This is just me personally not a problem with the system - but the biggest problem in DC20 is that the DM has no "out", your fighter *WILL* die, it just takes one or two lucky rounds of brutal hits or a good crit if they aren't already topped off. In my playtesting it's kind of a meatgrinder to the point my players don't want to play martials. I introduced an option to the system: when you hit zero you can stay on your feet, or you can go unconscious. If you choose to go unconscious you get resistance to all damage and they need to do prime+level damage to kill you (unless you have no living allies left, then they just kill you), you require a minute + magical healing or 1 hour without magical healing to get back up from this downed state - no yoyoing. In my last playtest this worked very well and it gave me options as a DM: the monsters had other targets that were still hitting them they had to deal with, rather than the fighter just staying on her feet until she more or less instantly died. We want hard combat, but we don't want to lose our characters that easily especially at low levels - however I do understand I am in the minority and most people prefer "punishing" TTRPGs like Mork Borg or Old School Essentials or 2e

WHERE'S the monk build & WHY does this keep happening!? If you say it, DO it.

How do the passive checks work. My modified version was to remove the +10

I gotta say. I love the features you choose to cherry pick from pathfinder and form fit to this system that seems to want to simplify pathfinders hundreds of pages of necessary knowledge

I like the look of this system, but one thing that seems like a really crappy cop-out is the Awareness skill. It's just tied to... anything? "Man, I'm so strong, I can see far away." I get the design issues with the Awareness skill. Perception can seem like a must have skill, so just letting anyone use it instead of tying to one of four skills is convenient, but pretty verisimilitude breaking. Even Pathfinder's system of tying it to specific classes seems better than this, and I wasn't a huge fan of that either.

i've seen a lot of love for the prime modifier system and i just... don't get it. the part that most rubs me the wrong way is the fact it's tied to the awareness skill which is just a bit off flavor-wise. it basically means there's no wrong answers for how you build your character and runs into a lot of weird issues in the fiction of the game. it might seem cool to have an INT barbarian, but it's only gonna feel less and less cool now that all skill checks are equally easy to be good in. there's a sort of texture that's added to dnd by the lack of balance in the stats, the way constitution, dexterity, and wisdom are uniquely useful beyond whatever class you have and the way you can rely on high INT being rare, meaning only special adventurers can gain access to that info. i think the answer was, kinda obviously, to make all stats useful in different ways, not to just make your highest stat the only one that matters. i mean, here's a thought, what if you just removed key attributes? that seems much more elegant and much more immediately obvious. i know im in the vast minority here but can anyone explain to me the actual appeal? i know it allows for more diverse character fantasy but what if... being an int barbarian actually changed anything at all about the way you played turn-to-turn? cuz that sounds way more appealing to me.

Kolby turned karmaric dice on to get out of that sap.

Did they mention what level the PCs were?

I don't like how you're assuming everyone has a 3 for their prime

Living the look of fighter. The amping up is cool as heck!

So if I'm an invisible sorcerer who casts subtle fireball, is it subject to being countered? The correct response is heck no. Firstly, you're unaware of where it originates from. You've no idea it's being cast or who's casting it, and finally, there's no mechanism to know what spell you should cast that would counter a spell. If you're going to make a requirement that's needed to counter there needs to be a mechanism in place that the opposing caster has for determining the makeup of the spell being cast. For example you used cone of cold assuming here cold or opposing element being required to counter. Why is cold required could not any spell be used? Secondly, if I'm casting a 5th level cone of cold vs a 3rd level fire ball there's a built in level disparity. Does a weaker level five spell beat a strong level 3 spell? If not why not? The spell effectively is by default more powerful, hence the higher level. It's a great idea if implemented well and this seems clunky. In 5E there's steps a caster can take to avoid spells being countered. Contrary to what most say attacking doesn't necessarily reveal your location in 5E per rules as written.

I might actually play a Rogue in this. I like the status condition play

Potential variant rule for martials, I give them a deed dice of d4 and they tell me what they want to do instead of a specific martial maneuver. Would open options and reduce memorization and i give them a number to beat on their deed dice. I also increase the size of their deed dice at certain levels, both increasing their success rate and increasing the level of deed they can accomplish. Trip attack a wizard 2 on the deed dice trip attack a fellow warrior, 3 on the deed dice, trip attack the large armored ogre, 5 on the deed dice naturally gating certain features behind fighter levels. What if i want to push both archers off the ledge with by turning my reach weapon sideways not dealing damage but pushing both, doable easy like this. Just a thought coach love the game :)

Even on this livestream, you use "Mana" and "Stamina". So why not remove the unnecessary "Point" after them? Mana and Stamina feels wayyy better than Mana Point and Stamina Point. Especially when there's like 5 other resources with "Point" after

I've always just used bloodied and critical (10%) and announced it when they cross the threshold...

I like the use of a skill check for initiative and still get to do that action.

Still need to know if raging stops spell casting lol

Love the idea, doesn't find the execution compelling. How come a spell being duelled by three people keeps its exact potency? In my opinion, either make the check easier for each consecutive person who'll duel it, or make the spell a bit weaker for each failed try. Still, a most excellent concept ! Good luck for your project !

That was glorious. Thank you sir

So let's say I start a warlock and want to muliclass into a bladesinger subclass. I'd have to wait until higher levels? It's rather confusing. One thing is for certain Adopting a single feature of bladesinger does not make you a bladesinger. This isn't multiclassing. True multiclass characters stem's from early AD&D in which non-human characters possessed multiple classes at one time. An elf fighter/mage or a dwarf fighter/cleric or a halfelven fighter/mage/cleric/thief. The caveat to playing these characters was that you split your experience earned by how many classes. Arguably, this is what people really want. The issue that happens is you'll have a 3rd level warlock, bladesinger, assassin where, as everyone is 9th level. This means fights tend to be rather more difficult for multiclass characters. Still, like you said, I shouldn't have to stop learning one thing when I switch which is consequences of 3rd edition which introduced dual classing. Multiclassing became dual classing without the penalties. Alas, there in lays the issue. What you're showing isn't multiclassing. At best in your system, you'd probably only actually be able to truly multiclass two separate classes by choosing talents from the new class until you learned everything, if that's even possible.

