D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7

[Draz74]

The honest truth is, I think, that there's enough kinds of D&D games now targeted to their audiences that the best Next can hope for is to be everyone's second-favorite edition. Which is fine, I suppose, but not something I can really get excited about.

This basically sums up my feelings. I think 5e has a decent chance of becoming "everyone's second-favorite system;" I'm even kind of rooting for it. I hope that it can keep the D&D name alive (financially) in that role. But I don't foresee it attracting a large market of die-hard fans when faced with competition from 3e, 4e, Pathfinder, OSRIC, C&C, Legend, Dungeon World, CRE8, 13th Age, OldSchoolHack, etc.

There's an update today? Man I wish their system worked. I don't get emails anymore.

Try their Facebook page. That's how I usually find out about the updates. Or you could just keep finding out from this thread, of course.

It's another reason why I'm very dismissive of maneuvers like Flurry of Blows, Whirlwind Attack, and Volley. Since they don't get any modifiers for damage, there's no solid base of damage to fall back on, and the results can be quite random. I prefer the approach of Cleave.

I'm less worried about these maneuvers being "too random" and more about their being simply obsolete (due to low damage) at higher levels. But I can definitely see why they're more limited in damage bonuses than Cleave -- that's for balance, since Cleave has another fairly harsh restriction (reducing a target to 0 HP) built into it.

Spells per day has been brought low. Almost cripplingly low.

I like the small number of spells/day at higher levels. If they're going to stick with a Vancian casting model at all, and if spells aren't uniformly completely boring, then spells/day has to be a meaningful limitation at all levels if spellcasters aren't going to take over the game. And the 50+ spells/day that a high-level 3e Wizard gets just doesn't qualify.

The spells themselves though don't seem to have that much of a difference between 3.5's versions though: Unless I'm missing something Polymorph is even less restricted than before.

Polymorph is definitely still broken, but I think it's the exception rather than the rule; most spells seem to be nerfed to sanity in the latest packet. And even Pathfinder is an improvement over 3e's version: it doesn't allow you to use any of your normal abilities (e.g. spellcasting) while polymorphed.