D&D 5th Edition: 8th Revision and Counting

[Dienekes]

So, L&L. Reactions:

Regarding the druid, it's fairly common knowledge that the 3e caster + wild shape + companion setup makes the druid too versatile and powerful and that the class would need to be split up or at least make some of those things mutually exclusive. Let's see what they've done, shall we?

Well, no animal companion, that's good, but wild shape being combat-viable from 1st level isn't going to help the "my class feature is better than your class" problem, considering what the fighter gets at 1st level (i.e. not much).

I can see the druid maybe working if a few things happen. 1) Natural Spell doesn't exist, or at least not for quite a few levels. 2) The Fighter/Rogue is mathematically better than the wildshapes that the druid can get into in and out of combat respectively.

I'm hoping that at level 1 a Fighter can take on a dog, and also that a Rogue can find hidden thing better than the dog. Hoping. We'll see.

Excellent. WotC is taking the suggestion for favored enemy that people have been making for the past year or so. No fighting style restrictions, more magic...hopefully this ends up looking more like the AD&D ranger than the 3e Drizzt clone, but we'll see.

I agree and like everything but the magic bit. I've just never seen why Rangers are magic in the first place honestly. But whatever, I like the favored enemy changes a lot.

So we're going from X dice every round to X dice that can be refreshed one at a time with an action. Why am I not surprised that they're screwing the fighter over yet again?

I agree, having a mechanic to refresh die is ok so the Fighter doesn't spam his nova attack repeatedly. Hell, Warblades have the same thing. The only difference is Warblade maneuvers were good, while this article says they're taking away the Fighter's best maneuver and instead giving him bonuses to his AC and attack. Woohoo. Oh and instead of refreshing everything instead he can only refresh one die at a time. Yay.

Well, that was their default assumption in 3e as well, and guess how that turned out?

Actually I don't think so. I think the implication he's going for is that every martial character starts with the two-weapon fighting feat for free, and it only improves from there.

Overall? Not impressed. I'll have to see the packet to be sure, but it looks like they're taking even more steps backwards in this one.

On some things. Fighter looks worse. Druid could be a nice fix from 3e if they go about it right, ranger doesn't look too bad, and the paladin... Well honestly there's a paragraph talking about the paladin's 8th level ability and essentially calling it useless, but the oath thing might give them some flexibility.