Legends & Lore: Updates

This week we get several rules updates, or more accurately the summary of what those rules updates will probably entail.

It looks like they are going to bring back Passive Perception (no mention of how it works with advantage though). I was not even aware that it was gone, but both this and an actual credit to 4th Edition (in name and everything) are steps in the right direction.

I think combining Passive Perception with marching order might be a bit too granular, but then the article does not provide any mechanics so who knows?

Not a fan of everyone making their own Stealth check. In my experience the people in heavy armor tend to ruin it for everyone else, but I can still see the reason for it. One thing that might speed up play is giving everyone a Passive Stealth to use while exploring, modified by how fast the party is going and light sources. That would also prevent the Dungeon Master from having to call for Stealth checks, potentially cluing in the players that something is nearby. The only downside is, like with Passive Perception, how it would work with characters that have advantage.

Matching the time it takes to pick a lock/disarm a trap to an exploration round both makes sense and is reasonable, something that I cannot often say about 5th Edition. The only potential issue is where the article specifically states that "disarming a trap or picking a lock takes 1 minute"; I could easily see complex traps and locks that need multiple checks to disarm, which would take multiple exploration rounds. But, maybe I am reading too much into it and that will be a thing in the final version.

I am pretty sure we converted Epiro over to 4th Edition before multiclassing hit, but given that it seems to operate very similar to 3rd Edition I have no idea why they are surprised that players have been able to cobble together broken combinations. You think they would have learned, especially when players cannot even choose most of the things they can do.

I think a simple, elegant solution to the extra action issue is to just go back to 4th Edition's action economy, at least in part, and make a bonus attack require a minor action, or even a move action if you felt that 4th Edition's minor action was a problem (I guess players tried to find ways to use them, even when they had nothing to use them on). Another option would be to go with 3rd Edition's swift action, where you do not automatically have an action to burn, but you can pick up features that use a specific, limited kind of action.

Tags and keywords could also be used to help highlight them as well as avoid repeated text, which it kind of sounds like they are doing by labeling them as bonus actions. It sounds a lot better and simpler than, say, repeating in each power that you cannot use it with something else that gives you extra attacks, like the initial "totally not a minor action" swift spells.

Speed penalties do differentiate races in an interesting and sometimes crucial way. If you use minis then there is the obvious difference in how far you can move; that extra space or two can make a huge difference. Even without minis there is still the equally obvious fact that dwarves and gnomes cannot keep up with the rest of the race-roster. By Mearls's own logic why give anyone low-light vision? It is not particularly interesting and comes up way less often in the game than movement.

I think there is a problem with the speed penalty imposed by heavy armor being negated with a sufficiently high Strength score, namely that if a Strength of 13 lets you waive it then I do not think it is going to come up at all. The characters that really want to get into heavy armor are most certainly going to have a Strength of at least 13, and if they do not it is not exactly hard to get it there.

Moving slower in exchange for the higher Armor Class gives it one of its only meaningful trade offs (the other being penalties to skills that the character probably never uses or will succeed at, anyway). I guess if you want to get rid of it, then just get rid of it; treat it like any other piece of gear and tie speed/skill penalties to overall encumbrance instead.