there...