How does multiclassing with the spellblade work? If I'm a spellblade and I use my talents to dip into wizard or fighter, do I get the respective spellcaster/martial "starter kit?" What about if I'm a pure martial or pure caster and I dip over into spellblade, would I also gain access to whichever resource my main class lacks?

How would multiclass wizards/sorcerer/warlock work? So in DnD 5E I could have a young mage who was kidnapped as a young man by an evil wizard because of his blood ties to magic. Whilst a prisoner, I strike a bargain with an imprisoned demon, a demon who's been imprisoned so long he's devolved into a shadow demon. A bargin to free this demon in exchange for eldritch power to inflict revenge. Once freed, the demon grants us shadow powers and abilities, allowing us to escape. Being free, I decided to embrace bladesinger. 5e can do this, but it's a bit clunky. I envision this character as a duel wielding eldritch bladesinger being able to manifest eldritch blades instead of a beam (i.e. eldritch blast) specialized in destroying opposing spell casters. Can this be done in DC20?

That is one HELL of a list of endorsements

As someone who is very bad with numbers I'm super excited for the simplicity that seems like DC20 will be

It would be cool if you changed the current “Wolf stance” to “Tiger stance” and made a new wolf stance that had a pack tactic design. Like giving allies offensive buffs or defensive buffs.

That was one of the most beautiful description I've heard. This is really inspiring mechanic.

Hey, is there an alpha version of the rules that goes beyond level 2? I'm wanting to make a test character, I bought the alpha rules document but there's nothing above level 2 for each class, as far as features. Is there a document with further class features, or is that coming at the end of the Kickstarter?

so in the scenario you describe at the end, would a GM not be able to allow players to aid each other if they had similar enough spells? I would like to have seen an option for 3 characters wanting to do the same thing to somehow stack the check so one just say gives advantage on the check and another with the same spell type adds 5 or something. So same narrative need but a cooperative stack instead of 3 characters doing their own thing. Any consideration for this type of play?

You should add a place to put the shield bonus in the character sheet. It becomes annoying to track if my fighter is constantly switching between two handed, dueling, and using a shield.

Me doing something similar with kobold, goblin, and gnome

This seems like a really game attempt to make class-and-level-based systems a little less broken and constraining. Solid work. But as someone who likes to roleplay, I gotta say points-and-skills-based systems (e.g. GURPS) are just fundamentally better. Multi-classing and subclasses and talents and feats and whatever are all these really creative ways to try to fit more stuff into the shoebox of character classes, and here we have an impressive approach to shoehorning all that stuff in without breaking the box too bad. But you can skip all that by just not roleplaying in a shoebox.

Fun Fact: that dance he was refering to is called a Haka (iirc) and would be done before battle as a means to threaten, taunt, talk mad shit all while hypeing up the warriors and getting them in the space for a fight!

Really excited to try this system!

Yeah, I never much cared for slots as a mechanic. Even in 5e I prefer the Spell Points alternate rule.

Does anybody else wonder if the reason that WotC has released all these D&D 2024 peeks the last few days is to try to counteract ALL the DC20 hype and/or exposure it's been getting lately? Especially from 5e channels? Keep on rolling, DC20!!! Hopefully to 2m!

So... I can make a Strength based Spellcaster?

58:01 there would be so many compromises

Hybrid class psion! Hello Jedi

There are many good ideas in DC20. In the end it seems a little rules heavy for me personally, but I'm very impressed anyway.

One time in college a few of us created level 20 characters in 3e in order to play a 1-shot. The game was terrible. We were incredibly overpowered and the DM had the hardest time coming up with something that was actually engaging. Each round of combat took forever as we all tried to figure out what we could actually do. Maybe if we’d played the characters from a lower level up to level 20 it wouldn’t have been such a problem, but it was the slowest most boring game I’d ever played.

at first I wasn't sure how i felt about unique initiative however when you combine it with a DC for who goes first (player or DM) it may affect the outcome as some may not be good at talking so they would potentially roll poorly which would potentailly impact whether they pass the DC or not which could be interesting

The advantage of picking only one ancestry instead of two is that... Later on I can pick a second ancestry? So there is no actual benefit of having only one ancestry, then?

Seems fun and better than d&d, but from the video that i watched i can tell that DC20 is very different play style than d&d. I can advice Pathfinder 2e to someone who want to play a balanced and more deep version of d&d. As far as i can tell DC20 is focused on being less cluncky and quicker, being very cinematic in the same time. But i fear that it will be to superficial mathematicaly speaking. I kinda like the way that d&d allow you to min max your charachter, but d&d is too broken rule wise. Simply play Pathfinder 2e if you like the mathematic behind the game, is incredibly well balanced and there an enormous amount of choices for your pg.

Honestly, the only thing I don't like about this character sheet is the amount of skill expertise. You shoulf have 3 levels: Trained/Expert/Master. And have these be +2/+5/+8.

We've been playing a family 5e game for yeeeears (like 8 years at this point) and to this day, I still have to help my mother in law figure out which dice she needs every time she rolls 😅

There shouldn't be resurrection. death is death.

These lets people have RP opportunity and the optimizer/power gamer do what they want. I would also make the PC find someone to teach them that class feature. They don't just spontaneously learn it, they have to be taught.