The D&D 2024 ruleset’s Dungeon Grasp’s Information is releasing November 12—although there’s an early entry interval on D&D Past, which means many gamers (together with myself) have gotten our mitts on it early.
I am nonetheless chewing over this factor, since rulebooks are typically weighty, and I will doubtless be unravelling my full ideas on this web site fairly quickly. Nonetheless, I simply needed to step apart for one second and warn you to the truth that, as this Reddit person Cranyx has recognized, it is attainable to your new heroic adventurer to get right into a chase, get winded in an embarrassingly brief period of time, after which drop lifeless (thanks, Wargamer).
As per the chase guidelines specified by the in any other case fairly solid-looking “DM toolbox” chapter clarify, gamers partaking in a chase can be sometimes spending their motion to Sprint—except they’re utilizing it to, say, forged a Maintain Individual spell or one thing to chop the spell brief. Because the e book reads:
“A chase participant can take the Sprint motion plenty of occasions equal to three plus its Structure modifier (minimal of as soon as). Every extra Sprint motion it takes in the course of the chase requires the creature to succeed on a DC 10 Structure saving throw on the finish of its flip or achieve 1 Exhaustion degree. A participant drops out of the chase if its Pace is 0.”
Within the new 2024 ruleset, exhaustion does a number of key issues—all rolls are decreased by twice your exhaustion degree, your velocity is decreased by 5 occasions your exhaustion degree (in toes) and, as was the case again in 2014, maxing out your exhaustion at six factors kills you lifeless. Don’t accumulate 100 gold, don’t go GO.
This intersects bizarrely with the chase guidelines. If in case you have significantly unhealthy luck, or a horrible con modifier, it is totally attainable to fail a DC 10 structure save—a forty five% likelihood in the event you aren’t proficient, and your con mod is zero. Because of this, in case you have six cases of unhealthy luck in a row, working too laborious can simply straight-up kill you.
The timescale right here can also be hilarious—as Cranyx rightly factors out, every spherical of fight in D&D is assumed to occur concurrently over the course of six seconds. You get three freebies, baseline, which signifies that, in 9 turns—assuming you fail when it is time to begin rolling, and preserve doing that—you’d be capable of run for a grand whole of 54 seconds earlier than the Grim Reaper takes pity and snips your mortal thread along with his depraved scythe.
The visible’s additionally fairly humorous, given your velocity is reducing every time you mess up. This unfortunate runner could be fantastic for 18 seconds earlier than quickly slowing, going from a strong 10 toes per second, to eight toes, to 6 toes, and so forth—till they’re stumbling a pitiful 1.5 toes each second. That is one mile per hour, or simply twice as quick as a tortoise’s common gait in the true world. Six seconds later, you die.
What’s extra, as a number of individuals in that thread have observed, there isn’t any clause just like the 2014 handbook that claims you wipe these exhaustion ranges after the chase is over. Every level of exhaustion requires a Lengthy Relaxation to clear, which takes eight hours. Assuming your DM’s solely letting you do that when per day, even barely messing up a dash can put you beneath the climate for a full working week.
Clearly, there’s simply been a few oversights right here—within the 2014 guidelines, hitting a sure degree of exhaustion meant your velocity could be decreased to zero earlier than you died, which makes extra sense for a chase scene. Finally, you’d simply get winded and need to double over. The change to how exhaustion mechanics work, nonetheless, has produced this decidedly unheroic finish.
There’s additionally the bizarre implication that in some way, having an antagonist to chase is far more exhausting than working on the identical precise velocity whereas not beneath duress. Possibly it is only a extended bout of chase-induced anxiousness, by which case, a Knowledge saving throw could be extra applicable.
In any other case, I’m liking what I am seeing—the DMG seems to be making real makes an attempt to construct up a DM’s storytelling toolkit, one thing I’ve complained about at size. I am excited to find whether or not it is succeeded at that or not within the studying periods to come back. I will not rush myself, lest I fail six saves and succumb to momentum apathy like Granthax the Barbarian, could he relaxation in peace.